Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
“Will do,” Jing replied, and then we were off like a shot.
For maybe five minutes, it was nice, the wind soothing and cool at the speed we were going, but then, of course, we had company.
“Three boats,” Garland grumbled, turning to me. “Begging your pardon, sir, but who are you that everyone wants to kill you?”
That was the million-dollar question, because in all honesty, most of the people who wanted me dead were, in fact, already dead themselves. I didn’t have a lot of enemies walking around. That simply wasn’t how it worked. “I’m nobody special,” I assured him.
“Three boats chasing us says that’s a lie, Colonel.”
I had no idea what to tell him.
The three long-tail gunboats were advancing on us at high speed. I counted five men on each craft, but they were moving, we were moving, and I didn’t have my glasses, so there could be more, or less. God, I really did need to retire after this. Not that fifty-six was old, but being on an op, needing glasses for distance—and reading—was not great.
“I see automatic rifles,” Garland said to be an asshole, showing off his seeing skills.
“Hey,” I called over to Jing, “how fast can this boat go?”
“Not fast enough,” she said snidely.
“Why are you mad at me?” I yelled at her.
“I’m not mad at you. I’m just sick of being here! I wanna go home,” she shouted back.
I understood the impulse. “Well, don’t let us die, and I promise you, you’ll go home.”
I heard her growl. “This boat will easily do seventy knots.”
Which meant eighty miles per hour. It was fast, but not crazy fast. “Is that enough to outrun the gunboats?”
“Not a chance. They can get us easy.”
Shit.
“But,” she said as I walked up beside her, “like every high-power, long-nose dragster, you sacrifice speed for maneuverability. We won’t have to repel boarders, but that becomes a moot point if they’re shooting at us.”
It did. Our pursuers had guns, and in a straight line, across open water, that was lethal. What also didn’t help were the mystifying number of small boats, river taxis, ferryboats, and water buses on the river. I liked our chances of shaking off the boats at low speed—the trick was maintaining enough distance to avoid being blasted to bits by their guns.
“Oh-oh,” Garland announced happily. “There’s a duffel here. Maybe your friend Mr. Hawthorne had his man back there pack us some goodies.”
I waited while Garland unzipped the duffel.
“Yeah, see, Colonel, your friend gave us a small arsenal of automatic rifles and ammunition, and a handful of concussion grenades.”
Thank Christ Darius had always been the guy who was overprepared for every situation. He always planned for contingencies.
Garland retrieved an MK-17 from the duffel, brought it to where I was standing beside Jing, gave me a reassuring pat on the arm that I hated, and then went back to join Nam at the rear of the boat. A moment later, he yelled, “They’re about two hundred meters out, Colonel.”
“Jing,” I began, taking a breath. “If they get alongside us, they’ll cut us to ribbons.”
“I know,” she growled.
“So don’t stop, and try not to kill us.”
“Hilarious,” she muttered, pushing the powerboat’s engines to the limit, roaring to a new level of speed into the river traffic.
“A hundred meters!” Garland yelled again, his rifle tracking on the closest boat and gunman.
“Let’s take them,” I roared, adrenaline pumping now as I knelt down, trying to stay as balanced as possible.
The Demon, followed closely by three others, sliced through an armada of sputtering canal boats and overloaded ferries. We barely missed one and sent a small tidal wave over another. One of the gunboats at even pace with us came in from the right, the hull of the gunboat no more than five meters off our side. The gunman on the bow let loose, a bedlam of shells slamming into our sport craft. We had no time to avoid the barrage of deadly fire, and we all instinctively crouched, only Jing couldn’t, gripping the steering wheel and pulling it hard to the left, nearly ramming a low flat-bottom craft in the process.
Closing my mind to the chaos around me, I narrowed my eyes, focused, and fired on the gunboat. The rounds struck high, thumping into the bow shooter and boat captain in quick succession. The captain slumped, shunting the control pole hard to the right and sending the twenty-eight-foot craft barreling toward a slower-moving water bus. Fortunately, it missed, exploding alone in a roar of flame. The good news: no innocents were killed. The bad news: we weren’t exactly operating under the radar.
Jing maintained a zigzag course, concentrating on skirting the river traffic as we fired fast bursts in the direction of the two remaining gunboats to keep them at bay.
“Jared!” Jing shouted.
Moving back to her side in the cockpit, I peered over the bow upriver, seeing what she did—we had run out of cover. The channel was empty save for a lone tug towing a barge. Glancing at the speedometer, I noted that the needle hung at the seventy-five-knot mark.