The boarder with the machine gun fired in the direction his gun was pointing—right into the compartment holding Stamp and Alexander.
Duvalier leapt out and used her claws low, hooking one boarder behind the knee to take him off his feet and raking another one along the inner thigh, causing a gush of blood from the femoral artery.
Ahn-Kha was a hairy boulder rolling through, sending men flying this way and that. Using the enormous range of his arms, he reached up onto the bow of the patrol boat and swung on board. He jammed the scuttling charge under the gun turret and flicked the switch that closed the circuit on the fuse.
Pistols, meanwhile, had thrown an open jerry can of gasoline for the fish-preserving ice machine onto the rear deck of the patrol boat. He followed it with a grenade.
It was a mess in the compartment. Stamp was dead, her North Atlantic crossing cut short. The blood that had soaked through her carefully chosen outfit added an extra note of pathos, running across those neat nautical lines.
“Shit,” Duvalier said. Stamp was a little silly, annoying even, but her heart was big, strong, and in the right place. What a loss.
Alexander was badly wounded. He had a tourniquet on his right arm and left leg. Sime and another man were up to their elbows in blood.
“Valentine, you bloody, bloody clown. I would have bribed us out of this. You risked all our lives and lost Stamp. She’s a personal friend of the president,” Sime said.
Duvalier didn’t like Valentine taking the fall for her decision.
“Sime, it was me, not Valentine. I told him I was fighting no matter what.”
“How did you know your bribe would have worked?” Valentine asked.
“Everyone has a price. You just have to figure out which currency works.” He took a peek at his thigh. “Jesus. We have to get to a doctor.”
“You’re just grazed,” Duvalier said. “I have some superglue. That’ll close that up no problem.”
“Superglue?” Sime gasped.
“We can’t turn around now, in any case,” Valentine said. “The Kurian Order’s going to be visiting Halifax, investigating the loss of their boat.”
“My days as captain of this boat are over,” Ableyard said sadly.
“I’ll buy you a new damn boat,” Sime said. “I can’t believe this tub’s worth the paint flaking off it.”
Sime clearly wasn’t used to dealing with pain, Duvalier thought with satisfaction. It was nice to see him sweat and cuss out the inoffensive Captain Ableyard.
“Maybe I’ll relocate to Iceland,” Ableyard said. “I hear the women are incredible. They’re a key link on the Northern Network.”
The wind dispersed what little smoke the burning wreck of the patrol boat produced.
Most everyone instinctively made for the control room. Captain Ableyard did a quick head count and had his informal ship’s medic—he’d spent two years driving a hospital ambulance before seeking refuge at sea—attend to the wounded from the fight.
Duvalier had come up on deck. She needed air before dealing with the bodies of the Kurian boarding party. One of the crew suggested putting them on fish-ice for now, so they could at least be buried on land.
They had company. The crab boat that had come out of the harbor with them had turned their way and put on speed, digging its weighed-down nose into the Atlantic rollers, dumping the water that came on board in streams of spittle running from each side of the grinlike rail. It had obviously seen the explosion and moved to render assistance. A searchlight above her control room turned on.
From the opposite direction, another low gray shape powered toward the direction of the explosion, heeling as it made a swift turn. It had a swept-back superstructure that was similar to that of the burning patrol boat, but details were indistinct in the morning fog. Its color was that of a wet greyhound.
It made sense that the Kurians would want to cover several points of the compass out of sight of Halifax. One boat couldn’t do the job.
“This may be bad,” Ableyard said, unlocking a wooden case near the wheel. He extracted a pair of large naval binoculars and gently rocked his hips as he examined the new mystery boat.
Bet those are worth a bit, Duvalier thought. When she was operating in the KZ, she took every opportunity she
could to steal binoculars or telescopes.
Ableyard’s big binoculars were so battered and worn that the black coating that had once covered the metal had all but rubbed off of the casing, leaving stainless steel shiny with the oil from various pairs of hands.
“Do you have another pair?” asked Valentine.