Through the black haze, Pitt detected both men rising and immediately ducked into the ladderway. But as he back-stepped, his instincts took over, and he grabbed the pistol on the step. As his body ducked below the deck, his arm went up with the pistol. His hand was aligned closer to the second gunman, and he whipped the barrel toward the man’s head and quickly squeezed the trigger.

A simultaneous explosion of lead ripped across the surrounding deck, blasting a shower of splinters on top of him. His ears told him that one of the machine guns had ceased firing, while the other still peppered the ladderway. Sinking to the lower deck with a slight dizziness, he turned to Giordino, who was headed up with a pair of wood-handled pistols and a Purdey shotgun.

“I think I got one of them,” he said.

Giordino stopped in midstep, noticing a pool of blood growing on the deck next to Pitt’s feet.

“You’ve been hit.”

Pitt looked down, then raised his right arm. AV-shaped hole had been ripped through the sleeve beneath his lower forearm, dripping a steady flow of blood. Pitt squeezed his hand, which still gripped his pistol.

“Missed the bone,” he said.

He slipped off the wool jacket as Giordino stepped over and ripped open the sleeve on Pitt’s sweater. Two ugly holes tore through the meaty part of his forearm, somehow missing nerves and bone. Giordino quickly tore strips from Pitt’s sweater and wrapped them tightly around the wounds, then helped Pitt back into his jacket.

“I’ll reload,” Pitt said, regaining some color in his pale face. Gritting his teeth, he looked Giordino in the eye with a determined plea.

“Go finish them off.”

Chapter 82

82

ZAK HAD REMAINED HIDDEN BEHIND THE RAIL when his two gunmen rose and fired. Using their barrage as a cover, he then stood and rolled over the rail, scurrying across the deck to the ice-encased foremast. He looked aft, but there was no way he could make a clean shot on the ladder well, as a mound of ice amidships created a high barrier between the two positions.

It was an absurd situation, he thought, being held up by men armed with weapons over a century and a half old. He had to admire their cunning, which seemed noticeably absent from his own security team. He looked for another vantage point from which to fire, but, finding none, he searched for a way belowdecks. He spotted the forward hatch, but it was buried under two feet of ice, and there was no forward ladderway on the ship. Then he looked up, noticing that the foremast was tilted at an awkward angle. A cross-spar had ground onto the ridge and jammed the mast to starboard. The heavy mast had cracked the deck around its base, opening a two-foot gash that led below.