Push Back: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (The Disruption Series Book 2) (46 page)

“I’M ON IT,” Gowan yelled back.

Hughes nodded and moved back a few steps to port in a crouching run. He glanced aft, relieved to see Laura and his twin daughters unharmed, firing steadily. But here and there along the line, he saw defenders down. He swallowed his panic and sighted down his rifle to take out an attacker.

“It’s like they’re friggin’ crazy or something,” said Jimmy Gillespie beside him. “I swear the last two bastards I shot were grinnin’ like idiots.”

Hughes’ radio squawked.

“Bridge to captain. Over.”

Hughes keyed his mic. “Go, Georgia.”

“They’ve broken out forward, just aft of the forecastle. We’ve lost control of the forward sally port and they’re pouring aboard.” Hughes heard the stress in her voice and glanced forward to see the backs of defenders falling back toward him, running backwards from one place of concealment to the next, firing as they fell back.

“It’s time, sir,” said Howell over the radio.

“What about the guys on the bow?” Hughes asked.

“Cut off,” Howell said. “The boarders are all the way across the deck and have hooked up with the attackers to starboard. The guys on the bow can’t turn the machine gun on them without risking that any misses will hit your position. There …. there’s nothing we can do for them.”

Hughes felt a hundred years old. Lose two good men … or risk everyone? He swallowed. “Sound the signal.”

The air was split with the mournful sound of the ship’s whistle and the raucous clanging of the general alarm, competing with but not blocking out the gunfire. Up and down the line, designated shooters held their positions as the rest fell back toward the deckhouse, establishing new positions to cover the retreat of the others. They leapfrogged aft, carrying their casualties with them, with Hughes always in the rear. He’d leave no one else behind.

The deck behind them filled with attackers spilling through the now undefended sally ports. With strength in numbers and the tide of the battle going in their favor, they grew increasingly bold and aggressive, and Hughes was only twenty feet ahead of the surge when two seamen slammed the watertight door of the deckhouse behind him and dogged it down tight. He gave an approving nod as they lashed the dog handles so it couldn’t be opened; then he started up the stairs for the bridge.

They were secure for the moment. As a precautionary measure before the attack, Georgia Howell had supervised the unbolting and removal of all the external stairways and ladders for the first two levels of the deckhouse and machinery casing. They’d hoisted them to the top of the machinery casing with chain falls, where they now rested in a jumbled heap, out of reach and of no use to the attackers. They’d also closed and secured all the steel doors anywhere on the deckhouse below the bridge and fitted heavy sheet-metal covers on the insides of the thick glass of the non-opening windows. No one was getting at them easily, but neither was anyone inside getting out.

When he got to the bridge, he found Howell on the radio, confirming all possible entrances were locked down tight. He walked out to the port bridge wing, where Torres had his Barrett sniper rifle resting on the wind dodger, peering forward through the scope. Hughes heard a noise above him and looked up to see the Coasties from the stern setting up a second machine gun on the flying bridge. He glanced toward the bow and his blood ran cold.

“Good Lord,” Hughes muttered.

Beside him Torres nodded. “As soon as y’all got inside, most of the cons started for the bow. Looks like they’re real interested in that machine gun.”

Hughes glanced at the bow again and then back up at the flying bridge. Torres followed his gaze.

“Can we—”

“Not a chance,” Torres said. “Jones and Brown have shifted to deal with the threat, and we can’t tell exactly where they are in that mob. If we open up with the machine gun, we’re as likely to hit them as the bad guys. Alvarez and I have the same problem. It takes a lot to stop these fifty-caliber rounds. I could shoot through a tango and take out Jones or Brown without knowing it.”

***

“To your right!” shouted Pete Brown, and Jones whirled to drop a charging attacker with his Glock before ducking back behind the cover of the anchor windlass.

“We’re screwed,” Jones said. “We can’t open up with the machine gun, and we can’t hold out long with just my Glock and your AR.”

“Why not use the machine gun? We’re shooting aft anyway.” Pete snapped off a shot to the left.

