Chapter 24 - A COVERT BOARDING PARTY
"Admiral Vance!" Avery barked into her comm unit, but only white noise answered.
She looked down at the mercenary pinned under her boot. "Cross, zip-tie him to the intake manifold. Strip his comms and grab his secure drive."
"On it," Cross said, his combat knife instantly severing the operative's tactical harness. He yanked a ruggedized micro-drive from the operator’s chest pocket and tossed it to Avery. "Drive is encrypted with five-twelve-bit NSA standard."
"I have the cipher," Avery replied, pocketing the drive. "The team on the 0-8 level didn't come from the water. They came from the sky."
"A helicopter?" Cross asked, binding the prisoner’s wrists with reinforced zip-ties. "In this squall? Without radar catching them?"
"A stealth MH-60 Black Hawk from the special activities division," Avery said as she sprinted back toward the central ladderwell. "They used our own blackout against us. When we turned off the lights to dodge the decoy, they dropped onto the island's upper antennas using high-altitude low-opening gliders or an ultralight insertion. They aren't trying to sink the ship—they’re trying to seize the bridge to steer this battle group into Chinese territorial waters."
Cross cursed under his breath as the SEALs fell into formation behind her. "A provocation. An international incident that forces the President into war."
"And buries Sterling’s treason behind a wartime declaration of national emergency," Avery said, taking the steel stairs three at a time.
The climb from the bilges to the superstructure was twelve vertical decks through the gut of the warship. As they ascended, the ship began to list five degrees to starboard. The massive vessel was turning hard, its wake boiling as the rudder answered an unscheduled helm command.
"They have the auxiliary steering!" Cross yelled, bracing himself against the bulkhead as the deck tilted beneath their feet. "If they cut across the Scarborough Shoal at thirty knots, we’ll run this carrier aground on the coral!"
"They won't make it to the shoal," Avery said, her voice chillingly calm as she reached the armored access door leading to the 0-8 level.
She paused at the hatchway, holding up two fingers. Through the steel, she could hear the muffled sound of controlled breathing and the distinctive click of customized M4 bolt releases.
"Three men inside the passageway," Avery whispered, studying the thermal reflections beneath the door's lower sill. "Two guarding the access ladder to the bridge, one facing this hatch. They’re covering the fatal funnel."
"Flashbang?" Cross suggested.
"No," Avery said. "This compartment houses the carrier’s primary halon fire-suppression bank. One spark in the high-pressure manifold, and we suffocate everyone on three decks."
She slung her carbine behind her back and reached into her tactical pouch, pulling out a small, metallic cylinder—a magnetic shaped breach-charge designed specifically for shipboard watertight doors. She set the digital timer for three seconds and pressed it against the hatch’s mechanical hinge pins, not the lock.
"Ear protection," she commanded.
The SEALs flattened themselves against the steel bulkhead, fingers in their ears.
*CRACK.*
The charge detonated not with a roar, but with a sharp, concussive whip-snap. The heavy hinge pins sheared away instantly.
Avery didn't kick the door. She grasped the locking wheel and pulled the entire multi-hundred-pound slab of steel inward, using its momentum as a shield as she stepped into the hallway.
A volley of suppressed rounds thudded into the outside of the armored door, sparks showering the narrow corridor.
From behind her mobile shield, Avery drew her sidearm—the standard-issue Navy SIG Sauer she had worn on the parade ground in Coronado, the very weapon Commander Miller had tried to inspect before she was struck.
She leaned around the steel edge, firing three rounds in rapid, mechanical succession.
The first mercenary fell, shot through the shoulder and collarbone. The second dove behind an electronics rack, returning fire.
Avery didn't retreat. She dropped the heavy steel door, allowing it to slam to the deck with a deafening crash, and advanced through the smoke. She fired twice more through the thin aluminum casing of the electronics cabinet. The rounds punched clean through, and the second operative collapsed with a groaning wheeze.
The third man bolted up the ladder toward the bridge.
May you like
Avery vaulted over the fallen bodies, her hand latching onto the ladder’s rungs. She hauled herself upward with explosive speed, bursting onto the bridge just as the third operative leveled his rifle at the back of Admiral Vance’s chair.
***
