Push Back: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (The Disruption Series Book 2) (45 page)

He depressed the muzzle a bit to target the barge shields. By the time the barges were almost abreast of
Pecos Trader
across the river, the shields were burning for their entire length.

***

“I can’t stop it, Captain,” The deckhand said between gasps. “I hit it with water, and the fire just floats on top. Fact is, I spread it; some of the flames floated aft and set that pile of mooring lines on the stern on fire. And the lines to the barges are burning too. If they part, we’ll lose the tow.”

Snag listened in disbelief and stifled a cough. The thick synthetic mooring lines were impregnated with dirt and grease, and their noxious smoke mingled with the wood smoke from the burning plywood in the barge shields to engulf the wheelhouse in a thick funk. On the barges, he could hear angry shouts, no doubt directed at the ship raining fire on them. At least he didn’t have to worry about the meth heads calming down. He jammed his pistol into the captain’s head again.

“We lose these barges before they’re jammed up against the side of that ship, and you’re dead.”

“But I … I can’t control the lines burning—”

“Then you better make sure we get across the river sooner rather than later,” Snag said.

The man nodded and rammed the throttles further forward in hopes of coaxing a tiny bit more speed out of his ungainly tow.

Snag looked aft from the wheelhouse at the flock of boats sheltering around them in the shadow of the barges. Close-packed and hard-pressed to maneuver in the tight space, they nonetheless managed; none of them wanted to become easy targets for a machine gun.

The boats held the second wave: five hundred hard-core members of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. But on the edges of the swarm were boats full of sacrificial meth heads, armed to the teeth and outfitted with boarding ladders and grappling hooks. To this group Snag had also promised the pick of the women captives to the first man who boarded
Pecos Trader
. He smiled. Dumb asses, all of them. It never seemed to occur to the meth heads the man or men capturing the machine gun AND the first man aboard from the small boats couldn’t ALL have first pick of the captives. Not that it mattered. Presuming they lived, all they were getting was more meth.

Snag watched the west bank recede as the boat maneuvered the barges across the river toward the ship, the boats clustered in the shadow of the barges following like so many mechanical ducklings.

***

Hughes stood on the bridge wing as the burning barges crept toward them in a line parallel to the ship. He saw gaps near the tops of the burning shields, each perhaps four to five feet wide. Through the gaps he glimpsed platforms and what he took to be handrails, and then he understood; they’d built shielded stairways up from the decks of the barges to allow the cons to rush aboard the main deck of the
Pecos Trader
from a dozen sally ports. Hughes looked over to where Torres stood at the rail, well aft of him on the bridge deck, with their single Cuban RPG on his shoulder.

“Ahh … he’s getting pretty close, Mr. Torres,” Hughes called, just as flame shot out the rear of the tube on Torres’ shoulder, and the grenade flew across the gap toward the shielded wheelhouse of the approaching push boat.

Things seemed to move in slow motion as the projectile moved straight toward its target, then veered sharply at the last moment to miss the boat by a foot and explode harmlessly in the river two hundred feet beyond the approaching threat. Hughes muttered a curse and looked back to where Torres was lowering the tube from his shoulder, a scowl on his face.

***

Snag flinched as the grenade flew past the wheelhouse of the push boat and exploded in the river beyond. A rocket! They had frigging rockets!

He jammed his gun into the captain’s cheek again.

“How much longer, damn you?” he demanded.

“T-ten minutes! Ma-maybe less,” the terrified man stammered.

Snag glanced nervously at his watch. “If it’s eleven, you’re a friggin’ dead man.”

***

“Can we pull our people back and set up one of the machine guns to sweep the port side as they try to board?” Hughes asked.

Torres shook his head. “I’m betting they’re going to try to shoot the gaps on either end of the ship with the small boats and hit us on the starboard side too. We need the machine guns to plug those holes. Besides”—Torres nodded down the deck—”if we hit those shields at an angle, any ricochets might take out the opposite machine gun. There’s just too much of a likelihood of friendly fire.”

Hughes looked at the barges again and gave a nervous nod. “I guess this is the ‘no plan survives first contact with the enemy’ part, right?”

