Just as he reached the rear deck, his eye caught a sudden movement to his left. He spun and saw a man by his left shoulder swing what looked like a pipe. He ducked into the man’s torso so the pipe went over him, gave the man a quick jujitsu punch to the jaw, and held him in a choke hold until he was unconscious. He found a length of rope on a cleat, used it to hog-tie him, and then tore the man’s shirt to make a gag.

Sam saw the wooden crates on the rear deck covered with a tarp. He pulled back the tarp and quietly lowered ten of them into the lifeboat at the stern. They were heavy, and it took nearly an hour of backbreaking work. Then Sam draped the bow rope in the water and freed two pins on the davits to lower the boat to the river. The lifeboat made an unexpectedly loud ratchet sound as it hit the water with a splash. Behind Sam there came a sound of running feet and a call: “Stashu?”

Sam jumped from the stern, grabbed his tanks, mask, and flippers from the propeller shaft and put them on and cleared his mask as he sank deeper.

Remi had seen the loose bow rope and now she held it out and they both grasped it and pulled. She and Sam swam, diving deeper and pulling the boat along the surface above them. As they went, Sam kept looking behind them and around the yacht to be sure none of the crew were jumping into the water after them.

First came the muffled sounds of shots from the yacht above the surface, but with each shot they heard a chuff sound as a bullet plowed under, leaving a line of churned water and bubbles behind it. Each one pierced straight into the water until it exhausted its momentum at about four feet, then simply sank into the dark water below them.

Next Sam and Remi heard the engine start and knew the propeller shaft was spinning freely. Without the propeller, the engine was just noise. The helmsman didn’t seem to understand at first because he just gunned the engine harder and louder while the crew at the bow used a power capstan to weigh anchor.

As soon as the anchor was off the bottom, the yacht began to drift downstream, powerless to fight the current or to steer. The anchor kept rising nonetheless, and the boat drifted farther and farther from Sam, Remi, and the lifeboat. At some point the engine stopped, but by then its noise was so far away that Sam and Remi had lost it among the many passing engines above them on the Danube. Sam guessed that they would drop anchor again, but the yacht was too far away to pick out in the murky water.