Crackdown by Cornwell Bernard

Author:Cornwell, Bernard [Cornwell, Bernard]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780061438370
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1990-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Jackson Chatterton’s hand seized me and dragged me hard into the shelter of Wavebreaker’s steel hull. Ellen was already there. We were safe enough for the moment because neither Miguel nor Sweetman, leaning over Wavebreaker’s rail, could fire past the hull’s convexity, but nor could we swim away from the hull for, within seconds, we would become the easiest of targets. Yet I knew we had to swim away from the schooner for surely Miguel or Sweetman would soon come hunting us in Dream Baby.

“Where’s Thessy?” I asked.

Ellen was treading water beside me, and Chatterton, who had pulled me to safety, was staring up into the glare cast by the deck-lights.

“Where’s Thessy?” I insisted.

“He was with me,” Chatterton replied irritably, as though I annoyed him with an irrelevant question. “We’ve got to get out of here! Shit!” A burst of automatic rifle fire smacked water not twelve inches from Chatterton’s face. The sound of the gun was obscenely loud. I heard the magazine being ejected and a new one slapping into place, then the gun fired again and I saw a stream of cartridges tumbling towards us through the yellow light, and I knew that whoever fired the weapon must be holding it far out from the ship’s side and angling its barrel back in, thus making the bullets come perilously close to us.

“Go forward!” I told Ellen and Chatterton. “Take a big breath, then dive for one of the anchor chains, understand? Use the chain to pull yourselves away from the ship. Get well out into the dark before you break the surface and you should be safe.”

The automatic weapon fired again, spraying bullets at the sea in an indiscriminate pattern. Some struck the hull just above our heads and whined away to leave scars in the paint. The shotgun crashed as well, forming an instant and miniature maelstrom above which I could see the cartridge’s faint smoke residue drifting away in the bright cast of Wavebreaker’s deck-lights.

“You’re coming as well?” Ellen wanted my reassurance.

“I want to look for Thessy.”

“I told you! He’s all right!” Chatterton spoke too loud and the rifle’s bullets swerved towards us. We all ducked under and I saw, astonishingly, the stitch of air bubbles where each bullet drove into the water to be immediately cushioned into impotence. The water had been turned yellow by the floodlamps.

We swam forward, keeping close to the ship’s side, and once under the steep overhang of the bows we took turns to dive for the nearest anchor rode. Sweetman and Miguel seemed to have lost track of us, for they kept firing at the water amidships, and the noise of their guns covered the smaller sounds we made as we pushed hard away from Wavebreaker’s side.

I dived last, kicking away from the ship and swimming deep so that the anchor chain was a silhouetted black streak against the shimmering yellow mirror-bright surface of the water. I panicked that I would miss the chain and that my head would break

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.