of weight and speed shot him beneath the surface like an arrow, blasting salt water into his nose and battering his already fragile skull. The pry bar loosened in his grip, but sheer will kept his fingers wrapped around it.
As soon as he felt his downward plunge begin to slow, he started crawling furiously toward the surface and broke it several strokes later, blowing out snot and seawater before gasping for air.
He turned his head just in time to see all of the lights of the Baltic Princess snap off. She was now a giant steel shadow slipping away into the dark, only the luminescent ribbon of churning water behind her twin screws to mark her way.
Jack whipped back around and spotted the barrel a hundred yards distant, upright in the water but already half submerged. He clawed through the water like a man possessed, the pry bar retarding the stroke of his right hand. He couldn’t drop it to speed his pace, or even take the time to pull off his jacket or kick off his shoes. He kicked furiously, churning the cold water all around him, numbing his skin, especially his face.
Over the splashing of his strokes he suddenly heard Liliana’s anguished cries up ahead.
“LIL! I’m coming!” he shouted as he swam, her desperate voice ramping up his already furious sprint. Digging even harder with each stroke, salt stinging his eyes, lungs gasping for air, he pushed beyond his agony until his left hand suddenly crashed into the barrel, which was already three-quarters submerged and sinking fast, air bubbles frothing the water.
“LIL! HOLD ON!”
“JACK? JACK!”
Only seconds left.
“HOLD YOUR BREATH!” he shouted, as his left hand seized the latch and his right hand jammed the pry bar claw under it.
But the barrel kept sinking, and the claw slipped out as the lid breached just below the surface, pulling Jack under with it. He grabbed a half-breath just before the cold water slapped his face, the last air bubbles from the barrel sweeping past his ears.
The rising momentum pushed the pry bar away from the latch. Jack’s iron grip welded him to the barrel, but in the growing dark it gave him his main point of reference. He jammed the pry bar claw beneath the latch again as the barrel plummeted deeper, the pressure stabbing his eardrums like jagged ice picks. His lungs burned as he worked the pry bar against the latch, but it didn’t catch and the claw slipped out again.
The cold water turned to freezing as he shoved the claw back under the latch a third time, his aching skull crushed like a vise by the water pressure. He strained his exhausted arm, trying to work enough leverage against the steel-tight latch, but the effort was stealing away his last oxygen until—
A sharp, metallic pop rang in the water and the lid gave way.
Liliana shoved it aside with bleeding fingers.
Jack dropped the pry bar and grabbed her hands, his lungs straining to hold their last, stale breath, her wide eyes hopeful in the moonlit gloom.
Suddenly her body jerked in his hands and her face spasmed with terror.
Jack’s salt-burned eyes could barely see the weighted barrel far below her and the glimmering chain stretching from its black mouth to her ankle.
Her left hand slipped out of his, but he held the other one tight. The two of them plunged deeper into the abyss. He didn’t care.
He would never let go.
But in a desperate burst of strength, she did, with a sharp yank of her small, slippery hand.
He panicked. His hand grabbed back out at hers, but she was already too far below him.
The triumph in her eyes turned to horror.
She screamed a word at Jack.
He couldn’t understand it.
She reached up to him with both hands like a grasping prayer, the billowing halo of her blond hair shrouding her pleading eyes as she vanished into the eternal black.
63
It was Jack’s turn to die.
He hung suspended in the bone-chilling waters beneath the surface of the Baltic Sea. His oxygen-starved mind began to dim and his burning lungs begged for a last, watery breath.
But he refused.
The shimmering half-moon beckoned him like an angel. Jack began clawing at the black water. His heavy clothes were body weights pulling him back and his cramping legs could hardly move, but he dug and pulled and kicked, still twenty feet below the surface.
Straining with every fiber, he thrashed his way upward, but the effort robbed him of his last ounce of oxygen. His mouth spasmed