Triage, in medical terms, means that a doctor attends to the patients who are in greatest need first. A sucking chest wound will be attended to before a broken femur, for instance. On the battlefield, triage means attending to the tasks most likely to keep you and yours alive longer first.

  Alejandra was in triage mode.

  She ignored Tomas’ body for now. He would not get any deader, and there was still an unconscious enemy on the floor who could potentially be a threat when he recovered. She stripped the plug wire from a table lamp, split the cord down the middle, and used the lengths to truss the unconscious Luis up like a prize hog ready for slaughter.

  She left him facedown on the deck. She did not owe him comfort.

  Next, she recovered his pistol from where she had thrown it down the hall and secured it by sticking it in the waistband of her jeans. Because with untrained civilians on board, a gun was a threat even if they weren’t hostile to her.

  Next she went back to her gun safe, unlocked it, and grabbed her rifle and as much ammunition as she could stuff into her pockets. Because if they were being chased by pirates, then she needed something heavier to deal with them than a Sig and some hollow points. She would have killed for a SAW and a couple capable gunners.

  Why not a fast-mover and a couple apaches, since we’re dreaming? She shook her head and started to lock her safe again, then paused. Matty would need a weapon too. She had the pistols of course, but the last time he had gone to the range he had been… Competent. Not stellar, merely competent.

  She grabbed a shotgun from the safe as well and stuffed two boxes of shells under each arm. She felt like a duck as she waddled back out of the room, and thanked the paranoia that had made her pack a small arsenal for their trip to Hawaii. Just in case of sharks, she’d said. And also to take the kids hunting. Because that was a thing families did on the Island, right? She and Matt both had known she really meant ‘just to keep my nerves from jangling the entire time.’

  This was going to undo, ooh, whole loads of therapy. She snorted at the thought.

  Her good humor vanished when she emerged into the hallway and saw three terrified faces staring at her through a crack in the door.

  “Mom?” Lucas was the only one to speak, and his eyes were not looking at her. “Is he dead?”

  She glanced over her shoulder to see Luis still trussed like a chicken in the doorway.

  “I thought I told you to keep that door closed and locked,” she said instead of answering. “You need to get back inside, right now and stay safe.”

  “Mom,” this time it was Olivia, and her voice was far steadier than poor Lucas’ had been. “You’re armed to the teeth and Luis is tied up and bleeding. What does ‘safe’ mean?”

  Allie glanced back again, then back to her children and their friend. Dinah looked more scared than either Lucas or Olivia. Which was only to be expected. She hadn’t lived with Alejandra for the last few years.

  Her children had.

  “Luis–” killed “–hurt Tomas. He’s… Part of a pirate group. The other pirates are out there now. Tu papa will try to outrun them, and if he can’t, then tu padres will fight them. That is why you must stay down here, and be safe.”

  Lucas finally looked at her. His eyes went up and down, pausing on her pockets and the boxes of shells under her arms, and on the guns.

  “I can carry those for you,” he said, finally meeting her eyes.

  “No,” she started to say, then jerked in surprise as her son shoved open the pocket door and all but ran up to her, his hands out and grabbing at the boxes. “Lucas, I said no! Get back inside–”

  “There’s more ammo in the safe, right?” Olivia appeared next to her brother, grabbing the boxes from Alejandra’s pockets. “Dinah, come here, help us carry.”

  “Um… O-okay?”

  “Stop.” Alejandra’s command voice cracked through the air… And she blinked when her children looked at her once, then did not stop.

  “You and dad are gonna fight pirates, mama.” Olivia said as she reached for the shotgun. “The only safe place for us is on a boat where you have won. Doors and locks won’t do anything. Let us help you win.”

  Alejandra stared into the brown eyes of her daughter, only fifteen years old but shining fierce and determined. She looked at Lucas, pale and shaking but with his jaw set and his hazel eyes–a heritage of his father–clear and wide open.

  You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.

  “You do not carry the guns,” she said, keeping the shotgun away from Olivia. “Go get all the ammo from the safe. The combination is nine-two-nine-seven. Bring it up to tu papa and stack it where he tells you. No, wait.”

