Chapter 14 - The Flare in the Dark
The 12-gauge marine flare struck Arthur square in the center of his ballistic vest with the force of a sledgehammer. The magnesium round ignited on impact, erupting into a blinding, twelve-hundred-degree plume of brilliant crimson fire that seared through his synthetic jacket.
Arthur shrieked in agony, stumbling backward and crashing into the main fuel lines running along the bulkhead.
Miller lunged forward with a roar, raising his service weapon, but the blinding phosphorus flare filled the cramped cabin with thick, suffocating smoke and white-hot light. Lena scrambled beneath the smoke, diving toward the companionway ladder.
Miller fired blindly through the haze, the slug gouging a chunk of mahogany from the step inches from Lena's hand. She scrambled onto the rain-swept deck, coughing violently, the salt air reviving her battered lungs.
Behind her, the laptop let out a high-frequency chime from the smoking cabin: DECRYPTION COMPLETE. BROADCAST TRANSMITTING.
"Stop the signal!" Miller screamed from below, his voice drowning in the hiss of the burning fuel line.
Lena didn't wait. She grabbed the emergency mooring line, releasing the trawler from Pier 42. As the boat drifted into the harbor current, a deafening explosion ripped through the engine room below deck.
A fireball erupted into the night sky, throwing Miller and Arthur’s burning men into the freezing sea. The shockwave knocked Lena off the edge of the pier, sending her plunging downward into the black, churning waters of the bay.
The freezing ocean knocked the wind straight from her chest. The cold was instantaneous, cutting through her hoodie like thousands of icy needles, pulling her down toward the dark harbor floor. Her limbs felt heavy; the remaining toxins in her blood fought against her will to swim.
*Fight,* a voice whispered in her mind—not her own, but the soft, clear voice of Victoria Reyes from the forgotten edges of her childhood. Swim, Lena.
With the last reserve of strength in her aching body, Lena kicked upward, clawing through the black water until her head broke the surface.
She gasped for air, choking on salt spray, and grabbed hold of a rusted barnacle-encrusted piling beneath the neighboring pier. Across the water, The Victoria was engulfed in a towering column of orange flame, lighting up the harbor like a funeral pyre.
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Sirens wailed in the distance. Dozens of them.
Not county cruisers, but heavy federal tactical vehicles rolling onto the pier approach, their blue-and-red flashing beacons cutting through the rolling sea fog. The transmission had gone through.
