Eddie made another lunge at the crewman, who hurriedly retreated. He followed, aiming to trap the sailor in a corner to bring the fight to a rapid end—
The deck rocked under his feet as the yacht made a sharp turn. Rouphos bellowed something in Greek.
Eddie hurriedly stabilised himself, expecting the crewman to make a counterattack, but he too had braced against the change of direction, dropping low. What had the captain warned about?
The answer came a second later as the mainsail’s swinging boom smacked against the back of Eddie’s head.
A moment of insensate blackness… then pain filled his skull to overflowing as he regained full consciousness. He forced open his eyes to find himself looking up at the sky, the crewman standing over him with a mocking smile. Rouphos arrived, handing his subordinate a gun and issuing a command before helping him drag the woozy Englishman upright. ‘If you were a sailor, you would have kept your head down around the mast!’ the captain said. Eddie tried to think of a comeback, but all he managed through the pulsing throb assaulting his brain was an irate groan.
Shouts caught Rouphos’s attention. Eddie endured a moment of nausea as he turned to watch him hurry to the aft railing — and beyond him saw Nina reach the yacht’s stern.
But the captain wasn’t looking at her, instead calling down to someone on the deck below.
Nina glanced back, hoping to see Eddie following her, but instead saw Trakas, Axelos and a number of the ship’s crew emerge from the superstructure. Spencer was with the burly Greek, his father and Petra being pushed along behind them with Anastasia and De Klerx. Rouphos stood at the end of the deck above, framed by a plume of dark smoke rising from the ship’s side.
Now she spotted Eddie behind him, but to her horror he was being held by the sailor. The fight had gone badly. And things were about to go the same way for her too, as Trakas’s bodyguards caught sight of her.
Nowhere to hide on the dock—
Instead she leapt down the nearby stairwell, landing hard at the bottom as a gunshot cracked from above. She threw open a door and rushed inside.
‘No, don’t shoot her!’ Trakas barked at the trigger-happy sailor. ‘Get after her, catch her!’ The man ran to the stairwell.
‘You want her alive?’ Axelos asked as the group reached the dock.
‘She might be useful,’ said the tycoon thoughtfully, before his attention returned fully to the situation at hand. ‘Put them in the launch. Keep them well guarded,’ he ordered, before having a partial change of mind. ‘No, the girl comes in the speedboat with me.’
‘Ana!’ yelled De Klerx as he and Anastasia were separated. He lunged at the man holding her, but another crewman dragged him back.
‘What about me?’ asked Spencer.
‘You come with me too,’ Trakas told him. He looked back at Rouphos on the upper deck. ‘That one as well!’ he shouted, pointing at Eddie. ‘Bring him—’
A loud, deep whump from somewhere within the Pactolus shook the deck — and a moment later a second explosion erupted into the open as a section of the starboard side amidships blew apart. Everyone staggered—
De Klerx smashed an elbow into the gut of the man holding him, folding him double. Before anyone could react, he vaulted off the launch’s bow into the sea, bringing up both arms to enter the water in a dive.
Two crewmen fired after him, bullets smacking into the waves as the dark figure dropped beneath the surface. ‘Rutger! No, stop!’ Anastasia cried from the speedboat.
Axelos ran to the end of the dock. The yacht was rapidly pulling away from the expanding splash marking the Dutchman’s landing, still making almost ten knots. ‘I don’t think we got him,’ he reported. ‘He went deep enough for the water to stop the bullets.’ He looked back at Trakas. ‘We can go after him in the boats when he surfaces.’
Another blast from the ship’s innards made everybody turn. A noxious black cloud was now boiling from the ruptured hull. ‘What the hell?’ gasped Lonmore as fire whipped past. The sea itself was alight, the Pactolus leaving a ragged trail of flame in its wake.
‘The fuel tanks!’ Rouphos cried. ‘We’re leaking fuel!’
By now the sailor had brought Eddie to the aft deck. ‘Abandon ship!’ Trakas ordered. ‘Everyone get off while we can!’
‘The fire control systems should be able to handle it,’ Rouphos insisted.
‘If they could stop that, they already would have!’ Trakas pointed at the mainmast. The fire swirling from the hole in the yacht’s side had swept up to reach the sails. ‘We leave, now!’
‘What about him?’ asked Axelos, pointing after De Klerx.
‘Forget him! We need to get to shore.’
Eddie didn’t understand the exchange going on between the Greeks, but the combination of the renewed rush to board the boats and the flames licking along the yacht’s starboard side meant that he got the gist of it very quickly. ‘Where’s Nina?’ he demanded as he was ushered at gunpoint to the dock. ‘Where is she?’
‘She went back inside!’ Petra cried from the launch.
‘What? Then bloody get her out of there!’ he yelled at Trakas.
The magnate waited for the Englishman to be put into one of the speedboat’s rear seats beside Anastasia before boarding himself. ‘I have sent one of my men after her. If he finds her, they will follow in the last boat.’ He glanced up at the remaining craft, still on the hoist. ‘If he does not, then she will either swim — or burn!’
The fire swirling around the mainmast deterred Rouphos from returning to the wheelhouse to sound the evacuation alarm. Instead he jumped down to the aft deck and went to open a wall panel in the gym, revealing a control board inside.
He flicked a switch to sound the general alarm, then activated the PA system. ‘Abandon ship!’ he snapped in Greek. ‘All hands to the boats!’ It was not standard procedure, but given the circumstances — gunfire was still being exchanged further forward — it was the best he could manage. Job done, he ran back to the stern to assist with the untying of the two boats, hoping the rest of his crew would reach them in very short order.
Had the captain gone to the bridge, though, he would have immediately spotted a new danger.
He had deactivated the autopilot to make the sharp turn that had taken Eddie out with the boom, then re-engaged the system as he hurried back to help secure the prisoner. The yacht had still been turning as he did so, but now it had settled on to its new course.
Straight towards a small uninhabited island, a ragged line of cliffs rising out of the sea like a rotten tooth.
25
Nina ran through the lower deck, hearing chasing feet behind her. Unlike the single central corridor bisecting the main deck, this was a minor maze of much narrower passages, winding past the engine room, holds and crew cabins.
And while her pursuer knew his way around, she had no idea where she was going.
She rounded a corner — only for flames and smoke roiling from an open hatch ahead to bring her to an abrupt stop. No way past. But a steep companionway to one side led back to the deck above. She hesitated, knowing that Trakas and his men might still be up there, but then her pursuer appeared behind her.
He shouted in Greek, but she was already haring up the ladder. Throwing open the hatch at its top, she emerged to find herself on the starboard-side deck. Thick smoke swirled past her, making her cough. Going forward would take her deeper into the choking miasma; her only options were to head aft or jump overboard.
A glance at the oily rainbow sheen on the water put her off the latter choice. The yacht was leaking fuel, lots of it, and fires were spreading over the surface. She wouldn’t be swimming from the Pactolus, at least not from this side.