by Alex Archer
First things first, she told herself. He was moaning and stirring feebly. She straightened, went to the door, took two quick looks around the doorframe, left and right down the corridor. She made sure to poke her head out at a different level in case somebody had spotted her the first time.
She saw no one. She heard plenty, though. Shouting and shooting.
A lot of shooting.
She grabbed the dead man by a foot clad in a filthy tennis shoe and dragged him inside. The dark rubber runner on the deck might hide the blood trail and it might not. A body lying right outside the doorway would be a dead giveaway. It was a slim hope. But from the sound of things, slim hope was the best she could wish for.
She shut the door and locked it from the inside. It would certainly not stop bullets, nor probably repeated kicking. But she had reflexively pulled Bima out of line with the doorway, and thus a probing burst fired blind through the door. And any attempt to break the door down would make enough noise for Annja to prepare a lethal reception.
Again it was a thin advantage. Better than none.
A nasty crack vibrated through the deck and bulkheads, a sharp sound scarcely muffled by distance. She guessed somebody had just laid into the vessel with an RPG. She knew it was the favored weapon of the modern terrorist.
Or the twenty-first century pirate.
She went quickly to the porthole. She could not see the main deck fore or aft. The superstructure spanned the hull from beam to beam. What she did see was blinding yellow-white and blue light beams stabbing the Ozymandias from several directions. She ducked back just as one swept across the port.
Pirates, she thought. A flotilla of South China Sea pirates. The only terrorists she knew of who boasted a navy that size were the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, but their home island of Sri Lanka lay as far away as Australia. And terrorists seldom mounted an operation as large as this one had to be.
As she thought, she acted. She summoned the sword. Bima was semiconscious. With luck he, or anybody he’d talk to, would pass off Annja’s suddenly plucking of a broadsword from the air to delirium. What mattered was surviving long enough for that to become an issue.
She slashed wildly at her bunk. Pirate gangs had been growing in number, size and ferocity for years. She knew it was one of the world’s great unknown stories. So many people around the Pacific Rim were so desperately poor, and the rewards from taking even a small freighter so large, that piracy was a definite growth industry.
She took a handful of linen strips back to Bima. She made a pad and quickly tied it around his middle. Blood instantly began to seep through it, a spreading stain. She had to hope the crude pressure bandage would staunch the blood loss so he had a chance of not bleeding out.
There was nothing she could do about the internal bleeding.
“What are you doing?” he croaked at her. His eyelids fluttered.
“Getting out of here,” she said. “I’m taking you with me.”
He shook his head violently. For a moment she was afraid he’d do himself damage. “Can’t! Must stay—”
“Hear that noise? There have to be a hundred pirates swarming this ship. They have automatic weapons, RPGs. You guys are hard-core, but you can’t hold out against odds like that.”
“But we fight to death,” he gasped.
She grimaced. “I know,” she said. “That’s why I’m taking you with me.”
She laced one of his arms around her neck and stood, in effect dead lifting him in an unbalanced kind of way. Fortunately he was slight, although with the density of his wire-hard muscles he probably weighed little less than she did, and she was muscular. He did help push with his legs, so at least he wasn’t dead weight.
He didn’t fight her. But he still shook his head. He wasn’t bleeding from the mouth, but the sweat flew off his face and short hair like rainwater.
“Must stay,” he said.
She had let the sword go. When she straightened, hauling the injured man upright, she had threaded the sling of his assault rifle around her right arm, her free arm. Carrying it, she guided him to the door and yanked it open.
“Must go,” she said, reeling the weapon up. She risked two more looks out, left and right. There was no one in sight—which was lucky, because she couldn’t change head-height this time. She urged Bima out into the corridor and aft. The ship’s stern was closer and seemed to offer the best chance of escape. If there’s any chance at all, she thought.
“We have to get out alive,” she said. “Otherwise your Sultan will never know what happened here.”
She didn’t know if Bima bought that. But he quit arguing, anyway. They staggered along the gangway like a dying horse.
