Читаем Designated Targets полностью

He typed quickly now, trying to appear calm and relaxed, even though he felt like passing out from terror. He shot a quick glance in Le Roux’s direction. Hidaka had leaned in close and appeared to be threatening him.

Please, let them keep fighting.

He reprogrammed the weapons in the forward bays. Another window opened up. He reprogrammed the bays amidships.

Hidaka and Le Roux became ominously silent. He tried to catch sight of them in the reflection on his monitor, but the CIC was too dark for that. He forced himself to look bored, like a process worker on the production line at the end of the day. He made a show of stretching his neck to work out a cramp.

Hidaka was stalking away, and Le Roux was about to return.

Damn.

He was out of time. Two key clicks shut down the targeting windows. He’d reset half the missile bays, but the rest were still programmed as Le Roux had wanted them. Except for the last two bays. Those missiles had already been taken off the ship. That still left plenty of punch, though. Twelve subfusion plasma-yield Laval cruise missiles.

He had failed.

He took out the photograph of his sister that he kept in a breast pocket. “I’m sorry, Monique,” he whispered.

Le Roux’s coarse bark sounded right behind him, making him jump. “Don’t cry for her now, boy. She’ll have her revenge soon enough, eh?”

“I hope so,” said Philippe Danton. He wanted more than anything to kill Le Roux at that moment.

A marine had not raped his sister. In fact, she had married a marine she met in Lebanon, when she had been working there for Médecins Sans Frontiéres. She had loved him, but she had lost him forever.

His name was J. “Lonesome” Jones.

It would be good to get home. They were running low on frozen brioche.

Still, he wouldn’t want to miss this for the world. Le Roux wished they had satellite cover, or even a drone. The vision they took from the small cams in the nose of the Lavals was nowhere near adequate. Even with the CI cleaning up the image, it still shook so much that watching for too long was liable to make you feel ill.

He occupied Capitaine Goscinny’s old chair, and from there he could survey the entire Combat Information Center. The trained apes Hidaka had brought along were proving themselves fast learners. They couldn’t match the original crew, of course, but they could be trusted to keep the ship running at a basic level. And the Germans were quite impressive. He couldn’t rely on them in combat, but the navigator was good, and the others had adapted to their various roles with great enthusiasm. Within a year, they might just make decent replacements for those idiots rotting in the cells back in Lyon.

Melanie began the ten-second countdown. Even Hidaka, who spoke no French, could tell immediately what was going on. He stood as still as the pitch and yaw of the vessel allowed, and watched the main panel display, which carried vision of the silos on the forward decks.

“Quatre, trois, deux, un . . .”

Le Roux’s balls climbed up inside his body as the first salvos soared free. The whole vessel shuddered as the brand-new, French-designed multipurpose missiles scorched away, their scram jets engaging after a less than a minute. Sonic booms reached them through the hull as the atmosphere was ruptured by the passage of the Lavals.

“Sacre merde.”

It was done. There was no calling them back now. He wasn’t even sure Danton could destroy them in flight, if he had to. Suddenly a flash of blind panic seized him, before subsiding just as quickly. “These will destroy the American’s radar stations and, I think, Hickham air base,” he said loudly, for the benefit of the others. “Is that correct, Danton?”

“Oui,” the surly young man replied.

“Can we see the movies from the missiles themselves?” asked Hidaka.

“Danton?” Le Roux called out.

The sysop blushed and began to fiddle with his station settings. Le Roux rolled his eyes. Hidaka and the Germans waited impatiently. After a minute, the krauts began to mutter among themselves, when the boy was unable to bring up any vision.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said the chief petty officer. “Let me do it.”

As he pushed himself up out of the commander’s chair, Danton blanched visibly. He was probably expecting another thrashing, but Le Roux merely pulled him out of his chair as the ship pitched down a large wave. Danton fell heavily into the met station.

Le Roux chuckled at the sight of the young officer’s distress. “Fucking four years at the Sorbonne,” he said to Hidaka, “And he still can’t use a fucking mouse.”

As Air Division maintenance chief, Le Roux was intimately familiar with the cam systems on the ship’s Eurotigers. The same software controlled the cams in the nose of the Laval missiles. A few clicks, a bit of typing, and the feed was live.

Four windows displayed a blur of indigo as the weapons ripped across the ocean at Mach 5.

“How long?” asked Hidaka.

“Not long at all,” said Le Roux.

Перейти на страницу:

Похожие книги