Battleground (2 page)

Belowdecks, the Security Alert Team leader heard the General Quarters gong and unlocked the armory door. Inside, the light was always on. He quickly took the lock off the long weapons, shotguns, and M-14 rifles, and pulled out a pair of Mossburg shotguns. A dozen men surged toward him reaching for .45 automatics and 9mm pistols and their magazines. Some took shotguns and pockets of rounds. Most of the men were in shorts and T-shirts right out of the sack from their coops.

“What the hell’s happening?” one man shouted.

“Nobody knows, but we got shitfaces all over the place shooting at us,” somebody said. The Security Alert Team leader left the armory open, and ran up a ladder for the deck above. He met no one on the ladder.

Another dozen more men raced to the armory and grabbed weapons and scattered. Now firing could be heard from several parts of the ship.

Forward, the Kenyans ran into a pair of sailors who had been smoking at the rail and watching the lights on the Mombasa waterfront fifty yards away. When the warning gongs sounded, the two sailors turned and ran for their General Quarters posts. They didn’t make it. Two Kenyan
rangers fired one round each of double-aught buck from their shotguns. The two sailors caught most of the slugs, slammed over the low railing, and splashed into the harbor below next to the pier.

The ship was silent for a moment, with only the gentle sound of the Mombasa Bay waters slapping the steel hull. Then two American sailors ran out of the passageway on the port side from the quarterdeck. Both men carried shotguns. Two more Kenyan rangers stormed up the brow from the pier. Damage Controlman Second Class Krokowski brought up his shotgun, surprising the Kenyans.

“What the hell you guys doing?” Krokowski bellowed. The Kenyans shrilled something in Swahili and lifted their rifles. Krokowski fired first, killing one of the Kenyans. The other invader triggered his AK-47 on full automatic, and Krokowski and his buddy spilled backwards on the deck, their weapons skittering away from them. Both the sailors were critically wounded. The Kenyan ran up, fired one round into the head of each American, and rushed down the deck.

Shots sounded from the forward part of the ship. Gunner’s Mate Third Class Mondes charged around the 1 Mk 13 Mod 4 missile launcher for the surface-to-surface missiles on the forward main deck with an M-14 in his hand. He heard firing down the starboard side and ran that way. Mondes saw two sailors shot down, and he screeched in protest.

“What is this, a goddamn war?” he roared. Six Kenyans ran toward him and he got off a burst of six shots. He saw two of the Kenyans go down before he felt a hammer blow in his side and then another in his chest and knew he was falling. He hit the missile launcher base and went down. The last thing Mondes saw was a Kenyan soldier standing over him as he stared up at an ugly black rifle muzzle. He never heard the fatal shot.

Twenty men jolted awake by the General Quarters alarm in their aft coops berthing compartment stumbled around hunting clothes. A few got pants on and ran out the door before two Kenyan soldiers ran in and one blasted a shotgun
round into the overhead. One of the Kenyan attackers spoke English.

“Down on the deck on your faces!” he bellowed. “The first man who moves gets shot dead.”

The General Quarters gong kept sounding through the ship like a racing heartbeat. It sent dozens more men up ladders and reaching for helmets.

Two officers were gunned down as they charged into CIC, the Combat Information Center, where the missiles were controlled.

The firing shotguns brought Commander Joseph Goddard, CO of the
Roy Turner
, awake with a jolt, only to stare into the black bore of an Uzi submachine gun.

“Captain Goddard, I believe,” Colonel Maleceia said softly. “I have just captured your vessel. If you would be so kind as to get up and dress, I’ll put you with the other prisoners of war.”

Commander Goddard shook his head to clear it. He came awake slowly these days. He heard more firing on board his ship. He nodded, started to slide out of the bunk, then whipped up the 1911 Colt .45 automatic he had slept with every night of his life for the past twenty years and snapped off a shot. It missed the huge colonel. The Uzi chattered and six 9mm rounds blasted into Commander Goddard’s chest and belly, slamming him into eternity on his bunk.

“Too bad,” the colonel said. “It’s a shame to mess up such a fine bunk that way.”

Six chief petty officers had been enjoying their weekly Sunday night poker game. The General Quarters blast surprised them, and two headed for the door to the enlisted mess. The Security Alert Team Leader jerked the door open and pushed in three shotguns and a Beretta.

