Serpent (NUMA Files 1)

"I think they took it the wrong way," Austin said.

"Must be my Mexican accent. What do you figure? AK 74s?" The AK 74 was the newer version of the terrorists' favorite firearm, the venerable AK47.

"That's my guess, too. Hard to mistake the sound"

His words were drowned by the ugly chatter of gunfire. The air was filled with the whine of ricocheting bullets being fired at a rate of four hundred rounds a minute. Again the firing stopped

Austin and Zavala took advantage of the intermission and rose to move to a position where they might have a clear shot. They heard a shout from the captain.

"Behind you!"

The two men whirled as a shadow dropped noiselessly from the deck immediately above them. Austin saw him first. His good arm came up in a swift motion, and he pulled the trigger. There was a second of delay as the sparks from the flint ignited the powder pan. After what seemed like hours the pistol belched fire like a dragon's mouth. The figure took a step forward and collapsed. The gun he was carrying clattered to the deck.

Zavala made a move to retrieve the gun. It was too risky now that the muzzle flash had revealed their position. With Zavala covering their rear, Austin and the captain moved toward the nearest stairwell and down to the next deck.

Gunfire was coming from every direction. They looked for cover. Too late. The captain cried out, clutched his head, and fell to the deck. Zavala grabbed the captain's arm and pulled him out of harm's way. More shots, and Zavala went down as a bullet plowed through his left buttock.

They had their backs to the science section. Austin opened a bulkhead door and, without checking to see if it was safe, grabbed the captain by the collar and pulled him inside. Zavala was crawling with one leg dragging limply behind him, but with some help he, too, made it through the portal.

Austin bolted the steel door shut and looked around. They were in one of the "wet" labs, so called because of the large sinks and running seawater He knew the room by heart and easily found a flashlight, then a firstaid kit, inside a storage locket:

He examined Zavala's wound arid breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the bullet had gone in and out of the flesh. As Austin worked to bind up the wound not an easy task with only one working hand, Zavala kept the Bowen leveled, at the door they had just come in.

"How bad is it?" he said finally.

"You won't like sitting for a while, and you might have to explain that you weren't running for the hills when you got hit. Otherwise, you'll be okay. I don't think they knew where we were. Just shooting wild."

Zavala looked at Austin's sling and then at the prone figure of the captain. "I'd hate to be around when they were really aiming."

Austin examined the captain's head. The close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair was matted with blood, but the wound looked to be a graze. The captain groaned as Austin applied antiseptic to the bloodied scalp.

"How do you feel?" Austin asked.

"I've got a hell of a headache, and I'm having a hard time seeing."

"Think of it as a hangover without the taste of booze in your mouth," Austin advised.

His ministrations finished, Austin looked at his bloodstained comrades and shook his head. "So much for guerrilla warfare."

"Sorry I lost the shotgun," the captain said.

Zavala said, "You should be. I could be using it for a crutch." He looked around. "See anything in here we can use to make an atomic bomb with?"

Austin squinted at the rows of chemicals and finally picked up an empty flask. "Maybe we can use these for Molotov cocktails." He glanced at the door they had just come through. "We can't stay here. They're going to figure out what happened to us when they see the blood trail."

Austin helped his partner into the next section, the high-ceiling garage that was home to the submersible when it wasn't plumbing the depths.

"What about those Molotov cocktails?" Zavala said.

Austin's mouth clamped into a tight and not very pleasant smile, and a hard gleam of anger flickered in eyes that had shifted in shade from coral blue to ice water. For all their wisecracks he and Zavala knew that if they failed, Nina and the others on board were as good as dead. The people crowded into the bow would be found, and these black-suited killers would dispatch them with the same coldbloodedness with which they wiped the archaeological expedition off the face of the earth. Austin vowed that was not going to happen as long as he was able to draw a breath.

"Forget the cocktails," he said with a quiet ferocity.. "I've got a better idea."

10 AUSTIN LEANED AGAINST THE METAL skin of the submersible, and under the unblinking gaze of the vehicle's porthole eyes he outlined his plan. Zavala, who was sitting at the edge of a sea sled to give his wounded haunch a rest, nodded appreciatively.

A classic Kurt Austin strategy, depending on splitsecond timing, unsupported assumptions, and lots of luck. Given the fact that we've got our backs against the sea, I say we go for it."

The captain shook his head in unison with Zavala's grin. The man would fall over with a good push, yet he acted as if he had a Fifth Cavalry division behind him. With the butt of the dueling pistol sticking out of his bloodsoaked sling, the silverhaired Austin could have passed for a Hollywood buccaneer in an Errol Flynn movie. Phelan decided that if he had to fight for his ship against such lousy odds, he was glad these two lunatics were on his side.