M/V TARABULUS PRIDE
Hurtubise gawked at the nine-thousand-ton ship pounding alongside, looking as big as a small mountain. Zikri watched out the starboard side of the bridge, gauging the intruder’s interval. Abruptly the bigger vessel’s bow swung to port.
“My God!” Hurtubise shouted. “They’re going to ram!”
The Libyan captain braced himself, then said, “Maybe not.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Monsieur, I think they intend to grapple.”
Hurtubise took six fast heartbeats to absorb the implications. Then he spun on his heel and shouted down to Pinsard. “RPGs up here. Now!”
Before Pinsard could respond, Hurtubise was on the opposite side. “Man the machine guns! Starboard fore and aft but keep one amidships to port.”
René Pinsard gave his superior a wry grin. “You’re sounding very nautical this morning, mon vieux.” Then he was gone.
M/V DON CARLOS
From the bridge, Gerritt Maas judged the closure nicely. He ensured that his ship established a three-knot overtake, anticipating his rival’s likely move. “Steady as you go,” he told the helmsman. “Wait for it … wait…”
Tarabulus Pride began veering to port, away from her assailant. Her thirty-four hundred tons answered the helm more quickly than the larger Spanish flagged vessel, but with the speed differential she could not escape.
Phil Green manned the center gun, watching for likely targets. When armed men appeared on the target vessel’s superstructure, he called, “Fire!” At the same time he drew a bead on two men abaft the bridge and pressed the trigger. He walked his rounds across the targets, holding slightly low to offset the ship’s rolling movement.
Several yards on either side of him, Verdugo and Ritter also opened fire. Glass shattered as 7.62 mm rounds punched their way across the superstructure. Green, mindful of Malten’s caution against everyone shooting at once, held his fire when his targets went down.
M/V TARABULUS PRIDE
Hurtubise flung himself on the deck as incoming rounds snap-cracked overhead and ricochets pinged off the bulkheads. Zikri kept low, turning bug-eyed to the Frenchman, mouthing words that were inaudible.
An RPG gunner appeared at the port access. Hurtubise gestured in anger and frustration. “Their bridge! Shoot their bridge, you idiot!”
The shooter possessed a wealth of Middle East experience but none at sea prior to the Zodiac assault. Now he low-crawled to the aft access, raised himself to a kneeling position, and looked behind him. The blast zone was clear so he placed his sight reticle on the offending ship’s bridge and pressed the trigger.
The back blast nearly destroyed the hearing of everyone on the bridge. Hurtubise, knowing what was coming, had clapped his hands over his ears, but the high decibels in the confined space were incredible. The shooter screamed in pain and collapsed backward. Hurtubise handed him another rocket and yelled, “Reload!”
M/V DON CARLOS
“Incoming!”
Maas did not recognize the voice of whomever screamed the warning, but he saw the rocket-propelled grenade’s smoky ignition. With everyone else on the bridge, he dived to the deck and awaited the impact. It came with a loud, authoritative smack, punching through the near windows and exiting beyond.
“What happened?” asked the watch officer.
“Too close,” Maas muttered. “We’re too close for it to arm!” He giggled in giddy gratitude. He scrambled to his feet.
“Now!” Maas shouted. “Move to contact!”
With the helm over to port, Don Carlos cut across the remaining twenty yards of seawater and slid hull to hull. The impact sounded worse than it was: screeching steel plates protesting in a high, ringing sensation.
M/V TARABULUS PRIDE
Hurtubise realized that something was missing. Outgoing gunfire.
He crouched below the level of the bridge windows and stepped over the prostrate RPG man. Risking a look outside, he saw only one MAG-58 in action. The gunner was firing intermittently, alternately triggering ill-sighted bursts and ducking the retaliatory fire from the larger ship. With a fright, he realized, They have fire superiority.
“René!” he shouted. “René, get some gunners going.”
There was no answer.
Reluctantly, Marcel Hurtubise decided that he had to take action himself. He assumed almost a sprinter’s posture, bracing hands and feet on the deck, inhaled, and shot out of the bridge, headed for the nearest MAG.
Abruptly, Pinsard appeared. He shoved the body of the previous gunner aside, grasped the weapon, and swiveled it toward the nearest American shooter. He pressed the trigger as two swaths of M-60 fire intersected him at belt level. The results were a vivid crimson gout sprayed across the steel structure.
Hurtubise reeled in shock and surprise. Sprayed with his friend’s blood, he shrieked in a microsecond of outraged panic.
Then he was in control of himself. He went prone again and rolled away from the gun position. Back inside the bridge, he yelled to Zikri. “We cannot win this way! You have to get away from them!”
The Libyan raised his hands in frustration. “Are you crazy? How can we? They are faster!”
Hurtubise’s mind raced. He sorted through every option that occurred to him, and came up with only one that might work.
“Stop your engine! They’ll shoot ahead.”
Abu Yusuf Zikri knew that would only afford a temporary respite, even if it worked. But he also knew this was not the time to explain basic seamanship to a gun-wielding French mercenary. He gave the order.
M/V DON CARLOS
On the superstructure, the three gunners had run out of targets. Green and Verdugo had cut down the last opponent—a brave man, no doubt, but a foolish one. Green glanced to his left to acknowledge Verdugo’s contribution. Then he glanced to his right and gasped at the sight.
The volunteer gunner was slumped on the deck, motionless beneath his M-60. Green suppressed the urge to go to him, but the hard-won fire superiority had to be maintained. Green shouted as loudly as he ever had.
“Medic!”
Green turned back to business. With Verdugo on the aft gun, he took turns peppering the enemy’s bridge and any portholes or hatches that might afford an RPG gunner a likely shot.
Victor Pope appeared beside Green. “All clear?” he asked.
“Yessir.” He looked to his right again. Dr. Faith was bending over Ritter. “How is he?”
“I don’t know, Phil. The crew will take him inside, but I gotta go.”
Green nodded impassively. “Good luck, Boss.”
M/V TARABULUS PRIDE
Hurtubise sensed what was coming.
He heard Zikri give additional orders in high, rapid Arabic, and sensed the engine change pitch three decks beneath his feet. But as the ship decelerated, the Frenchman realized that the Zionist vessel’s greater length would temporarily negate the speed differential. It would take a minute or more to force the other ship into an overshoot, and surely the hostile captain would compensate.
Hurtubise tapped Zikri on the shoulder. “I’m going below to organize the defense. I’ll send two men up here to guard you!” Without awaiting a reply, he was gone on a far different mission.