For several seconds a desperate silence fell over the river, broken by the soft crackling of burning surface oil. Then abruptly, like a shriek from the very pits of hell, an agonized voice screamed out over the water.

<<13>>

“Western filth!” Ketou cried. “You’ve murdered my crew.” He stood there against the gray sky, blood seeping from a wound in his shoulder, dazed by the sheer physical shock of the disaster around him.

Gunn stared up at him over the barrels of empty guns.

Ketou glared back at him for a moment, and then he focused on Pitt who was pushing himself off the deck and reaching for the wheel.

“Western filth,” Ketou repeated.

“Fair is fair!” Pitt shouted back above the crackle of the flames. “You lost the draw.” Then he added, “Abandon your ship. We’ll come around and pick you up.

Fleetingly, almost like the blink of a camera shutter, Ketou leaped down the ladder and ran toward the stern. The gunboat had heeled sharply to port, her gunwales awash, as he struggled across the steeply angled deck.

“Get him, Rudi,” Pitt snapped into his mike. “He’s going for the stern gun.”

Gunn said nothing but cast aside his useless weapons, ducked into the forward compartment, and snatched a Remington TR870 automatic shotgun. Pitt shoved the throttles to their stops convulsively, spinning the wheel to port and skidding the Calliope around in a violent sheer that ended with the bow aimed upriver. The propellers bit and dug in, the water boiled under her stern, and the Calliope leaped like a race horse out of the gate.

There was only oil and floating debris drifting on the river now. Commander Ketou’s gunboat was starting its final slide to the river bottom. The river flowed into the shattered hull and hissed in clouds of steam. Water was swirling around Ketou’s knees when he reached the aft 30-millimeter guns, swung the muzzles toward the fleeing sport yacht, and pressed the fire control button.

“Al!” Pitt hailed.

His reply was the hissing blast of a missile that Giordino launched from his turret. A streak of orange flame and white smoke shot through the air toward the gunboat. But Pitt’s abrupt turn of the wheel and the thrust of sudden acceleration had thrown off Giordino’s aim. The missile swished over the sinking gunboat and exploded in the trees bordering the river.

Gunn appeared at Pitt’s side in the cockpit, took careful aim, and began blasting away with the Remington over the stern at Ketou. Time seemed to slow as the shot splattered around the gun mount and into the African boat commander. They were too far away to see the hate and frustration in his shiny black features. Nor could they see that he died over the gun sight, his lifeless hand doggedly forcing down the fire control button.