Of the two men, AK was the louder and easier to deal with. Dao Ba was harder to read — he had enough authority to keep AK in line, so he was likely the one in charge, but he wasn’t carrying any weapons. Wei Lai had observed carefully: in this heat, both men were dressed light and airy, and Dao Ba didn’t have so much as a knife on him, let alone a gun.

The plan took shape: seize the gun, take the boat, zero casualties on his side, and the other two could take their chances — they’d brought this on themselves.

He tilted his head back, yawned with languid boredom, then turned and swayed to his feet with his back to the two men, stretching out in one long, lazy arc.

AK shouted from behind: “Sit down! Sit down!”

Wei Lai smiled. From the corner of his eye, he gauged the rhythm of the waves. His right leg suddenly stamped down hard. The boat lurched into a wide roll, and he threw himself into a pantomime of panic — stumbling, crying out “Ah ya!”, the picture of graceless disaster as he toppled backward.

When two hostile parties face each other head-on, the first instinct at a direct charge is to shoot. But at an unexpected, flailing fall, the instinct is to shove the person away.

Sure enough, AK’s curse rang out at his back.

Wei Lai’s lips curved: exactly what I was waiting for.

The instant AK’s hands hit his back, his back muscles snapped taut. Both arms shot behind him — precise and vicious — seizing AK by the left and right shoulder blades, using him like a blanket draped at his back, and hurled him outward with full force.

AK hit the deck dazed and reeling, spine arched, like a fish flung from the sea. At the same moment, Wei Lai slid backward, pivoting smooth as a spinning plate — one hand catching the tumbling AK-47, the other reaching around AK’s back waist, seizing his waistband with an iron grip, wrenching him back from midair to use as a shield, and in the same motion, drew the Desert Eagle from AK’s back holster.

Dao Ba had just steadied himself from the boat’s rocking when the entire scene before him had transformed —

AK sat opposite him, breathing ragged. The Desert Eagle’s muzzle was jammed roughly up under his chin, his eyes darting with terror. The AK-47’s long barrel extended from under his arm, its black muzzle aimed dead-straight at Dao Ba.

Dao Ba’s throat went dry with tension. He cut the engine on instinct.

The entire sea fell silent.

A gull spread its wings and swept over the speedboat, its call clean and brief — the echo it left in the air was like a strand of spider-silk glinting in the sun, trembling, stretching toward infinity.

After a long moment, Wei Lai’s face appeared from behind AK’s head. He looked at Dao Ba with a smile.

“At a moment like this, shouldn’t you… raise both hands above your head?”

Unexpectedly, Dao Ba held his ground. He didn’t dare make a reckless move, but he didn’t fold and surrender either.

Fine. No need to force it. Whether he raised his hands or not made no real difference — he was getting tied up either way.

Wei Lai pressed his knee into AK: “Get up. See that mooring line? Tie him up.”

AK shrank back, rose slowly, and in the instant he tilted his head, Wei Lai caught it — a glance he threw toward Dao Ba.

Still dreaming of a last-ditch counterattack? To prevent any further trouble, he should cripple both of them before the interrogation—

AK suddenly let out a wild shout and charged straight at Dao Ba. Before Wei Lai could even react, the two of them had tangled together and gone tumbling overboard.

A massive spray of water erupted on the outside of the hull. Wei Lai rushed over and saw two white trails in the water, both swimming desperately away. He raised the gun, narrowed his eyes, aimed for a moment — then slowly lowered it.

What the hell, are they stupid? This was the middle of the Red Sea. No boat meant no life. Jumping overboard to escape — wasn’t that just suicide?

At a certain moment, AK flipped onto his back in a frantic backstroke, his expression twisted into something grotesque and strange.

Wei Lai suddenly realized. He bellowed: “Cen Jin!”

She had just pushed herself up against the railing to stand.

Wei Lai charged toward her, wrapped one arm around her in a single motion without any pause, planted his feet hard against the hull, and using that push as momentum, shot sideways into the sea like a darting fish, plunging downward on the diagonal.

The boat erupted on the surface above them. The downward shock wave drove water surging toward them — but he had already dived deep enough. Riding the momentum, he rolled and kicked upward as fast as he could.

