The Pirate King

The super liner Queen Mary 2, was 1,132 feet long, carried 2,620 passengers and 1,253 crew members. It was essentially the size of a skyscraper landed on its side. Possibly the biggest liner of its kind in the world. It was, simply, big.

However, off the Eastern Coast of Africa, it was merely a great big target.

Abdi Barre smiled at the super liner. He was, at first, impressed at the size of the liner, and awed by its majesty. His second impression, however, was to plan to board her, and maybe—just maybe—hijack her.

Barre looked off either side of his bow. There were nine ships to port, ten to starboard, each of them heavily armed with automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades.

Barre, like many of his comrades, had been fishermen at one point, but they soon discovered that piracy was an easier way to make money. Somali society's clan-based organization, the lack of a central government, and Somalia's strategic location at the Horn of Africa, all made the enterprise easy. Somalia was also dirt poor, so recruits were frequent and as plentiful as their plunder. Not to mention that the lucrative success of hijacking and ransoming hostages drew even more to the organization. They had money, power, the most beautiful girls, big houses, new cars, new guns, everything the modern crook could ask for.

Ransom was so profitable, they could hire caterers to cook specifically to the Western palates of their hostages It was truly a pirate's life for Abdi Barre and his pirates.

Though Abdi preferred to think of himself as the Amir of the Sea.

And now, as Barre approached the Queen Mary 2, he wondered if he had brought enough ships. He had to gather ten different pirate groups just for this one endeavor. It would be risky, but what the hell. The people who could afford to be on board that liner had to be so overly wealthy, the ransoms would probably be paid before dinner.

Barre signaled for the others to close in from the other direction—there were twenty more ships a little further up the coast that would cut her off. The ten starboard ships went to go to flank speed. They would get ahead of the liner and fire a few bursts across its bow, and maybe an RPG or two. The boats on his port would join him and swing around to that side of the ship. Boarding would commence as soon as the QM2 slowed to about five knots.

It took only two clips of AK-107 ammunition and an RPG to get their attention, but the luxury superliner complied.

But like the proverbial dog chasing the bus, now what? Barre sighed, grimaced with thought, then got on his radio. "Everyone but the pilots should board. Repeat, everyone board her. I think we may have more loot than we could handle."

"If that's the case," one of the other boats replied, "then we might just want to take the ship as well."

Barre laughed. "Don't think I haven't thought of it, but they'd probably be able to find us rather easily, don't you think? No, just board her, we'll take what we can, and narrow down the potential hostages by monetary value."

With grappling hooks and tow lines, the pirate boats moved alongside the liner, with each of the pirates slowly climbing their way up to the railing. Everyone had an automatic weapon over their shoulder, and the pilots back on the ships had RPG's ready and waiting to fire at the liner below the waterline—it would both sink the liner as well as give Barre and his men time to get off the ship before it went under completely.

With forty ships' worth of pirates, there were nearly a thousand men on the main deck of the Queen Mary 2. They all came on and immediately unslung their rifles, ready to kill any who got in their way—though that was a touch melodramatic, and not perfectly true. Shooting was almost always a last resort, mainly because hostages were money. If large groups of people resisted, then they could mow them down, but usually the only ones stupid enough to resist were the odd lone passenger.

Barre climbed on deck, the last man from his ship to do so... and he blinked. There was no one in sight. Which was odd, there was usually much more screaming, and at least one passenger who wanted to see the pirate show, as though Barre was Johnny Depp or something.

This was... really quiet.

Until someone leaped out on top of one of the cabins, dressed in a white captain's uniform, and roared, "Avast, me harties, prepare to repel boarders!"

Barre and his men looked at each other as though wondering what to do with this fool. On the starboard side alone there were over two hundred of his men, not counting the boats boarding at the fore.

In the bizarre instant between the man's appearance and Barre's order for his men to mow him down, one of his men screamed.

"Amir" Abdi Barre looked to his left. His field of vision narrowed, almost heightened but the adrenaline spiking in his system. He saw what his man was screaming at. It was a square object that was attached to one of the cabins. There was lettering on it, and the words chilled Barre's blood down to the very marrow.

It read: "This side towards enemy."

The claymore antipersonnel mine first became well known in the Vietnam war. It was essentially a sharped charge of plastic explosive, with a large dose of shrapnel in the form of ball bearings, effectively making it the shotgun from Hell. The shaped charge gave it the advantage of being a directional explosive. The person firing it could literally stand directly behind it with no problem—the target on the other side would not fare as well, making the embossed words "This side towards enemy" words that no one wanted to see from the business end.

