Jack Du Brul - River of Ruin

“Sir!” Cheng shouted. “More explosions! It’s not coming from the Englander Rose . We’re under attack. Artillery of some kind. They’re targeting the doors.” There was a pause. Liu could hear detonations over the crackling cellular connection. “They’re gone. The doors are gone. The ship just raced by me going so fast I couldn’t see who was on the bridge. They’re on Miraflores Lake.”

Liu stood. He could no longer keep up a facade in front of Captain Wong. He nodded to the men and stepped from the cabin, moving far enough down the hallway so he couldn’t be overheard. His voice became an angry hiss. “What are you saying?”

“A barrage of some kind blew apart the lower lock doors. Water is pouring through and the Englander Rose went with it. It just passed a freighter on Miraflores and looks like it’s heading for the next set of locks.”

“Listen to me very carefully. That ship must not get off the lake. If you can stop it and get aboard I’ve got the code that will let you reset the timer on the explosives. We can still get the ship to the cut and finish what we started.”

“Yes, sir. I have a force at the Miraflores Locks and I can get the rest of my men down there before the ship reaches it. We’ll stop them.”

“Make sure you do, Cheng.” Liu put his phone away and stood looking at his feet, his face creased in thought. The dice were still rolling and a chance remained to effect their outcome.

A voice from behind snapped him from his reverie, a voice that wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near Panama, let alone on the Korvald .

“It seems you’re having a problem.” General Yu stood near the first officer’s cabin, where he’d been listening. There was a smirk on his pug face, delighting in seeing the younger executive about to have his world torn away from him. “It appears that we gambled and you lost.”

Mercer dove into the bridge. “Incoming!” he shouted again.

The rocket, a Chinese version of the Russian man-portable RPG-7, was primarily an antitank weapon with a five-pound shaped warhead capable of penetrating up to a foot of armor. Although their accuracy beyond three hundred yards was poor, and only a lucky hit could possibly disable a ship the size of the Englander Rose , everyone knew the wheelhouse was the missile’s target and a hit would turn it into flaming ruins.

They had all been under fire before, Harry during World War II and the others much more recently, and all knew to keep their mouths open to protect their inner ears from the overpressure of an explosion. Foch radioed a warning to his men in the hold and ducked behind the sturdy console to await the hit.

The rocket-propelled grenade flew unerringly at the vessel, a smoking slash of light that cut across the distance in seconds. The shaped warhead hit in the juncture where the superstructure met the deck and blew a cone of fire deep into the ship, shredding bulkheads and deck plates and leaving a four-foot smoking crater. The bridge rumbled and a gust of hot smoke blew through the aft doorway. For a fraction of a second, the crew waited for the secondary explosion, for surely such a strike could detonate the tons of explosives in her hold.

But then logic took over as they realized that they would never feel such a massive blast.

Mercer’s ears rang and his voice sounded unnaturally loud when he called, “Everyone okay?”

“We’re fine this time,” Rene said and ordered the Legionnaires to determine the extent of the damage and battle any fires the explosion might have ignited.

“Harry?”

“I’m good.” The old man got to his feet and immediately checked the ship’s gauges, grunting his relief that everything appeared in order.

Mercer’s earpiece crackled. “Angel Two, this is Heaven. Sit rep?”

“We’re still here.”

“We can target the seawalls with a strike before blowing the gates. The drone reports concentrations of troops along both sides of the lock you’ll be going through.”

“Hold on, Heaven.” Mercer went back outside and studied the barrier through his binoculars. Amid the uniformed troops, he saw dozens of workers being used as human shields by the Chinese. It seemed every soldier had at least two workers with him, men held by fright, not loyalty. Mercer couldn’t order their deaths. “Negative, Heaven. There are too many civilians out there. Lay a barrage along the wall to keep the rocket launchers pinned, but don’t hit the structure. Do you copy?”

“Roger. Retargeting now.”

The seawall dividing the two sets of locks was much longer than the one at Pedro Miguel, extending past the topmost lock by several thousand feet. Mercer tried to remain calm as he watched a team of soldiers at its tip readying another RPG. The range was sufficiently close to guarantee a hit on the Rose ’s bridge. Through the powerful binoculars he could see the brightness in the gunner’s eyes as he swung the tubelike weapon to his shoulder.

Mercer was about to shout another warning when the water just feet off the concrete wall exploded in what looked like a precisely timed series of charges. The VGAS cannon walked its shots from the end of the seawall all the way to the lock. Each round exploded an exact distance from its predecessor in a string of geysers like some sort of overwhelming fountain effect. Men dove for cover, fearing the next string would tear up the cement. Some leapt into the opposite lock, others cowered behind the mule engines and others just froze as they were showered with water.

“Okay,” Harry called from the wheel. “It’s time to blow the doors.”

The upper lock chamber was already flooded and its gates were open to the Rose while a ship was just being drawn into the lower one by the mules, although it appeared work had stopped.

“Heaven, Angel Two. It’s open-sesame time.”

“Could you repeat that, please?”

“Hit the goddamned doors!”

With the upper chamber fully flooded and the lower one drained to the level of the Pacific Ocean, only the doors separating the two locks had to be hit to allow the Rose to pass through. Because they closed at shallow angles, the cathedral-like primary and safety doors looked like a flattened two-striped chevron when viewed from above.

Twenty seconds later, the area around them erupted. The shots were perfectly placed, penetrating the first layer of steel and exploding inside the hollow gates. The following rounds worked at the hinge points, tearing them from their concrete redoubts. After a dozen hits, the safety doors failed and the twenty feet of water between them and the main doors rushed into the lower chamber, rocking the freighter held fast by the mules.

A savvy worker in the centrally placed control center slammed levers to try to close the upper gates in order to prevent a catastrophic flood like the one gushing through Pedro Miguel. He couldn’t chance ruining the mechanism by trying to close them against such a deluge, but they would hold if he could get them secure before the cannon destroyed the second doors and the chamber opened to the sea.

The VGAS continued its deadly work, six-inch shells raining down in a steady tattoo after their thirty-mile flight. The second door protecting the lower lock absorbed shot after shot. It had been holed several times, and water spurted in high-pressure jets that doused the trapped freighter below.

The canal employee in the control room realized he’d never beat the gun and reversed the upper doors in order to protect them, hoping that they could be deployed later under safer conditions.

At full speed, the Englander Rose couldn’t beat the gun either.

The ship’s bow had just entered the chamber, and was still one thousand feet from the doors, when two well-placed shots hit the lower hinges. The release was like a tsunami, a solid surge that deformed the doors into misshapen slabs before wrenching them free. The tidal wave slammed the freighter waiting below, raising it up and pushing it back. The four locomotives still attached by their tow lines didn’t stand a chance against such a titanic force. The drivers had leapt clear, but like toys, the engines were plucked from the tracks. All four were dumped into the boiling wash and dragged with the ship before the towing hawsers snapped. Caught like leaves in a liquid whirlwind, the electric locomotives continued to tumble along the rocky bottom.