Without warning

His small group of fighters, six in all, did as they were told and had been taught, popping up and firing short bursts at the Peruvians, before scuttling like bugs to another hiding place. Miguel himself snapped up his M16 and squeezed off short bursts whenever a slow-moving Peruvian exposed himself. Well, he assumed they were peruanos … It was possible they might have been from anywhere.

All that mattered now, however, was that a small army of them appeared to be boiling up from the innards of their ship and attempting to board the ship where his family sheltered. Some threw grappling hooks and thick lines across. Others darted from cover as the two vessels banged together and they attempted to leap from one to the other. He flinched as one man missed his jump and fell between the converging vessels. The crunch of steel plate on aluminium was slightly muffled as his body was pulped by the collision. Pieraro could not help but see the flattened remains peel away from the flanks of the trawler and fall into the sea.

‘They are getting on board!’ cried Adolfo, one of the older men.

‘Stay where you are. Keep firing. The others will take care of them,’ yelled Miguel.

* * * *

‘The boat deck!’

Jules hurried up behind the racing forms of two Gurkhas as they headed aft to repel the first of the intruders. Doubled over to remain below the line of the gunwale, she moved as quickly as she could but had trouble keeping up with them. The uproar of the battle was enormous, much worse than anything she’d experienced before. Bullets whined and pinged around her, chewing huge pieces out of the yacht’s superstructure. She kept her head down. And all the time, the vessel lurched up and down, dancing drunkenly on the huge waves.

A grappling hook clanged down in front of her and bit deeply into the fibreglass walls of the gunnel. She didn’t stop to look, instead whipping out her machete and slamming the weapon down on the line as she passed. An ululating scream fell away into the churning maelstrom and Jules moved on to where she could hear the bark of automatic weapons starting up.

She found the two Gurkhas, Sharma and Thapa, taking cover behind a couple of jet skis and engaging at least three boarders who’d leapt across and hidden themselves behind one of the smaller runabouts. ‘Coming up behind,’ she cried out over the savage din.

‘Please cover us from behind,’ Thapa yelled, and Jules dropped low, aiming her shotgun back up the exposed passageway along which she had just run.

Less than two seconds later a man swung over the rail and dropped to the deck. She registered him as young, dark and rake-thin; he was wearing cut-off (or possibly rotted) denim shorts and his naked torso was covered in swirling, amateurish tattoos. Jules cut him down with one blast from the shotgun, tearing a football-sized chunk of meat from his stomach and rib cage.

Behind her, she heard the Gurkhas scream something, but could not turn – as another man dropped to the deck beside his fallen mate. The Rules pitched over, and before she could shoot him, he tumbled back into the sea with a terrified scream.

A quick look over her shoulder, and she saw a chromatic, disordered flicker of scenes. Thapa and Sharma leaping at the intruders with kukri daggers drawn. A flash of silver blade. Gouts of blood. A shot, and Thapa flying backwards and slamming into the side of the sport fisher.

Then movement in front of her again – two of them this time. The yacht plunged and her shot went high and wild. Their guns cracked and spat at her.

She racked another round into the shotty and squeezed the trigger again. The first man flew backwards as she fired twice without success. The dead man’s body shielded his mate. She was going to run out of ammunition before she finished him.

A thunderclap and a spray of wet, organic matter.

Both pirates dropped to the deck.

Jules blinked and saw Denby Moorhouse, the banker, stick his head out of a hatchway and look her way. His grin was feral and he pumped his fist twice. ‘Yessss!’

She flinched as bullets stitched up the hatchway and Moorhouse disappeared.

* * * *

Fifi had lost two of her crew already. Dietmar was gone, shot in the throat. One of the engineers, Rohan or Urvan – she could never remember which was which – had died as soon as he’d stepped outside. She had two men left: a wounded Rhino, who had joined her from the bridge, and the surviving half of Rohan and Urvan. She was also out of ammunition.

No more boarders were pouring out of the Viarsa 1, but from the sounds of the struggle on the lower decks, there had to be more than enough of them on the Rules already.

‘Rhino, your arm’s fucked – gimme that 16, would you?’ she yelled over the noise.