“If nothing more, it would be rather poetic justice.”

Juan slapped him on the back, grinning. “That’s the spirit. Now, get down to the op center, and don’t hurt my ship when I’m gone.”

Max shook his head like an old bloodhound. “That’s one promise you know I can’t keep.”

Once they gave Captain McCullough the signal, the massive tanker altered her course southward toward the Libyan frigate. It was done subtly and without warning, but inexorably the distance between the two vessels shrank. On her original course, the Aggie Johnston would have passed the Sidra with a five-mile separation, but as the trailing distance closed so, too, did the range. Staying tight to her flank, the Oregon, too, closed in on its prey.

The radios stayed quiet until the tanker was a mile astern and two miles north of the frigate. Juan had a portable handset as he waited in the shadow of the gunwales with his men. With the sun beginning to set behind them, the worst of the day’s heat had abated, and yet the deck was still too hot to touch comfortably.

“Tanker approaching on my stern, this is the Khalij Surt of the Libyan Navy. You are straying too close for safe passage. Please alter your course and increase your separation before coming abeam.”

“Khalij Surt, this is James McCullough of ULCC Aggie Johnston.” McCullough had a smooth, cultured voice. Juan pictured him standing around six-two and, for some reason, bald as an egg. “We’re experiencing a rogue ebb tide right now. I have the rudder over, and she’s starting to respond. We will comply with your directive in time, I assure you.”

“Very good,” came the curt reply from the Sidra. “Please advise if you continue to have difficulties.”

McCullough had stuck to Juan’s script, and the first act of the play had gone perfectly. Of course, the tanker’s captain would maintain his heading and, in the process, buy the Oregon more time.

Ten minutes went by, and the speeds of the ships relative to each other had narrowed the gap by another half mile. Juan thought the Libyans would have called much earlier. He considered it a good omen that there didn’t seem to be any alarm.

“Aggie Johnston, Aggie Johnston, this is the Khalij Surt.” The man’s tone was still cool and professional. “Are you still experiencing difficulties?”

“A moment, please,” McCullough radioed back as if pressed for time. When he didn’t respond for two minutes, the Libyans repeated their request. This time, a bit more forcefully.

“Yes, sorry about that. The ebb intensified. We’re coming out of it now.”

“We did not experience this tidal action you seem to be facing.”

“That’s because our keel is forty feet down and stretches for three football fields.”

Easy, Jimmy boy, Juan thought.

Juan and the captain had worked it out so the next call originated from McCullough. Two minutes after the last comment, he was on the horn again. “Khalij Surt, this is the Aggie Johnston. Please be advised our steering gear just failed. I have ordered an emergency stop, but at our current speed it will take us several miles. I calculate I will pass down your port beam with a half-mile clearance. May I suggest you alter your speed and heading.”

Rather than slowing, the tanker began a steady acceleration, her single prop churning the water into a maelstrom at her fantail. This wasn’t in the script, and Juan knew that McCullough was ignoring his own preset conditions in order to get the Oregon in as tight as he possibly could. Cabrillo vowed to find the man and buy him a drink when this was over.

The Sidra had begun to turn away and gain speed, but she was still going slow enough that her maneuvers were sluggish. The tanker dwarfed the warship as she started to cruise past, moving at eighteen knots only a third of a mile off the Libyans’ rail.

Juan felt the Oregon’s deck shiver ever so slightly. Her big pumps were rapidly draining seawater from her saddle ballast tanks. They were going in.

In the op center, Max Hanley sat at the fore helm. Like Juan, he’d listened to the entire exchange, but unlike the Chairman he’d been able to at least watch some of the action. Next to him was the weapons tech. Every exterior door was folded back and every gun run out. The ship literally bristled.

He killed power to the pump jets, then reversed the flow.

Water exploded in a churning wave from the bow tubes, and the ship slowed so quickly her stern lifted slightly out of the water. As soon as she was clear of the Aggie Johnston, he cut reverse and applied forward pressure through the tubes. The cryopumps keeping the magnetohydrodynamics chilled to a hundred degrees below zero began to sing as the jets demanded more and more energy.

The Oregon accelerated like a racehorse, carving a graceful curve around the back of the tanker. In front of him was the low gray silhouette of the Libyan frigate.

He could imagine the consternation on the Sidra’s bridge when a ship twice its size suddenly appeared without warning from around the supertanker. After what had to have been a stunned thirty seconds, the airways came alive with expletives, demands, and threats.

Max nimbly tucked the Oregon between the two vessels even as McCullough turned sharply northward to gain sea room and safety.

“Identify yourself or we will open fire.”

That was the second time Max had heard the challenge, and he doubted there would be a third. There was still a big enough gap for the Sidra to rake the Oregon with her three-inch cannons. He resisted the strong impulse to snatch up the handset and identify themselves as the USS Siren.

Watching on the monitor, he saw a cloud like a big cotton ball bloom in front of the Sidra’s forward gun. The shell shrieked by the bow and exploded in the sea fifty feet off her beam an instant before the concussion of the shot rumbled across the Oregon.

“Warning shot’s free, my friend,” Max said tightly. “Next one and the gloves come off.”

The rear gun discharged this time, and an explosive shell slammed into the wing bridge, blowing it completely away.

Max could barely keep himself in his chair. “That’s it. Fire at will.”

The narrowing gulf between the two combatants came alive as the Oregon’s 30mm Gatling guns and bigger Bofors autocannon spewed out continuous streams of fire. The Sidra’s own antiaircraft guns added to the thunder of her main batteries, which were firing at a four-shot-a-minute clip.

The Oregon rang like a bell with each staggering impact. The rounds from the AAA penetrated her hull but were stopped by the next bulkhead. The deck guns’ rounds burst through.

Already three cabins were in ruins, and slabs of marble had been ripped from the walls of the ballast tank that doubled as a swimming pool. Every impact saw more destruction. The boardroom where the senior staff met took a direct hit. The five-hundred-pound table was upended, and the leather chairs turned to kindling.

The automated fire-suppression system was battling a half dozen simultaneous blazes. Fire teams had been told to stay on the opposite side of the ship with the rest of the crew rather than risk themselves during the duel.

But the Oregon was giving as good as she got. All the Sidra’s bridge windows had been shot out, and enough tungsten rounds poured through the openings to mangle all the navigation and steering equipment. Rounds sparked off her armored hide. Her lifeboat shook like a rat in the jaws of a terrier when the Gatling hosed it. When it moved on, the craft was riddled with holes and hung drunkenly from one set of pulleys.

None of their smaller-caliber weapons could penetrate the armor protecting the turrets, so the weapons officer loosened the bow-mounted 120mm cannon. Because it used the same stability control system as an M1A2 main battle tank, this main gun had unbelievable accuracy. Its first round hit where the turret met the Sidra’s deck, and the entire mass jumped five feet into the air before smashing back again, greasy smoke billowing from the guns’ barrels.