Chapter 38 - Storm over the Cyclades
The shockwave tore through the cavern, knocking the shooters off their feet and sending a wall of black smoke rolling across the water. Screams in Greek echoed through the fiery haze as the tender began to list violently, its stern engulfed in flames.
"Now, Emily! Into the water!" Julian yelled, grabbing the sealed ledger box and securing it across his back with nylon webbing.
We plunged into the freezing, churning water of the caldera. The shock of the cold drove the air from my lungs, but Julian’s hand never left mine. We kicked hard beneath the surface, swimming through the submerged arch of the cavern mouth while chaos raged behind us.
When we surfaced outside the cliff face, the weather had turned vicious. The Aegean sky had darkened into bruised indigo, and the wind was howling through the cliffs at gale force. Five hundred yards away, the *Aegis* was pitching violently against her anchor chains, surrounded by white-capped swells.
"Swim!" Julian commanded, his powerful strokes cutting through the rising chop as he pulled me alongside him.
Every breath tasted of salt and spray. The waves threw us backward, but the sheer will to survive—the knowledge that we had uncovered the final truth—drove our limbs forward. By the time my hands grabbed the stainless-steel swim ladder at the stern of the *Aegis*, my muscles were burning with exhaustion.
Julian hauled me over the transom, collapsing onto the cockpit sole beside me, both of us gasping for air while the diesel engines thrummed through the hull.
"The anchor!" I coughed, wiping the stinging salt from my eyes. "Julian, she said they placed charges on the keel!"
Julian scrambled to the helm console, checking the underwater sonar scanners. "They were bluffing to force us out of the cave—look! Keel sensors are clear. But her main yacht is rounding the southern point right now!"
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On the forward horizon, slicing through the storm swells like a black blade, came a one-hundred-and-fifty-foot luxury expedition yacht—the *Cassian Queen*.
"She's trying to box us into the caldera!" Julian yelled over the rising roar of the gale, slamming both throttles forward. The *Aegis* surged ahead, her bow rising as she met the first twelve-foot wave of the storm. "Hold on, Emily! We're running the northern passage!"
