A trio of shots rifled into the bridge, mangling steel and kicking up more sand.

The sniper didn’t know if he’d hit his target. He was trying to keep Cabrillo pinned, which likely meant he had more men with him, and they were sneaking up under covering fire.

Juan couldn’t move and he couldn’t stay.

He snatched off his sunglasses and held the mirrored lens up and just over the windowsill, moving so slowly that it looked as though it was nothing more than a creeping shadow. In its convex reflection he could see the plain separating his position from the sniper’s. He breathed a small sigh of relief. There was no assault team threading their way across the desert. Another shot cracked. The round passed through a window well aft of Cabrillo. The sniper hadn’t seen the glasses and was just firing for effect, but now Juan had his blind pegged thanks to a tiny spark of fire from the weapon’s muzzle.

The gunman was a little above Cabrillo’s first estimate, tucked into a fold in the hillside. Juan wondered how long the man had been up there. This situation was obvious proof that there was something important about Karl Petrovski’s eerie boat, though Cabrillo had yet to discern any significance. It was just another rusted hulk littering what had once been the seafloor.

If there were no additional troops coming, why keep an unarmed man pinned down? Why not come yourself and finish the job?

One explanation popped into Cabrillo’s mind and jolted him into action. The sniper was about to get his wish, but Juan had a trick up his sleeve. He was certain that the vessel had been rigged with explosives. The sniper had been out here eradicating all traces of Petrovski’s discovery. From the sniper’s point of view, either his prey died when the bombs detonated or he would make a run for it and the sniper would pick him off from his aerie. Mission accomplished.

“Like hell,” Juan spat as he reached the door leading to the aft compartments.

The hinges were located inside the hallway, so he had to crawl through and partially close the metal door. Protected from the wind, the steel was as hard as the day it had been forged. The hinge pins had bulbous caps that made pulling them out easier for the ship’s crew if the need ever arose. The center one eased out of the hinge as easy as a weed from the ground. The next one came much harder, but Cabrillo managed to free it as well. It was the bottom pin that refused to budge no matter how hard he pulled, and sweat quickly slicked it so he couldn’t find purchase.