Eddie chanced looking up. The pirates were headed for the tug where a SEAL assault boat from the Oregon was coming under heavy fire from gunmen aboard the large vessel. Whatever plan Juan had devised had seriously come part. There were only a couple of people on the assault boat. They needed cover fire from the Oregon if they were going to attack the tug, and yet the Gatling remained silent.

Then the multibarreled machine gun opened up. A ten-foot tongue of flame jetted from the weapons bay, and a section of hill where there were a bunch of retention ponds high above the beach vanished in a hammering volley that sent dirt flying thirty feet or more into the air.

Unable to warn the assault boat about the approaching tender, Eddie slithered down the boulder and took off again after Jan Paulus.

Firing with one hand while the other worked the wheel, Mike Trono added to the gunfire pouring off the assault boat as they countered the pirates’ initial barrage. Tory was hunkered low on the floorboards, firing precisely aimed shots at the pirates lining the tug’s rail. She had the accuracy of an Olympic marksman and the patience of a sniper.

The weapon felt perfectly balanced in her hands as she squeezed the trigger for a fifth time. Her target had ducked behind the railing’s metal plating, but the shot would keep his head down for a few critical seconds. Another gore-spattered gunman raised himself suddenly, hosing the sea with his AK-47 before homing in on the fleeing boat. Tory aimed carefully, her body anticipating the wave action, and she pulled the trigger. The light bullet sparked off the railing just in front of the Indonesian and ricocheted into his chest just below the sternum, lifting him high off his feet.

“Hold on!” Trono shouted. “We’re going back in. Cease fire.”

He twisted the wheel once again and set the boat on a collision course with the squat tugboat. Because they weren’t being fired on, many of the pirates stood up to draw a bead on the craft.

“Showtime,” Murph said over Trono’s radio.

The Oregon’s weapons officer shifted the Gatling from the hill and sent a few seconds’ burst into the drifting trawler. The boat was ripped to pieces in a hail of wood splinters and shredded netting. The pilothouse disintegrated. Seabirds gorging themselves on offal left to slop on the deck took flight as their world came apart. Then the stream of bullets penetrated the engine room, tearing the big diesel from its mount before puncturing the fuel tank. The resulting explosion sent a greasy fireball climbing into the sky, and the seas were raked with shrapnel.

What little remained of the trawler sank instantly, snuffing out the flames in a gout of steam.