The Tide: Deadrise (32 page)

“
Huntress
, do you copy? Standing orders are to stay here.” There were twenty seconds of silence. When the operator spoke again, there was a steely note of suspicion in his voice. “
Huntress
, put that ship in full stop immediately. You are asked to identify yourselves, or we will pursue.”

Dom had expected the response. “Glenn, are you ready with the Zodiac?”

“We’re in position, Captain,” Glenn said.

As the ship continued its reverse thrust, Dom flipped on several monitors near the chart table. Each showed a different camera view. He saw the helipad, the medical bay, the brig, the workshop, various passageways, and the cargo bay. He tore his gaze away from the med bay—he couldn’t see Meredith clearly anyway—and focused on the cargo bay.

“Open bay doors,” Dom said. The doors slid open, and the red glow of the battle lights washed over a lifeboat. “Drop our cargo.” Jenna shot the camera a thumbs up and pulled a lever. The lifeboat slipped out, splashing and bucking into the water, then righted itself, bobbing in the waves.

“Ready the lifts for the Zodiac.”

The outboard camera’s view appeared dark until Dom flipped it to night vision. The green and black bay lit up. A small pinprick of light shone over the waves—the infrared signal that marked the Zodiac. He ordered them to lower the lifts. The cords shook and rattled as they were lowered past the cargo bay’s opening.

“
Huntress
, we have been authorized to use force if necessary,” the operator’s voice called over the comms.

Dom signaled Thomas and Cliff to ignore the warning for now. They needed to outrun the Coast Guard vessels, not engage them.

“Captain,” Thomas said. “One of the cutters is starting to pursue. The other two appear to be in full ready. No, scratch that, all three are now in pursuit.”

“Understood,” Dom said, pacing the pilothouse deck. He watched the cams as Glenn raced the Zodiac toward the
Huntress
. Kara, Sadie, and Navid huddled near the gunwale. Each was wearing a life vest. Spencer sat next to them, his jaw clenched as the bandages along his neck flapped in the wind. Maggie hunkered down next to the hulking man as if she could sense his pain. “Ready, Glenn? Take care of my girls.”

“You got it, Captain.”

Dom didn’t envy the fine balancing act of avoiding the waves splashing off the ship’s bow while staying close to the ship, but Glenn was an expert. The ropes swung dangerously with their carabiner clips clanging against the
Huntress
’s hull.

“Cutters are gaining,” Thomas said.

Dom sensed Cliff waiting to get the orders for full astern. But he couldn’t risk going any faster until the Zodiac was on board. He wringed his hands together as Kara and Navid clipped the carabiners into place.

“Bring us in,” Glenn said. The Zodiac jolted up. Navid fell back into the craft, and Sadie crashed sideways. She bounced against the gunwale, and Dom saw her slowly slipping overboard. He balled his fists, desperate to be down there to help them. Instead, Kara leapt into action. She threw her arms around her sister’s abdomen just as the smaller girl tipped over. She dragged Sadie into the Zodiac with Navid and Spencer’s help as the boat climbed into the cargo bay. It was drawn inside, and the doors shut. Dom breathed a sigh of relief.

“Full astern!” he bellowed.

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Cliff said, grinning as he pulled back on the direct control throttle. The ship lurched, moving faster. But they still needed time to turn her around, and there would be no way to outpace the cutters even at full astern. The ship wasn’t built to move fast in reverse.

He’d planned for a maneuver like this, but it was the riskiest move yet. He gave Andris the order to detonate the explosives they’d planted earlier. Enormous blasts sounded over the bay. Water sprayed up in a geyser around the stern of two of the ships. They continued to drift forward, but Dom saw they were already slowing. Their propellers had been disabled by the charges.

But one cutter was still churning ahead.

“Damn. What’s going on, Andris?” Dom asked.

“Must have been a dud,” he replied. “Sorry, Captain, but there is nothing I can do from here.”

Dom closed his eyes. This was the order he had been dreading to give. “Thomas, fire a warning shot.”

Thomas nodded and activated the
Huntress
’s 57mm cannon. The gun shook, and smoke billowed from its barrel. A round whistled over the cutter’s bow.

“Come on,” Dom said. “Stop, you bastards.”

But she didn’t let up. The cutter barreled ahead, closing the distance between the two ships. A flash of light exploded from the cutter’s own MK 75 76mm cannon.

