Crowded as the highway might have been, guardsmen and deputies scattered to their cars and trucks and accelerated away, leaving the stretch of road totally empty within sixty seconds. Their response was as immediate as it was instinctive once they became aware of the danger. The trucks could be seen clearly now as they sped closer. They were semitrucks and trailers, big eighteen-wheelers capable of carrying a load weighing over eighty thousand pounds. No markings or advertising was painted on their sides. They came on seemingly unstoppable, their drivers hunched over the steering wheels, acting as though they were bent on suicide.
Their intentions became unmistakable as they skidded to a stop adjacent to the Mystic Canal, one of them jackknifing across the center strip dividing the highway. Unseen and unnoticed during the bedlam, a helicopter appeared out of the darkness and dropped between the trucks. The drivers leaped from their cabs, ran to the aircraft and scrambled inside. Almost before the last driver's feet had left the ground, the helicopter's pilot lifted the craft into the sky, whipped it on a nearly ninety-degree bank and disappeared into the night toward the Atchafalaya River to the west.
As they raced south in the backseat of Sheriff Marchand's patrol car, Sandecker and Gunn twisted around and stared back through the rear window. Behind the wheel, Marchand kept darting his eyes from the highway and the vehicles speeding around him into the sideview mirror. “If only the Army's demolition men could have had time to defuse the explosives.”
“It would have taken them an hour just to find and figure out the detonating mechanism,” said Gunn.
“They won't blow the levee just yet,” Sandecker said quietly. “Not before the United States arrives.”
“The admiral is right,” Gunn agreed. “If the levee is breached before the United States can be angled across the channel to divert the water, enough of the Mississippi's flow will gush into the canal to leave the liner with her keel in the mud.”
“There is still a slight chance,” said Sandecker. He tapped Marchand on the shoulder. “Can you raise General Olson on your radio?”
“I can if he's listening,” replied the sheriff. He reached for the microphone and began asking for Olson to respond. After repeating the request several times, a voice answered. “Corporal Welch in the command truck. I read you, Sheriff. I'll patch in the general for you.”
There was a pause punctuated by static, and then Olson answered. “Sheriff, what do you want? I'm busy getting battle reports from my tanks.”
“One moment, sir, for Admiral Sandecker.”
Sandecker leaned over the front seat and took the microphone. “General, do you have any aircraft in the air?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I believe they intend to set off the explosives by radio from the helicopter that snatched the drivers.”
Olson's voice suddenly sounded old and very tired. “Sorry, Admiral, the only aircraft I had at my immediate command were two helicopters. And now they and the men inside are gone.”
“You can't call up any jets from the nearest Air Force base?”
“I can try,” Olson replied solemnly, “but there is no guarantee they could scramble and get here in time.”
“I understand, thank you.”
“Not to worry, Admiral,” Olson said, his self-assurance all but gone. “She won't get past my tanks.” But this time around he didn't sound entirely as if he meant it.
The gunfire downriver came like a death knell as the United
States presented her broadside to the gunners inside the tanks. What General Olson did not yet know was that it wasn't a one-sided battle.
Sandecker passed the microphone back to Marchand and sagged into the rear seat, anxiety and defeat etched in his eyes. “That bastard Qin Shang has outsmarted us all, and there isn't a damned thing we can do about it except stand by helplessly and watch a lot of people die.”
“And let us not forget Dirk and Al,” he said grimly. “They must be taking it from the Chinese as well as Olson's tanks and howitzers.”
“God help them,” Sandecker murmured. “God help everybody who lives on or near the Atchafalaya River if the United States comes through the chaos.”
THE UNITED STATES did not reel, she barely quivered as the guns on the turrets of the six tanks opened up on her, their flashes lighting up the sky. At less than two hundred yards it was impossible to miss. As if by witchcraft, black, jagged holes appeared in the funnels and upper decks that once housed the cocktail lounges, cinemas and libraries. As Admiral Sandecker had predicted, every round in the first salvo from the tanks' 120-millimeter guns was ineffective. The armor-penetrating rounds passed through the ship's aluminum bulkheads as if they were made of cardboard, buried themselves in the marshlands on the other side of the west-bank levee and exploded harmlessly. The 106-millimeter mortar rounds fired from the launchers of the M125 carriers arched high into the sky and rained down on the exposed decks, gouging craters in the decks below but causing little serious damage. The tried-and-true 155-millimeter high-explosive fragmentation shells that spat from the Paladin self-propelled howitzers were a different story. Their fire battered the superliner unmercifully, causing significant destruction but none that affected her vital machinery deep within the bowels of her hull.
One shell plowed into what had been the main dining room in the center of the hull and burst, shattering the bulkheads and the old stairway. The second exploded against the base of the foremast and toppled it over the side. The great ship shook off the onslaught. And then it was the turn of the Chinese weapons team of professional fighters who were geared to put up a tactical confrontation despite the odds. The battle was not about to be one-sided. There would be no turning the cheek after the first slap.
Their missile launchers, though armed for surface-to-air and not antitank, lashed out. One struck the lead tank without penetrating its armor but burst against the barrel of the 120-millimeter gun, effectively putting it out of action. It also killed the tank commander, who was standing in the hatch observing the results of the barrage and who never expected return fire. Another projectile struck the circular opening in the roof of the mortar carrier, killing two men, wounding three and setting the vehicle on fire.
Colonel Robert Turner, directing the fire from within his XM4 command-and-control vehicle, was slow to comprehend the magnitude of his mission. The last thing he would have predicted was for the old passenger liner to shoot back. It's downright outrageous, he thought. He immediately called Olson and said in a voice vague with shock, “We're taking hits, General. I just lost my mortar unit.”
“What are they using?” Olson demanded.
“They're firing portable missiles at us from the ship! Fortunately, they don't appear to be armor-piercing. But I've taken casualties.” As he spoke another missile blew the treads off a third tank, but its crew gamely kept up their rate of fire, hammering the rapidly passing liner.
“What is the effect of your fire?”
“Severe damage to the superstructure but no vital hits. It's like trying to stop a charging rhino with air-pellet guns.”
“Don't let up!” Olson ordered. “I want that ship stopped.”
Then, almost as suddenly as the hail of missiles from the ship was launched, their fire slackened off. Not until later was the reason known. Pitt and Giordino, risking their lives to halt the counterfire, had shot down the two Chinese missile-launching teams.
Scuttling across the deck on their stomachs to avoid the hurricane of shrapnel and to make aim difficult for the Chinese riflemen who had discovered their presence, they moved around the giant aft funnel and lay prone, peering cautiously down onto the lifeboat deck, whose davits were now empty. Almost directly below, four Chinese soldiers crouched behind a steel bulwark, busily loading and firing their portable missiles, completely disregarding the hail of explosions erupting around them.