It wasn’t pretty, but it was a story that she had to tell, however she could, and writing it down was a good thing. It could be immortalised that way, and not diluted as the years went by to be inflated in the retelling or else miss out the parts that were most important, and she realised not for the first time how easy it was to retell a story with the benefit of hindsight and the experiences of others to add to it.
The day they were introduced to twenty-first century piracy was a day that Leah’s burgeoning faith in human nature took two to the head and one in the chest. She had never encountered people with such a low regard for human life until then. Sure, they had met some real bastards along the way, but they had just been bad men intent on hurting people or, more often, taking things that others had worked hard for.
These people though, she shuddered at calling them people, were something entirely different.
Human life just seemed so… so disposable to them. So worthless. Like people who mistreated animals, this lot had such little empathy, almost whatever the opposite of empathy was, when it came to the suffering of others. It wasn’t like they were sick in the head, not like the people who actually enjoyed seeing the suffering of living things, it was more that they just didn’t recognise it. It didn’t affect them or matter to them at all.
Marie said they were ‘quite literally apathetic’, which she took to mean that they were unable to consider the feelings of others, but that just didn’t seem to be strong enough. Leah thought they were the most disgusting and vile human beings on Earth, and she hadn’t lost one single night of sleep over what they, what she, did to them.
It was a small war of good versus evil, and it was the only conflict she’d ever been in where she never questioned whether she was one of the good guys or had to justify taking a life, like it was a ‘them or us’ scenario.
It was never, ever, going to be them. Not after what they did.
Like everyone who never watched the news on television when they were younger, Leah was blissfully unaware of any current events occurring outside of her immediate circle of influence. Given that the news stopped being a thing when she was twelve, a whole eight years before this part of her life happened, it was little wonder that her only knowledge of pirates was from kids’ shows and those big-budget movies where she would lose track of the plot and where the main character was, how Kate would put it, ‘of questionable mental health’.
Mitch, being in the know about these things and having been briefed for a training operation in northern Kenya before everyone died, was able to shed an alarming amount of light on the subject. That said, even he was shocked to see that the shittiest slice of life survived to continue in their unique style after the whole world went to hell.
Leah walked off the inactivity of sitting still and writing, taking in the late summer evening by the edge of the clear water of the sea as her newest sidekick, who she had called Ares, bounced along in the shallow water like he’d never experienced such fun before in his short life. He was the biggest of the litter by far and although Nemesis’ daughter Athena had bred with some lumpy mongrel from the town and turned her nose up at the attentions of the well-bred dog brought from The Orchards for the task, he had turned out okay in the end. The pups all had the dominant appearance of their ancestor and all looked like German shepherds unless a knowledgeable eye paid closer attention, but Ares was that much bigger than his litter brothers and sisters, which made Leah chose him over the loyalty she had found with her previous bitch.
Ash was gone by then, succumbed to old age and arthritis and buried high on the hill where she liked to think he could still look down on her, his head cocked to one side and the tips of his large ears meeting in the middle.
Ares had a wide head, a thick set of shoulders and haunches, and was already a fast dog, if he could concentrate long enough to recall the current length of his legs, that was. He was an ungainly puppy, constantly bumping into things and banging his head on doorways that had a cruel habit of jumping out on him.
Leah’s daughter was approaching ten years old in that summer, and parts of her still couldn’t believe that she had created such a beautiful little creature. Lucien was obviously responsible for her good looks, but gallantly claimed that she was a beautiful as her mother which still made her blush. She liked to think that Adalene’s devilish streak of rebellious nature was all her though.
She returned to the central keep with the dog bouncing ahead of her, lacking the energy to force her will on the dog and letting him just play and enjoy himself. She was met in the shadows of the old castle by her younger brother, a quiet teenager with an analytical mind but no desire towards action. Dan had been unhappy about that, which was a constant source of bickering between him and Marie, but she was happy. They had her, and she guessed that one child soldier had been enough for them. Brother and sister greeted each other wordlessly with a gentle bump of fists.
“How’s the old man?” she asked him.
“Grumpy as ever,” he said as he brushed his light brown hair off his face, “what you up to?”
“Walking this chump,” she said, pointing at the long-legged dog who had stopped to slurp loudly at an itch and proudly expose his boys to anyone who saw, “before that I’ve been writing down some stuff.”
“Oh?” he asked, eyebrows up in question.
“Yeah,” she said, not offering any more.
Pirates… as in Aargh?
We got back from our big supply run to find the gates open ready for us, which in itself wasn’t a big deal. What was different though, was the three armed militia members blocking the open gateway. They looked nervous, which was never a good thing, and my spidey-sense kicked off instantly. Our four trucks rolled through and the gates shut behind us. Being in the lead vehicle we had the furthest to go before we stopped so that the others could get inside, and by the time Dan had eased the truck to a stop I had the door open and was sliding to the cobblestones before breaking into a dead run back towards the gate.
“Qu’est-ce qui se passe?” I snapped at the nearest people. “What the hell is going on?”
