Eight of his assaulters stacked up outside the bridge. The second man tried the handle on the metal door, but it was locked. He stepped back and signaled for the team’s breacher—a man trained to gain entry where others hoped to heep them out. He did a two-second evaluation of the door, the lock, and the door frame before lighting a handheld cutting torch. Though it looked like a road flare, the Breachpen burned at 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to cut through the door and the stainless steel deadbolt in twenty seconds.

The breacher stepped back and the next man in the stack kicked open the door. The eight pirates streamed inside and fanned out against the walls, rifles up and ready for action, but the bridge was empty. They’d met no resistance from a vessel protection detachment, and a quick search of the accommodations area revealed no crewmen—which left one inescapable conclusion.

The crew had retreated to a citadel.

It took four and a half minutes for the assault team to locate it.

But with half-inch-thick steel walls and a waterproof hatch, another Breachpen wasn’t going to get them inside. One of the pirates fried the two exterior CCTV cameras with a high-powered laser while the breacher unloaded his backpack.

The team had encountered citadels before.

He removed a four-foot nylon circle with an adhesive backing and slapped it against the wall, then attached nine pounds of explosives and braced it with what looked like a pair of tent poles.

The team retreated behind cover as the breacher unspooled fifty feet of detonating cord and tucked in safely around a corner. After a quick check of the system, he pulled the trigger on the firing mechanism.

The explosion was deafening.

The wall looked as if a four-foot-wide bullet had been fired through it. Two assaulters approached from the sides and lobbed hand grenades into the opposite corners of the room, left/low, right/high, in a well-rehearsed routine to eliminate any chance that they might collide in the air, before juking back behind the steel walls.

Metal fragments ricocheted inside the citadel as the grenades exploded.

Four pirates climbed through the hole and dead-checked the downed sailors with 5.45mm bullets to the chest, more a function of training than necessity—the breaching charge and the fragmentation grenades had already done most of the killing.

A small drone operated by the pirates continued orbiting the ship, its thermal sensors scanning the deck for signs of life while the assault team searched the interior. One man was found in the pump room, two others in the engine control room, and they died where they stood, for there could be no survivors. The pirates would be out of business if the outside world ever learned of their tactics.