He was fine — he could free-dive beyond thirty meters without equipment. But Cen Jin couldn’t. The sudden increase in water pressure could give her decompression sickness; her eardrums, eye membranes, and internal organs were all at serious risk of injury.

He surfaced.

Only then noticed he was still gripping the Desert Eagle. He tucked the gun into his waistband at the small of his back.

Cen Jin was coughing hard — she’d probably inhaled water. Wei Lai held her close, treading water to keep them stable, then turned to look back.

Ragged black smoke rolled in all directions. The speedboat was nothing but wreckage. The two men were nowhere to be seen — they’d been swimming away in opposite directions to begin with, which was just as well. The farther from him and Cen Jin, the safer.

But…

Wei Lai smiled bitterly: the thing I was most worried about has finally happened.

He looked down at Cen Jin and said: “We’re going to have to swim back.”

That speedboat had been doing over sixty knots. Calculating by time, they were roughly thirty kilometers from shore. A person in good physical condition could swim maybe two or three kilometers at most in one stretch — and that was in a pool. Open-water swimming was far more complicated, especially the waves, which would undo every forward effort you made. You could tread water for half an hour and end up in the same spot.

If there were also sharks in this water…

Damn it, Milu and Hu Sha are both animals!

He paused, then suddenly felt the insult was redundant.

Milu and Hu Sha… were actually… animals to begin with.

As Wei Lai had anticipated, Cen Jin’s stamina was nowhere near sufficient. Add to that the deep ocean’s relentless, heavy surge, and after less than two kilometers, all the color had drained from her lips.

He swam over and steadied her, unable to bring himself to say more: she had already tried her hardest. She had done everything she could.

Cen Jin rested for a long while. Her eyes, soaked in seawater, could barely stay open. The sun dried the water on her face quickly, and her skin felt uncomfortably tight and sticky.

Wei Lai pressed her forehead against his chest, doing his best to shield her from the sun.

Cen Jin said: “Why don’t you go on alone? I really can’t swim any further.”

Wei Lai laughed. “And what about my payment? If you die, I don’t get paid. I lose the title too — someone who failed the job has no right to hold that rank.”

Cen Jin smiled with exhaustion, and after a moment said quietly: “As long as you’re alive, you’ll always find more work. As for the title — change your name, make a fresh start, take a few more jobs, and you’ll be a new champion.”

“So what you’re saying is, your life doesn’t matter to you?”

Cen Jin no longer had the energy to speak: “Doesn’t matter.”

Wei Lai thought for a moment.

“All right then. A bodyguard can’t protect someone who wants to die. If you’ve given up on yourself, there’s no point in me pulling you along — one death is better than two.”

He looked down and gave her a quick kiss on the lips. Then he let go, rolled over, and swam away.

Cen Jin smiled. It felt as though this was simply how things were meant to be — everyone has a place where the story ends, and this place was not so bad.

She stopped trying to move her arms.

The sun was warm. Water crept over her lips, her eyes, her brow…

Then a sudden lightness — someone from below the water grabbed her legs. With a splash they broke the surface together.

Cen Jin wasn’t surprised. She looked down. Wei Lai was raising one hand to wipe the water from his face.

He said: “I found a young woman floating in the sea and decided to take her back to keep me company — you have no say in this. You’re something I picked up. You already threw your life away, so whether it’s a shark that finds you or me, you don’t get a vote.”

Cen Jin laughed.

She closed her eyes, lowered her head until it rested against his forehead, and murmured: “You, of all people…”

Wei Lai laughed. He freed one hand, grabbed the hem of his black T-shirt, and pulled the shirt over his head and onto her, wrapping it around her head and face like a pirate, leaving only her eyes exposed.

“Don’t get sunburned. The main reason I picked you up was that you’re pretty — if you bake yourself ugly I’ll throw you back. You’re not light, carrying you all the way back.”

…

Carrying her all the way back was going to depend on fortune.

Wei Lai had Cen Jin try to “float still” — seawater is dense, and the Red Sea is especially so. In a state of complete relaxation, a person can manage to float on the surface. This way, he could bring her along while swimming and conserve a little energy, which would also help her recover some strength.