A hatchway burst open before them. A pair of commandos in their black night uniforms sprang in and spun back. Their scimitarlike parangs flashed in their hands.
Pirates surged in toward them. They fought with swords, too, and fat-bladed bolos. The two Rimba Perak commandos were clearly their masters, but disparate numbers would soon tell. The pirates went down spurting blood and howling. The commandos gave way toward Bima and Annja.
At the outburst of clanging and cursing in half a dozen languages, Bima snapped his head up. “See?” he said. “We still fight. Let me go. I have to—”
The metal of the outer bulkhead to Annja’s right began to ring as if a jackhammer was going at it. Lances of light stabbed into the gangway behind the battling men. They seemed to walk forward.
As Bima fought to pull away, Annja rocked her weight back slightly. Then she bent forward, hard, bringing her stiffened leg at an angle across his shins. At the same time she threw her weight down and right. They went down in a judo sacrifice throw. She twisted so he’d land on top of her to minimize the extra damage the fall did to him. She grunted as her tailbone cracked the hard deck through the runner.
In the dim yellow gangway lights and the floodlights streaming in through the marching holes, men came apart in sprays of blood. The hammering went on and on, growing louder.
Bima cried out. Annja wrapped her arms around him and closed her eyes. The impacts grew horribly loud as they passed above. She smelled salt air and spilled blood.
The hammering stopped. She opened her eyes.
A line of holes passed a good three feet above Bima’s back, which heaved convulsively as he breathed.
She rolled him off her so she could stand. Then she helped him up. His eyes were huge in his dark face.
He was too stunned to resist or protest as she tottered them forward, refusing to look down, no matter how they slipped and slid on the wet wreckage the .50-caliber machine gun, raking the doomed ship at random, had made of seven men.
Somehow she got him down the metal steps. The main afterdeck was surprisingly dark. Most of the attacking vessels lay lower in the water, and aimed their searchlights upward at the Ozymandias, concentrating on her superstructure. The sounds of combat still emerged from inside, but they grew faint.
Annja and Bima stumbled toward the stern. They made it almost halfway before the hatch to her right, which led down to the hold where she had been captured, opened up. Three pirates with rags wrapped around their heads scrambled out.
Chattering among themselves they did not notice the curious four-legged beast lurching at them from the shadows. Annja screamed and fired Bima’s assault rifle from the hip, one-handed.
Her first burst raked one man’s legs. He yelled and went down. It also struck the head of the last while he was still on the ladder. He disappeared without a sound.
The two pirates on deck had slung their Kalashnikovs to scale the ladder. The one still on his feet struggled frenetically to get his weapon off his back and into action. The sling seemed to wrap him like sticky tape.
Annja had no mercy. She charged toward him as fast as she could totter. She pumped burst after burst at him. The weapon’s recoil was relatively light. It wasn’t hard to keep the muzzle from climbing.
It wasn’t accurate shooting. But accurate enough. The pira
te spun down to the deck in a whirl of blood.
The third man rolled around moaning and clutching at shattered legs. He didn’t seem to pose much threat. From the amount of blood he’d already lost he was likely to be none at all, soon.
Annja let the empty SAR-21 drop and hauled Bima to the rail. His legs gave out on him as they reached it. Easing him to the deck, she looked down.
Her heart soared as she saw a twenty-foot motor launch bobbing there, tied on by a line to the rail.
Then it plummeted as she realized it had six pirates aboard, bristling with weapons.
THE HOLD WAS an echoing black cavern. Some trouble lights clamped to stanchions shone on a large oblong crate held by bungees to grommets in the very center of it. The pale yellow wood seemed to glow in the lights.
Three men stood around it, facing outwards. Their firearms, with no more magazines to feed them, had been thrown down and kicked away to leave their feet clear. They held their distinctive Malay swords in their hands.
“No shooting,” Eddie Cao Cao commanded, striding forward. His own curve-bladed Chinese broadsword sang clear of the sheath he had thrust through his belt. “It might damage the goods.”
