Shooting sounded behind him, but instead of the smaller caliber reports of police submachine guns, the shots were more like those of the larger caliber AK-47s. Chris glanced over his shoulder and one of the policemen had fallen… shot.
19
As Chris maneuvered through the streets, the sky continued to dump rain, and he wasn’t sure where he was until he spotted a statue of King Charles I on a horse.
The center of London. Northumberland Avenue leads straight to the river.
Like most frogmen in deep danger, he headed for the water. If he could get to the river, he still had a chance of escaping death.
He hurried along Northumberland Avenue but couldn’t see the river ahead.
Did I remember wrong? Is there another Northumberland Avenue?
Trees on both sides of the road formed a canopy overhead, blocking most of the skyline out. He ran a hundred meters, and he still couldn’t see the water.
Lord help me, please.
Not knowing what else to do, he continued down the same road. The upper pylon of a bridge came into view. The more he ran, the more pylons appeared. Some pedestrians climbed the stairs while others crossed the bridge.
This has to be the place.
To his right was the London Eye — closer now.
I’m almost there.
It wasn’t until he reached the intersection that he saw the River Thames. He didn’t wait for a pedestrian sign to flash green and raced across the street. One driver honked at him, but he didn’t care. On the other side of the road, he bounded over a wall. More honking behind him. Probably Animus’s men. A loud thump sounded, followed by a cry of pain.
Chris hopped over another wall, stripped off his jacket as he neared the water, and dropped it on the ground. He didn’t need his rifle and bullets weighing him down, so he threw his M4 in the river, and after tearing off his customized ammo-bearing vest, he threw it in, too, and both sank. His pistol still hung on his hip with some spare magazines of ammo, but they weren’t enough to sink him significantly, and he kept them.
He dove in. With Animus and company close behind, he expected the shooting to resume at any moment. If he could swim three feet below water, and Animus and his men fired from the shore at about thirty-degree angles, the bullets couldn’t kill him. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, he dove farther down and away from the embankment until he felt pressure on his ears and head. Thinking he had enough depth, he swam for distance.
Pop-pop went the AKs. Chris’s cocoon of water mellowed their bangs. Ploop-ploop went the bullets as they hit the surface above. The River Thames put the brakes on each bullet, causing an aquatic audible vzzz. They sounded like zippers. He swam until his lungs ached for air, and then he swam some more. The current pulled him to the left, taking him east, and he went with it, happy to put more distance between Animus and himself. The outer edges of his vision became gray, and his head felt fuzzy. He needed oxygen, so he ascended slowly, but the gray edges of his vision became darker, and his vision closed smaller, becoming a tunnel. Now his need for oxygen was urgent. He swam harder toward the sky. His head broke the water’s surface. With lips forming a tight circle, he sucked in a bite of oxygen, making his chest expand. Gunshots banged the air again, louder than they’d sounded underwater, but Chris couldn’t sense where the shots landed. Zing! The sound was lighter than a heavy AK round and seemed to move more slowly, a ricochet, probably deflected by the water, like a skipping stone. If he’d been facing it, a ricochet could have put an eye out, but it wasn’t likely to kill him. Even so, he didn’t want a souvenir in the back of his head.
He dove underwater and swam again, but this time he didn’t push so close to blacking out. And this time, when he came up for air, the shooting was farther away. The next time he dove, he realized he was shivering. He must’ve been shivering earlier, too, but now he noticed. His fingertips and ears were numb — even though one of his ears was a prosthetic replacement from an injury in Iraq, now he felt it, like a ghost appendage. His heart strained against the cold. As he tried to comprehend what was happening to his body, his thought processes seemed to slow down.
When he came up for oxygen the third time, he’d traveled well over a hundred meters, half the width of the river. And the current had taken him under the bridge and beyond. He turned to see where Animus and his goons were. Police had swarmed the area, but the tangos appeared to have fled. The rain continued to dump on London. Chris’s cold body trembled, and his respiration was shallow and quick. He tried to take slow, deep breaths, but his body resisted.
It wasn’t a cold day, but having been out in the rain and swum the River Thames had resulted in a lot of wet time, which drowned the warmth in him. On top of that, he’d come down from his adrenaline high, causing his temperature to drop further. He’d burned through a lot of calories, and he didn’t have much fuel left in his tank, so he was losing heat faster than he could replace it, experiencing hypothermia. Many people couldn’t understand how someone could suffer from hypothermia on a summer day, but frogmen knew the danger all too well. In spite of the hypothermia threat, he wanted to make sure Animus and the police didn’t know where he was, so he swam farther downstream past the next bridge.
A boat came his way, so he dove underwater to avoid getting chopped up by the propeller. He went straight down. The churning sound of the water became louder, and as he dove deeper, the water pressure squeezed his head. The boat’s engine passed above him, and the rumbling noise in the water dissipated. Slowly he ascended, and he could taste fuel in the boat’s wake.
Now his heart and lungs slowed their pace and the strain on his heart seemed to have lifted. At first he thought he’d succeeded in gaining control over himself, but something didn’t seem right. As he tried to figure out what wasn’t right, he experienced a mental fog. His arms and legs became less coordinated in the water, and he realized he was shivering violently — the hypothermia was worsening, and he needed to dry off. Soon.
Up ahead was a third bridge, or maybe it was the fourth — he was losing his ability to reason — and it was past time to head to shore. Still trying to keep a low profile, he continued underwater, rising up when he needed oxygen, until he made it to the other side.
Before coming out of the water, he realized he wasn’t wearing a suit jacket to conceal the pistol and magazines on his belt, so he made sure his shirt and T-shirt were untucked, so they could cover his weapon and ammo.
He dragged himself out of the water and stumbled into the city, south of the River Thames. Or am I headed north? It was still raining, and it didn’t seem to make much difference whether he froze to death in the river or in the rain. As he walked through street puddles, he felt like he was teleporting. He was at one street corner one moment and a different street corner the next. After doing this several times, he realized he was passing out as he walked, only to regain consciousness and find himself in a new spot.
Abruptly he stopped shivering — a bad sign. His outer body was shutting down while his core tried to stay warm. He wanted to strip off all his clothing, as if he could strip off the cold, but he wasn’t thinking rationally. He feared his lungs and heart would stop.
Now he had little idea of why he was walking in the rain or where he was walking to, but part of him wanted to dig a hole, crawl inside, and lie down. The other part of him had a vague notion he needed to get warm — his survival depended on it. When he spotted a café, he realized he could seek shelter from the rain there and find something warm to drink.