“Were you expecting someone?” Ridgeway asked without looking at Rebecca. He pointed toward the limo. The two figures in yellow slickers were making their way quickly down the dock, looking neither left nor right but directly toward the Valkyrie.

“Benjamin?” she called into the walkie-talkie. Static was the only reply. Rebecca stared at the instrument in her hand as if it had personally betrayed her.

Ridgeway drew the .357 Magnum from his robe pocket, felt it slide past the wad of thousand-dollar bills Rebecca had forced on him earlier. He thought briefly about handing them back but the footsteps sounding on the dock seemed more serious business.

“I think you’d better sit this one out a minute,” Ridgeway said. “Go into the forward cabin, and keep quiet.”

She seemed to shrink as Ridgeway led her quickly forward and eased her down onto a bunk.

Ridgeway spotted his khaki trousers hanging on the hook behind the cabin door. The realization that he was naked under his bathrobe did nothing for his confidence. Quickly, he laid the Smith & Wesson on the bed and reached for his pants, hearing above him the sound of one man and then another stepping aboard the Valkyrie. He had just snapped the catch on his trousers and pulled the zipper shut when the inch-thick teak companionway boards above his head exploded inward, torn by a silenced machine gun into a maelstrom of long twisted splinters.

“Back in the corner!” Ridgeway shouted, grabbing the Smith & Wesson and throwing himself against Rebecca. She groaned in pain as they tumbled into the corner of the cabin, just forward of the head. Instants later, Ridgeway watched in awe as the teak door and bulkhead wall on the other side of the cabin erupted with tiny brown geysers, spraying the area with a deadly pattern of slugs. He felt Weinstock shaking. But what he noticed most as he lay there with his cheek mashed against the forward wall of the head was the dull thudding vibration of slugs as they embedded themselves in the wood less than an inch from his head. Luck had tossed them at least one miracle; without silencers to rob them of their muzzle velocity the slugs would have sliced right through the two walls of the head, killing them both.

As suddenly as it had started, the firing stopped. Wind whistled through the bullet holes and Rebecca started to move.

“Be still,” Ridgeway whispered. They lay there some time, listening for a sound that was not part of the storm overhead. Eventually it came, the faintest of scraping noises, the sound of street grit grinding between a hard-sole shoe and the Valkyrie’s deck. The sound grew louder until it was directly overhead.

Whirling onto his back, Ridgeway fired twice through the ceiling. In the confined space the pistol sounded like a cannon. Though his ears were ringing, Ridgeway heard a surprised grunt of pain. Moments later, there was a heavy thud followed immediately by a metallic sound of a gun skittering across the deck.