Free Pirate by Ted Bell Page A

violent impact was targeted at the pilothouse itself. With maybe three seconds to spare, Hawke turned and simply dropped through the stairway opening, hitting the deck hard, and raced aft.
    He didn’t look back at the violent sound of metal on metal and shattering glass as the crane whipped around and smashed its pay-load directly into the four angled windows of the Star ’s bridge. Agonized screams were heard as bodies were smashed in the twisted metal.
    He reached the stern rail. On shore, he could hear the keening high-low sirens and see flashing blue lights approaching the harbor from every direction. Les flics to the rescue. Everyone aboard the old tub appeared to have run forward to see what was going on. He looked at his watch. The Zodiac rendezvous was in six minutes. In the pitted bulkhead behind him, a rusted door hung open, steps leading down. Brock had to be down there somewhere. Guarded? Absolutely. It seemed he was expected after all.
    How the hell had he imagined this was going to be simple?
    He had one thought as he raced down the steep metal steps.
    He’d gone soft. Lazy. Cocky.

Chapter Seven
Paris, 1970
    ALL WAS BLACK INSIDE DES INVALIDES. THE GREAT COMPLEX of buildings housed a veterans’ hospital and the army museum. And, in the center, a great church, the Church of the Dome, where the emperor was buried. The skeleton named Joe Bones had forced Luca’s father to use one of his keys to open a security door at the rear of the Musée de L’Armée.
    They entered the museum at the end of a long dark allée where no lights shone. But now the snow had stopped and a bright white moon had emerged from the clouds. Pale light flowed through the tall windows and Luca could hear the powdery silence outside.
    “Move yer ass, Joey,” Benny said to his gunman. “History awaits us.”
    “Yeah, yeah,” Joe Bones said, and shoved the gun in Luca’s father’s back, nudging him forward. The two mute goons brought up the rear.
    Everywhere Luca looked, in shadowy display cases, were relics of the vanished Grande Armée. Uniforms, muskets, cannon, and swords. Cavalry mounted on horses. The stuff of Luca’s dreams. The stuff of La Gloire. In other words, his bright and shining future, if he survived this night. His heart quickened.
    Their footsteps were a hollow echo on the vast marble floors as they made their way past the endless rooms of the museum, moving relentlessly toward the great Dome. Luca willed himself to show no emotion whatsoever. It would do no good in any case to let these monkeys see anything.
    His father was walking ahead of them all, his head down, like a condemned man approaching the gallows. The dog Pozzo trotted happily alongside his owner. Joe Bones held his gun extended at the end of his arm, trained on the back of his father’s head. Luca had never seen the old man look so forlorn and defeated. Except now, amazingly enough, his father had begun to sing. Softly at first, then with a full throat. The French National Hymn, “La Marseillaise.”
    Arise children of the motherland
    The day of glory has arrived…
    To arms, citizens! Form your battalions!
    We march, we march!
    Let their impure blood water our fields.
    It was almost unbearable, the pity Luca felt for his father at that moment. Almost. Finally, they came to a wide corridor at the end of a long hallway. Inside the church proper, now, Luca thought. The huge round room of the Dome was full of moonlight as they entered. There was a waist-high white marble balcony circling the room beneath the towering dome. Pale blue moonlight streamed down from above, falling on a single sculpted monument rising up from the floor below.
    “Holy Jesus,” Joe Bones whispered, awe in his voice. “Lookit that!”
    He took Luca by one shoulder and pulled him toward the balcony. Luca closed his eyes and placed his hands on the cool marble railing. Breathing deeply, he emptied his mind. When he was ready, he opened his hungry eyes and feasted on the vision