The deck pitched sharply forty-five degrees to starboard.
Julian lost his footing, his gun firing harmlessly into the ceiling as he crashed against the shattered navigation glass.
Vincent lunged forward, his hand darting toward the console to yank the military drive free before the wipe reached one hundred percent.
His fingers wrapped around the steel casing at ninety-nine percent, ripping the cables from the port.
“Got it,” Vincent breathed.
Suddenly, a loud, metallic clinking sound echoed through the smoke.
Emma looked down.
From beneath the tilted console where Julian had fallen, a series of red blinking lights flickered against the bulkhead.
It was not an ammunition fire.
It was an armed scuttling charge—a thermite demolition block wired directly to the ship’s keel, and the digital display read:
00:08…
00:07…
00:06…
Julian, bleeding from the head, smiled through bloody teeth from the deck floor.
“You didn’t win, Vincent.
We all sink together.”
Chapter 142 – The Plunge into the Abyss
The concussion tore through the bridge like the hammer of an angry god.
Thermite and high-explosive cordite detonated simultaneously within the corvette’s keel, converting the reinforced iron decking into a storm of glowing white shrapnel.
The shockwave lifted Vincent Moretti and Emma Ward off their feet just as their boots cleared the jagged perimeter of the shattered bridge window.
For a heartbeat that stretched into eternity, the freezing November wind ceased to exist, swallowed whole by an incandescent geyser of fire.
Beneath them, the flagship split in two.
Julian Sterling’s final, deranged laughter was consumed instantly by the roaring conflagration.
The steel hull buckled outward like crushed foil, and the shockwave threw Emma violently backward into the empty black air hanging forty feet above the thrashing waters of Lake Michigan.
Vincent twisted in mid-air.
Even as the kinetic force pounded the air from his lungs, his primary reflex was absolute: his left arm coiled around Emma’s tactical harness, pulling her against his chest to absorb the inevitable impact, while his right forearm clamped shut over the sealed titanium case containing the salvaged military drive.
They struck the lake at terminal velocity.
The water did not feel like liquid; it struck like solid concrete.
The freezing cold was an instantaneous, paralyzing agony that drove every cubic centimeter of breath from Emma’s lungs.
Lake Michigan in deep winter was a predator that killed through shock before drowning could even begin.
Darkness rushed over them—thick, churning, and laced with burning debris that hissed and died as it sank through the frothing depths.
Under the churning surface, the pressure squeezed Emma’s temples.
Her winter clothes and combat gear grew impossibly heavy, pulling her down toward the graveyard of sunken barges and ancient silt.
But through the numbing cold, a hand seized her collar with unyielding force.
Vincent kicked vigorously, his lungs burning behind clamped teeth.
He fought the violent undertow created by the plunging half of the corvette, dragging Emma upward through the vortex of bubbles and diesel scum.
When they broke the surface, the air was bitter enough to tear at their throats.
Emma gasped violently, coughing up foul, brackish water while treading furiously to keep her chin above the swell.
“Breathe!”
Vincent commanded, his voice raw from smoke and lake water.
His dark hair was plastered against his pale forehead, blood trickling from a laceration above his temple where flying glass had scored his brow.
“Look at me, Emma.
Do not stop moving.”
Fifty yards away, the stern of the corvette vanished beneath the waves with a massive, groaning gulp of displaced air.
Swirling eddies of black fuel burned in scattered rings across the rolling swells.
À la périphérie de la fumée, le bourdonnement grave et mécanique de deux moteurs diesel marins perçait le hurlement du vent.
Un bateau pneumatique à coque rigide, peint en noir mat, a percé le rideau de vapeur.
Aux commandes se tenait Marco, sa radio tactique serrée contre sa mâchoire, balayant l’épave avec un projecteur à haute intensité jusqu’à ce que le faisceau atteigne le gilet réfléchissant de Vincent.
“Chef!
Onze heures !
Marco cria par-dessus le rugissement des deux moteurs hors-bord.
Le bateau dériva à leurs côtés avec une précision quasi-pratique.
Quatre agents de sécurité Moretti lourdement armés se sont penchés par-dessus le plat-bord, ont agrippé le harnais d’Emma et l’ont hissée par-dessus le ponton en caoutchouc renforcé.
Vincent suivit une seconde plus tard, roulant sur les plaques du pont avec le disque d’entraînement en titane toujours solidement fixé sous son bras.
Emma s’est effondrée contre le banc, tremblant de façon incontrôlable tandis que le choc lui paralysait les extrémités.
Un opérateur a immédiatement drapé une couverture isolante sur ses épaules, mais ses yeux sombres ne quittaient pas Vincent.
