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From what Remo could tell before the sea went dark, the boat that had dropped
the depth charge was the same one Petrovina Bulganin had come from. The
woman's useless oxygen hose had stretched along the seafloor and up to the
side of the bobbing boat.
He glanced over at her.
Petrovina's boots were clamped to the scow's hold, keeping her upright. But
her head was bowed. Her arms floated ghoul-like in the dirty water. She had
lapsed into unconsciousness. Asleep, she would last a few seconds longer than
if she were flailing awake, but she didn't have much time left. Her heartbeat
was already growing thready.
Even worse for Petrovina, a piece of flying shrapnel had cracked her mask. Her
helmet was taking in water.
Remo frowned in annoyance. Why did everything bad always happen to him?
Wishing he could find a loophole in his conscience that would allow him to
just swim off, he glanced back up.
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The sea was still dark, but not entirely. At least not to eyes trained in
Sinanju. Where the silt thinned he could just glimpse the outline of a boat's
hull. After launching the depth charge, Petrovina's trawler had puttered
closer.
Remo zeroed in on the boat through the sea of floating trash. He grabbed a
fistful of diving suit in one hand. The dying flutter of Petrovina's
struggling heart carried like sonic waves to his hypersensitive ears.
Touching his toes to the scow's rusty hull, Remo flexed his calf muscles. He
took off like a fired torpedo, launching straight up at the bobbing boat. The
unconscious Russian agent trailed in his wake. A limp, living rag doll in the
last gasping moments before death.
THE MEN ON THE TRAWLER had ridden out the explosion gripping chains and rails.
The sea had churned, vomiting an enormous bubble of white that rocked the
trawler and nearly capsized her. After the waves subsided and the boat began
to chug into the spot where Petrovina Bulganin had walked in her diving suit,
the former KGB men scrambled over to the edge of the soaking wet deck.
Their matching black suits looked as if they'd been bought off the rack at
Woolworth's back in 1977. Three fat ties dangled out over open sea.
Eager eyes searched the field of risen trash and floating fish for human body
parts. They were surprised when the part that popped up right next to the boat
was not a woman's arm or leg, which was really what they were looking far. It
was a man's head. The head was talking to them.
"Do svidaniya," Remo Williams said.
There were three shocked intakes of air. Three meaty hands grabbed
simultaneously for shoulder holsters.
Deciding just this once to opt out of the traditional Russian 9 mm handshake,
Remo reached up and snagged three fat dangling ties. He yanked, and the men
and their guns were dumped overboard.
"I should have known there were Russians in town," Remo griped as the men
fell. "A million tons of rotting garbage can't cover the stench of boiled
beets and vodka."
As the Russian agents splashed in panic amid the garbage, Remo lifted
Petrovina Bulganin from below the surface and tossed her onto the boat. She
slapped to the deck with a watery splat.
Another moment and Remo was over the side. He padded barefoot across the deck.
His white T-shirt and baggy black chinos clung tight to his body as he bent
over Petrovina.
He pulled off her helmet. A shower of seawater poured out, splattering the
already soaked deck. Reaching around, Remo massaged her lower spine. With the
other hand he worked the heart and lungs. Petrovina's pale face reddened. All
at once her eyes shot open. Gasping desperately for air, she turned her head,
coughing up water. Bleary-eyed, she twisted toward her savior, still gagging
on seawater. "Who are you?" Petrovina demanded as she pushed herself up to a
sitting position.
"My name is Mr. Thank-You-For-Saving-My-Life," Remo said. "But you can call me
I-Would-Have-Drowned-If-It-Wasn't-For-You."
She hardly heard. Her attention was drawn to the side of the boat where the
three former KGB men were pawing through floating trash trying to swim back to
their vessel.
A light switched on in her eyes. "Korkusku," she hissed.
"God bless you," Remo said.
Petrovina scarcely noticed him. Scrambling to her feet, she pushed past Remo.
Diving boots clomping the deck, she stormed around the cabin to the front of
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