Page 98 of Distant Thunder

“Maybe it went off, but it didn’t do the job.” Two men ran from cover and tried to open the engine cover but failed.

Dino drove them away from the engine cover with a couple of well-placed rounds. A man came out of the wheelhouse holding a sinister-looking rifle with a scope and a silencer and held it to his shoulder.

Dino racked his Winchester and shot him, knocking him backward onto the deck of the trawler.

“Good shot, Dino!” Stone yelled, firing a couple of rounds with his own weapon. “That ought to keep their heads down.”

The shooter aboard the trawler struggled to his feet and rested the barrel of his rifle on the wheelhouse. Dino put a round into the wooden railing next to him, and he ducked. “I think we have an advantage in height here,” Dino said.

Then, from the trawler, came the roar of the engine, and even more smoke poured out of the hatch, which the crew had finally torn off.

Dino and Stone emptied their weapons into the cockpit of the trawler.

Stone looked around. “Where’s the ammo?”

“Oh, shit, I left it on the upper deck when we climbed into the whaler.”

“Well, we’re both out,” Stone said. “Does that give you any ideas?”

Dino jumped over the side of the whaler, retrieved the bag holding the ammunition, and tossed it into the whaler,then jumped back in. He opened a box of cartridges, and they both started loading them into the Winchesters’ magazines. The windshield on the whaler exploded, showering them with glass fragments.

“I guess they forgot to make that bulletproof, huh?” Dino said.

Stone looked up again, and the trawler was on the move once more. “Stand by to repel boarders!” he said.

The trawler was twenty-five yards out and aiming to come alongsideBreeze.

Stone and Dino fired more rounds into the trawler’s cockpit and into the wheelhouse windshield, which crazed but didn’t shatter.

The trawler, amazingly, hadn’t slowed and was making a good five knots toward the yacht.

“Shit,” Stone said, “they don’t have any control of the power. They’re going to ram us. Brace for it!” They held on to whatever they could find.

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The trawler had stopped,but it was a good four or five feet from the yacht. Engine-starting noises were coming from the craft.

Dino was pouring rounds into the wheelhouse and the deck, and when he ran out, he grabbed Stone’s rifle and began firing his rounds, too.

Stone heard the trawler’s engine restart, and the boat began to move forward.

“He’s having steering problems!” Dino shouted.

In desperation, Stone grabbed the shopping bag, opened the flap on the bomb, and pressed the button. “Ten, nine, eight, seven...” he counted. Then he stood up, grabbed the handles of the shopping bag, swung his arm, and tossed the bag,underhand, at the boat. There was too much smoke coming out of the engine bay to see where the bomb had landed, or even if it had hit the boat.

“Let’s get out of here!” Stone shouted, vaulting over the whaler’s rail and ontoBreeze’s upper deck. “Four seconds left.”

Dino was gathering both rifles and the ammo bag and tossing them at Stone.

“Get out of there, Dino!” Stone shouted. “Two seconds!”

Dino landed near Stone, and they both ran across the upper deck and threw themselves, facedown, onto the teak, covering their heads as best they could.

Nothing happened.

“What the hell?” Stone yelled at Dino. “It didn’t go off!”

“How should I know?” Dino yelled back. “Vanessa and you armed the thing!”

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