Chapter 41 - The Chasm of the Deep
The deck shuddered with the catastrophic violence of tearing steel. The freezing ocean rushed upward to claim the shattered stern, a churning vortex of white foam and black water. Above us, the operative’s gloved hand hung suspended between life and oblivion, demanding Lily.
"Never," I gasped, the spray choking my voice.
I didn't take his hand. Instead, I grabbed Lily with my left arm, pressing her tiny, trembling face against my chest, and drove my right heel into the operative’s knee joint. The armored strike didn't shatter his bone, but it knocked his magnetized boot off balance against the slick, inverted metal plating.
At that exact microsecond, Graham threw his entire body weight forward. He didn't aim for the operative's chest; he tackled the man’s support cable, snapping the carabiner clean off the extraction harness with the heavy steel bar he had ripped from the railing.
The countdown over the radio hit zero.
A blinding flash of electromagnetic pulse tore through the night sky from the upper atmosphere. The Osprey’s engines cut out in mid-hover, its glowing avionics dying in an instant. The monstrous twin-rotor craft tilted sideways like a dead bird, tumbling through the mist into the open sea.
Then the stern of the yacht inverted completely.
Gravity ripped away from us. We fell. The impact with the North Atlantic was like hitting poured concrete. The breath exploded from my lungs in an eruption of bubbles. Freezing, merciless salt water invaded my nose and throat, dragging me down into the absolute blackness of the abyss.
My fingers were locked in an iron death-grip around the collar of Lily’s flotation vest. Down, down, down—pulled by the suction of thousands of tons of sinking luxury steel. The pressure crushed against my eardrums. My chest burned with the agonized scream for oxygen.
Through the murky, boiling water, a silhouette appeared. Graham. His powerful strokes cut through the undertow. He grabbed my arm, kicking violently toward the surface against the dying suction of the ship.
May you like
We broke the surface gasping, retching seawater into the biting winter air.
Around us, the world had changed. In the distance, along the Atlantic coast, the dazzling skylines of New York and New Jersey were gone. Not a single skyscraper gleamed. The harbor beacons were dead. The entire Eastern seaboard had vanished into absolute, pitch-black silence. The purge had executed.