  She stopped them from running off and turned instead to check on Luis. The man was still unconscious. She’d probably given him a concussion. She dragged him back into his room and locked the door behind her with her key, then snapped the key off in the lock. It was a quick-and-dirty brig, and would probably cost Matty a bundle to fix. But it would serve for now, and keep the puto inside from getting up to mischief if he somehow managed to wake up and escape his bonds.

  “Okay,” she said, turning back to the children. “Now run.”

  ==================================

  “Dad, mom said to ask you where you want this stacked.”

  Matt turned his head just enough to glance at Lucas out of the corner of his eye. His son stood there, wide-stanced to deal with the rolling of the ship, and with his arms crammed full of…

  Ammo boxes?

  Of course they were.

  “On the bench,” he said, nodding to the side of the cabin. He would have pointed, but his knuckles were white from his grip on the helm, and he would have had to pry his hands loose.

  “Right,” Lucas moved out of his field of vision. “Hi sis,” he heard the boy say, presumably to Bel.

  “Hi squirt,” Bel replied, her voice thready.

  The coast guard frequency stuttered and popped over the speaker. The storm was interfering with the radio, and he couldn’t be certain anyone had heard his distress call. He’d set his emergency beacon to squawk at regular intervals, hopefully updating someone out there as to his position and heading.

  “Where are they?” the next voice belonged to Alejandra.

  “Port side aft, about a hundred sixty degrees.” He glanced at her, and found her armed to the teeth. “Is one of those for me?”

  “Yup.” she set the shotgun down on the console. “Chamber’s empty. You remember how to work it?”

  “Pump once, aim, fire, repeat.” He almost smiled as he repeated the words she had uttered the first time she had shown him how to fire the weapon.

  “Right. Binoculars?”

  “Here mom,” Bel said. Matt used the time to check his heading, the radar, and his speed. The Dilligaf was a well-built craft, and her powerful engines could handle the edge of the storm band with relative ease, even if it made for a rough ride.

  “I see them,” Alejandra’s voice took on a mechanical quality. “About four hundred yards. Looks like they’re closing.”

  “Yeah.” Matt glanced over his shoulder, watching as his children and their friend stacked ammunition on the bench in preparation for a gun battle.

  God, a gun-battle on the high seas. It was like a bad thriller movie.

  “That boat look like a rough-weather hull to you?” he asked his wife, who had her eyes trained into the storm and the boat trailing them.

  “Semi-displacement hull for sure,” she said after a moment. “But nothing special.” She lowered the binoculars and looked at him. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that when we commissioned the Dilligaf I made damn sure it could take just about anything the ocean threw at her.” Matt said.

  Husband and wife locked eyes for a moment. Alejandra nodded once, then glanced at Olivia as their daughter set down a box of ammunition and straightened up.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  “Thats all of it,” the teen said. “Now what?”

  Matt looked at Alejandra again. “Where’s Luis?”

  “Tied and locked. Houdini might be able to get out of it with enough time.”

  “Right.” He took a deep breath and looked at Olivia. “Get everyone else up here and strap in. It’s going to get rough.”

  He waited until his children were all where he could see them, then turned back to the helm. With one hand he increased the throttle, and with the other he spun the wheel.

  And the yacht leaped forward towards the heart of the storm.

  ============================

  “They are running, Jefe!”

  Esteban muttered an invective under his breath. So the fool on the boat had been unable to disable the engine. Pity. That would have made things simpler.

  He stood on the bridge of his commandeered fishing boat and glared through the rain at the blurry white shape of the fancy yacht. This was supposed to have been an easy snatch. Everything had pointed to a simple voyage, a quick capture, and a grand payday.

  Instead here he was, freezing his balls off in a freak pacific storm far from his hacienda and his women. It was enough to make a cartel man choke.

  “Increase speed,” he commanded the driver–pilot–his mind supplied the correct term.

  “My engines are already red-lined, jefe,” the fisherman said apologetically. “My Roberta is not meant for speed!”

  Esteban cursed again, this time with feeling, and glared at the norteamaricano boat as it turned into the wind and strove for freedom.

