John Carr. James Deegan

he could help.

      ‘You,’ said Abandonato, in English. ‘You need to get below and get as many passengers as possible off this damned ship. Boats, gangways, tell them to jump overboard… anything.’

      In response, the man said nothing, but raised his arm.

      Something in his hand.

      Abandonato ducked instinctively as the man fired, and the shot passed two feet over his head and spidered the bridge windscreen.

      Deafened, the captain scrabbled left, hidden from view by the centre console.

      His mind was scrambled.

      He could hear the man’s feet slapping on the deck as he walked across to get another shot at him.

      Abandonato looked wildly around.

      The main door was ten feet away.

      There was no way he could make it.

      He felt a terrible sense of despair, and of resignation – but luck was on his side.

      Fleetingly.

      The shooter had suffered a stoppage – the empty cartridge, which should have been cleanly ejected, had stuck in the breech and jammed the pistol. He’d gone through the clearance drill a thousand times, but the shock of the moment had fried his brain and turned his fingers to thumbs, and he was fumbling with the slide.

      It gave Abandonato the moment he needed.

      His eye lit upon the drawer above his head.

      The Very pistol.

      Keeping low, he pulled open the drawer and groped for the pistol.

      His hand closed around the grip.

      Felt for a flare.

      Found one.

      Hands trembling, he loaded the gun.

      As he snapped it shut, he saw the shooter’s legs appear at the edge of the console.

      Heard the sound as the man racked the top slide to load another round into the breech, ready to finish the job.

      Abandonato crossed himself, offered a prayer to his own God, and launched himself at the guy with the gun, yelling ‘Segaiolo!’

      The shooter rocked back on his heels in surprise at the sight of the captain coming for him, tripped on his own feet, and fell onto his arse.

      If Abandonato had pressed home his attack in the second, second-and-a-half, that his enemy was disoriented, he might have prevailed.

      But instead he hesitated.

      And now the attacker raised his pistol and fired from eight or nine feet away.

      The round hit the skipper in the right side of his groin and knocked him backwards like he’d been kicked by a mule. There was remarkably little pain – his left brain noted this fact with no little surprise, even as his right brain was overwhelmed with shock and alarm – but the bullet had severed his femoral artery and his life was now measured in seconds.

      Still prone, the attacker pulled the trigger again, but the top slide was back and jammed again – the curse of cheap ammunition – and the weapon didn’t respond.

      He pulled the trigger again – frantically – and then smashed the thing on the deck, in a futile attempt to clear it.

      And then looked up at the captain.

      Saw the Very pistol.

      The boot suddenly on the other foot, his bottle went.

      ‘No,’ he screamed, holding up a hand. ‘No!’

      Staggering forward, pumping blood, Abandonato raised the pistol and fired the flare into the other man’s face from a distance of three feet.

      Fifty grams of potassium perchlorate, dextrin, and strontium nitrate entered the terrorist’s right eye at 330 feet per second, and came to a stop two inches inside his skull.

      Burning at 2,000 degrees centigrade.

      The bridge was filled with an unearthly screaming and banging as the man howled and clawed at his face, but Abandonato was past caring.

      Suddenly weary, breathing laboured, he slumped to the floor in a puddle of his own blood.

      Pressed his hand to the front of his trousers.

      Looked at his palm.

      Bright, shiny red.

      He didn’t know how he knew it, but he knew that he was dying.

      He didn’t feel frightened, only sad.

      As the room started to go dim, a tear formed in his eye.

      He wanted to speak to his wife, and his daughter, but he hadn’t the strength to stand and reach for the sat-link.

      His last conscious thought was that he would never see his unborn son.

      Never smell him.

      Never hear or hold him.

      As that realisation formed, he slipped into oblivion and was gone.

16.

      THE SPANISH SECURITY complex had been dreading – and preparing for – a nightmarish attack like this ever since the Madrid train bombings way back in 2004.

      Cruise liners and tourists were just too big and soft and tempting a target.

      So within three minutes of the first shots, Guardia Civil officers were on scene at Málaga’s Eastern dock, and dead and wounded people were being carried away at a crouching run.

      Within six minutes, two mini-buses carrying locally based Grupo Especial de Operaciones teams – the Policia Nacional SWAT men – screamed on to Pier 1.

      The shooter, or shooters, had by now disappeared inside the vessel, so the GEO inspector-jefe sent three snipers to take up the best positions they could find, stuck another couple of men on the cordon as liaison, and then led the rest of his blokes charging up an empty gangway to get aboard.

      Forty kilometres out into the Med, aboard the amphibious assault ship SPS Juan Carlos I, the twin rotors on a giant, black Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter were almost up to take-off speed.

      In the rear of the aircraft were sixteen special forces marines from the Fuerza de Guerra Naval Especial.

      Flight time to Málaga, a little under eight minutes.

      And the final response came from down the coast at Marbella, where that town’s on-duty six-man detachment of Grupo Especiales de Operaciones special ops soldiers boarded their Eurocopter AS532 Cougar helicopter and lifted off, heading west.

      Absolutely flat out, their aircraft was capable of around 140 knots. That gave them a flight time of around fourteen minutes, which disappointed the soldiers – they knew the Juan Carlos I had been patrolling through the Med not far from Málaga, and that its SF marines were already inbound.

      Chances were the whole party would be over before they even got there.

      But they pressed on regardless.

17.

      JOHN CARR WAS not a patient man at the best of times, and now – just as those special forces troops from Marbella arrived over Málaga, sixty kilometres to the north-east – he finally cracked.

      ‘Hey, George,’ he said, leaning over on an elbow. ‘D’you fancy a pint? I’ve had enough of this.’

      George Carr turned to look at his father, eyebrows raised, mocking grin on his face.

      The expression said, very clearly, How can you have had enough of