Maestra as well. But the Algerine’s course had her set to enter the inlet about forty yards south of where the scialuppa had run in, thereby keeping to the deeper water. As she came within eighty yards of the foot of the Punta Maestra, she heeled over hard to port, clearly meaning to come about as tightly as possible in order to bear down upon the scialuppa and cut off her retreat by straddling the mouth of the inlet.
Along the length of the ship’s deck, just inboard from the rowers, sure-footed pirates leaned against the turn of the graceful xebec, unable to aim their weapons yet, but ready for the first opportunity. An equal number of them swarmed around the two away-boats that were waiting where the Algerine’s waists narrowed into its bow. Casting the lashing aside and preparing to lift the boats over the gunwale, the pirates’ hurried, eager actions set their belted swords and pistols swinging.
North saw it all, but only peripherally; he watched, measured the range as the xebec presented its starboard waist full to the slope of the Punta Maestra as it reached the apex of its intended 180 degree turn, and prepared to start back toward the wide part of the inlet’s mouth “Mr. Porfino,” North snapped, “raise the red standard.” Then, clenching the neck of the whistle firmly in his teeth, Thomas North blew out a long, rolling shrill.
Coming abreast of the tip of the Punta Maestra headland from the south, Owen Roe O’Neill’s sharp ears picked out the sound of North’s signal a fraction of a second before anyone else. “There it is! Best speed from the oars. Spikes and hooks at the ready. Boarders, covers off your pieces and blades two inches drawn; we’re but a minute away.”
And then the sound of firing began.
The lower slopes of the Punta Maestra seemed to roll a wave of thunder at the xebec as it showed them her starboard waist. Thomas North’s ten Hibernians, still concealed in the scrub and well-covered by rock outcroppings, began raking the deck of the Algerine at ranges varying from eighty to one hundred and ten yards. The steady crack-klikka-crack-klikka-crack of eight black-powder lever-action rifles accompanied faster, sharper reports from two SKS-Ms, each fitted with thirty-round AK 47 magazines.
Both the black powder. 40–72 cartridges and the Soviet 7.62 x 39 mm rounds were at their optimum range, and although more rounds missed their targets than hit, there were far, far more bullets in the air than there were pirates to fire at. The pirates did not go down in windrows, but they went down constantly, and within the first five seconds, some started to break for cover, abandoning the lines, the sails, the oars. Even seasoned corsairs, who had learned to brace themselves to withstand at least one murderous blast of grapeshot before leaping over an adversary’s gunwales, had little preparation for the unrelenting fire they faced now.
The xebec continued to come about, albeit unevenly-but then the tightness of her turn widened out into lazy arc; the heavy fellow manning the tiller fell away from the handle as three bullets drilled through his thick torso and speckled the deck behind him with blood.
However, the pirates were numerous, and as bad as their casualties were, there were still more than two score of them, knots of whom were already trying to fight back. Most forgot the scialuppa in their eagerness to return fire against the new enemies on the slopes of Punta Maestra, but not all: four made for the portside rail, armed with wheel locks and long-barreled miquelet muskets.
Damn it, thought North, who let his binoculars fall loose on their lanyard and snatched up his own SKS, hoping he’d find the range in time…
Harry pulled the tarp off the reconstituted outboard motor that had been borrowed from their dirigible’s array of makeshift up-time engines and opened the choke a bit; the engine coughed, then roared, and plumed water up behind the scialuppa. “Coming about,” he shouted as he angled the engine’s handle to starboard.
The prow of the scialuppa started coming around steadily to port. But the rowers continued to pull hard, and Harry could feel that their muscles were providing them with additional, and very welcome, speed. Although relatively powerful, the compact outboard motor had been intended to propel dinghies and rowboats, not something as large as a scialuppa. They were coming about-faster and more tightly than their enemy could have reasonably expected-but it wasn’t going to be fast enough; Harry saw a quartet of pirate marksmen gathering at the xebec’s portside rail, which overlooked the open expanse of the Cala Maestra. And the scialuppa was the only target in that direction. The range was long-almost a hundred yards-but still…
As the barca-longa came around the headland and her lookout could see into the Cala Maestra inlet, the ship’s limp lateen sails finally crossed the line of the wind and swelled tentatively. Owen started scrambling forward; they were still hauling as close to the wind as possible, but they’d only accelerate briskly once they began to turn into the inlet, which would bring the northerly wind off their prow and over their portside bow.
