M.I.A. Hunter by Mertz Stephen

Author:Mertz, Stephen [Buchanan, Stephen Mertz as Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Action & Adventure
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2012-05-09T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

The twin patrol boats were converging on their sampan, tinny voices hailing them first from one amplifier, then from another, demanding papers, explanation. Huddled in the bow, Stone knew that they could not withstand the most cursory examination, and he knew already what they had to do about it.

Do or die, damned right.

He started counting down, signaling his intentions to the others by a movement of his eyes, a gesture with his flash-suppressor-equipped carbine. They would follow where he led, no doubt about it. And the only question left for Stone was whether they had guns enough and time enough to pull it off. The slim advantage of surprise could only take a man so far, before he had to make it on his own.

The countdown bottomed out at zero, and Stone made his move, already on his knees and sweeping with the automatic rifle as the thought was being filtered through his nerve synapses into action. On his right, Lan Yang was following his lead, the autonfle that he carried sweeping up and out across the gunwale of the sampan, its lethal muzzle seeking targets in the spotlight glare.

Stone was aiming for the searchlight first, and he found it with a probing, measured burst. The light exploded, winking out like some cyclopian eye. Over on his right, a burst from Loughlin or the Laotian found the second spotlight and put it out of action in a spray of glass shards. An operator who was tardy in retreating from his station had a major portion of his brain forcibly externalized, deposited among his comrades huddling on the deck of their patrol boat, under fire.

It took an instant for the stunned Vietnamese to react—long enough, at any rate, for Stone to pick a target on the bridge of the patrol boat nearest him and slam a three-round burst into the khaki-covered chest. He saw the uniform reduced to bloody tatters in the half-light of the moon, and then the blank-faced corpse was gone, propelled away and out of sight by the impact of the CAR-15's manglers.

It was in the fan, for damned sure, and the twin patrol boats were returning fire now, taking time to determine range and elevation with their light machine guns, feeling for the sampan, finally finding her without much difficulty. She obviously had not been built for naval combat, and Stone knew that she would not remain afloat for long beneath that concentrated fire. Whatever happened now, for good or ill, would have to happen quickly if they were to have any chance at all of surviving.

He considered bailing out, but rejected it at once, aware that they would not survive for half a minute in the water, with the incoming fire and the prowling crocodiles to pick them off. The sampan was their only hope—a flimsy one, from all appearances, but still the best they had.

Stone raked his target vessel with another burst, and was rewarded as a crewman doubled over and lurched against the rail with both hands clasped across his punctured abdomen.

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