“We’ve got Kenyan rangers all over the ship,” he yelled. “Use these best you can.” Then he ran out and up a ladder.

“Whoever they are won’t be long getting here,” Gunners’s Mate Second Class Andy Johnson said. “They must know where this place is.” He had one of the shotguns and pushed five rounds into the magazine.

“We’ll blast a dozen of them before they touch us,”
Parachute Rigger Second Class Joe Lawler drawled. He loaded his shotgun and aimed it at the door. “Hail, in Tennessee we got shot at all the time. Damned revenuers never could hit their own assholes.”

Outside, rifle butts hammered on the metal door.

Johnson moved up beside the dogged-down bulkhead door and waited. He saw the lever turn. A minute later he stormed away.

“Dynamite,” he roared. Johnson swerved behind a heavy metal rack. The explosion that came moments later was muffled, but the locking bolts on the inside of the door snapped and blasted into the compartment.

Someone outside pushed the door open slowly. Johnson crawled forward. When the bulkhead door was six inches open, Johnson lay near it on the deck and threw a hand grenade through it into the passageway.

The blast 4.2 seconds later echoed through the ship like a warning gong. When the rumbling died down, the chiefs heard one man screaming outside.

A moment later, a flashbang grenade rolled into the compartment and went off with five furiously loud detonations and then six flashes of light so brilliant that a hand over the eyes kept out only a little of the intensity.

The six men reeled from the grenade. The explosion in such a contained space magnified its effect by three times. Johnson lay on the deck bleeding from his nose and one ear.

Lawler sat against the bulkhead shaking his head, blind and not able to hear a thing.

Three submachine-gun-toting Kenyan Rangers stormed through the door and kicked away the shotguns, then systematically shot all six chiefs to death.

In the Communications Center, Gunners Mate Second Class Art Brachman had just signed on the Internet to send an E-mail to his wife back in Portland, Oregon. He had the first two lines of his flash mail done when he heard the booming report of a shotgun. He knew the sound. He cut the lights in the center. Only the greenish hue of the consoles and screens gave off any light. He unlocked the crypto vault and pulled out the 9mm Glock Model 18 pistol with a
thirty-three round magazine they kept there. He cranked back the slide, chambering a round, and had thirty-two more slugs to defend himself with.

The Captain had cautioned them yesterday when they tied up. He’d said almost anything could happen in a jumpy, wild-assed place like Kenya, so they should be ready. Only a few chiefs had had any liberty that night, and that was Cinderella liberty. Most of the 206 officers and men were still on the ship.

Somebody ran past the Communications Center room door. Then Brachman heard the steps come back. Brachman swore at himself for not throwing the steel bars on the door, which was always locked. He heard the handle turn; then a half-dozen rounds from a weapon slammed into the door lock and the steel panel swung open. The terrible muzzle of a shotgun poked through the opening.

Brachman fired four times a foot above the shotgun. The sound billowed around the small communications room, and Brachman knew he couldn’t hear much. He saw a body slam backwards against the side of the door, then pitch forward. The scattergun clattered on the deck.

Brachman grabbed the weapon. The dead man was black—did that make him a Kenyan? He didn’t recognize the green uniform. Brachman took the shotgun and looked at it in the glow of the screens. Simple. A five-round pump weapon fully loaded. He dropped to the floor, pushed over the dead man, and crawled to the open door. Brachman took a quick look down the passageway. Twenty feet down someone fired at him with a rifle. The round missed. Friend or foe?

He poked his head out for a second, saw the green uniform in the passageway, and pushed out the shotgun and fired one round at the approaching figure. The Kenyan ranger flew three feet backwards as he died on the way to the deck.

Brachman wiped sweat off his forehead. What the hell was going on? Bad guys all over the place. Where was the security team when you needed it? He heard more boots pounding down the passage. He searched the dead man’s
pockets and found four more shotgun shells. Quickly Brachman refilled the magazine and edged up to the door.

Three black men in green uniforms worked slowly toward him from the bow. He waited until they were within fifteen feet, then reached out and fired once. He looked out and saw two men down and the third retreating. Brachman’s second blast of double-aught buck channeled in the passageway’s steel walls, blasted into the running figure, and smashed him to the deck.

Brachman pulled back the shotgun, wondering if he should push in two more rounds. Before he decided, a submachine gun muzzle poked in the door and fired.

