Patriot (A Jack Sigler Continuum Novella) by Jeremy Robinson, J. Kent Holloway Page B

He twisted in the water, focusing his eyes as best he could. He saw a ghastly serpentine shape thrashing through the water on the other end of his leg. The shape was long—easily larger than fifteen feet—with a sharply pointed fin jutting up from its back. A powerful, two-pronged tail whipped back and forth, as its massive hammer-shaped head wrenched at the flesh of his useless leg.
    Son of a …
    He let go of the rope, and his right hand brushed past something cold and metallic tucked into his belt. He reached for it, and felt the bone-carved handle of some type of dagger. Forcing the pain into the back of his mind—a trick he’d perfected over the centuries—he grabbed hold of the knife, yanked it from his belt and blindly slashed down at the massive hammerhead. The blade glanced across the shark’s rough skin to little effect. But the blow startled the animal enough to ease up on his leg. It was just enough for him to jerk himself outside of the creature’s immediate reach. As he did so, he watched as the unfocused object that could only be his lower leg drifted away and slowly sank to the ocean’s floor.
    The hammerhead, sensing the limb’s descent, dove headfirst toward it. Its tail wagged frantically to propel it toward its leathery meal. Fortunately, the old pirate had very little blood left within him to bleed out. He watched as only a small, six-inch cloud of dark fluid leaked from his leg wound.
    Sensing this was his chance, he tugged on the rope once more with his free hand, and felt it jerk him toward the surface once more. He glanced up. Though his vision was still hindered by years of slumber, he could just make out the darkening sky above him. It appeared that clouds loomed overhead. The makings of a storm. And rocking from side to side, just a few feet to his right, was the keel-shaped shadow of a small ship—a cutter of some kind, not his own frigate.
    As he ascended, propelled by reformed muscles and sinews, he peered down again just in time to see the hammerhead rushing hungrily toward him. Even worse, two others were approaching from just under the ship. The puny purge of blood that had seeped from his leg had drawn the creatures straight to him. Tethered to the rope as he was, he was little more than fish bait with no room to move around. The sharks had the advantage of the sea at their disposal, but he had millennia of experience. It was he, not these creatures, that was the apex predator here, and before this day was out, he was going to show them.
    With a flick of his wrist, he cut through the rope securing him to the cutter, whipped around in the water, and immediately began swimming toward the closest shark. The grin on his face matched those of the animals he faced. Sharp and infinitely deadly.
     
     
    “Cap’n!” cried one of the sailors on the other end of the line.
    Reardon turned to see the man gripping the sliced end of the rope.
    “Bloody ‘ell.” He stalked over to the man, and took the rope from him with a jerk. A brief glance revealed what happened. “He cut the blasted thing.”
    Finkle moved over to them, and examined it. “Now, why on Earth would he do something like that?”
    Reardon shrugged. “Maybe he saw the Hound ? Maybe he’s attempting to swim his way to them?”
    “I don’t think so, Cap’n,” another sailor, Mr. Leighfield, said. “We felt him pullin’ on the line. We begun draggin’ him back up, then something yanked him back down hard. Figure he was maybe bein’ attacked by one of them sharks we seen earlier. Then a minute later, he tugged again. We began pullin’ him back up… Then we had nothin’ on the line.”
    Reardon whipped his head around toward the mambo bokor. “Witch! What do you think this means?”
    “Got no idea, Capitaine ,” she said, cocking her head to the left, as if listening to something. “But I think your sailor dere be on to something. If dere be sharks in dose waters, and dey be after Lanme Wa for supper, den Lanme