The King's Tomb

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The exploding trawler had blasted the ECHO back through the water away from the sub and spiralling down toward the ocean floor. Hawke got it together first. Spinning around he gave the signal for everyone to get to the Anapos as fast as they could.

The sub was already at the stern, being hoisted out of the water by the davit crane and they all knew when the Oracle gave the order to move out they would be impossible to catch.

Reaper reached the yacht first, climbing up one of the many deck ladders and hauling himself on board. Scarlet and Lexi were next followed by Ryan. Camacho and Kim were next with Hawke and his wounded leg at the rear.

Hawke crawled on the deck, the pain coursing from his leg wound. Scarlet and Kim helped pull the wounded man up. “How are things up here?”

Scarlet said, “Apart from a handful of Athanatoi it’s mostly a skeleton crew of not very well-trained oilers and wipers and a few stewards.”

“Shouldn’t take too long then,” Hawke said. “And this time, can we please not let Kruger and the Oracle get away?”

Scarlet and Lexi ran up the steel steps and were soon heavily engaged in action on the promenade deck and Ryan was making progress on the portside of the same level. Camacho and Reaper had fought their way up the portside steps and were now pinned down on the navigation deck directly above Hawke’s position.

He sprinted over the deck and shot his way up the starboard steps until he was also on the navigation deck but on the opposite side of the ship to Camacho and Reaper. His idea was to work with them to create two fronts pushing toward the bridge, but things changed fast when a grenade landed a few meters in front of him and instantly exploded, blasting him clean off the side of the yacht.

He flew through the air, struggling not to pass out. Realizing the awkward angle he was about hit the sea at, he tried to swivel around in mid-air but it was too late. The navigation deck wasn’t high enough for him to make the manoeuvre and now he hit the ocean’s surface hard and heavy. It felt like he’d landed on concrete as he sank down beneath the waves once again, desperately clinging onto his consciousness.

Deeper he sank, weighed down by the near-full ammo belt and his speargun. He managed to unclip the belt and watched the fresh rounds sink into the black under his feet as he kicked and strained to get back to the surface.

He burst through it and sucked in a deep breath to find Venter high on the sun deck firing at him with a compact machine pistol. The weapon chattered and spat fire as the gunman sprayed the sea around him with automatic rounds. Kruger was beside him, ordering him to kill Hawke at any cost as he fumbled with his own weapon.

Eyes wide with surprise and fear, Hawke heaved in a deep breath and flipped himself over to dive into the water. Swimming back down in the black and heading to the boat to use the hull for cover, he thought he’d made it when he felt a savage, searing pain in his arm. He spun around in the water, air bubbles exploding from his mouth as he screamed in pain.

He saw the wispy white line of an underwater bullet trail as the projectile ripped its way down into the depths. The trail was tinged red with blood. He turned and looked at the location of the burning pain and saw a neat, inch-deep gouge mark in his right shoulder. The bullet had punctured his upper arm and burst out of the other side leaving a deep channel of bloody, torn muscle in its wake.

He swam back up toward the relative safety of the hull’s waterline with blood pumping from the fresh wound on his shoulder. He slipped under the boat’s hull, swimming around the stern end of a chunky structural keel. He came to the surface, ready to surprise Venter. Closer now, the South African commando launched a renewed assault on him and pock-marked the sea’s surface with more bullets.

Hawke fired back with the speargun. The projectile whistled through the air and wedged itself in Venter’s stomach, spraying blood all over Kruger. He was so shocked he never even screamed. He reached down and held the metal rod sticking out of his stomach with a terror-stricken face and turned white in the face.

“Come on in,” Hawke said. “The water’s lovely.”

Venter passed out from loss of blood and shock and tumbled off the side of the yacht. He hit the water with a tremendous splash and bobbed up and down in it face-down, allowing Hawke to use his body as a stepping stone as he reached for the stainless steel telescopic boat ladder.

With a sea of burning detritus from the trawler all around them, Hawke now watched with a crushing sense of defeat as a Kamov Ka-60 lifted off from the helipad on the sun deck, rotated in the air and swooped down low over the water. It headed back to the land and was quickly nothing more than a small black smudge on the horizon.

He climbed back up onto the top deck to find the rest of his team assembling around him. “Sorry, Joe,” Scarlet said. “But they got Lea and Danny.”

“And the codex,” Ryan said.

Kim sighed. “And the idols.”

Hawke tensed his jaw. “I’m calling Rich. We need to know where they’re going and fast.”