Juan adjusted his aim, but the guard had found cover behind a wet bar set against the far wall. He didn’t have enough ammunition to blast away randomly and was already angry at himself for the two bullets he wasted on the couch. When the second guard emerged from behind the bar he had his machine pistol ready and triggered off half a magazine in an uncontrolled burst.

Cabrillo dove flat as glass shattered and bullets screamed above him. The spray of rounds ricocheted off the massive steel pipe behind him, zinging harmlessly into the night. He scrambled aft and fought the natural urge to roll off the boat and onto the dock. Instead he gripped a stanchion that supported a retractable awning and whipped his body around it so that he was on the stairs again. He climbed as quickly as he could and leaned over the railing above the shattered window.

The stubby barrel of the guard’s machine pistol appeared, tracking back and forth as he sought his prey. When he couldn’t see Cabrillo’s body lying dead on the catwalk, his head and upper back emerged. He looked fore and aft and when he still didn’t see Cabrillo he leaned out further so he could look down on the dock.

“Wrong direction, pal.”

The guard twisted his shoulders, trying to raise the Skorpion. Juan stopped him with one round through the temple. The machine pistol dropped into the gap between the boat and the dock.

The Glock’s sharp report gave his position away to the final guard. The bridge floor erupted with ragged holes as the gunman below sprayed the cabin ceiling.

Juan tried to throw himself onto the dash but staggered when a bullet blew his artificial foot in half. The kinetic force of the impact, plus his own momentum, vaulted him over the low windscreen and he rolled down the sloping wall of glass that fronted the lower cabin spaces.

His back slammed into the foredeck, forcing the air from his lungs in an explosive whoosh. He levered himself onto his knees, but when he tried to stand the mechanisms that controlled his foot refused to respond. His state-of-the-art prosthesis was now no more than a wooden peg leg.

Inside one of the yacht’s beautifully appointed cabins he could see the fourth gunman silhouetted against the raging fire burning in the main salon. The propane line that fed the stove had burned through and a roaring jet of liquid fire blasted upward, spreading flames across the ceiling from corner to corner. Molten plastic dripped onto the carpet, starting numerous smaller blazes.

The guard had heard Juan’s tumble over the roar of the inferno. He shifted his aim from his cabin’s ceiling to the main window and stitched the safety glass with bullets. A dozen crazed spiderwebs appeared in the wide pane and chips rained down on Cabrillo like fistfuls of diamonds.