Devil's Gate (NUMA Files 9)

“Kurt, she’s going,” came the call over the radio. “Any minute she’s going.”

I’m aware of that, Kurt thought. He grabbed her arms again.

“Pull yourself up,” he shouted.

“I can’t,” she cried. “My shoulder is out.”

That didn’t surprise Kurt. But it left him with only one choice.

He grabbed the knife from his pocket, flipped it open, and slid it under the wire that held the woman. Trying desperately not to cut her but knowing he didn’t have much time, Kurt began to saw. The wire snapped all at once, and the young woman plunged toward the ocean.

Kurt pushed off and dropped in after her.

Smoke and fire passed him in an instant. He hit the water, and felt one leg strike something beneath it. When he came up, the woman was right in front of him, bravely trying to tread water with one arm.

Kurt grabbed her and splashed away from the flames of burning gas and oil. Quickly, he realized a much greater danger. The water was swirling around them. He felt it pulling at his feet like the undertow at the beach.

The ship was going down.

He looked aft. The fantail had risen up like the Titanic, the bow was beginning to plunge.

Grabbing the woman’s good arm, he began to swim, pulling her along. When the ship went down, it would create a massive wave of suction dragging everything within a hundred-foot radius down with it. Both of them would be long drowned before it released their bodies back to the surface.

It was hopeless, but he swam hard anyway. And then the fast boat from the Argo suddenly raced in. It slid to a stop beside them.

The men rapidly hauled the woman in, literally yanking her out of the water, as Kurt pulled himself over the side. The engines roared again.

Kurt fell into the back of the boat. Looking up he saw the “castle”—the five-story structure that housed the crew’s quarters and the bridge and the antenna masts — plunging toward them at a forty-five-degree angle, like a building falling out of the sky.

The fast boat leapt forward like a stallion as the pilot slammed the throttle home. Right out into daylight.

The castle crashed into the water no more than twenty feet behind them. A surge of foam hurled them along and then spat them out like a surfer ejecting from a massive breaker.

Seconds later the Kinjara Maru was gone.

As they sped away, heavy rumbling sounds rose up from the depths, along with surges of air and debris.

Kurt looked at the woman. She was covered in soot and oil, her shoulder was either broken or separated, her wrists were gashed by the wire that had cut into them, and her eyes were swollen and almost as red as the blood that soaked her clothes. Using her less injured hand, she placed pressure on the gash on her other wrist.

“We have a doctor aboard the ship,” Kurt said. “He’ll tend to your injuries as soon as we board.”

She nodded. At least she was alive.

“To the Argo?” the helmsman asked.

Kurt nodded. “Unless you have somewhere else in mind?”

The helmsman shook his head. “No, sir,” he said, and pointed the boat toward the Argo.

TEN MINUTES LATER, they were back on board the Argo. While the ship’s doctor tended to the young woman and the away team stowed the fast boat, Kurt stepped onto the bridge.

The ship was already accelerating and changing course.

“You look like hell,” Captain Haynes said. “Why aren’t you in sick bay?”

“Because I’m not sick,” Kurt replied.

The captain eyed Kurt strangely and then looked past him. “Somebody get this man a towel. He’s dripping all over my bridge.”