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

sideways and dropped to his knee among the life jackets still spread out in the hold. But he’d barely thumped to the deck before the other guard, Flip-flops, unleashed his semi-automatic.

Compared to the pock-pock-pock of the pistol, Flip-flops’ gun was shatteringly loud. He let loose in bursts. Chunks of fibreglass sprayed from the deck of the fishing launch and the man who’d fired the pistol was thrown clear out of sight.

The Bear was already clawing himself up out of the bilge. His left arm was vivid with blood from the elbow down. With his other hand he thrust his gun towards Barrel-man, who took it. They were swapping roles.

The Bear took control of the dive launch one-handed, Barrel-man covered the target boat with the rifle, and Flip-flops scrambled across the rail as the two boats came together. Once he was safely aboard Barrel-man followed, and then the Bear drew Pete’s boat away. Either the guy was in shock or just incredibly tough. He inspected his hurt arm with mild interest, as if it belonged to somebody else, before picking Pete’s chamois leather out of the compartment next to the driver’s seat and wrapping it tightly around the wound.

I couldn’t see what was happening on board the fishing boat, but somebody started shouting. The sound was immediately drowned out by another crackle of gunfire. There was a high scream, then sobbing.

‘They’ve killed him,’ Amelia stated.

She was right. Barrel-man levered the limp body of one of the anglers – presumably the guy who’d tried to fight back – up over the gunwale. He’d been shot in the head. I tried not to take in what was left of his face, just registered a middle-aged white guy with thick limbs and a big stomach. His T-shirt rose up to reveal its paleness as Barrel-man slid him over the side of the boat.

This seemed to be the pirates’ method: show everyone you mean business by making an example of at least one victim. In retrospect Pete had been lucky to be thrown overboard alive. Lucky or extremely unlucky, depending on how you looked at it, I thought grimly.

The body rolled over a couple of feet beneath the surface, blood clouding the clear blue water. I didn’t want to stare at the dead man but couldn’t help it. He was drifting our way. I tried to focus on the poor guys still aboard the fishing boat. One of them was shaking so hard it was visible from this distance. I couldn’t see either pirate aboard, but presumably one of them had his gun trained on the guys on deck, while the other was doing the looting.

‘What was that?’ Xander asked nobody in particular. He was pointing at the water right where the dead guy was floating. A dark blur rocketed up into the corpse, punching it through the surface, before immediately dragging it down again. The first shark still had hold of the man’s leg when the second one struck his body, and a third veered in on the second one’s tail. More immediately joined the fray. The water was soon boiling with them, their thrashing enough to create pink foam. It was a chilling sight, and if I had struggled to look away beforehand I was mesmerised now. Amelia and Xander were too. Only Mo kept his eyes on the fishing boat.

‘That happened so fast,’ said Xander.

‘It’s a common misconception that sharks can smell blood from miles away,’ said Amelia quietly. ‘Their sense of smell is acute, but it’s actually more like a few hundred metres. These ones will have been in the area already. Maybe they were following the fishing boat.’

‘Or us,’ I muttered.

‘Less likely,’ said Amelia decisively.

It didn’t take long for the frenzy to die down. The sharks quickly dragged what was left of the body too deep to see. As far as I could remember Pete hadn’t been bleeding when Barrel-man threw him overboard. He’d been conscious, he was strong, he was a formidable swimmer, with a life jacket, and a good knowledge of the currents, and … the more I tried to convince myself the dive master might have survived, the heavier the dread lay in the pit of my stomach.

Barrel-man was in view again now, ordering the anglers to hand over watches, wallets, phones. They gave up everything immediately, no doubt wanting the pirates gone as quickly as possible. Flip-flops passed two bags full of spoils they’d rinsed from the fishermen across to the one-armed Bear in the stern of the dive boat, and within minutes we were pulling away from the fishermen entirely. Though not as forlorn as the yacht before it, the fishing boat seemed equally adrift. Had the pirates incapacitated it, or would they be able to make their way back to the safety of port? I asked Mo.

He shrugged. ‘Sometimes the engine is broken in the aftermath.’

‘Nice use of the passive tense,’ said Amelia.

I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant by that but got the gist: these guys tended to maroon their victims at sea. ‘Where are we headed now?’ I asked Mo.

He gave another shrug. ‘I don’t know, but I’ll listen out.’

‘Not back to port ourselves then?’

‘That depends,’ he said, but didn’t elaborate.

Having realised we’d be returning to land at some point, it struck me now that I should do whatever I could to make it happen sooner rather than later. But what? Pretending to fall ill wouldn’t work. We weren’t that valuable to them. What they cared about was their ability to hunt down boats. How could I make it harder for them to do that?

‘Mo,’ I said. ‘Do you think you can persuade the boss to put me back in Pete’s boat?’

‘I doubt it,’ Mo replied.

‘Tell him we’d be less likely to mutiny if we were separated,’ said Xander. ‘Divide and conquer, et cetera.’

‘That’s not quite what it means,’ said Amelia, ‘But still. Why do you want to be stuck back there with those monsters anyway?’ she added, flicking a thumb at