And then he allowed himself to sink into the Water, under the speeding bow of the Pibber!
His legs went under water finally.
Then his waist, then his stomach, then his chest.
Slowly his shoulders edged under, followed by his neck.
Then, with a final, deep breath, Race allowed his head to go under the surface.
The World went eerily silent.
There was no roar of outboard motors, no thumping Of choppers, no clatter of automatic gunfire. Just the constant vibrating hum of boat engines echoing across the underwater spectrum.
The steeply-slanted grey hull of the Pibber filled Races field of vision. Small specks of God-only-knew-what rushed past his face at a million miles an hour, disappearing into the murky green darkness that lay beyond his flailing feet.
Slowly, deliberately hand over hand, Race lowered himself down the length of the anchor rope, heading aft along the hull of the Pibber, holding his breath for dear life—while still holding onto his cap with his teeth!
He was about a third of the way down the length of the hull when the first reptilian shape materialised from the green darkness around him.
A caiman.
It swooped in alongside the speeding Pibber, opening its mouth right next to his flailing feet, and with a rattlesnake- quick snapping motion, lunged viciously at his sneakers,
Race lifted his legs up just as the caiman's jaws came crunching together, catching nothing but water, and the big reptile, unable to keep up with the speeding Pibber, shrank prizeless into the hazy green darkness behind him.
Race desperately needed air. His lungs burned. He felt bile crawling up the back of his throat.
He quickened his pace down the rope until, finally, he found what he was looking for.
The diver's hatch.
Yes!
Race quickly reached up into the hatch and punched upwards with his fist, knocking its interior lid off. Then he shoved his head tip through it, his head broke the surface - inside the lower cabin of the Pibber!
Race quickly spat his Yankees cap out of his mouth and Sucked in every ounce of air that he could.
Then, when he had got his breath back he hauled himself up through the hatch and fell in a clumsy heap onto the floor of the cabin—battered bruised and absolutely breathless but glad as hell to be alive.
Doogie Kennedy ran across the open deck of the last helipad barge with a trail of sparks strafing the deck behind him.
As soon as he had seen Race go under the bow of the Pibber, he had opened fire on the four Nazis in its wheelhouse, Now they were returning his fire as he fnade a beak for the seaplane being towed behind the big helipad barge.
He came to the stem edge of the barge and quickly unlooped the rope that secured the Goos to it.
Then he leapt across onto the bow of the seaplane and yanked open the small entry hatch situated on top of its nose; He dived head-first down into the hatch; and several seconds later inside the cockpit of the plane,
Doogie punched the ignition switch and the Goose's two wing-mounted propellers immediately kicked into gear, at first rotating slowly, and then abruptly snapping into rapid blurring whizz.
The seaplane pulled away from the helipad barge, the Nazis' bullets pining against its bodywork.
In response, Doogie rotated the Goose on the river's surface so that it pointed at the deck of his recently abandoned Pibber.
Then he jammed on the trigger of his control stick.
Instantly, a deafening blare of 20mm machine-gun fire spewed out from the Gatling gun mounted on the side of the Goose,
Three of the Nazis on the Pibber dropped immediately— hit square in their chests by the Goose's powerful fire.
The fourth one fell too, but of his own and dropping quickly out of the line of fire.
'God, i love these 20-millimetre guns', Doogie said
On the Pibber, Race had been standing just behind the small metal doorway that led back up o he wheelhouse when Doogie's gunfire had assailed the boat.
When at last the gunfire stopped Race peered out the doorway to see that only one of the originally four enemies was still alive—he was lying on the deck of the Pibber, reloading his Beretta;
It was his chance.
Race took a moment to steel his nerves, then he flung open the door, levelled his SIG-Sauer at the surprised Nazi, and pulled the trigger.
Click!
The SIG's slide was racked back into the open position.
No bullets!
