‘Twenty,’ came the Australian’s voice over the intercom. ‘Nineteen. Eighteen . . .’
The hatch closed with a hollow bang, muffling Matt’s countdown. Eddie stonily closed the latch mechanism and turned the wheel to seal it. A red light on the cabin wall turned green.
Both hatches were secured.
They faintly heard Matt say ‘Ten’, followed after a pause by, ‘Well. No point dragging it out, eh? Good luck to you both.’
Nina gripped Eddie’s wrist with one hand, the other clenched into a fist over her mouth. ‘Good luck, Matt,’ she whispered.
Eddie’s voice was barely louder. ‘Fight to the end, mate.’
Metal scraped below – then the Mako shook as water slammed against the bottom of the hatch. The Sharkdozer had separated, the ocean surging back into the docking collar.
Trailing bubbles, the stricken submersible drifted away into the darkness.
25
The Mako’s pilot slowly woke to a throbbing pain across his face.
A mushy splat of blood on the control panel revealed the cause. What had happened? Memories groggily returned. He had been chasing the IHA sub, about to unleash the last torpedo – then it had unexpectedly angled upwards, and . . .
The rest was a blur. Something had hit the Mako, throwing him forward in his seat . . . then nothing. He had been knocked out. But he thought he had heard voices. How was that possible?
He squinted through the windows. No sign of the other sub – or the diver who had been with him. But something wasn’t right.
It took him a few seconds to work out what. There were reflections in the Plexiglas . . . of people behind him.
He spun his chair round in alarm – to find the menacing barrel of an ASM-DT pointing at him. It fired, the single shot earsplitting in the confined space. A nail round stabbed into the seat between his legs, the metal spike less than an inch from his groin.
The man holding the gun gave him a nasty look. ‘If you don’t do exactly what I tell you, the next one turns your bollocks into a shish kebab.’
The Mako powered through the blackness.
Eddie and Nina had debated – more accurately, argued – over their next action while waiting for the pilot to wake. Eddie’s first thought had been to try to help Matt. But the pleasure submarine lacked manipulator arms, so had no way to release the Sharkdozer’s ballast. And by the time the pilot recovered and was coerced at gunpoint into getting under way, the other submersible had disappeared. Whether Matt was making a genuine attempt to return to the surface or had merely moved off to deter them from going after him they had no way of knowing: the Mako had no sonar beyond a very basic depthfinder.
So, extremely reluctantly, they had turned to other options. The most obvious was returning to the surface. But the track on the inertial navigation system ultimately swayed the argument in Nina’s favour. Their attackers had come from a mother vessel, a submarine . . . and it seemed likely that Glas was aboard it. Wanted internationally for multiple crimes, and with the Group’s agents hunting for him, where better for the errant billionaire to hide? It explained the intermittency of his communications with his ‘partner’, Dalton: something as simple as making a phone call was impossible hundreds of feet beneath the sea.
The architect of everything that had happened – the man responsible for all the lives that had been lost – was just over two miles away. As Nina pointed out, it seemed a waste not to pay him a visit while they had a chance . . . and a torpedo.
‘So, is your boss on this sub?’ Eddie demanded, poking the rifle against the pilot’s side to encourage a truthful answer.
‘Yes, yes,’ he replied, dry-mouthed. ‘Herr Glas is there.’
‘How many others?’
‘About ten.’
‘About ten, or exactly ten?’ The gun pushed harder against his ribs.
‘Okay, okay! More than ten. Ah . . . twelve.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yes, yes, twelve! You killed two others.’
‘I’ll make it three if you piss me about again.’ Eddie gave him one final jab with the barrel, then moved back to join Nina. ‘You sure about this?’ he asked her quietly.
She shook her head, but said, ‘It’s the only chance we’ve got to end this. Otherwise Glas’ll just keep sending people after us. After me. Even if I manage to stay alive, other people will still get killed in the crossfire. People like Matt, and Lewis, and the other people on that sub.’
‘So what are we going to do? Cruise up to his window, wave, then blow the fucker up?’
