Butler Did It! (23 page)

<<>>

Matthew piloted the big yacht around to
the cove on Little Curieuse where Katharine had first crashed their
party. He cut the engines while they waited for the Rusty Duck to
arrive. Rummaging through the cabinets in the main cabin, he found
a blanket with which to cover Katharine, who sat shivering with
shock on one of the benches that lined the salon. Munching on a
surprisingly good omelet, he sat studying the control consoles of
the Rapier. There were two, one on either side of a smoked glass
door in the center of the bridge. One appeared to be navigation,
the other, propulsion and steering. He had figured out the three
throttles and a joystick, and of course, the steering wheel, but a
vast number of buttons, sliders, indicator lights, and numerous
readout screens took some investigation. He opened the door between
the consoles; it was a gull wing door, opening upward like the
doors on some Ferraris and Lamborghinis.

When the Rusty Duck finally arrived, he
transferred Katharine and the frightened steward into their care,
turned the yacht and gunned the engines, driving the enormous black
hull as far up into the soft beach sand as possible.

It’ll take a bit of effort to get
her free from that
, he thought, as Trask drew the Duck up
alongside the stern. “One less tool for Levasseur to bring against
us,” he said, handing Katharine over and then leaping lightly into
the Duck. The steward timidly followed.

<<>>

It was well past midnight when Trask
brought the Rusty Duck up the ramp into the cavernous belly of the
Pelican. Second Officer Martin and two crewmembers were holding
down the first watch. Eventually Butler finished his story of the
capture, and the audacious escape. After only two retellings, he
finally persuaded everyone to get some sleep. With everyone tucked
in their bunks sawing sea logs, the ship was as quiet as mass
snoring would allow.

At 0200 hours, the duty radar operator
picked up a mysterious blip. The Pelican’s thirty-mile radar
initially bounced back an indistinct outline. The image was poor
enough for an inexperienced operator to ignore the blip as a trick
of the weather. Fortunately, the duty operator, a man of fifteen
years experience, noted that the blip was moving at a rapid rate of
speed directly toward the Pelican. The operator, no fool,
immediately notified second officer Martin. Warned to look out for
anything suspicious, Martin decided to keep an eye on it. When it
got within five miles without a change of bearing, he sent a
crewmember down to wake up the Captain.

At three miles out, the blip suddenly
stopped. Eight distinct shapes moving in a V-formation separated
from it, moving toward the Pelican. The blips were just over two
miles away when the Captain hurried onto the bridge. With one
glance at the radar screen, he activated the ship’s security alarm
and ordered the Pelican to DefCon One, a full mobilization of the
crew to batten down all the exterior hatches and raise the
starboard and port boarding ladders.

“Attention! Attention! This is the
Captain. Battle stations, I repeat, battle stations.”

To every crewmember, the Captain’s
orders galvanized their nerves and supercharged their adrenaline.
The DefCon one alarm meant repel boarders with lethal force if
necessary.

The captain continued bellowing out
orders over the intercom.

“Seal and dog all watertight hatches.
Security Team Alpha, assemble at the bow turret. Security Team
Bravo, assemble at the stern turret. All civilians please assemble
in the main lounge for instructions.”

Butler and Tommy both arrived at the
bridge within minutes. Butler carried something special he had
acquired earlier from Joseph, Captain Z’s arms dealer friend, a SAW
machine gun.

Tommy immediately went to the Security
console and fired it up. His first task was to activate the
infrared camera installed on the mainmast.

“Salvador, take a headset and climb up
to the top of the mast. I want you spotting for me.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Salvador smartly
replied, with a huge grin on his face.

At two miles out, the V-formation broke
into two separate wings, each approaching the Pelican from a
slightly different vector.

“It looks like they plan to board from
both sides simultaneously,” Captain Z’s commented, as he slipped on
a vest of kevlar body armor.

“Captain, how do you want to handle
this?” Butler asked.

