Piracy: The Leah Chronicles (After it Happened Book 8)

by Devon C. Ford

  “Give me a hand, Leah,” Mitch yelled. I turned to see that he had climbed over the railings and down the ladder. I leaned over and he held up the big weapon to me, barrel first. It weighed a tonne. Not as much as the big Browning fifty-calibre monsters we had mounted back home, but the thing didn’t exactly strike me as what they called ‘man-portable’.

  “What the hell is this?” I grunted as I managed to get two hands on it and haul it aboard like some grotesque deep-sea fish hand been landed as a prize.

  “It’s a PKM,” Mitch told me unhelpfully, glancing up at me to read my face that further explanation was required. “Soviet machine gun. The world is littered with them, just like the old AK-47s. This one probably came from Afghanistan in the eighties.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “Russia was there for a long time,” he said, pausing and wearing his ‘thinking’ face. “That or any of the hundreds of little proxy wars fought in Africa.”

  “Proxy wars?” I asked, confused.

  “Other countries interfering,” he explained, “like us pesky Brits, but mostly it was smaller groups fighting each other and supported by communist countries. That meant that either us or the Americans would support the opposition and democracy. It was like the Cold War expansion pack.”

  I shrugged, having understood most of what he said. “But why Afghanistan?” I asked. “Didn’t we have troops there when, you know, it happened?”

  He searched the pockets of the three bodies on the boat, turning to stack two other rifles, one without a stock and the other with a folding parachute version. “The Soviets invaded it long before that, when I was just a wee bairn, and were stuck there for nearly ten years,” he explained as he handed up the two AKs and set his footing on the rickety ladder. “They claim they were supporting the rightful communist government and everyone else said they were invading. All the same kind of Cold War proxy shite, you know?”

  I didn’t, but I nodded.

  “Well anyway, it was their Vietnam apparently, not like us and the Americans fared a great deal better when we went in to ‘support the lawful government’,” he said with his tone of voice pronouncing the air quotes. “But against the Russians, or the Soviets as we called them back then, the West supplied a shit-load of weapons, China and Pakistan supplied a lot of training, and the result was, twenty years later, an international terrorist group attacking the West. Fucked up, eh?”

  “Yup,” I said, not understanding the politics, but knowing the stupidity well.

  Mitch hauled himself back over the railings, picking up the captured weapons and eying their state of care with evident distaste.

  “And that’s why these things are so bloody popular,” he said to himself as he dropped the magazine out of one rifle and checked the action. “Bloody filthy, but you could cock this and leave it in a muddy ditch for a few days and it’ll still be able to kill someone without blowing up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “These things are simple,” he explained, showing me an empty chamber and handing it over for inspection, “crude even, but that doesn’t stop them sending a big fat bullet your way. That thing’s older than you. Twice over.”

  I looked at it, hating the weight distribution and clunky feel of it in comparison with my own lightweight weapons.

  “And that’s why they’re known as the clitoris of Africa,” he said with a smirk, “because every cu—”

  “I get it!” I snapped, cutting him off before he went full squaddie. I handed back the gun and glanced back towards the distant boat where they had come from. I stared, my eyes narrowing at something I couldn’t see.

  “What?” Mitch asked suspiciously, his own eyes narrowing at my mischievous look.

  “Oh, nothing…” I said innocently.

  “Let’s just explore that nothing, shall we?” he said. “We don’t look like them, to put it bluntly, so if we ride their little shit-tub back then they’ll spray us with seven-six-two until we catch a serious case of death. No, Leah, it’s not happening.”

  “Mateo? Can you get our other boat on the radio?” I asked, ignoring Mitch.

  “Si,” he said, turning away and jabbering into a microphone on a stretchy cord.

  “No, Leah,” Mitch said again more forcefully, “the two of us can’t do this.”

  “I know,” I told him, “which is why we’re getting backup.”

  “No, Leah,” Dan’s voice came over the radio, crackling and distorted but every bit as forceful as Mitch’s had been.

  “Told you,” the Scotsman mumbled from behind me.

  “It’s not a big boat, and they’re four down already. We could do this,” I said, trying not to sound like I was pleading with him.

