Hell or High Water (Deep Six #1)(49)

Wolf disappeared through the exit. When the door slammed shut, Leo made his way farther into the ship. He was standing at the opening to the empty computer room when the second rocket hit the back of the vessel. BOOOOMMM! Wayfarer-I shimmied, her rivets popping, her seams bursting. He stumbled backward on impact, slamming into the hallway bulkhead. His weapon dug into his back, pinching skin and muscle, but his adrenaline levels were running at damn near full capacity, which meant he barely felt it. With effort, he steadied himself against the now-listing ship.

That one was near the fuel tanks. Fuck. A. Duck!

“Mason!” he yelled down the stairs leading to the galley and the crew’s quarters. “Mason! You down there?” He couldn’t see much; the only illumination belowdecks came from the few stray beams of sunlight drifting in through the portholes. He cocked an ear. Didn’t hear a thing other that the death groans of his beloved Wayfarer-I and the high-pitched bee-doo-bee-doo-bee-doo of the alarm in the pilothouse. Acrid smoke drifted into the interior of the ship, scratching the inside of his throat like he’d swallowed chunks of coral. His eyes watered.

“Hold together just a couple minutes more, ol’ girl,” he begged as he raced back down the not-quite-horizontal hall toward the exit. He burst through the door like the Kool-Aid Pitcher Guy used to burst through the walls on those old commercials. But he decided to forgo the accompanying Oh yeah. The sun momentarily blinded him when he stumbled onto the deck, skidding to a halt to get his bearings and allow his eyes to adjust.

Once they did, he saw smoke curling from the ship’s hull, a thin gray stream near the forward section, and a menacing black cloud puffing rhythmically from the aft. Wolf was by the railing, sawing away at the nylon ropes attaching the dinghy to the hydraulic crane meant to lower it into the water.

“Power’s out!” Wolf yelled when he spotted Leo.

“I know!” Leo hollered back, frantically searching the deck for Mason. Nothing. Where are you? Was it possible the big guy had been down in the engine room or generator room when that second rocket hit? No. Leo refused to consider it. He would not lose a man on this mission, by God!

“Have you seen Mason up here?” he yelled just as the water rushing into the ship’s hull reached a tipping point.

The whole vessel lurched, groaning mightily. Leo hopped out of his flip-flops to use his bare feet for better traction on a deck that was now angled at about twenty degrees from horizontal. For added security, he had a white-knuckled grip on the corner of the bridge house.

Not much time now…

“Haven’t seen him!” Wolf yelled. He’d managed to cut the front of the dinghy free. The little boat dangled precariously over the side of the vessel by a single rope attached to one plastic cleat. Having already steadied himself against Wayfarer-I’s new list, Wolf was hard at work slicing at the remaining rope. “And she won’t stay afloat much longer!” he continued. “We need to—”

Snap! Whack! The nylon cord succumbed to the razor-sharp edge of Wolf’s blade, and the front of the rubber boat hit the ship’s railing. The whole thing somersaulted over itself before falling into the sea.

“I’m not leavin’ until I find Mason!”

Wolf scanned the ocean, then the ship. “There!” he pointed, and Leo raced, or more like climbed—the deck was now at something approaching a thirty-degree angle—to the railing in time to see Mason emerge from the back of the vessel near the J-frame winch they were supposed to use to haul riches from the seabed. So much for that!

Mason held up an armful of orange life jackets—Leo’s friends were nothing if not good in a pinch—then snapped Leo a saucy salute, climbed the railing, and chucked himself overboard. He hit the water like a bag of boulders and started stroking toward the dinghy that had landed upside down. Leo breathed a sigh of relief.

“After you,” he told Wolf, gesturing toward the little boat below while adjusting the strap of his M4 more securely over his shoulder.

“Nah.” Wolf shook his head. “After you.”

“Don’t make me kick your ass up between your shoulder blades, Wolf.”

Wolf grinned, his face splitting around a mouthful of blinding white teeth. “Right on. Luck belongs to the brave and the…uh…stubborn, yeah?” Then he mirrored Mason’s salute before leaping from the ship, an ululating Cherokee war cry piercing the air on his way down.

Only after all his men…his friends…were in the water did Leo jump.

*

2:20 p.m.…

Olivia’s muscles burned with the effort of fighting the waves and the current, but she didn’t register any pain. The relief and elation she felt watching Leo haul himself into the dinghy after the three men managed to flip it over eclipsed everything else.

Thank God!

If she thought she’d been paralyzed by fear when that first rocket slammed into Wayfarer-I, it was nothing compared to the soul-shredding terror she experienced when that second rocket hit, accompanied by a huge fireball that had risen some thirty feet into the air. She’d frantically searched the railing, looking, looking, hoping he hadn’t been anywhere near the point of impact. Then ash fell like great, gray snowflakes into the sea. She’d caught herself watching them detachedly, her mind struggling to grasp the reality of just how badly this entire mission had gone off the rails.