More bullets smashed into the boxes. Chase fumbled for the catches of his deep suit. ‘Get me out of this thing!’
The cruiser closed in, dropping another speedboat from its stern hoist into the water with a frothing smack. It leapt away from its parent vessel, heading round the survey ship’s stern.
The pirate manning the heavy machine gun on the cruiser’s bow took aim at the Pianosa’s superstructure, pulled the trigger—
Lincoln led Nina along a passageway, seeing another crewman ahead wielding a fire extinguisher. Black smoke billowed round him. ‘Shit!’ Lincoln said. ‘We’ll have to go back around—’
The crewman’s chest exploded in a spray of gore as a .50-calibre round tore through him.
The passageway echoed with a rapid-fire metallic bam-bam-bam as more thumb-sized bullets punched a line of holes straight through the hull and inner walls, searing across the corridor and ripping out again through the other side.
The holes got closer, advancing with frightening speed—
Nina dived to the deck. She tried to pull Lincoln down with her, but too late. A bullet hit his upper arm - and blew it off below the shoulder.
Chase and Bejo had managed to unlock the deep suit’s shoulder fastenings and some of the clips on its side when the sound of the machine gun reached them. Chase recognised the distinctive chugging booms immediately - a Browning M2, a weapon in service all over the world, practically unchanged for almost eighty years . . . because it was exceptionally good at ripping apart anything unlucky enough to appear in its sights.
‘Shit!’ he gasped as ragged holes burst open in the Pianosa’s superstructure. He clawed at the remaining clips on his suit - then looked round sharply at a sound from behind.
Another speedboat, rounding the ship’s stern. More pirates aboard it.
They saw him.
Nina screamed as splintered metal and scabbed paint showered her. More bullets slammed overhead . . . then stopped. The machine gun’s rattle paused, then resumed, now aimed at a different part of the ship.
She sat up, horrified by the sight before her. What was left of the dead man at the end of the corridor was mercifully obscured by smoke, but Lincoln was slumped against the wall at her feet. The white wall above him was stained with red, a lopsided hole at its centre where the bullet had continued on after inflicting its carnage. Nothing remained of his upper arm but a sickening stump of torn meat, streams of dark blood running down on to the deck.
‘Oh, Jesus . . .’ Ignoring the pain in her leg, she crouched beside him and checked his pulse. It was weak, irregular. ‘Can you hear me?’
Lincoln’s eyes fluttered open, struggling to focus. ‘What happened?’ he mumbled, trying to sit up.
Nina gently pushed him back. ‘Keep still. You’ve been shot. Don’t move.’
‘My arm hurts . . .’
She choked back a sob. He hadn’t yet realised what damage had been inflicted upon him. ‘Oh, God,’ she whispered, unsure what to do. There was a first aid kit in the lab, but she had no idea if it would be any use on a wound of this magnitude.
But it was his only chance of survival. ‘Don’t move,’ she repeated. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
‘Move!’ Chase shouted. ‘Get out of here!’
Bejo didn’t need further prompting. Arms outstretched, he dived from the dock.
The driver turned the speedboat, swinging broadside-on to Chase so all four of its passengers could aim their AKs at him. Still trapped inside his bulky deep suit, a bright yellow target lying helplessly on the edge of the dock, there was nowhere he could go . . .
Except down.
With a yell, he rolled into the sea.
He hit the water on his side, facing the pontoon. The air tanks in the suit’s back might give him some protection - unless the gunmen aimed at his head.
Water gushed in through the open collar, filling the casing. He started to sink.
Not fast enough.
The Kalashnikovs chattered. Bullets cracked off the dock above him, splashed into the sea behind. These pirates were as bad shots as their comrades in the other boats - but only one bullet needed to find its target.
He took a deep breath just before his head was pulled under the water. The suit was getting heavier by the moment, a weight dragging him down . . .
