Having a Blast
In the engine room, Showy fires once at the spanner-wielding escapee, putting a full load of 00 buck into the man's chest at point-blank range. The Czech, only a meter or so away from the barrel of Snow's Remington at the time of impact, flies backwards as if yanked hard on an invisible string. He lands, crumpled, at the base of one the piston housings; the spanner lands with a loud clang a split second later. The downed Czech twitches for a few moments as his central nervous system undergoes a rapid and unexpected shut-down, the pair of handcuffs still adorning one of his wrists clinking along in time against the metal of the deck flooring.
Meanwhile, on deck, Dawid, at Minh's recommendation, moves Ritter's mangled body from the barge to the tug. The corpse is incredibly heavy- almost 15 stone of dead weight- and Dawid is dead tired from the morning's activities. Negotiating the barge's wet patchwork of warped wooden decking makes a fairly routine, if unpleasant, task extremely difficult and more than a little dangerous. Legs, back, and shoulders burning, he makes it across the Krolowa with little choice but to dump the load unceremoniously on the deck, leaving behind a temporary memorial of spattered blood.
Milk, Mariusz, and Tucker post themselves at the hatches leading below, watching and waiting nervously as the situation in the engine room comes to a head. The single shotgun blast that echoes up to them through the hatchways hints at a marginally favorable outcome to the prisoner search but not until the clearing team emerges will the doubts be assuaged.
Actions?