But even so, making progress kept getting harder: the distance was too great, the sun too fierce, the resistance of the waves too strong for still-floating to hold, it was easy to lose all sense of direction at sea, and dehydration for both of them was steadily worsening…

Another brief rest. He was so exhausted his vision was going dark.

If this weren’t an isolated fishing village — if they were near Port Sudan — there would be many boats passing, and someone would rescue them…

Cen Jin’s awareness was beginning to drift. She stared fixedly at something in the distance. “What is that?”

Wei Lai looked up: far away, something like small white scraps of paper appeared to be floating. But it definitely wasn’t a boat — no boat was that small.

“Foam, probably. Or plastic.”

He looked again after a while. The thing was still there, hadn’t been pushed away by the waves — as if something was anchoring it.

Something stirred in Wei Lai’s chest. He watched a moment longer and said: “Might be fuel drums. Empty fuel drums.”

He decided to swim toward them.

Even empty fuel drums were worth something — they could be used as flotation devices. Though a flotation device wouldn’t solve the problem of dehydration and physical exhaustion — at least it would let them conserve some energy.

Swimming closer confirmed it: fuel drums, two of them, spaced some distance apart. Wei Lai used the last of his strength to bring Cen Jin to one and had her grip the side of the drum.

Cen Jin couldn’t hold on and nearly slid into the water. Wei Lai sank with her, grabbed blindly by instinct — and caught something like a rope.

A thought flashed through his mind. The thought made him suddenly, sharply alert.

Wei Lai smiled. He wrapped one arm around Cen Jin — the water was nearly at his mouth; he tilted his head back as far as he could — and with the other hand felt along the drum beside him.

He said quietly: “Little one, we’re saved.”

Cen Jin was inhaling water. Wei Lai strained to lift her higher: “Put your arms around my neck. Hold tight.”

She had no strength left.

Wei Lai thought for a moment, then reached down to undo the button of her pants. She felt it and flinched back instinctively: “What are you doing?”

Wei Lai said: “Like I’d take advantage of you now? Even if I had the inclination, I don’t have the energy — I need your pants.”

He drew a long breath, held it, went under, grabbed the edge of her jeans and pulled down.

The jeans were fitted and soaked through, clinging to her skin. The pull nearly dragged her down with them. Wei Lai held his breath, dove deeper, used one arm to hold her legs, and with the other arm, levered her pants down and off.

Beret special training includes an underwater quick-strip drill. The reason: when you’re a soldier penetrating enemy shores by sea and discover the plan has been leaked and you’re surrounded, you strip off your uniform underwater as fast as you can — without the markings of a soldier, you might be mistaken for a civilian, and that gives you one slim chance at survival.

He’d always thought that skill would never see use…

One attempt was enough. He surfaced with the pants in hand, looped her arm around his neck, then reached down and used the pants to tie her to himself.

Good thing she had dressed conservatively in front of the pirates, and worn long pants this time — if they’d been shorts, he genuinely wouldn’t know what to use as rope.

With that done, relief flooded through him. He finally had a hand free to grip the fuel drum: he needed to recover and preserve his strength as quickly as possible, to hold out as long as it took for rescue to arrive.

He looked down at Cen Jin. At first she reflexively tried to maintain some distance, but her awareness soon dissolved, and she buried her face against his chest.

Thank God for the Saudis, for choosing a woman for the negotiation. If it had been some thick-necked man, he’d still have had to save him and tie him up like this — not only utterly joyless, but scarring for the rest of his life.

Cen Jin murmured: “How are we saved?”

Wei Lai smiled and said softly: “Have you ever fished?”

“Remember what Santos said? That in Buku village, only he had a boat, but a few of the others had nets. They’d set their nets out at sea the night before and come back to pull in the catch the next day. These two fuel drums are floats — underneath them is a drag net weighted with lead sinkers. For fishing.”

“Santos spent all of yesterday with us as a translator. He didn’t go out to sea at all. Today he’ll be coming to pull in his catch… All we have to do is wait.”