Barre's world exploded on either side of him, leaving him untouched as flame and shrapnel swept away clusters of his gunmen. Had he been a little quicker on the uptake, Barre would have realized that there were only a few claymores scattered around the luxury liner.

But that was before the strange man leaped off the cabin, landed in a crouch that segued into a roll, and coming up under Barre's rifle. The "captain" grabbed Barre's gun as he drove to his feet, slapping the pirate in the face with the barrel, and then grabbed the stock so he could pull it away. The captain then whirled, driving the rifle into Barre's jaw, and leveled the rifle on the other pirates, spraying them with weapons fire.

At this point, the newcomer shouldn't have had a chance. It was 200 to 1 against, 100 directly behind him, and the boat pilots had orders to sink the ship if it sounded like there would be extended resistance.

That was when things became much, much worse.

The main speakers for the ship came alive, suddenly pounding out electric guitar music, and someone singing about "through the fire and the flames." As though orchestrated to the music, the door of nearly every cabin on the main deck opened, spilling out men, women, and weapons. There were people coming out of the boathouse, guns sticking out the portholes, and for some reason, there was another man attacking with a shuffleboard stick.

Down below, there were also several portholes opening to the outside. Each porthole that opened had a man with a rifle spraying fire into the pilots left behind on each ship. The automatic weapons fire was almost a little faster than the music that shook the deck... or was that the gunfire?

Abdi Barre tried to look up, but his head was cracked open; the deck was slick with his own blood, and the noise and confusion had already overwhelmed his own men, who were significantly more intact.

Abdi's rifle clattered to the ground, empty, and the man in the white uniform pulled out two micro Uzis and dual-wielded them down the length of the deck. He sprayed them almost continuously, the pauses between trigger pulls so slight that he couldn't tell that they had happened.

The entire battle consisted of only a minute of intense fire, but it was more than enough to kill all the boat pilots and down most of the boarding party. If twenty of them had survived, there would be a peer revue where someone would be made fun of for bad marksmanship.

Abdi felt himself being turned over with a shoe. It was the man in the captain's whites. "Who..." he coughed, his jaw sending pain up and down his brain. "Who.... are... you?"

The captain smiled. He was white, with the brightest, bluest eyes Abdi had ever seen. "My name is Sean Aloysius Patricus Ryan, of Sean A.P. Ryan and Associates Security Consultants." He smiled manically. "Though you can call me Commodore Ryan, since I'm taking your fleet. Nice to meet you. You're going to jail."

Barre smiled weakly. "No jail... would hold me."

"If you insist. Unfortunately, we don't get paid per pirate, and we had video on the whole thing, so the company will know that we didn't just have a drunken party on board...though the decks could use a touch up." Sean smiled as he crouched down, closer to Abdi's level. "Tell me, what does it say in the Koran about what you're doing?"

Barre tried to grin, but his jaw wouldn't allow it. "We are within.... our rights... to take infidels... sell them. Our right..."

Ryan merely arched a brow, then raised the radio to his lips, keeping a finger off the button. "Well, I know what it says about thieves." He pressed down on the radio transmitter. "This is Corsair to crew, I think it's time to send a message. Take whatever bodies you find, and, at your discretion, lop off their right hand before tossing them overboard. " He looked directly into Abdi's eyes as he added, "Make sure you do that to all the living pirates you find...also before you throw them overboard."

The pirate's eyes widened, as Sean rose, horrified at the thought of what the Caucasian had just suggested. "You can't—"

"And who's gonna stop me? You wanted to cite Koranic law at me, pal, so guess what—you're going to enjoy it. I can understand being poor, doing something because you need the cash, but you should have drawn the line about three tax brackets ago." Ryan stepped over Barre's body, his rear foot delivering a quick kick to the pirate's head on his way past.

At the door to the cabin, Edward Levine, a large Afro-American, stared at Sean. "You really want these fellas to do that? I didn't think that ex-marines you found at a scif-fi convention would be into that."

Ryan shook his head. "Nah, but it's a nice idea though. I should probably tell them that before the bodies start going into the drink. Can I borrow your radio?"

"Why?"

"I took the batteries out of mine before I chatted with the pirate king over there."