Serpent nf-1 Page 11

  "Three on my side, three decks below. Dressed like Ninjas."

  "Same with me. Mike saw three coming from the aft deck That makes nine. That we know of. Captain, can Joe borrow your shotgun? He's had a little more experience shooting, ah, skeet."

  The captain knew there was a big difference between picking off clay targets and shooting to kill. He handed the shotgun to Zavala. "Safety's off," he said calmly. At Austin's suggestion, he stepped into the radio room where he would be out of the way.

  Austin and Zavala stood back-to-back in the middle of the darkened wheelhouse, the guns pointed toward the open doors on each side. They only had to wait a few minutes before their unwelcome company arrived.

  9 A PAIR OF SILHOUETTES MATERIALIZED in the starboard doorway, where they were framed against the blue darkness, one behind the other, making no attempt at concealment. It was a fatal mistake. Seizing his opportunity, Austin lined his sits up on the lead intruder and squeezed the trigger: The Bowen's thunderous roar rattled the wheelhouse windows as it sent a heavy .50caliber slug smashing into the first attacker's sternum, shattering it to bony splinters before the bullet burst from his nib cage and ripped through the heart of the second figure. The force of the impact threw the intruders back, and their bodies crashed over the rail.

  The shotgun boomed. Austin spun around with his ears ringing and through the haze of smoke saw another attacker step boldly through the portside door. Zavala's shot had gone off to one side, and the shotgun pellets gouged a headlevel chunk from the door jamb. Zavala rapidly pumped another shell into the chamber and got off a second shot. This time the pellets found their mark. The intruder yelped and drew back, but not before squeezing off a quick unaimed burst of machinegun fire. The rounds went wild except for one.

  The bullet grazed Austin's ribs, passing through the flesh under his left armpit. He felt as if he'd been lashed with redhot barbed wire.

  Zavala was shaking his head in disgust and didn't see Austin go down on one knee. "I aimed right at him," he said incredulously. "Point-blank range. I couldn't miss."

  The captain came out of the radio room and slammed a fist into his palm.

  "Damn! I forgot to tell you that old gun pulls right. You've got to aim it an inch left."

  Zavala turned and saw that Austin was down. "Kurt," he said with alarm, "are you all right?"

  "I've been better," Austin said, clenching his teeth.

  Years at sea had given Captain Phelan a hair-trigger reflex in emergencies. He brought over a first-aid kit, and while Zavala kept guard, pacing from one door to the other, the captain fashioned a compress that stemmed the bleeding.

  "Looks like your lucky day" he said, rigging a sling. "They missed the bone."

  "Too bad I don't have time to play the lottery" With the captain helping, Austin got back on his feet. "I nailed two with one shot. Unfortunately they took their guns over the side with them."

  "Showing me up again," Zavala said peevishly. "I think I only wounded my guy."

  "My guess is that they figured they'd catch us asleep and unarmed, so they got too cocky for their own good. It won't happen again. They'll test us next time, draw our fire to see what we've got. They'll see real fast that the ship is mostly deserted and will concentrate all they've got on the bridge. We'd better be gone by then."

  "We can move around through the ship's conduits," the captain offered. "I know them better than my own living room."

  "Good idea. Our guerrilla operation will be a lot more effective if we can pop up where they least expect us. Be careful, these guys are dangerous but not invincible. They fouled up when they let Nina get away, twice, and just now they got a little overanxious and it cost them. So they make mistakes."

  "So do we," Zavala said.

  "There's one difference. We can't afford our mistakes."

  They secured the wheelhouse doors and went into the radio shack. The SOS was still broadcasting mindlessly into the night. Austin wondered who would hear it and what they would make of the message. He paused and lifted the Bowen with his good arm. The weight was too much for one hand, and the revolver wavered from side to side.

  "My aim's shaky. You'll have to use it."

  He passed the revolver to Zavala, who tucked the flare gun into his waistband. Zavala handed the shotgun to the captain and told him to watch the door. "Remember, it pulls to the right." He hefted the revolver. "Two birds with one stone. Good shooting. With four shots left we can take out eight guys."

