Dark Watch полностью

In case they wouldn’t risk ransoming a hostage, Murph and Stone had also listed the Oregon’s complement at fifty-seven, large by the standards of modern merchantmen, and to the pirates she’d be a tempting target because of the correspondingly large payroll in the ship’s safe.

The sunset’s palette of reds and rose and purple had been made even more spectacular by the volcanic ash pumped into the atmosphere by an erupting volcano far to the north on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Now the blood-red moon cast a hellish reflection off the calm sea while the stars had dimmed to pricks. The crew was at battle stations. Julia Huxley and her staff were ready in the medical bay to treat anything from a wood sliver to multiple gunshot wounds. The ship’s armaments were primed and ready in their concealed redoubts. Like the German K-boats of World War One, plates along each side of the Oregon’s hull could be lowered to reveal 120mm cannons utilizing the same fire control and ranging system as found on the M-1A1 Abrams tank. She also carried three 20mm radar-controlled multibarrel Gatling guns. Each weapon could pump out three thousand rounds per minute. While primarily an antimissile system, the Gatlings could also take out aircraft, and a barrage against the waterline of an unarmored ship would punch enough holes in its hull to send it to the bottom.

The Oregon also sported concealed machine guns on her decks with thermal and IR sights. Gunners with video displays controlled these remotely from the operations center. One of her forward hatches could be blown off to launch four Exocet ship-to-ship missiles, and another hatch hid a pair of Russian-made land-attack cruise missiles. Although Langston Overholt at the CIA had paved the way for the Corporation to acquire some American military hardware, he’d drawn the line at missiles, thus forcing Juan to search elsewhere. Overholt had also vetoed the Corporation from getting Mark-48 ADCAP torpedoes. No other nation on earth used them, so they could be too easily traced back to the United States. The fish in the pair of forward-facing tubes had also been bought with hard currency from the same corrupt Russian admiral who’d procured the cruise missiles and supplied the end user certificates for the French Exocets.

It was nearly midnight when Juan entered the operations center. He regarded his people under the red glow of battle lights and the muted shine from their display screens.

Mark Murphy and Eric Stone occupied the workstations closest to the forward bulkhead. Stone had come to the Corporation from the navy, while Murphy had never spent time in the military. The young prodigy had earned a Ph.D. by the time he was twenty and joined the Corporation straight from private industry, where he’d designed weapons systems. Juan had been suspicious of him at first, fearing he lacked the mettle to cut it as a mercenary. In truth, his fear was that Murphy would turn out to be a psychopath who thrived on killing, but a battery of tests and psychological profiles showed that Murphy would have excelled in the military, provided the people around him were on the same intellectual level. Because Juan recruited only the best and brightest, Murph had settled in perfectly, even if no one else shared his joy of punk rock and skateboarding.

Behind and off to the sides of their stations were Hali Kasim monitoring the communications gear and Linda Ross on the radar and the waterfall sonar display. Along the back wall of the op center were stations for the remote deck guns, as well as fire and damage control coordinators. The rest of the crew had their positions, some suited up to fight fires, others to act as corpsmen, and still others who made sure the rapacious guns had enough ammo. Eddie Seng was in charge of the tactical troops on deck, ready to repel boarders. Juan could hear Max on a comm link from the engine room talking to Eric, announcing that the ship’s propulsion system was green across the board.

What had brought everyone to battle stations was an announcement from Linda that a contact thirty miles from the Oregon had suddenly changed course and was heading for the ship. In the world of maritime operations, efficiency was the name of the game. A deviation of a degree or two could add hundreds of miles to a journey and thus cost more money. Unless there was an emergency, and with the radios quiet there wasn’t, the approaching vessel was up to something. And because they’d been warned what to expect, the crew of the Oregon knew what was coming.