Finally he saw it – a tiny figure amongst the waves.
The airship was about a hundred metres away from her.
Jaeger didn’t hesitate for an instant. He figured the drop was over fifty feet. It was high but survivable, if he entered the water properly. The crucial thing was to let go of the life raft. Otherwise, its buoyancy would bring him up short, as if he’d driven into a brick wall.
Jaeger let the raft fall, and seconds later he jumped, plunging towards the ocean. Just prior to impact, he assumed the classic position – legs tight together, toes pointed, arms linked over his chest and chin tucked well in.
The collision knocked the wind out of him, but as he sank beneath the waves, he thanked God that nothing was broken. Seconds later he surfaced, hearing the distinctive hiss of the life raft self-inflating. It had an inbuilt system that automatically triggered on impact with water.
He glanced upwards. The Airlander was powering skywards and away from danger with its precious cargo.
The term ‘life raft’ did Jaeger’s inflatable something of an injustice. As it pumped full of air, it resolved itself to be a miniature version of the RIB, complete with a tough zip-over cover, plus a pair of oars.
Jaeger clambered aboard and orientated himself. A former bootneck – a Royal Marine commando – he felt almost as at home on water as he did on land. He fixed the position where he’d last seen Narov and began to row.
It was several minutes before he spotted something. It was a human figure all right, but Narov wasn’t alone. Jaeger’s eye was drawn to the distinctive V shape of a dorsal fin slicing through the surface of the water, circling her bloodied form. They were well beyond the protective barrier of the reefs here, which kept the beaches shielded from such predators.
This was a shark for sure, and Narov was in trouble.
Jaeger scanned the waters, spotting another and yet another razor-tipped fin. He redoubled his efforts, his aching shoulders screaming out in pain as he forced himself to row ever faster, in a desperate effort to reach her.
At last he pulled in close and stowed his oars, then reached into the sea and dragged her over the side and to safety. They collapsed as one, a heaving, sodden mess in the bottom of the life raft. Narov had been treading water for an age now, and bleeding profusely, and Jaeger didn’t have a clue how she could still be conscious.
As she lay there, gasping for air and her eyes tight shut, Jaeger busied himself tending to her wounds. Like all good life rafts, this one came complete with the basic survival essentials, including medical kit. She’d taken a bullet in the shoulder, but as far as Jaeger could tell it had passed right through the flesh, missing any bone.
Luck of the devil, he thought. He stemmed the bleeding, then bound up the wound. The key thing now was to get water into her, to rehydrate and make up for the blood loss. He thrust a bottle at her.
‘Drink. No matter how bad you feel, you got to drink.’
She took it and gulped some down. Her eyes found his and she mouthed a few inaudible words. Jaeger leaned close. She repeated them, her voice barely above a croaking whisper.
‘You took your time… What kept you?’
Jaeger shook his head, then smiled. Narov – she was unbelievable.
She tried to stifle a laugh. It petered out into a watery cough. Her face twisted in agony. Jaeger had to get her to some proper medical help, and quickly, that was for sure.
He was about to take up the oars and start rowing again when he heard it. Voices, coming from the west, their position obscured by the thick pall of smoke drifting across from the burning wreckage of the Sunseeker.
Jaeger had little doubt who it might be – or what he had to do.
92
Jaeger cast around for a weapon. There was nothing in the life raft, and Narov’s MP7 had to be somewhere at the bottom of the sea.
Then he spied it. Strapped in her chest sheath, as always: Narov’s distinctive commando knife, the one that had been a gift to her from his grandfather. With its razor-sharp seven-inch blade it was perfect for what Jaeger had in mind.
He reached across and unfastened the sheath, strapping it around himself. In response to her enquiring look, he leaned close.
‘Stay here. Keep still. Something I’ve got to deal with.’
With that he raised himself on to the side of the craft and dropped backwards into the sea.
Once in the water, Jaeger took a moment to orientate himself on the sound of the voices that drifted to him through the haze of smoke clinging to the waves.
He set off with long, powerful strokes, only his head showing above the surface. Shortly, the smoke swallowed him. He used his ears alone to navigate now. One voice in particular – the coarse but strident tones of Jones – drew him onwards.
The Sunseeker’s life raft was a large inflatable contraption, hexagonal in design and enclosed within a rain cover. Jones and his three fellow survivors were inside it, the flap open, going through the craft’s supplies.
Jones must have seen his shot hit Narov; seen her blasted into the sea. Not one to give up or give in, he would know he had a job to finish.
It was time for Jaeger to end this.
He had to cut the head off the snake.
The life raft was far more visible than a lone swimmer, one keeping low in the sea. When Jaeger reached its rear, he stopped and began to tread water, his eyes and nose barely above the waves. He composed himself for a second, then took a massive gulp of air and slipped beneath the surface.
He dived deep under the craft, surfacing silently at the point where the flap lay open. He could see the massive form of Jones weighing down the side of the raft. He kicked up powerfully, rising from the sea directly behind his target, and in one lightning move snaked his right arm around the man’s neck in a savage chokehold, jerking his chin upwards and to the right.
Simultaneously, his left arm came around in a powerful thrust, sinking the blade of the knife down through the man’s clavicle, driving it towards his black heart. Seconds later, their combined weight pulled them from the vessel, and they sank as one.
It was hard to kill a man with a knife. And with an adversary as powerful and as experienced as this one, doubly so.
As they sank into the ocean depths, the two men twisted, writhed and fought, Jones struggling to break free from Jaeger’s death grip. For long seconds he clawed, elbowed and gouged, desperately trying to break free. In spite of his wound, he was immensely – unbelievably – powerful.
Jaeger couldn’t believe how strong he was: it was like being tethered to a rhino. Just as Jaeger figured he could hold him no longer, a sleek, arrow-headed form flashed across his peripheral vision, its sharp V-shaped fin cutting through the water.
Shark. Drawn here by the smell of blood. Steve Jones’s blood. Jaeger glanced in the shark’s direction and realised with a jolt that there were a dozen or more circling them.
He gathered his strength, released his grip and kicked away from Jones as powerfully as he could. The big man spun around, muscled arms groping for Jaeger in the half-light.
But it was then that Jones must have sensed its presence. Their presence. Sharks.
Jaeger saw his eyes go wide with fear.
Jones’s wound was pumping a cloud of blood into the water. As Jaeger kicked further away, he saw the first shark bump Jones aggressively with its nose. Jones tried to fight back, punching it in the eye, but the animal had the taste of his blood now.
As Jaeger made a desperate surge towards the surface, he lost sight of Jones’s form within a sea of writhing bodies.
He was painfully short of breath now, but he knew what was waiting above: gunmen, scanning the sea. With a last burst of energy, he swam beneath the raft, using Narov’s blade to slice open the entire length of its underside.