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    He nearly made it. The platform edge was just inches from his fingertips when it started to slip away from him, the gap widening as the ship surged ahead. He leaped off the barracuda, stretching out full length, lunging for a metal rail at the base of the platform. His fingers snagged and then lost it as the boat powered away from him in the dark water.
    There was a rushing sound, and Chisnall spun around to see the narrow line of a wire rope cutting through the water behind him. The sonar array! He launched himself sideways, grasping the rope with one hand, then the other. It was wet, and his hands slipped. He managed one large gulp of air before sliding underwater. The water came at him faster and faster as the ship picked up speed. His facemask dislodged and began to fill. He locked his hands around the wire, trying to hang on. His lungs were already starting to burn. Rushing water buffeted his face, and he dared not open his eyes.
    Tightening his grip with one hand, he managed to slide his other hand forward a few inches. It immediately slippedback, losing most, but not all, of what he had gained. He slid his other hand along, with no better result. A wave of dizziness flooded over him. But he continued.
Slide a hand forward, slip a little back. Slide the other hand forward, slip a little back
. His mind was empty. Nothing existed except moving one hand, then the other, until at last he could do no more. The pain in his chest was unbearable; his brain was spinning. His mouth opened but instead of water, he inhaled a lungful of pure, sweet sea air.
    Chisnall took another breath, but this time got water. Spluttering and choking, he took another frantic gasp and got air. His mind began to focus. He was out of the water just enough so that he was able to catch a breath in the troughs of the waves.
    Timing his breaths carefully, he opened his eyes and glanced up at the stern of the ship. It seemed to tower above him, although it was only a few feet away. An easy climb on an obstacle course, dry, with fresh muscles. Here in the rough seas, at the limits of his endurance, it was impossible. He knew beyond a doubt that he could never make it. But he had to try.
    Chisnall wrapped his legs around the wire and twisted his ankles together, locking the cold metal between them. Without warning, the boat began to turn, a sharp veer to starboard. The force of it almost wrenched him from the wire, and he screamed in frustration and agony. But it was his salvation. As the boat turned, the wire swung to the right and suddenly the metal stairs that led to the platform were almost within his grasp. The impossible now seemed possible, and that thought gave him renewed energy.
    He stretched out a hand, scrabbling at the edge of the shortflight of steps. His fingers touched it, then slid away. Again he tried, and this time the waves were kind and the rocking motion of the boat brought the stairs to him. He gripped it with a strength that he didn’t know he had. The boat began to straighten. He flopped into the water, his fingers steel claws on the railing of the stairs. He swung his other arm up and now both hands locked on, the rest of his body bouncing over the water behind the ship, buffeted by the turbulence from the propellers below. Two hands became two hands and a knee, then two knees, and finally he collapsed onto the platform.
    He could have lain there and gone to sleep, or at least rested until he got some feeling back in his numbed fingers and legs, until the fires that burned in his muscles faded. But there was no time for that.
    There were shouts coming from the deck above him. They were hunting again.
    Price could hear the pinging through the cool water even before the Tsar spoke. It sounded like the tolling of a high-pitched bell.
A warning bell
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    “Active pinging,” the Tsar said. “Cavitation has increased, getting louder. They’re coming this way.”
    “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Wilton