Andy McDermott - The Tomb Of Hercules

But the deck was empty. Slowly, Nina raised her head. Above, she could see the nacelles and tail of the tilt-rotor protruding over the edge of the yacht’s helipad.

The sight energized her. If the aircraft was here, then so was Sophia.

And Chase.

Legs still shaking, Nina forced herself to stand. Some part of her mind noted with detached irony that she was standing almost exactly where she and Chase had fought at Corvus’s party, an age ago. But this time she was here not to argue with him, but to rescue him.

She ran her hands firmly over her clothing before squeezing her bedraggled hair, trying to wring out as much of the cold water as possible. The rear deck might be empty, but the Ocean Emperor still had a crew aboard, and a wet trail through the ship’s corridors would arouse the suspicions of even the slowest sailor.

As dry as she could get, she headed for the nearest door, trying to remember the layout of the ship. Three hundred and fifty feet long, someone had told her, with six decks. Enough cabins to accommodate more than forty passengers during a cruise, in addition to all the crew quarters.

A lot of places to search.

She suddenly remembered Trulli and looked back over the stern. She had no idea whether he’d managed to get out of the submarine before it sank. For a moment, she thought she saw a small light flash amid the endless darkness of the sea, but then it was gone.

“I hope you made it, Matt,” she whispered, clutching her pendant. Then she carefully opened the door and peered through.

It was a lounge, cream leather armchairs and a small bar. Empty. Nina crept into the room, its cozy warmth hammering home just how cold she had been in the water. She shivered, rubbing her arms, and paused to work out her next move.

First priority: find Chase. Once she’d freed him, they could take care of the next steps together, which were to locate and disarm the bomb, and then deal with Sophia and anyone else helping her.

So where would Chase be? He was a prisoner, so he was most likely to be somewhere that could be locked. That ruled out the staterooms, which were like hotel rooms in that the occupant could always open the door from inside. One of the holds, maybe?

She had to start somewhere, so it might as well be at the bottom and work up. A deck plan behind the bar showed emergency evacuation routes and the locations of the stairwells. She quickly went to a door at the forward end of the lounge. An empty corridor lay beyond.

Listening for movement ahead, Nina padded down the passage until she reached the stairs. She was about to descend when she heard something over the rumbling murmur of the diesels.

A moan?

It had come from the deck above. Nina cautiously crept halfway up the stairs and stopped to listen. It sounded like a man, possibly in pain. Chase?

She held still, anxiously waiting to see if the sound was repeated.

It was.

“Oh, for-” Nina hissed in angry exasperation when she realized what she’d heard. It was a moan, but not of pain. And now it was joined by another, a woman in the throes of ecstasy. Sophia . The man she’d heard was Komosa. “Hope they both get the clap!”

Deciding that Sophia probably wouldn’t be forcing Chase to watch, Nina descended the stairs. A glance at another evacuation plan confirmed that she was on the lowest deck, with the engine room astern and the holds forward.

On the assumption that the engine room would be manned, she scurried in the opposite direction to check each door in turn. The first was nothing more than a storage closet full of cleaning equipment, the second a darkened laundry. Undeterred, she continued along the corridor, making her way door by door up the length of the ship almost to the bow before taking a narrow connecting passage to head back down the starboard side. Holds full of stacked and secured cardboard boxes, a walk-in freezer-

One door was locked.

She froze, as if the rattle of the door might alert somebody. But the only sound was the thrum of the engines. She tried the handle again, still with no luck, then rapped quietly on the door. “Eddie!” she said, as loudly as she dared. “Eddie, are you in there?”

Silence. Then: “Of course I’m in here, Sophia-you handcuffed me to a fucking pole!”

Nina let out a stifled gasp of delight. He was alive! “No, it’s me, it’s Nina!”

Another silence. Then Chase spoke again, voice filled with utter incredulity. “How the fuck did you get here?”

“I’ll explain later.” Remembering that one of the closets she’d checked had contained tools, Nina rushed back to it and found a crowbar. She returned to the locked hold. “Are you okay?”

“I’m bursting for a piss, but apart from that…”

“You’re fine,” Nina muttered as she stuck the end of the crowbar into the doorjamb and leaned against it, pushing hard. Wood creaked and splintered, then something inside broke and the door flew open.

Nina almost stumbled into the hold to see Chase standing near the opposite wall with his hands cuffed around a pipe. He couldn’t hide his joy at seeing her. “Bloody hell, it really is you!”

“Told you I’d come after you,” Nina said with a heartfelt smile. They embraced as best they could with the pipe between them.

Chase held up his wrists. “Okay, pop these fucking cuffs off me and we can try to sort out the bomb.”

“You know where it is?” Nina asked. Chase pointed across the room. She looked around, and took a sudden step back when she saw the bomb less than ten feet away. “Yeesh!”

“Don’t go fucking around with it-Sophia said it’s booby-trapped, and I actually think she might have been telling the truth for once.”

Nina lifted the crowbar, trying to work out the best way to get enough leverage to break the handcuff chain. “Maybe we could just throw it overboard?”

“That would be very bad for the poor fish,” Sophia said from the doorway.

Nina whipped around, brandishing the crowbar-but saw that Sophia, her hair tousled and her face slightly flushed, had a gun pointed at her. Komosa, standing beside her wearing nothing but leather trousers, was armed too, as was an older man in a white uniform. “Aw, crap.”

“I must admit, Nina, I’m even more surprised and impressed to see you here than I was to find Eddie poking around in my underwater base.” Sophia paused and looked thoughtful. “Hmm. ‘My underwater base.’ That does sound positively Bondian, doesn’t it?”

“How did you know I was here?” Nina asked, unamused.

“We picked up a distress beacon a couple of minutes ago, right behind us. The ship’s computer told us that it was one of ours-one of René’s, rather: that ridiculous submarine he wasted so much money on.”

“I dunno,” said Nina, “it turned out to be a pretty good investment. It got me here.”

“For all the good it did you,” Sophia replied. She stepped fully into the hold, Komosa following, and gestured with her gun for Nina to put down the crowbar. Nina reluctantly obeyed, then raised her hands. “As soon as we realized what it was, I knew it had to be you. No one else would be that desperate . Then one of the crew found wet footprints on the carpet in the aft lounge, so we just followed them.”

Nina sniffed. “Well done, Sherlock.” She gave Komosa a brief look and saw sweat glistening on his bare chest and piercings, then turned her attention back to Sophia’s untucked clothes. “Too bad you had to interruptus your coitus.”

“Aw, I didn’t need to know about that,” Chase complained.

Sophia smiled. “It doesn’t matter, Eddie-the end you always droned on about fighting until has finally arrived. Chain her up,” she said to Lenard, indicating Nina. He took a pair of handcuffs from a pocket and moved as if to secure her next to Chase, but Sophia spoke again. “No, away from him. Over there.” She pointed to another vertical pipe across the hold.