As she looked at him, Lotto realised it was the Chinese girl. ‘Don’t just stand there staring,’ he screamed. ‘Shoot them!’
Every Somali with a gun ran to the front of the vessel and let rip.
On the bulker, the security guards had been watching the pirate boat close in. When Lotto opened fire, they assumed the bullets had been aimed at them.
‘Right,’ Bob exclaimed. ‘They want a battle. We’ll give ’em one. Section,’ he shouted, reliving his days in the Royal Marines as a troop commander. Bob had never seen action although he had spent almost twenty years in the mob. He’d done a lot of training, numerous section attacks across Dartmoor in his early days and then much later in the Omani desert in preparation for the first Gulf War. Sadly nothing ever came of it for him and the action had ended by the time he arrived in Iraq. Before that he’d completed a couple of stints in Northern Ireland but it had all gone quiet by the time he arrived, apart from the occasional roadside bomb that he only ever saw the aftermath of. A year after he left the Corp to become a civilian, the Twin Towers in New York were brought down and the lads went into Afghanistan along with the Yanks. He had remained philosophical about it, telling his mates down the pub that life was like that in the military. Some people saw loads of action while others saw none. The luck of the draw. He hadn’t been overly bothered about it on the surface. But deep down he always wished he’d seen at least one bit of real contact. His wife of twenty-five years was glad that he had left the Marines safe and sound but for his sake she wished he’d fired his gun in anger at least once, as long as he hadn’t hit anyone.
Truth was, Bob regretted that he had devoted the best part of his life to the military and had never had a single opportunity to ply the trade he had dedicated himself to for so many years.
Things were about to change in that regard.
When the Somalis opened up on Lotto’s orders, a couple of rounds zinged off the metal surfaces near the men. Bob felt a bullet ricochet somewhere around his feet. He didn’t flinch, calling, ‘Enemy front, rapid fire!’
The team let rip in unison, Bob blinking at the shock of the weapons clattering right beside him. He held his grimace as he stared back at the enemy. For a brief second he was in soldier’s heaven. He was in command. The enemy coming at them. His men engaging them. It was a moment to live for.
The private security detachment fired directly into the pirate vessel, the weapons in the hands of men who knew how to use them.
Rounds peppered the pirate boat and hit several pirates before they could take cover. One fell overboard and disappeared beneath the water.
Lotto dropped to his belly on the deck behind the metal sides as bullets flew around him. Windows in the bridge shattered, the wheelman taking a round in the chest and dropping out of sight.
Bob wanted more than to simply stand and give orders. ‘Give me that,’ he said to the man nearest to him who was about to reload his rifle. Bob removed the empty magazine, took a full one from the man’s pouch, loaded it on to the weapon, cocked it, aimed and loosed off a staccato burst of fire. He had never been quite so content as at that moment in his life firing at the enemy. Never again would he meet the question ‘So, you see any action in your time then?’ with a shrug before admitting that he hadn’t. Now he could do the same as so many other old soldiers who had tasted battle when asked the same question. ‘A little,’ he would say, and then nothing else, knowing it wasn’t a lie and letting the imagination of whomever had asked to run away with them.
‘They’ve fired a bloody torpedo at us!’ shouted one of the men.
Bob stopped firing to look down on to the water. Sure enough, something large was hurtling along towards the back of the boat.
Stratton ripped through the bulker’s wake completely unaware of the firefight raging above. He couldn’t hear it. He could hardly hear anything at all because his head was thrashing in and out of the speeding water. He had other more pressing issues to attend to. He had avoided being executed by Lotto one more time but instead he had sent himself hurtling towards the prop. He realised the line had gone around the prop and that he had barely seconds to do something to stop himself from going through the blades.
As he buffeted along he had kept a firm hold of the knife. He fought to look ahead and caught sight of the stern. The seconds were running down. The truest indication of how close he was to the propeller came when all daylight disappeared and he got dragged under the water.
He grabbed for the line and drew the edge of the blade across it.
In an instant the prop thrust him upwards and he burst to the surface, launched up into the wake. He spun in the wash, gasping for air, with something running across his body. It was the line, cutting into his life jacket, with the girl on the end of it hurtling towards him. The second before she collided with him he yanked the blade across it and she rolled to a stop face down, her arms and legs thrashing in desperation.
Stratton grabbed hold of her and yanked her over. She choked and spluttered as she fought to catch her breath, instinctively clutching at him as if she might go under again.
‘It’s OK,’ Stratton said. ‘It’s me. You’re OK.’
She regained her breath enough to look at him through feverishly blinking eyes.
But it wasn’t over. The back of the bulker was fast moving away. He thought he could see people on the stern and he waved in the hope that they gave a damn about who he and the girl were. As the carrier steamed away, Stratton continued to wave his arms at them.
The security guards had been stunned when the torpedo turned into a person, and then two.
‘Bleedin’ ’ell!’ one of them exclaimed. The comment seemed to satisfy the moment for them all.
‘Who the hell are they?’ another said.
‘They don’t look black,’ another offered. ‘Maybe they ain’t pirates.’
‘Man overboard!’ Bob shouted into his radio, keeping an eye on the pirate vessel. It had turned away and was still going full speed, its two speedboats alongside it. He knew it had been plastered by rounds and wasn’t surprised to see it withdraw.
One of the guards grabbed a life ring from a rail and tossed it as hard as he could off the back of the boat.
‘Launch a lifeboat,’ Bob shouted and a couple of his men hurried away. ‘Captain, this is Bob. You can slow the ship and cancel evasive manoeuvring. The pirates have had enough. We’ve got a couple of people in the water we need to pick up.’
‘Roger. Understood,’ the captain replied.
Bob and the remaining guards stared at the two people in the water who by then had become tiny specks.
‘I wonder who the bloody ’ell they are,’ one of them said.
It was what they were all thinking.
15
A steel, pyramid-shaped baggage cage, on the end of a heavy, twisted cable, rose up the side of the bulker as it cruised along at slow speed. The sun shone high in the sky, giving the ocean a deep and inviting look. A gentle breeze rounded off the tops of the waves that lapped against the huge orange-painted side of the vessel. Stratton and the girl stood on a narrow rim around the bottom of the basket hanging on to its rope surrounds as it ascended. The lifeboat that had rescued them rode the swell below, its two crewmen attaching the shackles to its ends before it would also be winched aboard.
The Chinese girl still felt in a daze. Once again she had been reprieved, having left her life in the hands of the ocean and been prepared to accept the inevitable. She experienced the same clarity of thought as she had after deciding against suicide before dawn that day. But this time it wouldn’t be a temporary reprieve. She was free of that living nightmare. The ship was large and powerful. It had electricity, engines, food and warmth. Civilised people operated it and had aimed it towards a civilised port that would connect her with her home. She could hardly believe it.