  Well. It seems we must take the riskier option then. Ordinarily he would not have risked it himself. But his orders had come from a high-ranking cartel boss, who appeared to have a personal interest in the mission. So. He grabbed his rifle and shouldered through the door and out into the howling wind and driving rain where his men waited miserably on the deck.

  “Lower the boats!”

  ===================================

  “Zodiacs! They’re getting into Zodiacs!” Alejandra’s voice cracked like a whip in the small cabin.

  Matt swore. “They’re insane!”

  “Apparently so, yes. I see two boats, ten-fifteen men in each.”

  Zodiacs were small, shallow-water craft built for speed. To put them in this kind of water was madness of the highest order, tantamount to suicide. One wrong move would capsize the whole thing. Hell, even one right move could capsize the whole thing.

  “Closing fast,” were his wife’s next words, tight and clipped.

  Of course, if they managed to get lucky and stay upright, they could beat the Dilligaf in a footrace every day of the week and twice on sunday.

  If they could stay upright.

  “Kids, strap in,” he heard himself say. “You too Allie. It’s going to get worse.”

  “Now it’s going to get worse?” he heard the disbelief in Olivia’s voice accompanied by the snaps of buckles and the zip of straps.

  There is an art to steering small craft–and for all her size and opulence the Dilligaf was still considered a small craft–in rough seas. For starters, you didn’t make fast turns in rough seas, any more than a race car driver would make a sharp turn at full speed. You had to be gentle and methodical even when everything around you was chaos.

  For second, you couldn't just drive a straight line through the ocean like it was the frozen north and you were driving an ice breaker. You had to zig through the waves, try to climb them at a 45-degree angle so that you’re cutting across that energy instead of trying to bull right through.

  The Dilligaf had not been built specifically with rough seas in mind, but Matt had insisted that she be over-engineered to the point of ridiculousness because his family was going to be aboard that yacht and by god he was going to do all in his power to keep them safe. And right now he was sending prayers of thanks up to God in His heaven that he had done so. The powerful engines on the yacht howled under the strain as he drove her right into the teeth of the storm.

  “Keep an eye on those zodiacs,” he heard his voice–more calm than he would have ever thought possible–say. “Let me know if they get close.”

  “Si,” was all Allie said.

  The next few minutes were the longest of Matthew Albright’s life. His eyes stared unblinking into the raging weather and his knuckles had gone past white to almost clear on the helm as he guided his yacht up and down waves that dwarfed her in size and power. He heard his children whimpering with fear at every crash of thunder, heard his own breath loud in his ears as he fought against nature itself.

  A powerful swell caught the side of the yacht and sent it rocking hard. Matt swore and spun the wheel, turning into the wave and gunning the engines to negate the potential capsize. He sighed with relief as the danger passed, then wiped his forehead and continued on.

  “They are close,” Allie’s voice said, her tone grim.”

  “What?” Matt blinked. How long had he been focused on his driving? “How in the world are they still upright?”

  ==============================

  “Hijo de puta!” Esteban swore viciously and received a mouthful of rain and saltwater for his trouble.

  How are we still upright? The thought slid across his mind like a knife as he huddled–and that was the correct word–with the rest of his men in the Zodiac as their crazy pilot drove them across even crazier seas.

  He had already vomited three times. Twice onto men he had called his brothers. But it was only fair, two of them had vomited on him as well. The storm was ripping at them, soaking them through and freezing them solid. He could not feel his hands or feet, and he was quite certain that death rode with them in this damned boat.

  I was a fool. He should never have ordered his men into these boats. He certainly should never have gone with them. Damn the jefes back in Mexico for sending them on this job in the first place, and damn them again for demanding every measure be taken to secure those Americano hostages.

  “Do not worry, jefe!” Miguel, crazy Miguel, practically shrieked from the pilot’s station. “You will not die today! Look, see, I have brought you to the Americano boat just as you asked!”

  Esteban risked a look up at the front of the zodiac. And miracle of miracles, there it was, the white bow of the Americano ship looked like heaven and its gates to his eyes, because it was big and close and most importantly more stable in the water than this child’s toy with engines on it.