“The safety of the passengers and crew
are primary, of course. Even so, I don’t intend to give up the ship
to brigands, either.”

“We still have time to haul anchor and
scoot.” Butler offered. “A moving target might be harder to
board.”

“True, but we would have fewer people
to fight with, and by the speed of the blips, their boats are
faster that the Pelican. Standing still, we can bring more
firepower to bear against them. They can’t afford to sink us, at
least until they’ve stolen everything aboard. Of course, that
assumes that they’re pirates, but we don’t really believe that do
we?”

“No of course not, I’d lay any odds you
care to name that this has to do with Kobi and that this guy
Levasseur is behind it. If they’re just out to kill us, sinking the
ship might be a fast way to take everyone out.”

“If that were their intent they could
have done it without sending out this many boats. No, I think we’re
going to be boarded. We do have one huge advantage, they have no
idea that we know they’re out there and are ready for them.
Besides, I really want to see what some of Tommy’s toys can do.”
Captain Z answered bluntly.

“You know Captain, so do I.” Butler
agreed.

“That takes care of defense. What about
offense?” Tommy piped up.

“Chief Engineer O’Neal and Chan will go
with Security Team Alpha to the forward AA turret. Mr. Trask is
with Security Team Bravo at the aft AA turret. Mr. Butler I would
appreciate it if you and your weapon would join Security Team Bravo
there.”

Butler smiled grimly and slapped the
stock of his SAW. “I would be delighted.”

Eight zodiac boats appeared out of the
gloom. They had shut down their gasoline motors, and now electric
trolling motors were bringing them silently to their prey. Everyone
at the command center could see four men in each of the zodiacs,
all armed with AK-47s.

“Ah, yes, the favorite weapon of
terrorists, insurgents and pirates,” Tommy muttered
sourly.

“Mr. Cooper, please inform our security
teams that they will be facing approximately thirty-two men armed
with automatic weapons. They have my authorization to use lethal
force in defense of the ship,” Captain Z commanded.

Butler met his five-man security team
in the aft corridor just below the empty stern AA turret.
Unfortunately, when Captain Z and Butler bought the Pelican, the
heavy weapons had been long removed, leaving a half dozen empty gun
turrets strategically placed around the ship. In the past, the
stern turret had been used for nothing more serious than
sunbathing. As Butler approached, Trask was positioning his men to
make the optimum use of their limited weapons. Each man was armed
with a M-16 and two bandoleers of magazines.

Trask noticed Butler’s SAW and a ditty
bag full of two-hundred round magazines and smiled. “Wish you’d
bought me one of those,” he grunted.

Butler grinned, “He only had one, but I
promise, if we get out of this, I’ll give you this one.”

Butler listened intently as Trask
outlined the team’s strategy. Trask's plan was to put himself and
Butler in the elevated AA turret and put a two-man ambush on either
side of the superstructure beneath the workboat cranes.

Tommy’s voice crackled in their radio
headsets. “Attention, two dozen intruders are boarding the ship,
both port and starboard, just aft of the forward cargo container
row.”

Captain Z cut in on the headsets. “We
are activating the defense systems forward of the superstructure.
The infrared lamps are lit, but once the shooting starts, I will
turn on the main deck lights. Do your duty, and good
luck.”

As the Captain concluded his
instructions, Tommy activated two beanbag cannons, mounted on the
forward bridge railing. A savage bag of beans moving at nearly
ninety miles per hour whooshed out of the darkness and struck the
first intruder in the chest. The bag lifted the marauder off his
feet and threw the man against a packing crate tied down to the
deck. The last man up the grapnel line to starboard was just
climbing over the railing when he caught a supersonic beanbag in
the head, snapping his spine and tumbling the body back over the
railing where it struck a zodiac floating below and tore thru the
flooring.

