The trapdoor had cut the number of guards in half, but it was still too many to take on in such close quarters.
“What’s going on?” Didi asked no one in particular.
Hakeem remembered Malik’s and Aziz’s wild story about the mess hall being empty. He looked around with superstitious dread. There was something not right with this ship, and his heightened desire to get off had nothing to do with the possibility of a fire.
Two pirates tried unsuccessfully to lift the slab of steel, while their comrades pounded on the metal from the other side. The smoke was growing thicker.
“Leave them,” Didi shouted, also feeling that things were not what they seemed.
He led the charge up the stairs, not noticing that the guard he had posted earlier wasn’t there. What started as a fast walk turned into a jog and then an outright sprint.
This guy has the instincts of a rat, Juan thought. He slowed his pace so he could talk to the op center without attracting attention. “Linda, are you tracking us?”
“I’ve got you.”
“I can’t grab Didi with all these guards. When we break out onto the deck I want you to hit us. Got it?”
“Got it.”
They climbed up past the corridor with the nearest secret entrance and emerged on the main deck by the gangplank. The moment they set foot outside the superstructure and into the burning sun, a lance of water from a fire-suppression cannon hit Didi square in the chest. The blast sent him back into his men, dropping three of them. Linc wrapped his big arms around two who had managed to stay on their feet and crashed their heads together with a dull knock. Had he wanted to, he could have cracked their skulls, but he was satisfied when they dropped to the deck.
Hakeem ignored the torrent sloshing across his feet and stared at Juan in disbelief. The gush of seawater had scoured the makeup from his face and torn away the sunglasses to reveal his piercing blue eyes. His shout of alarm rose above the wail of women doused by the blast. He was swinging his AK to his hip when Juan slammed into him with his shoulder, driving the pirate into the ship’s rail. The impact was enough to curl the pirate’s finger around the trigger.
A juddering blast of autofire ripped from the gun. Fortunately, it passed harmlessly over the heads of the milling women and children, but it turned what had been an orderly exodus into a stampede and caught the attention of other armed men.
Juan vented his rage into the Somali by ramming an elbow into his stomach. Hakeem’s Kalashnikov clattered to the deck. As the pirate’s eyes goggled and his mouth worked to suck air into his deflated lungs, Cabrillo hit him again on the point of the jaw hard enough to fling him over the rail. Juan glanced over to see Hakeem had the bad luck of landing not in the narrow band of water separating the ship from the dock but on the transom of the fishing boat he’d first used in his attack on the Oregon. By the way Hakeem’s neck was twisted, Juan knew it was broken and the pirate was dead.
He couldn’t be more pleased.
He pushed through the panicked throng of Somalis. Water continued to fountain from the fire cannon, splattering against the ship, so it was like running through a cyclone. No one seemed to notice his white skin until a boy of maybe six carrying a stack of sheets and towels saw him and opened his mouth to shout a warning. Juan pinched his arm in the hopes of making the kid start crying, a sound coming from dozens of wailing children trying to get off the ship with their mothers. Instead, the boy dropped to the deck and wrapped his arms around Juan’s leg. Cabrillo tried to pull away, but the boy hung on with the tenacity of a moray eel. Then he made the mistake of trying to bite Cabrillo’s calf. Having never seen or even heard of a dentist, the boy clamped down as hard as he could and managed to snap off four of his baby teeth. He started to bawl as blood dripped from his blubbering lips.
Cabrillo shook the kid loose and reached his teammates. “Come on, guys.”
Mohammad Didi was almost on his feet. The water had torn away his shirt, revealing a chest riddled with shrapnel scars, while water dripped from his beard. Looking like a drowned rat, he was more determined than ever to get off the Oregon. He lunged forward and ran into the proverbial immovable object.
Franklin Lincoln towered over the Somali warlord.
“Not so fast, my friend,” the big man said, and grabbed Didi around the upper arm while at the same time pulling the pirate’s pistol from its holster.
“Help me!” Didi shouted to his men.
The powerful jet of water and the spatter it kicked up when it hit the deck made it impossible to see what was happening just ten feet away, but the yell galvanized Didi’s men. They started forward, shielding their eyes from the spray, their rifles held one-handed. Fingers were an ounce of pressure away from loosening a barrage.
“Let’s go!” Juan helped drag Didi deeper into the superstructure, with Eddie covering their rear.
The pirates broke through the waterfall-like cascade, and as soon as their eyes adjusted to the dim interior they realized that their leader was in trouble. One of them triggered off a half dozen rounds, ignoring the danger to Didi.
Juan felt the heat of the bullets singe his neck before they hit the ceiling and ricocheted down the passageway.
Running backward, Eddie put the gunman down with a double tap from his AK, then thumbed the selector to automatic and fired a wild volley of his own. The three remaining pirates dove flat, giving the team time to round a corner.
Juan took point position, listening to Linda in his ear for warnings about other pirates still on board. He paused at a corner when she told him there was an armed Somali a few feet from him. He peeked around the junction, saw the man’s back was to him, and gave him a rap on the back of the head with the AK’s butt.
Either he had miscalculated or the pirate had the hardest skull in the world, because the man turned on Juan and rammed his gun into Juan’s stomach, shoving him far away enough so he could take a shot.
Juan kicked out with his left foot as the gun swung toward him, pinning the barrel against the wall. The gunman tried to yank it free but couldn’t. Cabrillo swung his AK like a baseball bat and hit the pirate in the head a second time. The blow opened a gash on his cheek and sent him sprawling.
Linda’s next warning came the instant Juan looked farther up the corridor. Two more pirates emerged from the mess hall, their guns blazing. Juan took a bullet just above his right ankle, the impact making him stagger. He lost his balance and was falling when Eddie grabbed his arm and yanked him back around the corner.
“You okay?” Seng asked.
Juan flexed his knee. “Peg leg seems all right.” Below the knee, Juan Cabrillo had a prosthetic leg thanks to a hit from an artillery shell from a Chinese destroyer during a mission for the National Underwater and Marine Agency. It is what the boy on deck broke his teeth on.
Cabrillo adjusted his headset, which had come loose. “Talk to me, Linda.”
“The two who just fired are taking cover positions at the mess hall door and you’ve got a half dozen more coming up from behind.”
“Eddie, watch our back.”
Juan ran across the hall to one of the cabins. The door was locked, and there hadn’t been enough time for the Somalis to force it open and strip the cabin bare. Juan rammed a master key into the handle and threw the door open. The cabin was supposed to be for the ship’s chief engineer, so it was smaller than the captain’s cabin Eddie had used earlier. The furniture was still cheap to maintain the ruse that the Oregonwas little more than a scow, and the décor consisted of Spanish bullfighting posters and models of sailing ships in bottles. He strode through the cabin and into the small head. Above the porcelain sink was a mirror affixed to the bulkhead with glue. He jabbed the barrel of his AK into the glass and smashed it to fragments. He plucked one the size of a playing card off the linoleum floor and raced out of the room.