THE THOUSAND DOLLAR TREASURE: A Colt Ryder Thriller by J.T. Brannan

Author:J.T. Brannan [Brannan, J.T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grey Arrow Publishing
Published: 2024-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Progress was slow-going, despite the powerful engines; the current and the wind were picking up steam, doing their best to push us further back into the Atlantic. But still we ploughed on, cutting through the darkening waters on a desperate push toward land.

Trent was still asleep, which was good; the way the boat was bouncing up and down on the swells, the pain in his untreated gunshot wound would be terrible. His subconscious mind obviously knew this, and was keeping him out of it for the duration. I was scared that the movement of the boat would reopen his wound, but there was nothing I could do about that; the man needed medical treatment, and he wouldn’t get it unless our little boat made it back to shore.

As we fought against the Atlantic back toward Eleuthera Island, the sky cool and grey now, the winds whipping around us with a relentlessness that was disturbing, Murdoch filled me in about what had gone down the night before.

“Trent’s system alerted him to some talk on the bad guys’ cellphones,” he said. “We couldn’t listen in to all of it of course, so he’d doped up his system with some kind of algorithm, designed to alert him to key words, that sort of thing. Anyway, right after you sent up that fifth box, he got some kind heads-up that Wilson had found some local contacts to help out, men with guns and boats he managed to hire. Looks like he was suspicious about what happened, thought someone was moving in on his territory so to speak, wanted to get it checked out. But that alert took a while to process. By then, a plane had flown overhead a couple times – I reckon it must have been Wilson, looking for us – and even though we were only using just a little light, he must have spotted us and directed those speedboats our way.

“We could hear the boats a long way off, but we couldn’t communicate with you down there, so Trent thought if we cut off the air supply to the hose, you might get suspicious and come back up. But the boats got there before we knew it, and then all hell broke loose. I figure they saw the winch, Wilson figured what we were doing, and he gave the order for them to attack us. Pure pirate operation, huh? Like what Jennings did to those salvage teams three hundred years ago in the first place, right? They’d gone to the trouble of bringing it up from the bottom, and he and his men went right ahead and stole it.

“Anyway, they started firing, so we started firing back. Hell of a thing. Should have been terrifying, right? Only it wasn’t. All I could think was that I’d be damned if those sons of bitches were gonna take what we’d worked our asses off for, you know? Thing is, I wasn’t scared at all. Not until that damn boat hit us, and the Galveston started going down with me still onboard.

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.