The Vault of Poseidon

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Lea and the others watched silently as someone rattled the lock of the hold door. Moments later the door swung open to reveal Baumann and two more thugs standing in the light and holding Uzis.

“It’s time,” Baumann said.

Lea’s eyes widened as she realized what he was talking about. Zaugg was going to hold good to his word and start executing them.

“Untie them!” he ordered. One of the men scuttled forward and cut off the cable-ties which were securing them to the inside of the hull.

“Now get up!” he shouted.

“What are they doing, Lea?” Ryan asked.

“They’re going to kill us,” Sophie said, her voice soft in the semi-darkness of the hold.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” said Ryan. “I haven’t even finished my Big Bang boxset. They can't kill me!”

“Believe it,” said Sophie. “It's the only way you have any hope of surviving.”

The men chatted casually in Swiss-German as they walked them through the yacht to the front deck, submachine gun muzzles jabbing in the smalls of their backs.

“Ouch!” Sophie said, doubling over.

“What’s the matter?” said Lea, concerned.

“My stomach — it’s… ouch!”

“Was ist das Problem?” hissed Baumann. “Move!”

Sophie fell to her knees clutching tightly at her sides. She began to sob.

Baumann sighed and flicked his cigarette over the side of the yacht. “I count to five and you get up, or I shoot you where you kneel. One.”

“I can't — it’s the pain, my baby…”

The other man looked at Baumann concerned. He shouldered his submachine gun and reached down to help Sophie.

In a flash she spun around, tiger-punched him the throat and stabbed him in the neck with the knife she had stolen from Zaugg’s table.

Without a pause she snatched his HK416 in one fluid movement and as part of the same action she continued spinning around. She fired a savage burst of fire from the submachine gun and struck the third man with a line of bullets from his groin to his shoulder. He dropped his gun and crashed over the side of the boat.

Baumann’s commando training kicked in immediately as he instinctively dived for cover behind a lifeboat, but the other man was slower, and Sophie’s bullets tore a line of holes in his chest and pummelled him over the rail into the sea below.

Half a second later, Sophie snatched the first man’s gun from the deck and tossed it to Lea, who straight away checked it was loaded and raised it ready to fire.

“Lea, behind you!” Sophie gasped as two more men, also armed with submachine guns, appeared at the top of the stairs and began firing bursts in formation as they snaked their way down to the lower deck.

Lea spun around, gun raised. She aimed and fired. Her single shot struck the leading man in the throat and the force of it spun him around in a shower of arterial blood which sprayed up the side of the white yacht. He tottered over the rail and crashed into the top of the foulweather gear locker with a sickening crunch.

Sophie fired at the man above him and hit him in the chest. He fell forwards, head-over-heels down the stairs. She turned and fired a burst above Baumann’s head, keeping him pinned down behind the lifeboat.

Lea ran to the dead man and snatched up his submachine gun, a Heckler & Koch 416 and a pistol.

“This should come in handy!” she said, shouldering it and throwing Ryan the pistol. “Safety’s on, Ryan. If you’re in a corner at least try and look like you know how it works.”

Sophie nodded to the rear of the boat. “We should go that way,” she said. “We know Zaugg likes to kill his victims on the front deck.”

Lea remembered the look on Grasso’s face when he finally realized he was going to die, but then she had a better idea.

“No, we need to find the engine room. If we can cripple this boat Zaugg will be a sitting duck.”

“Almost literally,” Ryan said, smiling for the first time since Baumann had dragged him out of the hold.

A rasping, crackling sound followed by a short howl of feedback emanated above their heads. Lea looked up and saw one of the many loudhailers dotted around the superyacht. Seconds later a guttural voice announced something in German to the crew.

“What did it say?” Lea asked Ryan.

He easily translated it and gave them the bad news.

“Just put it this way, entkommen means escaped and Töten Sie means kill them.”

“That’s just plain arsing fantastic,” Lea said, her mind racing with options. Then a loud siren started honking all over the yacht.

“In here!” Sophie said, opening a door to the lower decks. Inside they found a fire safety notice and a map of the yacht.

“The engine room is on the bottom deck in the center!” Ryan said, speed-reading the German.

“It won’t take them long to realize where we are,” Lea said. “Let’s go.”

They sprinted along a plush corridor lined with expensive-looking suites, and reached another staircase, this time leading down below decks.

