Celtic Empire (Dirk Pitt 25)

As the boat’s sharp prow approached, Dirk bent his torso and tried to dive. But his buoyant wetsuit interfered. Without his fins, he struggled to stay underwater. As the hull drew near, Dirk turned and swam toward the gunman, kicking and flailing as hard as he could.

The boat’s pilot briefly lost sight of him, then tried to correct course a fraction too late. The boat roared past Dirk, missing his legs by inches. Dirk stopped and surfaced, tracking the boat as it ran out a short distance and began to turn.

A hand clasped his shoulder, and he turned to find the floundering gunman grasping for support. It was the bearded driver from Assiut.

“Help me,” he gasped. “I’m drowning.”

The man was in a full panic, thrashing and kicking while he clung to Dirk’s back.

As Dirk struggled to free himself, he kept one eye on the cabin cruiser. It had completed its turn and was barreling back toward them.

Entangled with the gunman, Dirk had no chance to dive clear. He needed to break free. He flung an elbow backward and struck the man hard in the ribs. Desperation raged in the gunman’s eyes. Dirk thrust his arms skyward to break the man’s grip, but the gunman’s fingers were embedded in his wetsuit like a vulture’s claws. The roar of the boat thundered in Dirk’s ears. He braced for impact as something clasped his ankle.

An instant before the boat struck, he was yanked underwater. The gunman clung to him as he was pulled downward. The boat struck. The hull rammed into the gunman’s body.

The man’s hands fell loose, allowing Dirk to separate and descend another foot. The white hull raced by, the deadly props buzzing just inches from his head.

As the maelstrom subsided, Dirk felt a fin brush past his face. Summer, with an elbow hooked around his ankle, swam for the bottom like a demon. She pulled him down to her and passed him her regulator. As he drew a deep breath, she purged air from her B.C., attaining neutral buoyancy. She maintained an inverted position, kicking her fins lightly as he clutched her vest. Together they swam horizontally, maintaining their depth while exchanging the regulator. Above, the cabin cruiser made several more high-speed passes.

Dirk and Summer waited until the boat roared away and its motors faded to silence. They remained underwater until Summer’s tank was nearly empty, then they surfaced.

Dirk scanned the lake. Far to the north, he spotted the boat. He turned to Summer, who floated alongside, clearing her mask.

“Are they gone for good?” she asked.

“I think so. Thanks for the undertow. That was the closest haircut I’ve had in a while.” He rubbed a hand over his scalp.

“Quite the hit-and-run driver. I had a pretty good view of events from downstairs. Whoever was driving that boat had little regard for his own men.” She nodded toward the second gunman’s body, which drifted a short distance away.

“I didn’t see who was driving,” Dirk said. “The other two were our armed friends from Amarna and Assiut.”

“Hard to believe they tracked us all the way here.”

Dirk gazed at the vast expanse of empty water and the arid wasteland around the lake. “A good place to kill someone without eyewitnesses.”

“But not a great place to be abandoned without a boat. Do you think they were trying to kill us for what we already know?”

“That, or what we might find at Faras.” Dirk pointed to the camera attached to Summer’s B.C. “You got the pictures?”

“I got them. Whether they have any bearing on what we’ve already found remains to be seen.”

“Speaking of bearings, do you prefer to swim west or east?”

They were nearly dead center in the lake, with a two-and-a-half-mile swim in either direction to reach shore.

Summer glanced west, then turned east. She tensed, her eyes large with fear. “I don’t think we want to go east,” she said in a bare whisper.

Dirk turned toward her gaze.

Barely thirty feet away, a pair of cold yellow eyes protruded just above the surface, eyeing the two with lethal desire.

31

The Nile crocodile was a beast long worshipped by the ancient Egyptians. A favored god named Sobek took the form of a crocodile. Depicted with a man’s body and a crocodile head, he was believed to have created the Nile and provided strength and power to the pharaohs. Yet Sobek was also considered a dark god who required appeasement to protect the people from his river-dwelling manifestation. As an homage, live crocodiles were often kept in temple pools, and mummified crocs have been found in numerous ancient tombs. Yet the deadly reptile was rightfully feared as well.

Brother and sister cared little about the ancient treatment of the animal that had roamed the region for thousands of years. All they knew was that Nile crocodiles in Africa inflicted twenty times more fatalities a year than all of the combined shark attacks around the world. That, and the fact that the fifteen-foot behemoth in front of them appeared more than a little curious.

“Give me your fins,” Dirk whispered, “then get behind me and slowly back away.”