Tom Cain - The accident man

The gun fell to the deck and skittered away across the bucking, rain-slick surface.

Carver scrambled to his feet, his chest heaving and eyes streaming with tears. Trench was sitting in front of him, holding his wounded hand, coughing and gasping for breath. The older man tried to get up, but Carver hit him twice, left and right to the face, putting the full power of his shoulders behind each punch. Then he grabbed a handful of Trench's gray hair and smashed his head against the wooden rim that ran around the top edge of the cockpit's perimeter, three savage blows that left Trench semiconscious and bleeding.

Carver grabbed the front of Trench's jacket and hauled him into an upright position on the bench.

"Sit on your hands," he commanded.

Wincing with pain, Trench forced his hands under his thighs.

The flare was still spewing out smoke, though the relentless gale was now blowing it away in a billowing red plume. For a second, the air around Carver cleared and he was able to drag some pure, clean sea air into his burning lungs.

"Where is she?" he snarled.

Trench looked at him through bleary, unfocused eyes. "Where's who?"

Carver slapped him once, hard, to the side of the face.

"Alexandra Petrova, that Russian girl of mine you were going on about. Big mistake, that. Gave yourself away. Now, where is she?"

"Christ, her… I haven't a clue."

This time Carver caught him with a backhander.

"I mean it," Trench insisted. "I knew nothing about the Russians. They weren't my idea."

"So who's idea were they?"

A weary, battered smile appeared on Trench's face. He was leaning slightly forward, his mouth hanging open, still struggling for breath.

"I taught you everything you know about resisting interrogation. Do you seriously think you're going to make me talk now?"

Carver looked Trench in the eye. "No," he said. "I don't."

"So now what are you going to do?"

The question took Carver aback. He realized he did not have an answer. And in that fraction of a second's indecision, Trench struck, drawing his knees up to his chest and then driving his legs forward into Carver's body, catapulting him across the deck.

At that moment a wave hit the Tamarisk amidships, spraying the two men with foaming water and bucking the deck upward and sideways. As he staggered backward, Carver lost his footing and fell helplessly to the deck.

His head landed by a small black object lying on the cold, wet wood. As the boat lurched again, he realized that it was Trench's gun and it was sliding past him, back across the deck, back to the man who wanted to kill him.

Carver's old commander-his teacher, his role model-picked up the gun with his one good hand and swung his arm around to take his shot. His eyes glittered with fierce, gleeful triumph, then widened in a momentary flicker of shocked surprise as Carver fired the second emergency flare.

The rocket hit Quentin Trench in the face, the plastic tube driving up through his palate into his brain and sending him sliding across the narrow stern deck and over the side of the boat before the flare itself detonated, blowing his skull apart in a starburst of blood, brain, searing light, and bubbling smoke.

And as the flare cast its gory light across the water, illuminating everything in its path, Samuel Carver saw the gigantic bow of the Scandwave Adventurer bearing down on him, an unstoppable wall of black steel, as vast and irresistible as an avalanche.

The one-hundred-thousand-ton container ship was no more than two hundred meters away, its hull looming high over the top of Tamarisk 's mast, its superstructure lost to sight in the teeming rain, far beyond the glow from the flare. The ship was moving as fast as the weather would allow, forcing through the waves as if they were no bigger than ripples on a pond. Carver knew at once that even if the blazing flares had alerted the ship's crew to the presence of the yacht sailing directly across their path, it was far too late for them to change course or speed.

He had around twenty seconds before the Scandwave Adventurer smashed into the side of the yacht. Carver gathered his senses. It wasn't too late. If he could start the engine and loosen the sails, he could steer straight into the wind, maintain his speed, and twist away from the onrushing mass. The two boats would end up side by side, the container ship overtaking him like a juggernaut passing a moped. Even a glancing blow from the container ship would still be fatal, but at least there was a chance it might miss.

He dashed to the engine's starter button. He pressed it. The engine coughed, spluttered, and died. He pressed again. Nothing. Five seconds had elapsed. The boat was still sailing directly toward its gigantic executioner.

Samuel Carver was not a yachtsman. But he was an exmarine. He'd spent years studying, planning, and executing waterborne operations. He'd attended the military sailing courses with which the British armed forces, steeped in the nautical traditions of an island race, were obsessed. Now he prayed he could remember everything he'd ever been taught.

Carver disengaged the auto helm and crouched by Tamarisk's tiller, the wind in his face, sea spray foaming around him, the rain beating against him so hard he had to screw his eyes into slits to maintain any vision at all. The massive hull was no more than a hundred meters away now, still traveling just as fast, still on course, still oblivious of the yacht's existence. He could now see flecks of rust on its hull, the white depth markings running down from its Plimsoll line.

He breathed hard and pushed the tiller away from his body, directly toward the Scandwave Adventurer. For a long, endless, agonizing second nothing happened. Then the bow of the yacht turned into the wind, began to swing around, and the boom bearing the mainsail rushed across the boat, over Carver's head. The jib at the front was jammed tight against the mast. The wind was pushing it over to the far, port side of the boat. But the sail was held back by the taut rope holding it in its previous position to starboard.

Moment by moment, the Tamarisk shifted its course. It slewed anticlockwise in the water, turning three-quarters of the way around the dial, till it was no longer running broadside to the container ship but pointing almost directly at the vast black-painted behemoth. And then the turning stopped and the Tamarisk lay there, dead in the water.

The container ship was now no more than fifty meters away. As the Tamarisk had completed its tack, Carver had frantically worked the rope holding the jib sail, fighting against the tension generated by the wind in the sail.

The line loosened and the jib flapped helplessly in the wind. The boat would not move again until Carver reversed the procedure. He had fewer than five seconds till impact.

He dashed to the jib winch on the port side of the boat, frantically turning the handle to tighten the line and heave the jib around the mast to the point where it could once again catch the wind that would power the Tamarisk.

The Adventurer was now so close that Carver could not even see the top of its hull, which loomed over the yacht, twice as high as its mast. Every second brought it another ten yards closer. There was no time left, nothing more he could do. And then, somehow, the jib caught a gust of wind, filled for a moment, and gave the Tamarisk a little push-no more than a few feet of movement, but just enough to bring the boat around a fraction.

Then Carver felt the craft being gripped by a far mightier force. Below the waterline of the container ship, the bow flared out in a great, round, bulbous protrusion, like the head of an oversize whale. It was designed to push water away from the ship in such a way that it minimized the wake left behind it. It was so effective that the Adventurer, like most modern megaships, generated less of a wake than a forty-foot cabin cruiser. The water was displaced in a huge, rolling swell that picked up the Tamarisk and flung it up and away from the container ship.