The pirates had stopped shooting, finally realising their bullets couldn’t penetrate the water. But they were heading straight for him, picking out his shape through the shimmering waves.
The Pianosa’s keel was directly ahead, a dark, barnacle-crusted mass. If he went under it, he could surface for air - and if they followed him round the ship, he could double back and hopefully reach the dock before they caught up.
He swam deeper, passing beneath the survey ship.
Nina didn’t have time to return to her hiding place. All she could do was dart into the locker, hunching down and pulling the door almost shut.
The pirate entered the lab. It was the third man, the one who had been rebuffed by his leader. Nina watched through the crack of the door as he glanced furtively round the room, then picked up the underwater camera.
‘Thieving son of a bitch,’ Nina whispered. She waited for him to leave. But now that he had one valuable piece of equipment, the thought had entered his head that there might be others. His gaze darted calculatingly over the room’s contents.
He regarded the locker. Frowned. Nina knew why.
When he left the room, its door had been open.
Her hand groped through the cramped space, searching for anything among the loose items that she might be able to use as a weapon.
The pirate advanced on the locker. He gripped the handle, pulled it—
Nina blasted a spray of astringent powder into his eyes.
He shrieked and reeled back, clutching at his face with his free hand. His AK came up in the other. Nina leapt from the locker and slapped it aside. It fell from his hand - but the strap tangled round his arm. She couldn’t wrest it from him.
Instead she raced for the door. Behind her, the pirate shouted as he fumbled for his rifle.
Back up the passageway, reaching the storeroom, sparks still popping from the damaged wiring—
Running footsteps ahead. Another pirate was coming back.
She barged open the storeroom door. A cramped chamber, packed with stacked wooden crates and maintenance gear and large paint cans. A porthole on the opposite wall, two .50-calibre bullet holes flanking it.
The porthole was too small for her to fit through.
Trapped.
She slammed the door shut behind her and yanked a crate down to the deck, jamming it against the entrance.
But it wouldn’t hold them for long.
She looked back at the equipment. The twin cylindrical tanks of an oxy-acetylene torch were secured in a rack. But she didn’t know how to use it, or even light it.
Come on, think, something—
A metal box about the same size as the sonar case turned out to contain a piece of gear she couldn’t immediately identify, some sort of heavy-duty grinder or cutter. But simply hiding in the box wouldn’t save her—
The door banged against the crate. The pirates were outside.
Chase surfaced on the Pianosa’s port side. Not far away was another boat, a sleek cabin cruiser. The machine gun he’d heard earlier was mounted on its bow, another pirate manning it.
Sudden noise to his right. The speedboat rounded the Pianosa’s bow, its occupants shouting warnings to the men aboard the cruiser. The machine gunner immediately swung his weapon round.
Looking for him.
Chase didn’t wait to be seen, powering back under the surface, scraping against the barnacles.
He heard the chug of the .50-cal—
The huge bullets were even less effective at penetrating the water than the 7.62mm ammo of the AKs, smashing apart as they hit the surface. But the impacts alone slammed at Chase like miniature grenade explosions. Barely able to endure the assault on his eardrums, he swam back under the ship.
The two pirates didn’t risk shooting through the metal door for fear of ricochets. Instead, they kicked at it until the crate finally broke.
A strange smell was the first thing they noticed as they burst in. The second was a loud hiss. Both came from the same source: a pair of metal cylinders propped against an angle grinder.
The valves on both tanks had been fully opened, the red and green hoses whipping about like enraged snakes as the gases escaped, filling the room, reaching the corridor outside . . .
The electrical cables sparked.
And the acetylene gas, mixed with pure oxygen for maximum combustibility, ignited.
The fireball rushed back into the confined storeroom, instantly engulfing both men in flames as the gas canisters hurtled across the room on a jet of scorching blue fire. One of the pirates was smashed against the door jamb with bone-cracking force. His companion hit the wall across the corridor, the blunt ends of the cylinders crushing his sternum before spinning away like a monstrous Catherine wheel.
