Jon Merz - Raider X

“Come on!” Thatcher shouted at the knot as his fingers ripped away doing his best to untie it. He felt some give and pushed for more as he kept swearing under his breath. Raider X loomed above him as if it would come crashing down and crush him unless he managed to get the life boat freed in time. He heard more explosions now and an awful creaking that told him that metal was being bent by the inexorable assault of the water.

One of the knots came undone and Thatcher scrambled to untie the next. Who had tied this damned thing? He thought nautical knots were supposed to be easy to untie in case of an emergency.

There!

The rope came free from Raider X and instantly the lifeboat started drifting away. Thatcher collapsed in a heap in the boat struggling to get air into his lungs.

Raider X’s main engines groaned once and came to halt as the ship listed even more almost now completely on her side. Thatcher got both oars into their oarlocks and started pulling to get away from the ship. He knew when it went down it would create a huge sucking void that could pull him under as easily as if he’d been swimming nearby.

Which is when he saw Cyra’s head break the surface twenty yards back in the direction of the ship. “Harrison!”

She was struggling in the waves. Thatcher could see the fear in her eyes. How in the world had she still managed to survive a grenade exploding right in her back? She should have had all of her internal organs blown apart. And yet she was somehow in the water now desperately trying to claw her way toward the life boat.

Thatcher kept pulling for all he was worth.

Raider X was sinking fast. And already Thatcher felt the ocean pulling on the life boat to drag it back and under. He groaned as he pulled harder on the oars, straining in their oar locks under his exertion.

“Harrison! Save me!”

Cyra’s voice carried to him despite the crashes and explosions coming from the ship as it yielded to the immense pressure of the ocean. Thatcher could see the desperation in Cyra’s face. She had apparently not been lying about not being able to swim.

But he didn’t stop. Whatever she was, he couldn’t save her. He would have lost his own life in the process and he had to get back to England. Not just because he’d completed his mission but because Hewitt needed to know about what the German scientists were creating in the Polish countryside. If there was one creature like Cyra then there would be others unless those same scientists were stopped.

He pulled harder now as the backdraft of ocean water threatened to drag him into the maelstrom vacuum that the sinking hulk of Raider X created. Cyra was being sucked back toward the ship now, screaming and gurgling. Waves washed over her head and she coughed and sputtered as she was yanked into the vacuum.

But still her eyes locked on Thatcher’s and he felt his heart lurch. He’d never considered himself a cold and heartless man before, but as he pulled on the oars he knew what the priority was. And as hard as it was to watch her die, that was exactly what he had to do.

Raider X seemed to take a huge gulp of air and then with a mighty groan, it rolled beneath the churning seas sucking everything down with it. Despite his best efforts, Thatcher was being pulled toward it as well. His arms screamed at him as he tore at the oars trying to pull against the toughest current he’d ever felt in his life. Its pull seemed interminable and without yield and yet he knew that if he did not find a way to escape, he was surely as dead as Cyra.

He spotted her head one final time before she was sucked beneath the surface into a watery grave.

But still Raider X demanded more and sought the lifeboat that Thatcher occupied.

“Come on, baby, come on!”

Thatcher wrenched the oars again and again. He had blisters breaking out and popping even as he did so but he shut out the immense pain lancing through his hands and kept pulling as hard as he could. Over and over again he pulled even as he heard the roar of the vacuum so frightfully close that he thought he was surely going to drown at any moment.

But then with a final gasp, the vacuum released its hold on him and Thatcher felt the lifeboat surge away from the spot where Raider X had sunk. He kept pulling. Part of him thought it was entirely possible that Cyra would somehow find a way to break the surface and claw her way onto the life boat. Thatcher just kept pulling on the oars until he could no longer feel his arms.

Only then did he collapse back into the lifeboat, groaning from the amount of exertion he had just expended.

Silence fell over the entire sea, broken only by the lapping of waves against the bow of the lifeboat.

Thatcher lay there gasping for air for what felt like hours.

Right until a passing fishing boat found him.

TWO WEEKS LATER…

“That’s it, put the det cord in just like so. Good. And now step back.” The instructor peered over Thatcher’s shoulder eyeballing every little action he took. He was an older fellow with quite a number of missing teeth. But he hadn’t lost any of his fingers so far which made him a legend among demolitions instructors.

“Initiating!” said Thatcher with a yell. He fired the trigger and the log which he had just finished wiring up with plastic explosive went boom and rose several meters into the air before coming down with a fearsome crash in the clearing on the expansive grounds of the mansion in the Scottish Highlands.

“That’s taking it down,” said the instructor. “Piece of piss. Nicely done.” He clapped Thatcher on the back. “We’ll make a saboteur out of you yet.” He nodded back toward the main house. “Right, run along, I think someone’s come up to have quick word with you.”

Thatcher glanced back in the direction of the mansion house which had been converted to a barracks for the trainees of this course, albeit a very luxurious barracks indeed. Meals were cooked from whatever game roamed wildly across the hundreds of acres that was owned by the family so Thatcher had been eating quite well, feasting on quail, deer, and even wild boar. But if they ate well, the DS — directing staff — made sure they also worked it all off with early morning runs and “beastings” — exhausting bouts of exercise and calisthenics. Then there was the hand-to-hand combat and knife fighting that they worked hard to drill into Thatcher. Firearms were also of paramount concern so every afternoon was spent live firing on the ranges they had built.

It was an impressive place and Thatcher took off at a slow jog meandering down the paths until he emerged from the woods and came abreast of the manicured lawns. In a pinch, the lawns could double as runways for a squadron of fighters and short range bombers. But right now, the hundreds of yards of green reminded Thatcher of some of the estate he had grown up back in the States. And yet, here he was in the midst of a war that wasn’t even sanctioned as yet by his home nation.

He wondered if that made him a traitor or not? He couldn’t figure out if fighting for a friend was some sort of crime. In any event, he was already a convicted criminal so what difference did it make?

He had been sleeping better than he’d expected as well. Thatcher felt certain immediately afterward that his sleeping hours would be plagued by dreams of Cyra and her last evil stare at Thatcher as she had been sucked beneath the waves. Yet despite that memory of her, Thatcher had been able to compartmentalize it and move on. Even the doctors who asked him about the mission as part of his training now seemed perfectly content with Thatcher’s ability to rationalize what he had done as necessary to ensuring he lived to communicate some of the things he had discovered in the midst of the operation.