A recess housed a cabinet of emergency equipment. She pulled it open, hoping to find something she could use to jam the hatch shut behind her, but found only first aid kits, survival blankets, rope… and distress flares. She grabbed one — not to summon help, but to ward off the crewman — and hurried back towards the stern.
The two boats had gone.
The launch and the speedboat were pulling away from the stricken yacht, swinging hard to its port side to avoid the floating fires in its wake. Both vessels were full to the point of overloaded, Trakas’s remaining crew having crammed aboard. She saw Eddie in the speedboat with the Greek. Other men were in the water, their wetsuits revealing them as members of De Klerx’s team. Some had grabbed life vests before leaping over the side, others simply taking their chances and hoping their comrades would come to their aid.
But no one was coming to hers.
She looked at the last boat, still swinging from the hoist over the stern. How long it would take her to get it into the water she had no idea. And a bang from behind warned that even if it only took seconds, it would not be fast enough. She spun to see the sailor emerging from the hatch.
Nina backed on to the aft deck and raised the flare, pointing it at him. His reaction was almost amusement. ‘I’ll do it!’ she warned, hooking her index finger around the pull-tab in its base. ‘I’ve done it before. Back off!’
His mouth curled into a grin, and he lifted his gun—
She yanked the tab.
The flare shot from its tube with a muffled bang and crossed the gap between them in an instant, hitting the sailor in the chest. He shrieked, stumbling backwards as his clothing was set alight, and fell over the railing into the ocean below. The sizzling flare went with him…
Landing in the spilled fuel.
Burning wreckage had already ignited the marine diesel, but the fires had not been hot enough to spread far, the dense oil being naturally hard to light. But the flare’s magnesium heart was blazing at over two thousand degrees Fahrenheit, and not even water could extinguish it.
The result was instantaneous.
A swirling wall of flame burst upwards. Nina staggered back in shock as the heat hit her. The deck’s edge was already alight, paint and varnish blistering. She ran to the port side, knowing she would now have to take her chances in the water — only to stop at the railing in fear as she saw a new danger.
The blaze was spreading out behind the yacht, its wake stirring up the burning fuel. One of De Klerx’s men had leapt from the ship, only for the fire to consume him as the Pactolus swept on. He screamed, vanishing into the blaze.
The same would happen to her if she jumped overboard.
Flames rose behind the stern, hot tongues lashing up at the remaining speedboat. If she released it, it would fall straight into the firestorm. No way off…
A shadow crossed over her: the mainsail shifting as the wind changed direction. The boom! At the limit of its swing, it extended far out from the yacht’s side. She looked around to see if she could climb along it to get clear of the fire—
The sail was alight, flames eating away at the great canvas sheet, but that wasn’t what froze her in fright. It was what was visible beyond the bow.
A wall of rock.
The Pactolus was charging straight at a cliff.
Even with the mainsail holed, the other sails were still catching enough wind to maintain the vessel’s brisk speed. ‘Crap,’ she gasped. ‘Crap, crap!’ The ship’s fiery wake was if anything wider and fiercer than before. Traversing the boom was now her only hope of escape.
She ran to the ladder and climbed to the upper deck, only to freeze in dismay as the burning mainsail split apart, a great swathe of smoking canvas slapping down before her. The boom swung back until the weight of material dragged it to a standstill. Even if she climbed all the way to its end, she would barely clear the ship’s side, never mind the waterborne conflagration behind it.
The cliffs loomed ever closer beyond the wheelhouse. She stared in desperation after the retreating boats as they carried Eddie and the others away to safety—
Something caught her eye near the boat hoist. Trakas’s parachute.
After landing from his parasailing jaunt, he had needed help to stop him from being dragged off the stern by the wind…
There was no one left to tell her how crazy her instantly improvised plan was, so she did it herself as she jumped back to the aft deck and ran to the hoist. ‘This is absolutely insane!’ she gasped, collecting the chute. The sailors had repacked it after their boss’s return — at least she hoped they had. ‘Seriously, what is wrong with you?’ she added as she fumbled her limbs through the various straps. Trakas’s torso was considerably larger than hers, the harness hanging loose. She struggled to pull it tighter. The cliffs kept growing, swallowing the horizon ahead. ‘Eddie’s the one who has the mad ideas, not me!’
The straps finally drew snug around her chest. She clambered up the hoist, the Hadean sea of fire churning frighteningly below, and leapt across to land on the speedboat’s bow. It rocked beneath her, almost pitching her into the flames before she caught the top of the windscreen.
The shallowing ocean became more choppy. Coughing as vile smoke streamed past, Nina clambered into the hull, making her way to its rear. The Pactolus was almost at the cliffs. She stood and faced forwards — then yanked the ripcord.
The pilot chute popped from its pouch, catching the headwind and snapping backwards… too slowly. It dropped as it dragged the main chute out with it, falling towards the fire. Her wild gamble had failed—
The main chute suddenly inflated as it too caught the slipstream. A sharp tug on Nina’s harness sent her lurching backwards off the boat’s stern. She screamed — as the parachute opened fully and lunged upwards, dragging her with it.
The Pactolus speared away as she was carried higher. Trailing smoke, it raced on through the breaking whitecaps — and ploughed into the cliff. The bow shattered in an explosion of fibreglass and wood, followed by an escalating series of detonations that ripped the ship apart from within. The forward mast snapped as if it were a matchstick, the taller mainmast lashing crazily before tearing out of the deck and toppling into the water like a felled tree.
Nina grabbed the parachute’s steering lines and swung herself away from the boiling black cloud rising to engulf her. The cliffs rolled past, still growing larger as her momentum carried her towards them, larger—
Bare rock whipped past her dangling feet — then she was clear, turning back out to sea. She straightened out, letting the parachute take her away from the disintegrating wreckage.
A sharp smell hit her nostrils. It wasn’t the burning yacht or its flaming trail of fuel. This was more like melting plastic…
Fear returned in full force. It was plastic: nylon.
The parachute was on fire.
A flame-ringed hole was opening up in the brightly coloured canopy, glowing globs of molten material dropping away as the fire ate through it. ‘Oh, shit!’
Nina pulled on both lines, trying to bring herself down to the water more quickly. But her descent was already accelerating as the burning parachute started to collapse. Another scream as she dropped towards the ocean—
She still had enough presence of mind to take a deep breath just before she hit. A wave smacked hard against her face as she went under amidst a rush of churning bubbles. Disoriented, she tried to right herself and return to the surface, only to find herself entangled as the remains of the parachute came down on top of her.