A bullet hit the back of the casing - and he was slammed against the float supporting the pontoon as the air tank ruptured, its pressurised contents spewing out in a churning rush. More bullets thwacked into the water around him.
He pushed himself away from the float. The escaping air forced him downwards, bubbles belching out of the collar past his face as he brought himself into a more upright position.
The pirates were still shooting, but now were just wasting ammo. Even a small depth of water was enough to stop a bullet. Spent rounds spiralled slowly downwards around him.
He reached for the last catches on the suit’s side. Once he got the body open, he could work the quick-releases for the sealing rings around his limbs. Then he could swim under the dock, get his breath back, and work out a plan of action.
The first catch clacked open. One more to go. He tried to hook his gloved finger under it.
He couldn’t.
Chase tried again, clawing harder at the catch. It felt as though it was bent. But he could prise it open with his diving knife . . .
It wasn’t there.
All his gear was still on the surface.
He forced back panic, pushing his fingertip harder against the catch. Still unable to get any purchase, he sank further into the depths.
4
Another fusillade of gunfire tore through the ship as Nina limped towards the lab. She shrieked, dropping flat beside a storeroom door as more holes exploded in the walls. Electrical sparks crackled angrily from a severed cable overhead.
The firing ceased. Nina held her breath, expecting it to resume at any moment, but nothing happened. The gunner had swept the length of each of the Pianosa’s decks. Either he thought he’d killed everybody aboard . . .
Or the next phase of the attack was about to begin.
Chase still couldn’t get any purchase on the damaged clip. Caught unprepared, with no time to get any extra oxygen into his system, his body was rapidly burning through the limited amount of air in his lungs.
The punctured tank ran dry. He kicked, trying to slow his descent, but without air to provide buoyancy the deep suit was nothing but dead weight.
His leg muscles were cramping, lactic acid building up as the oxygen in his blood dwindled. He spasmed, the involuntary movement forcing air from his lungs.
He was about to drown—
Something thumped against him. He looked round - and saw Bejo. His hand scrabbled against the side of the suit, fingernails pushing under the damaged metal . . .
The clip opened.
The deep suit’s front unlatched, the last pockets of air inside it gushing upwards. Chase immediately tugged at the release for the seal on his left shoulder as Bejo did the same on the right. He desperately shrugged his arms free as the young Indonesian pulled at the rings round his thighs to unlock them. The deep suit was still hauling him down like an anchor.
One leg loose.
Fire searing his lungs, head pounding . . .
The other seal was released. Bejo grabbed him and kicked upwards as the suit dropped away, tearing off one of Chase’s flippers.
He was clear - but he still had to reach the surface.
Where the pirates were waiting.
Holes had been blown through the lab’s walls, the metal peeled back like the skin of a half-eaten orange. Some of Nina’s equipment had been destroyed, the magnifying lens over the clay tablet shattered. But she ignored it, instead searching for the first aid kit - Lincoln’s only hope of survival.
She found the green box in a cabinet. No time to check if it contained anything useful, and no point either. Either it did, or the maimed crewman would die. Clutching the
box, she hurried back along the corridor.
She heard shouting.
Inside the ship.
The pounding of blood in Chase’s head felt almost like physical blows, blackness roiling in from the edges of his vision as the shimmering waves on the surface drew tantalisingly closer, closer . . .
He breached the surface, taking in clean, fresh air in tremendous whooping gasps. Bejo burst from the water beside him. Chase’s vision cleared - to reveal the speedboat bobbing less than twenty feet away. The men inside it spotted the gasping figures, expressions of surprise rapidly changing to anger.
‘Not again!’ Chase wheezed as he pulled Bejo back underwater, bullets churning the surface around them.
‘Mr Lincoln!’ Nina called. The smoke in the passageway had thickened, making her cough. ‘Can you hear me?’
A faint moan reached her. She limped to where she had left him. The pool of blood had spread, little rivulets winding along the deck.
