Chapter 38 - The Scuttling Engine
The downdraft from the twin-turbine Sikorsky S-76 hit the bridge deck with hurricane force, whipping the shattered glass into miniature blades that skittered across the floor. The helicopter hovered barely twenty feet above the aft landing pad, its blinding searchlight sweeping across the sinking, listing yacht.
"The helicopter isn't for us!" Graham yelled, grabbing Lily and pulling her behind the reinforced steel helm pedestal as Julian retreated backward across the exterior promenade, shielding his face from the blinding downdraft.
"He's escaping!" I shouted.
"The ledger is broadcasting, Claire!" Graham pointed at the glowing terminal. A progress bar was flashing: `TRANSMITTING 11.4 BILLION DOLLARS IN EMBEZZLED SOVEREIGN ASSETS TO THE TREASURY SPECIAL ACCOUNTS... 64% COMPLETE.` "If he gets into international airspace, he triggers the secondary erasure from the airborne relay! We have to sever the uplink!"
"How?!"
"The antenna array on the radar mast!" Graham slammed a fresh magazine into his carbine. "Keep Lily down! If that transmission is interrupted before one hundred percent, the entire financial registry defaults back to the Council's shell corporations!"
Julian was scrambling up the wet, pitched stairs toward the helipad, clutching a metallic briefcase to his chest. The helicopter's side door slid open, revealing an operative in black flight gear extending a hand to haul him up.
The yacht groaned again—a terrifying, metallic shriek that echoed from the ocean's depths. Even though the scuttle valves had been sealed by Arthur's override, the thousands of tons of seawater already trapped in the forward compartments were pulling the bow relentlessly downward into the Atlantic trench. The stern—and the helipad—was rising violently into the air like the tail of a dying whale.
"Stay here!" I shouted to Lily, wrapping her in Graham’s dry tactical jacket and tucking her into the recessed cubby beneath the navigation desk. "Do not move, do not peek! Count to one hundred!"
"Mommy, don't go!" Lily cried, tears finally breaking through her stoic mask.
"I love you more than the whole world, Lily. I will be right back."
I didn't wait for Graham. I grabbed the heavy emergency fire ax mounted on the bridge bulkhead and lunged out through the shattered window into the freezing storm.
The wind nearly tore the ax from my hands. The deck was tilted at an unnatural, sickening thirty-degree slope. Salt spray and rain coated the teak planks, making them slick as wet ice. Below the starboard railing, the black ocean churned like a boiling cauldron, ready to swallow anything that slipped.
Above me, on the raised aft deck, Julian was reaching for the helicopter's skid. The aircraft was struggling to maintain a hover in the forty-knot gale, its tail rotor swinging precariously close to the yacht's satellite communications dome.
Julian looked back down the tilted deck and saw me scrambling up the iron stairs, the ax gripped in both hands.
His face contorted with feral madness. He released his grip on the helicopter strut, pulled a secondary sidearm from his coat, and aimed it down at me.
"You stubborn, miserable Vance bitch!" he screamed over the roar of the rotors. "You die with the ship!"
*Click.*
The slide racked back on an empty chamber. The weapon had jammed, fouled by salt water and debris from the bridge explosion.
Julian stared at the useless gun in horror, then threw it at my face. It missed by inches, clattering into the raging sea below.
I reached the top of the helipad stairs, my boots skidding against the wet diamond plate. The transmission cable—a thick, black fiber-optic conduit linking the satellite dome to the master transmitter—ran directly along the railing three feet from my hands.
"Stop!" Julian lunged toward me, his hands clawing for my throat. "Do you have any idea who is on that list?! Supreme Court justices! Prime ministers! The entire monetary foundation of the West collapses if those accounts are liquidated!"
"Good," I snarled.
I brought the fire ax down with every ounce of fury, grief, and maternal rage inside my soul.
*CRACK!*
The heavy steel blade cleaved clean through the fiber-optic trunk, severing it against the steel deck. A shower of blue sparks erupted into the rain.
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At that exact second, the Sikorsky’s landing gear caught the edge of the rising deck railing as the ship pitched violently in a rogue swell. Metal screamed against metal. The helicopter banked violently out of control, its rotor blades clipping the yacht's steel communications mast with an explosive, deafening blast of flying shrapnel.
***