Shots rang out from the bottom of the staircase, and Lea peered carefully over the banister to see several armed guards making their way up the carpeted steps. Seconds later the deck was crawling with Zaugg’s men.

Pinned down in the corridor, with no cover except a heavy oak case full of antique books and manuscripts, Lea unleashed a savage volley of fire from the muzzle of the HK416, spraying polymer-case subsonic bullets across Zaugg’s pristine deco murals. Dusty explosions of atomized hardwood blew into the air like volcanic dust.

It had been a while since she had fired a gas system carbine and she was once again struck by the accuracy of it, thanks to a combo of the cold hammer forged 10.4 inch barrel and the tapered bore. Hell, I like this thing! she thought.

Ryan screamed and covered his head with an encyclopaedia for protection. He didn’t look as fazed as he was when Vetsch was trying to kill them back in New York, so he must be getting used to it, she thought.

Now Ryan was scrambling toward Sophie who was providing cover with her pistol, and then the two of them crawled back along the carpet through the dust and destruction of the firefight, as Lea in turn covered them.

Inside one of the rooms Ryan spotted something that belonged to him. “Hey! That’s my sodding MacBook!” He ran inside and snatched it up off the table, wrenching out the wires that had been used to connect it to another computer, now long-gone. “Bastards have been copying my hard disk.”

Back in the corridor, the fighting continued. Ryan now had his MacBook case slung over his back, and it took a couple of rounds which ricocheted off and landed with a grim thumping sound into the ceiling above him.

“Get that laptop out of here!” Lea shouted. “We’ll need it to find the tomb!”

“Some concern for me might be nice!” shouted Ryan. “And it’s a MacBook!”

“Get lost, Ryan,” Lea said, “and I mean that literally and in the best possible taste — Sophie, go with him to the engine room and try to stop this bloody boat! Then try and find somewhere to hide until Joe turns up.”

“If Joe turns up,” said Sophie doubtfully.

Lea saw them safely around the corner at the end of the corridor, and turned to see one of the guards struggling with a jammed weapon. A second later she planted a firm double-tap in his forehead and took him out of the equation forever. She was beginning to think they were getting on top of things.

Then, things changed.

Rapidly and for the worse.

She saw four more men appear at the end of the corridor and set up with impressive efficiency what looked from this distance like some kind of updated Browning M2, a heavy machine gun.

Seconds later it was on its tripod and another second after that bursts of fire spat from the muzzle as it propelled its 50 cal tracers along the corridor in a deadly arc.

They struck the walls and book cases with such velocity they acted like a wrecking ball and sent chunks of carbon fiber, aluminum and splinters of wood flying through the air, creating thousands of lethal projectiles. And it was so noisy! She’d forgotten just how noisy the heavy stuff could be.

She returned fire but it was of little use against the M2, and it was only a matter of time before its tracer rounds completely annihilated her cover and took her out of the game permanently.

She had to retreat to a new position and find Sophie and Ryan. This, after all, was the same weapon she had once used to suppress ISIS positions in Syria. Trying to fight it with a submachine gun was the definition of insanity.

Then just when she thought all hope was lost, the moment came that she had been waiting for.

She heard the telltale clunk as the M2 hit the end of its feed, and seconds later one of the soldiers tossed the ammo case aside and slotted a new one into the side of the heavy gun. They were reloading.

She withdrew along the corridor, covering herself with occasional short bursts of fire from the 416 as she retreated back, rolling backwards twice and then crouching on her haunches for the final few steps.

The men fired on her in response but Lea was faster and took out two of them before taking cover behind the corner wall at the end of the corridor.

She made her way to the engine room where she found Ryan and Sophie hiding behind one of the engine housings.

“I took a few of them out but it won’t buy us much time,” she said. “We need to work fast and really fuck this engine up. It’s the only way of making sure Zaugg doesn’t get off this boat.”

“Er, that’s not true,” Ryan said.

“What are you talking about?” Lea asked. “He’s not likely to swim back to the mainland is he?”

“You’re forgetting about the rather splendid helicopter sitting on the rear deck.”

“Oh, fuck it!” Lea kicked the side of the engine. “One of us has to go and sabotage that as well.”

“Well don’t look at me,” Ryan said. “I wouldn’t know one end of a helicopter from the other. I studied the classics.”

Lea steeled herself. “I’ll go. You and Sophie stay here and make sure this engine stops working.”