Chapter 36 - Sinking Shadows
The calm was short-lived. Beneath their boots, the deep thrum of the freighter’s diesel turbines abruptly stuttered and died. A secondary shudder rattled through the deckplates—not from an external strike, but from within the bowels of the ship.
"Dylan," Mia said, tapping the engine telemetry monitor. "Look at the bilges. The auxiliary scuttling charges... Marcus didn't just sell weapons. He wired this freighter to sink if the buyers failed to eliminate us."
Marcus let out a ragged, bloody cough. "The automated scuttle program initiated the moment the telemetry array went dark. In twenty minutes, thirty thousand tons of scrap metal goes straight to the ocean floor. And with the blast doors sealed from the master server room, you can't override it from here."
"Then we take the evidence drive and get to the helipad," Mia urged, pulling Dylan’s arm. "Dylan, leave him! We have the satellite recordings, the encrypted manifests, everything the Commandant needs to purge his network!"
"No," Dylan said firmly, grabbing Marcus by his tactical collar and hauling him onto his shoulders despite the searing pain in his broken ribs. "He doesn't get the easy way out. He doesn't get to drown here and let his co-conspirators paint him as a fallen hero in the press. He stands trial before a military tribunal. Every Marine he betrayed deserves to look him in the eyes."
"I can't walk, Dylan!" Marcus groaned, his shattered knees dragging along the slick floor. "Leave me, you idiot! You'll drown us all!"
"Shut your mouth and hold your weight," Dylan growled, taking Marcus's full weight on his left shoulder. "You wanted to test my endurance? Let's see who breaks first."
Mia moved ahead with her rifle raised, clearing the debris-littered companionway. The emergency lighting cast eerie amber shadows along the bulkheads. Water was already rising through the lower maintenance corridors, smelling sharply of unrefined bunker fuel and burning electrical insulation.
As they reached the exterior catwalk leading toward the rear flight deck, the midnight Pacific wind whipped against them with gale-force intensity. The ocean below was a churning vortex of black swells.
Suddenly, a blinding white searchlight sliced through the rain from above, pinning all three of them against the iron rail.
The unmistakable, thunderous beating of heavy twin rotors vibrated through Dylan’s chest. A massive silhouette hovered fifty feet above the tossing waves—a modified Sikorsky Sea Stallion, unmarked, painted in matte-black radar-absorbent coating.
"Is that the extraction team from Camp Pendleton?" Mia yelled over the roar of the rotors, squinting up into the blinding glare.
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Dylan squinted, his tactical instincts instantly flaring with alarm. The heavy side-door of the helicopter slid back, revealing not Marine rescue jumpers with hoist harnesses, but two masked operators armed with suppressed submachine guns aiming directly down at the catwalk.
"Ambush!" Dylan roared, throwing Marcus hard against the bulkhead and pulling Mia down behind a heavy steel ventilation housing just as a suppressed hail of automatic fire chewed through the iron deck where they had been standing.
