The Templar Thief: A Peter Sparke Book by Scott Chapman

Author:Scott Chapman [Chapman, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Publish Nation
Published: 2014-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

Bright Lights

Sparke released the lifeboat and it plummeted, nose first, towards the sea. By the time it hit the water, the surface of the ocean was nowhere near horizontal. It was starting on its steep sloping climb towards the face of the wave.

Water is one of the few things that gets harder the faster you hit it. Dip your fingers in a pond and there is no resistance, slap your hand on its surface and it might sting, throw a three thousand kilogram lifeboat at it from the height of a four-story building and the impact is like dropping it on a parking lot. No manned craft will survive the force unless it is one of those unique vessels specifically built with this kind of punishment in mind.

Sparke had known that there was no chance of escape if he stayed on Husker One, he also knew that the tiny lifeboat would be smashed to pieces against the rig if he tried to escape or, if he managed to survive that, be flattened by the wreckage of the rig as it disintegrated. Being on the same side of the wave as the rig meant death. Sailing to safety was impossible as the engines on the lifeboat could never get it over the top of the wave, so there was only one thing he could do. There was never any choice and there was barely any chance.

There was nothing good about this plan except that it was less bad than any other option. It wasn't a plan. It was hardly even an idea. It was something that would never be considered by anyone who had an alternative.

The boat dropped like a stone and its snub-nosed bullet of a body carved its way into the face of the wave and a complex tug-of-war kicked in.

First the downward momentum of the boat drove it underwater, then tons of falling water from the advancing wave face pushed it down further. Next the small but powerful engines kicked in, engines designed to get the craft away fast from a burning oil rig, and they in turn moved it forward, deeper in towards the base of the mountain of water.

Against this, the huge amount of buoyancy built into the boat fought against the surrounding water, pushing it upwards. For perhaps the first time in history, a man in a lifeboat was willing the buoyancy to lose this fight, at least for the next few seconds.

If the lifeboat rose too quickly, it would be pushed back out of the water the way it had come in, back on the wrong side of the wave. The only way Sparke could survive was if the boat could survive inside the wave until the highest, heaviest part passed over it.

The crest of the wave has the most water underneath it, therefore the most weight, so all the water in front of and behind the crest had lower pressure. On the way into the water, Sparke's lifeboat was pushing against this pressure.

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