She put down the first aid kit and opened it. There were several rolls of bandages and a packet containing sterile gauze inside: at least she might be able to stop the bleeding. There didn’t appear to be any painkillers, though.
‘I’m going to put on a bandage,’ she told Lincoln as she tore open the packet. ‘I’ll be as gentle as I can, but it might hurt.’
‘Can’t get . . . any worse . . .’ he said in a strained whisper, eyes closed.
Hesitantly, Nina brought the piece of gauze to the wound. A nub of bone was visible amid the torn muscle, blood dripping from it. She fought past her fear and revulsion and pressed the pad against his arm. Lincoln let out a strangled screech.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she gasped. The gauze was already soaked, and she could feel blood on her palm. Keeping it in place, she groped with her other hand for one of the rolls of bandage. ‘I’m going to—’
Someone cried out through the smoke, a panicked plea - which was cut off by a crackle of gunfire. Nina flinched. The shots were close by.
Lincoln forced his eyes open. ‘Go.’
‘But I can’t leave—’
‘Go!’ He pushed her back. The blood-sodden gauze fell into the crimson pool.
Nina regarded him helplessly, then stood. More voices came through the smoke. Closer.
She gave him one final, fearful look, then turned and ran.
The firing had stopped, but Chase and Bejo stayed underwater, swimming some ten feet beneath the surface.
They passed under the pontoon dock. They could have surfaced between its floats for air, under the cover of the deck - but the pirates would expect them to do just that, and be watching. Instead, they kept swimming along the length of the survey ship. Debris floated above them, smashed pieces of—
The Pianosa’s boat.
The wrecked craft was inverted, smoke wafting from the edge of the hole where the RPG had blasted it. But its wood and fibreglass hull was still afloat, the curved keel above the water.
Chase surfaced inside the upturned boat. Bejo popped up next to him. ‘You okay?’ Chase asked. The young man nodded, panting for breath. ‘Thanks.’ He squeezed Bejo’s shoulder in gratitude.
Engine noise. He looked through the hole to see that the first speedboat had already pulled up at the dock beside the gangway up to the main deck. Behind it, the RIB was coming to a standstill.
Its occupants jumped on to the dock. Chase assessed the pirates in a flash: dirty, scruffy, the wiry, slightly pot-bellied build of men used to intense bursts of adrenalin-fuelled physical exertion, followed by celebratory excess.
But there was one man who stood out: taller, harder-faced, conspicuously lacking the cheap gold chains the others wore. Not all the pirates were amateurs; Chase could tell simply from the way the man held his AK - sideways on its strap across his stomach, the barrel pointed down out of harm’s way - that he had received proper military training in the past. The group’s leader.
He barked an order, then quickly ascended the gangway, his entourage following.
Nina peered round the corner of the passageway, looking back towards Lincoln. She couldn’t just turn her back and abandon him. Maybe their attackers would see he posed no threat and leave him alone, in which case she might be able to return and help . . .
She froze as a man emerged from the smoke, a red bandanna pulled up over his nose and mouth. He had a rifle in his hands, pointing it at Lincoln. He warily advanced, stopping a few feet from the injured crewman, and shouted back over his shoulder.
Nina remained still, terrified that he might spot her but unable to look away. The pirate shouted again. More men appeared through the smoke. One of them, clearly the leader, kicked Lincoln’s leg, shouting in Indonesian. The wounded man looked painfully up at the new arrival, who shouted again.
Finally, Lincoln spoke.
‘Fuck . . . you.’
The briefest flicker of anger crossing his face, the pirate leader shot Lincoln in the forehead with his AK. The back of his skull burst open, dark gore sluicing down the wall behind him.
Nina clapped a hand over her mouth to stop herself from crying out. Move, she told herself. Run! But her legs remained frozen, pinned to the spot by fear.
The pirate was about to step over the corpse when something caught his attention. He crouched, lifting something from the bloodied floor.
The piece of gauze.
He regarded it for a moment, then looked up, eyes filled with the realisation that someone else was still alive.
