“Air-1, launch on my mark . . . Boat-1, launch nine-one seconds from my mark . . . Boat-2, launch three-five seconds from my mark . . . 3-2-1, MARK.”

The helo lifted from the deck with its lights off and dove for the wavetops to avoid being silhouetted against the moon and stars as it flew toward the tanker. The Amjad was making fourteen knots. On its radar, moving at twenty-five knots on a parallel course, the helo would appear to be just another ship.

“Activating EW,” said the helicopter pilot.

Mounted under the aircraft’s fuselage was a Russian electronic-warfare pod that had been purchased from Cawar the arms dealer sixteen months earlier for ninety thousand euros. It immediately jammed the tanker’s radios, GPS, and satellite communications, cutting it off from the outside world. The pirates’ radios operated on a short-range, high-frequency band that was outside the jammer’s capabilities.

The helicopter tilted its rotor forward and accelerated to one hundred knots.

The high-capacity pumps aboard the two semisubmersibles began emptying their ballast tanks, raising them out of the water and turning them into speedboats. Boat-2 accelerated on schedule and was soon planing over the sea at forty knots, her pilot using an inertial navigation system and a gimballed thermal camera to guide her onto the target.

Fifty-six seconds later, Boat-2’s pilot hit the throttles and closed in from the opposite side.

Between the tanker’s enormous engine, the sea churning along the hull, and the noise of the wind, the deck of the ship was a noisy place, but the sound of an approaching helicopter, even the quiet MD 520, was impossible to conceal.

As the first faint image of the port-quarter lookout appeared in the snipers’ sights, they could see the man searching for the source of the noise, scanning the sea with binoculars, or possibly a night scope of his own.

But it didn’t matter.

Each of the airborne marksmen was equipped with a Polish SKW semiautomatic sniper rifle and FLIR thermal weapon sight.

It was an incredibly difficult shot, shooting from one moving platform to another, and the right-side snipers acquired their target and adjusted for shifts in trajectory and drag inherent in firing from a moving helicopter. They also adjusted their aim down slightly, to compensate for the fact that the clockwise-spinning bullets would generate additional lift as the airflow from the moving helicopter hit them from the left.

They fired at the same time and the sentry went down with two rounds in his chest.

The helo flew in an arc behind the ship’s stern until the other lookout came into view. This time the left-side snipers fired, aiming slightly higher to compensate for the clockwise spinning bullets’ tendency to bite into the air and pull themselves down.

One of the shooters missed.

But the second sniper caught the sailor in the edge of his hip. The round had knocked the man to his knees, but he staggered to his feet behind the ship’s railing.