J.F. Kirwan - 66 Metres - A chilling thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat!

‘Fucking… lying… BITCH!’ Janssen tried to get up, but his hand slid in the puddle of blood trickling from the wound in his chest. She’d aimed to wing him, but he’d moved the wrong way at the last second. Missed his heart, punctured his lung. Not fatal. Not yet.

‘Give it up, Janssen,’ she said. She imagined her father shaking his head.

Janssen coughed, the silver Magnum still in his right hand as he tried to prop himself up on the other arm so he could take aim.

Sammy picked up the Rose, inspected it for damage, and waved his Glock in Janssen’s direction. ‘Finish him.’

Janssen’s body shook. He muttered something she didn’t catch, then suddenly flung out his arm. He fired. The bullet ricocheted off the wall behind Nadia’s right shoulder. The sound clanged in her ears. She took another deep breath, let it out slowly, firmed her firing arm and rooted her feet on the floor. But her trigger finger wouldn’t move.

‘Finish him!’ Sammy shouted.

Janssen half-choked, half-coughed, as blood from his mouth drooled onto the concrete.

‘Doesn’t have it in her, Sammy-boy. Crack shot, can’t kill. Just another pussy.’

He took aim, steadier this time. Nadia’s heart pounded, and she lost control of her breathing. She felt as if all the blood had drained out of her body. Her gun hand shook. Fuck! She couldn’t do it. And now Janssen was going to kill her. Her mother was going to win. Her eyes welled. Sorry, Katya .

Janssen leered. ‘You’re going to be my bitch in hell, Nadia, for all eter–’

Sammy fired.

The bullet cleaved Janssen’s forehead in two. Bloodied flesh, brain matter and shattered bone blossomed, then Janssen slumped forwards, quivered a few times, and stilled.

Nadia felt cold, unable to tear her eyes from Janssen’s corpse in its spreading red pool. She imagined his soul slipping from his body through the floor, down into the sea beneath them, falling through the Earth to the place where it belonged, where her dad would be waiting for him, and would beat the crap out of him for all eternity.

Sammy appeared in front of her, seized her shoulders. ‘Nad, listen to me. We have to split up. I need to get out of the country, explain this fuck-up to Kadinsky personally, but I’ll never get that through customs.’ He stared at the Rose. ‘It’s emitting a very faint signal. I’m not sure but I reckon the authorities might have a way of detecting it if they get close enough. You take it.’ He shook her. ‘Nad, are you listening to me?’

She was, though his voice was muffled by the ringing in her ears. She gazed past him to Janssen, then to the other two corpses. Her personal fast-track ticket to hell. Would her father be able to protect her from these three when she arrived? But she hadn’t actually killed them herself…

She barely registered the slap, then stared into Sammy’s eyes.

‘Again,’ she said.

Sammy obliged, striking her face harder the second time. She swallowed, took a couple of jagged breaths.

‘Get a grip, Nad, for Katya’s sake.’

Sammy was right. Her sister. Focus on the living . She pocketed the Beretta.

‘Tell me what to do.’

Sammy hauled open the trapdoor. A couple of metres below, the sea splashed against concrete pillars. The tang of sea water and seaweed helped clear her head.

Sammy searched Janssen’s corpse. ‘Your passport,’ he said, tossing it to her.

She caught it, but her fingers were numb. She watched as Sammy methodically wrapped chains around the three men’s legs and shoved them one by one into the water below. He siphoned most of the petrol from his Suzuki’s tank and scattered it around the inside of the warehouse. Then he rigged a crude fuse to set the place on fire half an hour after they’d left. He let the iron trapdoor fall back down with a loud clank. Like a metal coffin lid snapping shut.

‘Give me your gun,’ he said.

She took a step back, shook her head. The Beretta was all she had left from her father.

‘Okay, just don’t get caught with it. At least one of the bullets in Janssen’s corpse will match. Lie low for a week,’ he advised. ‘You’ll never get that device through customs, X-ray machines everywhere. I’ll get word back to Kadinsky. He’ll extract you.’

Nadia nodded. But the Rose was a death magnet. Five dead already on its account. Those who knew what it could do would happily ramp up the body count to get hold of it. She’d be lucky if she survived a week. Sammy told her to get out of Penzance, get off the mainland – the remote Isles of Scilly off Land’s End might be a good bet. She said nothing. The less they knew of each other’s plans, the better.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘Kadinsky will get his package, and you’ll get your sister back. This is so big he’ll let you both go for good this time.’

She stared at him till he broke their gaze.

Outside on the deserted dock, the weather was clearing up. She watched him disappear on his Suzuki. I hope you make it, Sammy . She turned and walked in the opposite direction, slowly, as if drugged. She clung to Sammy’s words. Get the device back to Kadinsky. Then leave with Katya. If he’d let them go. Or at least be alive, with her. She picked up her pace.

When she heard fire engines far behind her thirty minutes later, she didn’t turn around, just kept walking, clutching the bag holding the Rose. She tried to erase the image of Janssen’s shattered face. But she couldn’t. It was all she saw. She found a public lavatory on the seafront, went straight to an empty stall, locked herself inside, and threw up.

Chapter Three

The cold hit the nape of Jake’s neck as he rolled backwards, holding mask and regulator in place with one hand, torch in the other. Cool fjord water seeped into his hood and gloves. A single droplet defeated his drysuit neck seal and ran down his spine as he righted himself. Finning to the back of the boat in the moonless night, he shone his torch onto his left hand to give Andreas the ‘OK’ signal. In that brief moment he caught the concerned look on the skipper’s face while he lowered the green nightlight into the water to help them find the boat later.

Jake turned to the others, gave them time to get adjusted. Their torches, dangling from lanyards attached to their wrists, shone downwards, two cones illuminating the depths below, sharp halogen light diffusing into shadows. A few silver fish scurried away from the searchlight beams, unwilling to be lit up as tonight’s main course for larger fish. Beneath them the abyss of the fjord sucked downwards. Jake knew the lure of the deep only too well. He lifted his mouth out of the water.

‘Fin to the wall. We need a frame of reference as we descend, it’ll help to stop narcosis setting in.’

Jan Erik and Bjorn turned and finned towards the shore. Jake put his head underwater again and shone the beam down until it caught the green, orange and red fauna of the underwater cliff face. He lifted up his head. ‘This will do.’ He angled his torch upwards, still underwater, just enough so he could see their faces clearly, the water refracting the light through the thin layer of glacier run-off hovering near the surface, turning their faces a ghostly green. He searched their eyes. Anticipation had taken over concern. Good. Jan Erik grinned behind his mouthpiece, and Bjorn’s eyes adopted the look usually reserved for sharking blondes at discos.

They were both hungry for this, like he’d been two years ago when he first dived this deep. The adrenaline rush caught him, too. This is why I dive . He replaced his regulator, gave them the ‘OK’, then the thumb-down signal. They returned both signals, and the trio slipped below the surface.