'Sound the alarm!' Jorgenson cried. 'That's not — '
'Tomare!' Wanibuchi, the Japanese liaison standing close behind the bridge security guard, shouted. He reached into his bulky yellow windbreaker and pulled out an automatic pistol with a long sound suppressor screwed onto the muzzle. 'Ugoku na!'
It happened too quickly, was too shockingly sudden, for anyone to react. As the bridge security guard reached for his weapon, Wanibuchi swung the pistol up into line with the back of the man's head and pulled the trigger. With the suppressor, the sound of the shot was a sharp, hissing chirp that knocked the guard forward through the half-open doorway. 'Do not move!'
Immediately, a second shot, followed by a third, sounded from the radio shack, and Robert Orly stumbled through the door onto the bridge, the side of his head a scarlet mass. He fell forward, the cord jerking his headset from his ears as he fell full-length on the bridge deck. The second corporate liaison, Kitagawa, stepped out, his pistol held in a tight, two-handed grip. Dunsmore lunged for the alarm klaxon on the bridge console, and Wanibuchi shot him down before he'd taken two steps.
'Nobody move!' Wanibuchi shrilled, the gun in his hand swinging wildly from the crumpled Dunsmore, to Jorgenson, to Kinsley, the helmsman, to Mathers, the navigator. 'All of you! Hands up!'
Feeling a deathly cold rippling up his spine, Jorgenson did as he was told. Mathers and Kinsley raised their hands as well. Dunsmore was writhing in a spreading pool of blood, arms folded across his belly. 'May I help my officer?' Jorgenson asked. 'He's hurt!'
'No! Get down on the floor!' Wanibuchi shouted. 'All of you. Lay on the floor! Facedown! Spread your arms and legs wide apart! Do it! Do it!'
Floor; Jorgenson thought as he moved to obey, not deck. These people weren't seafaring men, then. Perhaps they could use that.
Wanibuchi barked something at Kitagawa in Japanese.
'Hai!' the man replied, and left the bridge, taking the central passageway aft.
'How many of you are there?' Jorgenson asked as he spread himself on the deck. 'Only the two of you? You can't possibly take over this ship!'
'Be quiet, Jorgenson,' Wanibuchi replied, his English perfect. 'Another word and I will shoot your navigator at the base of his spine. It's an agonizing way to die.'
Jorgenson heard footsteps and then a metallic clatter. Turning his head, he saw Wanibuchi picking up the SA80 assault rifle dropped by the guard. Wanibuchi saw the movement and raised the rifle. 'Turn your head! Look at the wall!'
Again Captain Jorgenson did as he was told, and wondered how he could fight back.
Chujiro Moritomi had to restrain himself to keep from breaking into a run. The excitement of the moment pounded in his heart and throat and head, to the point that he was having trouble breathing. He felt powerful, though, even superhuman. Some of the radio operator's blood had splashed Moritomi's jacket, but he ignored that. He had killed the man, had walked up behind him and fired two bullets into the side of his head and killed him.
They'd located the positions of the ship's guns during their first inspection of the vessel, days ago. The number two gun was on the starboard side of the deckhouse forward, three decks down from the bridge. Holding his pistol behind his back, he reached the door, turned the handle, and pulled it open.
A cool breeze slapped him in the face. The compartment's outer panels had been dropped, converting it to a kind of outdoor balcony overlooking the forward deck to the left and the wreckage-strewn ocean off the ship's starboard side straight ahead. Two of the civilian guards were inside, one leaning against a stack of ammo cases, the other in the saddle behind the 30mm chain gun.
'Well, hello,' the man by the ammo cases said, looking around at Moritomi's entrance. 'Whose little wog are you?…'
The gunner turned, startled. 'Here, now! You're not allowed — '
Except for the M230 chain gun, neither man was armed. Moritomi brought his pistol around, put two shots into the gunner's head, then shifted aim and shot the loader as he lunged for the door.
