Клайв Касслер - Typhoon Fury

They were all getting to the beach. Or none of them were.

• • •

FROM LINDA’S VANTAGE POINT, she could easily see the results of shutting down the Oregon ’s starboard tube. Water no longer jetted up at an odd angle, and the froth on that side subsided.

She felt useless as she watched the Oregon struggle to pull the ferry to dry land. Max and MacD were beside her, noting the positions of the speeding Kuyogs and passing the information on to Murph, who continued to deftly take them out one by one. By this point, however, the Gatling guns had been spitting out 20mm tungsten rounds for far longer than normal, and she could see steam rising from the overworked barrels. If they overheated, the guns would jam, and there’d be no stopping any more drones.

The sea was being churned by waves from the approaching typhoon, making the progress of the two ships that much more difficult. Because they’d been able to modulate the closing of the water-tight doors, the ferry was no longer in danger of capsizing, but the bow was dropping closer and closer to the surface, with some of the bigger whitecaps now breaking onto the deck.

Linda glanced up at the sky, but, judging by the cloud density, it didn’t look like the worst of Hidalgo itself would be arriving before the ferry could be off-loaded by the Coast Guard. Assuming, of course, that there was a ferry left to off-load.

A black dot caught her eye as it danced in front of one of the ominous gray clouds. At first, she thought it was a bird, but the way it moved was more like a fly buzzing around a kitchen.

She nudged MacD and pointed at the darting object. “Do we have a UAV in the air?”

MacD peered at it and said, “Let me check.” He passed the question along to Max, who got a quick response from Hali that it wasn’t theirs.

“Then tell the Chairman we’ve got a spy in the sky,” she said.

Max called it in and got a confirmation that Juan would take care of it since Eric and Murph were busy.

Seconds later, a deck plate near the stern of the Oregon slid aside, and a large rectangular block mounted on a rotating armature rose above the Iranian flag fluttering on the jackstaff. On the front of the block was a grid of one hundred holes, which were actually the ends of the barrels of the Metal Storm gun.

Unlike the six rotating barrels in the Gatling gun that fired a stream of rounds fed by a belt, the Metal Storm antiaircraft/antimissile system was completely electronic, so there were no moving parts, making jams impossible. Rounds were loaded into the grid of barrels so that the projectiles lined up nose to tail. The electronic control allowed for a precise firing sequence that made the Gatling gun’s rate of three thousand rounds per minute seem pokey. With each barrel of the Metal Storm gun firing simultaneously at a staggering rate of forty-five thousand rounds per minute, the weapon could pump out its entire load of five hundred tungsten slugs in six milliseconds.

The Metal Storm gun swiveled around and tilted up until it was pointed at the unknown UAV, presumably Locsin’s observation drone watching his Kuyogs trying to finish off the Oregon .

The gun fired with a thunderous boom. The rounds flew out of the barrels so fast that it seemed like a single flash of light.

The UAV didn’t stand a chance. The heavy tungsten rounds formed a wall of shells that would be impossible for even the most dexterous operator to evade. In a fraction of a second, the UAV simply ceased to exist.

The Metal Storm gun then disappeared back into the deck for reloading in case it was needed again. At the same time, the Gatling guns continued their buzz saw howls as they picked off more Kuyogs. Linda counted more than fifteen destroyed so far, either by the guns or by the drones hitting their target.

A moment later, a large UAV emerged from the bowels of the Oregon on a deck elevator. This one was the Corporation’s heavy supply drone. Slung underneath it was a device Linda recognized as the decoy beacon that Murph and Eric had showed her. The supply drone’s eight propellers whirred to life, and it took off from the deck, flying low over the ferry.

Linda followed its flight path and paled when she saw what was behind her.

She hoped Eric and Murph’s decoy beacon was going to work because more than twenty Kuyogs were heading toward them in a side-by-side formation to deliver the coup de grâce. The Oregon didn’t have nearly enough firepower to take them all out before they ripped it to pieces.

• • •

“NO!” Locsin screamed when the feed from the observation drone cut out. He grabbed Tagaan by the shirt. “Get it back! I want to see the Oregon die!”

Tagaan shoved the hands away. “I can’t. There was a flash on the ship’s deck before we lost it. They must have shot it down.”

“Then turn us around!”

He lunged for the fishing boat’s pilothouse, but Tagaan stepped in his way and pushed him back.

“Comrade!” he yelled. “We have what we came for! The Oregon will be destroyed. Even if it isn’t, it’s severely damaged. We need to get this supply of Typhoon to safety before the storm comes.”

Locsin was shocked by Tagaan’s pushback. He had never defied an order before, and the insubordination threatened to send Locsin over the edge. He very nearly grabbed one of the assault rifles to shoot Tagaan where he stood, until his right-hand man continued.

“You have your victory,” Tagaan said. “You outwitted Juan Cabrillo. Savor it. And when we take over the country and have factories churning out Typhoon pills, you will have whole armies at your disposal. No one will be able to stop us.”

Locsin took a deep breath and saw that Tagaan was right. The Typhoon pills he had in hand and the search for the orchid used to make it were the highest priorities. He straightened up and told the man at the wheel to keep heading for home.

Besides, he’d seen the last two dozen Kuyogs racing in for the killing blow. The Oregon would sink, he was sure of it. Cabrillo himself might survive the attack if he was too cowardly to go down with his ship, but if he wasn’t killed, he would have to live with the fact that Locsin had beaten him.

But Locsin knew it was even worse than that for Cabrillo. The former CIA agent was pointlessly bound by an overdeveloped sense of ethics. He didn’t have the unflinching long-term vision that Locsin possessed. That vulnerability had been Cabrillo’s undoing, and the memory of these events would haunt him for the rest of his life. It would always be the day that he’d failed to save the lives of twelve hundred souls.

57

From the supply drone’s camera feed, Juan could see that it flew mere feet above the whitecaps lapping at it from below. Gomez Adams, now at his remote flight station in the op center, was doing a remarkable job keeping it from being swamped while Murph picked off the last few Kuyog stragglers that preceded the final wave of twenty-four that were nearing the ferry’s stern.

“You’ve got to keep it right above the water,” Murph said to Gomez. “Otherwise, the sensors might not pick up the supply drone’s beacon.”

“Easier said than done,” Gomez said without breaking his concentration on the controls. “How close do I have to get to these Kuyog things?”

“I’d say less than a hundred yards. More than that and they might not break the lock they have on the Oregon . Think of it like the countermeasure flare a fighter jet uses to fool a heat-seeking missile into diverting from the jet’s hot engine exhaust.”

Gomez shook his head. “Except this fighter jet weighs over eleven thousand tons and is towing a huge ferry.”