“He must be trying to stall them until they drift past us.”

On board the gunboat, Matabu and Ketou’s faces registered a total lack of comprehension as Pitt called out, this time in his native tongue.

“I do not understand Swahili. Can you try English?”

Matabu pounded on the bridge counter in exasperation and growing anger. He was not used to humored indifference. He replied in broken English that Pitt could barely decipher. “I am Admiral Pierre Matabu, Chief of the National Benin Navy,” he announced pompously. “Stop your engines and heave-to for inspection. Heave-to or I will give the order to fire.”

Pitt nodded furiously and waved both hands in a gesture of compliance. “Yes, yes, don’t shoot. Please don’t shoot.”

The cockpit of the Calliope was slowly coming even with the stern of Matabu’s gunboat. Pitt kept just enough distance between the two boats to make it impossible for anyone but an Olympic broadjumper to leap across the gap. Two crewmen threw lines on Pitt’s bow and stern decks, but he made no move toward them.

“Tie the lines,” Ketou ordered.

“Too far away,” Pitt shrugged. He held up a hand and made a half arc. “Hold on. I’ll come around.”

Not waiting for a reply, he eased the throttles forward and swung the helm so that the sport yacht slowly slipped into a 180-degree turn around the stern of the gunboat before straightening out and pulling up along the opposite side of the hull. Now both vessels were on a parallel course, bows pointed downriver. Pitt noted with no small amount of satisfaction that the 30-millimeter guns could not depress low enough to strike the Calliope’s cockpit.

Matabu stared down at Pitt, eyes gloating, a smile of triumph beginning to spread across his thick jowls. Ketou didn’t share his superior’s wolfish expression. His face wore a very suspicious look indeed.

Calmly, still grinning, Pitt waited until Giordino’s turret was directly in line with the gunboat’s engine room. Keeping one hand on the wheel, he casually reached under the chair and grasped the stock of the grenade launcher. Then he spoke softly into the microphone on his headset.

“Helicopter dead ahead. Gunboat to starboard. Okay, gentlemen, it’s show time. Let’s take ‘em!”

As Pitt spoke, Giordino dropped the shield around his engine room turret and unleashed a rapier missile that ran straight and true into the helicopter’s fuel tanks. Gunn popped up from the forward hatch two modified M-16 automatic rifles clamped under each armpit, both hands gripping and squeezing the triggers, muzzles blazing, blowing away the men manning the 30-millimeter guns as though they were chaff spewed from a grain combine. Pitt aimed the muzzle of the grenade launcher into the air and fired the first of his incendiary/concussion grenades over Matabu’s vessel onto the superstructure of the second. Unable to see the backup gunboat, he fired blindly, judging a trajectory that would drop on his target. The grenade bounced off a winch into the river, exploding with a thunderous boom underwater. The next lob missed the boat completely, bursting with the same result.