Stepping through the door, Moritomi turned, pulled the door shut, then shoved the body of the gunner out of the saddle. The M230 was aimed in the general direction of the helicopter off the ship's starboard beam.
Moritomi had trained with these weapons at the camp in Syria. He checked the ammo feed, made sure the power was on, and dragged back the charging lever with a rasping snick. Then he swung the weapon around to the left, depressing the barrel to aim at the Sandpiper's crowded forward deck, and switched off the safety.
Jack Rawlston turned from the ship's starboard railing and looked at the crowd in disgust. 'Here, you lot!' he shouted. 'Clear the deck!'
There was, inevitably, a certain amount of friction between the regular crew and the 'specials,' the civilian security guards provided by PNTL and the UK Atomic Energy Authority 'Up yours,' an older seaman growled. 'Who made you captain?'
'Clear the fucking deck!' Rawlston bellowed, swinging his arm. 'We need some order up here!'
He was assuming they would be bringing survivors up onto the forward deck, and this crowd of rubbernecking tourists was going to be in the way. The skipper might want that helicopter to land, too, and they would need the entire length of the deck clear for that.
'You heard the man!' Timmy Smithers shouted. 'You people make yourselves useful and — '
He never finished the sentence. Rawlston heard an angry high-speed rattle of automatic gunfire, and then the Pacific Sandpiper's steel deck was erupting in white puffs of smoke and hurtling shards of shrapnel. Smithers was jerked to one side, his upper chest and left shoulder exploding in a pink spray. Merchant seamen began falling as explosions ripped through the crowd with murderous detonations.
It reminded him, Rawiston thought as he dived for cover behind a hold cover, of autocannon fire from a helicopter gunship, and he assumed the helicopter was firing on them. He hit the deck, pulled his SA80 off his shoulder, and came up with his weapon aimed and tracking, ready to return fire.
But the fire wasn't coming from the helicopter, not so far as he could tell. The aircraft was circling now past the starboard bow, still a hundred yards off, but he saw no weapons pods or gun mounts on the helicopter, no door gunner or clattering minigun trailing streams of spent shell casings. If it wasn't the French helicopter…
More high-explosive rounds slammed into the deck, tearing a safety stanchion free and cutting down three men running toward the bow, and two shells hit the lip of the cargo hold cover a foot from his face, stinging him with specks of flying metal. The way the impacts tracked up the deck, moving forward, made him look aft.
Rawlston saw the muzzle flash from the starboard-forward chain gun as it hosed down the Piper's forward deck with explosive rounds.
What the bloody hell?…
He twisted around, leveling his rifle at the Piper's superstructure. From here he couldn't see the gunner, but if he could lay down a heavy enough fire, aimed into the open gun housing, he might drive the bastard to cover.
Before Rawlston could fire, however, bullets whined and shrieked, ricocheting off the deck beside him. He turned again. That fire was coming from the helicopter, which had changed course suddenly and was flying straight toward the Sandpiper's forward deck. Several more security guards and seamen, caught in the open in a deadly crossfire between the helicopter and the superstructure of their own ship, jerked, spun, and fell. Rawlston saw at least a dozen men sprawled in bloody heaps across the deck, maybe more… some of them still moving, trying to rise, trying to seek cover.
The helicopter roared low overhead, so low that Rawlston instinctively ducked as its shadow engulfed him and then swept on. Men inside the helicopter now shot at the open port side gun mount, pouring automatic rifle fire into the opening from almost point-blank range. Rawlston changed targets again, drawing a bead on the helicopter… and then a savage hammer blow struck him in his side, slapping him back and away from the meager shelter of the hold cover. The 30mm chain gun on the starboard side was firing now in short, precise bursts, and a piece of shrapnel blasted from the hold cover had struck him in the side, hard.
There was no pain… and then he drew a breath and the pain shrieked inside his brain. A broken rib at least, and maybe a punctured lung as well. He clutched his side and his hand came away wet with blood. His gun had spun away with the impact, was lying on the deck five yards away.
