Sam Fisher- Flooding Shots

When the mo­ment came, Fish­er pulled him­self up the rungs and rolled onto the wet deck.

“Mudak!” He heard the an­gry shout and twisted into the blow that came from be­hind him.

A sav­age kick caught Fish­er in the head and sent him sprawl­ing. Fire­works burst be­hind his eyes as he struck the deck and rolled away.

Aslanov came stalk­ing to­ward him. “You have ru­ined it! Years of work, for noth­ing!”

The Rus­sian fired his pis­tol at Fish­er as the next wave burst through, and this time the surge blew up through the gaps in the deck’s met­al gridwork, brief­ly swamp­ing them both as the wa­ter lev­el con­tin­ued to rise. Aslanov lost his bal­ance and slammed into a sup­port pil­lar, the Grach’s shots go­ing wide.

Fish­er was ready for it this time, the flood­ing seawater break­ing over him, swat­ting both men like the hand of a gi­ant.

Un­bid­den, an old mem­o­ry flashed through Fish­er’s mind as the freez­ing, salt-harsh wave seared his ex­posed skin. For an in­stant he was a young man again, fight­ing his way through the hell week of BUD/S train­ing to make the grade for SEAL se­lec­tion.

The snarled words of an in­struc­tor ech­oed through the thun­der of the sea. Nev­er fight the wa­ter, son. You’ll al­ways lose. Let it take you. Be­come part of it.

Fish­er rolled into the un­der­cur­rent and fol­lowed that hard-earned ad­vice. Hold­ing his breath, he braced him­self against the gan­try, while Aslanov flailed and choked on a lungful of seawater. When the surge dropped back, Fish­er rose out of the flood with his gun drawn and aimed.

Two shots, cen­ter-mass. The SC-IS barked twice, and the Rus­sian reeled back as if he had been kicked by a mule. Aslanov crashed into the ris­ing wa­ters, cough­ing and groan­ing.

More than an­y­thing, Fish­er wanted to fin­ish the man off, to be cer­tain it was done, but the sea had oth­er plans. The suc­ceed­ing wave came and the flood­ing con­tin­ued to fill the decks, ris­ing in­ex­o­ra­bly.

- Firewall, Chapter 25