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“Other side?” Marbury questioned.
Monk made the decision instantly. “No. Same side.”
“Sir? Don’t you want them having to defend from both sides?” Walcott argued. There was fear in his voice. He had no confidence in Monk, and he did not care who knew it.
This was a fight Monk needed to win, more even for his men’s morale than to get back the stolen goods and arrest the thieves. “Ballast,” he said briefly, as if that were enough. Walcott would realize soon enough, when the barge began to tip.
Hooper brought the boat alongside and Laker leaped onto the barge. He attacked the second man wielding the barge pole, ducking beneath its swing and catching the man by the legs, sending him crashing into the boxes. They rolled over, arms flailing.
Hooper rose to his feet as Bathurst shipped the oars. The first bargee swung his pole. Monk could hear the sound of it as it slashed through the air, missing Hooper by inches.
The other thieves started to come over from the far side. One of them jumped from the barge onto the boat, sending it rocking wildly. Hooper lost his balance and fell, and Bathurst had to step sideways over the forward gunwale.
Laker was getting the better of his man, but there were now two more attacking him.
The barge rocked so hard, two of the bales shifted, sliding to the starboard and making the barge list badly.
One of the thieves yelled something, an order, a warning. Two of them tackling Laker left him immediately and started to heave at the boxes, to no effect. There was fear in their voices now. The current was fast and strong. It was slowly carrying them backward toward Blackfriars Bridge and the eddies beneath.
Monk smiled grimly, only too aware of the danger. He had not meant it to be this close. A man who went overboard in the Thames did not often survive. It was not such a big river, but it was full of powerful currents, bending back on each other as they found obstacles, filthy, strongly tidal, and, at certain times of the year, cold enough to rob you of breath.
Marbury understood now and was putting all his weight against the drag of the boat. They were nearly at the barge. Walcott was ready in the bow, grappling hook in his hands. Monk’s decision to board on the same side as the first boat obliged all the thieves to spend as much time trying to stop the barge from capsizing as fighting the boarders.
Monk would have liked to keep all the cargo to return to its owners, but he was not going to risk a man’s life to save it.
“Stay here!” he ordered Walcott. He and Marbury moved to the side, away from the others so as not to tip the boat, and then leaped onto the barge. Monk went for the nearest man, using the cudgel all police carried. It was heavy, easily adaptable, and silent. Unlike a gun, it could not run out of ammunition or misfire.
He fought hard, dangerously, with more violence than he had anticipated. But it gave him a deep, savage feeling of satisfaction to be able to strike at a thief, catch him in the arm that he had raised to hit Laker, and feel the bone break as he connected with it.
The man let out a howl of pain and lost his balance, landing hard on the edge of one of the crates. Laker slid away from him and grabbed one of the thief’s legs in time to stop him from going overboard.
One of the men with barge poles was swinging it around his head like a long staff. It caught Monk on the shoulder, and he felt the jar of it right through his body. Marbury flung all his considerable weight on the man with the pole and sent him flying. But the man rolled over and stumbled to his feet again, coming back at Marbury.
Laker was on Monk’s far side, jabbing with his fist at one of the thieves who doubled up. There was a scream and a loud splash as someone went into the water. The barge was drifting, still going upriver with the tide, but lying across the current and sliding further out into the mainstream of the river.
Both police boats were tied together, one onto the near end of the barge. There was a man, unconscious or dead, lying on top of one of the bales. Another slid down onto the deck between boxes. At least one was gone into the water.
Monk tried to make out silhouettes. He recognized Hooper from the outline of his head, Walcott from his stature and the tight, swift way he moved, like a bantamweight boxer. His blows, though, were those of a street fighter, kicking and gouging included. But the thieves would fight like that, too, with no rules, survival their only aim. Monk and his men also had to be aware they could be carrying knives. Most sailors did, although usually for practical use, not fighting.
Monk was struck from behind and pitched forward, turning as soon as he could. Some instinct remembered from his shattered past made him hunch hard and low, and then swing the cudgel again. He took a glancing blow on the side of the head and retaliated with his right knee to the groin, and then in the same movement, a blow to the throat. The man went down and stayed there.
Monk turned to see Marbury fighting with a bald-headed man. He could see that much in the light of the half-moon: the sheen on his skin, the dark patch of blood on his ear. His face was twisted with fear.
Monk looked at Marbury. He was not swinging wide, but hard and low, with his body weight behind it. Then he aimed at the man’s head.
Monk leaped forward and knocked Marbury off balance, then hit him, not with all his weight, but enough to startle him and ruin his swing.
The man backed away, the terror still in his face.
“What in hell’s the matter with you?” Monk shouted at Marbury.
Marbury stared at him for a moment as if he would strike back, such fury in his eyes that Monk felt a twinge of fear for himself. For a terrible moment his mind leaped to Kate Exeter. Had she seen the same look, just before she felt the blow that killed her?
Hooper was behind Marbury. He had two men manacled together. At the far end of the barge, Bathurst had two more.
Walcott seemed to be poling them very slowly toward the shore, anchor at the ready.
“Get in the boats and bring us all in,” Monk said to Marbury, his voice thick in his throat. “Now!?
