“What the hell is that thing?” Lea asked, astonished.
“It’s a Migaloo,” Hawke said.
“A what?”
“A submarine-yacht. The latest must-have for the mega-rich. No international villain would be without one.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” Victoria said, her eyes crawling all over the beautiful vessel in the water below.
“It’s a pretty amazing piece of kit,” Hawke said with appreciation. Contains a library, gym, bar, cinema — you name it. Plus it can dive to two hundred and forty meters as well.”
“What does Rán mean?” Lea asked.
“Goddess of the Sea,” Victoria said. “I can’t believe how enormous it is!”
“So big, in fact,” Hawke continued, “that it has its own mini-sub.”
“Now you’re just joking with us,” Lea said. “A submarine with its own submarine?”
Hawke nodded. “Yeah — a Triton 1000/3. This is for the seriously discerning ego.”
“I’ll say,” Lea said. “How much?”
“The whole package is over two billion,” Hawke said flatly.
“How much?!” Lea said.
“That’s absurd,” Victoria said. “That’s even more than Daddy has.”
Scarlet emerged from the cockpit with smudged lipstick and raised an eyebrow. “And how much has Daddy got?”
“If Sala’s already got two billion,” Lea interrupted, “just imagine what must be in Valhalla.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Hawke said.
Lea looked anxious. “Anyone see Ryan down there?”
Hawke ran his eyes along the smooth, long deck. “There!” he shouted.
“Is he all right?”
“He looks fine,” Scarlet said. “But I’m worried he might have bored Sala to death thereby denying me the pleasure of killing the bastard.”
Lea pointed out of the chopper’s open door. “Woah — looks like they’re diving!”
Hawke watched anxiously as the Migaloo prepared to dive. Sala was dragging Ryan toward the aft hatch.
“Listen up,” Hawke said. “I’m going down there to get Ryan before that thing goes under. After I touch down you get this chopper to shore and start to unload the sub.”
“But our sub’s shit compared to that!” Scarlet said.
Hawke looked at her, but before he had time to respond their chopper lurched violently to starboard as Trond increased power to the rotors and executed a sharp turn.
“What the hell’s going on?!” Hawke shouted through the headset.
Trond’s reply was calm but grim. “We’re under attack!”
Hawke stepped into the cockpit and saw another chopper racing from left to right and turning hard to make another sweep at them. It was a Eurocopter Super Puma. Its portside plug-door was wide open and revealed a man inside who was operating a nasty-looking M60 machine gun.
“It must be Sala’s transport!” Hawke shouted. “And there’s a door gunner just waiting to drill us full of holes and send us into the sea!”
“What do you want me to do?” Trond asked.
Hawke put his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Keep this bird in the air, Trond — Lea and Scarlet will do the rest.”
Hawke stepped into the main cabin and told the others what was happening. Lea told Victoria to strap in and stay out of the way while Scarlet loaded up a Heckler & Koch MP7 and pulled a coin out of her pocket.
“What’s that for?” asked Lea, looking at the small copper coin.
“Got it in my change back in Stockholm.” Scarlet nodded her head at the heavy machine gun mounted at the door of the chopper. “We’re tossing for the M2.”
“Tails,” Lea said.
Hawke rolled his eyes as the coin flipped over in the air and landed on the back of Scarlet’s wrist. She smacked it down with the palm of her other hand and grinned when she saw the sombre profile of Carl Gustav XVI looking back up at her. “Too bad — it’s heads and that means I’m having the M2!”
“Great,” Hawke said. “Let’s get on with it then shall we?”
He opened the side door and Scarlet swung the long perforated barrel-shroud of the M2 out into the cold, rainy Norwegian air. On the other side of the chopper, Lea opened her door and cocked the MP7 while Victoria looked on in abject horror.
“I say — it’s not going to be too loud is it?” she said.
Ignoring her, Hawke secured a descent-control nylon Type 4 rope inside the chopper and slipped on a pair of double-leather rappellers’ gloves. He checked the hookup, rappel seat and rappel ring as Trond evaded another burst from the Puma’s M60 and navigated their chopper over to Sala’s yacht-sub.
As they approached the Rán, Hawke checked the anchor point connection — or what rappellers liked to call the donut ring — one final time and then dropped the deployment bag out the door of the chopper into the rain, swinging his legs outside.
Trond swooped the chopper down to one hundred and fifty feet and gave the signal to go. Outside they heard the clang clang clang of the Puma’s bullets striking the side of their chopper’s steel exterior and Trond began to pull up to evade them.
Scarlet swung the M2’s barrel at the Puma and returned fire. The noise of the heavy machine gun was intense but muffled by their ear defenders. The spring-activated ejector spat out the empty .50 caliber shell casings as she raked the bullets all over the side of the enemy helicopter, forcing them to break off their attack and pull away. “I could do this all day!” she shouted.
“Now!” screamed the Norwegian pilot.
Hawke looked up at Lea. “Back in a jiffy,” he said, and pushed away from the chopper. He used his guide hand to control his descent and was on his way.
Buffeted wildly by the downdraft of the AW101’s mighty rotors, he looked above and saw only gray skies and rain, and the muzzle-flash of the M2. Below there was only the slim outline of Sala’s submarine-yacht as it sailed toward the coast and prepared to dive.
Hawke used his brake hand to slow the descent and then when he was low enough he released himself from the rope, crashing into the tumultuous ocean and disappearing into the black waves.
Times were getting interesting, he thought.
Lea watched Hawke disappear into the raging sea but had no time to dwell on his safety. In the cockpit, Trond was working like a devil to evade the Puma’s vicious attacks, muttering Norwegian expletives every now and again when he had time to take a breath.
On the other side of the chopper, Scarlet Sloane seemed to be having a whale of time firing the M2 whenever she got a shot good enough to justify the ammo, while strapped in at the rear a terrified Victoria Hamilton-Talbot was sitting with her eyes closed and mumbling what Lea presumed were prayers.
Now, Lea stared out into the dark stormy sky. Her hair whipped around in the hail-streaked Arctic wind as she used the MP7 to pin down some goons who were standing near the Rán’s forward escape hatch and taking pot-shots into the water.
They must have seen Joe! she thought to herself as she raked the sub’s outer casing with bullets. In contrast to the pressure hull beneath it, the light hull was made of steel only four millimeters thick. Its only function was to provide a smooth hydrodynamic contour to the sub’s design. Lea’s bullets chewed into it with ease and made the men dance around like fools as they tried to evade the rounds.
She continued firing with quiet determination. Somewhere down in all that gloom was the man she loved, but her thoughts were interrupted by the chopper veering violently to the portside. She reached out to grab hold of anything that would save her, but it was too late.