Page 146 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier
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Cabrillo’s team split up according to plan. Linc and Murph swam into their positions near the machine guns as the others advanced toward the mini sub and its smaller pier.
As soon as Juan’s team arrived, everybody stripped off gear and pulled weapons. Juan’s team couldn’t climb onto the pier until Murph and Linc knocked off the machine guns or they’d be cut down.
With his head barely above the surface and hiding behind a pylon, Cabrillo whispered orders in his mic to commence the operation.
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Linc and Murph slipped effortlessly out of the water, emerging just inches away from their assigned machine guns whirring on their gimbals. They slapped C4 charges with timed detonators against tripod legs in less than three seconds.
But as Murph warned earlier, that was enough time for the auto machine-gun sensors to pick up their glistening wet suits in the bright overhead lights. Both guns spun onto their targets and opened fire.
The first few rounds slapped the water just inches from Murph, but a fourth round hit him in the left bicep. He cried out before gasping for a lungful of breath and diving below the surface.
The other gun had a harder time locking onto Linc’s lightning-fast physique. He disappeared back underneath the water with barely a ripple just as a spray of jacketed rounds hammered the surface.
Seconds later, the two C4 charges exploded. The tripod leg on Linc’s machine gun collapsed and tumbled into the water as planned.
Murph’s charge also exploded and broke the tripod leg on his assigned gun. But the unit itself merely collapsed to the rocky shelf, not quite reaching the water. Unable to rotate properly, the weapon shuddered like a heart attack victim on a bathroom floor, trying to fix its aim. Though incapable of tracking, the weapon could kill just the same if one of the Gundogs ran through its sensor field.
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Shocked by the sudden eruption of gunfire, the Vendor froze in place, but his mind ran to overdrive, processing the electrical impulses from the cochlear nerve dumping information into his brain stem. Milliseconds later his incredible intellect understood he was under attack. But it was the raw acidic churn in his gut that told him Mendoza was behind it. The resulting C4 explosions seconds later confirmed both.
The Vendor shouted into his wrist device. “Keiko—launch theGhost Sword!”
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As soon as they heard the two C4 explosions, Cabrillo and his men pulled themselves onto the small dock and crouched down beneath the mini sub’s hull, barely hidden from the beehive of activity ten yards away.
Leaning against the smaller sub’s hull, Cabrillo heard alarmed shouts from the armed techs as they racked their weapons. Juan nodded to his guys, lifted the P90 to his shoulder, stood, and fired.
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Aboard theSpook Fish
Callie had her acoustic sensors turned up. Perched in the pilot’s seat and with her drone retracted, all she had was a dim view through the cutout in the anti-sub net she’d made earlier.
She caught the sound of a couple of dull splashes and then the muted sound of distant gunfire. She strained to see who or what hit the water, but she was too far away.
The speakers inside theSpook Fishsuddenly splashed the metallic sounds of the big anti-submarine net parting like a Broadway curtain. Her blood pressure spiked.
What did that mean?
Had Cabrillo tripped a switch to let her in—or was somebody trying to get out?
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The first salvo of bullets from the Gundogs’ P90s dropped a half dozen surprised techs, spilling two of them into the water. The rest were dragged to safety, while others found shelter in the wall of rocks.
Just as theGhost Sword’s bubbling ballast tanks began pulling its hull beneath the waves, a grenade sailed over the mini sub, where Juan and the others were standing. The grenade hit the pier six inches from Cabrillo’s bare feet, but bounced off the deck and hit the water. The explosion a few seconds later sent a geyser of salt water into the air, but luckily no shrapnel came with it.
“We gotta stop that sub!” Cabrillo shouted in his comms.
“Cut me a lane,” Eddie said.
Linc and Murph—with a now self-bandaged arm—lay prone on different points of the lagoon compass. Linc opened up with precision shots, while Murph cut loose with one-handed controlled bursts. At the same time, MacD and Juan tossed flash-bangs.