Torres nodded. “But we should pull back from the rail to the centerline like you suggested and divide our shooters into groups, each to concentrate fire into one of the barge sally ports. And half of each group should be ready to switch fire to the starboard side as needed. We’ll use the Cuban machine gun as planned to target any boats that make it to the starboard side of the ship, and Alvarez and I will stay up top as overwatch to help deal with anyone who makes it aboard.”

Hughes nodded, moving toward the stairs. “I’ll get them organized—”

Georgia Howell moved to cut him off. “That’s my job, Captain.”

“Negative, Mate. Stay here and warn us if something is developing, and be ready to sound the signal if it looks like we’re about to be overrun—”

“No, sir! You’re commanding. You need to see—”

“And I’m commanding from the front and telling YOU to follow orders. Are we clear?”

“But, Captain … Jordan …”

“My family’s down there, Georgia. I won’t stand up here and watch them being shot at. It’s just … it’s just too hard. Are we clear?” The question was softer this time.

“Clear,” Howell said softly.

Hughes turned toward the door, then hesitated. “What about the kids and noncombatants? That all squared away?”

Howell nodded. “Forted up in the steering gear room. Polak and one of his guys are down there with twelve gauges. They’ll shoot anybody coming in who’s not us.”

Hughes nodded and moved to the central staircase. He glanced to port as soon as he reached the open deck. The barges were less than fifty yards away now, and he could see movement through the gaps of the sally ports. He moved along the defensive line, pulling his people back to the centerline of the vessel to find cover as best they could, and formed them into groups charged with defending the section of railing across from each barge sally point.

Task done, he found cover behind a pipe support in view not only of his designated sally port, but Laura and the girls in the next group further aft. If they retreated back to the deckhouse, he’d make sure his family didn’t get left behind in the confusion. The barges were ten feet away now, inching closer.

“I never expected to be here doing this.”

He turned to see Dan Gowan standing beside him, facing the approaching barges with a Winchester .30-30 in his hand. His cheek bulged from a huge wad of chewing tobacco.

Hughes nodded and turned back toward the barges. “Me neither. But don’t let me catch you spitting that nasty—”

His voice was drowned in a maelstrom of noise as the machine guns opened up on the bow and stern, and a savage war cry sounded from hundreds of crazed meth heads on the barges.

Chapter Twenty-Six

M/V
Tilly

Same Day, 5:40 a.m.

Snag stood in the wheelhouse window of the towboat and gave the hand signal. Engines roared, and boats peeled off the outside of the swarm into two roughly equal groups to jet at full speed around opposite ends of the barges, bound for the narrow gaps at either end of the ship. He heard the machine guns and seconds later felt a shuddering thud through his feet as the barges impacted the ship’s side.

“Now you better well hold them there, if you know what’s good for you,” he said to the towboat captain.

The man looked relieved. “Nothing to it now. As long as I keep the engines going ahead and don’t touch the steering, we’ll stick here like glue.”

“You don’t have to do anything else?” Snag asked.

“No. That’s it …”

The man realized his mistake a split second before Snag shot him in the forehead.

“Good,” Snag muttered. “I got things to do, and I was worried about leaving you alone.

Snag moved down the inside stairway and found the young deckhand cowering in the main deck passageway. The boy put up his hands. “Don’t kill me, mister, please! I’ll do anything you want.”

Snag smiled. “Relax, son. I won’t shoot you as long as you’re straight with me. Now what’s the best way for us to get off the boat?”

“Starboard side’s burning like hell, but the port side is all right. I can show you,” the boy said.

“No need,” Snag said, then shot the boy in the head and moved toward the port side. He exited the deckhouse and waved one of the boats over. He was about to jump aboard when he glanced toward the barges and saw the still figures of meth heads at the back of the mob. That wasn’t right; they should all be pressing forward.

He motioned for the boat driver to wait, then ran forward to climb the ladder on the port push knee at the front of the towboat. When his head was above the barge deck, he yelled at the milling mob.

“THE TOWBOAT IS ON FIRE AND SINKING!” He pointed to the burning shields on the barges. “AND THESE BARGES ARE FULL OF GASOLINE! Y’ALL NEED TO TAKE THAT SHIP AND TAKE IT NOW SO YOU CAN GET OFF THESE BARGES AND WE CAN MOVE THEM AWAY! AND DON’T TRY TO JUMP IN THE WATER, IT’LL SOON BE COVERED WITH BURNING GASOLINE. PASS THE WORD!”