‘I was thinking more of giving him the finger first,’ she said, with a faint attempt at a smile. ‘But we should talk to him before that. I didn’t believe that Warden was telling us the whole story any more than you did, so we ought to find out Glas’s side of it.’
‘Then blow the fucker up.’
‘If we have to.’ She looked back at the pilot. The dot representing the sub on the inertial navigator was approaching its origin point. ‘How much further?’ she asked him.
‘About half a kilometre,’ the pilot replied nervously.
The couple moved forward for a better view as the Mako continued towards its destination. Nothing was visible yet, but a readout on the navigation screen ticked down the distance in metres. Four hundred and fifty, four hundred . . . ‘What if it’s moved?’ Nina wondered, still not seeing anything. ‘Maybe they figured out that something went wrong and took off.’
‘Then we go back to the surface, and Chuckles here takes a swim with the sharks,’ said Eddie.
The pilot gulped. ‘It will be there, it will be!’
Three hundred metres. Their prisoner looked from side to side for any sign of the mother ship. Two hundred, and the pilot’s hands visibly trembled as he reduced speed. ‘I think they’ve buggered off,’ Eddie growled, hefting the ASM-DT.
‘No, no, they will be here!’ the pilot squealed. ‘They will be, they will – there!’
He pointed off to the left. A faint line of lights appeared through the murk.
As they closed, the line grew longer. And longer.
‘Wow,’ said Nina, unable to conceal her amazement. ‘That’s a big-ass submarine.’
The craft bearing the lights gradually took on form. The mother ship was well over two hundred feet long, a sleek white shape resembling an ultra-modern megayacht – but one with the ability to plunge beneath the waves on a whim. Large circular portholes ran along the length of its hull, a long wraparound window marking the bridge atop the elevated, streamlined superstructure. ‘Must have cost a few bob,’ said Eddie.
‘Ninety million dollars,’ the pilot volunteered.
‘Did I ask for a fucking brochure?’ The man fell silent, cowed.
Nina spotted movement through a porthole. ‘Shit, they’ll see us!’ She hunched down, tugging at Eddie’s sleeve for him to do the same. ‘Where do we dock?’
‘Behind the bridge,’ the pilot hesitantly answered, ‘or on the keel.’
‘Go to the top one,’ Eddie told him, pushing the gun behind his ear. The man obediently guided the Mako upwards.
‘You sure?’ Nina asked.
‘Be a lot easier for us to get out by jumping down than climbing up. We’ll need to move fast.’
The larger submarine slid past the windows as its offspring moved into docking position. The area aft of the superstructure was revealed as a flat deck; on the surface, it could be used by passengers to enjoy the sunlight, but underwater it acted as a landing platform. Bright lights revealed a port set into it.
‘Can you dock on your own?’ Eddie asked the pilot.
‘Yes, it’s – it’s automatic.’
‘Good. Where does the hatch open, and how many people will be there?’
‘The docking port goes into the engine room. I don’t know how many people will be inside – three or four, usually.’
‘But there might be more,’ Nina said. ‘Coming to congratulate you for killing us.’
�
�They won’t be celebrating for long,’ said Eddie grimly. ‘All right, dock this thing.’
Sweating, the pilot manoeuvred the Mako into position. A graphic of the docking port appeared on a monitor, crosshairs guiding him into the perfect position. A series of bleeps, and the crosshairs turned green; he pushed a button, and the computers took over to lower the sub into position. A couple of bumps and clanks from below, then the engines shut down as flashing text on the screen announced that the minisub had docked safely.
‘That everything you need to do?’ Eddie asked. The pilot nodded. ‘Cheers, then.’ He smashed the rifle’s butt against the man’s head, knocking him back into unconsciousness. ‘You’re fucking lucky I didn’t kill you.’
‘What next?’ said Nina as they headed for the hatch. ‘I don’t want to rush down there without knowing who’s waiting.’
‘We don’t have to,’ Eddie replied. ‘We’ll let them come to us.’
At the bottom of the docking connector, two of the submarine’s crew watched as an engineer released the hatch, stepping back from the residual drips of water before looking up into it. The Mako’s own hatch was already open at the top.
