Pirate - Duncan Falconer [87]
For a few seconds none of them said anything. Like they had all realised something important. Like it was one thing to talk about pirates and the threat they posed, but something totally different to see them in person and know they were targeting you.
‘Shall we get the ’oses ready?’ one of the men asked.
‘Yeah. Let’s drown the bastards in their boat,’ said the big Marine.
‘We’re not usin’ ’oses when we’ve got guns,’ Bob said calmly. ‘You might want to take the more humane way right now. But if you end up an ’ostage of those wankers, you’ll wish you’d shot a few of ’em first chance you ’ad … Everyone got their weapons loaded?’
The men moved as one, inspired by Bob’s words. The rifles they used were not new but they had kept them well cleaned and oiled. The five men pulled back the gleaming working parts, loaded shiny magazines, released the breach blocks to fly forward on powerful springs and pick up bullets and slam them home into breaches. All five then put the ends of the barrels over the rail and aimed in the general direction of the pirate vessel.
‘Somefin’ in the water,’ the guard with the binoculars said. ‘About ’alfway between us and them.’
Bob grabbed the binoculars again, the strap yanking at the young guard’s neck, and looked along the bulker’s track until he found what the man was talking about. All he could see was something being dragged through the water.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Bob said. ‘Let’s worry about the job in ’and, shall we. If they’ve got RPGs, then they’ll probably want to engage ’em around one-fifty metres. So as soon as those bastards come within two ’undred metres, we’ll give ’em a volley to think about.’
‘What if they keep comin’?’ the big Marine asked.
‘The closer they get, the easier they’ll be to shoot,’ Bob replied.
‘Bob? Captain here.’ The voice boomed over all of the men’s radios.
‘Bob, send,’ the old team leader said into his radio.
‘They’ve got about two knots on us and are gaining.’
‘Roger that,’ Bob replied. ‘Just keep up the zig-zagging. We’ll take care of the rest,’ he added, before releasing his radio to dangle from a strap around his neck. ‘I didn’t take on this job to spend next Christmas as an ’ostage of those tossers. They close in another ’undred metres and we go to war. Is that understood?’
The men focused hard on the pirate vessel. Bob had said enough. They did not intend to be captured either. A war it was going to be then.
‘Come on you bastards!’ one of them shouted.
Stratton leaned up to look at Lotto’s boat. He could tell the pirates were gaining on him. He could see men running along its sides. Preparing to lower a couple of speedboats into the water. He would be impressed if they could do it at speed.
They could. A boat dropped into the water off the starboard side, held there on a line by crewmen. A couple of men jumped down into it and the crewmen let the line go and the boat dropped behind as the men went to fire up the engines. More crew lowered the other boat into the water on the port side and it bobbed around as a second team jumped into it.
Stratton felt for the pouch attached to the front of his harness. Touched the knife that was still inside. He took it out and held tightly on to it, not sure what he was going to do when they came alongside him.
Then the tension suddenly went from Stratton’s line like it had snapped and he slowed to a stop, no longer being towed by the bulker.
Stratton couldn’t believe what was happening. He’d held on to the possibility that the pirates would eventually give up and pull off. That one of the ship’s crew might spot him and initiate his rescue. But suddenly that was all over. The end of the road had arrived. The end that he had fought