“Too risky,” Jones said. “Even if we hit the cons, it will keep on going right through ’em and maybe hit our folks as well. Even if they all made it back to the deckhouse, it’s only thin steel. That gun will open it up like Swiss cheese. Besides—”

“Y’ALL SURRENDER AND WE’LL GO EASY ON YOU. BUT IF YOU MAKE IT HARD ON US, IT’LL GO TEN TIMES HARDER ON YOU. GIVE UP AND GIVE US THE MACHINE GUN AND WE’LL PUT YOU ASHORE AND LET YOU WALK AWAY,” yelled a voice from aft.

“Sounds like they really want this gun,” Pete said.

Jones nodded. “And they’ll get it, one way or another, if we don’t do something. Then our guys in the deckhouse don’t stand a chance.”

“Got any ideas?” Pete asked.

Jones snorted. “You know as well as I do there’s only one. We gotta ditch it, but we can’t reach the rail from here. We gotta get closer.”

Jones surveyed the situation. “It’s thirty or thirty-five feet to the rail on either side, and maybe fifty straight forward to the bow,” Jones said. “The bow is farther, but I’ll still have the anchor windlass between me and most of the shooters, at least partway.”

“We should draw straws or something,” Pete said.

Jones just looked at him. “Like it matters. Shoot me now or shoot me later. Besides, I got the gimpy arm and just the Glock. You can provide much better cover fire with the AR.”

Pete nodded. “When?”

“No time like the present,” Jones said. “Get ready to empty a mag at ’em, and as soon as you start shooting, I’m off. With any luck I’ll have it over the side before they figure out what’s going on. On three?”

Pete nodded, and Jones picked up the M240 with his good arm, took a deep breath, and began to count. When Pete leaped up to fire, Jones was off like a shot. He’d covered two-thirds of the distance when two rounds slammed into his back simultaneously. He heaved the machine gun as he fell, hoping against hope it would clear the rail.

***

Pete was changing mags when he heard the M240 clatter to the deck. He looked back to see Jones face down and unmoving, with the machine gun on the deck beyond him, ten feet from the bow. Pete slapped the fresh magazine home and rose without hesitation, running backwards as he fired.

A round slammed into his left shoulder, and he sprawled across Jones’ body as a dozen more rounds pierced the space he’d occupied a scant second before. His left arm useless, he clawed at the deck with his good hand and pushed with his feet to move forward on his belly as bullets ricocheted off the deck all around him. He reached the twenty-five-pound gun and rolled over on his back to grab it with his good right hand and sling it toward the bow in an awkward toss, then rolled over again and crawled after it, oblivious to the whine of bullets off the deck around him. One struck him in the shin, but still he crawled as he heard boots pounding towards him.

He reached the gun and looked up at the solid steel of the bulwark, towering four feet above him. It might as well be forty.

Then he spotted the bull nose chock penetrating the bulwark and crawled toward it, summoning the strength to lift the butt of the gun and rest it in the opening. He used his good leg to push himself forward a bit more and grabbed the barrel of the gun with his good hand and heaved, gratified when it slipped through the chock.

And hung up at the tripod.

He reached to free it as a shadow loomed over him.

“DON’T TOUCH THAT GUN, NIGGER!”

He looked up to see a big man approaching, not ten feet away, gun at his shoulder. With a speed Pete didn’t know he possessed, his right hand shot out and freed the tripod, and the machine gun disappeared to splash into the river below.

Pete Brown smiled. “Bite me, cracker.”

He felt the first round penetrate his gut; then his attacker’s head exploded.

***

“You got the bastard!” Hughes said, lowering the binoculars. “Keep the rest of them off him!”

Beside him, Torres squeezed off another shot, and Hughes heard Alvarez’s gun bark from the other bridge wing as well.

“We’ll try,” Torres said, his eye still glued to the scope, “but it looks like he’s already wounded and it’s only a matter of … wait. It looks like they’re losing interest.”

Hughes raised his binoculars. With the treasured prize no longer on offer, the mob was turning back toward the deckhouse. They moved down the deck in a wave, screaming like injured and enraged animals. Hughes lowered the glasses.

With an icy calm he didn’t quite understand, he turned to Torres. “Mr. Torres.”

“Yes, sir,” Torres replied, equally formally.

“Let’s kill as many of these bastards as we possibly can, shall we?”

Torres responded, his jaw clenched, “It’ll be our pleasure, sir.”

Torres yelled up to his men on the machine gun, and they opened fire, driving the attackers to cover as Torres and Alvarez pitched in with the Barretts. Elsewhere from the flying bridge and along the bridge wings, other shooters joined the line, eager to avenge their shipmates. Hughes walked to the telephone.