  "We can do it with one shot if they all line up, but I wouldn't count on it," Austin said. He picked up the slim darkwood case he'd dug out of his luggage. "All is not lost. We've got the Mantons."

  The ends of Zavala's lips twitched. "Poor bastards won't stand a chance against your single-shot dueling pistols," he said with bleak humor.

  "Ordinarily I might say you're right, but these aren't just, aiy dueling pistols."

  A matched pair of antique flintlock dueling pistols lay inside the box snugly cushioned in compartments covered with green baize. The gleaming brownish barrels were octagonal and the highly polished butts rounded like the head of a cane.

  During the ship's stopover in London, Austin had gone to a Brompton Street antique dealer whom he'd had good luck with before. The brace of pistols had come into the shop as part of an estate liquidation, said the proprietor, an older man named Mr. Slocum. From their high finish and lack of ornamentation Austin would have known who made the pistols even if he hadn't seen the Joseph Manton label inside the case. Manton and his brother John were the most renowned eighteenth-century gun makers in England, where the best dueling pistols were made. Manton pistols were short on decoration and long on what really counted in matters of honor:mechanical precision. When Austin heard the astronomical price he balked.

  "I do have Mantons in my collection," he said.

  Slocum was not to be deterred. "I might point out that these were custom-made by Mr. Manton," he said, using the honorific as if the gunsmith were still living. "These are just the weapons for a scoundrel. " Austin took no insult from the statement, understanding exactly what Slocum meant, that the pistols had built-in insurance. Using a creative combination of traveler's checks and American Express, Austin walked out of the shop with the brace of pistols.

  When Austin first showed off his acquisition, Zavala held the pistol at arm's length and said, "It feels barrel-heavy."

  "It is,' Austin had explained. "Gun makers like Manton knew there was something about staring down a .59 caliber muzzle that made a fellow nervous. Duelists tended to shoot high. The barrel was weighted to keep their aim down. The checkering on the grip and the trigger spur for your middle finger will help you keep it steady."

  "How accurate is this thing?"

  "Duels were supposed to be settled by fortune. Deliberate aiming or barrel rifling were considered unsportsmanlike. Even cause for murder." He removed the other pistol from the case. "This has 'blind rifling.' Manton made it so the grooves stopped a few inches short. You can't see them by looking into the barrel, but it's enough rifling to give you the edge. At three to five yards, it should be right on target for a snap shot."

  Standing in the radio room now, Austin brought the gun up quickly and sighted down the ten-inch barrel as if it were an extension of his arm. "Just the thing for a one-armed man."

  Earlier Austin had given Zavala a quick lesson in loading, so he had the concept down even if he was lacking in execution. The flat, pea-rshaped powder flask had a spring-activated shut-off that measured out the right amount of load. Zavala had no problem tamping the heavy lead ball down the barrel, but he spilled too much primer in the pan. The second pistol took half the time, and the loading was a lot cleaner. Austin told Zavala he'd make an excellent second in a matter of honor. He tucked one pistol in his sling and held the other in his right hand.

  Deciding it would be too dangerous to go back through the wheelhouse, they went into the chartroom, and the captain slowly opened the aft door that led outside. With
the Bowen at ready Zavala cautiously peered through the crack. All was dear. They slipped out into the night.

  Austin softly called up to Mike and told him to lie low, then suggested they go down the exterior ladders and work their way toward the stem to lead the attackers away from where the others were hiding. He and the captain cautiously descended the starboard side, and Zavala went down on the port. They came together on the deck that extended to become the flat roof of the science storage section. The extension of the bridge superstructure was three levels high and nearly the width of the ship's fiftyfoot beam. The roof served double duty as a parking lot for the inflatable workboats.

  Three attackers had been spotted earlier on the roof. Austin scanned the shadows, thinking that the deck was perfect for an ambush. He worried about the attackers having nightvision goggles. The roof would have been a dangerous place even if their firepower were not laughable.

  He whispered to Zavala, "Do you know any insults in Spanish?"

  "You're kidding. My father was born in Morales."

