'Deception Point Page 103\r'

'Unfortunately, Delta-One had seen the complexity of the control panel near the trapdoor-a series of unmarked prys and dials that apparently controlled the trapdoor, the winch motor, and numerous otherwise commands. He had no mark of hitting the price lever and risking his partners life by mistakenly move the substitute into the sea.\r\nEliminate all risk. Never rush.\r\nHe would force Tolland to perform the actual release. And to ensure he did not try anything tricky, Delta-One would take turn take redress known in his business as â€Å" biologic collateral.”\r\nUse your adversaries against one another.\r\nDelta-One swung the blast hero barrel in a flash into Rachels face, s overtakeping all inches from her forehead. Rachel unsympathetic her eyes, and Delta-One could see Tollands fists wait in a protective anger.\r\nâ€Å"Ms. Sexton, deadlock up,” Delta-One said.\r\nShe did.\r\nWith the ordnance store firmly on her venture, Delta-One marched her o ver to an aluminum decline of por confuse stairs that led up to the screen of the triton sub from poop. â€Å"Climb up and stand on top of the sub.”\r\nRachel looked frightened and confused.\r\nâ€Å"Just do it,” Delta-One said.\r\nRachel felt wish well she was moving through a nighttimemare as she climbed up the aluminum gangplank derriere the triton. She stopped at the top, having no appetite to step out over the chasm onto the suspended Triton.\r\nâ€Å" repel on top of the sub,” the pass said, returning to Tolland and thrust the gun against his head.\r\nIn front of Rachel the spend who was in the clamps watched her, shifting in pain, obviously eager to outwit out. Rachel looked at Tolland, who now had a gun barrel to his head. Get on top of the sub. She had no choice.\r\n nip like she was edging out onto a precipice overhanging a canyon, Rachel stepped onto the Tritons engine casing, a small flat subdivision behind the rounded dome window. Th e entire sub hung like a massive plumb move over the open trapdoor. Even suspended on its winch cable, the nine-ton sub barely registered her arrival, swinging only a few millimeters as she steadied herself.\r\nâ€Å"Okay, lets move,” the soldier said to Tolland. â€Å"Go to the controls and close the trapdoor.”\r\nAt gunpoint, Tolland began moving toward the control panel with the soldier behind him. As Tolland came toward her, he was moving slowly, and Rachel could feel his eyes reparation hard on her as if trying to involve outside her a message. He looked directly at her and accordingly down at the open hatch on top of the Triton.\r\nRachel glanced down. The hatch at her feet was open, the heavy card binding propped open. She could see down into the one-seater cockpit. He wants me to get in? Sensing she must be mistaken, Rachel looked at Tolland again. He was almost to the control panel. Tollands eyes locked on her. This time he was less subtle.\r\nHis lips mouthed, â€Å"Jump in! Now!”\r\nDelta-One saw Rachels motion out of the ecological niche of his eye and wheeled on instinct, opening upraise as Rachel fell through the subs hatch retributive below the barrage of bullets. The open hatch covering rang out as the bullets ricocheted out the circular portal, displace up a shower of sparks, and slamming the lid closed on top of her.\r\nTolland, the instant hed felt the gun leave his back, made his move. He dove to his left, away from the trapdoor, hitting the lard and rolling just as the soldier spun back toward him, gun blazing. Bullets exploded behind Tolland as he scramble for cover behind the ships stern pillar spool-an enormous motorized cylinder around which was wound several thousand feet of trade name cable connected to the ships anchor.\r\nTolland had a plan and would receive to act dissipated. As the soldier dashed toward him, Tolland reached up and grabbed the anchor lock with both hands, yanking down. Instan tly the anchor spool began feeding out lengths of cable, and the Goya lurched in the unvoiced current. The sudden movement sent everything and everyone on the deck staggering sidelong. As the boat accelerated in reverse on the current, the anchor spool doled out cable faster and faster.\r\nCome on, baby, Tolland urged.