The Big One by John Cutter

Author:John Cutter [Cutter, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2015-10-13T23:00:00+00:00

11. Tryst Does His Job

Sullivan recognized the copter. An American Cayuse, a small copter used in Vietnam for low-level reconnaissance. Small and maneuverable. Fast.

An electronically amplified voice boomed from the copter, “STAY WHERE YOU ARE. OUR BOATS ARE COMING OUT TO PICK YOU UP. STAY WHERE YOU ARE OR WE LL OPEN FIRE.”

Sullivan could make out the muzzle of a .30-caliber machine gun poking from the open gunner’s side door of the chopper, a hundred feet overhead. The wind of the chopper’s blades rocked the boat and swirled the waves.

Sullivan stood — and dived off the starboard side of the boat into the water. He swam through shafts of dim light and womblike warmth. The womb illusion was broken by the vip-vip of machine-gun slugs rocketing into the water around him. He dived deeper, feeling the pressure build up on his temples, then did a somersault and swam back the way he’d come, hidden in a small forest of seaweed.

He saw the outline of his boat on the dappled surface above and, lungs near bursting, swam up toward it, surfacing on the side opposite the one he’d jumped from.

He gasped and clung to the rim of the boat, looking cautiously around for the copter.

As he’d hoped, it had gone on in the direction it had last seen him swimming, expecting him to surface for air, its searchlight combing the waves for him.

He climbed into the boat.

He heard a rumble of approaching boats. He had to make this fast.

The copter was realizing he’d pulled a fast one. It banked, came back at him, just ten feet over the waves. He had braced himself, was raising the MM-1 projectile launcher, aimed a little higher than the actual target to compensate for the drop-off of the arc trajectory, and fired. The stubby weapon recoiled so slightly he wasn’t sure it had fired — and then the projectile struck home, an orange fireball exploding where the copter had been — just forty feet away.

The shock wave from the blast kicked Sullivan over backward. The MM-1 fell from his arms into the boat — but Sullivan was knocked into the water.

And this time, he wasn’t alone in the water.

As he sputtered on the surface, fighting dizziness, he saw the unmistakable triangular fin of a great white shark cutting toward him through the waves. Sullivan looked for the boat. It was twenty feet off, and rocking violently in the water.

And there was no mistaking the purposeful way the shark was moving. It was coming for him, was maneuvering between him and the boat.

Sullivan, treading water, felt for the knife in its sheath. It was gone, lost in his fall. And the Beretta was soaked in water.

The shark was coming straight at him, wriggling as it picked up speed. It was eight feet long, and the way it moved, he had a feeling it was hungry.

Sullivan took a breath and ducked his head under water so he could see its mouth.

Its maw, overcrowded with serrated teeth, opened for him, visible in the light from the burning wreckage of the copter half-sunk a dozen yards away.

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