Helen nodded her understanding.
Thorn set one foot on the bracket and slowly shifted more of his weight onto it. It held.
He exhaled slowly, running through a mental countdown.
Three. Two. One. Now!
Thorn stood up on the bracket, grabbing for the edge of the seconddeck walkway with his left hand. He steadied the Makarov, aiming for where he guessed the two Russians should be.
The bracket groaned under his full weight.
Both men were already turning toward the source of the sound, weapons at the ready. They were only yards away.
The closest Russian appeared over Thorn’s front sight. He squeezed the trigger. The man fell to the deck, clutching his stomach.
The second gunman, a big man with thinning hair, fired back before he could shift targets. The round clipped the deck near Thorn’s face — spraying sharp-edged paint chips in a stinging arc across his left cheek.
Moving fast, Thorn swung his pistol toward the second man and squeezed the trigger again. Sparks flew off the railing instead.
Damn it, he’d missed! Suddenly, the coiled fire hose shifted beneath him. The Makarov wavered off target. Shit!
Smiling now, the big Russian leaned out over the railing to get a clearer shot. The smile vanished. Helen’s bullet took him under the jaw and blew off the top of his skull. He staggered, then toppled over the railing and fell to the main deck below.
Thorn stood poised on the bracket long enough to make sure the first man he’d shot was still down. Satisfied, he dropped to the deck.
Blood trickled down his cheek. Impatiently he wiped it off.
Two more of their enemies were down — dead or dying. But that left at least two more to go. And they couldn’t stay lucky forever. He glanced at Helen. “Straight on?”
She nodded calmly. “Let’s press it.”
Thorn took the lead again, moving quickly to the portside of the freighter’s superstructure. He peered around the corner.
There was no one in sight — not even near the gangplank. Sure.
Somehow he doubted the bad guys would leave the only exit unguarded.
At least one of them had to be out there somewhere — sprawled in cover, waiting and watching.
He ducked around the corner and dropped behind a large metal box, an equipment locker of some kind. They were going to have to flush out their enemies the hard way.
Helen Gray followed Peter around the corner.
A pistol shot cracked from somewhere ahead and above. The bullet slammed into the deck at her feet and whirred away — tumbling through the air. She went down on one knee, firing rapidly in the direction the shot had come from, trying to keep the shooter’s head down until she could spot him.
Another round hit the bulkhead above her.
There! Helen saw the gunman. He was on the second deck catwalk, lying prone behind a stanchion. She frowned. With only part of one hand and his head exposed, the Russian was a difficult target. She fired again, mentally counting off her shots.
Two more were left in the magazine.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Peter lifting his head above the equipment locker, trying to spot the man who had her pinned down.
Five meters from the gangplank, Mischa Chabenenko lay flat behind a metal fitting on the rusty steel deck. He saw the American man rise slightly, looking up toward the superstructure towering above — toward Yuri’s firing position.
Chabenenko felt his heart pounding. Sweat trickled down his forehead and puddled under his arms. This was supposed to have been an easy job — a piece of cake. Instead it had all gone wrong.
Kleiner, the German bastard who’d masqueraded as Captain Tumarev, was dead. And so were most of his comrades — all of them killed by these two Americans. Except for that gutless worm, Rozinkin, already on his way back to Moscow, Yuri and he were the only ones left.
All he’d been told was that the two Americans and an MVD major were poking their noses into places they should not be.
And that the vor, Larionov, wanted them stopped — permanently.
Chabenenko muttered an oath under his breath. Someone should have checked into just who they were trying to stop.
What should he do? It would be easy to let the Americans escape, he knew. All he had to do was just stay in hiding here, let them get clear, and then flee down the gangplank himself. He might have a slim chance of making it safely back to Moscow before the militia picked up his trail.
But then he’d have to answer to the vor.
A bead of sweat rolled down his nose and dripped onto the deck. Felix Larionov did not tolerate failure. Or cowardice.
Chabenenko shook his head. He’d rather take a bullet here than die screaming under the Lariat’s knife. Besides, if he could just take these two, he and Yuri would share the pay once meant for eight.
Driven by fear and greed, he took careful aim, centering his pistol sights on the American man’s head. He pulled the trigger.
Superheated air tore at Peter Thorn’s face as a slug screamed past, only an inch away — way too close. He dropped back behind the locker.
Shit! There was a second shooter out there, near the gangplank — one he couldn’t see.
The gunman above them fired again.
Helen screamed — a terrible, rising wail that tore at his soul.
He whirled around, expecting to see her writhing in agony on the deck.
So did the Russian who’d been shooting at her. He poked his head further out from behind the stanchion — trying to see whether the woman he’d hit needed a second bullet to finish her off.
Instead, Helen still knelt there, perfectly poised and aiming for the upper deck. She fired twice, coolly paused, and then snapped a fresh magazine into her weapon.
She glanced at Thorn and nodded contemptuously toward the upper deck.
He followed her nod and saw the gunman’s shattered head lying cocked at an odd angle over the edge of the catwalk.
Thorn swallowed hard, forcing his breathing back to a normal pace.
She’d scared the hell out of him with that stunt. Another bullet tore across the top of the metal locker he was using for cover, reminding him that at least one of their enemies was still alive and fighting.
Helen rolled in beside him. “Spotted the guy. He’s close to the gangplank — about four or five meters back, behind some kind of rusted-out fitting.”
Thorn ran through the memory of what he’d seen before the latest round of shooting started and nodded. He knew the spot she was talking about. Remembering the round that had nearly taken his head off, he frowned. They didn’t dare move forward.
This Russian was too good a shot to risk rushing him.
But they couldn’t wait here indefinitely. If there were any more bad guys left alive aboard the Star of the White Sea, huddling behind this metal locker was a good way to wind up getting shot in the back.
The gunman fired again.
Why? Thorn wondered. Neither he nor Helen had offered him a target.
So why was he still shooting? Was he trying to keep them pinned here long enough for his friends to close the net?
Another steeljacketed round punched into the equipment locker.
Thorn suddenly realized the Russian was firing at fairly steady intervals — once every several seconds, almost in a pattern. Acting instantly, he rose above the locker with his pistol braced in both hands, aiming just above the metal fitting — right where the shooter would be … now!
