As he snapped it shut, he saw the shooter’s legs appear at the edge of the console.

Heard the sound as the man racked the top slide to load another round into the breech, ready to finish the job.

Abandonato crossed himself, offered a prayer to his own God, and launched himself at the guy with the gun, yelling ‘Segaiolo!’

The shooter rocked back on his heels in surprise at the sight of the captain coming for him, tripped on his own feet, and fell onto his arse.

If Abandonato had pressed home his attack in the second, second-and-a-half, that his enemy was disoriented, he might have prevailed.

But instead he hesitated.

And now the attacker raised his pistol and fired from eight or nine feet away.

The round hit the skipper in the right side of his groin and knocked him backwards like he’d been kicked by a mule. There was remarkably little pain – his left brain noted this fact with no little surprise, even as his right brain was overwhelmed with shock and alarm – but the bullet had severed his femoral artery and his life was now measured in seconds.

Still prone, the attacker pulled the trigger again, but the top slide was back and jammed again – the curse of cheap ammunition – and the weapon didn’t respond.

He pulled the trigger again – frantically – and then smashed the thing on the deck, in a futile attempt to clear it.

And then looked up at the captain.

Saw the Very pistol.

The boot suddenly on the other foot, his bottle went.

‘No,’ he screamed, holding up a hand. ‘No!’

Staggering forward, pumping blood, Abandonato raised the pistol and fired the flare into the other man’s face from a distance of three feet.

Fifty grams of potassium perchlorate, dextrin, and strontium nitrate entered the terrorist’s right eye at 330 feet per second, and came to a stop two inches inside his skull.

Burning at 2,000 degrees centigrade.

The bridge was filled with an unearthly screaming and banging as the man howled and clawed at his face, but Abandonato was past caring.

Suddenly weary, breathing laboured, he slumped to the floor in a puddle of his own blood.

Pressed his hand to the front of his trousers.

Looked at his palm.

Bright, shiny red.

He didn’t know how he knew it, but he knew that he was dying.

He didn’t feel frightened, only sad.

As the room started to go dim, a tear formed in his eye.

He wanted to speak to his wife, and his daughter, but he hadn’t the strength to stand and reach for the sat-link.

His last conscious thought was that he would never see his unborn son.

Never smell him.

Never hear or hold him.

As that realisation formed, he slipped into oblivion and was gone.

16.

THE SPANISH SECURITY complex had been dreading – and preparing for – a nightmarish attack like this ever since the Madrid train bombings way back in 2004.