Goliath Read Online Free PDF Page B

swells become mountainous barriers, rising higher as she spins faster.
    Too strong …
    Rocky sucks in a last desperate breath as the cavitation of the displaced mass of the carrier snatches her about the waist and drags her below.
    She kicks and paddles in protest, wasting precious air as she fights to swim upstream against the maelstrom, the unfathomable suction spinning above the now-submerged wreckage.
    Forty feet … her diving watch displays, unheeded.
    Her pulse pounds in her ears.
    Sixty feet . . . sinister pressure assaults her eardrums as her limbs turn to lead.
    Eighty feet, forty seconds, thirty-one years … and still she is plummeting, ever downward.
    How deep can a human go and survive on a single breath of air? She remembers seeing specials on free-diving and wills herself not to waste precious energy by fighting.

    The haunting sounds of the depths envelop her. Rocky pinches her nose and blows, attempting to rid the pain from her ears. She looks down, falling feetfirst into the deep blue sea. Far below, the Ronald Reagan groans back at her as the once-mighty vessel disappears into murky shadows, approaching its final resting place.
    Please let me go …
    One minute … the pressure dragging her below easing only slightly, the pinch in her ears now daggers.
    One hundred twenty feet … still falling, strength and resolve diminishing with every foot.
    One fifty, her throat and chest on fire.
    At one hundred fifty-eight feet, the carrier releases her.
    The air space in Rocky’s flotation device has been compressed flat beneath six atmospheres of pressure. No longer buoyant, she continues falling, flailing in slow motion, a marionette dancing for Death’s amusement before He takes her.
    She closes her eyes, her body no longer hers, her mind in a fog, the sea ready to squelch the flames in her lungs. Pills were easier. Wish I had my pills. No more pain … no more gain, no more brain, no more fame, no more blame. Good-bye, Mom. Good-bye, Papa Bear.
    Something enormous sideswipes her face. Her eyes burst open against the tremendous impact, its brutality jolting her with adrenaline.
    A cloud of buoyant debris races up from the sunken carrier.
    Willing her arms to move, she reaches for the closest object, misses the first, then the second. She twists her torso, close to passing out as she aims for a large object rising from below … waiting … waiting … her eyes nearly popping out of their sockets as the object suddenly slams into her gut, her chest exploding as she latches on to the bucking bronco, her nose inhaling seawater, her mouth vomiting it back out.
    And still, she refuses to let go.
    The object twists in her grip as it pushes her higher, the helicopter tire somehow settling beneath her, driving her to the surface, spinning her as it rises.
    Rocky loops both legs and the crook of one arm around the tire, pinching her nose with her free hand as Death’s pressing blackness continues pushing in on her peripheral vision. A warm feeling fills her chest as she rises higher, the residual molecules of air in her lungs expanding, easing the scorching pain. With newfound strength, she grips the wheel’s strut tighter, gently expelling air to prevent her lungs from bursting and to keep dissolved nitrogen from forming deadly bubbles in her blood.
    The life vest reexpands, nearly pushing her from the tire.

    And then the incredible sound of life returns in one mighty swoosh as her body is literally launched from the sea. Thrown from the tire, she haltingly inhales a lungful of blessed air, her salt-burned throat heaving with the effort.
    Moaning involuntarily, she swims back to the tire and climbs on, hugging it as feeling slowly returns to her oxygen-deprived limbs.
    Rising.
    Falling.
    Hills of water toss her insides about. She vomits seawater, then closes her eyes, her head pounding, her body shivering from the cold. The sound of circling fighters grows louder.
    And then she is moving.
    Rocky looks up,