Water crashed in like a car through the window, and a quick breath was all that saved Zelenko from drowning. The force of it pinned him against the bridge's far bulkhead as the saltwater burned inside his nostrils. It only took seconds before he was submerged completely as the Kosatka continued to turn on its side and bury itself deeper into the sea.
The navigational instruments went out immediately. The bridge was now a dark cavern, save for the ambient sunlight from the surface outside the shattered window. He'd have to swim through without cutting himself on the glass shards and then find his way up in the gloom. Zelenko kicked off the bulkhead behind him, his lungs already burning.
He wasn't alone.
A rotund shadow rolled past, and he came face to face with Valeri Solonik, illuminated with ghostly green light, his eyes open and mouth frozen in a silent scream. Zelenko pushed away in panic and snorted seawater up his nose, choking some before he could swallow it down. Valeri was dead but not a ghost—the stolen watch on Zelenko's wrist glowed with incandescent dye and cast its light all around. The carpeted floor of the bridge was now the wall, and the window was now a vertical slit aiming at the shadowy seafloor dappled with dancing sunlight from the surface.
Fuck the brothers.
Zelenko had served his time. Done their dirty work, washed their money. He ran their entire operation and lacked only the connections back home for new inventory. Most of the world thought that Valeri had died in Ukraine, but he was dead for real now, and with him, their means to acquire stolen Russian hardware. Now was as good a time as any to abandon the brothers to the Americans—to literally abandon ship.
He was through the window, almost free, when a hand gripped his wrist. It was the Estonian woman, and she was trapped at the threshold of the broken window. Her purse was still strapped across her body and was caught on a tooth of glass jutting from the window frame. Just moments ago, he'd been ordered to shoot her, but now her dark hair floated about her like seaweed and her cheeks puffed out in a desperate attempt to keep her breath. Her face was green under the glow of the stolen watch, like his father's face had glowed gold beneath the gilded cross hanging above his coffin. His eyes had been dead. Her eyes pleaded.
Fine.
Zelenko reached back and pulled at the purse strap. It wouldn't budge from where it was stuck on the glass, but the woman was able to wiggle out of it. Zelenko grabbed her wrist and kicked his powerful legs to thrust them upward towards the waiting sun. Just like in the movies, but this time, he was the hero saving the day.
He'd have laughed if he could.