  “It’s too risky,” he said, “two of you can’t do this.”

  “I know,” I countered, “so get over here so the four of us can…”

  A pause on the other end stretched out for long enough that I almost started speaking again twice.

  “Fine,” he said eventually, “wait there, and do not fucking do anything before we get to you. Put Mateo back on.”

  I did, and the captains exchanged the information required for them to meet. It took thirty minutes before they were visible. Another ten and my binoculars could make out Dan stood at the prow looking right back at me with his own.

  As they slowed, they pulled alongside for the crews to lash the boats together after they threw the lashed tyres over the side to cushion our coupling. Dan timed it badly and landed heavily as he stepped over to our deck, cursing his old knees with a tight-lipped face and annoyed silence.

  “One boat,” Mitch said, “four of them, one overboard and three dead inside. Recovered a PKM and two AKs.”

  “A bloody PKM?” Dan said as he wore a look of mixed horror and disgust, “Jesus... have you searched them?”

  “Yeah,” Mitch answered, “nothing.”

  “No offence…” Dan said, making Mitch shake his head to imply that he didn’t mind the man double-checking.

  Dan climbed over and down the ladder just as Adam got to our deck, all smiles and barely suppressed excitement.

  “For fuck sake!” Dan yelled from below, his voice a little higher than his characteristic grumpy growl. “Fucking basics! Come on!”

  “What?” Mitch asked.

  “Two dead, one not!” Dan snarled back up to me. I leaned over to see him ripping open a filthy T-shirt and slapping a dressing onto a wound low on the left abdomen of the mumbling pirate who fluttered his eyelids as he came around.

  Mitch and I exchanged a look, both horrified and appalled at ourselves for making the assumption without checking.

  “Wound isn’t bad,” Dan called out, his anger gone as soon as it had appeared, “just winged the side of his belly, the lucky bastard. He’s got a decent lump on the head though. Help me get him up.”

  Mitch and I both leaned over to try and grab any part of his body as Dan bodily hauled him up towards us. Ordinarily I’d protest and want to protect the neck after a head injury, but seeing as we’d just left him cooking in the sun for over thirty minutes assuming him dead then I doubted I was winning any care awards.

  He was laid out on the deck just as his eyes opened, blinking slowly until his brain caught up with what he was seeing and the eyes went wide. He started yelling and trying to scrabble backwards. Four gun barrels were levelled at his head and had the combined effect of some invisible forcefield that froze his movement.

  “Speak English?” Mitch snapped. “Do. You. Speak. English?”

  “Fuck you,” he said in a thick accent made even less legible due to his grogginess. “Americans.”

  “Not Americans, mate,” Dan said conversationally, “how many on your boat?”

  The captured and confused pirate grimaced as he clutched at his belly but I saw his eyes wander over the deck until they rested on the captured weapons.

  “No,” I said, snapping my fingers for his attention and pointing up to my face, “up here.�
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  He narrowed his eyes at me and pulled the start of a face. It was the facial equivalent of sucking in a breath and pulling back a fist before throwing a wild punch, and I had no intention of him landing any of his spit on me. My left boot, the closest part of my body to him, shot out and pushed his head down to the deck where I held it by leaning my bodyweight forwards.

  “How many on your boat?” Dan asked again, louder.

  “Many,” he said roughly, the words distorted by the metal deck squashing his face.

  “How many?” I snapped as I ground my boot down a fraction harder to make my point.

  “Ten,” he yelped, “maybe more.”

  “Guns?” Mitch asked.

  “Yes, many guns,” the pirate answered weakly as he though he fought for breath. I let his head go and stepped back, ready to move forward and clock him hard if he went to spit at me again.

  There was silence for a while as he closed his eyes and panted for breath. I looked at Dan, who looked right back at me, then we both looked at Mitch.

  “Oh no,” he said, stepping back and drawing out the words, “you’ll not put this on me. I say we go. Toss this bastard back over and be done with it.”

  “They’re not going to leave us alone, Mitch,” I said gently. “They’ll stay out here and try to take every boat we send. We can’t lose our access to the sea; it’s how we survive.”

