MV JULIUS FUCIK

"Idiot!" Kherov growled. The smoke from the rocket motor didn't even come close to the aircraft. "He'll shoot at us now. All ahead flank! Helmsman, be alert!"

"Okay," the pilot said, turning away from the merchantman. "Tacco, we got a target for your Harpoons. Any luck with Keflavik?"

"Negative, but Sentry One is relaying the data into Scotland. They say a bunch of missiles hit Keflavik, looks like the place is closed whether we keep it or not."

The pilot cursed briefly. "Okay. We'll blow this pirate right out of the water."

"Roge, Flight," the tactical coordinator replied. "Two minutes before we can launch the-damn! I got a red light on the portside Harpoon. The sucker won't arm."

"Well, play with the bastard!" the pilot growled. It didn't work. In the haste to get off the ground, the missile's control cables had not been fully attached by the weary ground crew.

"Okay, I got one working. Ready!"

"Shoot!"

The missile dropped clear of the wing and fell thirty feet before its engine ignited. Fucik's weather deck was lined with paratroopers, many holding hand-launched SAMs and hoping to intercept the incoming ASM.

"Tacco, see if you can raise an F-15. Maybe they can rip this baby up with twenty-millimeters."

"Doing that already. We got a pair of Eagles coming in, but they're skosh fuel. One or two passes'll be all they can manage."

Forward, the pilot had binoculars to his eyes, watching the whitepainted missile skimming the wavetops. "Go, baby, go.

MV JULIUS FUCIK

"Rocket coming in, low on the horizon, portside." At least we have good lookouts, Kherov thought. He estimated the distance to the horizon, and gave the missile a speed of a thousand kilometers per hour...

"Right hard rudder!" he screamed. The helmsman threw the wheel over as far as it would go and held it down.

"You cannot run from a missile, Kherov," the General said quietly.

"I know this. Watch, my friend."

The black-hulled vessel was turning radically to starboard. As she did so, the ship heeled in the opposite direction, the same way a car rolls away from a turn on a flat road, which artificially raised the waterline on the vulnerable portside.

Some enterprising officers aboard fired signal flares, hoping to decoy the missile away, but all the missile's microchip brain cared about was the enormous blip that occupied the center of its radar seeker head. It noted that the ship's heading was changing slightly, and altered its own course accordingly. Half a mile from the target, the Harpoon lurched upward from its ten-foot altitude in its programmed "pop-up" terminal maneuver. The troopers aboard the Fucik instantly fired an even dozen SAMs. Three locked onto the Harpoon's engine exhaust plume, but were unable to turn rapidly enough to hit the incoming missile, and continued past it. The Harpoon tipped over and dove.

PENGUIN 8

"All right..." the pilot whispered. There was no stopping it now.

The missile struck the Fucik's hull six feet above the waterline, slightly abaft the bridge. The warhead exploded at once, but the missile body kept moving forward, spreading two hundred pounds of jet fuel that fireballed into the lowest cargo deck. In an instant, the ship disappeared behind a wall of smoke. Three paratroopers, thrown off their feet by the impact, accidentally triggered their SAMs straight up.

"Tacco, your bird hit just fine. We got warhead detonation. Looks like... The pilot's eyes strained at his binoculars to assess the damage.

"Rudder amidships!" Kherov had expected to be knocked from his feet, but the missile was a small one, and JULIUS FUCIK still had thirty-five thousand tons of mass. He ran out to the bridge wing to survey the damage. As the ship returned to an even keel, the ragged hole in her side rose ten feet from the lapping waves. Smoke poured from the hole. There was fire aboard, but the ship should not flood from the blow, the captain judged. There was only one danger. Kherov rapidly gave orders to his damage-control teams, and the General sent one of his own officers to assist. A hundred of the paratroopers had been trained over the last ten days in shipboard firefighting. They would now put what they had learned to use.

PENGUIN 8

The Fucik emerged at twenty knots from the smoke, a fifteen-foot hole in the ship's side. Smoke poured from the opening, but the pilot knew at once that the damage would not be fatal. He could see hundreds of men on the upper deck, some of them already running toward ladders to fight the fire below.

"Where are those fighters?" the pilot asked. The tactical coordinator didn't answer. He switched his radio circuits.

"Penguin Eight, this is Cobra One. I got two birds. Our missiles are all gone, but we both got a full load of twenty-mike-mike. I can give you two passes, then we gotta bingo to Scotland."

"That's a roge, Cobra Lead. The target has some helos spooling up. Watch out for hand-held SAMs. I seen 'em fire about twenty of the bastards."

"Roger that, Penguin. Any further word of Keflavik?"

"We're gonna have to find a new home for a while."

"Roger, copy. Okay, keep clear, we're coming in from up-sun, on the deck."

The Orion continued to orbit three miles out. Her pilot didn't see the fighters until they started firing. The two Eagles were a few feet apart, perhaps twenty feet over the water as their noses sparkled with the flash from their 20mm rotary cannon.

MV JULIUS FUCIK

Nobody aboard saw them come in. A moment later, the water around the Fucik's side turned to froth from short-failing rounds, then her main deck was hidden with dust. A sudden orange fireball announced the explosion of one of the Russian helicopters, and burning jet fuel splattered over the bridge, narrowly missing the General and captain.

"What was that?" Kherov gasped.

"American fighters. They came in very low. They must only have their cannon, else they'd have bombed us already. It is not over yet, my captain."

The fighters split, passing left and right of the ship, which continued to move at twenty knots in a wide circle. No SAMs followed the Eagles away, and both turned, re-formed, and closed on the Fucik's bow. The next target was the superstructure. A moment later, the freighter's bridge was peppered with several hundred rounds. Every window was blown away, and most of the bridge crew killed, but the ship's watertight integrity hadn't been damaged a whit.

Kherov surveyed the carnage. His helmsman had been blown apart by a half-dozen exploding bullets and every man present on the bridge was dead. It took a second for him to overcome the shock and notice a crippling pain in his own abdomen, his dark jacket darkening further with blood.

"You are hit, Captain." Only the General had had the instinct to duck behind something solid. He looked at the eight mutilated bodies in the pilothouse and wondered once again why he was so lucky.

"I must get the ship to port. Go aft. Tell the first officer to continue landing operations. You, Comrade General, supervise the fires topside. We must get my ship to port."

"I will send you help." The General ran out the door as Kherov went to the wheel.