Alejandra Albright’s mind was filled with War.

  The gunshot had been that of a handgun, small-caliber and nearby. The weight of her own gun in her hand went instantly from a comforting presence to a necessary tool and partner as it came up and settled into a combat grip almost of its own volition. Her eyes went wide and unblinking as she got to the stateroom door and nudged it open with her foot, bringing the pistol’s sights up in line and clearing the corners like she had done hundreds of times back in the desert.

  And beneath the War lurked the Scout, cataloguing her own thoughts and all the details that would get in the way of the War putting bullets downrange.

  Someone was firing on her boat. The only guns on board should have been hers. The Scout went back through her memories and decided that none of the guns had been missing from the safe. Which meant someone else had brought a gun on board.

  The shot had come from the direction of the stewards’ cabin. That meant Tomas or Luis. Tomas was a friend, had been with Matty for over six years, and had once confided to Alejandra that he barely knew how to hold a gun much less fire one.

  Luis was new. Luis was a threat. The Scout decided that Luis was the most likely culprit, and relayed that necessary information to the War as Alejandra stepped out of her cabin and moved in a combat walk down the hall.

  “Allie? Allie!” the radio in her pocket crackled with Matt’s panicked voice. She ignored it. “What’s going on?”

  The door to the stewards’ cabin swung open. Alejandra saw a flash of brown skin and a glint of gunmetal.

  She fired without consciously deciding to pull the trigger, rode the recoil back down and fired again, sending two rounds downrange in the space of a heartbeat. Luis’s head had jerked away, and her shots missed by millimeters, smashing into the mahogany wall paneling and sending hardwood splinters ricocheting through the air.

  “One chance cabron,” she heard her voice say as she fast-walked down the hall. “Throw out your gun and come out with your hands up, or you die.”

  She moved quickly. Luis would return fire. He would have to. She didn’t know what his goal was with all this, but she was an obstacle to whatever it was. He would try to shoot her.

  He would fire at her down the hall. At the end of which were her children, protected only by a thin layer of drywall and fiberglass.

  It might stop a bullet.

  He could not be allowed to fire.

  She fired twice more when she was barely feet away from the cabin door, sending more splinters flying. The shots were not meant to hit anything besides air. They were meant to draw the other man out to return fire. A pause in a gunfight is a natural invitation.

  Luis took it. The wiry man popped out of the door and thrust his gun down the hall like amateurs and movie actors did–and squawked when Alejandra disarmed him. Her left hand went like this and her gun barrel dug in here and now she was holding his gun by the barrel as he staggered back from her assault. She threw the gun behind her down the hall and shoved forward, then gasped as Luis’ knee came up and blasted into her groin.

  “Puta,” the man hissed. “I will kill you and sell your children as slaves!” He lunged at her, launching himself with the roll of the boat, trying to tackle her.

  Alejandra was all of five foot two. The man’s charge should have knocked her off her feet and onto her back. But she had been a Sergeant in the United States Army, surrounded on all sides by slabs of muscle twice her size and three times her weight.

  She knew how to fight large opponents.

  She planted her left foot and pivoted with his motion, taking the energy he had meant to overwhelm her with and adding her own to it to redirect it… Right into the wall.

  Luis’ face met mahogany at speed. The crunch was satisfying. She felt him grunt with the impact, wounded but not out of the fight. Felt him tense against her, felt him prepare to shove away and come at her again.

  She brought the butt of her pistol down on the back of his head. Once. Twice. On the third strike his limp body hit the floor and did not move.

  Shoot him, the War whispered, the barrel of her pistol pointed directly at the man’s head. He is an enemy. He threatened your children.

  It was tempting.

  Instead she forced her finger away from the trigger and sucked in a breath. Her clothes were soaked with sweat, her hands shook, and her eyes were wide and unblinkng. That, at least, was no different from the last time she’d been in Indian Country.

  Her hand went automatically for the zipties in her ruck before she realized she had neither zipties nor ruck. She kept her gun on Luis and glanced into the room. She could use lamp cords. Matt had made sure to furnish all the rooms with table lamps–

  Tomas’ body was on the floor, face turned so that his eyes stared sightlessly past her. She hissed at the sight. That had been Luis’ first shot, obviously–

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Senora…?”

  She jerked, pistol coming back up to point at Tomas’ body–No, not a body. Dying, but not dead. She hustled into the room and used her free hand to turn the man over. His midsection was an ugly mess of red. Gut-shot. There was nothing she could do. Maybe if they could get medevac in the next ten minutes and maybe if there had been a trauma surgery team ready and waiting… No.

  “I’m sorry Tomas,” she said, meaning it.

  “Boat…” The man coughed up blood onto her blouse. She did not flinch away. “The boat…”

  Tomas had always loved the yacht. It was his second home, after the one he shared with his Tia. “We’ll make sure to take care of it for you, Tomas,” she murmured.