Around him a dozen men from half as many countries drew steel or clubs. Eager to impress the most powerful pirate chieftain in the South China Sea, they surged past him like a scruffy tide.
At the first echoing exchange four of the pirates went down. Eddie Cao Cao frowned. This was turning out to be an expensive operation. On the one hand, that meant more shares of loot for the survivors, including obviously the captain’s share. On the other, it didn’t make it easy to recruit new bravos.
The man who faced him was taller than the others, almost as tall as Eddie himself, who stood six feet tall…or anyway, no one said he didn’t. Something about him suggested he commanded. He was prominently balding and wore a resigned look. Eddie was not deceived—the man had cut down three of the pirates with remarkable speed.
Eddie strode purposefully forward. The man turned to face him, right foot advanced. As the pirate leader drew near he lunged.
With his sword hand he feinted a high attack, then whipped his blade down to his left, then back in a slash at Eddie’s legs. Eddie stepped away with his right foot. His curved blade whistled down to meet the other’s in a ringing clash.
As his two remaining men were swarmed over and hacked down he launched a desperate whirlwind attack. Eddie found himself forced to give ground. That was a surprise in itself. He was a fanatic about swordsmanship.
His men began to crowd near. Some shouted encouragement. Others seemed poised to move in and intervene to score points with the boss.
Eddie had no intention of letting that happen. This man had made him give ground. He must be seen to fall by Eddie Cao Cao’s hand, and his alone. A good pirate leader did not rule exclusively by fear. Just by a large measure of fear.
After pulling back for a brief, panting breather, the Rimba Perak commander came on again. This time Eddie gave way deliberately. Then as he stepped back with his right foot his boot slipped out from under him, as if he’d come to a patch of spilled oil—or some other fluid.
He turned to his right as he went down. Still silent, the commando raised his sword and closed for the kill.
Still turning, Eddie Cao Cao lashed out with his left leg. He was a powerful man and it was a power shot. Both his attacker’s legs were swept from beneath him.
Like a tiger Eddie sprang. As he came up he reversed his grip on his big sword. With both hands he thrust downward into his opponent’s sternum. His momentum drove the blade through his chest until the tip grated on the deck.
Eddie Cao Cao leaned on the blade until it bent. The other man glared up at him. For a wild moment Eddie feared the man would simply swarm up the sword at him like a speared boar and take him with him into death.
Then the eyes glazed. The man relaxed. His head fell to the side.
Shaking his head, Eddie Cao Cao straightened. He almost hated to put his boot on the dead man’s chest to give him leverage to pull his weapon free. But it played well—his men cheered and shook their weapons in the air.
He cleared blood from the weapon by snapping it down and right. Scabbarding it, he stalked forward to the crate.
“Open it,” he commanded.
The bungee cords were quickly removed. Instead of bothering to go for pry bars, the pirates swarmed over it, wedging in their blades, levering at the lid with clubs. It came free with a screeching of nails and fell to the deck.
Inside was a mass of tan fibrous packing-filler. “Clear it away,” Eddie said. Pirates jumped in and began to pitch the stuff out as if bailing a boat with their hands.
In a moment they had revealed the top of a metal coffin.
Eddie Cao Cao frowned. A tip from one of his carefully suborned contacts, this one in the Sultanate of Rimba Perak, had told him this ship carried cargo valuable beyond measure. Yet this coffin was the only cargo.
“Is this a joke?” he rumbled. He rubbed his wide jaw, which was fringed with blue-black beard. “If it is, then someone is going to spend a long time begging to be allowed to die.”
“Shall we open it?” one of the pirates asked. His teeth were stained red from chewing betel nut. Eddie Cao Cao found the practice revolting. But he couldn’t ban it without losing too many men. Some of the best pirates in the business wouldn’t stay if they couldn’t chew.
He looked at the coffin. His square, handsome face furrowed. He felt a strange sense of unease in the pit of his belly.
