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

Mike cautiously placed a hand on her waist, their first physical contact. The patrol boat lights were behind him, gaining steadily. She needed more time for the GPS to locate their exact position. She remembered her training for a scenario like this. Distract and misdirect . And she imagined Katya reminding her younger sister that she was Russian, and Russians always did what was necessary. Katya had always said the best cover story was one that stopped people from asking questions…

Mike set the engine to idle, and moved closer. She swallowed. Maybe she could do this. He was attractive, after all. Confident about his job, yet quiet. Sensitive not pushy. Maybe, if given a bit more time… But the patrol boat was catching up. Mike leant forward and kissed her neck. Normally it would have made her spine tingle, instead she felt prickly all over her body. Her breathing sped up. That seemed to goad Mike on. A reasonable misinterpretation. She made her decision, and kissed him fully, his coarser seafarer’s mouth bitter from the coffee on his tongue. Both his hands gripped her, pulled her to him, his eyes closed. Hers stayed open, and over his shoulder she saw the patrol boat lights in silent pursuit. But as he held her wrists, that night with Slick and Pox came back to life as if it was yesterday, no, as if it was now. She tried to disconnect, to make her body go limp, but she remained tense, her rape memory screaming at her to fight back this time. Her muscles barely held back from lashing out at his pressure points.

Mike’s breath quickened as his hands went to work on her. Strong fingers slid under her t-shirt, fondled her breasts, his hands less sure on her than they were on the boat. She willed herself to play along, and led him towards the bench above her bag, keeping his back to the patrol boat trailing them. He kissed her harder, pushed her backwards onto the bench. He pulled off her top and savoured her breasts with his mouth, just like… She could hardly breathe. Concentrate. One more minute. The boat will arrive. Then you can dispose of the Rose.

He unzipped her jeans and one of his hands slid between her thighs, making her gasp. She slipped back on the bench as he peeled her jeans off, his index fingers hooking into the sides of her underpants, pulling them off, too. She wondered if this was how it was for Katya back in Moscow. She shut her eyes. Her lips trembled. And then the rape scene came flooding back to her in all its sick detail: Slick grabbing her forearms, licking her face like a dog, punching her in the stomach when she’d spat in his eye, thrusting inside her as violently as he could, while Pox… She opened her eyes. Her hands shook, her breathing was out of control. Mike was staring at her, a deep frown on his face.

‘Jesus! Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘You’ve gone white as a sheet.’

‘I’m sorry’ she said, because on so many levels, she was. ‘Mike, I –’

‘STAND TO! SWITCH OFF YOUR ENGINE! PREPARE TO BE BOARDED.’

Mike whirled around. ‘What the…?’ Pulling up his trousers, he hobbled to the canopied engine controls. Nadia sat up, her breasts momentarily lit up for all the crew to see, before the searchlight jerked towards a semi-naked Mike.

The loud-hailer blared again. ‘CUT YOUR ENGINES! NOW!’ The patrol boat loomed closer, its bow surging through the waves, water frothing white before dissolving into blackness.

Get a grip on yourself! She stood up, pulled on her jeans and top, then bent down as if to find and fasten her shoes, all the while trying to get her breathing back under control. She leant over the side and scooped some water onto her face. She reminded herself that one of those bastards, Pox, was now pushing up daisies.

She focused, opened the holdall and glanced at the GPS coordinates. They were still changing because the boat was still moving. She had to wait, or risk never finding the Rose again. Its battery indicator read fully charged. Checking first to see that Mike was distracted, she pulled out the Rose and placed it on the ledge behind her, upside down so as to conceal the slowly pulsing red LEDs. Now it looked like part of the boat. Like a brass fitting you’d loop a rope around. She walked over to Mike and handed him his sweatshirt. She kept her body between his line of sight and the Rose. In any case, he was glancing the other way, towards the patrol boat.

‘Thanks,’ he said, disengaging the engine. The diesel choked off, drowned out by the patrol boat propellers revving in reverse as its prow manoeuvred alongside. She glanced over Mike’s shoulder to the sonar display. Sixty-six metres of water beneath them. But there was something else there, something big – the edge of a shipwreck, judging from its shape. At least sixty-six was better than seventy. As a teenager she’d learned to dive in the Caspian Sea with her uncle Dmitry, though never so deep.

Mike caught her elbow. ‘Listen, I’m –’

She placed a forefinger across his lips, just as a gangplank clattered down on the port side. Nadia went back to her place on the starboard side while Mike tied the gangplank down. As she leant over the edge to scoop some seawater onto her face, she lowered the Rose into the sea, held it underwater so it didn’t splash.

She let go.

Two sailors stood at the other end of the narrow bridge, waiting for Mike to finish. They were armed, wearing white Navy-style belts and holsters. Nadia glanced into her bag and read the GPS on her phone. It had stabilised. She intoned the figures twice in her head. The two sailors walked across the plank and jumped down into the boat. She looked up at them, hands by her side.

The captain looked serious, a shock of white hair framing a face of granite. The younger one behind tried not to grin. The captain looked her over, then stormed up to Mike.

‘Licence,’ he barked.

Nadia noticed four more sailors on the patrol boat. One on the bridge was holding a radio. They looked earnest, which meant they knew something, though almost certainly not everything. Mike was briefly interrogated, but only mildly; he was local. The captain began speaking in low tones, and she pretended not to listen amidst the water chopping against both hulls, and the creaking of the gangplank as it see-sawed between the two vessels. The captain was asking Mike about her. She reached into her backpack, switched off the GPS app, and searched for her passport. The captain came over and stood above her, his right hand near his holster. She handed him her ID.

‘I’m here for some diving and sightseeing,’ she said. She knew there were plenty of Russians on holiday in Cornwall at this time of year, many of them divers. In Russia, she’d probably be taken into custody on suspicion, but in England the burden of proof was higher.

He shone a flashlight onto her passport, then to her face, then back to the document. Without taking his eyes off hers, he handed the passport to the other sailor, who dashed back over the gangplank as if everything was perfectly stationary, not two boats pitching in darkness, locked in a frenzied embrace.

She tried to stay calm, suppressing thoughts of Janssen’s bloated corpse, probably already found by police divers.

‘How long are you here, Miss Laksheva?’

‘Until Friday,’ she said, ‘then to London, then back home to Russia.’ She showed him the tickets. The flights were booked, so they could check her story, though she wouldn’t be taking those particular planes. She smiled, but his face remained stern, which meant he knew blood had been spilled.

Mike watched her from the steering console. She could see he was wondering.

‘Let me see your bag, miss,’ the captain said.

She handed him the backpack and he rooted around inside. He was thorough. But there was nothing inside to worry about. He handed it back to her. He didn’t look happy. From his pocket he pulled out something that looked like a phone, but was clearly a detector of some sort, and wandered around the boat, opening up the two small cupboards under the console. The detector made a small pinging noise. It was hunting for the Rose. Sammy had been right. She wondered what the detector’s range was. Thank God she’d tossed it over the side. The captain walked past her again. She held her breath as she suddenly remembered the Beretta hidden on the underside of the ledge where she sat. Shit! How the hell would she explain that? The gun was smaller and slimmer than the Rose, but if the captain bent down to look… The pings continued as normal, and he didn’t search further. She breathed out, trying to keep her face normal, not showing the wave of relief she was feeling. After a minute he put the device back in his pocket, and turned to Nadia.