The Baltic War(59)

In the end, he got nervous enough about that possibility that he decided six yards would do the trick. He surged to his feet, far more athletically than Juliet had done, and yanked the blanket off of Maddox.



Juliet had been watching for it, of course. The moment she saw him move, she issued the loudest shriek she'd managed yet. Then—she must have undone the lacings while Harry hadn't noticed—she clawed aside her upper garments and exposed her bosom.



A very impressive bosom, indeed. Between the shriek and the breasts, the pirates barely noticed Harry at all until he snapped the blanket wide open and hurled it into the air at them.



There was no chance the blanket could make it across the space, even if there hadn't been any wind, but that didn't matter. As a visual distraction, it worked almost as well as Juliet's tits. The incredible thunder clap of the ten-gauge going off came as a complete surprise to the Algerines.



One of the pirates holding a grappling hook caught most of the pellets, which pretty well shredded his upper body. Even with a sawed-off ten-gauge, the range was just too short for the spread to be very wide. Still, one or two stray pellets hit the men on either side, causing both of them to flinch violently—and their swords, added to the one the slain man dropped as he went down, caused more injuries to the men bunched next to them. None of the injuries were really major, leaving aside the pirate who'd been slain outright, but as a distraction and a source of confusion—especially coupled with the noise the shotgun made as it went off—you couldn't ask for anything better.



Harry waited until the second barrel went off before he sprang to the rail. As good a shot as she was, and as much as he trusted Sherrilyn, nobody in their right mind is going to get anywhere near the possible line of fire of a sawed-off ten-gauge loaded with buckshot.



Maddox's second shot took out another grappling hook holder. Harry was at the side an instant later, bracing his left hip against the rail and firing half-sideways with a two-handed grip. He favored a nine-millimeter himself, which he could easily fire one-handed. But that was on dry land, not a ship's deck at sea. Even at a range of six yards, he had to concentrate.



He double-tapped the pirate right across from him in the chest. Then he shifted his aim from left to right, double-tapping each target as he came to it. Following right behind him, Felix had taken position toward the stern and was doing the same. A better and faster shot with a pistol than Harry, even starting a bit later, Kasza had taken down his fourth man by the time Harry killed three—and he'd managed to shoot another one of the pirates holding a grappling hook, while he was at it.



That left one grappling hook holder still to worry about, but Harry didn't bother looking for him. Speed was everything in this situation, and he just concentrated on killing the nearest targets, whatever they had in their hands.



Swords and other hand weapons only, so far as he could see. That was what he had expected. No sensible pirate captain would arm his men with firearms just to capture an unresisting merchant vessel with a crew less than a third the size of his own. Leaving aside the ever-present risk of accidentally shooting one of your own in the excitement of the moment, loaded guns on a ship—and they'd all be matchlocks, to make it worse—posed too great a danger of starting a fire.



The pirates were shrieking themselves now, but Harry blocked that out of his mind. There was just a row of targets, that's all. The only sounds that registered at all clearly were the sharp and unmistakable cracks of a semi-automatic rifle going into action from the stern.



One rifle only, from the sound. That meant Matt, who could see everything unfolding from his position far better than Harry could, had gauged that the situation was well enough under control that he needn't take the risk of releasing the helm and adding his own rifle to the mix. And it also meant Harry didn't have to worry about that last grappling hook. Donald would have targeted that man first, and he was a superb marksman with any kind of rifle.



Not in Julie's class, of course, but Julie was a freak of nature. What difference did it make? The range here was measured in yards, not hundreds of yards.



When his pistol ran out of ammunition, Harry just dropped it onto the deck, pulled out his backup, and kept firing. There weren't any scuppers nearby in the ship's bulwarks, so there wasn't much danger of the valuable gun slipping overboard.



Maddox had joined Harry and Felix at the rail with her own pistol, and, not more than two seconds later, Paul Maczka was out from under the tarpaulin he'd hidden under and weighed in with his shotgun at the bow. Like all seventeenth-century soldiers Harry knew, Paul positively adored pump-action shotguns. Clickety-BOOM, clickety-BOOM, clickety-BOOM, clickety-BOOM. By the time he started reloading, the bow of the enemy's ship was a charnelhouse.