Rogue Elements

“Which means you’ll be on me like a conquistador on an Aztec princess?”

“Something like that,” Bolan admitted.

“Can’t wait.” Ibarra held out the mug. “Until then I could use more coffee.”

He pushed off the rail. “Yes, ma’am.”

Ibarra seized his hand. “Blue!”

Bolan looked where Ibarra was looking.

“I swear I saw something!”

Yard hadn’t even issued them night-vision equipment. Bolan gazed into the gloom. In the purple light of the predawn he caught whitecaps moving across whitecaps. “Good eye, B.B. Sound the alarm. We’ve got fast boats coming in.”

Ibarra ran into the bridge. Bolan took the gangway down to the main deck a landing at a time. His boots rang on main deck as the captain spoke across the intercom. “All hands! This is not a drill! Action stations!”

Big Abe charged up. “Is this it?”

“This is it.” Bolan put his phone on speaker and slapped its Velcroed back onto his tactical vest. “Captain?”

“Yes, Mr. Blue?”

“Sound and lights.”

Every light on the Caprice clicked on like Christmas. Her harbor searchlights stabbed out into the gloom as the ship’s collision alarm began its whoop, whoop, whoop! The deck hummed beneath Bolan’s boots as the freighter’s two four-stroke diesels went to full power. Twenty-five knots was just barely under thirty miles per hour, but it would make hooking onto the Caprice much harder.

Mendez shouted as speedboats pierced the halo of lights surrounding the Caprice. “Here they come!”

AK-47s stuttered into life from the approaching boats almost as if they had heard him. Captain Cleverly shouted across the open phone line they were using as a com-link. “It’s the bloody Spanish armada...”

Bolan watched the pirates come in. Cleverly was right. There were too many of them. Even if they had a mother ship, three or four skiffs were the most that were carried, and they usually fanned out to form a wide net across a shipping lane. This group had launched from a land base, and someone had told them when and where to intercept the Caprice. Bolan counted half a dozen. Orange fire strobed from the prows of the pirate skiffs, and bullets rattled like hail off the hull and sparked and whined off the superstructure. Bolan and his team dropped low. Bullets hit the bridge and shattered windows.

Captain Cleverly swore a blue streak. “Fast boats coming alongside to starboard! Right in front of you, Blue!”

The ladder hooks clanked onto the rail and bullets streaked over it. Someone was providing effective covering fire. The hooks rattled and shifted as the ladder took the weight of boarders. “Abe!” Bolan loaded his sling with a Molotov. “You’re up!”

Big Abe came forward with his huge frame hunched over a sixteen-quart stockpot filled with liquid soap. “Better if this shit was boiling, brah!”

“Let them have it!”

The Samoan upended the pot between the ladder hooks. Men who were ascending screamed and scrabbled as the wet metal rungs of the ladder suddenly went bubble-bath slick. The pot tore from Big Abe’s hands as a burst of AK fire drilled through it. Abe crouched, shaking out his hands and counting his fingers. “Shit!”

Bolan lit his firebomb and rose. He swung the sling overhead like a tennis serve and released straight down. Men in the skiff below screamed as the flaming bottle shattered and fire engulfed the prow. The Executioner dropped just as bullets screamed past his head. “Abe! Ladder is clear!”

Abe heaved on the hooks, pulled the ladder free and chest-pressed it into the sea.

The captain shouted across the link. “Skiff to aft! Amidships!”

Another ladder clanked. Ketch and Ibarra ran in a crouch below the level of the rail. A man with an AK hit the top of the ladder, spraying gunfire. Mono rose with his sling taut. “Got you!” The sling whirled, and the ball bearing smashed the boarder in the sternum. The pirate flapped his arms like a dying gull and toppled back. A high-powered rifle cracked out on the water, and Mono spun and fell.

Ibarra screamed. “Mono!”

“Sniper!” Bolan roared. “Stay low! Laz! See to Mono!”

Another pirate hit the top of the ladder. Ibarra cut loose with her sling. The invader bobbled-headed as Ibarra’s missile cracked into his skull. The pirate fell back with a chrome-colored third eye weeping blood from the middle of his forehead. Ketch slid across the deck as if he were headed for home plate, clutching a slopping five-gallon bucket of soap. A screaming pirate appeared at the top of the rail. Ketch slammed the plastic bucket over the invader’s head like a medieval helmet and rammed his fist in a wicked right-hand lead where the visor would have been.

The pirate toppled backward. Ketch had the wherewithal to snatch the AK from the man’s soapy hands. The high-power rifle cracked again. The bullet hit below the bridge’s window frame. Sparks flew as a bridge control panel shattered.

“Ketch! The sniper!” Bolan shouted. “The sniper!”

Ketch popped up. The big rifle out in the dark cracked again, but it was seeking to damage the bridge and bridge personnel. The AK chattered as Ketch fired at the sniper’s muzzle-flash. He ducked as several AKs answered.

Captain Cleverly snarled. “Skiffs alongside! Port and starboard!”

Ladders hit the Caprice.

“Grenade!” Ibarra yelled.

The bomb looped over the rail and fell at Bolan’s feet. He snagged it and lobbed the explosive to the opposite rail. “Down!”

Bolan’s team grabbed the deck. A screaming pirate came over the rail. His war cry rose to a shriek as he saw the grenade spinning on the deck before him. The bomb detonated, and he shuddered as if he were in a terrible wind and fell back. Bolan loaded his sling with a Molotov cocktail and lit its fuse. The grenadier pirate came over the other rail, holding a grenade in his hand.

Bolan let fly.

The spiraling bottle just missed, but it hit the top of the rail and shattered. Half of the bottle’s contents sheeted over the pirate and ignited. He pulled a flaming crucifix from around his neck and dropped back. His grenade clanked to the deck.

He hadn’t pulled the pin yet.

Bolan ran forward at a crouch and snatched the bomb out of the path of the creeping, flaming oil and shoved it in his pocket. He took his last Molotov and lit it, not bothering to use the sling. He stood. Below, the burning pirate was flailing and screaming, and his fellow pirates in the boat were flailing and screaming, trying to avoid him. Bolan flung his firebomb into the middle of the ruckus. It broke apart, and fire flooded the skiff. The pirates abandoned the vessel en masse.