The remaining intruders, most of which
were unaware of the infrared directed beanbag attack, broke into
four teams. One team immediately began sweeping toward the stern to
starboard with a second team doing the same to port. A third team
moved stealthily through the laboratory skids arranged in neat rows
along the deck near the superstructure. The last team was providing
support. They had taken up positions in the gaps between the cargo
containers and were aiming at the darkened bridge
windows.

Captain Z’s voice came back over the
radio headsets. “Heads up! These people aren’t amateurs. They’re
using the classic advance and cover tactics taught to infantry
units. For all our younger crewmembers with combat experience, you
might know it as ‘bound over watch’. Offhand, I’d say we’re dealing
with well trained mercenaries.”

The Captain turned to Tommy. “Activate
our second line of defense, and then signal Security Team A to open
fire at their first convenience.”

On signal, Tommy remotely aimed the
sonic laser at the port starboard ladder well, and cranked up the
volume to a staggering one hundred fifty-five decibels. The highly
directed barrage of sound, only lightly heard through the armored
glass of the bridge, was the classic Deep Purple hit, Smoke on the
Water.

The first man up the ladder, a towering
hulk, shrieked piteously as the focused sound waves struck him like
a hammer blow. He immediately dropped his weapon and put both hands
over his ears. His mates behind him fell back to the main deck,
milling and trying to escape the sound waves by beating on dogged
and locked hatches. As Tommy turned the laser to follow the
confused group, the invaders on the port side rushed into a second
cone of intense sound. Initially, this group stopped and milled for
a second or two but they had more guts and charged up the ladder
well firing wildly in all directions.

EB, Chan and Security Team Alpha,
concealed in the bow AA turret, suddenly opened fire on the first
group of pirates retreating from the sonic laser attack. Within
minutes, the two sides had established defensive positions and a
lethal firefight was blazing. Several of the invaders, hoping to
get out of range of the deadly fire, skirted the ladder well and
bolted along the port side of the superstructure. They hadn’t gone
ten paces when a burst of M-16 fire from Security Team Bravo,
hiding under the landing barge cranes, roared. Those not cut down
in the opening blast retreated to the nooks and crannies of the
cargo container row.

Suddenly, an angry horde of steel
hornets slammed into the armored bridge windows as one enterprising
pirate figured out that the entire defense of the ship was being
choreographed from the bridge.

Despite being behind heavily armored
glass, everyone on the bridge ducked. Mrs. Yan, a recent arrival
with a fresh pot of hot coffee moved faster than everyone, dropping
the pot and rolling beneath the steering console. Once everyone
realized that the three-inch thick armored glass had stopped the
bullets, the tension of the moment dissolved as quickly as it
began. Mrs. Yan angrily rose from under the console and began
cleaning up the spilled coffee, muttering all the while about bad
men who waste food.

As the gunfire slacked to merely
sporadic bursts, Tommy bitched, “If we don't end this soon, we are
going to run out of ammo. As it is now, I’m nearly out of beanbags.
Whoever is directing this attack is smart. They've already set up
defensive positions out of range of my cannons.”

“So, you’re telling me you can't bean
them hard enough to be effective at this range.” Captain Z
concluded.

“I can’t even bean them at all!” Tommy
replied with obvious frustration in his voice. “At this range my
bean bags get aerodynamically unstable and tend to sail in any old
direction. I need something with more striking power.”

“You need something harder and
heavier?” Mrs. Yan asked politely. “I know what you need.” She
smiled to herself and shuffled down a stairwell toward the galley,
humming all the while.

Tommy, mildly flustered at Mrs. Yan’s
response, shook his head and focused back on the battle.

To prevent any further incursions
toward the bridge Tommy aimed his two sonic lasers at a gap between
the rows of cargo containers amidships, and cranked up the volume
to the maximum. A palpable fist of sound struck the gap, causing
more screams, and resulting in considerably more gunfire directed
at the sound source. Tommy also activated high-intensity strobe
lights and four green light lasers popularly known as dazzlers,
both guaranteed to cause temporary blindness and
disorientation.