Power and Empire

The muffled rattle of rifle fire erupted from inside the cabin of the sailboat. Bright flashes illuminated the portholes. The woman at the mast slumped as bullets shredded the deck beneath her.

The woman at the bow screamed, diving over the lifelines.

“Return fire!” Gitlin shouted above the noise. He turned to face aft with the rest of the team as Chief Rose shoved the throttle forward, pointing the RHIB directly at Lucky Strike’s bow.

The woman in the water went under once, then bobbed to the surface. Only the top of her head and her flailing arms were visible in Gitlin’s NVGs. Knight leaned over the side while Gitlin grabbed his rigger’s belt to steady him, as if they’d planned it that way. The RHIB’s pontoons were huge, nearly two feet in diameter, forcing Knight to lean well out over the water in order to grab the woman when they sped past. Top-heavy from the extra fifty pounds of gear, he would have slithered over the slick tube into the drink had Gitlin’s weight not provided a counterbalance.

“Got her!” Knight yelled above the hiss of spray and the roaring motor. Both men fell backward in unison, hauling the sputtering woman over the pontoon and into the chief’s lap, Knight clutching a handful of her hair and the back of her swimsuit.

The two men farthest aft in the RHIB opened up in earnest with their rifles, strafing the side of the sailboat.

A green head peeked around the corner from the cabin hatch, followed by a bright flash. Gitlin had never seen a rocket-propelled grenade coming directly at him, but his instincts said that’s what this was.

“RPG!” he screamed. “Cover! Cover! Cover!”

Rose jerked the RHIB hard to port. They were so close that it wouldn’t have made much difference, but thankfully, the shooter had rushed the trigger under the fusillade of oncoming gunfire. The rocket-propelled grenade hit the waves well to the left, skipping along the surface to explode well in front of the inflatable, throwing up a plume of spray.

When Gitlin looked back, Ridgeway was slumped, chin to his chest, weapon dangling from his single-point sling, arms hanging to the deck.

Chief Knight, ever aware of the men in his charge, pushed the woman away so her back rested against the side of the pontoon. He slid to the back of the speeding RHIB on both knees, lifting Ridgeway’s head. A moment later, he turned and gave Gitlin the harrowed look that all good leaders dread.

“Pirate vessel returning,” Gitlin heard over his radio. “Nineteen knots and accelerating.”

The traffic was followed by the rhythmic thump of the Mk 28 chain gun, firing from Rogue’s foredeck. There hadn’t been time to tell them about the RPG, but they’d obviously seen it. Twenty-five-millimeter high-explosive tracer rounds creased the night air, chewing the fishing skiff into kindling. An instant later a bright flash blossomed up from where the pirate vessel had been. Gitlin and his men jerked their heads away, temporarily blinded in their NVGs.

“Holy shit!” Peavy yelled from his station on the bow of the RHIB. “That’s a hell of an explosion for a twenty-footer.”

“Chief Rose,” Gitlin said, willing his voice to stay calm — and the sailboat not to explode until they’d moved farther away from the RHIB—“put some distance between us and that sailboat!”

Belowdecks on Lucky Strike, Mamat dragged himself forward with his good arm. The other was shot away, the elbow joint exposed in a sickening mess of meat and bone. Both legs had taken rounds. He didn’t know how bad, but the pain was nearly unbearable. He was certain to pass out if he chanced a look at the wounds. The sound of the Navy boat’s departure was a knife to his heart. He cursed himself for his mistake. He’d held off detonating the explosive, waiting for the sailors to tie up alongside in order to inflict maximum damage.

None of the Jemaah Islamiyah planners or their Abu Sayyaf financiers had thought it would be possible to get anywhere near the larger ship. The ammonium nitrate in the fishing vessel had been put in place on the off chance the captain of the USS Rogue had been lax or inexperienced. He turned out to be neither. But the deaths of six sailors in the inflatable would have been a mighty blow to the Great Satan — if Mamat had not been so stupid.