Target Deck - 02 by Jack Murphy Read Free Book Online Page B

ran in the only direction available, towards the sunlight that barely penetrated the smoke.
    The entire dock rocked into the water, causing him to stumble once more. The fire was eating through the wooden pylons, making the entire platform unstable. Tears streamed from the corners of his eyes as the smoke began to sting. With his legs driving him forward, Deckard knew his body was red lining.
    Suddenly, he burst out into daylight, the sun hanging in the morning sky above the ocean. Behind him, the canvas that had been concealing the bay collapsed into the fire with a whoosh of hot air and black smoke. By now, most of the flames had been smothered by the collapse or extinguished as the dock sank into the bay.
    A bullet exploded at Deckard's feet, wooden splinters sent tearing into his pant leg. Rolling behind a forklift, he came to a knee as a cascade of auto fire clanged off the metal framework of the heavy lift vehicle.
    “You okay down there Six?” Fedorchenko came up on the net.
    “I'm not dead,” Deckard replied into his radio.
    Peering from behind his cover, he saw the trigger man who had been shooting at him disappear down into the mast of the midget sub. Metal on metal sounded as the port hole slammed shut. White water churned behind the sub as it began to pull away from the dock.
    “We're trying to flank around but we have to hack through the jungle to get to you.”
    “See you soon,” Deckard terminated the transmission and broke from cover in an all-out sprint.
    Boots pounded across the sinking dock, the sub quickly picking up speed as Deckard chewed up the ground between himself and his target. Unfortunately, he was running out of dock. The pier was about to end as he vaulted into the air. Weighed down with nearly forty five pounds of weapons, ammunition, and body armor, he managed more of a leap than a jump, coming down hard on the metal fuselage of the submarine. Slipping, his feet splashed into the water as he found purchase, grabbing a hold of a periscope that snaked from the top of the sub.
    Pulling himself up onto the submarine, he moved towards the mast sticking from the center of the giant metal cylinder. It was amazing that cartel engineers were able to put together a functioning midget sub in a dry dock somewhere deep in the Colombian rain forest. It looked like something straight out of a WWII movie. The porthole was tightly secured he discovered, grunting as he gave the handle a few tugs. Inside he could hear frantic voices arguing in Spanish.
    Looking over his shoulder, Deckard could see his platoon of Samruk soldiers at the edge of the bay, looking out to sea as their commander grew distant, the submarine making haste for the open ocean.
    “Six-” the Kazakh platoon leader's voice crackled over the radio.
    “I've got an idea.”
    Deckard wasn't carrying any breaching charges or other explosives aside from a couple flashbangs and fragmentation grenades. He had one chance to improvise something before the sub filled its ballast tanks and plunged beneath the waves. Unzipping his med pouch, the American pushed through his tourniquets, bandages, and celox gauze before he tore free a plastic IV bag full of Hextend fluid. The IV was meant to be given to gunshot victims to help boost their blood pressure after massive blood loss.
    Deckard had other ideas.
    Tearing a flashbang from its pouch, he used a roll of white medical tape to secure it to the IV bag, wrapping several lengths around the two items to hold them together. Pulling on the hatch, the mercenary commander did his best to identify where the locking mechanism was located. Placing the IV-flashbang satchel over it, he taped it in place on the hatch with more medical tape.
    He had created an improvised water impulse charge. Normally, C4 plastic explosives would be used in conjunction with a container of water. Water didn't compress under pressure so when an explosive charge was placed behind it, the force of the detonation pushed the water