Page 82 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm
“Expensive?”
“Eye-wateringly.”
Bell and Marchetti both wore black one-piece suits, with padded and reinforced knees and elbows. Each man carried a pistol in kidney holsters as well as backpacks loaded with the bombs and other gear. Joe would also carry a chopped down 20-gauge shotgun loaded with buck rather than birdshot. It wasn’t as powerful a weapon as Bell’s piece, but he freely admitted the recoil from a sawed-off 12-gauge was too much for him.
Bell’s head snapped up when he heard the full-throated roar of theSaarland’s main battery firing for a second time. They were far enough up the East River to the see the muzzle flash reflected off the low clouds blanketing the city. It was like distant lightning. A moment later came the freight train–like roar as the huge shell split the sky. And a handful of seconds later came the sound of the shell exploding in Manhattan. Bell watched as a fresh plume of dust climbed into the sky very near where the first had impacted. They were bothin Midtown and he guessed that either Penn Station or Grand Central Terminal was the target.
He clenched his fists to keep them from trembling in rage.
Moments later they were motoring through Hell Gate, the once deadly narrows at the top of the East River. TheSaarlandfired a third round just then. It had come so much faster than the second that Bell knew that Balka Rath had zeroed in the range and trajectory for his brother aboard the battleship.
“He’s north of Rikers Island,” Bell shouted into Grimm’s ear. “Take us to the east and we’ll come up behind him.”
They lost some more time circumnavigating the island with its disused Union army training ground, and Bell felt each second ticking by. His gut was clenched with anticipation of more shells being lobbed at the city in a rapid-fire bombardment, but minutes crawled past, and the big guns remained silent. He was confused but grateful for the lull.
They finally came around the north shore of Rikers and got their first look at the anarchists’ battleship as she menaced New York. Her aft turret looked inert, the two big cannons extending straight back and parallel to the deck. Her forward turret was turned and one of the guns was elevated to a great degree. Bell studied the massive warship through binoculars. He saw no one on the deck and no one standing on the bridge wing high above. It was impossible to see into the bridge itself and yet Bell’s imagination put Karl Rath in there near the glass windscreen, his binoculars trained on the city to which he was laying waste.
TheAlice N.raced across the open water and tucked alongside the ship near her fantail. Being this close changed their perspective on the battleship. She seemed to take up the entire world, her grayhull curving up and over them, so the fishing boat was draped in shadow.
In order to keep the ship on station, one of her three propellers spun slowly to maintain tension on the anchor that had been dropped into the tidal estuary.
Now that they were invisible to anyone on deck because of the hull’s curvature, Grimm slowed his boat. They were so close to theSaarland’s hull that Grey kept having to push them off so they didn’t scrape the steel plates. Everyone kept an eye toward the sky. If an anarchist noted their approach now, he could reach over the railing with a machine gun and shred the sturdy little boat.
Bell and Marchetti moved to theAlice N.’s bow. Bell’s hybrid shotgun was slung across his back on a thick webbed cotton strap, while Joe’s sawed off 20-gauge fit in a special holster belted around his waist and tied off around his thigh. They had brought a lightweight aluminum ladder to ease in boarding the battleship, but with the anchor down, they could clamber up the chain and squeeze through the hawsehole.
It had been at least seven minutes since the last salvo was fired at the city. That respite ended with a crashing explosion, the loudest any of the men had ever heard. Had they not earlier fixed wax plugs in their ears and been under the long gun tube, they would have all lost their hearing. Still, the noise left them reeling and with the feeling they’d been punched in the lungs without the protection of their ribs.
The men took a few seconds for their bodies to recover. TheAlice N.had drifted a little from the great warship. Grimm made a quick correction. Grey grabbed on to theSaarland’s anchor chain when they got close enough. Bell and Marchetti exchanged a briefnod. They had never seen combat together but had helped each other escape the doomed linerLusitania,and knew neither lacked courage and would remain calm under the most hellish conditions.
Bell gave Joe a thumbs-up and started climbing the sofa-sized chain links.
43
“I’ve got it!” Archie shoutedand gave the Ford’s steering wheel a fingertip drum solo.
“What?” asked his two passengers.
It had been a minute since the third shell had exploded at what a passerby had told them was a construction site on Sixth Avenue.
“They have the grids reversed,” he said as he put the car in gear and merged into traffic. “They had the number of blocks correct when they adjusted after the first shot, but the gunner thought New York City blocks are nine hundred feet wide and two hundred long when in reality it’s the other way around, on average. That’s why the second two rounds were so far off.”
“So the next one?”
“Since it hasn’t already been fired, they’re realizing they’ve miscalculated. They’ll work it out eventually and put the next high explosive shell right through the roof of Penn Station.”
“And Balka will be nearby to tell his brother he’s made a direct hit,” Hanna said from the back seat, her eyes reduced to angry slits.
“And that’s where we nab him,” Archie told his companions, his hunter’s instinct telling him he was right.
It was only a couple of blocks, but they were going against traffic trying to flee the area and many times their lane was taken up by oncoming cars driving illegally on the right. At one point a stampede of four fear-crazed horses raced past, the big animals’ eyes showing mostly white while their bodies were covered in sweaty lather.
Eventually they made it to the massive white-columned station. Traffic here had thinned out, as if people were coming to realize the explosions weren’t random, that their beloved city was under attack, and the likely target was the gleaming new station. They turned from Thirty-First onto Seventh Avenue, each looking for any kind of van or truck. There were several but Hanna was sure none of them belonged to her brother. They kept on circling the sprawling station, peering down side streets and alleys in hopes of spotting their quarry.
Then came the gut-clenching sound of a fourth incoming projectile, that long rolling crack that grew louder as it drew closer. They saw the shell hit high up on the train hall’s exterior wall near where it met the roof. The round bored through the granite façade and plowed aside interior layers of stone and brick and structural steel.
It then shot across one of the tall passenger galleries before plunging through the floor, subfloor, and twenty feet of compacted dirt before screaming into a vacant train tunnel and finally embedding itself in the filthy ballast stones between the rails.
Rather than waste another precious high-explosive shell, KarlRath had ordered one of the armor-piercing rounds be fired to make certain they had corrected their geographic error. Once Balka confirmed a hit, the building would be reduced to a smoldering pile.