  "We need something strong enough to draw our visitors out of hiding."

  Zavala thought for a second, cupped his hands to his mouth, and let loose with a torrent in Spanish. The only word Austin recognized was madre, repeated several times over. Nothing happened.

  "I don't understand it," Zavala said. "Hispanics usually go crazy at any insult to their mother. Maybe I'll go to work on their sisters.'

  He fired off more insults. Louder and with more of a sneer in his voice. The echoes of the last barbs had hardly faded when two figures stepped from behind. the workboats and sprayed the deck with gunfire. Austin was crouched with Zavala and the captain behind a large deck winch. The firing stopped suddenly as the shooters exhausted the bullets in their magazines.

  "I think they took it the wrong way," Austin said.

  "Must be my Mexican accent. What do you figure? AK 74s?" The AK 74 was the newer version of the terrorists' favorite firearm, the venerable AK47.

  "That's my guess, too. Hard to mistake the sound"

  His words were drowned by the ugly chatter of gunfire. The air was filled with the whine of ricocheting bullets being fired at a rate of four hundred rounds a minute. Again the firing stopped

  Austin and Zavala took advantage of the intermission and rose to move to a position where they might have a clear shot. They heard a shout from the captain.

  "Behind you!"

  The two men whirled as a shadow dropped noiselessly from the deck immediately above them. Austin saw him first. His good arm came up in a swift motion, and he pulled the trigger. There was a second of delay as the sparks from the flint ignited the powder pan. After what seemed like hours the pistol belched fire like a dragon's mouth. The figure took a step forward and collapsed. The gun he was carrying clattered to the deck.

  Zavala made a move to retrieve the gun. It was too risky now that the muzzle flash had revealed their position. With Zavala covering their rear, Austin and the captain moved toward the nearest stairwell and down to the next deck.

  Gunfire was coming from every direction. They looked for cover. Too late. The captain cried out, clutched his head, and fell to the deck. Zavala grabbed the captain's arm and pulled him out of harm's way. More shots, and Zavala went down as a bullet plowed through his left buttock.

  They had their backs to the science section. Austin opened a bulkhead door and, without checking to see if it was safe, grabbed the captain by the collar and pulled him inside. Zavala was crawling with one leg dragging limply behind him, but with some help he, too, made it through the portal.

  Austin bolted the steel door shut and looked around. They were in one of the "wet" labs, so called because of the large sinks and running seawater He knew the room by heart and easily found a flashlight, then a firstaid kit, inside a storage locket:

  He examined Zavala's wound arid breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the bullet had gone in and out of the flesh. As Austin worked to bind up the wound not an easy task with only one working hand, Zavala kept the Bowen leveled, at the door they had just come in.

  "How bad is it?" he said finally.

  "You won't like sitting for a while, and you might have to explain that you weren't running for the hills when you got hit. Otherwise, you'll be okay. I don't think they knew where we were. Just shooting wild."

  Zavala looked at Austin's sling and then at the prone figure of the captain. "I'd hate to be around when they were really aiming."

  Austin examined the captain's head. The close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair was matted with blood, but the wound looked to be a graze. The captain groaned as Austin applied antiseptic to the bloodied scalp.

  "How do you feel?" Austin asked.

  "I've got a hell of a headache, and I'm having a hard time seeing."

  "Think of it as a hangover without the taste of booze in your mouth," Austin advised.

  His ministrations finished, Austin looked at his bloodstained comrades and shook his head. "So much for guerrilla warfare."

  "Sorry I lost the shotgun," the captain said.

  Zavala said, "You should be. I could be using it for a crutch." He looked around. "See anything in here we can use to make an atomic bomb with?"

  Austin squinted at the rows of chemicals and finally picked up an empty flask. "Maybe we can use these for Molotov cocktails." He glanced at the door they had just come through. "We can't stay here. They're going to figure out what happened to us when they see the blood trail."

  Austin helped his partner into the next section, the high-ceiling garage that was home to the submersible when it wasn't plumbing the depths.

  "What about those Molotov cocktails?" Zavala said.