Now Nina ran.
The ravaged corridor blurred past her as she hunted for a hiding place. She reached the storeroom, the damaged cables still crackling on the wall outside it - then continued past it. She didn’t know what was in the storeroom, but she did know that her lab contained somewhere she could hide.
Whether she would be safe there was another matter.
His breath recovered, Chase looked through the hole again. The only pirate he could see was standing beside the RIB’s mooring behind the empty speedboat with his AK-47 slung casually over one shoulder. The rumble of the other speedboat’s engine echoed off the ship’s side, still searching for him and Bejo - but in the wrong place, on the far side of the dock’s long arm.
‘Wait here,’ he said, then swam under the rear of the upturned boat. He surfaced slowly, only his eyes and nose exposed as he scanned the rest of the dock. The body of one of the Indonesian crewmen was sprawled halfway along it - but there were no more pirates in sight. He looked at the floatplane. The fire had mostly burned itself out, a few patches of spilled fuel still alight on the water below the wrecked wing. Its engine was still running.
He slipped back inside the boat. ‘I’m going to get to the plane,’ he told Bejo, ‘see if the radio’s still working. If I can contact the Coast Guard, they’ll get someone out here to help us.’
‘It could take hours for them to get here, Mr Eddie,’ Bejo warned.
‘I’m not sitting under this fucking thing until those arseholes leave. Not while Nina’s still inside the ship.’ He prepared to dive. ‘You wait in here, though. No point both of us risking our lives.’
Bejo gave him a nervous look. ‘Good luck, Mr Eddie. Try not to die, hey?’
‘That’s part of the plan. Actually, that’s the whole plan.’ Chase submerged once more.
He swam the short distance to the side of the dock. Surfacing between two of the pontoon sections, he checked on his enemies. The RIB driver’s back was now to him as he looked up at the Pianosa, and the speedboat had moved away to lurk near the ship’s stern.
Now or never.
Chase pulled himself out of the water, lying flat on the decking close to the dead crewman. Scattered all about him was the expedition’s diving gear. He crawled along the dock. The boxes and crates would keep him hidden from the men in the speedboat for at least part of the way, meaning he only had to worry about the boatman. The pirate was still facing away, now swinging his Kalashnikov half-heartedly from its strap. Amateur, Chase thought with disdain,
but it would only take one shout from him to raise the alarm . . .
He passed the plane’s tail. No more cover, but he had barely ten feet to go to reach the cockpit. He looked round the last crate for the speedboat. It was moving slowly away from him, a couple of men standing and peering into the water to each side, guns ready.
If he moved quickly enough, he could make it before anyone saw him.
One last glance back at the boatman—
He was staring right at Chase. His expression was almost quizzical, as if he was wondering why there were now two bodies lying on the dock when there had only been one before . . . until his brain finally registered that one of them had just moved.
He fumbled with his AK.
Caught in the open, Chase was about to dive back into the water when he saw something lying nearby.
His speargun.
He snatched it up as the pirate brought his rifle to bear—
Chase fired first. The spear lanced down the length of the dock - and hit the pirate square in the chest, the Magnum round at its head blowing a fist-sized hole in his ribcage.
The dead man slumped backwards. But the pirates in the speedboat had heard the noise.
Chase dropped the empty speargun and dived back into the water as they started shooting.
The pirate leader kicked open the lab door, sweeping his gun from side to side before stepping inside.
Nina watched through the narrow slit of her hiding place. More men entered the lab behind him. For a moment, it was as if he was staring right at her. Then he moved out of sight, whispering something in his native language.
The only reason he would have to whisper was if he thought there was a danger of being overheard. He knew she was in here. She froze, not even daring to breathe.
The leader stepped slowly round the table, boots crunching on broken glass as he headed for the storage cabinet in one corner. Finger on his AK’s trigger, he reached out, gripped the locker’s handle . . . and yanked it open, aiming his gun inside—