“Sir?” the pilot asked from the till.
“Nothing,” Mitchum scowled. “Pay attention to your job.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the pilot answered sheepishly.
Leveling his weapon, Campbell fired and the girl on the beach jerked once, then went still. Grabbing another slave, a navvy tossed the teenaged boy into the ocean.
“Go fifty feet to the left of the girl,” Glassman ordered.
Splashing about, the youngster nodded, then pulled in a lungful of air and dived out of sight.
“Fucking bastard.” The sergeant sighed and gestured at the crew. In oft practiced ease, the armed men went to both sides of the foredeck and aimed their blasters. In the mob of slaves, an old woman began to cry. After a few minutes, the teen bobbed into sight about sixty feet behind the PT boat. The sec men opened fire in a rough volley, the barrage of miniballs tearing into the boy, blood spurting high into the air as one round smacked him right in the heart. Gurgling horribly, he sank from sight, leaving a crimson wake that slowly thinned away.
“Damn fine shooting there, Donovan,” Glassman said with a smile. “Been practicing?”
“In my spare time, aye, skipper.” The navvy grinned, preening with the praise. “A sailor that can’t shoot, ain’t nothing but ballast to his shipmates.”
“Damn right,” Campbell said. “Skip, we need a new bosun.”
“You’re it, Donovan,” the captain said with a wave. “Consider that longblaster yours to keep.”
“Yes, sir!” the man said, grinning from ear to ear.
Just then a sharp whistling cut the air, and Donovan’s head disappeared. A split second later, something slammed into the water beyond the boat as a rumbling boom echoed from the mountains of the jungle island.
“Cannonfire!” Campbell cursed, rushing to the anchor and yanking the release lever. Instantly, the chain slipped free from its ratchet and snaked into the drink.
Set loose, the boat began to move with the choppy waves, and two more cannonballs slammed hard into the ocean exactly where the craft had been only seconds ago.
“They found us!” a navvy shouted in warning, firing his flintlock longblaster at the distant mountainside bunkers. As if in response, a series of white smoke rings silently shot out from the trees on the mountainside, the twenty-pound lead balls arriving long before the sounds of the discharge could reach the sea.
“Start the engines!” Mitchum commanded, brandishing his revolver. “Get us the fuck out of range!”
“Too late!” the pilot cried as the cannonballs slammed into the water amid the peteys, a round crashing into a floating raft packed with slaves.
Timbers and human arms flew skyward from the strike, the mortally wounded slaves shrieking for a few moments as they tried to swim away, but the heavy chains linked to their ankles dragged the helpless people down and out of sight. The bloody water bubbled madly from their submerged death screams.
Even as the vessel spattered into life, black smoke blowing from its short flue, Glassman bitterly lamented the terrible loss of human life. That was the last of the slaves. Now he had less than a dozen slaves to find the safe path through the rad craters. After that, he’d have to use his men. What a waste.
The hidden mountain cannons blew more smoke, the balls whistling past the moving ships to hit only water. Then the first of the Firebirds launched from PT 181 with a muffled roar and a cloud of gray exhaust fanes. The rocket streaked toward the dense greenery, spiraling once in the air as the tiny pilots in the warheads had been taught by Kinnison to confuse enemy gunners, and then it angled sharply to the left and shot into the trees. Almost immediately there was a tremendous explosion, bodies and cannons carried skyward on a column of flame from the combined detonation of the Firebird and their ample store of black powder.
On the sea, the navvies cheered as a second rocket was set off, this one heading deep into the valley only to be caught by an updraft and slammed directly into the granite bridge. In slow majesty, the arch began to break apart, cracks spreading along its length until pieces began to fall off. Then, in crashing thunder swallowed up by the distance, the bridge shattered and crumbled into the jungle, tiny geysers of muddy water forming as the mammoth stones plummeted into the shallow river.