  Mitch turned to Dan for sense.

  “Come on, man,” he said, “you can’t be serious about this? It’s madness.”

  “Madness?” Dan answered in an approximation of Mitch’s own accent, with a smile that said he could barely contain his own humour. “No. Not madness… This. Is. Sanctuary!”

  I laughed, mostly because the impression was so badly delivered when he seemed so excited to use the joke. Neil would have got it, and probably finished re-enacting the entire scene.

  “I don’t get it,” Mitch said after a pause, puzzled, “what was that supposed to be?”

  “Sparta…? Sanctuary…? No?” Dan tried. “Oh forget it. I say we do it.”

  “Ah bollocks,” Mitch said, “don’t say I didn’t warn you when they cut our heads off with a rusty spoon.”

  “We’ll make it work,” I said as I turned back to give the pirate a nudge with my foot. “Oi, nobber, do you want to live?”

  He looked up at me with frustrated hate in his eyes, but seemed to swallow his pride and nod.

  “Good,” I told him, “you can drive us back. One wrong move and I’ll shoot you. Again.” I jabbed my forefinger on the bone above and between his eyes for emphasis.

  Trojan Boat

  The pirate drove, sitting at the back and controlling the outboard motor. I lay in between the benches in the stinking, blood-tinged water pooling at the lowest point, and held my Walther pointed at his face. Nobody asked what his name was, clearly nobody was bothered, but I was sure to make it clear to him that I meant what I had said.

  Dan was sat behind me, his hands appearing bound before him and blood smeared down from one ear courtesy of one of the bodies we dumped overboard, with Mitch and Adam under a tarpaulin at the front, weapons at the ready. It appeared to anyone paying close attention that he had taken a hostage and brought back plunder from the fishing boat, but the absence of the three men he had left with would obviously raise some questions. I hoped to answer those questions with a little high-velocity lead projectile reply.

  I craved a contact, needed it almost, and I couldn’t put my finger on why. It could have been the inactivity or the stress of yet another enemy threatening us, but if I was honest with myself it was because I was stressed about what was happening inside my own body and the only way I knew how to cope with stress was by doing something.

  In this case, it was doing something reckless and dangerous.

  “Remember,” I called over the sound of the screaming engine and the rushing wind, “try to warn them and you’re dead.”

  He scowled at me.

  “I am already dead, unless you kill them first,” he answered as he adjusted the empty rifle we had given back to him for appearances’ sake. He was no doubt wishing that it was loaded so that he could kill us as he turned his attention back to the sea ahead.

  The short journey felt longer because I was unable to look around or do anything other than lie in the foul-smelling bilge water and keep my eyes glued to him for any sign of a double-cross. I had no idea what he was thinking, but if it was me I’d either look to make a move or hope that we killed all of his friends on the bigger boat; if he was the one who had brought us back and caused carnage on board then he would suffer their wrath. I guessed that anyway; I had no idea how pirates thought.

  “We come to the boat now,” he said without moving his mouth much and staring straight ahead, “three men there with guns. I take you to the back where it is low to the water.”

  “He’s right,” Mitch said from beneath the tarpaulin. I looked back at him, the man who had tried to kill me and then spit at me. The man I, or Mitch, had put a bullet through - luckily only a fleshy bit with nothing important behind it.

  “Why are you helping us?” I asked.

  “Shut up,” Dan warned.

  The man seemed to think about the question, indicated only by his slight change of expression as he bounced the boat towards conflict.

  “These people,” he said flatly, “they are not my friends. I was not like this before.”

  I had no time to consider his response before the engine note wound down suddenly and the small skiff lurched to come alongside the bigger boat. I felt the air grow slightly colder as the shadow overtook us and bathed us in grey instead of bright sunlight, and then all hell broke loose.

  The shooting started before Dan had slipped his hands out of the loosely wrapped ropes faking his bound wrists. Mitch and Adam rose up, dropping the two men with guns standing on the low stern of the rusty boat with a flurry of controlled single shots. They were over the side and onto the ship before Dan had retrieved his weapon and stood to aim higher up and drill two more on the half-deck above the stern with a series of sharp coughs from his carbine. He climbed aboard as I stood, dripping dirty water from my hiding space in the bilge where only I could fit, and I kept my suppressed Walther in both hands to save on the time it would take to switch weapons.