“Brace for impact,” Dom said. But the round plunged into the waves near the
Huntress
, sending a jet of water across her bow. They too had fired a warning shot, and Dom knew they would only have one chance at this.

“
Huntress
, full stop now!” a voice from the cutter boomed over the comms.

“Cease pursuit immediately,” Dom called back, “or we’ll be forced to fire. And this time it won’t be a warning shot.”

The cutter continued its pursuit. “
Huntress
, you’ve opened fire on a United States Coast Guard vessel. You are committing treason. Full stop now, before you make this worse for yourself and your crew.”

Dom ignored the threat.

“What now, Captain?” Thomas asked.

“I want to minimize casualties,” Dom said. “But we still need to get out of here.” So far, Dom thought they’d managed the escape without unnecessarily killing any of the servicemen who had been ordered to stop them. He wanted to keep it that way.

“Disable their cannons,” he ordered.

Thomas aimed the 57mm and prepared to take a shot. “I’ve got a firing solution.”

“Fire!” Dom said.

But the cutter was faster, anticipating their move. Three successive flashes exploded from her guns. Smoke plumed as fire and debris billowed up. The 57mm was now a crumpled mess. Alarms rang out in the pilothouse, and Dom saw the crew, still wearing gas masks, racing about the passageways through his monitors.

His mind raced as the Coast Guard’s 76mm recoiled again. Rounds crashed across the
Huntress
’s hull. One pierced the cargo bay door, and something exploded within the hold.

Were Kara and Sadie still down there? He couldn’t see them on the monitors, which was rapidly filling with smoke.

“Engineers, fire in cargo,” he barked. They had no time to prepare the torpedoes, and their surface-to-air guided missiles would be problematic, if not impossible, to maneuver at this close range. He had one option left. “Thomas, arm the 127s.”

Thomas’s fingers danced across the weapons command module. Panels opened along the bow. Two stubby tubes poked out of the openings.

“Evasive maneuvers, Cliff,” Dom said. He knew it was a difficult order. There wasn’t much he could do, racing backward from an enemy that was minutes from overtaking them.

“127s armed,” Thomas called.

“Launch!” Dom said.

Thomas pressed a key to fire the first of the grenade launchers. Nothing happened. “Misfire, Captain. Misfire!”

“Launch, damn it!” Dom said. A rocket-propelled grenade whooshed from the second tube, a smoke trail giving away its route. The cutter moved just enough for the grenade to explode against the ship’s reinforced prow, missing the cannon completely. Dom pounded his fist on the console. “Again!”

Another grenade launched. It never even reached the other vessel. The cutter’s anti-missile Gatling guns spun up in time to take out the RPG. The 76mm cannon lit up again, followed by a booming fury that rocked the
Huntress
. Dom grabbed a rail along the bulkhead to prevent himself from falling.

“Captain?” Thomas asked.

The
Huntress
had plenty of small arms in addition to the ship’s armaments, but nothing that would slow the cutter. And one half-functional grenade launcher wasn’t going to stop the ship. There had to be a way out of this mess, but Dom couldn’t see it. Unless...

“Thomas, how low can you aim the AA missile? Low enough to trick the anti-missile Gatling?”

“Maybe,” Thomas said. “Let me see.”

Another salvo from the MK 75 exploded against the
Huntress
’s hull. More alarms. More yells over the comm link.

“Lowest possible trajectory. Launch two missiles, followed by as many grenades as you can,” Dom ordered.

Thomas keyed up the missile launch sequence. They launched, one after another, in a pillar of climbing smoke. They started slow, then accelerated. There would be no way they could correct in time to hit the MK 75, but Dom watched, holding his breath, as the anti-missile Gatling adjusted to fire on them. As soon as the guns focused on the missiles, the grenade launcher lobbed a series of rocket-propelled grenades.

Thomas leaned back in his chair, mopping his forehead. “Magazine is empty, Captain.”

“Engineers, reload,” Dom called. But even if they rearmed the clips in time, Dom feared it wouldn’t be enough. He judged it would be less than a minute before the MK 75 tore into their hull and ended their escape efforts for good.