The fireball dispersed. Nina flung open the box and jumped up, one arm covering her face to protect it from the dancing fires as she stumbled over the dead pirates. Looking right, she saw the flaming gas cylinders still whirling on the deck.
No way out that way. She went left, passing Lincoln’s body before braving the smoke to find a way into the open.
Head ringing, Chase surfaced once more. He was back by the floating dock. The speedboat was still on the other side of the ship - but it wouldn’t take long to reverse its course.
He pulled himself up, about to run to the nearby gangway - when he realised that there were men about to come down it. The pirates were leaving the ship.
All he could do was dive back into the sea and hope they hadn’t seen him.
That hope barely lasted a second. AK fire kicked up the water above him. He swam deeper, already hearing the speedboat coming back.
5
Nina’s eyes were watering from the smoke, but she finally saw daylight ahead. But she could also hear gunfire, and shouting. She held in a cough as she cautiously looked outside.
Several men were on the starboard side of the main deck, some clomping down the gangway to the dock, others firing at the water. The pirate leader shouted a command. His men stopped shooting and hurried after their fellows. The leader was the last to go, casting a satisfied look at the smoking superstructure before following them to the dock.
Nina emerged, moving in a crouch towards the empty port-side boat hoist. When she was sure the pirates had gone, she stood.
Big mistake.
A shout came from her left. She whirled to see a motor yacht off the port bow, a man in its bridge pointing at her - and another pirate whipping round a huge machine gun.
‘Shit!’ She threw herself to the deck, scrambling towards the starboard side as the gun opened up—
The hammer-blow clangs of bullets pounding into the side of the hull and up through the decking were almost deafening. Debris showered her as machinery and deck fittings were torn apart. A hole the size of her fist exploded through the painted floor just a foot from her head, another bullet striking a thick metal cross-beam beneath the deck with a piercing bang. She screamed and moved faster towards the starboard hoist, the boat in it rocking and jolting as bullets peppered its hull.
The firing stopped. Maybe the gunner thought she was dead, or had run out of ammo. Nina didn’t care, feeling only relief as she reached the starboard side of the deck.
It didn’t last. From there, she had an elevated view of the dock. The floatplane at its far end had lost most of one wing; the Pianosa’s other boat had capsized, debris floating around it. Two bodies lay on the dock - one was a member of the ship’s crew, but the other was unfamiliar; one of the pirates, a spear protruding from a bloody hole in his chest.
Eddie, she thought. He was the only member of the expedition who could have fired such a shot. Was he still alive - and if so, where was he?
The other pirates provided an answer. Some of the men on the dock started shooting into the water, quickly joined by more in a speedboat. Dozens of little waterspouts shot upwards where the bullets hit. The leader shouted again, sounding annoyed. The pirates stopped shooting - but there was no sign of
anyone below the waves.
The pirate leader climbed into the larger of the two moored powerboats, the others splitting up to board the vessels. Engines started. They were leaving.
From her vantage point, Nina already knew they weren’t simply going to sail away. The RIB had rocket launchers aboard, the bulbous dark green warheads already loaded.
They hadn’t come just to rob the ship. They were going to sink it, remove all trace of the expedition.
One of the men in the smaller powerboat, almost directly below, looked up - and saw her. He shouted something, raising his gun—
Nina jerked back. The hoist controls were just a few feet away. Above, the bullet-pocked boat was hanging out over the ship’s side, still swaying . . .
She waited for the swinging boat to reach the furthest point of its arc - and kicked the hoist’s emergency release lever.
The boat plunged downwards with a rattle of chains. The pirates barely had time to scream before over half a ton of steel and wood and fibreglass hit, crushing them flat inside their own boat. Blood spurted over the dock.
The men in the two remaining boats gaped at the sight. Only their leader, at the RIB’s controls, was immediately able to overcome his shock, gunning the engine to curve his boat sharply away from the Pianosa.
