light filtered by the griddle deck above bathed it in a yellow glow. If he walked across the space anyone who might be there would see him. Stratton chose to go around the outer edge, keeping in the shadows thrown by the bulky containers and smaller items of machinery.
He crept across the deck. He did not see the figure that stepped out a few metres behind him. Yet he heard them, even through the hum and whip of machinery and weather. Stratton’s highly tuned senses picked up the out-of-place noise which sounded like a small piece of metal rolling along the metal floor. He stopped, his senses suddenly screaming but at the same time warning him not to turn around just yet.
Pirate hadn’t seen the tiny bolt that he’d scuffed with the toe of his heavy boot. His stare had been fixed on the back of the figure he had seen coming up through the guts of the platform. He had moved back from his position as ordered. He hadn’t engaged anyone. Yet. But he couldn’t comprehend the figure’s presence. He wasn’t used to taking orders, or obeying any that he considered stupid. That was how he had become a commander. During the attack on a Russian ship in the Gulf of Aden a couple of years before, his boss, a man from his own village and like him a former fisherman, had ordered the men not to kill any hostages. Pirate knew the Russians to be dangerous but when he suggested they should shoot the first crewman as a warning to the others the commander chastised him.
When the Somali thugs scrambled on deck, Russian crewmen stepped out of the engine room with their empty hands held high. The pirates moved forward to capture them, signalling to the boats to come alongside. The ship was theirs. But then the Russian crewmen dropped to the floor and others carrying AK-47 assault rifles leaped from cover. Their bullets tore into the pirate ranks, cutting them down.
Further along from the fighting Pirate had climbed unseen onto the vessel. He fired his RPG at the ambushers, killing several, wounding others, and setting the ship alight. Those who could fell back into the superstructure. Pirate led the charge but this was no longer an attack for profit. It became a battle for revenge. He went through the vessel room by room, killing anyone he found. He shot the captain and officers on the bridge. He walked calmly into the communications shack to kill the radio operator.
Pirate never knew what happened to the ship, neither did he care, after abandoning it ablaze. The attack had been a waste of time and manpower. A resulting argument with his commander left the leader dead, a knife buried in his neck, the hilt firmly in Pirate’s hands. And for his efforts the others made him commander.
From that day on his pirate philosophy had been to kill first, capture later. But his command turned out to be short-lived. His methods were shunned by other pirate commanders as counterproductive and he was soon forced out of his position under threat of execution.
Such was the way of his world. One’s power rose and fell like the tide. Surviving was the only important thing. And so here he was again, forced to obey orders that he believed to be wrong. He had watched this man step past him carrying a gun and knew he was a threat not to be ignored. And so he decided to act. ‘Move one more step and I kill you,’ the African warned.
Stratton’s mind raced. The fact that he had not been shot already told him the man was not quite prepared to kill him yet, for whatever reason. That gave him a narrow margin in which to negotiate. ‘I’m not alone,’ he said, hoping to unnerve the man.
‘You will be when I shoot you,’ Pirate replied.
Stratton sensed the murderous confidence in the foreign voice immediately.
‘Put your gun down on the floor now or I put a bullet into the back of your head.’
‘Okay,’ Stratton said, trying to sound nervous. ‘Don’t shoot.’
As he leaned forward he used his thumb to click the selector catch on the weapon from single-shot to fully automatic and moved the barrel round so that it angled across his body instead of facing his front. With nothing to go by but the voice he estimated the man to be three or four metres behind him. The barrel of the weapon was now pointing at