But nobody was coming down it.
Seconds passed. ‘Where is he?’ asked one of the men, moving closer to see for himself. The submersible’s cabin lights were off.
‘I don’t know,’ said the engineer. He called up through the hatch. ‘Moritz?’ No answer. Giving his companions a look of concern, he tried again. ‘Moritz! What’s the problem?’
‘Yours,’ said Eddie, stepping out of the gloom and firing the rifle down the shaft.
The nail round hit the engineer in the face and went straight through his head, bursting out behind one ear in a bloody spray. The man standing beside him only had time to flinch in shock before a second sharpened spike plunged into the top of his chest and ripped open his heart. Both corpses crashed down on the deck.
The third man turned to flee. Behind him, Eddie dropped from the docking port with a bang. Another shot, and six inches of steel punched through the running man’s upper back to clang off the bulkhead beyond.
There was only one exit from the chamber. Eddie stepped over the bodies and opened a hatch to find a flight of steep metal stairs leading down into the submarine’s engine room. Two more crewmen were in the compartment, one staring up at him in stunned surprise, the other already sprinting towards a door. The Englishman tracked him and fired. The recoil from a nail round was different from that of a bullet, but when the first smacked noisily into a bank of batteries just behind his target he immediately adjusted – and the next shot hit home, tearing into the man’s neck.
He snapped the gun back at the other engineer – who was diving for a control panel. Eddie fired, but the man had already slapped his hand down on an alarm button – his last act on earth before the nail pierced his skull. A siren sounded, red lights flashing.
Nina emerged from the docking chamber. ‘So much for the stealthy approach!’
‘It’s not really my thing anyway.’ Eddie switched the ASM-DT to conventional ammunition and ran down the stairs. ‘Okay, what’s a good thing to break?’
As well as the batteries, the two-deck-high room housed a pair of diesel engines for use when the submarine was on the surface, plus electrical generators and hydraulic pumps. But what caught his eye were two identical sets of machinery, complex networks of pipes and valves connected to large metal cylinders. Both systems were hooked to overhead ducts that led through the forward bulkhead into other parts of the sub. Eddie was no engineer, but it seemed a safe bet that the machines were part of the submarine’s air supply. ‘Nina!’ he shouted as he hurried across the room. ‘Find an intercom and tell Glas we want to talk to him.’
She descended the stairs, spotting a panel with a telephone-like handset near the door. ‘What if he refuses?’
‘Then he’ll have trouble breathing!’ He reached the nearer of the two machines. A prominent warning sticker told him that the device was an oxygen generator, using chemical reactions both to create and to recycle the life-sustaining gas, and that the greatest potential danger from it was potassium chlorate burns. That was, in an odd way, reassuring: since it didn’t store compressed oxygen in pressurised tanks, there was far less risk of an explosion.
He still retreated to what he hoped was a safe distance before taking aim. ‘Okay, Nina, get down!’ He waited for her to duck behind the batteries – then fired.
The bullets tore into the generator’s pipework. A pump shattered, gas escaping with a shrill hiss. The rest of the machinery rattled furiously for several seconds before rasping to a stop. Warning lights flicked on.
Nina hesitantly raised her head. ‘What did you do?’
‘Took out one of their oxygen generators. There’s a backup, but I’ve got enough bullets left to fuck that up too. Get on the phone and let them know. Oh, and say that if they try to force their way in here, we’ve wired the place to blow.’
‘We have?’
‘No, but they don’t know that!’
He found a toolbox and took out a crowbar as Nina went to the intercom and picked up the handset. ‘Hello, hi,’ she said into it. ‘This is Nina Wilde calling for Harald Glas – I guess you know me, since you’ve been trying to kill me for the past week. I just wanted to tell you that we’ve destroyed one of your oxygen generators, and we’ll take out the other one if we don’t hear from you in, oh . . . thirty seconds?’
Eddie used the crowbar to jam the hatch’s handle. ‘Bit casual, and I would’ve told him to surrender straight off, but not bad. You’re getting the hang of this whole being threatening lark.’
