Bolan sliced smoothly into the dark underwater void. The raging turbulence of the ocean's surface and the whine of the Harrier faded to throbbing rumbles, then to nothing.

The instant he was submerged, Bolan executed a forward semiroll and dived straight down, swimming with arms close to his sides, pedaling hard with both fins. He did not switch on his diving light.

As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he detected a faint, wavering illumination from the sky.

Below, he could vaguely make out patterns of pinpoint lights moving about like fireflies on a summer night in Massachusetts.

Bolan swam deeper and deeper away from the filtering rays of the sun. The gloom reached out as if to smother him and increasing pressure tightened around his body.

A school of fish fled at his approach.

He continued angling toward the waving lights in the uneven depths.

A sixth sense alerted him to approaching danger from above and to his left. He rolled sideways as a massive presence glided ominously past him, missing him by inches.

He would have to risk switching on his helmet dive light. He hoped that it would not distract the distant salvage crew from their work around the jumbled shadows of the sunken Liberian freighter.

He activated the light just in time to see the great white shark turn around in a graceful curve before coming at him again.

Bolan rolled and kicked. He registered a momentary impression of the razor-sharp serrated teeth ringing the shark's big mouth.

Then the killer beast was past a second time.

Bolan floated, immobile.

The shark banked again at a distance of some twenty-five meters, then came in for another head-on swipe at this unexpected meal.