Warshot (The Hunter Killer Series Book 6) by Don Keith (top ten ebook reader TXT) 📗

Gadliano grabbed the microphone for her marine band radio.

“This is the USS Canberra. The United States recognizes these waters as international. Your claims are not valid. You are violating mineral rights legally registered by United States persons under the International Seabed Authority. You are hereby directed to leave these waters immediately.”

As she dropped the mike, she signaled for the gunners to train their forward gun mount toward the patrol boats. A shot across a bow, though not likely necessary, would surely bring this dispute to a hasty close.

No one on Canberra was paying particular attention to the Pearl Moon. She was, after all, a freight vessel, her decks full of big containers. But then, the sides of one of the upper containers suddenly dropped down. From inside, a gunner fired an HJ-12 Hongjian missile directly at the American LCS. The missile arced up and raced toward the warship, leaving a bright, flaming trail across the starless night sky.

Admiral Yon’s “surprise!” But there was more.

The sides of two more containers collapsed. A team of gunners slewed a Type 85 machine cannon around and opened fire on the Canberra. Twin streams of twenty-three-millimeter cannon fire spewed from the pair of guns and raced across the gap between the ships. The explosive shells reached the LCS even before the missile did, blowing away the fifty-seven-millimeter gun mount. The HJ-12 exploded into the wreckage, spraying the forward end of the lightly armored aluminum ship with shrapnel and destroying the vessel’s Navy Strike Missile System box launchers.

The Canberra’s SeaRAM defense system sprang into action, retaliating with a half dozen rolling airframe anti-air missiles zooming across the water at the Chinese ship. The rest followed in a second ripple launch.

Readly was lying flat on the deck, trying to avoid all the flying debris, when he realized Gadliano was down, injured. He pulled her from the wrecked bridge and delivered her to his Marine corpsman. His Marines had set up their TOW launcher on the ship’s helo deck, along with their M2A1 fifty caliber machine guns. The pair of “ma deuces” were already launching deadly streams of fifty caliber bullets back at the container ship, spraying the decks with fire. And the TOW missile leapt from its launch tube and flew arrow straight toward the Pearl Moon. The projectile slammed into the containers just below the one holding the machine cannon and erupted into a fiery blast. The cannon tumbled into the blazing pit.

The Pearl Moon’s stinger might have been pulled, but the Canberra was severely damaged.

Ψ

The Fendouji manned submersible glided down through total darkness broken only by the vessel’s LED lights, illuminating the way directly in front of them. It showed nothing more than an occasional weirdly shaped denizen of these awesome depths, creatures that had almost certainly never experienced light before.

The pilot nudged Yon Hun Glo’s foot to wake him.

“Admiral, bottom coming up. Another ten minutes, sir.”

Yon Hun Glo shook himself awake. He rubbed his eyes and tried to stretch his aching muscles, but there was no room in the cramped capsule.

The Fendouji reached the ocean floor right on schedule. The pilot smoothly brought the little submersible to a hover barely a meter above the featureless bottom. But then, the LEDs caught and reflected back a startlingly brilliant golden glow that appeared to stretch out in front of them as far as they could see. The little team stared, awestruck.

Yon Hun Glo could now finally see the culmination of all the planning and risk-taking, right out there in front of him on the other side of the submersible’s twenty-centimeter-thick viewport. It was there for the taking.

He nudged the equipment operator with his foot.

“What are you waiting for? Get the MRV ready to receive the ore. It must be loaded, and we have to be headed back to the surface in one hour.”

“But Admiral, it will be impossible at these depths to…okay, as you wish, sir.”

The equipment operator knew better than to protest. It would take at least twenty minutes at these crushing depths to delicately maneuver the cumbersome MRV into place so that he could use the manipulator arms to load it. And twenty metric tons of gold would take some time to lift off the bottom and shovel over to the MRV’s cargo bay.

He would not object. He would simply get to work. Then he would endure the old admiral’s ire and impatience if it should become necessary. But the admiral would certainly be too enraptured by the gold to even remember his dictum.

Ψ

The Cheyenne came up to periscope depth to report sinking the Chinese submarine and the loss of ORCA One. They were greeted with the sight of tracer fire and missiles splitting the night sky, the loud and bright battle between the American LCS and what appeared to be a large container ship. The bow of the LCS exploded, a bright flame leaping up to illuminate the entire area. Another explosion erupted, this one on the container ship, and only a few seconds after the one on the Canberra, but with an even larger flash of light.

Then the night quieted. No more tracer fire. No more missiles racing overhead. It appeared Cheyenne was half a minute late for this particular party. And glad of it.

“Conn, Sonar, picking up transients from Sierra Five-Seven, the other Yuan sub. I think he’s at periscope depth. He may be making an approach on the Canberra. Not getting any engine lines off the Canberra. I think she is DIW.”

Not good. Not good at all. The stricken LCS was dead in the water and would make an easy target. And it would take Cheyenne far too long to get into position to stop the Chinese sub from doing its damage.

Bill Knox grabbed the 21MC mike.

“Sonar, Conn, aye. Canberra looks damaged, probable DIW.” He turned to Walt Smith and mumbled, “XO, we’re going to play this the same way as we did the last one. Get your team set to shoot, then I’m