Chase surfaced under the longer leg of the dock, seeing the RIB moving off. The other moored pirate craft, he saw with surprise, had become the bottom slice of a boat sandwich, its occupants reduced to a glutinous red jam.
‘Nice work,’ he muttered, looking up to see who had been responsible - and filling with relieved delight at the sight of a very familiar face peering over the deck.
His smile vanished as the RIB came about - and two men inside it raised Russian RPG-7 rocket launchers, aiming them at the Pianosa.
The first shot streaked across the water and hit one of the fuel barrels under the gangway. The explosion instantly consumed the others beside it, a huge ball of fire and filthy black smoke seething upwards. The heavy gangway broke loose, crashing aflame on to the burning dock and destroying several pontoon sections.
But the pirates weren’t finished.
The second RPG hit the ship at its waterline, blasting a foot-wide hole through the steel. The sea instantly rushed in, greedily filling every space it found within. A third detonation, from the other side of the Pianosa - the cruiser had also fired a rocket.
Holed in two places, no crew left alive to contain the flooding, the survey ship was doomed.
And Nina was still aboard.
The pirate leader pointed away from the stricken ship, to the northwest. The surviving speedboat turned and surged off in that direction, the RIB following. The deeper rumble of the cruiser’s engine rose as it joined the smaller boats in their escape.
Chase climbed on to what was left of the dock. It was now severed from the ship, slowly drifting away. ‘Nina!’ he shouted up at the Pianosa. ‘Nina, are you okay?’
She crawled to the edge of the deck, dishevelled hair fluttering in the wind, and looked down at him. ‘Eddie, God! Are you all right?’
‘More or less. Is anyone else alive up there?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Nina called back grimly. Toxic black smoke was belching from all the entrances to the superstructure.
Chase glanced at the waterline. The hole made by the RPG was now completely submerged, and dropping lower with increasing speed as the bow took on water. ‘The ship’s sinking - you’ve got to get off.’
‘How? The gangplank’s gone!’
‘Find a life jacket, then jump.’
She looked dismayed. ‘Jump?’
‘Might as well!’ He turned his attention to the overturned boat. ‘Bejo!’
Bejo surfaced beside the wreck. ‘Mr Eddie! You okay?’
‘Yeah,’ Chase told him, pointing at Nina. ‘Get ready to help her when she jumps in. Then bring her over here.’
‘I don’t want to jump in!’ Nina protested, donning a life jacket. ‘It’s too high!’
‘Well, if you wait a couple of minutes it’ll be at water level and you’ll just be able to step off, but I don’t think waiting’s a good idea!’ He indicated the flickers of flame escaping from the ship’s interior.
Nina reluctantly climbed over the railing. ‘Oh . . . craaaap!’ she shrieked as she closed her eyes and dropped into the sea. Bejo quickly reached her and raised her by the shoulders as she gasped and shook her head. He helped her to the dock.
Chase lifted his bedraggled fiancée from the water, then pulled Bejo out before starting for the other end of the dock. ‘Where are you going?’ Nina asked.
‘If the plane’s radio’s still working, we can send a distress call.’ He jogged to the battered Otter. There was an unpleasant moment when he had to push Ranauld’s shrapnel-torn corpse aside to reach the instrument panel, but he saw from the lights on its fascia that the radio was still active.
He reached for the hand-held microphone under the panel and switched the radio to VHF channel 16 - the international distress frequency. ‘Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is the research vessel Pianosa . . .’
The pirate leader looked down sharply as the speeding RIB’s radio crackled. It had been set to receive on channel 16, listening for any distress calls from the survey ship. None had come - destroying the vessel’s bridge and radio masts with the very first shot had seen to that.
But now a survivor was making a call - and worse, it was being answered. Someone aboard an Indonesian Coast Guard vessel was replying in halting English, asking for the ship’s location.
The plane, he realised - it had only been damaged, not destroyed. Its radio was still intact.
No witnesses of the attack could be left alive. His employer had been very clear about that.
