Monster Hunter Siege (Monster Hunters International Book 6) by Correia Larry

Author:Correia, Larry [Correia, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781481482554
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 2017-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

The island was in sight.

I was on the bridge of the Bride, scanning the approaching landmass through a pair of binoculars. All I could make out from here were dreary gray rocks. The rocks went on for a while before they turned into the island’s glacial cap. The sea between us was clear of ice and relatively calm.

From here the island looked lifeless. It probably wasn’t.

“I’m not seeing any movement yet,” I reported.

“Want to take bets on how long that will last?” James Conason was our helmsman. He was from our Florida team, and his background was driving a Coast Guard cutter. He said in comparison to his old ship, Pride of Krasnov was like going from a sports car to a bulldozer.

“Let them come,” Mayorga muttered. She was also scanning the horizon for threats. “I didn’t pay all that money to weld all these guns onto this barge hoping those pendejos would stay hiding underground. Close to two thousand meters. Full speed ahead.”

The engine got louder and the ship shook more, but we weren’t going to be setting any records in this thing.

With four people in it, the Bride ’s bridge was cramped. This was no warship. Most of its life had been spent hauling vehicles up and down rivers and coastal waterways. You didn’t exactly need the bridge of the Enterprise to pull that off. All we had to work with was a narrow metal room with a bank of windows on the front. It was even more crowded now since we’d installed quality instruments—most of which I didn’t understand—and screens displaying information I didn’t know how to decipher. There was one Hunter giving orders, one driving, one running communications, and me standing in the doorway being the mostly useless non-nautical type.

“Overland vehicles are on their way. Everything is still on schedule.” Terry Van Ausdall was running all our comms and monitoring all of the various displays I didn’t particularly understand. Like May, he was former Navy, but he’d gotten picked for this job because Earl said he was to electronics what Milo was to mechanical stuff. He had been the one who had installed all of the Bride ’s new high-tech gizmos. “Skippy will be in range in three.”

Mayorga checked her watch. “Anything else?”

“The pumps are working. The engine hasn’t caught on fire for two whole days. We’re redlined at a blistering fifteen knots.”

“I could get out and swim faster,” Conason grumbled.

“Skies are clear. It’s a sweltering twenty degrees above zero. Winds are five knots from the north. And the Russians must have believed their loud fat dude with the big mustache that we’re not invading them, because there’s no naval vessels on the radar coming to sink us.”

“They’d send a sub. Torpedo us. We’d never see it coming and sink in seconds. Plausible deniability. No international incident. That’s what I’d do.” Mayorga’s default expression was a scowl. Even her team lovingly said that she had resting bitch face, but right now she seemed extra grumpy.

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