Free The Covenant of Genesis by Andy McDermott

to see that the first speedboat had already pulled up at the dock beside the gangway up to the main deck. Behind it, the RIB was coming to a standstill.
    Its occupants jumped on to the dock. Chase assessed the pirates in a flash: dirty, scruffy, the wiry, slightly pot-bellied build of men used to intense bursts of adrenalin-fuelled physical exertion, followed by celebratory excess.
    But there was one man who stood out: taller, harder-faced, conspicuously lacking the cheap gold chains the others wore. Not all the pirates were amateurs; Chase could tell simply from the way the man held his AK - sideways on its strap across his stomach, the barrel pointed down out of harm’s way - that he had received proper military training in the past. The group’s leader.
    He barked an order, then quickly ascended the gangway, his entourage following.
     
    Nina peered round the corner of the passageway, looking back towards Lincoln. She couldn’t just turn her back and abandon him. Maybe their attackers would see he posed no threat and leave him alone, in which case she might be able to return and help . . .
    She froze as a man emerged from the smoke, a red bandanna pulled up over his nose and mouth. He had a rifle in his hands, pointing it at Lincoln. He warily advanced, stopping a few feet from the injured crewman, and shouted back over his shoulder.
    Nina remained still, terrified that he might spot her but unable to look away. The pirate shouted again. More men appeared through the smoke. One of them, clearly the leader, kicked Lincoln’s leg, shouting in Indonesian. The wounded man looked painfully up at the new arrival, who shouted again.
    Finally, Lincoln spoke.
    ‘Fuck . . . you.’
    The briefest flicker of anger crossing his face, the pirate leader shot Lincoln in the forehead with his AK. The back of his skull burst open, dark gore sluicing down the wall behind him.
    Nina clapped a hand over her mouth to stop herself from crying out. Move , she told herself. Run! But her legs remained frozen, pinned to the spot by fear.
    The pirate was about to step over the corpse when something caught his attention. He crouched, lifting something from the bloodied floor.
    The piece of gauze.
    He regarded it for a moment, then looked up, eyes filled with the realisation that someone else was still alive.
    Now Nina ran.
    The ravaged corridor blurred past her as she hunted for a hiding place. She reached the storeroom, the damaged cables still crackling on the wall outside it - then continued past it. She didn’t know what was in the storeroom, but she did know that her lab contained somewhere she could hide.
    Whether she would be safe there was another matter.
     
    His breath recovered, Chase looked through the hole again. The only pirate he could see was standing beside the RIB’s mooring behind the empty speedboat with his AK-47 slung casually over one shoulder. The rumble of the other speedboat’s engine echoed off the ship’s side, still searching for him and Bejo - but in the wrong place, on the far side of the dock’s long arm.
    ‘Wait here,’ he said, then swam under the rear of the upturned boat. He surfaced slowly, only his eyes and nose exposed as he scanned the rest of the dock. The body of one of the Indonesian crewmen was sprawled halfway along it - but there were no more pirates in sight. He looked at the floatplane. The fire had mostly burned itself out, a few patches of spilled fuel still alight on the water below the wrecked wing. Its engine was still running.
    He slipped back inside the boat. ‘I’m going to get to the plane,’ he told Bejo, ‘see if the radio’s still working. If I can contact the Coast Guard, they’ll get someone out here to help us.’
    ‘It could take hours for them to get here, Mr Eddie,’ Bejo warned.
    ‘I’m not sitting under this fucking thing until those arseholes leave. Not while Nina’s still inside the ship.’ He prepared to dive. ‘You wait in here, though. No point both of us