Meaning the tuna tower, which was eight feet above the cabin roof and about twenty feet above the water.
I didn’t think that was a good idea, with the tower swaying about 20 degrees from side to side, but he’d have the advantage of not having the bow rising and falling in his line of fire. I would never order a man to do that, but before I could think of a reason why he shouldn’t become the best target on the boat, he disappeared onto the deck and climbed up the side rungs to the tower. “Good luck.”
Sara came up the staircase wearing a Kevlar vest and carrying another one that she handed to me.
I put on the vest and motioned to the windshield, which had three separate framed windows that could swing out on hinges and lock-arms. “Unlatch the window on the left, and when I give you the word, push it out, and it’ll lock into place. You stand in the stairwell and take aim out the window.”
She nodded and unlatched the window over the stairwell, then drew the Glock from her waistband.
“Don’t fire when the bow starts to rise.” I was going to add, “You might hit Felipe,” but I figured she was smart enough to know that, so why mention it?
I glanced at the radar. The blip that was the Zhuk was about five hundred yards from us, dead ahead. Felipe was still standing in the hatch, his elbows on the bow deck, and the shotgun aimed straight ahead. Jack would be at the top of the tower by now, and Sara was standing beside me with the Glock in her hand and extra mags in her pockets, waiting for the word to fire. I was at the helm.
The Zhuk captain must have realized that I was not running to him to surrender my ship and crew, and I saw the double flash of his twin machine guns, then the streak of green tracer rounds that went very high because his bow was rising, but his gunner adjusted—or overadjusted as his bow fell—and the next streak of tracers went into the water about a hundred yards in front of The Maine.
The tracers showed where the Zhuk was, and I could hear Jack popping off a rapid succession of single shots from his firing perch.
Felipe couldn’t see much from the pitching bow, but he did see the tracers, and he got off five rounds as the bow settled down, then reloaded as the bow rose, and waited to fire again.
Jack was popping off rounds as though he could see the target, and maybe he could from up there, but I couldn’t see the Zhuk and I glanced at my radar. The blip was so close that I should be able to see him. I looked out the rain-splattered windshield and there he was—a black silhouette on the black horizon, and coming fast.
I called to Sara, “Fire!”
She moved quickly to the window, pushed it out, and raised the Glock with both hands as I’d taught her. The wind and rain were streaming through the open window, and as the bow dropped she emptied the nine rounds in a few seconds, but instead of dropping below the windshield to reload, she stared straight ahead at the oncoming ship.
“Bastards!”
“Get down!”
I saw that Felipe hadn’t been hit by enemy fire—or friendly fire—and he was firing at the Zhuk, which I noticed was not firing back. And the only reason for that would be because the gunner had been hit. In fact, I heard Jack shouting at the top of his lungs, “Got him! Got that asshole!”
The twin guns would have an armored shield, but Jack had the high ground and apparently he’d scored a hit. The Zhuk, however, had no shortage of gunners, and as we got within a hundred yards of him, the twin guns opened up again, and the tracers went high as his bow rose. But this gunner didn’t overcorrect, and he kept a steady stream of rounds coming, and as his bow settled down, so did the tracers, and suddenly the cabin was filled with the sound of breaking glass and impacting bullets.
Sara screamed, then dropped into the stairwell, but she didn’t appear to be hit. I caught a brief glimpse of Felipe and he was still firing. Sara was sitting on the steps now, slamming a fresh magazine into the Glock. She stood and emptied her second magazine at the looming ship.
The next burst of machine-gun tracers went high, not because the Zhuk’s bow rose, but because that’s where the gunner was aiming, so he must have caught sight of Jack in the tuna tower.
We were on a collision course, and the collision was going to happen within the next ten seconds, and I knew I wasn’t going to change course because The Maine and everyone on her were as good as dead anyway. So he was going to change course, and all I had to do was wait to see if he was going to break to port or starboard.
We were within fifty yards of each other now and I could actually see the windows on the high bridge where the captain was either at the helm or giving orders to the helmsman. Easy shot if I had a rifle. But I didn’t, and I didn’t hear Jack’s AR-15. I did, however, hear the twin machine guns open up, but The Maine was so close to the Zhuk and his forward deck was so high that the gunner had to depress his barrels to the max to get a burst off, and the tracers streaked over the cabin and impacted on the rear deck. And that was his last shot at me because the Zhuk suddenly veered hard to port to avoid a collision, and I caught a glimpse of his twin machine guns as the gunner swung them to starboard to try to get a burst off, but I was moving fast along the starboard side of the 80-foot Zhuk, so close that I could see men on deck.
Just as I reached the stern of the ship, I cut hard to starboard, directly into his wake, which sent The Maine airborne, and when we came down it felt like we’d hit a brick wall and The Maine bounced wildly. The rear gunner was either not at his station, or if he was he didn’t know what was happening or it was happening too fast for him to react, and his stern swung to starboard, away from me, as the Zhuk continued its swing to port.
The Maine was more maneuverable than the bigger ship, and I cut hard to port so that my stern was lined up amidship to the Zhuk, and moving away from him. His forward-and aft-mounted guns could swing only one hundred and eighty degrees, so there was a blind spot about forty feet wide at his midship point, and I kept glancing over my shoulder, trying to stay perpendicular to him as he continued into his port turn. The Zhuk’s crew, however, armed with AK-47s, had no blind spot and I could see muzzle flashes from the forward and aft decks, but the tracers were going wild as the oncoming waves started to slam against the starboard side of the Zhuk. The captain changed course to get his stern lined up so that his rear gunner had a shot at me, but I changed course to keep that from happening, and it was a little like a dog chasing its tail except that the tail—me—was getting some distance from the dog’s teeth.