The Lucifer Crusade by Mack Maloney

Author:Mack Maloney
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-11-26T03:27:59+00:00

Chapter 24

One of the Commodore's boat captains saw them first ...

The carrier fleet had passed through the Strait of Sicily and was about 100

miles due east of the island of Malta. Captain Olson had decided the best way to utilize the Liberte Marina was to deploy them forward of the carrier. This way they could serve as lookouts and warn the Saratoga of any treacherous waters ahead.

So now the proud fleet of armed yachts, converted workboats, ferries, and trawlers plowed the sea, spread out anywhere from ten to fifteen miles ahead of the carrier force.

It was mid-afternoon. The day had dawned hot and nearly breezeless. Hunter was in the CIC, catching up on the latest radio intercepts from Lucifer's Empire, when a frantic call came in from one of the Commodore's lead boats.

"Emergency! Emergency!" the heavily accented voice cried out from the radio speakers. "We are

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under attack! Enemy aircraft! We are under att -"

The radio suddenly went dead.

"Christ," Heath said to Hunter. "What the hell was that?"

Hunter didn't reply. He was already out of the CIC, and up on the ship's bridge. There, the six men of Yaz's group charged with keeping the carrier on course had also heard the message and were already reacting. Yaz himself was crouched over the bridge radar. It had momentarily picked up several blips just as the panicky call had come in from the Freedom Navy boat. Now Hunter was peering out of the ship's powerful telescope, searching the horizon for the boat that made the call.

The first thing he saw was a faint wisp of smoke off to the northeast.

"Yaz, can we establish contact with any of those boats out there?" Hunter called out, zooming in on the smoke.

Yaz moved over to the bridge radio and started punching buttons and twisting dials. "We've only got radio linkup with a few of them," he said. "I'll try the Commodore's boat itself. He's in that area."

At the same time, a call came in from one of Olson's frigates. "We've got enemy aircraft out here," the calm, cool, Norwegian-accented voice reported via the bridge radio speakers. "They have sunk one Freedom Navy boat. They are attacking others. We are moving in to engage ..."

Hunter gave up on the telescope-the action was too far away from them. Instead he moved to the bridge's backup radio set and called the frigate commander.

"This is Major Hunter. Please ID number of enemy aircraft and type."

The radio crackled with a burst of angry static. Then the same Norwegian voice came back on, this

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time a little less calm. "We are now under attack ourselves!" the radioman reported. "At least twenty-five aircraft! They are firing on us with cannon and missiles . . . We are . . ." Another burst of static drowned out the man's word.

Yaz was at Hunter's side as the pilot tried to raise the frigate again. "How can there be aircraft out there, major?" the American sailor asked. "We would have seen it on the radar before it was a hundred miles near us.

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