Ghostrider - M. L. Buchman Page 0,77
Mike had even helped when Jeremy became too technical and she’d needed a translation.
“As ready as you can make me.” She slewed the targeting for the howitzer to Vasquez’s private compound and hoped the circular balcony marked the master bedroom.
She glanced at JJ, “I’d still like the order to proceed, sir.”
“Granted, Colonel Cortez. Weapons free. Fire at will.”
To Jeremy’s credit, he didn’t hesitate. He lit the armory. The beam would be invisible from the ground, but their instruments displayed a brilliant green-white blaze on the roof of the armory.
She fired the howitzer at the same moment. The big round traveled at twice the speed of sound—four seconds from their current altitude.
Their gun crew required ten seconds to reload the howitzer, so all she could do was wait and watch.
The corner of the hacienda disappeared in a ball of white. She moved her cursor to highlight the next corner of the hacienda. Her indicator turned green but she didn’t fire.
The computer will compensate for most scenarios, Jeremy had told her. Windage, air speed, and so on. But if you can wait until the target remains steady in your crosshairs for at least two or three seconds, then the chances of the projectile flying true increase drastically.
Just as she hit the Fire button, Jeremy’s laser must have finally burned through the armory roof.
The entire compound disappeared beneath the blinding glare on their screens.
“What just happened?” It looked as if everything had blown up.
“Screen overload. It will compensate in a few moments, but right now the CCD and the computer are simply overwhelmed with photon impact which is—”
“Did it blow up the whole compound?” JJ was leaning in over her shoulder.
“No, see.” Jeremy pointed. “The bloom is going away. So…now we can see what happened when the armory exploded. Though the brightness of the fire is continuing to mask the extent of the actual damage.”
A second flash of brightness, even bigger than the first, smeared across the screen so suddenly that she slammed back into her seat and JJ stumbled back.
“What did you do, Jeremy?”
“A laser isn’t like a shell. There’s no aim, fire, wait. Though there are problems of atmospheric blooming and energy usage from sustained firing, but we’re well within the performance envelopes of this weapon in the current environmental conditions. So, I can simply re-aim the beam. I didn’t want to expend energy burning through the garage roof, but I then spotted the fuel dump. Fifty-five-gallon drums aren’t designed to withstand hundred-and-fifty-kilowatt lasers. Ka-Pow! Bang! Boom!” He waved his hands in the air as he made exploding sounds.
Mike spoke up. “Just like a little kid, Jeremy. Jeffrey would approve.” They didn’t laugh, but they clearly enjoyed the shared memory.
Taz turned away, unable to watch. It hurt. She didn’t know why, but it did.
People were racing across the compound in every direction.
A lone vehicle roared out of the compound. By its look it was a very fast sports car, not some mere SUV.
“Hit it, Jeremy!”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t shoot people. That’s the deal.”
“How do I do it? That’s got to be Hector Vasquez. He loves his supercars. He’s got to go down.” She tried to aim the howitzer but it only had a very small range that must be aligned off the right wing. And Jeremy had told her that moving targets required techniques he didn’t have time to teach her.
Jeremy watched her closely as the vehicle bounced violently over the rough road but kept gaining speed.
“He’s got to, Jeremy. There aren’t many worse people in the world.”
For a long second he looked in her eyes, then reached out and took her hand. Rather than squeezing it with some unwanted but expected sympathy, he moved it to the laser’s joystick. “Get a feel for tracking the vehicle. It’s moving fast, so you’ll need to keep it steady in the crosshairs for longer than you’d think.”
At first she was veering side-to-side. Finally she had a feel for how to keep it steady in the crosshairs, reasonably.
Jeremy tapped in a quick series of settings, called in a correction to the cockpit, then pointed at a red Fire button.
He sat back to watch her carefully. His face totally unreadable. She glanced at Mike, who noticed the change as well.
She wanted Jeremy to think well of her.
But she wanted Vasquez dead. So much of the pain in her life—and Mama’s—had been his doing.
Why had a man who headed a cartel, a violent competitor of the one her father worked for, helped them