  The dying man shook his head, tears forming at the corners of his eyes. “No, no Senora… The boat…”

  “Just rest, Tomas. The boat is not your worry anymore, I promise–”

  “No!” Tomas rose up, with what must have been the last of his strength, and clutched at her arm with one hand. “The boat!”

  He pointed with his free hand. She followed his finger, and saw a small electronic device on one of the bunks. Frowning, she looked closer. It looked like some kind of GPS device… A transmitter, perhaps?

  I will sell your children into slavery!

  The War howled as ice ran through her veins. She scrabbled her radio out of her pocket and hit the button.

  “Matty, come in.”

  “Allie! Thank God! What’s going on down there? Is everyone alright?”

  “I am fine. The children are fine. Tomas is hit. Luis shot him. I know you will have questions but there is no time. I need you to focus. I think there is another boat out there, following us. Tell me if you see it.

  She hoped she was wrong.

  Tomas died in her arms. He had used his last words to tell her about a boat.

  She did not think she was wrong.

  =====================

  Matt stared at the radio in his hand as if it had just started speaking Swedish. Tomas was shot? By Luis? And what was that about a boat? His thumb automatically moved to the talk button and depressed it, and his mouth opened to demand more answers… But then his brain kicked in.

  That had been Allie’s Sergeant voice. Even over the cheap radios, he had heard the urgency in her tone, and the bedrock of authority under it. Matt had grown up in the construction industry. He knew the sound of command. And he knew how to take orders.

  “Bel,” he said, releasing the button and using his own Voice. “There’s a set of binoculars under that seat,” he pointed. “Grab it and look at the horizon, tell me if you see anything.”

  “Are you insane?” Bel demanded. “Mom just said Tomas has been shot! We have to do some–”

  “We are doing something,” he broke in, his voice going hard. “We’re doing what tu madre told us to do. Now get the binoculars.” He turned back to the wheel and his white-knuckle grip on it. The seas were getting even rougher now, and the rain was driving so hard it was making the windows of the tower almost opaque. Bel would have a hard time seeing anything in that–”

  A flash of lightning lit up the sky and the sea, followed by the shockwave of thunder. Okay, maybe it wouldn’t be as difficult as he had imagined.

  As he wrestled the Dilligaf through the waves, he cranked up the power to the radar topside. He’d spent a small fortune on the best set on the market. At full power it would be enough to pierce through the storm at least for a short way before the returns became too scattered by the weather to give useful data. Between the radar, his own eyes, and Bel on the binoculars, maybe they’d find whatever it was that had Allie so worked up.

  The seconds ticked by to the sound of the rain and thunder. The radar returned nothing. Bel grumbled about how there was nothing to see out there. Matt gave it a forty-count before he grabbed the radio again and keyed the transmit button.

  “Allie, it’s Matt, there’s nothing out here that we can see. What’s going on–”

  “Dad! There’s a boat! Right, um, astern? That’s to the left, right?”

  Matt’s head whipped around to look portside where Bel was pointing. Between the swells and the rain and the darkness he couldn’t see anything.

  “Binoculars,” he demanded, not looking away and just extending his hand. He felt Bel slap them into his palm and he brought them to his eyes without ever blinking. Still nothing. What had she seen?

  And then a bolt of lightning cracked through the sky, illuminating everything in a photographer’s strobe for just an instant.

  In that instant Matt saw it. It looked like an old fishing barge, but it was cresting the waves like it had some serious engine power on it, and the angle of the prow was aimed more or less directly at the Dilligaf. There were human shapes in the conning tower, and more shapes on the deck.

  And in that snap-flash of light, Matt caught the glint of metal in more than one man’s hands.

  He felt his blood run cold as the boat vanished from his vision to be replaced by the storm battering at his windows.

  “Correction,” he heard himself say into the radio, and was amazed at how calm he sounded. “There is a boat out there, on what looks like an intercept course.” He swallowed. “Men on board. Some of them have–” fishing rods, maybe? They could just be random fishermen, out for a midnight troll through the harshest storm in a century in this part of the pacific. “–what appear to be guns,” he finished through a dry mouth.

  “Dad?” Bel’s voice sounded scared behind him. “What’s going on? Who is that out there?”

  Matt didn’t reply. His next action was as automatic as breathing. It was something he’d trained for, though in truth had never expected to have to actually use that training. He flipped on the powerful main radio of the yacht and tuned to the Coast Guard Emergency channel before plucking the handset from its cradle.

  “Mayday mayday mayday,” he said, his voice almost robotic. “This is the pleasure yacht Mrs. Dilligaf. My position is…” he glanced up at the GPS and rattled off the longitude and latitude. “I am currently on the eastern edge of the storm band in the pacific. I am declaring an emergency.”

  He took another breath. He could feel Bel’s wide eyes staring at him.

  “I am being pursued by pirates.”