“Aye, aye, sir,” Joslow said.
“Cut the fishing boat loose too,” McGarvey said. “I’m going to need her.”
Lipton hesitated for just an instant, but McGarvey disappeared down the stairwell.
“Do it,” he told Joslow, and he hurried after McGarvey, a sinking feeling in his stomach that somebody was about to get hurt.
It was pitch-black below. Lipton pulled out his flashlight and switched it on, just catching a glimpse of McGarvey’s back rounding a corner on the stairs one deck below.
The man was fifteen years older than the oldest SEAL on his team, but he was just as quick, if not quicker, than any of them.
Lipton followed him, nearly stumbling over another body at the foot of the stairs.
Like the others this one too had been shot in the head at close range. He wore greasy coveralls. He’d probably been one of the engine room crew.
A flashlight beam bobbed from an open hatch aft at the end of a corridor. Lipton started back when a series of four quick explosions from somewhere below rocked the ship, sending him sprawling.
When he scrambled back to his feet the light he’d seen in the open hatch was gone, and he could hear water rushing into the ship. A lot of water!
“Mission red! Mission red!” he shouted the emergency recall signal as he headed in a dead run for the open hatch.
Already the Thaxos was beginning to list hard to port. It would only be a matter of minutes, perhaps less, before she rolled over. They’d all be trapped down here with little or no chance for survival.
Bryan Wasley and Tony Reid, soaked with seawater and diesel oil, clambered through the open hatch just as Lipton reached it.
“The bottom’s gone,” Wasley gasped. He was shook up, but neither of them appeared to be injured.
“Get out of here,” Lipton ordered, shoving them aside.
“Frank is down there with McGarvey.”
“What about Bob?” Lipton demanded.
“He just disappeared,” Wasley answered.
“Go,” Lipton snouted and he braced himself against the list and shined the beam of his flashlight down into the big engine room.
Water was pouring in from the port and starboard bulkheads and from somewhere aft.
Whoever had placed the charges knew what they were doing. There was no possibility of saving the ship.
Frank Tyrell was hanging on the ladder about eight feet below the open hatch. Already the water had risen to the rung he was standing on, and it was coming up fast.
“Frank,” Lipton shouted down to him over the waterfall roar.
Tyrell, who was covered in diesel fuel and engine oil, looked up. “Get away!” he hollered.
“Where’s Bob?”
“He got caught on the way up. McGarvey has gone down for him.”
“Christ,” Lipton swore, and was starting to swing out onto the ladder when Tyrell shouted.
“Here! He’s got him!”
Lipton shined his light on the water as McGarvey surfaced with a sputtering Bob Schade.
Tyrell grabbed the man by the arm but Schade shook it off.
“I’m okay,” he shouted, coughing. “Get the hell out of here. Go, go-go!”
Already the water was up to Tyrell’s waist and rising even faster. The ship would go in less than a minute.
He scrambled up the ladder and at the top Lipton hauled him through the hatch. “Jules is off with the raft and the fishing vessel. Don’t hang around.”
“Aye, aye,” Tyrell said, and he headed down the corridor for the stairwell.
A moment later Schade hauled himself up, and Lipton helped him through.
“Come on,” Lipton shouted, but Schade turned back.
“Mr. McGarvey is coming,” he answered, and McGarvey’s bulky form appeared in the hatchway. Schade helped him the rest of the way up.
“Is that everybody?” McGarvey asked.
“Yes, sir,” Schade said. He was a solidly built twenty-seven-year-old.
“Then what the hell are we waiting for? I don’t want to go swimming down here again.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Schade said, and Lipton led the way back up as the ship continued to list to port.
At the top, the angle of the list was so severe they couldn’t make it to the high side to starboard. Instead they slid down the corridor and had to dive under the water in order to clear the hatch to the outside, and then swim another thirty yards or so to make sure they would be well clear of the ship’s superstructure when she rolled.
Lipton broke the surface and turned back in time to see the ship roll completely over and immediately start down by the stern. McGarvey had already surfaced and he was watching the distant shoreline of the island, not the ship, although it was nearly impossible to see much of anything. The weather had completely closed in over the past few minutes and a light drizzle had begun to fall.
Tyrell and the others were treading water a dozen yards away, and Schade remained a few feet behind and to McGarvey’s left.
Lipton swam over to them. “Let’s go.”
The Dhodhdni was a hundred yards off to the northeast, the rubber raft in tow, and she was beginning to swing around toward them.
“Just a second, sir,” Schade answered. He too was watching the shoreline.
Lipton followed their gaze, but he couldn’t make out much of anything, except that the island seemed to be a darker mass that rose up out of the near-blackness of the sea.
“There,” McGarvey said softly. He studied the shoreline for another moment or two, then turned around.
“What is it?” Lipton asked. “I didn’t see a thing.”
“There was a light showing high up on one of the cliffs.”
“So?”
“It went out,” McGarvey said.
Lipton shook his head, not understanding, but then his attention was diverted back to the ship. The bows were rising very fast now, up out of the water. For a long second or two the Thaxos seemed to hang on her tail, until she slipped quietly beneath the sea, the waves and eddy currents washing past the men, bouncing them in the water.
For a very long time, it seemed, the night was absolutely still, until they began to hear the hiss of the falling rain and in the distance the faint burble of the Dhodhoni’s engine turning over at idle speed as she headed toward them.
On McGarvey’s insistence they kept the Dhodhdni between them and the island as they boarded her, which further puzzled Lipton. But for the moment he was willing to go along with almost anything. His respect was growing by leaps and bounds. He’d been told about McGarvey, but nothing he’d heard had prepared him for the actual man. Besides, they owed him.
“No lights,” McGarvey whispered. “And keep out of sight.”
“What are you talking about?” Lipton asked.
“Spranger’s people on the island were waiting for the Thaxos to go down, and now they’re watching us through starlight scopes.”
“Shit,” Lipton swore half under his breath. He should have seen it earlier. “The lights on the monastery went out so that they could use the night optics. It proved that they were watching.”
“That’s what I figure,” McGarvey said. “But they couldn’t have seen you or your people dressed the way you are, and so long as they don’t spot a lot of movement aboard this boat they’ll never suspect that you’re here.”
“But they’ll know that someone survived. Why not the one we neutralized?”
“There were two of them,” McGarvey said. “And by now they would have radioed their mission accomplished.”
“So Spranger knows that you’re alive.”
McGarvey nodded.
Lipton and Tyrell exchanged glances. They, along with McGarvey and Schade, were huddled on the bridge, Joslow still at the wheel. The engine was at dead idle, and they were barely moving against the swells.