The Gatling brought down the first missile. It exploded in a cloud of fire that made the waves glow vibrant orange and bleeding red. The Gatling’s sawblade-like whine continued as it spewed rounds at the second AA missile. That one made it closer, exploding only a hundred meters out from the cutter. Dom’s nerves screamed as he watched the smoke trails of the slower RPGs.

The first almost hit the cutter, but it too became nothing more than shrapnel and smoke under the scourge of the Gatling gun.

But the remaining five grenades made it. One slammed into the hull, and another tore into the upper deck. The third pounded the MK 75, silencing the weapon. The other two hit just below the cutter’s pilothouse.

The cutter’s weapons were disabled.

“Cliff, full stop and then alter heading to sixteen points,” Dom ordered.

Cliff put the ship in a slow one-hundred-eighty-degree turn. Dom wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand. His knuckles were still white from clenching his hands into fists.

Still, he grinned fiercely as he gave his next order. “Full speed ahead.”

––––––––

T
he ship’s engines whined. Red lights flashed in concert with the wailing alarms. But they were moving forward, cutting through the bay and headed to the Atlantic.

But they weren’t alone. The cutter, despite its disabled weaponry, still churned after them. The ship might not a pose a physical threat against the
Huntress
now, but Dom couldn’t let it keep a visual lock on the
Huntress
. Reinforcements would arrive soon enough, and there was no way the crippled
Huntress
would survive another sea battle.

The cutter closed in. Smoke wafted from beneath its pilothouse and from the damaged MK 75 cannon. Part of the hull was crumpled, but the ship seemed to be in better shape than the
Huntress
. Dom tried to tune out the Klaxons and flashing lights. Through the ship’s monitors, he watched his crew run to put out a fire in the cargo bay. Others rushed to the medical bay with the injured. The knockout gas had been filtered from the passageways, but smoke had replaced it.

He couldn’t let the cutter track them, but causing undue casualties aboard the ship wasn’t acceptable either. Firing on it would only incriminate them further in General Kinsey’s eyes. More importantly, he refused to kill the Coast Guard officers who were, after all, only following orders. He weighed his options and didn’t like any of them. Ultimately, he knew what he had to do. There was only one path that would allow them to continue their mission and stop the Oni Agent.

“Ready the torpedoes,” Dom said.

Thomas hesitated only for a moment before tapping the button to prepare the German-made DM2A4 torpedoes for launch. “Ready when you are, Captain.”

“Wait,” Dom said. “I want you to intentionally miss.”

“Another warning shot?”

“No,” Dom said. “Have the torpedoes circle and target the stern. Detonate at approach. Remember, disable the ship but don’t kill it. We want to minimize casualties.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Thomas said, entering in the targeting trajectory.

“Fire.”

The two torpedoes launched. A thin fiber optic cable dragged behind each, providing the guidance system feedback to Thomas. He adjusted their trajectory on the fly. The cutter dumped a cylindrical Nixie torpedo decoy to replicate their ship’s signal. The Nixie plopped into the water, towed by its own fiber-optic cable. But the countermeasure wouldn’t work. The DM2A4 was the cutting edge in torpedo technology.

“Torpedoes are clearing the cutter at one hundred meters,” Thomas said. He waited a beat. “Clear. Retargeting.”

“Slow torpedo two to ten knots. Keep her as backup.”

“Aye, aye,” Thomas said. His fingers danced over the weapon controls. “Torpedo one on the approach. Within three hundred meters. Two hundred meters. One hundred meters.”

Dom watched the torpedo’s reported location on a radar with GPS overlay. “Detonate,” he said.

A pillar of water exploded from the bay’s surface. It rained down over the cutter, but the ship continued its pursuit. They hadn’t detonated it close enough.

“Shit,” Dom said.

“It’d be easier to score a direct impact,” Thomas said. “That would definitely disable the ship.”

“I know,” Dom said. They’d also guarantee the deaths of men and women dutifully serving the United States Coast Guard. “Torpedo 2, forty knots.”

“Keel?”

“No, same plan as before.”

Thomas raised a skeptical eyebrow but concentrated on the weapons module. He studied the data and feedback coursing over the multiple screens in front of him and relayed the torpedo’s position as it closed in on the target.

“Slow her down to match the cutter’s speed.”

Thomas pulled back on a small joystick, and the torpedo slowed.

“Now inch up on it.” Dom narrowed his eyes, held his breath, and waited for a handful of heartbeats. “Now!”