Trojan Odyssey (Dirk Pitt 17)

She was sitting with her back against the transom. "What is it?"

"Go down in the galley, empty whatever bottles you can find, then fill them with fuel from the tank on the generator motor."

"Why not fuel from the engines?" asked Dodge.

"Because gas ignites more easily than diesel fuel," Pitt explained. "After the bottles are filled, insert a cloth and twist on the top."

"Molotov cocktails?"

"Precisely."

Renee no sooner disappeared below than the Epona swung in a wide arc toward them. Coming head-on, she was closing fast. From the new view, Pitt could see that she had the twin hulls of a catamaran. "If we don't get off this mud pile," he said irritably, "we'll have a most exasperating complication."

"Exasperating complication," Giordino shot back. "Is that the best you can do?"

Then to everyone's stunned amazement, Giordino suddenly ran from the pilothouse, scrambled up the ladder to the roof, stood poised for a moment like an Olympic diver and leaped onto the stern deck between Pitt and Gunn.

Call it luck, call it foresight or fate. Giordino's weight and momentum striking the stern deck was the extra inducement it took to jar the boat loose. Sluggishly, inch by inch, the boat slowly slithered off the unyielding muck. Finally, the keel slipped free and the boat leaped astern as if yanked on a big spring.

Creases of mirth crinkled the corner of Pitt's eyes. "Don't ever let me tell you to diet."

Giordino flashed a broad smile. "I won't."

"Now for our well-rehearsed getaway," said Pitt. "Rudi, take the helm and crouch down as far as you can go. Renee, you and Patrick lay low and take cover behind all this junk we've piled on the stern. Al and I will hide under a pile of nets."

The words were barely out of Pitt's mouth when one of the crewmen of the luxury yacht fired a handheld rocket launcher. The missile soared through the port door of the pilothouse and out the starboard window before impacting with the water fifty yards abeam and exploding.

"Good thing I wasn't in there yet," said Gunn, trying to act as if he was on a walk in the park.

"See what I mean about crouching down?"

Gunn jumped in the pilothouse and spun the wheel, sending the hull curling away from the muck rising from below the water. But before he could bring the boat up to speed, another rocket smashed through the side of the hull amidships and struck the starboard engine. Miraculously, it failed to explo

de, but it caused a fire by igniting oil spilling from the shattered engine. Almost as a reflex, Gunn immediately closed the throttle to prevent any broken lines from spraying fuel on the fire.

Dodge took the initiative, dove down the hatch into the engine room and snatched a fire extinguisher mounted on a bulkhead. Pulling the safety pin and squeezing the trigger, he smothered the flames until only a billow of black smoke spiraled through the open hatch.

"Are we taking on water?" Pitt shouted from under the fishnet.

"It's an ungodly mess down here, but the bilge is dry!" Dodge yelled back between coughing fits.

To those on board the pirate yacht, it looked as though the fishing boat was mortally hit, as they watched the column of smoke billowing from inside her hull. Believing her crew dead and too injured to resist, the yacht's captain backed off on his engines, slowed the vessel and drifted across Poco Bonito's, bow.

"Do we still have power, Rudi?"

"Our port engine is dead, but the starboard is still turning over."

"Then they just made a big mistake," Pitt said with a cold grin.

"And what was that?" Gunn replied.

"Remember the pirate ship?"

"I do indeed." Gunn cut back on the throttle to the good engine for the sucker play, allowing the little research boat to stop dead in the water. The ploy worked. Certain that his victim was about to sink, the yacht's captain swallowed the bait and idled closer.

Seconds crawled by, until the yacht was almost sitting on top of them at point-blank range. Seeing no movement on board and smoke still gushing from the hull, no small-arms fire was poured into the seemingly stricken vessel. Then a bearded man leaned out the window of the yacht's pilothouse, and with an American Deep South accent spoke through a bullhorn.

"Y'all who can hear me. If y'all do not abandon your boat, it will be blasted to kindlin'. Do not attempt to use any communication devices. Ah repeat, do not open communications. We'all have detection equipment on board and will know immediately if y'all transmit. Y'all have exactly sixty seconds to take to the water. Ah promise y'all safe passage to the nearest port."