Where the ship had been, there was nothing but a circle of floating wreckage half a mile across. He was alone. Just him and the bird, and the silence and emptiness of the whispering sea.
As he bobbed there on the slow heave of the ocean, he thought about his life, his past, his future. Maybe he had none to look forward to; maybe he’d die out here. Maybe that wasn’t such a terrible thing, he reflected, and not undeserved either.
But if he somehow ever got back to shore, what would his life be then? A future with Brooke? He didn’t know. Didn’t even know if he’d ever see her again.
He thought about his friends. He’d brought them into this and now they were gone. Gone, like all the plans he’d made. More regrets. He had so many.
He drifted numbly, getting colder in the water. The seagull lost interest in him and flapped away to investigate the wreckage elsewhere. ‘Be like that,’ he called after it.
Then he was alone.
Though not as alone as he’d thought he was.
‘Ben!’ came a cry from across the water. He knew that voice. Clutching at the buoyant piece of rotor blade, he began to paddle through the drifting debris.
When he saw them, he let out a yell of joy and paddled faster.
‘Look what we found,’ Jeff said. His face was pale from blood loss and pain, but he was grinning from ear to ear. He, Boonzie and the weakly conscious but smiling Jack Quigley were sitting in the rigid inflatable boat.
‘You got room for one more?’ Ben let the rotor blade drift away. He swam to the boat and clambered aboard.
‘Outboard’s buggered,’ Boonzie said.
‘Guess I’m the only one fit to row,’ Ben said, unclipping the single oar.
‘Then you’d best get started, laddie. It’s a fair distance to shore.’
The sun rose and fell overhead as the hours passed. Nobody spoke. Quigley fell asleep. Jeff and Boonzie silently nursed their wounds. The only sound was the slap and gurgle of the paddle in the water as Ben rowed. Somewhere beyond the horizon was the coast of Estonia.
‘My son loves the sea,’ Ben said absently after about four hours’ silence.
‘You have a son?’ Boonzie said, amazed despite his pain.
‘That’s a long story,’ Ben said.
About the Author
Scott Mariani is the author of the worldwide-acclaimed action-adventure thriller series featuring ex-SAS hero Ben Hope, which has sold over a million copies in Scott’s native UK alone and is also translated into over 20 languages. His books have been described as ‘James Bond meets Jason Bourne, with a historical twist’. The first Ben Hope book, THE ALCHEMIST’S SECRET, spent six straight weeks at #1 on Amazon’s Kindle chart, and all the others have been Sunday Times bestsellers.
Scott was born in Scotland, studied in Oxford and now lives and writes in a remote setting in rural west Wales. When not writing, he can be found bouncing about the country lanes in an ancient Land Rover, wild camping in the Brecon Beacons or engrossed in his hobbies of astronomy, photography and target shooting (no dead animals involved!).
You can find out more about Scott and his work, and sign up to his exclusive newsletter, on his official website:
www.scottmariani.com
By the same author
The Alchemist’s Secret
The Mozart Conspiracy
The Doomsday Prophecy
The Heretic’s Treasure
The Shadow Project
The Lost Relic
The Sacred Sword
The Armada Legacy
Copyright
Published by Avon
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2014
Copyright © Scott Mariani 2014
Cover design: www.headdesign.co.uk
Scott Mariani asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007398461
Ebook Edition © May 2014 ISBN: 9780007398478
Version: 2014-04-22
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The Nemesis Program_Ben Hope Page 37