‘Everyone at the IHA thinks I’ve already got it.’ Eddie moved back to cover the hatch as Nina waited for a reply. The seconds ticked by. ‘Is he going to answer?’
Eddie grinned crookedly. ‘Maybe we caught him while he was taking a dump. Even billionaires have to crap.’
‘There’s a delightful thought,’ she said with a disgusted sigh.
Still nothing but silence from the intercom. Eddie eyed the remaining oxygen generator. Now that the threat had been made, they might have to go through with it . . .
A click from the handset. ‘Dr Wilde. This is Harald Glas.’
Nina switched the intercom to speaker mode so Eddie could hear. ‘First things first. If you try to break in here, we’ll destroy the other oxygen generator, and the engines and batteries too. You’ll be trapped down here. You got that?’
‘I hear you.’ The Dane’s voice was sonorous, measured, calm even under threat. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘I want you to stop trying to kill my wife, for starters,’ said Eddie. ‘Then if we’re still making deals, maybe also an Aston Martin. And a pony.’
‘You’re as irreverent as I’ve heard, Mr Chase.’
‘You seem very well informed about us,’ Nina said.
Glas didn’t offer a response to that, instead saying, ‘I assume you wish to see me in person.’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Eddie replied. ‘You get your arse down here – alone.’
A brief hesitation. ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible. But . . . I will send a representative to bring you to me. A hostage, if you prefer.’ The background hiss from the speaker briefly cut out as Glas closed the mic; Nina guessed that the newly appointed ‘hostage’ was unhappy about the arrangement. ‘They will be with you shortly. Alone, as you wished.’
‘And unarmed,’ said Nina.
Another muted pause. ‘Agreed.’
‘If we see anyone else on the way to you, I’ll shoot your friend and blow up the engines,’ Eddie told him. ‘So get everyone to lock themselves in the galley or wherever.’
‘It will be done,’ said Glas. The intercom fell silent.
‘You trust him?’ Nina asked Eddie, before answering her own question. ‘Of course not.’
‘Go upstairs and wait in the airlock. If anything happens, get back into the sub and take off.’
‘I don’t know how to drive the thing,’ she told him as she ascended. ‘I don’t even know how to detach it from this sub.’
‘Bash every button until something happens, that’s my usual trick.’
‘Yeah, that’s why I don’t let you use my laptop.’ She pushed the hatch until it was slightly ajar and she could see out through the narrow gap.
Before long, someone knocked on the door. Eddie looked up at Nina. ‘Well, here we go,’ he said, freeing the crowbar from the handle before returning to cover. ‘Okay, open it. Slowly!’
He held his finger tightly on the trigger as the door eased open; if he saw a weapon, he was ready to fire instantly. But instead a pair of slender black-gloved hands came into view, fingers spread wide to show they were not carrying anything. ‘Well?’ said a familiar aristocratic voice, filled with irritation. ‘May I come in?’
Eddie could hardly believe it. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’
‘Charming as ever, Eddie.’ Sophia Blackwood leaned through the opening, taking in the rifle pointed at her. ‘You can put that down; I’m not armed.’
‘I’ll check that for myself. Shut the door, then put your hands against it.’
Sophia impatiently complied. Eddie pushed the ASM-DT’s muzzle against her back and performed a one-handed pat-down. He knew his ex-wife well enough to be unsurprised to find she had lied. ‘Not armed, eh?’ he said as he pulled a compact Glock 36 pistol from the waistband of her black leather trousers beneath her blouse. ‘I should just shoot you on fucking principle. Glas thought he could use you to kill us, did he?’
‘Actually, Harald doesn’t even know I have that gun,’ she said as he finished his search. She looked up at Nina, who had cautiously emerged from the docking chamber. ‘It’s got quite an interesting story, actually.’
‘Really,’ said Eddie, not caring. ‘You should send it to a publisher – maybe it’ll outsell Dan Brown.’
‘I’m sure Nina will want to hear it. Part of it takes place in Rome.’
Eddie stepped back, keeping the rifle fixed on Sophia. ‘Nina, take this,’ he said, holding out the Glock.
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