Chapter 40 - THE FLEET ON THE HORIZON
The 30mm M230 chain gun whined as its electric servo motors brought the heavy barrel directly in line with Elena’s position on the exposed crane. Inside the gunship's glass cockpit, the pilot’s helmet reticle was locked onto her torso. There was no cover. There was nowhere to dive.
Elena Vance did not lower her rifle.
Standing alone on the rusting crane fifty feet above the roaring Atlantic surge, her uniform soaked with salt water and her face streaked with cordite and blood, she brought the scarred M14 back to her shoulder. With open iron sights, she aimed directly through the plexiglass canopy at the pilot's chest, ready to trade her life for one final, defiant shot.
"Die a martyr, Captain," Halloway’s voice hissed through the speaker. "Nobody will remember your little rifle."
Before the pilot’s finger could depress the chain gun’s firing trigger, the morning sky to the east split wide open with a blinding flash of white light, followed three seconds later by a concussive shockwave that shook the very foundation of the island fortress.
A five-inch naval artillery shell screamed across the harbor at Mach 3, obliterating the empty watchtower thirty yards behind the Apache with pinpoint accuracy. The sheer overpressure of the detonation threw the attack helicopter violently sideways, its rotors beating frantically against the air as the pilot fought desperately to recover from the vortex.
Out across the horizon, tearing through the morning mist under full combat speed, the towering gray silhouette of the guided-missile destroyer *USS Marcus Vance* crested the harbor bar, all its combat arrays lit up like a blazing constellation of legitimate authority.
Behind the destroyer, four naval strike craft followed in tight assault formation, their sirens screaming across the open sea.
Over the universal emergency guard frequency, the deep, thunderous voice of Colonel Marcus Vance cut through the static, booming with the weight of the entire United States Navy:
"This is Task Force Ironclad to all Apex assets and rogue commands. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has authorized lethal intervention. Stand down your weapons and prepare to be boarded, or you will be reduced to scrap in the next ninety seconds."
On the crane, Elena lowered the rifle an inch, her breath clouding in the morning air.
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Inside the Apache, the pilot hesitated, caught between Halloway’s panicked shrieks and the targeting radars of an entire Aegis combat system. But then, far out at the entrance of the deep sea channel, a new, monstrous sound reverberated from beneath the ocean surface—a metallic groaning that didn't belong to any Navy ship.
A massive, unmarked ballistic submarine began to surface right in the center of the harbor channel, its missile hatches slowly creaking open.
