Pitt saw the anchor line was still set, running up into a small locker on the bow. Behind him, he heard the deep rumble of the ship’s engines as its towering hulk advanced. It was too close. Any slip in cutting the anchor line or a delay in starting the motor and their boat would be smashed to bits, with them in it.

With the regulator back between his teeth, he shook his head at Loren and waved for her to come closer.

She hurried to the side and reached to help him aboard.

Instead he reached past her hand and hooked his arm around her waist.

Before she could react, she felt herself being jerked over the side. She yelped as her body hit the cold water. Kicking and floundering, she gasped for a last breath of air. The towering mountain of steel was now just yards away.

Then she was snatched like a rag doll and disappeared beneath the rippling surface.

Chapter 5

5

THE FREIGHTER NEITHER SLOWED NOR TURNED. Its broad steel hull smacked into the speedboat, severing the anchor line before burying the tiny vessel in the bow’s wake. The small boat bounced along the ship’s hull and then remarkably popped to the surface, where it bobbed in the freighter’s receding wake, its port beam only slightly mangled.

Somewhere beneath the surface, Loren found herself clinging to her husband in a desperate plunge to the seafloor. Startled by the cold-water immersion, she nearly panicked when she felt Pitt yank her to the depths without air. Then she felt him force his regulator into her mouth while wedging her arm around his buoyancy compensator harness. Despite the cold, her nerves began to settle. She began to assist their progress by kicking as well, remembering to clear her ears as they descended deeper.

The shimmering light of the surface water grew dark as the black hull passed over them. Loren glanced up, feeling like she could reach out and touch the barnacle-encrusted plates only a few feet away.

Though they had escaped the mass of the hull, Pitt continued driving deeper with frantic kicks of his fins. His lungs felt like they would burst, which only made him push harder until they finally reached the seabed. Seeing a bus-sized rise of coral, he pulled Loren along its curved side. As their knees touched the hard bottom, he grabbed a nodule for leverage.

Loren realized her husband had not taken a breath of air for almost the entire descent. She quickly passed the regulator to his lips. Her pulse racing and her eyes wide, she peered into Pitt’s face mask. He gazed back at her calmly and winked, as if cheating death was a daily occurrence.