While the assault team had expected the smaller fishing boat to be an easier target than a thousand-foot tanker, the Saviz’s small size also made the approach of the two semisubmersibles impossible to conceal, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard sailors fired down from the deckhouse at the men climbing over her sides, barely forty feet away. Two pirates received light wounds before the team was able to move to cover and return fire. They raked the bridge with automatic weapons fire, shattering glass and sending bullets through its thin metal skin.

The Norwegian took four men and advanced to the deckhouse. The door was locked, and he called the breacher forward. They hadn’t brought the fancy explosives for the small fishing boat, and the muscular man took a full swing at the lock with a sledgehammer. It broke halfway, with the bolt still holding the door closed, and he wound up for a second try just as a burst of gunfire came through the door. Two of the rounds were stopped by his Dyneema vest and its bulletproof ceramic, but the third round caught him in his left eye and he fell to the deck, dead.

Standing off to the side, the Norwegian picked up the sledgehammer and finished the job as the Iranian gunman continued to fire. The door crashed open, and the Kenyan tossed a grenade inside, primed to explode almost instantaneously.

The blast killed the Iranian defender, and the three pirates stormed in. It was a small room, no more than an entryway and, except for the smoke in the air, the blood on the walls, and the body on the ground, it was empty. There were two doors on either side of a stairway that led up and down.

The Norwegian tried the first door.

It was unlocked.

The three pirates stacked up outside. The third man opened the door while the first two stepped inside. The room was tiny, a small cabin with a single berth and a grimy porthole. It smelled like mildew and it was empty.

The pirates checked the second door. It too was unlocked, but when they opened it they found a crewman inside, hiding under a table.

Two pirates fired at once and the room was cleared.

Outside, the helicopter had closed with the ship and the snipers were firing at the bridge with their semiautomatic sniper rifles, blowing out the windows so their thermal sights could acquire targets. The heavy rifle rounds killed one of the ship’s officers and drove the others from the glassed-in bridge.

“At least two crew squirting from the bridge,” said one of the snipers over the assault frequency.

The Norwegian motioned to his team.

They ascended the first few stairs, with weapons pointed up the staircase, but he raised a closed fist in the air when he heard footsteps racing toward them.

The two remaining Iranian naval officers raced down the stairway—straight into the pirates’ sights, barely three feet away.