River of Ruin

The dynamic angle of the keel and rudder shot the ship toward the Korvald. With water pouring over her rail, the Englander Rose nosed into the refrigerator ship just hard enough to tear a large gash in her hull. With her momentum expended, the Rose settled over even more, fountains of air and water exploding from ventilators and leaky hatch covers as her interior spaces were drowned.

When her bow struck the bottom her keel bent in an agonized scream of wrenching metal. She settled deeper, rolling ever so slowly. Her forward cranes were smashed like matchsticks when they slammed the Korvald’s deck. The upper edge of the superstructure crashed into the other ship’s wheelhouse in an explosion of broken glass and men too slow to get out of the way. The funnel snapped off when it struck, and rolled like an enormous pipe onto the deck. It caught two gunmen and crushed them flat.

Wave action from the collision separated the two vessels for a moment before they struck again, harder, opening another hole in the Korvald’s hull. As the Rose continued to settle on the shallow bottom, torn plates, tangles of rope and other debris locked the two vessels together. The Chinese ship was pulled downward by the Rose’s dead weight. She ended up with a ten-degree list when at last the tramp freighter stopped sinking. But with water rushing through her torn hull, the Korvald also began to go down.

The Rose lay as though dead, with more than half of her bulk underwater and waves lapping just five feet below where her crew huddled.

Rabidoux was the first to recover. “I think they are going to come after us for what Harry did to their ship.”

Lauren disentangled her legs from under Foch, struggling to find her orientation on this world turned sideways. Looking down through the bridge door she saw nothing but water. She grabbed her weapon. “He’s right. We can’t stay here. They’re going to cut us down.”

Mercer fingered the knot on the back of his head. He’d hit it against the wall during the final plunge. “Let’s give it a minute.”

“What?” they all shouted at once.

Mercer twisted his wrist so they could see his borrowed watch. It was 11:00. “We’ll make our move when the Change lights off. The chopper can provide cover.” He radioed his plan to the McCampbell, who would pass it on to the pilot of the Seahawk, swirling out of reach of small-arms fire from the Korvald.

“According to my watch,” Lauren said, her free hand gripping her M-16, “it should come in four, three, two, one. .”

Nothing.

“It’s that Rolex you wear,” Foch teased. “Too accurate. They’re using a cheap Chinese knockoff.”

Harry was about to crack a joke when a dazzling flash arced across the underside of the low-lying clouds, a blinding display that left his jaw slack and his eyes stinging.

Twelve miles up the canal, seven thousand tons of explosives detonated. It wasn’t so much an explosion as a hurricane of fire that shredded the sky as it bloomed and billowed into a towering column of flame. The Robert T. Change ceased to exist, wiped from the earth in the first milliseconds of the blast. Slapped as if by a giant fist, the Mario diCastorelli was lifted from the water and tossed nearly a half mile, while chunks of her hull sailed even farther. The billion gallons of vaporized water added to the overpressure that hammered the surrounding rock. In an instant, the soil below the canal turned into a slurry no stiffer than Jell-O and the fractured mountains began to collapse, tumbling and grinding and filling the crater gouged by the explosion. Clouds of dust rose around the blast scene like the banks of ash that pour from a volcanic eruption.

The shock wave traveling through the earth made the surface of the canal near the Rose come alive. They could see the growing fireball climbing over the horizon but could hear nothing yet as jittering waves topped ten feet and washed over their tight group. The pressure wave hit a second later, and then came the rumbling thunder of the detonation, a roar like a thousand jet aircraft.

In the cut, tens of thousands of cubic yards of rock and debris tumbled from the mountainside in an endless cascade. On the opposite bank was a gently sloping field nearly four acres square. The structural shifts in topography caused the top ten feet of dirt covering the field to slide like a conveyor belt into the canal. The avalanches fell unabated for several minutes, and slides would continue for days as the landscape resettled itself.

For the first time since October 10, 1913, when a telegraphed signal from Woodrow Wilson in the White House detonated the dike separating the Gaillard Cut from Lake Gatun, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were no longer joined. The most vital sealane in the history of maritime commerce had been severed. Below the churning dust and dissipating flames, angry water lapped at both sides of an earthen plug that stretched from bank to bank.

Mercer roused his people as soon as the sound hit them. They couldn’t waste the precious seconds of distraction the explosion gave them. The Seahawk pilot understood her orders and didn’t bother staring at the awful destruction taking place up the canal. She swung her chopper in a tight circle, lowering her altitude so the door gunner could open fire directly into the Korvald’s bridge. Glass and blood flew.

The Legion soldiers led the group around the wing bridge and across what had once been the side of the superstructure. The steel was slick with rain and the footing treacherous. There was no cover. Had it not been for the chopper keeping the Chinese pinned, their charge could have been cut down before it ever really got going.

Munz and Foch reached the edge of the superstructure first, dropping flat to peer over the lip to see who or what was below them. Mercer and Lauren watched where the Korvald’s wing bridge jutted out ten feet over their heads. So far no one on the Chinese ship presented themselves as a target.

“Clear,” Foch called and disappeared from view over the edge.

The others rushed forward. The Korvald’s rail was only a foot below them and was less than a yard away. The water between the two ships continued to bubble as air escaped from the capsized freighter.

Foch waited in the shadow of a ventilator to help steady the others as they leapt over. Above them and forty feet aft, the ship’s mangled wheelhouse continued to take automatic fire from the Seahawk. A short way off two pairs of legs shown grotesquely from under the Rose’s decapitated funnel.

“What’s your plan?” Mercer asked the Legion officer.

He shrugged. “Je ne sais pas. I thought you’d have an idea.”

Looking toward the bow, Mercer saw movement. A Chinese soldier was working his way along the raised hatch covers to find a way to shoot down the helicopter gunship with his type 87. Mercer swung his M-16, but Rabidoux was quicker and triggered off a three-round burst that threw the soldier flat.

Two more Chinese rose from their hiding places to counterfire and were cut down by Lauren and Foch.

“The chopper’s keeping everyone on the bridge occupied,” Mercer said, his breathing growing ragged as adrenaline once again electrified his body. “Foch, take two men and mop up the forward deck so no one can sneak up behind us.”

“D’accord.” He grabbed Munz and the Legion trooper whose name Mercer didn’t know and vanished around the funnel.

Mercer and the rest shuffled over to the superstructure, mindful of glass still falling from the bridge. Reaching a sealed hatchway, Bruneseau took up a covering position while Rabidoux spun open the dogs. No one was waiting inside.

“Haven’t we already done this once today?” Harry remarked as they stepped out of the storm.

“Quit your complaining and help us find a place to hole up until Foch gets back.”

They made their way down a dim passage, turning left toward the interior of the ship, and found an unlocked cabin. Mercer went in first, his M-16 held tight to his shoulder. It was clear. Harry went straight to the desk and sat down. “Ah, that feels better. Damned peg leg is starting to bother me.”

A minute later, they heard movement outside the cabin. Rene peeked out the door then opened it wide for Foch and the others. “Is the deck clear?”

He nodded. “There were three others. What do we do now, hunt down the rest?”

Mercer thought about it. “No. Just one of them.”