The Orpheus Deception Read Online Free PDF Page A

inside him. He backed up against the wall of the bridge tower and pulled out the Colt Python, pressing the radio CALL button again.

    “Captain, this is Fitch. Chiddy’s nowhere—”

    The handset popped and crackled, as a burst of lightning sizzled across the night sky far astern, briefly illuminating the ship’s wake and showing him a long matte-gray shape running fifty yards off the stern, riding inside the ship’s wake. A yellow face with a thin black beard— frozen in the lightning flash—was staring up at the deck. Then it was gone, as the dark came rolling back and a peal of thunder shook the night. Seconds later, a torrent of rain swept across the deck, drenching Fitch to the bone and bringing the visibility down to a few feet. Fitch took out the radio handset, thumbed CALL.

    “Captain—we have boarders! Boarders! Lock down the wheelhouse!”

    Barely audible in the storm, Anson Wang’s voice came back on the handset, shredded in the driving rain, drowned by the steady churning of the prop. “Boarders? Where—?”

    Wang’s voice was cut off abruptly, but Fitch heard the eerie banshee wail of the ship’s siren winding up, a ghostly shriek that increased in volume and intensity until it was almost louder than the storm. Fitch heard the thudding of steel doors and the clatter of feet on the interior gangways as the crew ran for their stations, and muted voices calling out. Then a deep, rhythmic chatter that drove the last of the sake out of his head; semiauto fire—from the sound of it, an MP5—and the muffled screams of men.

    The siren shut off a second later.

    Light flickered from the bridge, and Fitch shoved himself back into the dark as a shape came tumbling down from the upper deck, arms flailing. The shape struck the taffrail with a dull clang and lay there—broken-backed and obscenely twisted—and Fitch stepped forward and saw the bloody face of the old Malay wheelman. Under the old man’s chin his slit throat gaped wide, ripped muscles still twitching like the mouth of a hooked trout.

    Fitch sensed movement to his left, turned, and fired into the mist, the muzzle flare of the big Colt reflected in the rain droplets, the sound slamming off the steel decking. A dim, plaid-shirted figure fell back into the dark, and something came clattering across the decking plates, a large parang with a wooden handle wrapped in bright green silk.

    No telling how many pirates were already on board. Fitch had only five rounds left. If he kept using the Colt, he’d be out of rounds in four seconds. He tossed the Maglite against the wall, shoved the Colt into his belt, and scooped up the long wickedly curved machete just as a second figure rounded the other corner and ran at him, shrieking in Tagalog—an angry, falsetto howl—right arm raised high, holding a parang.

    Fitch parried the downstroke with the flat of his own parang and stepped in under the slicing horizontal return cut, feeling the thrumming rush of the parang as it passed through the air above his left shoulder. He caught a fistful of the figure’s shirt in his left hand and felt the swelling of breasts under the thin material. He jerked the slender girl sideways and she smacked down hard onto the steel decking, the air puffing out of her, as she twisted, snakelike and very fast, trying to regain her feet, her machete slicing sidelong at his left ankle.

    Fitch blocked the strike, and his automatic riposte split the young girl’s chest wide open from her chin to her belly, the force of the blow shuddering up Fitch’s arm all the way to his shoulder.

    She screamed and dropped the parang, bringing her hands up to her chest, her exposed ribs pink in the half-light, her body twisting and writhing as she hissed with pain and fear. Fitch brought the heavy blade down hard on her forehead, splitting her skull open, the tip of his parang striking red sparks off the decking underneath the girl’s head.

    Fitch turned away from the ruin of the girl,