  “You stay there,” Dan warned our captive, emphasising his point with the carbine levelled at his chest. “Mitch, Adam, topside. Left and right,” he instructed. “Leah with me. Inside.”

  I said nothing but snatched the powerful compact flashlight from my vest, the same one as I had attached to my own carbine, and held it in my left hand under the pistol to support the weight. My arms made a stiff kind of triangle with my body, and everywhere the gun pointed was where my eyes were, making me able to react in a flash and squeeze off rounds should I see something hostile. Dan had flicked his own weapon-mounted torch on, just a thumb’s reach from where his left hand supported the barrel at the angled foregrip. Two powerful LED beams sliced through the filthy gloom of the cabins as gunfire rattled above our heads. The clattering and heavy rhythm of the enemy was answered with the more staccato reply of the lighter ammunition we used. I ignored that, or at least pushed it to the back of my mind. My fight was down here in the dark.

  “Clear,” Dan hissed after stepping smartly back out of a small cabin, waiting for my mirroring actions and word as I did the same on my side. We came to a hatch in the deck leading down to where the loud sounds of an engine echoed upwards. More gunfire was exchanged overhead, just as loud as the sounds coming from below, and Dan looked to me with a choice evident on his face.

  “Go,” I told him, “I’ll clear down.”

  Dan hesitated, only for a second, then nodded and pushed out through the door ahead where I knew he had thrown himself straight into the fight as he had emerged in a position to flank the men swapping bullets with Mitch and Adam. I refocused, pointed my gun and torch down the sloping ladder, and descended feet-first leani
ng back against the rungs to support myself as I went below.

  Mitch and Adam fell upon the first three men as they spilled from the cabin on the main deck. Two went left and one right, and that single foe turned directly aft and into the barrel of Adam’s rifle. His eyes went wide, and he instinctively grabbed at the end of the barrel just as it began to spit flame and supersonic projectiles into and through his chest cavity. He died on his feet, three rapid-fired bullets drilling small holes straight through him, and fell to his knees still griping the hot metal that had been the instrument of his death.

  Adam wriggled and wrenched the gun free just in time to see another man, bone thin and wearing ragged clothes over bare feet, as he climbed to the top of the steps and rose into view. As he grew taller, and his torso and legs were exposed, he raised the AK-47 and levelled it at Adam’s chest as he depressed the trigger on the run, spitting heavy bullets wildly in all directions as though he was trying to announce his presence more than kill the invader.

  Adam wanted to freeze. He thought he had, in fact, so when he felt his body dropping to the deck and his cheek pressing into the stock of his own gun he worried for the briefest moment that he had been hit. His finger spasmed on the trigger, sending a small but tightly packed hail of bullets towards the running pirate and stitching a series of holes into his thigh and hip.

  As time let go of the breath it held and the world returned to normal speed for him, he stood and checked his body for pain and any sign of gaping holes showing where he had been shot. He hadn’t. The man who had run at him on a desperate or brave or stupid charge was dying, bleeding out as great spurts of bright red blood shot skywards from the wounds in his groin. Adam snapped his head left, looking past the rusted metal of the bulkhead he hugged and through the grimy Perspex of the cabin windows to two other men holding the iconic-looking weapons. They were taking it in turns to point them blindly over their hiding spots to rattle off a handful of shots on automatic without any way of knowing if they had been effective. He moved forwards, only to have to throw himself down again as more wild and un-aimed shots punctured the windows and flew past him. He heard the cracks of Mitch returning fire, knowing that the old soldier would be far more disciplined in his own methods, but before he could move again to flank the two men pinning him down to his front he heard a chorus of bare feet slapping on the metal deck down to his right. He leaned over to look and saw three men running hard for the lower aft section which would lead them directly to Mitch’s unprotected rear. He ran, unthinking and simply reacting, reaching the top of the steps he had climbed just in time to fire a burst of automatic into their tightly packed group as they crossed his path.