Chapter 8 - Blood in the Harbor
Rounds cracked through the wooden pilings of the dock, sending showers of splintered cedar into the salt water.
A civilian charter boat’s windshield shattered fifty yards away, sending nearby tourists diving behind bait lockers in terror.
I turned on the wooden pier, dropped to one knee behind a steel mooring cleat, and returned fire with the captured carbine.
The shooter near the marina office ducked behind an ice machine as my rounds punched through the aluminum housing, venting freon gas into the air.
“Cast off the lines!” I screamed at Caleb over the thunder of gunfire.
“Cast them off now!”
Master Chief Miller didn’t ask questions.
He threw the heavy nylon lines off the cleats, slammed the throttle of the twin two-hundred-horsepower outboard engines, and roared into reverse.
The prop wash churned the shallow marina water into a frothing white fury.
Marcus Vance threw himself across the boat’s transom, landing heavily on the fiberglass deck beside Leo, who was crying into his mother’s shoulder.
I ran down the swaying gangway, leaped across three feet of open water, and hit the deck of the boat hard on my chest as another burst of automatic fire ripped through the fiberglass gunwale.
A searing line of fire sliced across my left shoulder.
I grunted in pain, rolling onto my side as Maya grabbed my vest and hauled me behind the center console.
“You’re hit!” Maya cried out, her hands shaking as she touched the dark blood spreading across the fabric of my white dress uniform.
“Graze,” I gasped through clenched teeth, pressing my hand against the burning wound.
“Keep Leo down below the deck line!”
Caleb spun the wheel hard to port, slamming the throttle forward until the boat surged out of the marina slip into the main navigation channel of San Diego Bay.
Behind us, two high-speed black interceptor craft detached from the commercial fuel dock, their long hulls cutting through the water like predatory barracudas.
They were fast, military-grade assault vessels operated by the same contractor team that had ambushed the bank.
“They’re pacing us!” Caleb yelled over the roar of the engines, his weathered face grim as he eyed the narrowing channel ahead.
“We can’t outrun them in open water, Commander!”
“Those hulls are rated for fifty-five knots!”
“We’re not going to open water,” I shouted back, crawling up beside the helm console.
“Head for the naval station!”
“Head for Pier Six!”
Marcus Vance crawled forward on his knees, his face pasty white with absolute dread.
“Pier Six is where the USS Titan is moored!” Marcus shouted over the wind.
“If we go there, we are walking directly into the security perimeter of Knox Harlan’s loyalists!”
“The entire dock is manned by Harlan’s special boat unit!”
“That’s why we’re going there,” I said, pulling Jonah’s encrypted drive from my vest.
“Harlan thinks he controls the Titan.”
“He doesn’t know Admiral Vance’s carrier strike group flag ship is moored directly across the turning basin.”
The two chasing boats closed the distance rapidly, positioning themselves on either side of our wake.
A gunner on the lead vessel mounted a heavy machine gun on the bow pintle, aiming directly at our outboards to disable our propulsion.
“Get ready to cut the throttle!” I ordered Caleb, unhooking the marine flare gun from the console rack.
“What are you going to do with that?” Maya asked, holding Leo’s head against her chest, shielding him with her entire body.
“Jonah always said you don’t need an air strike if you know where the fuel vents are,” I replied, loading a heavy red phosphorus cartridge into the flare chamber.
The lead interceptor surged alongside our starboard side, less than twenty feet away, the gunner lining up his shot.
I leaned over the gunwale, locked eyes with the shooter, and fired the high-heat flare directly into the exposed intake vent of the interceptor’s high-performance inboard diesel engine.
The phosphorus round burned at two thousand degrees Fahrenheit the instant it met the aerosolized fuel vapors inside the manifold.
A massive concussive explosion blew the entire engine housing of the pursuer into the air, throwing the boat sideways into a violent spin that capsized it into the churning wake.
The second pursuer veered hard to avoid the burning debris, sliding across the harbor surface in a spray of white foam.
Before they could recover their heading, Caleb swung our boat around the breakwater and into the vast, shadowed basin of Naval Base San Diego.
May you like
Rising above the concrete piers like a floating steel mountain was the massive gray hull of the amphibious assault ship USS Titan.
And standing along the flight deck railings, armed with combat gear, were dozens of sailors watching our boat approach with weapons drawn.
