Page 60 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm (An Isaac Bell Adventure #15)
C aptain Grimm coaxed everything he could out of the Alice N .
Her engine was revved to just below its redline, making a deafening racket while smoke boiled out of her skinny funnel.
Whoever had tuned the motor early this morning knew what he was doing.
Bell estimated he’d wrung an extra two knots from the tired old fishing boat.
Bell had changed clothing and was now on deck with Joe, checking over the weapons and gear.
“You sure about that gun, Isaac?” Grey asked. “It’s the oddest-looking thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Why not the bottom?”
“Without a long clip hanging under the receiver, a shooter can hunker a little lower in a trench while firing. It increases his chance of surviving. This type of weapon also makes anyone using it far deadlier than an ordinary rifleman. This beast can lay down nearly a hundred man-stopping pellets in about fifteen seconds.”
“Nasty. Has he sold the design?”
“No takers. To make it reliable, the tolerances need to be very precise. That makes the gun horribly expensive to manufacture. Khris has made a lot of one-off items for the agency over the years. He thought of me for this gun when he knew he’d never get to make a second one.”
“Expensive?”
“Eye-wateringly.”
Bell and Marchetti both wore black one-piece suits, with padded and reinforced knees and elbows.
Each man carried a pistol in kidney holsters as well as backpacks loaded with the bombs and other gear.
Joe would also carry a chopped down 20-gauge shotgun loaded with buck rather than birdshot.
It wasn’t as powerful a weapon as Bell’s piece, but he freely admitted the recoil from a sawed-off 12-gauge was too much for him.
Bell’s head snapped up when he heard the full-throated roar of the Saarland ’s main battery firing for a second time.
They were far enough up the East River to the see the muzzle flash reflected off the low clouds blanketing the city.
It was like distant lightning. A moment later came the freight train–like roar as the huge shell split the sky.
And a handful of seconds later came the sound of the shell exploding in Manhattan.
Bell watched as a fresh plume of dust climbed into the sky very near where the first had impacted.
They were both in Midtown and he guessed that either Penn Station or Grand Central Terminal was the target.
He clenched his fists to keep them from trembling in rage.
Moments later they were motoring through Hell Gate, the once deadly narrows at the top of the East River.
The Saarland fired a third round just then.
It had come so much faster than the second that Bell knew that Balka Rath had zeroed in the range and trajectory for his brother aboard the battleship.
“He’s north of Rikers Island,” Bell shouted into Grimm’s ear. “Take us to the east and we’ll come up behind him.”
They lost some more time circumnavigating the island with its disused Union army training ground, and Bell felt each second ticking by.
His gut was clenched with anticipation of more shells being lobbed at the city in a rapid-fire bombardment, but minutes crawled past, and the big guns remained silent.
He was confused but grateful for the lull.
They finally came around the north shore of Rikers and got their first look at the anarchists’ battleship as she menaced New York.
Her aft turret looked inert, the two big cannons extending straight back and parallel to the deck.
Her forward turret was turned and one of the guns was elevated to a great degree.
Bell studied the massive warship through binoculars.
He saw no one on the deck and no one standing on the bridge wing high above.
It was impossible to see into the bridge itself and yet Bell’s imagination put Karl Rath in there near the glass windscreen, his binoculars trained on the city to which he was laying waste.
The Alice N. raced across the open water and tucked alongside the ship near her fantail. Being this close changed their perspective on the battleship. She seemed to take up the entire world, her gray hull curving up and over them, so the fishing boat was draped in shadow.
In order to keep the ship on station, one of her three propellers spun slowly to maintain tension on the anchor that had been dropped into the tidal estuary.
Now that they were invisible to anyone on deck because of the hull’s curvature, Grimm slowed his boat.
They were so close to the Saarland ’s hull that Grey kept having to push them off so they didn’t scrape the steel plates.
Everyone kept an eye toward the sky. If an anarchist noted their approach now, he could reach over the railing with a machine gun and shred the sturdy little boat.
Bell and Marchetti moved to the Alice N.
’s bow. Bell’s hybrid shotgun was slung across his back on a thick webbed cotton strap, while Joe’s sawed off 20-gauge fit in a special holster belted around his waist and tied off around his thigh.
They had brought a lightweight aluminum ladder to ease in boarding the battleship, but with the anchor down, they could clamber up the chain and squeeze through the hawsehole.
It had been at least seven minutes since the last salvo was fired at the city.
That respite ended with a crashing explosion, the loudest any of the men had ever heard.
Had they not earlier fixed wax plugs in their ears and been under the long gun tube, they would have all lost their hearing.
Still, the noise left them reeling and with the feeling they’d been punched in the lungs without the protection of their ribs.
The men took a few seconds for their bodies to recover.
The Alice N. had drifted a little from the great warship.
Grimm made a quick correction. Grey grabbed on to the Saarland ’s anchor chain when they got close enough.
Bell and Marchetti exchanged a brief nod.
They had never seen combat together but had helped each other escape the doomed liner Lusitania, and knew neither lacked courage and would remain calm under the most hellish conditions.
Bell gave Joe a thumbs-up and started climbing the sofa-sized chain links.