The Last Odyssey (Sigma Force #15) - James Rollins Page 0,148
closed his eyes.
The plan was to strike for the coast, where allies would meet him and whisk him to safety. Only then would he contemplate his revenge.
Still, he enjoyed some thoughts of what he would do to Elena Cargill.
Perhaps I’ll tape it. Eventually send it to her father.
Still, even such pleasant daydreams failed to dim his worries, his anxieties about what had happened to Nehir’s team.
The sub jolted sharply, shocking him out of his reverie.
“What was that?” he demanded.
“We were struck from underneath,” the pilot reported. “Maybe a shark. Drawn by the commotion in the water back there. They can do us no harm.”
Firat nodded and leaned back, irritated that the pilot felt the need to reassure him in such a condescending manner. The sub bumped again—hard—driving a surprised yelp out of him.
He braced his arms wide to either side and turned to the twilight seas. He caught a flash of fire in the deep below. Was the sub under attack again? Had another torpedo exploded?
He checked the other side—just as something monstrous rose into view. He scrambled back from the sight of it. Its crocodilian head was half the size of the sub. Its unblinking eyes glowed in the darkness. Impossibly, golden flames wreathed its head and traveled in brilliant cascades down its long, snaking neck.
He wanted to believe it was some fever dream, some nightmare that he had yet to wake from. But the crew spotted it, too. Yelling, gasping. The pilot sped away, but it chased them.
“Shoot it!” he yelled.
The crew regained their wits, spun the sub like a skipped stone, and fired both torpedoes. One missed, but the other struck the beast in the neck. The explosion rocked the sub. The seas burst with fire, bright enough to see the decapitated head of the monster fall away and get dragged toward the bottom.
The two Sons cheered their success.
Then on the other side, another of the fiery apparitions appeared, then another, and two more. They surrounded the sub, their eyes burning hotter, their flames writhing and coiling across their forms.
Then they attacked.
The sub was batted, ripped. Huge jaws lined by three rows of shark’s teeth crunched into the Lexan bubble. The glass cracked under the pressure. Then the entire canopy was ripped off.
Water pounded into him, flushed him out of the sub into darkness. Pressure popped his ears, crushed his lungs. Then his body was grabbed, pierced by teeth, dragged deeper.
But that was not the worst.
Flames erupted all around him, burning away his clothes, searing his skin, setting his hair on fire. His eyeballs boiled in his skull. He was being burned alive—in water.
He writhed at the pain, at the impossibility, knowing only one certainty.
Rather than finding Tartarus . . .
Hell found me.
49
July 24, 10:15 A.M. WGST
Tasiilaq, Greenland
A month after events in Morocco, Elena stood in the bitter sunlight of an Arctic summer morning. She wore a goose-down parka but felt no need to zip it up. From this mountaintop she enjoyed the cold wind, the frigid bite on her cheeks, the ice in each breath. It made her feel new again, reborn in some way.
Which maybe is appropriate.
Ahead of her, a cliff dropped into the fjord far below. The view looked out across the water to the frozen, cracked surface of Helheim Glacier, a river of ice slowly spilling into the ocean. The bright morning sunlight reflected off it, refracting into rainbows, polishing sections of ice to a dazzling cerulean blue.
It was a perfect spot.
A group of locals from Tasiilaq gathered to pay their respects. Candles were lit, some in hands, more flickering along the cliff’s edge. John Okalik stood with his palm resting on his grandson’s shoulder. Nuka stared out to sea. Even Officer Jørgen had come to say good-bye.
The village had lost two men who had guarded the tunnel into the heart of the glacier, cousins of John. Their bodies had never been recovered, but she had learned that many found it fitting. According to old Inuit customs, they did not burn or bury their dead, but gave them back to the sea.
Another had also never been found.
Mac returned from the cliff’s edge, where he had placed a candle for the lost man. He limped over to her, his foot still in a boot splint, but he was recovering well from his injuries.
“Nelson would hate all this fuss,” Mac said, sniffing hard, trying not to let Elena see his damp eyes. “He was the least sentimental man I ever knew.”