I was out and on the first guy in half a second. He was sitting up and bringing his rifle steady when I kicked it to the side. I plunged my knife into his neck without thinking, and then I ripped the gun from his hands, leaving the knife in his throat.
I didn’t have time to think or react as I fired some rounds at the second man with my newly-stolen rifle, forcing him back away from the door. I quickly followed up, firing at him as he retreated back onto the deck.
He was clearly an amateur, sloppy and terrified. He wasn’t at all the practiced professional I thought he was when I first saw them board. He was moving from cover to cover, but he moved slowly, and he was clearly scared. His shots were missing wildly, and there was no thought to tactics or strategy, just an obvious animal fear.
I was the opposite. This was my element. Even half naked with a borrowed gun, I was a deadly killing machine. I had been beaten down and broken by the Navy SEALs and rebuilt into a real man. They had drilled every bit of training and deadly force into me, and now I could use it at will.
But I didn’t want to kill the second guy. I wanted to wound him so that I could potentially find out who the hell they were. He was more useful to me that way.
As he fell back, my shots forcing him toward their ropes, he decided to be brave and make a jump for it into their ride.
Before he could make it, I put a targeted shot right into his calf. He screamed in pain as he toppled forward. Before I could get to him, though, his momentum carried him forward and he tipped over the railing, disappearing into the water.
Cursing my bad luck, I looked over the edge but couldn’t see him. He wasn’t in the boat and he wasn’t coming back up for air. I watched and waited for another minute, but there was nothing. The sea had swallowed him whole.
I moved back downstairs and checked the first man. He was dead; there was no question about it. Frustrated, I wiped my bloody hands on his clothes.
Claire looked out from the back room. “Nate?”
“Get back inside,” I snapped at her.
Her eyes were wide as she stared at the dead man at my feet.
“Is he . . .?” she asked, trailing off.
“These men were pirates.”
“I heard gunshots.”
I nodded gravely. “They’re gone now, though.”
“You killed him,” she said softly.
“I did what I had to do. Now get back in that room and stay there while I take care of this.”
She obeyed, hesitating, her eyes full of fear. I was sure it was the first dead man she’d ever seen.
I pulled my knife from his body and wiped the blood on his shirt. I yanked off the mask, but I didn’t recognize him. He was young, possibly Latino, but I wasn’t positive.
With a sigh, I began to drag his body up the steps. Dead bodies weighed a lot, and so it was a bit of a struggle, but I managed. Once there, I lifted him up and perched him on the railing.
Before I could let him go, I caught sight of a tattoo on his wrist: a red heart with a dagger in it. I didn’t think much of it as I tossed him over the side.
The sea reclaimed him, too.
I sat down on the deck, breathing deeply. The rain had finally given up. My battle calmness was slowly beginning to fade away.
What a fucked up day. I knew we should never have gone out. There was only one last problem: their boat. I forced myself to my feet, because a SEAL never left a job unfinished, and walked over to the lines. I cut the ropes and decided to let the boat drift free. There might have been something useful on board, but I didn’t want to risk the climb.
Besides, I couldn’t leave Claire down below much longer. She was likely freaking out. Civilians weren’t trained for the sort of thing that had just happened. They couldn’t handle the violent and sudden realities of life. That’s why SEALs existed. We were the men that protected people from the bad shit in the world.
I didn’t know what I’d say to her. I didn’t know what the right thing was. Talking down scared girls wasn’t exactly my kind of shit.
But I was going to have to figure it out.
The last few minutes had been a blur of violence and danger. It all had come out of nowhere, but I was always ready, always prepared to do what I had to do.
Claire, however, was probably going to be a little fucked up from it, at least for a little while.
Still, I’d take care of her, because that’s what I did.
CLAIRE
I was shivering by the time Nathan pulled the boat back into the harbor.
The face of the dead man kept coming back to me, over and over. Everything had happened so suddenly and so brutally. I didn’t have a second to really understand until the guns started going off.
Then there was Nate. The way he had reacted, so swiftly and seriously, was both terrifying and incredible. I couldn’t believe that he was able to take out those two guys when he had only a knife. Without him, I had no clue where I would be, probably tied to the bottom of a boat on my way to sex traffickers or something equally horrifying.