Chapter 26 - Blood in the Mediterranean
The first burst of automatic gunfire shattered the clerestory glass above our heads, showering the oak deck of the schooner with razor-sharp crystals.
"Down!" Julian roared, shoving me behind the reinforced steel keel block as concrete chips exploded around us.
Caleb fired three controlled shots toward the shattered hangar doors, forcing the muzzle flashes in the darkness outside to pull back behind the concrete pillars. "The main sluice valve is on the east catwalk!" Caleb yelled over the roar of another volley. "The manual wheel requires two men to break the rust!"
"I'll go with Julian," I shouted.
"No, Emily—" Julian started, but I grabbed his sleeve.
"You need both hands to turn a seized marine valve! Caleb needs to cover the corridor. We move together or we die here!"
Julian didn't argue. He gave me a sharp nod, gripped the pry-bar, and lunged forward across the open floor toward the industrial steel stairs leading up to the flooding controls.
Bullets pinged against the iron risers as we scrambled up. Below us, Caleb laid down disciplined fire, his scarred face grim, every shot deliberately placed to keep the mercenaries from clearing the hangar entrance.
We reached the platform. The iron sluice wheel was nearly four feet in diameter, coated in thick red oxide. Julian jammed the pry-bar between the spokes to create a lever. "On three, Emily! One, two, THREE!"
We threw our combined weight against the bar. With a sickening, metallic screech that vibrated through my teeth, the valve broke its rust seal. Salt water began to hiss through the intake conduits below.
*Crack.*
A high-caliber round tore through the sheet metal beside my ear. Julian grunted, his body jolting violently as he shoved me flat against the steel grating.
"Julian!" I screamed.
Blood bloomed across the left sleeve of his jacket, dark and hot.
"I'm fine! Grazed the shoulder!" he gasped through clenched teeth. He grabbed the wheel again, ignoring the blood running down his forearm, spinning the iron spokes with frantic power.
Below, a deafening roar echoed through the hangar as tens of thousands of gallons of Mediterranean seawater surged into the drydock through the opened culverts. The water level rose at terrifying speed, lifting the discarded timber and steel barrels into a swirling vortex.
The cradle groaned. The sixty-foot oak schooner shuddered, her buoyant hull breaking free of the timber blocks with a thunderous wooden creak.
"She’s floating!" Caleb roared from below, retreating up the gangway onto the vessel’s deck. "Get down here! The flood tide is blowing the outer sea doors!"
Julian and I scrambled down the shaking iron ladder. We leapt across the widening gap between the catwalk and the schooner’s bulwarks, crashing onto the teak deck just as the rising tide smashed the rotted outer drydock gates wide open.
Caleb hit the ignition. The twin diesel engines roared to life with a deep, throaty rumble that shook the deck under our feet. Julian lunged for the helm, throwing the throttles wide.
The schooner surged forward on the crest of the surging water, bursting through the shattered hangar doors into the open night air of the harbor basin. Behind us, the two black Zodiacs were caught in the violent counter-current of the flooding drydock, spinning out of control and smashing into the stone seawall.
I knelt beside Julian at the wheel, tearing a strip from my cotton shirt and binding the bloody furrow across his shoulder. He hissed in pain, but his hands never wavered from the helm.
"You hit them hard," I whispered, my forehead resting against his arm.
"We aren't out of it yet," Julian said, his eyes scanning the horizon.
Out past the harbor breakwater, illuminated by the city lights of Marseille, anchored a massive two-hundred-foot private superyacht—the *L'Étoile Noire*.
May you like
"Vivienne is on that ship," Caleb said, stepping up to the companionway, reloading his magazine. "And she knows she just lost her tactical advantage."
***
