Chapter 38 - Storm Over the Mediterranean
Morgana’s smile vanished in an instant. "Drown them," she whispered into her radio.
The night exploded into violence.
The gunboat beside Morgana unleashed a heavy caliber machine gun burst that tore through our starboard bulwark, sending sparks showering across the wet steel deck.
"Down!" I roared, throwing my body over Elena as rounds shredded the fiberglass around us.
Our flanking cutter opened fire simultaneously, twin thirty-millimeter cannons roaring with rhythmic, deafening concussions. High-explosive shells ripped through the hull of the first enemy gunboat, detonating its fuel bladder in a blinding fireball that illuminated the churning black waves.
"Cover the ladder!" Elena shouted, rolling out from under me and raising her assault rifle.
Enemy boarding grappling hooks clattered onto our stern. Mercenaries dressed in black wet-suits swarmed over the rail, combat blades drawn.
Elena fired three controlled bursts, dropping two boarders back into the frothing sea before they could gain footing. I drew my sidearm, pushing forward through the spray, eliminating a third attacker who lunged with an automatic carbine.
Above us, the massive hull of the *Vance Goliath* groaned as our private boarding party stormed the cargo ship’s bridge, retaking control of the vessel from within.
Through the chaos, Morgana’s gunboat began to reverse hard, attempting to slip away into the heavy fog of the storm.
"She’s fleeing!" Elena yelled, wiping rain and salt from her face.
"Not this time," I snarled.
I grabbed the deck-mounted grenade launcher, locked onto the steering rudder of Morgana’s retreating vessel, and pulled the trigger.
The high-explosive round struck true. The stern of Morgana’s boat blew outward in an eruption of steel fragments and black smoke, disabling her propulsion dead in the water.
Before our cutters could close in to capture her, an emergency distress transponder on my tactical rig began to blink with frantic, crimson urgency.
It wasn't a signal from Gibraltar.
It was the satellite distress beacon from the mountain redoubt in the Swiss Alps.
*Code Zero. Perimeter compromised.*
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Elena saw the light. Her face went deathly pale, the rifle shaking slightly in her grip. "Lily..."
Morgana’s wounded boat drifted in the current, but her voice crackled through our comms one last time, filled with sickly triumph: "Did you really think the Strait was the target, Vance? We traded three cargo ships to draw you out of the mountains. Say goodbye to your daughter."
