Black Flag: A Taskforce Story Read Online Free

Black Flag: A Taskforce Story
Book: Black Flag: A Taskforce Story Read Online Free
Author: Brad Taylor
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Contemporary, Contemporary Fiction
Pages:
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visibility out to a hundred feet, and it didn’t take long to find the anomaly. It was a boat, twenty-five to thirty feet long, lying on its side on the sandy bottom. Various artifacts were scattered in a circle around it, twinkling in the light like some giant hand had thrown them from the heavens to have them sink to the ocean floor, forming a wreath around the wreck. We were looking for a section of PVC pipe capped off on both ends, but nothing like that was lying in the sand next to the boat.
    Knuckles pointed to the bow and I nodded, letting him take that section. I went to the stern. The first thing I noticed was a blackness all around the inboard engines, like the boat had caught on fire, then I saw a gaping hole in the rear of the engine housing. It didn’t look like something that would occur from having the bottom sheared off, especially if the boat had sunk immediately. It looked like the boat had blown up, then burned a little bit before going down.
    I swam to the hull and saw that it did have a large hole in it, but it, too, was ringed with blackness, as if the hole had been caused by an explosive force instead of a kinetic contact at speed with a reef.
    I heard metal on metal tapping and looked for Knuckles, knowing he was trying to get my attention. I located him and saw him pump his arm up and down, then hold up a section of PVC. He’d found the pipe.
    He signaled that he was going topside, and I told him I was going to poke around a little bit more. He looked a little confused behind his mask and signaled once more that he was going topside. I nodded and signaled again that I was staying under. He shook his head and began to ascend.
    I poked around the boat for another twenty minutes, finding absolutely no evidence that it had run aground on a reef, which I’d honestly been wondering about since we’d entered within range of Navassa Island. The reef in question was a good seven feet from the surface, which I suppose could have been halved during some tidal-type surge, but even so, this boat’s draft was probably two or three feet. It didn’t make a lot of sense.
    I checked my gauge and saw I had just over 500 PSI left. That meant about ten minutes, given my breathing rate, which was inside my reserve threshold. I started powering to the surface, running the ramifications through my head.
    The sea anchor had let our boat drift, so when I broke the surface I was a little disoriented. I did a circle and found it about twenty meters away. With Knuckles in the bow holding his hands in the air.
    What the hell?
    I said not a word and began swimming toward the boat, keeping my eye on my partner, wanting to see that I was mistaken. Instead, Knuckles punched one of the Romanians in the face, and I stopped my movement, treading water. He turned and dove over the side away from me while the other Romanian assholes started digging into a duffel bag they’d brought with them. They rose and started firing what looked like MP5s. I saw Dylan holding his arms over his head like a child, cowering on the deck, then I went under, clearing my regulator. I started swimming toward the location I’d seen Knuckles enter the water, seeing the rounds slice through the ocean. I went deeper.
    Bullets lose killing capacity very fast in water, mainly because it’s a hell of a lot thicker than air, but they’re still deadly up close. I got under the hull and saw Knuckles stroking hard to get out of the range of the rounds. Going deeper and deeper like a free diver. What the hell he thought he was going to do once he was out of range was a mystery. He could stay under for only about four minutes before he had to surface.
    I started powering my fins, overtaking his swim. He went to the right, near the reef, thinking he could evade the firing by hugging the coral. I jerked his leg and he swung around so hard he almost ripped my mask off. I ran my hand down my side and brought up my emergency regulator, attached to the octopus at the
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