James Deegan - John Carr

Several people were already floating in red-tinted water, and others were scrambling to get away.

The Yemeni had been chosen for this operation precisely because he was battle-hardened; he had cut his teeth on the US Marines in the Second Battle of Fallujah, during the insurgency in Iraq, and had travelled the Middle East and Africa throughout the years that followed, fighting the kuffar in the name of Allah.

He’d spent most of the recent past fighting the Pesh and the al-Hashd al-Shaabi in Iraq, and the YPG and others in Syria.

He was remorseless and dedicated: he accepted that death would embrace him today, and he welcomed the fact.

He thought of his friends, men who had gone before him and died in the same glorious cause, and he smiled.

This was for them: he would see them soon.

He had ten magazines of thirty rounds each on his chest rig, and he intended to make as many of those rounds count as possible.

He took aim at a young child, standing by a gangplank on the deck below, screaming in frozen fear next to its dead mother, and heard the click as the hammer of his weapon struck an empty chamber.

His magazine empty, he allowed it to hang free on its sling, and took a grenade – a Swiss-manufactured L109A1, liberated from a British Army stores in Germany, on a four-second fuse – from his bag.

Leaned against the guard rail.

Pulled the pin.

Almost casually, he threw the grenade over the side at the child, and the panicking stream of humanity – if you could use that term to describe the dogs who were running like cowards down the nearest gangplank.

The grenade detonated with a dull crump, killing the child and two others outright and wounding many more.

Smiling, he reloaded the AK, fired a dozen rounds into the survivors and then turned and walked in the direction of the cabins in search of more victims.

It was a good day to die, here in the land of the infidel, bringing terror to the enemy, and his womenfolk, and his young.

15.

BY NOW, CARLO Abandonato had reached the bridge deck, his blood running alternately cold and hot.

He found the bridge empty, the staff captain and the navigator having leaped overboard into the warm embrace of the Med when the shooting began.

‘Merda!’ spat Abandonato. ‘Bastardi codardi!’

He activated the Windsor Castle ’s distress beacon, picking up the ship-to-shore telephone – as though the authorities were not already aware of what was happening.

He pressed the click-to-talk.

And then he saw movement outside.

A young man.

Abandonato recognised him.

An assistant purser?

No, a waiter.

Either way, it didn’t matter – he was here, and he could help.

‘You,’ said Abandonato, in English. ‘You need to get below and get as many passengers as possible off this damned ship. Boats, gangways, tell them to jump overboard… anything.’

In response, the man said nothing, but raised his arm.

Something in his hand.

Abandonato ducked instinctively as the man fired, and the shot passed two feet over his head and spidered the bridge windscreen.

Deafened, the captain scrabbled left, hidden from view by the centre console.

His mind was scrambled.

He could hear the man’s feet slapping on the deck as he walked across to get another shot at him.

Abandonato looked wildly around.

The main door was ten feet away.

There was no way he could make it.

He felt a terrible sense of despair, and of resignation – but luck was on his side.

Fleetingly.

The shooter had suffered a stoppage – the empty cartridge, which should have been cleanly ejected, had stuck in the breech and jammed the pistol. He’d gone through the clearance drill a thousand times, but the shock of the moment had fried his brain and turned his fingers to thumbs, and he was fumbling with the slide.

It gave Abandonato the moment he needed.

His eye lit upon the drawer above his head.

The Very pistol.

Keeping low, he pulled open the drawer and groped for the pistol.

His hand closed around the grip.

Felt for a flare.

Found one.

Hands trembling, he loaded the gun.

As he snapped it shut, he saw the shooter’s legs appear at the edge of the console.

Heard the sound as the man racked the top slide to load another round into the breech, ready to finish the job.

Abandonato crossed himself, offered a prayer to his own God, and launched himself at the guy with the gun, yelling ‘Segaiolo!’

The shooter rocked back on his heels in surprise at the sight of the captain coming for him, tripped on his own feet, and fell onto his arse.

If Abandonato had pressed home his attack in the second, second-and-a-half, that his enemy was disoriented, he might have prevailed.

But instead he hesitated.

And now the attacker raised his pistol and fired from eight or nine feet away.

The round hit the skipper in the right side of his groin and knocked him backwards like he’d been kicked by a mule. There was remarkably little pain – his left brain noted this fact with no little surprise, even as his right brain was overwhelmed with shock and alarm – but the bullet had severed his femoral artery and his life was now measured in seconds.

Still prone, the attacker pulled the trigger again, but the top slide was back and jammed again – the curse of cheap ammunition – and the weapon didn’t respond.

He pulled the trigger again – frantically – and then smashed the thing on the deck, in a futile attempt to clear it.

And then looked up at the captain.

Saw the Very pistol.

The boot suddenly on the other foot, his bottle went.

‘No,’ he screamed, holding up a hand. ‘No!’

Staggering forward, pumping blood, Abandonato raised the pistol and fired the flare into the other man’s face from a distance of three feet.

Fifty grams of potassium perchlorate, dextrin, and strontium nitrate entered the terrorist’s right eye at 330 feet per second, and came to a stop two inches inside his skull.

Burning at 2,000 degrees centigrade.

The bridge was filled with an unearthly screaming and banging as the man howled and clawed at his face, but Abandonato was past caring.

Suddenly weary, breathing laboured, he slumped to the floor in a puddle of his own blood.

Pressed his hand to the front of his trousers.

Looked at his palm.

Bright, shiny red.

He didn’t know how he knew it, but he knew that he was dying.

He didn’t feel frightened, only sad.

As the room started to go dim, a tear formed in his eye.

He wanted to speak to his wife, and his daughter, but he hadn’t the strength to stand and reach for the sat-link.

His last conscious thought was that he would never see his unborn son.

Never smell him.

Never hear or hold him.

As that realisation formed, he slipped into oblivion and was gone.

16.

THE SPANISH SECURITY complex had been dreading – and preparing for – a nightmarish attack like this ever since the Madrid train bombings way back in 2004.

Cruise liners and tourists were just too big and soft and tempting a target.

So within three minutes of the first shots, Guardia Civil officers were on scene at Málaga’s Eastern dock, and dead and wounded people were being carried away at a crouching run.

Within six minutes, two mini-buses carrying locally based Grupo Especial de Operaciones teams – the Policia Nacional SWAT men – screamed on to Pier 1.

The shooter, or shooters, had by now disappeared inside the vessel, so the GEO inspector-jefe sent three snipers to take up the best positions they could find, stuck another couple of men on the cordon as liaison, and then led the rest of his blokes charging up an empty gangway to get aboard.