Odessa Sea (Dirk Pitt 24)

A spasm of pain shot through her right arm and shoulder. The ache raced to her head, and she nearly passed out.

He grinned. “Feeling better after your kiss from the claw?”

Ana flinched from his rancid breath. She saw only malice in his dull, dark eyes, framed by a ragged scar that cut across his brow. The tentacles of an octopus tattoo on his back scalp seemed to reach out for her. She resisted the urge to scream. “I am a Europol police officer,” she said. “Release me at once.”

Vasko slipped a hand around her upper arm and pinched her with an iron grip. “Release you?” He laughed, poisoning the air with his breath. “That’s not how we welcome nosey intruders aboard our ship.”

Turning from his imposing face, Ana gazed toward the helmsman, an equally tough-looking character who grinned at her with brown teeth. Beside him, her SIG Sauer pistol lay on a console—tantalizingly close.

“Return this vessel to Burgas at once,” she ordered, surprising herself by the strength in her voice. Adrenaline overcame her wooziness, and she punctuated the statement by kicking her knee at Vasko’s groin while throwing a punch at his throat.

Vasko’s quick reflexes thwarted both moves. As she turned on him, he simply gave her a hard shove. Weak and off balance, she crashed hard into a chart table. Grasping its edge for support, she noticed a pair of brass calipers lying there. Before she could collect herself, Vasko grabbed the back of her shirt and yanked her toward him.

She reached back and grabbed the calipers, hiding them at her side as he spun her around.

Holding her from behind, Vasko slipped his left arm around her throat and squeezed while grabbing a fistful of hair and yanking back her head. “What are you doing aboard my ship?” His lips were just inches from her face.

Pain surpassed fear as Ana struggled to breathe. Vasko slowly loosened his grip, allowing her to gasp for air.

She let her nerves settle before answering. “The highly enriched uranium from the Crimean Star—we know you have it.”

Vasko showed no reaction. “You were aboard the NUMA vessel?”

Ana looked him cold in the eye. “I was aboard the submersible you tried to destroy.”

She caught a flicker of his brow.

“You are mistaken. The uranium is not aboard. We searched but did not find it.” He stuck out his chin and looked down his blunt nose at her. “You cost the lives of your two companions by coming aboard.”

He released his stranglehold and shoved her across the bridge. His brute strength sent her stumbling to the knees of the helmsman. “Lock her up in an empty cabin.”

With a wolfish grin, the helmsman grabbed her and dragged her off the bridge. Ana feared the worst, but he simply led her to a barren cabin and locked the door.

The crewman returned to the bridge and retook his position at the helm. He gazed at Vasko. “What are we going to do with her?”

Vasko stared out the bridge window, his face a mask of concentration. “Same thing we’ll do with her dead police friend on the rear deck,” he said with an indifferent shrug. “We wait till we’re thirty kilometers offshore and throw her over the side.”

11

He felt like he was plunging down a well wrapped in a straitjacket. His world grew dark and cold. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t even seem to move. Death tapped him on the shoulder, but he shook off the unwelcome specter. Petar Ralin wasn’t yet ready to die.

His mind began to function, shaking off the shock of being shot and plunging through the ship’s moon pool. He was about to drown and he knew it. He struggled to get his limbs moving. His legs felt like they were made of lead, but his arms responded. Kicking and flailing, he headed toward a faint light that flickered above. The distance closed quickly, but then he stopped.

The light was from the Besso’s moon pool. He couldn’t surface there or he would be picked off. He turned away, but had to surface quickly. His lungs ached for oxygen. He kicked harder, then collided with the underside of the Besso. Despite the new spasm of pain, he kept moving. Ralin scraped along the hull until he finally broke free and stretched to the surface.

Gasping for air as quietly as he could, he heard voices and movement on the deck above but no gunfire. Dukova was surely dead, but what of Ana? He had to help her, but at the moment that was impossible. He didn’t have the strength to climb aboard even if he wanted to. No, he must try to get help.

He waited until the deck turned quiet and his pulse stopped racing, then pushed off from the ship and began paddling toward shore. The lights of Burgas were less than half a mile away, but the distance might as well have been a thousand. In seconds, Ralin became light-headed. He barely had the strength to make headway against the light current. A wave of fatigue from his bleeding leg wound swept over him. But he pushed on, resisting the urge to give up and sink.

A yellow object in the water caught his attention and he struggled toward it. He recognized it as a mooring ball, and, for Ralin, it was a lifesaver. He swam to the metal sphere and grasped its float chain. Clinging for life, he waited until a friendly wave rolled past, lifting him higher. He used the momentum to slide his torso onto the top of the large metal ball and lay outstretched on it like a drowned rat.

Through blurry eyes, he raised his head and gazed at the lights of the Besso a short distance away, then promptly passed out.

12

Georgi Dimitov paused to wipe the perspiration from his face as he scanned the Varna commercial docks, eyeing the Macedonia at a far berth. Walking past some heavy equipment and stacked commercial cargo, the plump Bulgarian archeologist waddled up to the research ship. He clutched a painting under one arm and tugged a beaten-leather satchel with the other.

A NUMA crewman welcomed him aboard and escorted him to the stern deck, where a tall man in a welder’s mask was repairing a seam on the damaged submersible.