Thunderbolt by Wilbur Smith (reading strategies book .txt) 📕

our way steadily straight for whatever it was. The thing split in two as we approached. Pete’s idling speedboat was one half of the equation, the other was a becalmed yacht with a broken mast.

It was lying low in the water, clearly half flooded. I put two and two together to work out what Mo had been reluctant to say. Most likely the mayday call I’d overheard during the storm had come from this stricken boat. The pirate captain had dispatched his new quick launch to find it.

I knew before I saw the yacht’s owners – a white-haired man and a younger woman with sunburnt shoulders, who were taped back to back next to the shattered mast – that the pirates hadn’t sped here to offer assistance. They were stealing anything of value. Flip-flops was minding Pete’s boat, but Barrel-man, the assault rifle slung across his back, exited from the half-submerged interior of the yacht carrying something and dropped it into the open mouth of a kitbag on deck.

‘What’s happening?’ asked Amelia.

‘They’re robbing those people,’ muttered Xander.

‘That boat looks like it’s sinking though,’ said Amelia. ‘They’ll bring that couple aboard, right?’

Mo looked away.

‘They won’t leave them on a sinking boat, surely.’

Mo didn’t reply.

Both the captain and the remaining guard on our boat were fixated by what was going on with the yacht. That meant they had their backs turned. I cast around for anything I might use as a weapon, but there was nothing. Hitting one of them over the head with a half empty water bottle wouldn’t achieve anything.

Even if we managed to take control of this boat, we’d never outrun Pete’s launch with Barrel-man at the helm. A length of thin plastic cord, coiled in the bilge, was the only object of any possible use within reach, so I picked it up and wrapped it round my hips, then concealed it below the waistband of my shorts. It might come in handy for tying something to something, possibly.

The poor couple on the boat were keeping their eyes down. I noticed that the man had a livid gash running the length of his left shin. He was bleeding onto the deck. Surely they’d have a first aid kit on board?

I was about to ask Mo to suggest Barrel-man look for it, when I spotted the speck of another boat on the horizon. It was coming our way. If I was right and the yacht had put out a distress call during the storm it would make sense that other boats in the area might respond to it as well.

The captain had also clocked this new inbound boat. He yelled something across the water, alerting Barrel-man and Flip-flops. Barrel-man dived into the half-submerged yacht again to retrieve another bag filled with I’ve no idea what, flung it and the other spoils across to Flip-flops in the speedboat, and followed himself, deftly jumping the gap. At the captain’s order the two men began to ready the dive boat.

‘We should do something,’ I said.

‘Like what?’ replied Xander.

‘Something to alert that boat. They’re sailing into a trap.’

Mo grabbed my arm. ‘Don’t!’ he hissed.

I might not have done what I did next if he hadn’t been so insistent, but I wasn’t about to take orders from Mo. I shook the boy off easily enough. Then I pulled my T-shirt over my head and waved it frantically in the air, a flag of distress.

It was a ludicrously weak attempt at a warning; unless somebody on the other boat had a pair of binoculars trained on me they’d never see me at that distance, but so what?

Xander hissed, ‘That looks like a distress signal! It’s as likely to make them think we need help and draw them to us as it is to warn them off!’

Like an idiot I ignored him, and regretted it almost instantly. The approaching boat may still have been too far away to spot me but the big bear-like guard who’d stayed on the cabin cruiser with the captain, the one who cradled his assault rifle with such tenderness, saw what I was doing. He moved very quickly for such a big guy. In three or four steps he was slap bang in front of me with the gun pointed at my midriff and a look about as blank as that sand tiger shark’s in his eye.

19.

Somebody shrieked, ‘No, no, no!’ beside me. I thought it was Amelia, or possibly Xander, but it turned out to be Mo. With hindsight that’s pretty scary: Mo knew these guys and definitely thought the big guard might pull the trigger. But that wasn’t his plan. Although he advanced pointing the gun’s muzzle at me he swung the butt forward as he arrived and slammed it straight into my solar plexus.

The blow drove the air from my lungs and knocked me flat on my back.

I’ve been winded before, but this was different. The nearest thing I can liken it to is the time, aged eight, I accidentally gave myself an electric shock trying to get a burning bagel out of the toaster with a fork. The electricity shooting through me then felt like icy lightning. It bounced me across the kitchen. I cracked my head open on the corner of the island unit.

Now, on my back in the bilge, trying to draw a breath was impossible. The air had somehow turned to tarmac. I had to cough up lumps of the stuff before I could catch a lungful of actual sea breeze.

He didn’t hit me again, and mercifully he didn’t hit any of the others either. He didn’t need to: the blow to me made a good enough point. By the time I’d clawed my way upright onto one knee the guard wasn’t even bothering to stand over me.

‘You OK?’ said Xander. Both he and Mo were helping me up.

I tried to say ‘yes’, but it came out more like a cough and tasted, faintly but worryingly, of blood.

Xander looked unconvinced.

Amelia, taking me