Serpent (NUMA Files 1)

"That's right. Four of us form the team's nucleus. We've got a deep ocean geologist and a marine biologist, but they're on other assignments. Basically we handle jobs outside the realm of NUMAs ordinary tasks." And outside the realm of government oversight, he might have added.

"What on earth is your ship doing here?"

"We're on a shakedown cruise on our way from the Mediterranean," Austin said. "The Moroccan government is worried offshore oil drilling is affecting its sardine fishery. Nereus was going to be in the area, so we said we'd do a quick bottom survey."

"Nereus, the Old Man of the Sea," Nina murmured, cocking her head in thought. "There's a quote from Hesiod, the Greek poet: 'A trusty and gentle god who thinks just and kindly thoughts and never lies.' "

Austin glanced at Zavala. Maybe Nina really was a mermaid. She was certainly lovely enough. "I don't know if the ship qualifies as the Old Man of the Sea. The Nereus was launched only a couple of months ago, but Hesiod was right about not lying. This ship is packed from stern to stem with state-of-theart survey gear."

"The ship's designer says we scientific types are only on board as ballast," Zavala said.

Nina was having a hard time reconciling the broad-shouldered Austin and his softspoken companion with the scholarly scientists she was used to. She sized the two men up with an analytical eye. At six-foo-tone and two hundred pounds, none of it fat, the broadshouldered Austin was built like a professional football player. He had the deeply tanned face of someone who spent most of his time outdoors, with the metallic burnishing look that comes with constant exposure to the sea. Except for the laugh lines around his mouth and eyes, the skin was unwrinkled. Even though he was only pushing forty, Austin's hair was a premature steely gray, almost platinum white.

At five-foot-ten, the darkly handsome Zavala was less powerfully built than Austin, yet his one-hundred-seventy-five-pound frame was flexibly muscular, particularly around the arms and neck, and there were traces of scar tissue around his eyebrows, the legacies of having financed his way through college by boxing professionally as a middleweight. He won twenty-two fights, twelve by knockouts, and lost six. His straight black hair was combed straight back. The humorous, slight smile she had seen when he first came into the examination room hadn't left his lips. Remembering the mate's comment, she could see how a woman could be drawn to the soulful brown eyes.

Their gentlemanly manners couldn't disguise a rough-and-ready quality. The brawnier Austin was positively genial now, but she remembered his fierce determination when he'd yanked her out of the way of the hovercraft. Behind Zavala's gregariousness lurked a flinty hardness, she suspected. The way the two men meshed, like gears in a well-oiled machine, as they got her safely to the ship demonstrated that they were used to working as a team.

"Sorry for being so rude," she said, remembering her rescue. "I haven't thanked you both."

"My apologies for sneaking up on you with the jaws routine," Austin said. "It must have been frightening."

"Not half as frightening as having that ugly boat playing water polo with my head. I can never thank you enough. Please sneak' up and pull me out of danger any time you want." She paused. "One dumb question, though. Do you normally swim around in the Atlantic Ocean waiting for damsels in distress?"

"Dumb luck," he said with a shrug. "Joe and I were puttering around below. I surfaced to get a bearing on the ship and saw you playing dodge 'em with the hovercraft. My turn to ask a question. What was that all about?"

Her smile vanished. "Simple. They were trying to kill me."

"I think that was fairly obvious, but why?"

"I don't know," she said in a monotone, her eyes glazed. .

Austin sensed she was trying to avoid talking about something. "You haven't told us where you came from," he said gently.

It was like pulling a plug. "Dear God," Nina whispered. "The expedition. Dr. Knox."

"What expedition?" Austin said.

She stared into space as if trying to remember a dream.

"I'm a marine archaeologist. I was with a University of Pennsylvania party working an excavation not far from here."

She related the story of the massacre and her escape. The tale was so fantastic Austin might not have believed it if he hadn't seen the hovercraft attack or the unmitigated fear in Nina's face. When the narrative was finished Austin turned to Zavala.

"What do you think?"

"I think we ought to go take a look for ourselves."

"Me, too. We'll call the Moroccan authorities first. Ms. Kirov, do you think you can give us directions to your camp?"

Nina had been fighting off the survivor's guilt at being the only one who escaped certain death. She needed to do some. thing. She slidoff the table and stood on unsteady legs.

"Better than that," she said with a steely edge to her voice. "I'll show you."

7 CAPTAIN MOHAMMED MUSTAPHA OF the Moroccan Royal Gendarmerie leaned against the sun-warmed fender of his Jeep and watched the tall American woman walk slowly back and forth across the sandy clearing, her head bent toward the ground.

Like most of the country's rural policemen, the captain occupied his days chasing down truants among the village schoolchildren, filling out traffic accident reports, or checking papers of strangers, of whom there were pitifully few. The disappearance of a camel he investigated last year stirred up exciting possibilities of rustling before it was determined to be nothing more than a runaway. Yet that was the closest he'd come to tracking down a vanished archaeological expedition.

Mustapha was familiar with the area the Berbers called the Place of the Dead for the old tombs, and he was aware of the nearby ruins. It was far off the beaten track in a patrol territory that covered hundreds of square miles. He had visited the lonely spot once and stayed only long enough to decide he would not come back unless he had to.