66 Metres Read Online Free Page A

console, breathing from a small bail-out tank, clutching a bright orange box to his chest. He held a pistol in one hand, wrapped in a transparent plastic bag. Smart. Because of the bag she couldn’t tell what make it was, but it would be dry, and so would still fire underwater. He pinched his nose between finger and thumb to equalise pressure as the helicopter continued to sink, and stared towards her, blinking hard.The chomping of the barge’s propeller ramped up. Nadia had one advantage – she could see clearly because she had a mask. He would only see a blur. She switched off the torch, anchored arms and legs around the rotor, and waited.
    She’d surfed once, a lifetime ago, and when the barge’s wake came, it was like a giant swell picking her up. An underwater wall of water seized the helicopter, and began rolling it. She held tight as she rose then plunged. It was a nightmarish fairground ride, water swirling around her, pulling at her mask and regulator. All the time she watched the pilot, hoping he’d bolt for the surface. He didn’t. He knew that divers would be coming to rescue him. And he was right; as the barge’s engine receded, a speedboat’s engine revved somewhere above them. She couldn’t wait any longer. She switched on the torch again, and pulled herself along the rotor as the helicopter continued to cartwheel in the black water. Then she remembered what she’d forgotten during her rapid risk assessment. The bridge, with its supporting arches. She glanced up, and had just enough time to fold her forearms in front of her face.
    The cockpit didn’t shatter when it slammed into the angled concrete, instead it ripped apart like paper, spilling the pilot into open, churning water, tearing the small air tank from his mouth. One arm gripping the orange box, he raised the gun and fired three shots. The first two fizzed past her, leaving slug-like trails in the gloom. The third punched into her chest, too slow to do serious damage. He might have fired again, but the wake slapped him into the arch wall, knocking him out.
    She swam fast toward him. Divers above splashed into the water, cones of light from high-powered torches filtering through the blackness. They would find her in seconds. She grabbed the box, and readied to kick away from the wreck. But the pilot… The divers might not find him in time. Switching off her torch, she took out her regulator and rammed it into his mouth, purging it so it jetted air into his lungs. She closed off his nostrils with finger and thumb to stop him drowning through his nose, and checked he was still breathing. Then she finned fast, one arm wrapped around his torso, as they washed along with the current and the barge’s wake, away from the helicopter the divers were about to infest.
    After thirty seconds her lungs were bursting. She found her stab jacket deflate hose and breathed from it, swallowing a mouthful of rancid Thames first. She and the pilot sank as she slowly breathed her jacket empty, until they hit the clay-like bottom. They drifted to a stop, and she tried to think. She dug out a nose-clip and clamped it to seal the pilot’s nostrils, so she would have a hand free. They were probably fifty metres the other side of the bridge. Lights flickered in the distance behind her from where the divers would be crawling all over the helicopter, looking for the box, presuming the pilot drowned, knowing he’d wash up later. Armed police would be scouring the area up top, looking for the drone and its pilot, who’d need line-of-sight to operate it at night. Added to that, Janssen wouldn’t wait long.
    The solution was obvious: leave the pilot. Let him drown. There were all sorts of ways to rationalise it later. Instead, she knelt on the cloying river bottom, the Rose locked between her knees, and undid her stab jacket harnesses. She freed the tank and, with some effort, strapped the stab jacket around the