“Keep pulling boys, for all you’re worth,” he shouted as he went along the benches. Eyes forward, he saw the stern of the xebec heave into view around the stony shoulder of the Punta Maestra and thought, now we’ve got you, pinned from behind and beside, and not enough room or time to turn out.
Or maybe they did have enough room and time-or at least, that must have been what the two pirates who leaped to take hold of the tiller believed. They heaved the xebec’s rudder back into a tight turn to port. One, glancing over his shoulder, saw the barca-longa and screamed something in a swift liquid language that Owen had never heard. But the meaning was clear enough: musket-bearing pirates began streaming toward the protuberant stern overhang that followed the xebec like an elaborately carved afterthought.
“Wrecking Crew,” Owen shouted back over the heads of the boarding party in the bows. “you have targets. Clear their poop deck.”
Thomas realized, even as he raised the SKS, that if he fired he might well kill his own people. As luck would have it, his own line of fire to the four pirate marksmen taking aim at the scialuppa extended onward to the deck of that smaller boat. Miro and Lefferts’ men would be safely out of the way in three, maybe four seconds, but that might be too late. Besides, what the hell was the sniper waiting fo-?
From forty yards up the opposed slope of the inlet’s northern headland, there was a flash and a viciously sharp report. One of the four pirates at the rail bucked backward a step, then went down, thereby obscuring the high spinal exit wound and the dark blood that was beginning to spread across both sides of his back like a pair of painted wings.
About time our marksman got into the act, groused North silently, wishing that it was Lefferts up on the slope: best sniper among us, by a country mile. But, being armed with Harry’s scoped up-time Remington, the Hibernian who had been given the job was still very well equipped to take down any pirates who might pose an unanticipated threat to the team or its operations. But there were still three pirate musketeers — Who fired in a volley even as the sniper’s second shot cracked and echoed between the granite walls of the inlet. Another pirate went down, clutching his shoulder. But so had someone in the scialuppa. North thought about his binoculars. If they got either Miro or Harry But he swept up the SKS instead; first things first, now that the scialuppa was out of his downrange field of fire. North squeezed the trigger, saw the round send splinters up from the deck a few feet behind the musketeers. Damn Chinese export ammo; even for Combloc 7.62, it shoots like a rainbow. As North raised the weapon slightly and let the bead rise a little too high in the sight, then squeezed the trigger again.
Blood spattered outward from the lower back of the pirate on the left. He clutched the rail, his legs sagged, then his knees went-at the same moment that North had finished riding the SKS’s recoil back down and cheated over to the right to bring the last corsair into his sights.
His weapon barked in unison with the sniper’s Remington; hit from front and back, the last of the four pirate marksmen spun and toppled to the deck.
Thomas grabbed for his binoculars, swept them after the scialuppa, looking for “Estuban? Estuban?” shouted Harry, his buttocks half off the stern thwart.
Miro’s rather round, close-cropped head poked up out of the tangle of sails in the bows, just visible over the back of the slain oarsman.
“I wasn’t the unlucky one, Harry; I’m fine. You just keep bringing us around.”
“We’re around already, heading toward open water.”
“Good. Excellent, in fact.”
“Yeah. Now, want a piece of advice?”
“Certainly. What is it?”
Harry smiled. “Keep your own head down, too, fool!”
As half a dozen pirates swarmed back out across the xebec’s stern overhang to fire down into the barca- longa that was almost upon them, Donald Ohde, Paul Maczka, and Matija Grabnar raised their shotguns and began the firing-and-pumping sequence that was, more than anything, the combat trademark of the Wrecking Crew. And whereas the high velocity bullets of their other weapons often inflicted surprisingly subtle entry wounds, the
