Stephen Coonts: Pirate Alley

That was when he got a bad shock. The voice of the Stella Maris ’s captain rang in his ears. “ Stella Maris is under attack by pirate boats, apparently from Yemen. Three of them. They are shooting up the ship. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!”

* * *

Lieutenant de vaisseau Gilbert Louceck surveyed the instruments in the cockpit of his Panther helicopter and checked the radar distance readout to the ship currently under attack, eighteen miles from the Yemen coast. In his headset he could hear the captain of the ship calling Mayday in English, and the controller aboard the French destroyer talking to him in French. Long ago he had learned to sort all these voices out. His copilot was answering the controller just now, giving him a range and how many minutes they were from the ship under attack, the Stella Maris. Ten miles to go. A little less than five minutes.

Now he was listening to the panicky voice of the ship’s radio operator. Apparently the captain was busy conning the ship.

“They are shooting at the bridge.” The words were in English, although heavily accented. Idly, Louceck wondered about the speaker’s nationality.

“Now they are approaching again.” While he held the microphone open, Louceck could hear a beating sound that he took to be automatic gunfire. “Three boats. Maybe ten men in each boat.”

Louceck could see the ship materialize out of the haze, which seemed thicker the higher one got. By now he had the helicopter in a descent, accelerating.

“About three minutes, capitaine, ” the copilot said, quite unnecessarily.

Automatically Louceck checked his fuel. He had enough to stay over the cruise ship for perhaps twenty minutes, then he would have to fly back to the Toulon, his ship.

“Call the ship,” he told the copilot. “Get them heading this way.” If the ship could close the distance, that would save a few gallons, give him another minute or two over the cruise ship.

As the copilot made the call, Louceck turned the safety sleeve on the master armament switch and lifted it, arming the Giat 20 mm cannon carried in the external pod. Just in case. He could see the boats now. He lowered the nose still more, intending to make a low pass.

The pirates knew the game. His orders did not permit him to open fire on the pirates unless they fired at him, which of course they would not do. They knew his orders as well as he did. Still, if he could intimidate them, make them turn away …

“I’m taking photos.” That was the crewman in back.

“They are alongside.” The voice was high-pitched, the words nearly impossible to understand. “I leave microphone open and move away from radio.”

The copilot, Pigot, fidgeted in his seat.

Sure enough, now continuous cacophony sounded in the helicopter crewmen’s ears.

A burst of gunfire came over the radio, then the transmission ceased abruptly.

Lieutenant Louceck was at fifty feet, making 180 knots, coming down the port side of the cruise ship. One pirate boat was against the side.

People, all over the ship, running, some leaning over the rail, trying to see. Like ants on a corpse!

Louceck roared right over the pirate boat, then threw the chopper into a hard turn while he pulled up on the cyclic. The chopper quickly lost speed, slowing dramatically as it came around in the turn.

The captain of Stella Maris was holding his ship steady on course. Why didn’t he turn into the pirate boat, force them away from the ship?

While Louceck was wondering, a hole appeared in the Plexiglas to his left. Then another.

“They’re shooting,” Pigot roared into the ICS. His voice drowned out the cacophony coming over the radio.

Automatically Leucock dumped his nose and began accelerating. Fortunately he was pointed right at the pirate boat. His finger found the trigger on the stick and he squeezed off a burst. A handful of 20 mm shells struck the water right beside the pirate boat, then Louceck was overhead and saw a man shooting at him with a rifle, then he was going away, his tail rotor pointing at the danger as the massive slab sides of the ship slid by the cockpit on his left.

She looked like a floating hotel, with rows of balconies and white faces and people waving their arms at him. At him!

Louceck checked the engine instruments and hydraulic gauges. All seemed okay … for now. Here he was, over hostile pirates, a hundred miles from the Toulon. If this machine stopped flying, he was going into the sea.

“Any damage back there?” Louceck asked the crewman.

“Don’t see any.” The kid’s voice was none too steady. Well, neither was Louceck’s or Pigot’s.

Louceck climbed and turned again and looked for the other pirate boats, which were on the starboard side of the ship, toward Yemen. They were still fifty yards or so away from Stella Maris, angling in.

Why didn’t the captain turn his ship?

Louceck came smoothly around and lowered his nose for another pass at the pirate boat on the port side, which was still almost against the ship, with grappling hooks being thrown up toward the ship’s railings.

Louceck flew the gun’s pipper into the pirate boat and squeezed the trigger. He held it down, walking it the length of the boat, then released it.

“Don’t hit the ship!” Pigot roared, and automatically Louceck slammed the cyclic left, lifting the right side of his rotor disk. The ship was right there, close enough to touch. He was so engrossed in shooting at the pirates … how he had failed to hit the liner he didn’t know. A miracle.

The pirate boat fell rapidly behind the cruise ship, foundering in the wake.

Louceck crossed the cruise ship’s bow and began a circle of the two other pirate boats. They seemed to be holding their distance from the cruise ship Stella Maris.

He could hear Pigot talking to Stella Maris ’s captain, telling him to speed up and turn into the pirates. He didn’t catch the captain’s reply, but he heard Pigot call him a fool.

Down Louceck went to ten feet off the water, slowing, flying between the pirate boats and the cruise ship.

He had done this a dozen times in the last four months. Prevented the pirates from closing on their victim. Pirates had never before shot at him.

To his horror, the pirates in the nearest skiff were also shooting. He saw at least four men with automatic assault rifles pointing at him, saw the muzzle flashes, felt the bullets striking the helicopter.

He heard the crewman groan on the ICS.

Louceck already had picked up the tail and was accelerating away. He would come around and sink this boat, too.

Halfway through his turn Pigot pointed to the left engine instruments. The engine was overheating, losing power. Now he looked back as he turned. Black smoke behind him.

Falling oil pressure.

The crewman was on the ICS. “I’m hit,” he said. “In the leg.”

Pigot began unstrapping as Louceck shut the left engine down and turned toward the Toulon, one hundred miles away. Pigot maneuvered himself out of his seat and went aft to look after the crewman.

Damn, damn and double damn.

Mustafa and his pirates had Sultan of the Seas in sight. He was on her beam. She was making at least twenty-five knots. He had to hold in eighty degrees of lead as he closed to keep her from moving to his front.

The men in the boat grasped their weapons. A few fired short bursts into the air in celebratory anticipation. The reports sounded flat.

Mustafa’s radio was alive in his hand. He could hear the other boats attacking Stella Maris talking to each other. He breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the helicopter had left trailing smoke. One skiff sunk. If anyone who had been aboard was still alive, he was on his own; Mustafa needed all his boats if he hoped to capture a cruise ship. The men knew that, knew the risks, and had come anyway. At least there were two more skiffs to harass Stella Maris, which was only ten miles to the northeast.