In Cold Blood Read Online Free PDF

quarter mile away, but if there had been any doubt that they were serious, that had now been allayed. Rounds crashed against the metal housing and another rang off the smokestack high above his head. The others aimed and started to fire, too. It looked like they had AKs. Not surprising.
    “Joyce to Squad,” he said into his portable handset. “Shots fired. Repeat, shots fired. Tangos armed with automatics. Weapons free. Weapons free.”
    The flying bridge was the open space directly above the main bridge. It was one of the highest points on the ship and was a good spot to settle in with a sniper rifle. The M107CQ had been designed for situations where the firepower of a .50 caliber rifle was required, but the bulk of the M82 or M107 series was impractical. CQ stood for ‘Close Quarters’ and it was ideally suited for use in helicopters and watercraft. This big ship, steady and unwavering, would offer a pretty solid platform to shoot from.
    Joyce brought the rifle around and rested the bi-pod against the safety rail that prevented the drop to the deck below. He pressed the stock into the groove between his shoulder and neck and sighted down the Leupold Mark 4 telescopic sight. He swept the sea until he had the skiff in the sight and then aimed at the man in the bow. Hitting him would be a potent demonstration for the men behind him. He squared the man’s head in the reticule, took a deep breath and slowly released it, exhaling to a natural stopping point. He waited until his muscles were calm and he didn’t need to inhale and then he squeezed the trigger with a good, crisp pull.
    The .50 caliber round closed the distance to the man before he had even heard the deep report of the gun. One moment he was living, the next moment he was not. Joyce absorbed the recoil against his shoulder and kept sighting the target. The round was designed to stop materiel. It made a very big mess of flesh and bone. Snipers called it ‘pink mist.’
    He had expected the boat to check its pace, but it did not. The men ducked down a little and the firing paused, but they did not reduce speed. He put the glasses to his eyes again and watched as another of the men crawled to the bow and hauled the body of the headless pirate over the gunwale, tossing him into the wash. The body floated for a moment, spun in the waves, and then sank from sight.
    They started firing again.
    “They’re fucking tenacious,” radioed Joyce’s number two, Paddy McGuinnes. He was a gruff Ulsterman and it took a lot to fluster him.
    “Keep firing.”
    He let the glasses fall on their strap and sighted with the optics again. The boat was two hundred feet away and darted around to make itself more difficult to hit. Joyce changed tack. He sighted the bow and aimed backward, down the boat, until he had a shot at the glossy black outboard motor. He relaxed his shoulders into the shot, breathed in, and fired.
    The fifty-caliber bullet streaked out and crashed into the engine, pulverising the casing and ripping a tunnel through the machinery. The boat was near enough for Joyce to hear the engine splutter and then fade out and, as he looked, the boat lost speed and drifted away.
    He thumbed the portable radio. “One boat disabled,” he reported. “I took one of them out. Had no effect. Go for the outboards.”
     
    JOE AND the Third Mate, Barry Miller, sat on the floor, beneath the metal wainscotting that reached up four feet above them. Bullets rang against the metal, bouncing around, ricocheting. Joe figured that they were safe unless there was a crazy rebound, but that didn’t make it any less terrifying. The skiff to port had drifted away without its engine and was out of the fight. He crossed the bridge to starboard and looked down. The pirates were a hundred feet away and eating up the distance between them. One of the security men sent a barrage of fire down at them, but he missed, the surface of the water interrupted by a series of small plumes, the boat racing