"Bring up the sixty and my twelve," Teach told his second mate.
"Aye, sir."
The whip-thin redhead scrambled to obey. Brief moments later, he was back, handing Teach the black Benelli M-1 Super 90 semiautomatic shotgun they had looted from a Haitian fishing boat some two years back. As for himself, the mate cradled a modified M-60 machine gun, its barrel shortened and fitted with a forward pistol grip, the ammo belt neatly folded into a side-mounted box on the left. Cosmetic modifications aside, it would still spew 7.62 mm rounds at a cyclic rate of some 600 rounds per minute, fast and deadly enough to sweep the deck of any target vessel Billy Teach was likely to select.
The other members of his crew were armed, as well, with knives and handguns of their choice, but they were under standing orders not to fire unless their captain gave the word. Teach didn't mind a bit of bloodshed on his raids-it was traditional, in fact-but in the ideal situation, he decided who should live and who should die. Unless they were embroiled in mortal combat with a well-armed foe, he would not leave that choice to lowly deckhands and the like.
"Remember to stay out of sight with that until I give the word," Teach told his mate. It was unnecessary-might even have been insulting to a man with sharper wits-but he was answered with a brisk "Aye, Captain" and a nod for emphasis.
The Ravager was running with the wind now, and Billy Teach lingered at the toe rail, enjoying the breeze and salt spray in his face. He held the shotgun down against his leg. There was no need for a bracing hand against the toe rail. Billy Teach had grown up on the ocean, or in such proximity that he could hear and smell it in his sleep. He had developed sea legs long before most boys his age had learned to run a football down the field for no damn reason he could ever understand. What kind of sport was that, when you could spend your best days on the water, hunting other men?
And women, aye. Best not forget the women he had glimpsed aboard their target. From what Billy Teach had seen, this lot would more than make up for the one who got away.
There had been some concern about the female prisoner's escape, initially, but Teach had managed to convince himself that she was dead. A city girl and landlubber like that, what chance did she have on the open water, miles and miles from anywhere, without provisions or a hint of how to navigate?
No chance at all.
The sharks and 'cuda would have done for her by now, if she had not been caught up in a squall and simply drowned, or died from thirst and hunger in the open boat she stole. There had been talk of going after her, but it had seemed too risky in the long run. Better to let nature take its course, and if by some bizarre fluke she was found alive-what of it? How could she direct the law to a location she had only seen but briefly, in the early-morning light, as she was fleeing for her life, without a chart or any instruments to guide her?
The wind was brisk behind them, and they had already closed the distance to their target by half. When Teach raised the spyglass again, he saw that their intended prey had sighted them, as well. The two young women on the foredeck had their tops on now, both sitting up and staring back at him, an eerie sense that they could somehow see him, read his mind.
Well, let them. Even witchy magic wouldn't save them now.
There was a third young woman, equally attractive, standing near the wheelhouse, where three men were clustered, one piloting the yacht, his two companions arguing. Not with each other, it appeared, but with the tall man at the wheel. Teach had no skill at reading lips and couldn't tell what they were saying, but he wondered if they were alarmed at the appearance of another vessel here and now. He hoped they wouldn't run for it, but if they did...
When they were still two hundred yards distant from the yacht, Teach faced the stern and called out to a couple of his crewmen standing in the push pit, "Hoist the flag! Let's show these lubbers who we are! "
"SO WHAT THE HELL IS THIS shit?" Tommy Gilpin muttered.
"What?" Jon asked, peering at the console first, as if expecting trouble with the gauges, finally lifting his eyes to scope the sailboat that was closing on their port side, forward, running with the wind.
Jon saw what Tommy had and echoed him. "What is that?"
Barry pointed with the neck of his Corona bottle and remarked, "Looks like a flag to me."
Now, that pissed off Tommy. He knew it was a flag, for Christ's sake. The thing that bugged him was what kind of flag.
"It's black," said Jon. "What kind of flag is that? Does anybody know? Is that some kind of quarantine alert?"
"It's not all black," said Tommy, glaring at the sailboat as it drew inexorably closer. He could see some kind of white insignia, dead center on the flapping midnight field, but it was still too far away for him to make it out. "Get the binoculars."
Barry retrieved them, but he didn't offer them to Tommy. Leaning forward as he scanned the sailboat, shoulders hunched, he momentarily reminded Tommy Gilpin of a character in some effete yacht-racing movie, take your pick, dressed to the nines but casual enough to make a stranger think he didn't really care about the way he looked.
As for himself, now, he felt nothing but the most appropriate, well-reasoned confidence in his ability to cope with any situation that arose. Star quarterback in high school and at Princeton, now the second in his class at Harvard Law, with only a pathetic egghead nerd in front of him, he-
"Jesus, it's a skull and watcha-callit!" Barry said. "Those bones, you know?"
"A skull and crossbones?" Jon suggested.
"Right. Now, what the hell-"
"A pirate flag," said Tommy. "Shit! We need to make a run for it."
"You kidding me?" The grin was vintage Barry. "Hell, it has to be some kind of joke!"
"I don't think so," said Megan, sidling close to Barry, waiting for his arm to loop across her naked shoulders.
"Hey, now, babe-"
"You don't think what?" Felicia asked, coming to join them in the wheelhouse, Robin close behind her.
"Someone on that boat just raised a goddamn Jolly Roger," Tommy told them both.
"A what?"
"A pirate flag, okay? You never saw one on TV? I don't have time to lead a seminar in history right now, if that's all right. We need to get the hell away from here, as fast as possible."
"Listen to yourself, would you? A damn Jolly Roger? And you're gonna take it seriously?"
"Yeah, I am," Tommy snapped at Barry, hating him in a heartbeat with an intensity he never would have believed possible. Sure, old Bare was a pain in the ass sometimes-most of the time, in fact-but he was also the life of most parties. This time, however, Tommy Gilpin had a sneaking hunch that his secondbest friend's laid-back attitude just might get them killed.
He brought the wheel around and opened up the throttle, feeling the Salome's big screws biting water, accelerating off the mark. She was supposed to have a cruising speed in the vicinity of twenty knots-around twenty-three miles per hour in plain English-but he hadn't tested her for speed and had no way of knowing if the maximum, assuming she delivered, would be good enough.
Some precious time was wasted as he veered off course, doubly lost now that he was running for his life, abandoning a heading that had been uncertain in the first place. Where the hell was land? How far away? The compass on his console told him they were running eastward now, which should have put the Windward Islands somewhere dead ahead, but would he miss them? Would they even get that far, before the Salome was overtaken?