Pirate Alley: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

swept down her back. Nora, on the other hand, wore her hair relatively short, the better to showcase her striking features, which people noticed when they tore their eyes from her surgically enhanced figure.
    “Double D’s,” Suzanne whispered to Irene. “Mine will be a bit more modest.”
    “That’s wise, dear. After all, you have to carry them around.”
    The swirling sea breeze played with the brim of Juliet’s hat. She adjusted it.
    When Rosen nodded at Nora, she smiled and held his eyes.
    “Ten bucks she lands him before Doha,” Suzanne murmured to Irene.
    “No bet,” Irene shot back and glanced around for a waiter.
    Rosen was making conversation with Nora and Juliet; Suzanne and Irene couldn’t help but overhear. “Did you take the tour to Luxor?”
    “Oh, yes,” Nora said and began discussing the bus ride from Al Qusayr and the ancient monuments by the Nile.
    It was all very pleasant, with the blue sea and the light wind off Arabia and the sun shining down.
    Irene winked at Suzanne and asked the waiter for more coffee. Suzanne ordered another Mimosa.
    *   *   *
    Harry Zopp glanced at the surface radar—and was surprised to see four small targets approaching from the south. They were on a collision course and closing. He picked up the closed circuit telephone, which rang in the captain’s stateroom.
    “Pirates, I think,” Harry Zopp said. “Maybe fifteen minutes out.”
    “Radio the navy and activate the boarding prevention plan,” Captain Arch Penney ordered, then added, “I’ll be right up.”
    Zopp dialed the preset radio frequency into the box in front of him and picked up the handset. “Red Ryder, Red Ryder, this is Sultan of the Seas .”
    “This is Red Ryder. Go ahead, Sultan. ”
    “Looks as if we have four high-speed boats approaching from the south on a course to intercept us. About fourteen minutes out. Over.”
    “We’ll get the chopper headed your way. Nearest surface warship is seventy miles northeast of you.”
    Two hours, Harry Zopp thought. He used the intercom to call the bosun. “Activate the boarding prevention plan. Pirates less than fifteen minutes away.”
    Zopp walked out on the starboard wing of the bridge with his binoculars. He was standing there trying to spot the boats on the horizon when Captain Penney joined him.
    “Just got a glimpse of one of them,” Zopp said. “Radar says they are making thirty knots.”
    The captain told the helmsman, “All engines ahead full.” Full speed for the Sultan was thirty-one knots, but with the pirate boats on the starboard quarter, there was no way he was going to outrun them on this heading. He went inside the bridge and looked at the moving map display on the GPS. He was twenty miles offshore. If he turned tail to the pirates, he would be heading toward Yemen. He could buy some time, but he couldn’t sail through sand and stone.
    Penney glanced again at the radar. He could see the symbol for the Stella Maris, fifteen miles ahead. She would pass down his left side if he kept on this course. “Come left ten degrees,” Penney told the helmsman. This course would take him very near to the Stella Maris. He picked up the radio handset and dialed in the proper frequency, then called Stella Maris. Better tell her captain what was going on.
    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