Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(10)
When they were done, she rolled him off her. Stretching full length, she reached under a pillow. Farreng had good reason to feel harried; he was wanted in a number of countries for publishing damning documents hacked off government, corporate, and institutional servers. These leaks had already caused consternation and chaos across the world—hence Farreng’s status as a wanted man. LeakAGE, Farreng’s organization, was proudly reliant on third-party whistleblowers, whose identity it protected with the ferocity of a lioness with its cubs. The trouble came in vetting the LeakAGE sources, of which Fran?oise Sevigne was one. He’d never give her up, she knew that even before the first time she had slipped her arms around him and pressed her body against his, felt his instant arousal. That was six months ago, and nothing had changed. His ardor for her burned just as bright.
Smiling, she handed him a thumb drive filled with files painstakingly manufactured expressly for him by agents of First Minister Timur Savasin.
4
They reached the runabout at breakneck speed. Neither of them had said a word following the Nym’s violent demise. Mala climbed into the runabout first, began to bring up the anchor. Bourne took the helm, started the engines. As soon as the anchor cleared the water, Bourne went full throttle. If Mala hadn’t been braced she would’ve been tossed head over heels.
The sky above where the boat had been was a livid bruise. They could smell the aftermath of the explosions. The stink of marine fuel was in their nostrils. The moon and the stars had vanished into the spreading cloud of smoke and debris blown apart into what amounted to nothing more than grains of sand.
“Jason, what are you doing?” Mala asked as soon as she realized Bourne was heading directly toward the area of the disaster. “You can’t believe anyone could have survived those explosions.”
“No,” he said grimly. “No one’s survived.”
“Then why are you—?”
“Quiet.” His gaze was fixed on the way ahead. “Just be quiet.”
She stared at him for a moment, shook her head, then, with a shrug, directed her attention to the debris field. She tried to see what he was seeing, without success. This journey was a mystery to her, and this made her uncomfortable.
They came up on the landward perimeter of the debris field quickly. Bourne still had the outboard at full throttle. Their eyes began to burn from the residue in the air. There was still a good deal of heat; at one spot the water appeared to be boiling, but the smoke made it difficult to see anything clearly. It was like entering a low-lying fog bank.
Mala could see debris bobbing all around them, most of it unrecognizable, until they passed a human arm, twisted and blackened, all the hair burned off. And then a foot, bones poking through. The stench was momentarily sickening.
Bourne plowed through all this at high speed. The instant they breached the far side of the debris field, they saw the patrol boat, lying to, motionless several thousand yards from them.
“Why are they still here?” Mala asked no one in particular. “What are they waiting for?”
“The last diver,” Bourne said, cutting the engines.
Guiding her behind the wheel, he handed her the Steyr. Stepping to the gunwale, he removed his shoes, jacket, and trousers. Pulling up one of the cushions, he opened and felt around in the storage cabinet and removed a flying gaff, used to bring large fish up onto the boat. Pulling the hooked head off, he filled his lungs, then dove into the water.
Beyond the debris field, the smoke had risen, then dissipated in the freshening wind driving westward. Shimmering silver light from the full moon slanted down through the water. Almost immediately, he saw the piercing light emanating from the forehead of the diver as he headed away, toward the boat rocking gently on the surface. Bourne had rightly figured that divers had attached explosives to the hull of the Nym under the waterline. It was the most logical route to destruction; it was the one he himself would have used. Plus, no one had come onto the boat when they had briefly docked to resupply in Istanbul; he’d taken care of that himself. The process of elimination had been short and to the point.
Powerful swimmer though he was, the diver was too far away for him to make it without fins. He was about to kick up to catch some air rather than catch the diver, when a dark shadow appeared below him. It was as if the sea floor were rising toward him. A ripple of great wings told him all he needed to know. He waited as the creature rose, then he reached down and grabbed onto the upper part of the reef manta ray’s mouth. The manta jetted forward with such speed that Bourne’s arm was almost pulled out of its socket. Like its close cousin, the shark, the creature was all muscle. He could feel the power of the ray rippling the currents around it, sending patterns outward like a rock thrown into a lake.
Bourne’s lungs ached, but he had been repeatedly waterboarded as part of his Treadstone training; his lungs held air as well or better than most free divers.
As if sensing its passenger’s mission, the manta put on even more speed. The diver’s silhouette bloomed in front of him. He was very close when the diver, feeling the pressure of the manta’s approach, turned toward the disturbance. He saw the manta first and jerked in shock. That was when Bourne let go of his perch, pushed himself upward, and slammed into the diver.
The diver already had his knife out, and he slashed at Bourne wildly, disconcerted by both the ray and Bourne’s sudden appearance. With a froth of bubbles, Bourne swept the diver’s mouthpiece off, jammed it into his own mouth. He felt the serrated blade slide down his chest, opening a wound from which blood drifted. He grabbed the underside of the diver’s mask, ripped it off. The diver flailed at it, and Bourne drove the hooked end of the gaff into the meat of his right arm. He let go of the knife in an automatic gesture to cover the wound with his hand.