“That’s right, Captain,” Linc said, noting the four gold stripes on his shoulder boards. “We’re about to put an end to this situation. We need to get to the roof.”
“Of course. Follow me.” They started up. “What’s going on? All I know is one minute we’re taking on our normal load of crude and the next some idiot has yanked the hoses, damaging my ship. I called the marine office but no one picked up. Then my lookouts report armed men on the pier. Now it sounds like my days in the Falklands out there.”
“Suffice it to say, your crew is going to be okay. Just don’t let any of them near the deck or any open spaces.”
“That’s been my standing order all morning,” the captain assured him. “Here we are.”
They’d reached the top of the stairwell. There were no doors but there was a hatch in the ceiling accessible by a ladder. Ski started up without a word.
Linc held out his hand, “Thank you, Captain. We’ll take it from here.”
“Oh yes, right. Good luck to you,” he said and shook Linc’s outstretched hand.
Ski got the hatch open, flooding the stairwell with brilliant sunlight. He climbed through, followed by Linc. There was no way to lock the portal from the top, so they would have to keep an eye on it to make sure that no one came up after them.
The roof of the pilothouse was a featureless plane of white-painted steel shadowed by the ship’s funnel and an antennae array. When they neared the edge they dropped to their bellies so as not to show themselves and again looked down over the dock. At the end of the causeway they could see Mike’s small army awaiting their signal. The UAV buzzed nearby.
“Oregon, this is Linc. We are in position. Give us some time to designate targets. Stand by.”
After setting up their rifles and placing full magazines along the lip of the roof so they could quickly shift positions, the two men scoped every one of the enemy soldiers, figuring out who the officers and noncoms were so they could decapitate the leadership, as the saying went.
“I’ll be damned,” Linc muttered.
“What?”
“Eleven o’clock. Guy with the shades chewing out some teenager.”
Ski shifted his rifle so he could see who Linc was talking about. “Got him. Yeah? So? Who is he?”
“That, my friend, is Colonel Raif Abala, the sneaky bastard who pulled the double-cross on us when we were selling him the guns. He’s General Makambo’s right hand.”
“Seems to be out of favor if Makambo sent him here,” Ski said. “Want to take him first?”
“No, I think I’d rather see his face when he realizes what’s what and who’s who. You ready?”
“I’ve got at least four officers on my half of the dock and six more who seem like they know what they’re doing. Rest are cannon fodder.”
“Okay, then let’s rock and roll.Oregon , we’re ready.”
“We’re good to go here,” he heard Mike Trono say over the tactical net.
Max’s reply was letting Mark Murphy unleash a torrent of shells from the Gatling gun. The water and oil soup ten yards off the causeway exploded in a line that extended its entire length. It was as though the ocean had reared up in a continuous wall. The rebels cowered at the sight and sound as they were doused with filthy spray. A soldier stationed on the causeway broke cover to run back to the floating dock.
With the Gatling’s scream overriding the sound of their shots, Linc and Ski got to work, firing as fast as they could. One shot equaled one kill. Every time. After firing five rounds they could see confused soldiers start to look around as their leaders dropped. The two snipers backed away from the edge and shifted further aft. When Linc looked through his scope again he could see Abala screaming at his men.
By the fear Link could see written in the faces of Abala’s troops his rants were having little success. In the distance, Mike and his team were cautiously coming down the causeway.
Again, he and Ski found their targets and again the rebel leadership was decimated. A soldier finally realized the shots were coming from above and behind them and looked up at the tanker. The guerilla was about to shout a warning to his comrades but got no further than opening his mouth before Ski dropped him with one of his Barrett’s half-inch slugs.
“Mike, you’re about eighty feet from the first ambush,” Tiny Gunderson said over the radio.
“What are they doing? My Softscreen’s down again.”
“If I were a betting man I’d say talking about giving up. No, wait, my mistake. I think one’s trying to rally them. No, wait again. He’s down. Nice shot, Ski.”
“That was me,” Linc said.
“And courage has left the building,” Tiny crowed. “They’ve dropped their weapons and are reaching for the sky.”
That first sign of capitulation broke the dam for the rest. All along the causeway and on the loading dock men were laying down their arms. Only Abala seemed interested in fighting on. He waved his pistol like a madman. Linc watched him level it at a young guerrilla, screaming at him, presumably, to pick up his AK-47. He shot off half of Abala’s foot before the colonel could murder the unarmed man.
Trono’s team swept through the defeated rebels, tossing their captured AKs into a pile and patting down each man for additional weapons.
Linc and Ski remained in their sniper nest, making sure there were no holdouts until the entire area had been secured.
“That’s the last of them,” Mike announced. He was standing over Colonel Abala, who was on the dock writhing in pain. “Who missed on this guy?”
“That was no miss, son,” Linc said. “Once he gets out of the hospital that’s the cat that’s going to lay this whole thing on Makambo and Singer.”
It took ten minutes for Linc and Ski to get down to the dock. Linc approached Abala and squatted next to him. The rebel colonel was nearly in shock and didn’t acknowledge his presence, so Linc lightly slapped his face until he looked over. Spittle bubbled from Abala’s lips and he had a deathly pallor under his dark skin.
“Remember me, numb nuts?” Linc asked. Abala’s eyes went wide. “That’s right. Congo River, about a week or so ago. You thought you could double-cross us. Well, this is what happens.” Linc leaned close.
“Never, and I mean never, mess with the Corporation.”
WHEN the Angolan army finally arrived at the Petromax terminal, theOregon —with her equipment, her crew, and all of Moses Ndeble’s men, alive or dead—was well over the horizon.
The Angolan forces found that the oil flowing to the loading pier had been shut off and crews had capped the two offshore wells. They also discovered eighty-six corpses laid out next to an administrative building and over four hundred frightened men roped together and locked inside, many of them wounded.
One of them, who had a bloody bandage wrapped around his truncated foot, had a sign draped over his neck that read:
MY NAME IS RAIF ABALA. I AM A COLONEL IN SAMUEL MAKAMBO’S CONGOLESE
ARMY OF REVOLUTION AND WAS HIRED TO PERPETRATE THIS ACT OF TERRORISM
BY DANIEL SINGER, FORMERLY OF MERRICK/SINGER. I UNDERSTAND THAT IF I DO
NOT COOPERATE THE PEOPLE WHO STOPPED US TODAY WILL FIND ME.
HAVE A NICE DAY.
29
THEshabby appearance of theOregon was expertly applied camouflage to make her look neglected, but the dilapidation of theGulf of Sidra was the real thing. For twenty years she’d tracked back and forth across the Mediterranean carrying her loads of oil while her owners eked every penny of profit they could. If something broke it was replaced with a used part, hastily repaired with duct tape and bailing wire, or discarded altogether. When her sewage treatment plant went down it was bypassed and repiped to dump directly into the sea. Her air-conditioning system merely moved hot air around the superstructure rather than cooled it. And with the galley’s walk-in cooler not working, the chefs had to balance taking food out of the freezer and letting it thaw but not spoil.
Her black hull was streaked with rust while bare metal showed on her superstructure, and her single funnel
