Distant Thunder

56

Stone popped his head up and had a look to port, then drew back, but not before inviting several rounds to be fired at the whaler. “Their rounds are not penetrating,” Stone said. “There’s a layer of Kevlar in the hull.”

“Good for us.”

“Yes, but we can’t see anything. Let’s get aboard the whaler.”

“You first,” Dino replied.

Stone half stood, then drew back a leg and threw it over the side of the whaler, like a cowboy mounting a horse, and got into the boat.

Dino did the same.

Stone’s phone rang. “Yes?”

“That’s a good spot for you,” Lance said. “The hull of that boat is very tough.”

“I figured that out,” Stone said. “Do you have anything new for us?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. The trawler seems to have used its engine a little too hard. There’s smoke trailing from the on-deck engine cover. And they’ve slowed more than they needed to, while they try to figure out what’s wrong. They’re still a hundred yards behind you and moving very slowly.”

Stone popped up to look ahead of them and didn’t draw fire. “Our berth is fifty yards away, and the skipper is creeping up on it.”

“Why haven’t you been shot in the head?” Dino asked.

“Because something’s wrong aboard the trawler. Lance says they’re trailing smoke from the engine cover on deck.” He looked aft, and so did Dino.

Dino fired a couple of rounds from his Winchester into the deck, and three or four men on the trawler took cover. “That ought to slow them down with the repairs,” he said.

Breeze was in her berth now, and shore hands were securing her warps. Stone looked back and saw the trawler, maybe fifty yards back. A man in the wheelhouse was moving back and forth, pulling levers and pressing buttons.

“They’ll have an automatic fire extinguisher in the engine bay,” Stone said.

“Then why aren’t they using it?” Dino asked.

“Maybe it went off, but it didn’t do the job.” Two men ran from cover and tried to open the engine cover but failed.

Dino drove them away from the engine cover with a couple of well-placed rounds. A man came out of the wheelhouse holding a sinister-looking rifle with a scope and a silencer and held it to his shoulder.

Dino racked his Winchester and shot him, knocking him backward onto the deck of the trawler.

“Good shot, Dino!” Stone yelled, firing a couple of rounds with his own weapon. “That ought to keep their heads down.”

The shooter aboard the trawler struggled to his feet and rested the barrel of his rifle on the wheelhouse. Dino put a round into the wooden railing next to him, and he ducked. “I think we have an advantage in height here,” Dino said.

Then, from the trawler, came the roar of the engine, and even more smoke poured out of the hatch, which the crew had finally torn off.

Dino and Stone emptied their weapons into the cockpit of the trawler.

Stone looked around. “Where’s the ammo?”

“Oh, shit, I left it on the upper deck when we climbed into the whaler.”

“Well, we’re both out,” Stone said. “Does that give you any ideas?”

Dino jumped over the side of the whaler, retrieved the bag holding the ammunition, and tossed it into the whaler, then jumped back in. He opened a box of cartridges, and they both started loading them into the Winchesters’ magazines. The windshield on the whaler exploded, showering them with glass fragments.

“I guess they forgot to make that bulletproof, huh?” Dino said.

Stone looked up again, and the trawler was on the move once more. “Stand by to repel boarders!” he said.

The trawler was twenty-five yards out and aiming to come alongside Breeze.

Stone and Dino fired more rounds into the trawler’s cockpit and into the wheelhouse windshield, which crazed but didn’t shatter.

The trawler, amazingly, hadn’t slowed and was making a good five knots toward the yacht.

“Shit,” Stone said, “they don’t have any control of the power. They’re going to ram us. Brace for it!” They held on to whatever they could find.