“Calm down,” came the smooth voice from behind me as Lucien walked out of the dark stairwell leading up to the ramparts, before quailing ever so slightly under my answering look that reminded him about using that specific phrase.
“Tell me,” I said, hearing footsteps stop behind me and feeling a presence over my right shoulder. I saw Lucien’s eyes flicker up to where Dan’s would be boring into him from behind me.
“Not here,” he said softly, “please come.” He led the way straight across the courtyard towards the docks. I saw that he was dressed as we were: fully kitted and carrying his long rifle in addition to the carbine and sidearm. He was dressed for war.
We followed, Dan barking instructions at people to unpack and sort the haul, ending with a familiar sounding request for the company of specific people.
“Mitch, Neil, Adam. On me.”
He sounded riled, and with Dan that came out as angry and had a habit of spilling over to make others feel as though they were the ones to have done wrong. I was on edge too, and that had the outward appearance of being ready to commit murder, but I held onto my indignant anger until I had heard the facts. Clearly somebody had threatened Sanctuary in some way, and that offended me deeply to my core. Lucian stopped finally on the sea wall, well out of earshot of anyone else, with the only people in sight being the two men and one woman in the small, covered guard post at the mouth of our small harbour. All three were pointing their weapons out to sea beside the mounted heavy machine gun which had been stripped of the heavy canvas cover it usually wore.
Three? I thought as I realised instantly where the threat must have come from. That’s a one-man post.
“One of our fishing boats came back to the home more early than we expect,” Lucien explained. “The crew was five, but only three come home and one is shot.” He held up both hands and took an involuntary step back as three of us bega
n firing questions off at him like the commencement of an ambush. “Please,” he said, refraining from adding the words calm down.
We stopped talking and waited for the rest of the information.
“They were fishing in a pair and were attacked by a boat. They were shot at, and one boat escaped.”
Dan spoke before I did.
“One boat and crew lost, one other crew member dead and one injured,” he said, making sure of the facts and receiving a nod from my man. “Severity of the GSW?”
Lucien glanced at me for help.
“Blessure grave?” I asked, translating Dan’s use of acronyms into more simplistic language.
“It is bad. The man loses a lot of blood from his leg.”
“Is Kate working on him?” Dan asked.
“Yes,” Lucien said, “she is stitching in the wound.”
“Who attacked them?” Mitch asked almost softly, hiding the anger behind professionalism.
“That is what is the problem,” Lucien answered, “come to speak with the fishermen with me.”
He led us back towards the docks and into a small house that was far taller than it was wide. A gaggle of people were in there surrounding two sweat-stained men. Both held small glasses of the local liquor and both bore the appearance of men who had faced the realistic prospects of their own imminent deaths.
Lucien said something loud and clear, which roughly translated as ‘give us the room’. People filed out, some placing reassuring hands on the shoulders of the two frightened men. When the small room had cleared Dan pulled up the nearest chair and leaned forward to speak to them after readjusting his carbine.
“Parlez-vous anglais?” Dan asked in his roughly accented French.
“I speak English,” said the nearest man in an accent that made me think of Denmark or Sweden, surprising us all.
“What’s your name?” Dan asked.
“William. Will.”
“Tell me what happened, Will,” Dan said carefully. An open question, not ‘can you tell me?’ but an invitation to explain and not inviting any annoyingly simple yes or no responses.
“We were trawling,” he explained, “in a pair like usual. This little boat came towards us from the deep water. At first we were thinking, ‘this is good, more survivors’, but they went straight past us and had guns. We were scared. They came past again and started shooting at us. Antoine, he…” Will ducked his head and screwed his eyes shut for a moment before continuing. “Antoine waved his arms and tried to make them stop. He was shot and fell overboard. The other boat cut away their nets and tried to leave, but they chased them. We ran away. Antoine was not to be found in the water and Rémy started screaming.” He lifted his blood-encrusted hands to stare at them. “I tied his wound.”
“You did well,” I reassured him, not knowing for certain whether he did or not but guessing that the application of pressure or a tourniquet to a gunshot wound most likely saved the man’s life. He smiled weakly up at me.
“And the other boat?” Dan prompted.
“The last thing I saw of them was when they climbed on board.”
“Who attacked you?” Mitch asked, a hint of premonition in his voice as though he already knew the answer but wanted it confirmed.
“They had black skin,” Will answered, “and were very thin men. They wore things around their faces that showed only their eyes.”
“What language did they speak?” he asked in a more intense tone of voice.
“I did not understand it,” Will said almost apologetically.
“When did this happen?” I asked.
“They came back less than one hour ago,” Lucien answered for them.
“It’s okay,” Dan told him, “you two rest now and leave it up to us. Lucien?” He looked at Dan in answer, waiting for instructions. “Show them a map and ask them for their last location,” Dan said. “The rest of you, on me.”
We went back outside and wandered towards the sea wall where we had the privacy of isolation. Dan paused to light a cigarette, blowing the smoke upwards as he prepared to launch into the speech I knew was coming.