  Austin's mouth clamped into a tight and not very pleasant smile, and a hard gleam of anger flickered in eyes that had shifted in shade from coral blue to ice water. For all their wisecracks he and Zavala knew that if they failed, Nina and the others on board were as good as dead. The people crowded into the bow would be found, and these black-suited killers would dispatch them with the same coldbloodedness with which they wiped the archaeological expedition off the face of the earth. Austin vowed that was not going to happen as long as he was able to draw a breath.

  "Forget the cocktails," he said with a quiet ferocity.. "I've got a better idea."

  10 AUSTIN LEANED AGAINST THE METAL skin of the submersible, and under the unblinking gaze of the vehicle's porthole eyes he outlined his plan. Zavala, who was sitting at the edge of a sea sled to give his wounded haunch a rest, nodded appreciatively.

  A classic Kurt Austin strategy, depending on splitsecond timing, unsupported assumptions, and lots of luck. Given the fact that we've got our backs against the sea, I say we go for it."

  The captain shook his head in unison with Zavala's grin. The man would fall over with a good push, yet he acted as if he had a Fifth Cavalry division behind him. With the butt of the dueling pistol sticking out of his bloodsoaked sling, the silverhaired Austin could have passed for a Hollywood buccaneer in an Errol Flynn movie. Phelan decided that if he had to fight for his ship against such lousy odds, he was glad these two lunatics were on his side.

  Their strategy session done, they crept through a rear door that led from the submersible garage onto the stern deck Just behind the towering science storage structure, two portable container vans had been lashed ,to the deck for use as extra lab space. The three men made their way around the vans and across the deck until they were at the very stern of the ship under the massive beams of the aft A-frame that was used to lift the submersible in and out of the ocean.

  The deck appeared to be deserted, but Austin knew they wouldn't remain alone for very long, and in fact he was counting on having company.

  "What do you want me to do?" the captain asked Austin.

  Austin regretted that he ever had any doubts about the doughty old sea dog.

  "You're the only one with two whole arms and legs. Since brainpower doesn't count with this phase of the operation, you
get to do the grunt work."

  Under Austin's one-armed direction, the captain transported four of the gasoline tanks used by the workboats from a.storage area and strung them evenly spaced in a line across the deck about halfway between the Aframe and the van labs. Each molded red polyethylene tank held nine gallons.

  The captain felt dizzy after the work and had to rest. .Austin, who was lightheaded from the blood he'd lost, couldn't blame him. Zavala had located a short wooden paddle to use as a cane and was thumping about the deck like Long John Silver. He said he was fine, but he clenched his teeth as. he eased himself onto a cable drum of a deck winch.

  "Guess we won't be giving to a blood bank anytime soon," Austin said. "We'd better get this show moving before we all keel over. It's vital that we make them come to us."

  "1 can try greeting them in Spanish again. That worked the last time."

  Remembering the violent reaction Zavala's taunts provoked on the upper deck, Austin said, "Let 'em have it."

  Zavala drew a deep breath and in the loudest voice he could muster let fly a string of insults that called the character of the listeners' families into question in every way imaginable. Fathers, brothers, and sisters, assigning to each an imaginative array of perversions. Austin had no idea what he was saying, but the sarcastic needling tone left no mistake about the meaning of the scornful barbs.

  While Zavala threw out the bait, Austin got a tight grip on one of the deck hoses and signaled the captain to turn on the water. The hose jerked as if it were alive. Austin walked across the deck, sweeping the spray back and forth.

  The water hit the deck with a spattering hiss that was drowned out by Zavala's insults. Barely visible in the moonlight, a whitefoamed ripple began to advance. Austin kept the miniature wave moving until it almost reached the gas tanks.

  Zavala's taunts failed to work their scatalogical magic this time. The enemy had become wary after the last episode. Austin grew impatient. He drew the dueling pistol from his sling, pointed it in the air, and fired. If his scheme failed, a single bullet wasn't going to help much anyhow. The rise worked. Before long, dusky ghosts that were more spectral than real in the faint light of the moon materialized from the shadows around the cargo containers and began to advance slowly toward them.