Strike Force Delta by Mack Maloney Page A

miles away. So where had this helicopter come from? It had to be from another ship. But it didn’t seem lost. To the contrary, on first spotting the blip Bingham had altered the ship’s course, going to a due south heading—and the incoming aircraft adjusted its flight path as well. There was little doubt that whatever this thing was, it was intent on coming right at them.
    So the bigger question was: How did anyone know the
Ocean Voyager
was even out here?
    Within a minute of the alarm being sounded, the top deck of the containership was crawling with armed crewmen. They’d drilled for such things in the past. Each man was carrying either an M16 rifle or an M-60 machine gun. The members of the primary strike team—the Delta guys, the SDS, and the SEALs—took up key positions around the ship, including the helipad and at the highest part of the wheelhouse. The ship’s crew, the sailors who actually made the vessel run, then scattered themselves among the jungle of containers on the open cargo deck. They, too, were armed with M16s.
    But their weapons were mere popguns compared to what the
Ocean Voyager
was really packing.
    There were two red containers on the port side of the ship, two more along starboard. Another was located up on the bow, a sixth down at the stern. These containers were specially built to drop their sides at the touch of a button. Inside each were two CIWS guns—high-tech Gatling guns that were able to spit out an incredible six hundred rounds
a second
. Their function was to fill the sky with thousands of lead projectiles on the idea that at least some of them would hit anything coming in at the ship. To get caught in the barrage of one of these guns was to face a nasty death by perforation.
    And the crew had been through this sort of thing before. During the ship’s first cruise, a helicopter suddenly appeared, landed on the ship—and the people onboard took Murphy away, in handcuffs, under arrest, throwing the team into chaos. Just how their diminutive leader was able to get out of that tight jam he never told them. But the Ghosts really didn’t want it to happen again. Nordid they want this helicopter to be an attack helicopter, as some were known to carry very deadly long-range antiship missiles. It wouldn’t take more than one or two of this type to put the
Ocean Voyager
on the bottom, with all hands going down with it.
    So everyone involved was very anxious as they hunkered down at their positions, weapons ready, waiting. A few tense minutes went by—then, suddenly, another announcement was made over the ship’s PA system. This one was as surprising as the first. In his deep booming tones, Bingham told the crew that the helicopter had contacted the ship and that it was displaying no hostile intent.
    In fact, the people in the ship’s Combat Room had picked up the copter’s IFF signal and from it determined that not only did the copter not belong to a potential enemy, but it was actually a part of the
Servizio Pontificio Aereo
—the Vatican City’s Papal Air Service.
    This news went through the ship like wildfire.
    The Pope was coming to see Murphy. . . .
    The copter came in a few minutes later, and much to the disappointment of the ship’s crew, it was not
Il Papa
dropping in to hear confession. The copter was an all-black Bell Textron, a military version, with no visible national markings, and certainly too sinister for anyone from Vatican City to be flying in.
    The copter’s IFF signal had been a clever fake to get close to the ship without being blown out of the sky. This could mean only one thing: The aircraft’s true owner was the CIA.
    It set down on the rickety helipad hanging off the ass end of the ship. Two men in civilian clothes climbed out, leaving the pilot with the motor running.
    Murphy was on the landing platform, waiting for them. Having already had a brief radio conversation with them, he knew who