“Harry?” he said.
“Yes?”
“You and I have never been close.”
“Right. Because you hate me.”
“Right. But I feel a bit differently about you now. After all you did back there. A lot of men would have died without you and your M-60.”
“Yeah? So?”
“I’d like you to join me and Stokely. Leave CIA, sign a contract with Red Banner. Pays a lot better, Harry. Less paperwork in the mercenary business than inside the Beltway.”
“Really? So-that means you, what, you like me now?”
“I didn’t say that, Harry. I paid you a far greater compliment.”
“Lemme think about it awhile.”
“Take as long as you want.”
“I’m in.”
“Yeah!” Stoke said, wrapping his massive arms around Harry and bouncing him up and down like a ragdoll. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
Lines were heaved aboard, throttles were engaged, and Nighthawke moved swiftly out into the channel.
The Trojan Horse had left the barn.
Fifty-six
Strait of Hormuz
The sky was remarkably clear under a lantern moon.
“Mosquitoes,” Stoke, looking over his shoulder, said to Harry Brock. “Look at ’em swarm. Gotta be fifty of ’em at least.”
Harry’d come out on the stern deck for a smoke. He’d been the first to hear the snarling outboard motorboats, a vast flotilla of them, racing across the flat black sea to converge on Nighthawke ’s stern. They were pirate scows, some of them forty feet in length, the longboats Somali pirates used to board and capture defenseless behemoths off the coast of Africa. Harry once tried to explain to Stoke that the reason the tankers didn’t have armed crews had to do with the insurance.
“So who pays the ransom when the tankers get hijacked?” Stoke said.
“Uh, the insurance companies.”
“Oh. Now I get it,” Stoke had said, shaking his head.
The pirates were about four miles out and rapidly closing the distance. In the midst of them was the “mother ship,” enclosed for protection. Sirens aboard Blackhawke sounded General Quarters, and gunners climbed up inside their turrets, wheeling about on their ring mounts to face the threat aft. Threat is maybe a teensy bit too strong a word for these assholes, Stoke thought. Pests, maybe? Spray ’em with Raid, he told Harry, that oughta do it. Or get one of those bug zappers. These pissant pirates chasing after a high-tech warship like Nighthawke? Oughta get their turbans out of their asses.
The longboats, incredibly fast with their three-hundred-horsepower outboards, were gaining on them rapidly.
“Boss?” Stoke said into his radio. Hawke was on the bridge radio, talking to Carstairs aboard Blackhawke, discussing the best approach to the Strait of Hormuz as soon as the team was finally back aboard their own mother ship.
“Go ahead, Stoke.”
“You know those new antiship mines we rigged in the aft tubes?”
“Yes.”
“This pirate attack might be the perfect opportunity to battle test them, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely. Good idea. Deploy as the scows move into range. Our ETA for the rendezvous with Blackhawke is twenty minutes.”
“Affirmative.”
“What mines?” Harry asked Stokely.
“Made in Israel. They’re cherry red. GPS equipped. They’ll go anywhere you send them, any depth you send them. Explode on direct contact, or by timer, or when the enemy enters a preset sonar range. Forgot the real name for them. I call ’em cherry bombs. Here’s the portside tube, the other one is over there to starboard. Each tube loads a dozen mines. You deploy them from the fire control center of this fire control panel right here. I figure we only need about four, two from each tube.”
“What are those thingys sticking out?”
“The little fins? Diving planes and rudders. And the entire surface is embedded with tiny propulsion jets. Send the little bastards anywhere you want. But they don’t have to be anywhere near the bad guys. Each cherry bomb has a blast range of a half mile. Anything inside that circle? Gone.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah. So anything traveling within a two-mile radius of four cherry bombs is going to be turned into fine sawdust and microscopic metal filings. You know how when a nuclear bomb first explodes, it rolls out that big ring of fiery-ass shock-and-awe shit before it turns into a mushroom cloud?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s kinda what they do.”
“Don’t tell me they’re nuclear?”
“Hell, no, they’re not nuclear. That technology’s so outdated. This is new technology, baby. Far superior. Those Israelis have got their shit together, trust me.”
“Yeah, well, these 30mm cannons work pretty good, too,” Harry said, removing the cover and getting into firing position on the small seat behind the breech. He put his eye to the rangefinder.
“What are you doing?”
“See that big mother ship hiding in the middle of the pack?”
“Yeah.”
“Watch this, pal. One fuckin’ shot.”
Harry yanked the cord and the big gun fired. It was a direct hit. Most of the mother ship’s topsides were destroyed and a fire was raging at the stern. She was badly damaged, but still maintained her course and speed as the crew desperately tried to extinguish the fire.
“Nice shot.”
“We do what we can.”
The main body of the pirate fleet held back out of range, but the pirate captain sent a dozen or so of his longboats racing full speed ahead and soon they were swarming around the big yacht, pirates standing now and firing their AK-47s. A few even nudged right alongside the yacht and flung grappling hooks over the rail. The young pirates, chains of gold dangling from their necks, their heads wrapped with red turbans, started scrambling up the lines with amazing agility. They had curved knives clenched in their teeth and they were clearly excited about this huge prize they were about to take.
Until, that is, the Navy SEAL snipers positioned on the topmost mast began picking them off with precision head shots. Those who’d reached the rail in an attempt to board died first, dropping like so many stones into the sea. Next the pirates coming up the lines, and finally those brave souls with their AKs, manning the longboats. It was all over in about five minutes.
But it didn’t stop the rest of pirate fleet from making a run on the yacht. It was just too glittering a prize to give up on.
“Okay. Here come the rest of those assholes. Show me.”
“Bombs away,” Stoke said, and pressed each of the big red Fire buttons two times.
Four red mines, about the size of large cannonballs, instantly deployed, arcing up into the sky, two from each tube.
