Who were they? Then Jude remembered what Hercules had told him.
The three a-holes on D Deck. Our esteemed passengers.
None of the three was smiling. The captain and mates didn’t seem very happy to see them, either. But that might have been because of the pistol that the man with the case was holding in his right hand. It was pointing right at them.
‘Carter? What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?’ Jude heard Captain O’Keefe demand in a loud voice full of outrage.
Jude whipped out of sight, scrambling back up the ladder and over the railing to the flying bridge. He froze there for a few instants, shaking and numb with shock at what he’d just seen. What was he supposed to do next? The rational part of him told him to remain hidden where nobody could see him.
To hell with rational. He had to keep watching.
He clutched the railing and let himself dangle head-first over the edge, terrified that the strong wind and the motion of the ship might cause him to slip and go plummeting to his death on the deck far below. Even more terrified that he might be spotted from inside the bridge.
Hanging upside down and clinging on for dear life, he peered through the glass.
The three mates were staring in bewilderment as the captain yelled at the man with the case. ‘Lower that weapon, Carter, you hear me? This wasn’t part of the deal.’
Those words hit Jude like a brick. The deal?
From the looks on the faces of Wilson, Guzman and Marshall, they had absolutely no idea what O’Keefe was talking about, either.
Jude hung on tight and kept watching.
The sound of the first gunshot almost made him let go.
The man called Carter showed not the smallest flicker of emotion as he shot the captain. O’Keefe clutched his chest and crumpled to the floor of the bridge. Then Carter turned the pistol on a stunned Frank Wilson and shot him in the head before he could react. Blood spattered the window.
Then the other two mystery passengers pulled out pistols of their own. Guzman took two bullets to the chest and one in the back as he tried to bolt for the outer exit. The last man standing, Ricky Marshall, made a valiant attempt to wrestle a weapon from one of the gunmen before he, too, was cut down and collapsed to the floor.
Paralysed with horror, still gaping through the bloody glass, Jude could barely breathe. As the speedboats kept getting nearer and nearer to the ship, he was realising that events much more complex and sinister than a simple pirate attack were unfolding. The Svalgaard Andromeda had just been hijacked from inside.
What happened next confused and bewildered him even more.
Chapter 13
The man sometimes known as Ty Carter, sometimes by other aliases as the sensitive nature of his work dictated, and rarely ever by his real name Lee Pender, walked calmly towards the bodies. Blood was already pooling thick on the bridge floor, spreading in rivulets this way and that with the motion of the ship. Carter disliked getting his shoes messy, and was careful to avoid the blood as he crouched over each body in turn and used his free hand to ensure none had a pulse. He had performed such checks many times before in his long career, and was as skilful as any surgeon.
Satisfied that all four were dead, he stood up and turned to his two accomplices with a nod. Their names were White and Brown, which amused him. They were mere hirelings, short-order trigger men paid to do exactly as he told them. So far, they’d proved perfectly capable at their job, and been equally good at taking his money without asking questions. To an operator like Pender, who trusted no one, secrecy was an essential part of life, and never more than now. Because if White and Brown had had any inkling whatsoever of what this was all about — the hit in Oman, the purpose of this sea voyage and, most of all, the nature of the item he was carrying inside the case attached to his left wrist — he was certain they would waste as little time killing him for it as he had in dispatching its former owner.
Which wasn’t a worry for Pender, because he intended to beat them to the punch. The plan was about to enter its next phase. White and Brown had fulfilled their purpose and their services would no longer be required. Aside from anything else, after several days cooped up in their company on this vile tub, Pender couldn’t stand them any longer.
‘Thank you for your help,’ he said to them. ‘You’re fired.’
He shot White first, because he’d observed that White was just a touch quicker on the uptake than Brown. The single bullet blew the back of White’s head off and spattered the control console with blood and brains. Pender instantly turned the gun on Brown and pulled the trigger again. Brown caught it in the throat and dropped his weapon as he went staggering backwards, then slumped against the wall and slid to the floor.
Pender shot each of them once more in the head, just to be sure. Then put away his pistol and walked to the window to watch the fun and games that were about to begin. The boats were fast approaching. Khosa’s men would soon be here, right on schedule.
Jude had witnessed the whole thing. Peering upside down through the window as the gunman opened fire on the second of his own accomplices, he decided he’d seen enough. He dropped down the ladder like a gymnast. For an instant he was certain he must surely have been spotted, and fully expected to hear more gunfire behind him: shattering glass and the shock of the bullet as he scrambled away.
But the killer was too busy slaughtering his own men to notice. Jude hit the deck at a sprint, his legs pumping faster and harder than he’d ever run in his life. No time to try to understand what he’d just seen, or what was happening. The angry buzz of the incoming speedboats was getting louder. It was all happening at once, and so fast. There was nothing Jude could do about the gunman who’d taken control of the bridge. Right now, all that mattered was keeping the attackers from getting on the ship. He had to find Mitch and the others, and alert them. What they could possibly do, he had no idea.
If the sound of pistol shots from the bridge hadn’t already raised the alarm, the sudden crackle of automatic rifles and the splat of gunfire rattling off the side of the ship certainly did. Jude ran to the edge of the deck and peeked downwards over the rail, and his blood froze at the surreal sight of the two boats down below, coming right up alongside the Andromeda’s hull, crowded with pirates.
There were about fourteen or fifteen of them, but it might as well have been an army a hundred strong. They were thin and ragged in dirty T-shirts and shorts, mean and aggressive and visibly psyched up for war. Every one of them was armed with an assault weapon that Jude recognised from their distinctive banana-shaped magazines as Kalashnikovs. The mother ship, some kind of trawler, was still some way behind, but closing in rapidly.
As Jude watched the unthinkable happening right there in front of him, he saw muzzle flash from one of the boats and ducked back just in time before bullets whanged and sparked off the rail where he’d been standing a second ago. He rolled away from the edge, then sprang to his feet and went racing along the deck, frantically searching for his fellow crewmen.
Then he saw them.
A group of five crewmen, Mitch, Condor, Gerber, Lang and another sailor called Trent, were at the station just forward of the superstructure where the main high-pressure hose was kept, frantically getting ready to deploy the water jet in an attempt to repel the boarding that everyone knew was going to begin at any moment. The gunfire was almost continuous now, with bullets pinging everywhere and slapping off metal. The pirates seemed to know exactly where to concentrate their fire, making it impossible to get the hose over the side without getting shot to pieces. Running hard with his head down, Jude saw his friends were hopelessly pinned down on the deck where the upwards angle of the gunfire couldn’t reach them.