Harper thought fast. Ideally you wanted to strike your target where it offered the largest profile, which was broadside. But he was not going to wait for the boats to open fire.

“Ready Torpedo One. Hit the guy in the middle Let’s see if his friends take the bait.”

“Roger.” This from the co-pilot, Strauss.

Linick gripped his joystick, racing ahead toward shore. Beside him, Strauss wasn’t mucking around with instruments and readings. At high speed and close range, he used his sailor’s eye and the aug-reality monitor like a hunter using a scope. Then he pressed a red toggle on his panel.

Harper felt the Ghost shudder a little as one of its lightweight Mark 54 torpedoes discharged from a tube on the side of the hull. Locked on, moving at almost sixty-five knots, it closed fast, bearing steadily toward its target at the head of a long, churning wake.

Strauss didn’t miss. The torpedo struck with a loud whoom that he and the others could hear as well as feel through the Ghost’s hull. Then a high sheet of foam reared up from the water’s surface as the boat blew, consumed by a gaseous orange knot of flame.

Harper saw its two companion vessels peel off to the left and right and initially thought they were taking flight. But the Ghost’s ARNV mast provided a three-sixty field of view, and a glance at his overhead told him otherwise.

After shooting in opposite directions for a hundred yards or so, the one on the left had about-faced, slowed in the water, and released its torpedoes full salvo. A pair of them launched from their tubes.

Harper stared at his screen as they came racing toward the Ghost. They were seconds from impact and in line to slam it dead-on.

Carmody’s team split up on his signal, scampering downslope into the parking lot as the explosion roared from the beach. He and Dixon descended on the east side of the landing station, Musil and Schultz on the west side, to his left.

They ran across the lot, triple-time, heads low, their rifles in firing position. Coming at the men outside the station from two sides would divide their attention—and the blast still echoing in the air from the direction of the bay had added to the confusion and distraction.

Carmody saw one of the guys behind the building turn toward him, raising his carbine. He triggered his M249 first, and the guy went down.

Suddenly the lot was with thick with gunfire. Racing ahead, he heard Dixon’s rifle chatter to his right, then saw a second guy fold to the blacktop. That made two of the three men out back.

Schultz and Musil scratched the third, hitting him with twin volleys that spun him around on his feet. He fell with his own gun spitting harmlessly into the air, a spasmodic trigger pull.