Rogue Hunter by John R. Monteith

Author:John R. Monteith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stealth Books
Published: 2016-05-17T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

Cahill watched a gust force Walker’s eyes shut, making his colleague appear like a bug under his hearing protection muffs. The tiny camera on his executive officer’s bridge-to-bridge radio caught sharp shadows shaped by halogen lights. Wave crests foamed behind the ship’s stern as the transport ship churned water at flank speed.

“Say that again, Liam.”

“The last bolt is removed. No more stanchions and no more temporary weapons. I’m sending the work team below.”

“Very well. How’s the port weapons bay?”

The starboard cannon fired.

“Dear God, Terry,” Walker said. “You don’t realize how loud that is from the inside.”

“Try to stay focused.”

“The port induction mast is beyond repair.”

“Very well. We’ll continue without it and rely on the starboard mast in a cross-connected feed.”

“We’ve deployed and stowed the port cannon in manual mode as a test. It works. We’ve got fifty-two rounds staged in the bay for manual loading. It looks like we can salvage about forty more from the damaged magazine. Any other rounds for the port cannon will have to come from the backup stores.”

“Stay up there and load the rest from the magazine.”

The cannon erupted again.

“How are you doing against the Kilos?” Walker asked.

“The first rounds should land soon. I’ll let you know.”

Cahill looked at the display that showed the trajectories of his railgun’s rounds. The speed leaders on the projectiles showed them slowing to six times the speed of sound from their faster muzzle velocities, yielding a travel time of fifty seconds to reach targets fifty miles away.

Green halos around the rounds indicated that Global Positioning Satellites guided them toward their targets — three surfaced Kilo submarines scrambling from their base at Novorossiysk to reach safe submergence depths.

To the north, Ukrainian helicopters provided radar support, painting his targets. He felt helpless in his reliance on airborne and orbiting sensors to empower his attack, but the tactic was working.

Then the icons representing the Kilo’s flashed and became hollow outlines.

“We’ve lost the Kilos,” his weapons controller said.

“Jamming?”

“I think so.”

“It won’t matter. The first round arrives in ten seconds. The Kilos are moving too slow for it to matter. We may not hit them in their diesels, but we’ve got enough metal raining down on them to make them think twice before submerging.”

The halos then disappeared.

“We’ve lost GPS guidance,” the weapons controller said.

“Very well,” Cahill said. “Ballistic flight will be good enough. Keep raining metal on them.”

The starboard cannon’s rhythmic eruptions continued as the Goliath spat rounds towards the Kilos.

“Send satellite imagery to the main screen for battle damage assessment,” Cahill said.

His target, the lead Kilo, issued billows of soft turquoise from its diesel engines. A ray of light blue extended towards it, spread its claws of buckshot, and drew streaks whizzing by the surfaced hull.

“Is that a miss?”

“I’m not sure. It looks like our shot skipped off the hull. The angle of attack is shallow.”

“We may need to shift to explosive rounds, or at least non-splintering rounds.”

“Give it a chance,” Cahill said.

The next flash of blue missed wide, but the third punctured his enemy, and small plumes of azure wounds grew in the submarine’s engine room.

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