The speedboat was the fastest of their three remaining craft. He handed the RIB’s controls to one of his men and beckoned the speedboat closer. ‘There are still people alive!’ he shouted across to its three occupants. ‘Go back and kill them!’
The man at the speedboat’s outboard tugged the red bandanna from his face and gave him an eager, malevolent smile, then swung the vessel about.
‘Oh, bollocks,’ Chase muttered as he concluded the distress call - and saw one of the retreating boats making a hard turn.
They had heard the message.
Stranded on what was left of the pontoon dock, he, Nina and Bejo had nowhere to run. Even if they dived underwater, the pirates could just wait them out, taking shots when they surfaced for air. And they had no weapons.
Except . . .
‘What are you doing?’ Nina called as Chase clambered into the cockpit.
‘I’m going to meet them.’
‘You’re what?’
Chase didn’t answer, instead pushing Ranauld’s body out of the other side. ‘Sorry, Hervé,’ he said as the dead man splashed into the sea. He slid into the pilot’s seat and examined the instrument panel. Most of the dials and gauges were a mystery, but it didn’t matter. With half a wing missing, the Otter wouldn’t be flying anywhere. The only controls he needed were the rudder pedals and the throttle.
The latter, he knew from having watched Ranauld the previous day, was a large lever on the central console. He pushed it experimentally from the marked ‘Idle’ position. The engine note rose sharply, the fuselage vibrating as the propeller increased speed. A good start. He stretched back across the cockpit, untying the mooring rope, then shoved the throttle forward.
A cutting wind whipped through the broken windscreen, the engine’s roar driving into Chase’s skull like a drill. He ignored it, pushing one of the pedals to turn the Otter away from the dock. The plane began to pick up speed - and also to lurch, every small wave on the surface magnified as the floats ploughed through them.
He opened the throttle further. The amount of rudder control increased as the Otter went faster, but the aircraft was worryingly unstable. The wrecked port wing meant it wanted to turn right, the weight of the other wing pulling t
hat side down. But if he applied too much left rudder to straighten out, the plane would tip over.
Sawing at the pedals with both feet in a precarious balancing act, he looked ahead. Through the propeller’s blur he saw the cruiser and the RIB retreating in the distance - and the speedboat coming at him.
More power. He couldn’t let the pirates get into range of the dock. The Otter smashed through the waves. Spray gushed through the hole in the fuselage, soaking him. He was doing thirty knots, and increasing.
The speedboat was approaching fast. One of the pirates stood up, gun ready. The driver changed course, turning to pass along the Otter’s port side.
The missing wing meant they had a closer approach. A better shot.
Chase turned straight at them. The plane began to tip over, a sickening slow-motion sensation as it approached the point of no return . . . then recovered as a wave impact pitched it back. The boat turned again, harder, the driver realising what he meant to do and trying to avoid the collision—
Chase ducked as the gunman fired. A burst of bullets clanked along the Otter’s nose and through the cockpit. One of the remaining pieces of windscreen shattered, sharp fragments whipped back at him by the wind.
Then the boat was past him.
Chase pushed down hard on the rudder pedal.
The plane tipped - but this time he wanted it to. The starboard wingtip sliced into the water. The sudden drag swung the whole aircraft round, much faster than with the rudder alone. Then the centrifugal force of the tight turn pushed the Otter back upright . . . and Chase straightened out, aiming directly at the speedboat as he jammed the throttle fully forward.
The engine noise became a scream, the blast from the propeller almost blinding him. But he could still see just enough to make out the speedboat almost side-on to him as the driver desperately tried to turn out of his way, but too late—
The gunman’s upper body instantly disappeared in a spray of red as the propeller hit him, his legs and abdomen remaining standing for a moment before the Otter’s floats crashed into the speedboat’s side and threw what was left of the body into the sea. Another man was clipped by the tips of the blades and flung over thirty feet into the air, an arc of blood tracing his path to a splashdown some distance away.
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