Without warning

‘How long until we are intercepted?’ asked Shah.

‘Two to three hours, depending on how hard we can push the second engine. I don’t want to blow it too, though. If we get stuck without any propulsion at all, we’re royally buggered.’

‘Then I shall take all of the civilians outside for a live fire exercise,’ the Gurkha said. ‘It would be best if they hear the guns before the real shooting starts.’

‘Yes, it would be,’ agreed Jules. ‘Who knows, it might even put off our chasers.’

It didn’t, but the live fire did give her some hope and, she supposed, her charges too. Sergeant Shah gathered everyone on the boat deck at the stern and had them fire off three rounds. One individually; one in their fire teams; and one en masse. It was the latter that gave everyone some heart. Shah had assembled quite an armoury for the yacht and the roar of so many guns firing all at once was more than impressive – it was actually frightening. The youngest children, who would be having nothing to do with the fight, as agreed, were all herded inside during the exercise, but it was still loud enough to upset them. Quite a few of the adults, too, Julia

But when the single crack of thunder had dissipated on the strong ocean breeze, what remained were forty-one people, most of whom were gri

‘Bring it on!’ yelled Fifi, leaping onto a diving locker and waving her ass at the small dot of the pursuing vessel. ‘You want some of this? Come and get it, baby!’

The younger members of the crew laughed and gri

‘Maybe we should be the pirates,’ said the Rhino, who stood beside Jules on the pool deck, above the display. He was wearing a side arm for the first time and his eyes were hidden behind a pair of dark aviator glasses. His face was flushed, but Jules couldn’t smell any rum on his breath. He was smoking, of course.

‘How long, Rhino?’

‘Less than an hour.’

Julia

First blood went to Fifi. As the Viarsa 1, a red-hulled 2000-to

Fifi took her time, adjusting to the relative rise and fall of the two vessels. With the Viarsa 1 coming up astern, she had a clear view of the vessel’s foredeck and bridge. She had intended to unload a magazine into the wheelhouse, hopefully cutting down some of the more important crew members, but as the distance between hunter and prey collapsed, an infinitely more tempting target presented itself. At least a dozen men, all armed, began to gather near the bow of the Viarsa, pointing at the super-yacht and occasionally firing the odd random shot.

Fifi waited in her little tent, patiently tracking the closely grouped cluster of men with her sights. Three times she imagined squeezing off a burst – but she held her fire, waiting to see what the arrhythmic dance of the two ships did to her aim. Once, as the Rules fell hard a-port into a boiling black trench, she would’ve missed completely. The second and third times, however, were fine.

On the fourth occasion that the two ships lined up, she was ready. The battered, rusting trawler had pulled to within two hundred metres. The boarding party had stopped firing, possibly at the behest of a large bearded man who had just rushed down onto the deck. He was yelling and gesticulating, obviously warning them to move away. The eerie quiet of the Rules, the complete lack of any movement on deck, had apparently u

She breathed out and squeezed the trigger.

The PKM began its harsh industrial jackhammering and lines of tracer arced out across the ocean to kiss the bow of the Viarsa 1. She had a 200-round box mag loaded with Russian-standard 7.62 rifled cartridge and tracer. The long, whipping line of light ribboned across the gap between the ships almost instantly and tore the men apart. She fired in three separate bursts, as hot spent casings bounced off the tented tarpaulin and stung her whenever they touched exposed flesh. Only two of her prey survived. The bearded man who had rushed onto the deck to warn his comrades of the danger they faced, and another who dived for cover as soon as her first target disintegrated in a shower of blood and body pieces.

She noticed a twinkling light on the roof of the wheelhouse and rolled off her perch a split second before the tarpaulin was chewed to pieces by the line of return fire.

… whump whump…

Two lines of grey smoke reached out for the Viarsa’s twinkling star, which disappeared inside twin explosions as the rocket-propelled grenades detonated, taking out the machine-gun. Fifi heard another snarling burst of automatic fire and wondered whether Shah or one of his men had also targeted the bridge, as she had intended to. Belly-crawling to her next firing station, where Dietmar waited with a fresh box of ammunition, she didn’t dare put her head up to look.

The Rules was now taking fire from the length of the trawler.

Sergeant Narayan Shah, formerly of Her Majesty’s Royal Gurkha Rifles, had disposed of his resources very well. Five independent fire teams, providing coverage for the length of the super-yacht, with the least experienced or reliable provided with the best cover.

Peering at the Viarsa 1, he had to wonder who was ru