“So we have hostiles out on the sea,” he began, then glanced towards an uncertain-looking Mitch. “Mitch? You know something?”
“I suspect something,” he said carefully, “but I can’t be sure. It sounds pretty bad, but we don’t know if it’s isolated or not.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, slightly annoyed at his ambiguity.
“It means,” Mitch said measuredly, “that we need more intelligence before we can make a thorough threat assessment.” The formal tone told me in no uncertain terms that he had dropped back into professional soldier mode, and that he wouldn’t waste his or anyone’s time giving an opinion unless it at least tipped the balance of probability to be correct.
“So we go out there,” Dan stated with the most imperceptible shadow of doubt in his own words, hinting at, but not quite implying, the question mark after his words.
“We go out there,” I echoed in a more certain tone.
~
Mateo took us out with two of his crew. He didn’t use the hulking fishing boat he usually captained in favour of a smaller and faster craft which covered the distance to the spot where our missing crew had last been seen in just over thirty minutes. The smudge of some shape out on the open sea grew larger and more obvious the closer we got, and when Mateo backed off the engines to allow us to look at our beleaguered fishing boat I got my first glimpse of one of them.
With the sea’s movement I had little hope of scoring a clean hit at that distance which is why we went in closer. We still had five of our people on that boat, and I didn’t want to be the one who accidentally killed or injured one of them. One of them had fired shots when they saw us approaching; nothing aimed or disciplined with a design to hit us, just wild firing in the air like the automatic weapon they carried was a toy. That annoyed me. I’d seen it in movies in the past where someone would rattle off an entire magazine into the air without considering for one second the potential death toll of all of those bullets finally returning to earth still in possession of more than enough velocity to kill the members of the crowd, who were usually seen baying and shouting around the idiot pulling the trigger.
Even a mounted machine gun with a high firing rate and in a heavy calibre would have struggled to hit us with any kind of accuracy from the range they had seen us, but I guessed it was just a territory marking threat. Dick measuring, Dan called it.
We went in closer and I saw the exact thing Will had described to us: a skinny guy, arms like sticks or a young child, wearing a filthy vest that appeared beige and brown in desert camouflage but had most probably begun its life as white. He had a white and red checked scarf tied around his head exposing just the flash of his face around the eyes and he brandished his gun in the air like it was some kind of holy talisman of power.
I told Dan I had a shot and he made sure everyone knew the plan.
“In your own time, kid,” he said.
“Relax, Granddad,” I said, internally cursing myself for using the words without considering their meaning, “you just get ready.”
I took the shot.
It took a moment for me to reacquire my target in the scope in time to see him thrown backwards off the deck to flip over the railings. A rattle of undisciplined gunfire came back at us as the bow of our boat surged upwards again to hide them from view. I slid backwards a little, turning and sitting up as I did to rest the big rifle in an empty bucket lashed to the deck. Once settled, I swung my carbine around to my front ready to engage these bastards at closer quarters.
Precious long seconds went by as the sound of incoming fire whistled through the air. I saw bright white splashes in the sea around us, but nothing seemed to hit our boat; I couldn’t hear any round connecting with our thin hull which gave me some solace. I reminded myself that a lucky bullet killed just the same as a carefully aimed one. The engine note backed off rapidly and disappeare
d almost entirely and my body was pushed to the left by the forces of inertia when Mateo swung the wheel to put our left side against the other boat.
Dan was up, squeezing off single shots in rapid pairs at a target I couldn’t see because I’d lost my purchase on the slippery deck. I got up to one knee, accidently flicking my safety catch all the way up to full-auto because the boats bumped heavily against one another. I rose up, seeing and hearing Dan and Mitch engaging two others off to my left as I looked to the right towards the prow of the taller fishing boat.
Looking back on it I actually laugh, even though it was far from funny at the time. I shouted something I never thought I would have a reason to say, and it sounded just like a line from some over-the-top action movie. Another one, bareheaded and wearing similarly filthy rags with prominent yellow buck teeth, ran towards the railing of the boat carrying something so utterly preposterous, so out of place for the world I lived in, that it momentarily stunned me.
“RPG,” I screamed, dragging out the last syllable in perfect mimicry of something worthy of Hollywood. The sound of my voice was cut off by three rapid bursts of automatic fire which, I didn’t fully appreciate until afterwards, had all come from my own gun.
His momentum, arrested only in his upper body as my shots hit him at brutally short range, carried him under the railings as his legs crumpled beneath him. He slipped overboard, smashing his face off the edge of our own boat with a sickening crunch, and for one moment, one awful, bladder-emptying moment, I saw the tip of the rocket pointing straight at my face as it tumbled with him into the water. I froze, my brain for once trying to catch up with the events in real time as opposed to the other way around.
“Clear,” I heard in a loud Scottish accent, before a responding “clear,” came from Dan who had somehow got on board the boat in a few seconds.
Piracy: The Leah Chronicles (After it Happened Book 8) Page 3