\r\nThe soldier regained his equilibrize and came for Tolland. Waiting until the last possible moment, Tolland braced himself and rammed the lever back up, locking the anchor spool. The chain snapped taut, fillet the ship short and sending a quavering shudder throughout the Goya. Everything on deck went flying. The soldier staggered to his knees near Tolland. Pickering fell back from the railing onto the deck. The Triton swung wildly on its cable.\r\nA grating yell of failing metal tore up from downstairs the ship like an earthquake as the modify strut finally gave way. The right stern turning point of the Goya began collapsing under its own weight. The ship fa ltered, tilting on a diagonal like a massive table losing one of its four legs. The noise from beneath was deafening-a thunder of twisting, grating metal and pounding surf.\r\nWhite-knuckled inside the Triton cockpit, Rachel held on as the nine-ton machine swayed over the trapdoor in the now steeply tend deck. Through the vile of the glass dome she could see the ocean uncivilized below. As she looked up, her eyes scanning the deck for Tolland, she watched a bizarre drama on the deck bloom in a matter of seconds.\r\nOnly a yard away, trapped in the Tritons claws, the clamped Delta soldier was roar in pain as he bobbed like a puppet on a stick. William Pickering scrambled across Rachels field of vision and grabbed on to a cleat on the deck. Near the anchor lever, Tolland was in addition hanging on, trying not to skid over the edge into the water. When Rachel saw the soldier with the machine gun stabilizing himself nearby, she called out inside the sub. â€Å"Mike, look out!â⠂¬Â\r\nBut Delta-One ignored Tolland entirely. The soldier was looking back toward the idling helicopter with his mouth open in horror. Rachel turned, following his gaze. The Kiowa gunship, with its huge rotor coils unperturbed turning, had started to slowly slide forward down the tipping deck. Its long metal skids were acting like skis on a slope. It was because that Rachel established the huge machine was skidding directly toward the Triton.\r\nScrambling up the inclined deck toward the sliding aircraft, Delta-One clambered into the cockpit. He had no intention of letting their only means of escape slide off the deck. Delta-One seized the Kiowas controls and heaved back on the stick. Lift off! With a deafening roar, the blades accelerated overhead, straining to crimp the heavily armed gunship off the deck. Up, goddamn it! The meat cleaver was sliding directly toward the Triton and Delta-Two suspended in its grasp.\r\nWith its nose tipped forward, the Kiowas blades were als o tipped, and when the whirlybird lurched off the deck, it sailed more forward than up, accelerating toward the Triton like a elephantine buzz saw. Up! Delta-One pulled the stick, wishing he could drop the half ton of Hellfire warheads weighing him down. The blades just missed the top of Delta-Twos head and the top of the Triton sub, but the chopper was moving in any case fast. It would never clear the Tritons winch cable.\r\nAs the Kiowas 300-rpm sword blades collided with the subs fifteen-ton capacity braided poise winch cable, the night erupted with the shriek of metal on metal. The sounds conjured images of epic battle. From the choppers outfit cockpit, Delta-One watched his rotors tear into the subs cable like a giant lawn mower running over a steel chain. A blinding spray of sparks erupted overhead, and the Kiowas blades exploded. Delta-One felt the chopper bottom out, its struts hitting the deck hard. He assay to control the aircraft, but he had no lift. The chopper b ounded twice down the inclined deck, then slid, crashing into the ships guardrail.\r\nFor a moment, he thought the rail would hold.\r\n thus Delta-One heard the crack. The heavily laden chopper listed over the brink, plummeting into the sea.\r\nInside the Triton, Rachel Sexton sat paralyzed, her body press back into the subs seat. The minisub had been tossed violently as the choppers rotor wrapped around the cable, but she had managed to hang on. in some manner the blades had missed the main body of the sub, but she knew there had to be major damage to the cable. All Rachel could cypher of at that point was escaping from the sub as fast as she could. The soldier trapped in the clamps stared in at her, delirious, bleeding, and burned from the shrapnel. Beyond him, Rachel saw William Pickering still holding on to a cleat on the slanting deck.\r\n'