5
IN AN INSTANT THE
DECK of the freighter became a battleground. Bullets and shell
casings flew in all directions. Andras moved quickly, grabbing
Kristi and dragging her backward. He added the occasional burst to
what had become a raging gun battle, but his plan was to do more
than stand and fight.
As he pulled back, he
saw the situation for what it was: a first strike. The Americans
had stormed in, taking out a half dozen of his men, but they were
now pinned down on the deck, caught in a sort of cross fire while
the ship burned and slowly sank beneath them. He guessed they
wouldn’t have done that intentionally, unless they had backup
coming.
The sound of a
loudspeaker echoed from the approaching cutter.
“Throw down your weapons and surrender,” an
authoritative voice demanded.
While he had no
intention of doing anything of the sort, Andras was keenly aware of
the danger to himself. But then, he was a man who’d made his life
knowing how to turn the tables.
He reached one of the
loading cranes. Grabbing the hook that dangled from it, he slipped
it under the wire he’d wrapped around Kristi’s hands.
He threw the power
switch and was rewarded with the sound of its hydraulic pump
running. Before he sent her out, he ripped the gag off Kristi’s
mouth.
She looked at
him.
“You’re going to want
to scream,” he said, “trust me.”
With that, he threw
the lever and the crane sprang to life. It pulled her upward and
began swinging her out over the battleground for all to
see.
KURTAUSTIN CROUCHED
BEHIND a steel hatch cover. His idea to race around the bow of the
vessel and literally drive right up onto it had been a cunning
move. With the smoke surrounding them and the Argo approaching from the opposite direction, Kurt
and his men had taken the pirates by surprise, speeding onto the
deck and hitting several of them immediately.
The one flaw in his
plan had been the number of pirates. There were far more than he’d
expected, more than a dozen, maybe close to twenty. Those who’d
survived and taken cover now had him pinned down.
Sooner or later the
other tenders from the Argo would
arrive, giving them a numerical advantage, but until then it would
be tough sledding.
The radio on his belt
crackled, a call from one of the tenders. “Kurt, we’re approaching the stern, no resistance so
far.”
He didn’t have time
to reply as shells started pinging off the hatch behind him. He
ducked lower, trying to see where they were coming from. Before he
could decide what to do next, he heard a female scream. He glanced
skyward to see a woman, in her mid-thirties, dangling from the hook
of a crane.
Seconds later, a
voice bellowed above the din.
“Are we ready to stop
this madness?” the voice shouted.
Kurt didn’t look up,
as that was a good way to get one’s head blown off, but the guns
around him went silent.
Kurt glanced at the
young woman. Blood streamed down her arms and across her
clothes.
“Now that I have your
attention,” the voice boomed, “you’re going to let my men get off
this stinking garbage scow of a ship or I’ll blast this woman to
shreds like a piñata.”
Kurt glanced around,
sweat and smoke burning his eyes. He noticed water beginning to
swirl at his ankles, and several feet away it poured into one of
the open cargo hatches.
The ship was settling
fast. The bow was now completely submerged with only a few high
points sticking out like dead trees in flooded field. Worse yet, as
the water began filling the forward cargo holds the weight on the
front section would increase rapidly.
In a few minutes the
Kinjara Maru’s fate would change from a
gentle settling to a nosedive into the abyss.
“I’m waiting!” the
hidden speaker shouted.
“Kurt?” a voice asked over the radio. “What do you want to do?”
Kurt looked up at the
woman again. “Hold your positions,” he said into the
radio.
“Well?” the unknown
voice shouted, demanding an answer.
“Okay,” Kurt yelled
back. “Take your men and get out of here.” He shouted to his men.
“Hold your fire until they’re clear.”
Almost instantly Kurt
heard movement, the pirates pulling back.
“Can anyone see him?”
Kurt whispered into the radio. “He has to be up high.”
Someone must have
risked a look because a shot rang out. A grunt sounded over the
radio.
“No peeking,” the
voice shouted.
“Damn,” Kurt mumbled.
He keyed the mike on his radio. “Who got hit?”
No response. Then
someone said, “It’s Foster.”
Kurt shook his head
angrily. “You hit one more of my men,” he shouted to the unseen
figure, “and I promise you’ll die on this boat!”
“I’m sure,” the
hidden man replied, “that you’d like to believe that.”
By now the water was
lapping at Kurt’s thighs. It felt like the tide coming in, only way
too rapidly. The ship’s equilibrium was changing. As the pitch
increased, loose items began sliding down the deck toward
him.
Kurt glanced up at
the woman again. She had to be in tremendous pain. He wanted to
shoot the scum who’d hung her up there, but he didn’t dare risk a
look for her tormentor.
Then the sound of
large outboard motors starting echoed from over the starboard side
of the ship. In a moment, the soft rumble turned to a fierce roar,
and what looked like a stripped-down powerboat began racing off
into the distance.
“Go,” Kurt
shouted.
His men sprang into
action.
“Hawthorne’s down,”
someone said.
“Get him up,” Kurt
shouted. “Get him and Foster into the boat.”
“What about the
search?”
“I doubt these guys
left any survivors,” he said. “Either way, you don’t have time to
look.”
The ship had tilted
ten degrees nose down, far enough for a length of chain to come
sliding toward him like a great metallic snake.
Kurt dodged the
chain. It hit the edge of the cargo hatch and poured itself into
the cavernous space below, rattling ominously as the links slid
over the edge until the chain released itself into
oblivion.
“Get off the ship,”
Kurt ordered.
“What are you going
to do?” one of his men asked.
“I’m going to get
that woman.”