Eddie Cao Cao was not a superstitious man. But he had learned to trust his gut.
“Not now,” he said. “Put the packing back and seal it.”
He turned and strode toward the ladder. It was time to get the captured freighter under way. He had contacts or better in every level of government of every state in the region. But if such a concentration of the Red Hand fleet were spotted, by surface craft, air patrol or satellite, those contacts might not be able to forestall a fast and violent retributive strike.
For every friend, ally or hireling Eddie Cao Cao had in the South China Sea, he had a thousand enemies.
THE PIRATES HAD TIED a blue-and-white nylon rope to the taffrail to secure their boat to the bigger vessel’s stern. With only a heartbeat’s hesitation Annja went right down it feet-first.
It was a scary climb. The boat bobbed in a considerable swell. The rope jounced all around, threatening to smash her against the hull, or simply shake her loose and drop her into the black waves to drown.
The men below were preoccupied playing some kind of game in the boat. She knew she was spotted when she heard a surprised cry. Encouraging hoots followed. The pirates couldn’t believe their luck.
She kept sliding downward with her legs wrapped around the line. The last thing six heavily armed and murder-hardened thugs were going to feel by a lone woman was threatened. Even if she was probably taller than any of them. In fact they were probably focusing on nothing but the long legs and muscle-rounded rump descending toward them.
The wolf whistles rose. Annja let rope play through her hands. The nylon was relatively smooth but still tore at her palms. All she needed was for it not to tear her hands up too badly to grip.
The waves tossed the boat. As she got lower she began to time the essentially chaotic motions.
The catcalls reached a joyfully predatory crescendo. A couple of pirates stood and clapped their hands. Though Annja couldn’t understand their exclamations their tone alone would have chilled her blood to the point of congealing.
Except she—and she alone—knew what was really about to happen.
About eight feet from the boat the line snapped taut. Anticipating that, Annja had turned away and braced. She used the springlike action to leap directly into the crowd.
Abruptly her reception committee got more than they had bargained for. The hard rubber cleats of one hiking shoe took one man in the chest and slammed another in his shoulder. Both w
ent down beneath her, cushioning her landing. The man whose shoulder she struck clutched the man behind him as he fell, taking them both into the rough water in a tangle of limbs.
By this time the sword was in her hands. She was as a wolf among a flock of chickens.
One man, shrieking now in terror, got a knife cocked over his shoulder for a desperate overhand stroke but Annja lunged and knocked the man over the gunwales into the sea. Most of his crewmates did no more than raise their hands defensively and howl for mercy.
Annja cut them down with fury. It was a measure of vengeance for the brave, cheerful, courteous young men who had been butchered aboard the Ozymandias. And her only hope of escaping with the lone survivor.
The wounded men, recognizing defeat, threw themselves into the sea. They were swallowed by the rough water almost instantly.
One last man, pumping blood from his severed forearm, fell backward in the stern of the launch by the small outboard engine. With his remaining hand he brought up a double-barreled shotgun.
Annja lunged across the muck and jumble that filled the bottom of the boat. The sword pierced his throat. His eyes bulged toward her, then rolled up in his head.
She let the sword go. It vanished as the dead man seemed to melt into the bottom of the boat.
Annja rolled the dead man overboard. Then, wiping her hands clean on her shirt as best she could and trying not to fret about the blood of strangers mingling with her own in her torn-up palms, she began the tortuous climb back up the mooring rope.
The wind was rising. Spray lashed her. Adrenaline and sheer determination gave her strength to persevere.
On deck she found Bima conscious, if muzzy and weak. He lacked the strength to climb down unaided. Near exhaustion herself she was almost foolishly grateful to find a metal locker nearby with a safety rope coiled inside. She cinched the wounded man to the mooring line, eased him over the rail and onto it. She took a couple turns around her waist, looped the safety line over the rail and climbed over to join him on the thicker cable. Then with her legs wrapped about the cable and playing out the safety line through her already painfully abraded palms, she lowered them both toward the launch.