Chapter 93 - Fire on the Surface
The salt spray felt like needles against the raw skin of my face. I pulled myself out of the bobbing capsule, balancing precariously on the inflatable collar as ten-foot swells threatened to pull me into the freezing trough of the North Atlantic.
To my left, half-submerged in the foam, bobbed an unmanned emergency supply sled released by the pod’s automatic deployment cycle. I grabbed the tether line, hauling the waterproof casing toward me with burning muscles. Inside lay a dry tactical assault vest, an MP5K submachine gun with four pressurized magazines, a thermal flare, and a handheld tactical uplink.
I strapped the weapon across my chest, the cold aluminum grounding the frantic pulse pounding in my throat. I didn’t have the luxury of grief or shock. In the world Sarah Sterling had built, hesitation was an execution order.
Snapping the tactical uplink open, I synced it with the master drive around my neck. The screen flickered green, penetrating the storm's electromagnetic interference. Sanctuary Three—a decommissioned oil platform anchored over the Dogger Bank—was lit up on the heat signature map like an incinerator. Thermal blooms bloomed across the upper landing deck.
Gunfire. Heavy caliber.
A Zodiac patrol boat, painted in matte non-reflective black, cut through the waves fifty yards to my starboard, sweeping the water with a high-intensity xenon searchlight. They weren't looking to rescue; they were scouring the surface to ensure whoever was in the Leviathan never came back up.
The searchlight beam swept across the swells, freezing on my ascent pod.
The twin-mounted machine guns on the Zodiac’s prow immediately swung in my direction.
I didn't wait for the trigger pull. I dove backward into the freezing swell just as a burst of 7.62mm tracer rounds chewed the ascent pod into fiberglass splinters. The concussive thuds of bullets penetrating water vibrated through my eardrums. Beneath the surface, the sea was an ink-black void, but the glowing tracer lines painted deadly streaks of phosphor through the foam.
Swimming with hard, disciplined strokes beneath the patrol craft’s line of sight, I surfaced directly under the Zodiac’s stern, gasping silently for breath behind the churning dual outboards. The crew of three was fixated on the smoking remains of the pod.
I reached up, caught the cold lip of the transom, and pulled myself upward.
My right hand came up with the MP5K. The sound of the three-round burst was swallowed whole by the howling wind and the thrum of the engines. The gunner collapsed instantly over his mount. Before the remaining two could pivot, I cleared the deck, putting two rounds through the center mass of the navigator and sweeping the helmsman off his station.
The boat lurched as the dead helmsman’s foot slipped off the throttle. I vaulted over the gunwale, kicking his body into the churning wake, and seized the wheel with one hand while dragging the throttle forward.
The boat surged ahead, cutting through the towering crests of the Atlantic, roaring directly toward the burning legs of Sanctuary Three.
The headset on the dead navigator's vest squawked to life with a familiar, calm voice that made the hair on my neck stand on end.
*"Zodiac Two, report. Did the pod survive the scuttle? Over."*
It was Vance. His voice was smooth, stripped of all the gentle warmth and humble deference he had displayed in our hideouts across Europe.
I keyed the transmitter on the dead man's collar, leaning close to the mic over the scream of the twin outboards.
"I’m coming up, Vance," I said, my voice dead, flat, and hollow. "Keep the girl safe until I get there. If she has a single scratch on her, there isn't a hole on this earth deep enough to hide you."
A second of dead silence hung on the frequency. Then came Vance's low, cold chuckle.
May you like
*"I always knew you were your mother’s daughter, Emily. But you're too late. The board is already cleared."*
***