“Engine room, Chief,” Dan Gowan answered.

“You ready, Dan?”

“Just waitin’ on the word.”

“Do it,” Hughes said.

“One nasty surprise, comin’ right up,” Gowan said, and hung up.

Hughes went back to the bridge window and waited. Their attackers were spread out over the main deck now, taking advantage of the ample opportunities for cover there to move on the deckhouse, despite the defenders’ fire. He spotted the old fire hose, visible in places as it snaked under the deck piping toward the bow, multiple lengths joined together and lashed at intervals to the stanchions supporting the centerline pipe rack. The after end of the hose was connected via a jury-rigged fitting and some Gowanesque chicanery Hughes didn’t want to know about to the engine room waste oil pump.

The hose was mostly obscured by deck piping, but Hughes picked out a visible section and waited. Soon it pulsated and a long black puddle formed along the centerline of the ship as used lube oil flowed from the perforations cut every three or four feet along the full length of the hose. It spread like a giant inkblot, covering the deck to run down the slight slope of the deck to each edge. In a nod toward pollution prevention, they’d plugged all the scuppers and deck drains, so the oil pooled at the edges of the deck and ran aft to run down each side of the deckhouse toward the stern.

Frantic cries rose from the main deck as startled attackers scrambled to escape the spreading oil, to no avail. In less than a minute, the previously pristine deck of
Pecos Trader
became one gigantic oil slick, and Hughes’ grimace morphed to a smile as attackers attempted to move on the deck below and slid from behind their cover. Rifles barked along the wind dodger as the defenders dispatched the newly exposed attackers.

Hughes walked to the console and dialed the phone.

“Cargo control room, Chief Mate.”

“All right, Georgia,” Hughes said. “The deck’s fully coated. Use all the ballast pumps and let’s get her off the bottom and put as much starboard list on her as you can. When you get all the ballast shifted, transfer cargo to help out if you have any slack tanks.”

“I’m on it,” Howell said, and hung up.

Hughes nodded at the familiar sound of the hydraulic deep well pumps coming up to speed.

Sun Oil Dock

Neches River

Near Nederland, Texas

Spike McComb cursed before lowering the binoculars to grab his radio. “What the hell is going on, Snag? Over,” he snarled into the radio.

There was a long pause before Snag’s tentative reply. “Uhh … we got a problem, Spike.”

“I CAN SEE THAT, SHIT BRAIN! WHAT IS IT?” Spike demanded.

“I can’t see from where I am, but I sent some of the boys around in a boat. It looks like the bastards pumped oil all over the deck to make it slippery, then started tilting the ship. The meth heads are all sliding to the low side against the rail, and there ain’t no cover. They’re gettin’ the hell shot out of themselves and they’re all starting to jump in the water. We fished a few of them out, and they say there’s no way in hell anybody can cross that deck.” Snag hesitated. “Uhh … what do you want me to do, Spike? Uhh … over,” he added as an afterthought.

Spike controlled his urge to scream while he thought through the situation. “All right. The meth heads ain’t much of a loss anyway. I wanted to capture those damn sailors, but it ain’t worth getting our hard-core guys shot up. We’ll have to settle for just killing ’em all. How many of your boats got flare pistols?”

“I don’t know,” Snag said. “A lot of them, I guess.”

“Okay, listen up.”

M/V
Pecos Trader

Starboard Bridge Wing

Hughes nodded as the last few living attackers clawed their way over the piles of bodies to fling themselves into the river. Below him the surface of the water was black with oil leaking over the side, and here and there an oil-coated head bobbed as their would-be attackers swam for shore. The boats previously attacking the starboard side had long since fled back to the safe cover of the barges.

He heard a cargo pump wind up to speed and remembered in the excitement, he’d forgotten to let Georgia Howell know they had enough list. Along the centerline of the ship, liquid sprayed from a pipeline in countless places and the pungent smell of gasoline assailed Hughes’ nostrils. He cursed and raced into the wheelhouse and up the canted deck, hamstrings straining, to reach the console phone and dial the chief mate.

“Cargo control room, Chief Mate speak—”

“SHUT DOWN! THE CARGO PIPING IS SHOT FULL OF HOLES!” Hughes yelled.