The Baltic War(60)

Harry decided he could afford to pause himself. Not to reload—he still had four rounds left—but to take stock of the overall situation.



Good enough, he decided, after a quick scrutiny. They'd killed or wounded close to half of the Algerine crew already. More than a third, for sure. And while the pirates still outnumbered them, they were obviously so stunned by the incredible mayhem that had been visited upon with no warning that they posed no immediate danger at all. Whatever rumors they might have heard about the rate of fire of the witch-weapons brought from the future, they'd dismissed as nonsense.



They wouldn't any longer, of course. But, for them, "any longer" was a time span that had shrunk down to minutes.



"Front and center, Gerd!" Harry shouted.



Gerd popped out of the hatch. Literally popped. George must have been standing in the hold below with Gerd's feet in his hands and just heaved him up.



Gerd rolled when he reached the deck, not even trying to find his feet right away. He was simply concentrating on keeping the large canvas package in his hands from getting damaged.



Once he got to his knees, he leaned back over the hatch and held the package out. A very large hand came up holding a slowmatch and lit the fuse sticking out from the canvas.



It was a very short fuse. Gerd surged to his feet, raced to the rail, and pitched the package onto the deck of the pirate ship.



"Get us the fuck out of here, Matt!" he yelled, half-sprawled over the rail. Then he just flung himself down onto the deck.



Matt already had their ship veering aside. Harry and the other shooters sprawled to the deck also, as fast as they could while making sure their guns didn't go off by accident. The package went off not more than a second later.



The blast wasn't so bad, but Harry could feel the heat through his heavy coat, even sheltered where he was. Whatever Gerd had put in that makeshift bomb, it was mostly designed to set the enemy ship on fire. Harry could only hope it wouldn't ignite one of their own sails before they got far enough away.



"Cut it a little fine there, didn't you?" Paul hissed at Gerd.



Harry was tempted to add his own admonishment, but manfully resisted. What could you expect? "Cutting it fine" and "let Gerd handle the fireworks" were pretty much a given. Which, of course, was the reason Harry had given him the assignment in the first place. As hair-raising as the results might be.



He levered himself up and peered over the rail. The Algerine vessel was already an inferno. Several more pirates had been killed outright by the blast, at least as many injured—and the intact members of the crew were paying no attention to anything except getting their two dinghies overboard. They didn't have a prayer of stopping that blaze, and they knew it.



By now, Grabnar had them far enough away that there was no danger of the fire spreading to Harry's own ship. He rose to his feet and took a few seconds to study the pirates working at the dinghies. By the time he was done, Sherrilyn was on her feet also and standing next to him, reloading her pistol. Harry picked up his own gun from the deck but didn't reload it. There'd be time later to do so, as well as scavenge the brass.



"You're the best rifle shot we got except maybe Ohde," he said to her. "Go to the stern and get Paul's rifle. Between you and Don, you ought to be able to keep them from launching either of those dinghies."





The pirates did manage to get one of the dinghies into the water. Or Sherrilyn did, if you believed her later boast that one of her rounds had cut the last remaining line and dumped the dinghy before any pirate could get into it. Either way, it didn't matter. That dinghy drifted off, unoccupied, while Donald and Sherrilyn systematically slaughtered any pirate who tried to lower the other one.



At the end, not more than half a dozen pirates threw themselves into the sea to get away from the holocaust that their ship had become.



"Get us closer and we can pick 'em off!" Ohde hollered.



Harry shook his head. "Waste of ammo, Don. Just let 'em be. They'll all be dead anyway, in less than ten minutes."



People had swum across the English Channel from time to time, Harry knew, in the world he'd left behind. But they hadn't been Algerine pirates picked at random, they'd been people who'd trained for it for years. And he was pretty sure they'd done it at the narrowest stretch of the Strait of Dover, which was still many miles away. And he was dead sure they hadn't done it in January. Maybe if he were wearing a wet suit—and assuming he was a good enough swimmer in the first place—a man could make it to the French shore, well over ten miles away.



But these pirates didn't stand a chance. The first dinghy had drifted too far away for any of them to get to it in time. Hypothermia would take them under in a few short minutes.