  “Well done Miguel!” Esteban yelled back to be heard over the storm. “Get ready you men! Miguel, find us a place to board!”

  “Aye aye, Jefe!”

  ===================================

  “Captain, I think we are off course!”

  Tokikichi blinked and turned from the bridge windows to stare at his navigator. “How can that be?” he asked with a calm he did not feel. Damn this storm, it was playing merry hell with everything.

  “I am unsure captain,” the navigator said, his eyes glued to his panel. “The GPS readings are… Strange. I have been watching them, and our speed and heading indicators. They do not match up.”

  “The storm is interfering with GPS now?” Disbelief made itself known in Tokikichi’s voice.

  “Perhaps something knocked our antenna out of alignment,” another crewman said hesitantly.

  “Perhaps there are demons in the storm,” said another one, scoffing.

  As soon as the words were out, the bridge got quiet. Even the scoffer. Eyes turned to look out the bridge windows at a storm that had appeared out of nowhere and was doing things a storm should not be able to do.

  “Plot our course manually,” Tokikichi ordered. “Start with the last reading you feel is good. Find out where the hell we are. Immediately.”

  “Aye Captain.” The navigator reached for his charts.

  =================================

  “They’re almost here.” Alejandra’s voice was steady as iron. She could see the Zodiacs clearly now. One had all but pulled up behind the Dilligaf, and she could see two men in the front standing up–or at least making an attempt at it–with grappling hooks in their hands.

  “I’m opening a window,” she said next, just to make sure her husband knew what was happening behind him. “Kids, get low and cover your ears. It’s going to get loud in here.”

  She settled in against the rear wall of the cabin and slid open the window, letting the storm howl into the small space. She was soaked through to the bone instantly as she knelt and settled the barrel of her rifle onto the sill. Her eyes found the front sights, and she slowed her breathing as she took aim at the men in the zodiac behind her. The rolling and thrashing of the boat beneath her became just another thing to ignore as her sight picture lined up on the man’s center mass. He came up over the railing, landed awkwardly on the deck, recovered his balance, and stood with his rifle in his hands–

  The feel of the trigger pulling and the buck of the rifle against Alejandra’s shoulder came almost as a surprise, just like it always did at the start of such things. The silhouette dropped like a stone, his rifle spinning off somewhere into the darkness.

  She breathed out, shifted aim, and started firing in earnest. Bullets went downrange, slapping into the boat and various items of cover as her enemies flung themselves away and out of sight, trying to get out of the metal rain.

  Smile, cabron, for War has come for you.

  =============================

  “Captain! We are no longer in the commercial shipping lanes!”

  Tokikichi’s head whipped up at the sudden panic in his navigator’s voice. “What!?”

  “We have drifted almost sixty miles off course captain! The storm–”

  “LIGHTS! Lights dead ahead!”

  The call came from one of the lookouts he had posted, and the panic in the man’s voice was palpable even over the radio.

  “Turn!” Tokikichi ordered without thinking. And then he looked forward, and saw a flash of white hull barely twenty meters ahead of the prow of his ship, and knew that the order would help not one bit.

  =============================

  Matt’s eyes flew open wide. The Dilligaf crested the biggest wave yet…

  And a monster was there.

  The huge boxy shape of the car carrier loomed in front of the Dilligaf like a leviathan of old. Matt’s breath froze in his lungs and his eyes bugged out of his head.

  “BRACE!” he screamed and spun the wheel in a suicidally tight turn. He felt the boat spin. Felt it pitch and yaw in the dangerous waves. Felt it start to tilt.

  Saw the prow of the car carrier coming straight for them.

  He turned and leaped from the helm towards his kids, driven by instinct older than time. His arms went around Bel and Olivia. He felt something warm grab onto his hand, and he looked up to see Alejandra there, arms around Lucas and Dinah, her hand in his. Her eyes were wide with fear and understanding as they met his.

  He felt her squeeze his hand.

  He heard his children scream.

  He heard the explosive CRUNCH as the two came together in an apocalyptic crash. Felt the hull give way. Hugged his children tight. Water smashed into his back.

  Pain.

  Cold.

  Black.