As soon as he saw the blue-steel barrel, he knew he’d never finish that E-mail to Jody. Brachman jolted sideways and tried to find the Glock.

Before he touched the small weapon, a six-round burst of 9mm lead slashed into his left leg, bringing a scream of anger and pain. A second later, four rounds of the next six-round burst caught Brachman in the side of his head and ripped off large chunks of his skull and brain.

Back on deck, Colonel Maleceia took reports from his remaining lieutenant. His best officer had been killed. He’d lost twelve men so far, and the fight wasn’t over. He owned the bridge, the quarterdeck, Main Control, the Combat Information Center, the engine room, the Communications Center, and one of the two enlisted crew’s berthing quarters. A dozen men had barricaded themselves in the last berthing compartment. He figured they were heavily armed.

“You told me that the crew’s weapons would all be locked in the armory,” Colonel Maleceia shouted at his last officer, Lieutenant Nigoru. The man took a step back. He knew the colonel’s physical power, and his political muscle as well.

“That was our best intelligence, sir. We have the situation almost resolved. Another ten minutes.”

“Fool. In another ten minutes we could all be dead.” The colonel took a swing at the younger man, who dodged back.

“I’ll go personally and dig out those last men, Colonel.”

“Do it, Nigoru, or don’t bother coming back,” Colonel
Maleceia said in his native Swahili. The younger man lifted an Uzi and ran down the passageway.

“Where the fuck did the attackers come from?” Torpedoman’s Mate Third Class Lew Klement whispered from where he lay beneath the bottom bunk in his mid-level coops. He winced when he moved his right arm, which had taken a shotgun’s wildly ricocheting double-aught slug.

“I heard some big three-hundred-pound son of a bitch of a Kenyan officer killed Mathews on watch at the brow and the OD and they swarmed on board.” It was Quartermaster’s Mate Second Class Clifford “Jonesy” Jones. He always knew everything going on on board.

“How good is that bitch of a door?” Hospital Corpsman Second Class Jugs Wilson asked. He’d just wrapped up Klement’s wounded arm.

“As strong as a Japanese mama-san’s whorehouse door,” Jonesy said. “Last about two minutes. You’ll have lots of work to do in here shortly, Doc.”

Klement watched the door. All the lights were out except one far back. The door wasn’t a watertight-compartment type. One stick of dynamite would blow it right off its hinges.

As he thought that, Klement heard voices outside. One shouted in what sounded like an ultimatum, but Klement couldn’t tell if it was in English or Swahili. He’d been doing some reading about Kenya ever since he’d heard that they would stop here. This was supposed to be a damn goodwill call, for God’s sake.

The blast at the door came as a surprise. Klement thought he could see the metal door bulge. Then the hinges came off, slashing through the air like shrapnel.

The front three men in the quarters had the only weapons. Klement had a shotgun and a full five-round magazine.

Doc Wilson carried a .45-caliber automatic. The only weapon Jonesy could find was a flare gun with three rounds. At close range one of the flares could burn halfway through a body.

The three sailors were on the floor under the triple-deck bunks, which was below the dynamite blast that tore
through the metal door and pitched it aside like a used tissue. Six Kenyan rangers stormed inside all firing automatic weapons.

Jonesy targeted the first man deliberately and hit him with the flare gun’s magnesium round in the stomach. The round didn’t penetrate, but it glued to the man’s shirt and burned at two thousand degrees, putting the man down shrieking for help. Before Jonesy could target another Kenyan, two AK-47 rounds plowed into his chest, spinning him around under the bunk into death.

Klement fired his shotgun the moment the rangers ran through the door. He shot three times as fast as he could work the pump. The double-aught buck cut down three attackers before a round from one of the enemy guns drilled cleanly through Klement’s forehead dumping him to the side, dead in an instant.

Doc Wilson pumped out six rounds from the .45, firing as fast as he could, before one of the heavy slugs caught him in the leg, another in the chest, and he slumped dead before he knew it.

The wave of attackers swarmed over the three on the floor. One man kicked the flare gun away and it was over. They took the rest of the men prisoners and had them all lie facedown on the floor. Quickly the Kenyan rangers put plastic hand restraints on the U.S. sailors. They were all bound by the time Lieutenant Nigoru arrived. He wiped a bead of perspiration from his forehead and marched the prisoners of war to the main deck.