Skeleton Coast

Eric Stone ignored the distraction of the assault, instead watching the iron bollards bolted to the dock through his closed-circuit television. The hawsers pulled taut as the ship edged further from the dock. A pair of enterprising terrorists rushed for the stern line and started scrambling up like rats, weapons slung over their shoulders. Stone gu

One rebel fell immediately, and was sucked into the blades of the stern thruster when Eric reversed power to correct the ship’s course. All that emerged from the other side of the ship was a dark stain that tinged the waters red before fading in the current. The other gunman managed to cling to the rope as automatic capstans reeled it up. When he reached the hawsehole he tried to scramble on board the ship only to be greeted by Eddie Seng and Franklin Lincoln, who’d watched his boarding attempt from tactical view screens attached to their combat vests.

Eddie had come to the Corporation after premature retirement from the CIA, and while he didn’t have the combat experience of Linc’s SEAL career, he more than made up for it in single-minded determination. This was why Juan had made him chief of shore operations, the head of the gun dogs, as Max called their cadre of ex-SEALs, Force Recon, and Special Forces operators.

The rebel’s eyes went wide when he tried to heave himself to the deck. Linc regarded him over the sites of a Franchi SPAS-12 combat shotgun while Eddie jammed the barrel of a Glock to the soldier’s temple.

“Choice is yours, my friend,” Eddie said mildly.

The terrorist let his fingers go lax and plummeted into the frothing water below.

Back in the op center, Eric watched the second bollard. Despite the tons of force, it refused to pull free from the dock. Instead, large tears appeared in the wood as the underlining timbers were wrenched from their positions. A fifteen-foot section of the quay was torn away, tossing three more soldiers into the water and causing a much larger section of the dock to sway precariously.

“We’re free,” he a

“Very good,” Juan replied, checking his tactical display. The choppers were two minutes away and closing at over a hundred miles per hour. He imagined that the stolen oil company helicopters would be large and state of the art. With the weapons arrays secreted around his ship, Cabrillo knew they could gun down every soldier still on the dock, knock both helos out of the sky, and turn the pursuing patrol boats into so much flotsam—but that wasn’t the point of the mission they’d been hired to perform. “Bring us up to twenty knots.”

“Twenty knots, aye.”

The big freighter accelerated smoothly, the extra drag of the water finally tearing away the section of dock still attached to the bollard. Soon the autofire from shore stopped, but the two patrol boats continued to pound theOregon with steady streams of fifty-caliber rounds.

“RPG launch,” Mark Murphy called out sharply.

Abala’s men must have had vehicles hidden in the jungle, which were now pacing theOregon as she fled down the Congo. The small missile arched out of the underbrush, raced across the water, and slammed into the bow. The ship’s armor protected the interior spaces but the explosion was deafening as the fireball rolled across the deck. Almost immediately another RPG came out of a tube held by a gu

“I’m on it,” Hali shouted as soon as his screen went blank. He ran from the op center as fire control teams and electronics specialists were automatically dispatched by the onboard computer.

Linda Ross, an elfin woman with freckles and a high, almost girlish voice took over his work station seamlessly. “Choppers are a minute out, Chairman, and the last image from the radar showed traffic ahead coming upriver.”

Juan called up higher resolution on the forward-facing cameras. The river was as black as oil, hemmed in with hills made silver by the moonlight. Just emerging from around a bend was a big river ferry. She had three decks and a blunt bow, but what caught the crew’s attention was the image from the infrared cameras. Her topmost deck was a sea of humanity, and it looked like every other deck was equally full of passengers headed inland toward the port of Matadi.

“God, there must be five hundred people on her,” Eric said.

“And I bet she’s rated for no more than two hundred,” Cabrillo replied. “Take her down our port side. I want theOregon between the RPGs and that tub.”

Stone edged his controls and took note of the fathometer. The riverbed was rising rapidly. “Chairman, we’ve got less than twenty feet under our keel. Eighteen. Fifteen. Ten feet, sir.”

“Hold us steady,” Juan said as a hail of fresh gunfire erupted from the jungle, AK-47s and a string of RPGs launched as fast as a Roman candle.

Explosions rocked the freighter as she raced toward the lumbering ferry, the sky lighting up with each hit.

One of the missiles went errant and for a horrified moment looked like it was going to hit the ferry broadside, but at the last second its motor kicked out and it detonated just shy of her hull, drenching the passengers who were frantically rushing around in a hopeless bid to stay out of the line of fire.

“Max, give me everything you’ve got,” Juan said angrily, sickened by the callousness of Abala’s troops.

“We’ve got to protect those people.”

Max Hanley released the safeties from the battery circuits and eked a few more amps out of them and into the pump jets. TheOregon gained another three knots but it would cost them more miles of range, miles they couldn’t afford to lose.

The ferry veered toward the middle of the river, giving theOregon just enough room to pass without grounding. Moments later, the Swift boats split around the oncoming vessel, cutting frothing arcs of water across the river. A motorized skiff that had been riding in the ferry’s wake emerged in the confusion, and one of the Swift boats rammed it under the waves, crushing its wooden hull and two occupants without a check in speed.

Juan watched Eric at the controls. Maneuvering such a large vessel in the tight confines of the river was bad enough, but dodging traffic while being shot at was something young Stone had never faced before.

Juan had full confidence in his helmsman but in the back of his mind he knew he could override Eric’s work station and take the helm himself.

A voice sounded over Cabrillo’s headset. “Chairman, it’s Eddie. I have visual on those two choppers.

Can’t tell the make but they look big enough to carry at least ten men. Now might be the time to splash them.”

“Negative. The pilots are civilians for one thing, kidnapped by Makambo’s rebels and forced to fly for them. And secondly, we can’t let them know our capabilities. We went over this before coming upriver.

We’ll take a pounding, but the old girl will get us home. Just be prepared if they try to drop men onto the deck.”

“We’re ready.”

“Then God help ’em.”

For an hour they raced down the Congo, dogged by the Swift boats and taking occasional fire from shore where the road came close enough to the river for the rebels to set up an ambush. The choppers continued to hover over theOregon without attempting to land or off-load troops. Juan assumed they wanted to board the ship once she’d been forced aground by the RPGs.