Word spread through the back of the mob like fire through the nonexistent gasoline. The pressure from the back of the mob would likely counter any developing lack of enthusiasm at the front. Snag smiled. Sometimes you just had to know how to motivate people.

***

Hughes braced his rifle against the vertical stanchion, firing economically. Their impromptu plan was working better than he’d dared hope. Though sheltered behind their shields, the screaming cons were fully exposed when they topped the improvised stairways to drop over the rail on to the ship’s deck, and the defenders’ massed fire into each sally port was keeping the corks in all the bottles. Moreover, the growing piles of dead and wounded at the top of each stairway seemed to be noticeably diminishing the enthusiasm of those attackers still behind the shields.

The success of the main deck defenders left Torres and Alvarez little to do on the port side, but as the machine guns fell silent, Hughes heard the sporadic boom of the sniper rifles engaging targets to starboard. He keyed his radio.

“Captain to bridge. Request SITREP. Over.”

“The boats swarmed the gaps. The machine guns took some of them out, but there were just too many and too close. Estimate thirty to forty boats made it to starboard. Repeat. Estimate thirty to forty boats made it to the starboard side. Snipers and bridge machine gun are trying to engage, but most of the boats are sheltering close to the hull where they can’t be seen well without our guys exposing themselves to massed return fire. Do you copy? Over.”

“I copy. Can we re-task the lower machine guns to starboard? Over.”

“Negative. There are still a lot of boats behind the barges. If we change the guns, it will only get worse. We need to—”

Loud clangs from behind him on the starboard side diverted Hughes from the situation in his immediate front.

The PA system boomed. “GRAPPLING HOOKS AND BOARDING LADDERS SIGHTED STARBOARD SIDE. STAND BY TO REPEL BOARDERS STARBOARD. REPEAT. STAND BY TO REPEL BOARDERS STARBOARD SIDE.”

Hughes glanced up and down the line as the designated defenders responded, then turned himself and walked a few steps to starboard to crouch behind another pipe support. Gowan was there, focused on the rail where the top end of a boarding ladder appeared.

“Isn’t this some John Paul Jones shit?” Gowan asked.

Hughes was about to answer when a would-be boarder scampered up a boarding ladder and reached for the handrail. Hughes raised his rifle, but inexplicably, the attacker lost his grip and screamed as he fell from sight. Elsewhere down the starboard side, other boarders were falling, without a shot being fired.

“What the …”

“Damned if it didn’t work,” Gowan said.

“Damned if WHAT didn’t work?” Hughes asked.

“Rich and I greased up all the handrails last night.” Gowan glanced over with a lump-jawed grin. “I didn’t want to bother you with it, seeing as how particular you are about keeping the main deck clean and all.” He turned back toward the starboard rail and shot a stream of tobacco juice on the deck, then turned back to Hughes and grinned even wider, the picture of satisfied innocence.

“How is it you can piss me off even when you’re doing something good?” Hughes asked.

Gowan shrugged. “Just a knack, I guess.”

But Gowan’s smile faded at the clang of grapples and boarding ladders in two dozen more places along the side. Then an attacker was up and over, ignoring the rail and diving over it to roll on the deck. The man scrambled for the cover of a set of mooring bitts, but was shot several times before he got there. Incursions increased, each ending with a dead boarder. They were containing the assault, but using half their defensive firepower to do it. The gunfire increased in intensity behind them, and Hughes glanced nervously back over his shoulder.

Something had changed. The attackers were no longer probing tentatively from the sally ports, but vomiting out of them as if pushed from behind. Most were shot down at the rail, but the sheer volume and speed of their advance ensured a few made it to the ship’s deck. Some, but not all of those, fell to the guns of the overwatch; Torres and Alvarez were split now, port and starboard, and the surviving attackers found cover on board and began to return fire.

Hughes flinched as a bullet ricocheted off a pipe beside his head—from the wrong direction.

“DAN,” he shouted, “PASS THE WORD! EVERY OTHER SHOOTER TO STARBOARD SHOULD SWITCH BACK TO THE PORT SIDE!”