Detective Danny Cavanaugh 01 - The Brink

the surface. He pierced the surface of the Potomac, hungrily feeding on the scorched air around him. Although he only traveled what he figured was the length of a swimming pool, Danny couldn’t see their raft anywhere. Instead, he stared at pools of fire burning on the river and scattered pieces of airplane bobbing up and down. He also noticed the last thing he saw just before he and Sydney escaped the raft. It was the boat at the end of the missile’s smoky tail.
    Danny took a few strokes toward it but then remembered the person who had just saved his life. Where was Sydney?
    He frantically splashed around in every direction. He was about to yell for her when he noticed a familiar body once again clad only in a bra and panties. She was slicing through the water like a torpedo, heading for his same intended target.

Chapter 63
    Sydney pumped out twenty fierce strokes before taking a breath. As she did, she caught a glimpse of the boat in front of her. The fires that continued to burn on the water behind her cast a menacing glow around it. She was only thirty feet away when she slipped underneath the water. Plagued by zero visibility, Sydney stiffened her arms out in front of her and scissor-kicked toward the boat’s hull. She started toward the surface when something brushed alongside of her. She realized she made an awful mistake when she grabbed for what she thought was Danny only to feel a wetsuit and then a scuba tank.
    It’s the person who launched the missile!
    Sydney clamped her hand on the diver’s wrist. Then she swiveled her legs forward and locked them around his waist. He clawed at her legs, trying to escape. He dug his fingers into her thighs, but Sydney wouldn’t let go. She reached out through the black water, felt his mask, and ripped it from his head. He let go of her thighs, and she gripped his waist even harder. She was about to reach for his regulator when she felt a sharp blade against her throat.
    Sydney instantly released her legs, and like a caught fish now being released, her assailant wriggled free of her and swam away.
    Sydney shot to the surface as fast as she could. She was only feet away from the boat’s swim platform. She lunged for it, hoping she could spot Danny and warn him of the diver.
    She scurried up the swim platform and scrambled to every corner of the boat, searching the water for Danny. “Danny! Danny!”
    “Over here!”
    The sound came from beyond the bow of the boat. Sydney dashed to it and finally noticed Danny waving at her. He was treading water a good thirty yards away. She was about to yell at him to get out of the water when she looked past him at strange lights in the sky. They hovered where they were for a moment and then spread apart into three different clusters. As they approached her, the unmistakable chopping of helicopter blades quickly drowned out every other noise.

Chapter 64
    Danny turned as soon as he heard the helicopters. Gunships!
    They had to get out of there. The only option was to try and swim away from the boat as fast as possible. There was little chance they could outswim three helicopters, but they had to at least try.
    He looked back at the boat. Where was Sydney? An instant later, he saw her. She was climbing down to the swim platform, dragging an oxygen tank behind her. She hugged it as she splashed into the water.
    Danny didn’t think twice. He swam as fast as he could for her. The water around him was trembling from the helicopter noise, but he figured that as long as he wasn’t in their direct light, they couldn’t see him.
    The burning sensation in his shoulders from the surge of lactic acid was finally too much to handle. Danny stopped swimming and wiped the water from his eyes. He was now only five feet away from the boat’s swim platform. He looked up in the sky, the blinding curtain of light nearly on top of him.
    “Danny!”
    He looked at the boat’s port side and saw Sydney’s head bobbing in the water. He dove under the water and headed in her direction just as the boat was awash in the choppers’ floodlights.
    Danny surfaced next to Sydney. She grabbed him, pressing him into the sliver of darkness that hung underneath the boat’s deck.
    “We’ve got to get out of here,” he told her. “They’ll have people in the water any second!”
    He barely spoke the last word before an object materialized from the water in front of his face. It was the scuba tank’s regulator.
    “Let’s just hope there’s enough