Pirate - Duncan Falconer [76]
Stratton thought about how he used to be. When he was young and full of piss and vinegar, it had been a simple process to fob off the deaths of colleagues. You accepted that it was all a part of the risk of the job. And if anyone got uptight about that, they should never have joined up. He recognised the sentiments of exuberant, carefree and ambitious youth, but also those of the mandarins at the top who ran everything. They could be even more ruthless. They had to be. Few of them had done anything more dangerous than run a desk or an ops room. Some had been exposed to the level of field operations Stratton had, but not many.
The more time Stratton spent in the field, the more operatives he knew personally died or ended up in wheelchairs, and the deeper the psychological wounds that cut into him. And not all of them healed. Not fully. The kind of wounds you never got rid of.
Like Hopper would be.
Stratton felt a chill run through him. He looked up at the North Star and made another slight adjustment of the tiller. Satisfied he was on course, he tied off the tiller.
He went to the cabin and reached over the girl to search through the bag of clothes, found a thick old sweater and pulled it on. The elbows had gone and it had a large hole on one side, but otherwise it would help keep out the night air.
He stepped out of the wheelhouse and looked behind them again. He couldn’t help it. But until the pair of them were aboard a vessel and heading for civilisation he would always be looking over his shoulder. The edge of the sea had been black as pitch all around them for hours. He looked back again and something registered in his mind. Something insignificant to the point of being non-existent but he couldn’t look away. The black sea met the lighter sky and the only light came from the stars. He thought maybe he had seen one shoot down past the horizon.
After a long hard look, he was about to face the front when he saw a tiny speck of light appear for less than a second. So faint that he still wasn’t sure if he had actually seen anything.
He stared, suspecting his eyes of playing tricks on him. His mind began to run at the possibilities. If a vessel, it could have come from only one source: the pirate town. It was directly behind them. It could be from nowhere else.
The light appeared again. This time for a moment longer. It was real. It was a light. He hadn’t imagined it. It had to be a boat of some kind.
He realised what it had to be, following directly in their track, and how it was doing it. It had to be the pirate mother ship. It didn’t need daylight to see them. It had radar.
He felt a flush of fear run through him then he brought it under control. The implications were clear enough. Which amounted to nothing more complicated than death if they were caught again. Lotto had discarded the girl once and would not even bring her back to the town this time. And if the master wasn’t on board, those would undoubtedly be his orders. Stratton doubted the girl would let herself be taken again only to go through the ordeal of a gang rape before being killed. As for him? Lotto had threatened to amputate his feet and Stratton didn’t doubt for a second that the leader would do a lot worse this time. He wouldn’t see land again if the ship got them.
It gave the chase clear parameters. Escape or die trying.
He continued