River of Ruin

starboard side of the Englander Rose. Four produced towering geysers that reached higher than the superstructure and doused the ship with water. The fifth shot hit squarely on the aft section of the pilot boat, sliced cleanly through her fiberglass deck, and impacted her diesel engine.

Her destruction was complete. Nothing larger than a postage stamp remained as her hull blew apart under the triple assault of explosives, kinetic energy, and her own load of fuel. Steel, plastics, and the remains of her crew rose on a column of fire and water that exploded outward in a plume that raked the side of the Rose and the jungled bank of the canal. When the sound rolled away and Mercer dared look over the railing again, a pool of burning fuel was the only marker for the men who’d died.

“Heaven to Angel Two.”

“Go ahead, Heaven.” Mercer’s voice was filled with awe at the power the USS McCampbell was able to throw so accurately from so far away.

“Our screens show target destroyed. We’ve reacquired primary target and await your order.”

“Roger that, Heaven. Nice shooting. Stand by.” Mercer roused himself. Rene and the fourth Legion soldier burst onto the bridge. Their clothes were soaked because both had been on the deck when the cannon ripped along her rail.

Bruneseau was breathless. “Was that from your ship?” Lauren nodded. “Mon Dieu. I never imagined such a weapon existed.”

“That’s only the first generation,” she explained proudly. “The production guns don’t go into full service for a couple more years.”

Mercer noted that Harry had gotten back on his feet and was once again working the ship. The old man nudged the Rose on her axis using the bow thruster and expert hands on her rudder and throttle. “Did they even have bow thrusters when you were a captain?” he asked.

“Nope,” Harry answered laconically. “But it’s the same as having a well-tended tug at the bow. I’ll have her pointed back at the lock in another minute.”

Much of the windscreen had been riddled by bullets and shrapnel. What pieces that hadn’t fallen away completely were starred and cracked and nearly impossible to see through. Lauren and Foch hammered away at the remaining panes with the butts of their weapons to improve Harry’s visibility.

Like he was parking a car, Harry spun the freighter in a tight circle, coming out early and backing the ship at an angle so he wouldn’t waste space when they moved forward again. He had a mastery over the vessel and her quirks as if he’d been at her wheel for years.

By the time he got her completely turned to face the lock he’d pushed her up the canal so a hundred yards separated the bow from the thousand-foot-long seawall extension that divided the two chambers. Harry looked to Mercer. “I’m ready.” His hands were relaxed on the wheel, ready to coax the great vessel rather than fight her.

“Okay,” Mercer replied. “Let’s do it. Foch, call Rabidoux and Munz. Tell them we’re going through.”

“Oui.”

“Heaven, Angel Two. Any time you’re ready.”

Harry eased the throttles to Ahead Full. The lock chamber was still flooded and her upper doors had remained open following the Englander Rose’s passage through. The lower doors, almost a half mile away, were closed, making the concrete-lined basin look like an enormous dead-end chute. Not for long, he thought. He could just see the top couple of feet of the lower doors rising above the level of water in the chamber. The steel doors, each weighing nearly seven hundred tons, were seven feet thick and sixty-five feet wide. They were all that prevented the untold billions of tons of water trapped in Lake Gatun from flooding the lower, and smaller, Miraflores Lake and the rest of the canal below.

Because the Rose was thirty feet above Miraflores Lake, he spotted the superstructure and funnel of a ship waiting for her turn to come up. In a minute, he knew she wouldn’t be there any longer.

“Firing now,” Mercer heard over his radio.

“Goddamnit!” Harry shouted at the same moment.

Mercer’s guts clenched. “What?”

“I have to take a piss.”

“Jesus, Harry, cross your legs or something.” He snatched up a pair of binoculars and focused on the tops of the lower doors, counting back seconds in his head.

Everything looked so normal. In the adjacent lock chamber, a container ship was slowly being raised to the level of the Gaillard Cut. Beyond her, several more vessels slowly made their way across Miraflores Lake. Workers were going about their duties along the locks, although a few had stopped to see what had exploded around the Englander Rose, and they were no doubt wondering why the ship had turned around and was pointed at them again.

Lauren too was counting the seconds. “Four, three, two, one.”

Mercer tightened his grip on the binoculars.

The first shell hit the two-story control house that sat between the locks and blew away its red-tile roof. Mercer barely had time to acknowledge the miss and the scatter of panicked workers when explosive rounds began to find their mark.

Exposed on the lower side of the lock, the doors looked like thirty-foot slabs of steel, rust-streaked but still amazingly sound after a century of use. They were designed to act as swivel dams that could be opened or closed to allow ships to move past them. They were never meant to withstand a naval bombardment.

The shots hit and exploded in a steady string that bit and tore at the metal like some enraged animal. Shrapnel exploded in all directions. It took just a few seconds before one of the doors broke off its huge hinges and fell flat into the lake. It floated away on the boil of water as more shells destroyed its twin.

That door also succumbed to the sustained hits so remnants hung off the remaining hinges like tattered pieces of skin. This alone wasn’t enough to give the water an unimpeded path from Lake Gatun through the cut and out. The canal’s builders had doubled up the most vulnerable doors, those on the downstream sides of the lock, in case one was ever broached by a ship slamming into them. The second set of identical doors, just a few feet from the ruins of the first, felt the strain of the lake pressing against them. Had they not been placed at a slight angle to each other, the pressure would have burst them apart.

The Englander Rose had steamed past the seawall extension and her bow was just entering the lock chamber. At her current speed, she’d hit the remaining gates in one minute. Men raced along the length of the seawall in a desperate attempt to get away from the explosions. A few stared incredulously at the old tramp freighter that was driving toward the smoke and burning metal erupting at the far end of the lock.

No ship in the history of the canal had ever moved faster through a lock. It was as if the vessel wanted to die by crushing her bow against the unyielding doors. For even at this speed, the gates would absorb her headlong charge the way a brick wall shatters a fist that dares to punch it.

Harry couldn’t resist. He gave the horn a long pull, adding the ship’s voice to the storm and explosions and frenzy of screaming men. He gave a demonic laugh. Mercer knew the crazy old bastard was loving this.

With another two hundred feet before the front of the ship hit the doors, the next barrage from the distant destroyer reached their target. The shots were surgically precise, targeting the lower hinge points. They hit concrete and steel, gouging through both, weakening the attachment points so that the gates slipped and a jet of water more powerful than a fire hose shot from a tiny gap near their base.

That was all the urging that gravity needed. Behind the gates was a thirty-foot-tall water column that was backed up for miles and miles. How many tons of water were pressing against the doors Mercer didn’t know, but he and the others certainly did feel it.

The burst came an instant later when the doors were ripped bodily from their sockets. The lock chamber drained in a fraction of a second. One instant the Englander Rose raced hard for the gates and the next she had dropped thirty feet and accelerated to forty knots as the torrent catapulted her down the chamber. There was no time for anyone to react. It was faster than any white-water raft ride, and twice as rough.

When she careened past the ruined stumps of the first doors, fingers of steel ripped along her outer hull, peeling back her plating with a sound like nails on a chalkboard. Fortunately none of the tears were below the waterline.