Pirate Offensive

Reloading, Bolan started for the main hatchway. Kicking open the wooden door, Bolan frowned at the sight of several rebels sprawled on the metal stairs, a thick gray smoke issuing steadily from the air vents. Exhaling as hard as he could, Bolan stepped back into the rain and shouldered the BAR. He drew a knife and slashed off a wet sleeve, tying it around his face as a crude gas mask.

Bolan descended the steps, his boots clanging on the corrugated metal. He headed straight to his cabin. He had U.S. Army surplus gas masks in a box stuffed under his bunk. Not enough for the whole crew, but sufficient for a handful of the Ghost Jaguars to fight.

The gas continued to bellow out of every air vent, and Bolan was starting to feel dizzy by the time he reached his cabin. He had the key, somewhere, but he could not find it. Knowing unconsciousness was close, Bolan simply shot open the lock to his own room and staggered inside.

He ripped off the blankets, yanked open a drawer and pulled on a gas mask. It took every ounce of his iron resolve to wait a few moments to check the seals before allowing himself a breath. The chemically scented air tasted bitter, almost foul, but Bolan gratefully filled his aching lungs.

As the dizziness eased, Bolan stuffed a pillowcase with masks and lumbered back into the smoky corridor. He had no idea if this was a poison gas or sleep gas, but his gut reading on the pirates was that they would want the crew alive to open safes and move cargo. Corpses only fed the fishes. Live men could be made to work.

Plus, there was always a market for sex slaves, both male and female, Bolan noted dourly.

After checking over his weapons he headed down the accessway. Bolan passed a man struggling to pull himself along the hall. He had a coffee soaked T-shirt wrapped around his mouth. Smart. But as Bolan quickly approached, the man dropped, totally unconscious.

Knowing a mask would not help the fellow now, Bolan moved on. There was only one location where a gas bomb or generator could feed outward to the entire ship. The main intake vent at the front.

Bolan moved quickly through the cloudy passageways, trying not to trip over the Ghost Jaguars’ unconscious bodies. His hopes of defending the ship were rapidly dwindling. It was starting to appear as if the gas attack had caught most, if not all, of the rebels.

Reaching the room, Bolan yanked open the door and a thick cloud of smoke rolled out. Temporarily blinded, he backed away until he reached the wall. The external vent was closed tight. But a small machine was bolted to the deck table, the gasoline engine sputtering away and a thick column of fumes pouring out of the vent and heading straight into the primary airway.

Bolan turned off the machine then put a steel-jacketed round from the BAR through the engine to make sure it couldn’t be reactivated. As the booming report echoed down the steel corridors, a pair of figures appeared in the doorway. They were both wearing insulated parkas and rebreathers. Each held a silenced automatic pistol.

The sight of them cut deep into Bolan. Son of a bitch! Narmada must have smuggled people on board during the recent delivery of frozen meat. Attacked from within and without. Damn, the man was good.

As the two pirates swung their weapons toward him, Bolan stroked the trigger of his Beretta and sent a man flying backward, blood spraying across the steel walls. The woman shot back several times, the small-caliber rounds ripping holes in Bolan’s thick Navy coat and flattening on the NATO body armor underneath. Bolan returned the favor, and the shooter joined her partner in the abyss.

Doing a fast sweep of the kitchen, Bolan checked for any more sleeper agents. He found several huge wooden boxes of meat in the main freezer and decided to play it safe, riddling all of them with 9 mm Parabellum rounds from the Beretta. Splinters and hamburger sprayed everywhere, but there came no cries of shock or pain. Good enough. Time to leave.

Charging down the central passageway, Bolan opened door after door until he found Major Cortez. She was slumped over a table, her face smeared with soup. Slinging the woman over a shoulder, Bolan had a brief internal debate, then tossed aside the heavy BAR and drew the Beretta. Speed was more important than firepower at the moment.

Back in the stairwell, Bolan was startled to discover several more rebels staggering along. They moved clumsily, but they were armed and wearing French-style gas masks from another era.

“Pirates?” asked Lieutenant Esteele.

“They’re here,” Bolan replied curtly. “And more coming. We have to abandon ship.”

“Never!”

“Then die,” Bolan said.

The lieutenant paused for a moment, then gave a curt nod and started up the metal stairs.

Reaching the main deck, Bolan was not surprised to now see several vessels in the water around the Constitution. Powerful arc lights were sweeping the deck, and he could hear the sporadic crackle of small-arms fire.

Hit twice, Bolan pretended to stagger, then emptied the Beretta directly into a search light. He was rewarded with a loud shattering of glass, closely followed by a wide swathe of darkness.

Distant voices shouted garbled commands, but Bolan charged into the blackness and jumped over the gunwale. He hit the water hard, losing direction and sinking fast under Major Cortez’s dead weight.

Reorienting himself according to the air bubbles around him, Bolan kicked furiously. A moment later, his head broke the surface, and he yanked off the gas mask to draw in some much-needed air.

A quick check showed the major was still alive, and now Bolan swam further from the Constitution and its new owners, hoping to find the lifeboat he had set free before. Almost immediately there came the sound of a prolonged firefight from the vessel, and Bolan saw Lieutenant Esteele and his people wildly spraying their new AK-101 assault rifles at the pirates. The 5.56 mm rounds did not harm the protective glass covers of the big search lights, but the 30 mm grenades smashed the lights into shards, and soon the only illumination came from the muzzle flashes of the deadly weapons.

“Surrender and live!” a voice boomed over a loud speaker. “All we want is your cargo!”

Swimming with one arm, Bolan hoped the rebels would soon recognize the hopelessness of their position and jump overboard. If they stuck with him, they stood a small chance of coming out of this fiasco alive. But separately...

One of the fake lifeboats flipped over, and now the stuttering flash of the quad-style Remington .50 machine gun roared into operation. The stream of heavy bullets chewed a noisy path of destruction across a trawler. A man screamed, a window shattered. Then there came a telltale double flash, and Bolan saw a firebird of some kind streak across the main deck. The rocket hit the machine gun and the blast overwhelmed the night, throwing bodies and wreckage far and wide.