Fire Ice (NUMA Files 3)

"What do you want me to say?"

Pulaski smiled. "I think that is fairly obvious," he said. "Tell them to sit back and enjoy the ride."

3

THE BLACK SEA

THE SIXTEEN-FOOT ZODIAC inflatable boat sped toward the distant shore, its flat bottom thumping against the wave like a hand beating a tom-tom. Hunkered down in the bow, hands clutching the lifeline to keep from being bounced out, Kaela Dorn looked like a finely carved figurehead. The spray that splashed over the blunt prow stung her face and her dusky features dripped with water, but she turned away only once, and that was to yell at the man who knelt in the boat with his hand on the tiller.

"Mehmet, crank this thing up, crank it up!" She made circular motions with her hand as if she were twirling a lariat.

The wizened Turk answered with a toothless grin that was wider than his face. He goosed the throttle and the Zodiac porpoised over the next wave and slammed down with even greater gut-wrenching force. Kaela reinforced her grip on the lifeline and laughed with delight.

The two men jouncing around in the boat like dice in a shaker were less enthusiastic. They held tight to keep from being thrown into the sea, their teeth clacking with every jolt. Neither passenger was surprised to hear Kaela tell Mehmet to kick up the speed. After three months of working with the young reporter on the Unbelievable Mysteries television series, they were accustomed to her recklessness. Mickey Lombardo, the crew's senior member, was a short, thickset native New Yorker with arms made powerful from hefting sound and light equipment in and out of every conceivable means of transport around the globe. A wave had extinguished the cigar clenched between his teeth seconds after their wild ride began. His assistant, Hank Simpson, was a blond and muscled Australian beach boy Lombardo had nicknamed "Dundee."

When they'd first learned that they would be working closely with the beautiful reporter, neither man could believe his good luck. That was before Kaela had led them through a dung-filled bat cave in Arizona, down the rapids in the Green Hell of the Amazon and crashed a voodoo ceremony in Haiti. Lombardo said Kaela was living proof of the old axiom: Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it. She'd turned out to be a cross between Amelia Earhart and Wonder Woman, and their libidos had diminished in direct proportion to their growing respect for her audacity. Instead of regarding Kaela as a potential conquest, they now guarded her like a precocious kid sister who had to be protected from her own impetuousness.

Lombardo and Dundee could hardly be classified as shrinking violets themselves. The crews that worked for Unbelievable Mysteries had to be physically fit, aggressive in pursuing a story and preferably brain-dead. The cable TV series had a high turnover and injury rate. With its emphasis on high-risk adventures, the series was tough on production crews – in fact, the misadventures of the crews, rather than their main assignments, often became the topic of each episode. It was the logical continuation of the "true-life" adventure inspired by the success of the Survivor series and its clones. If a reporter or technician were swept into the sea or pursued by cannibals, it made for a better story. As long as a crew didn't lose expensive equipment, management didn't care how hazardous working conditions were.

They had arrived in Istanbul a few days earlier to launch a search for Noah's ark. The ark was an overworked cliche that even the supermarket tabloids had consigned to the back section with Elvis sightings and the Loch Ness monster, so Kaela had kept a sharp eye out for other leads in case the ark story didn't pan out. Their first day, while Kaela was looking for a fishing boat to take them into the Black Sea, she'd struck up a conversation with a colorful old Russian seaman she met on the docks. He had served on a Soviet missile sub and told her about an abandoned submarine base, even drew her a map showing the base's location in a remote comer of the Black Sea, after hinting that a gift of money might refresh his failing memory.

When Kaela approached her colleagues and excitedly poured out the story of the abandoned Soviet submarine base, they lost no time planning a side trip. The sub base might make a good backup if the search for Noah's ark fell apart, as it probably would. The fishing boat had been hired to take them to a rendezvous with a research vessel from the National Underwater and Marine Agency.

Captain Kemal, the boat's owner, was paid by the day, and said he knew of the sub base and would be happy to go there before they hooked up with the NUMA vessel. However, the fishing boat had engine trouble as they neared the base and the captain wanted to turn back to port – he'd had a similar problem before and it would take only a few hours to fix it once he had the part – but Kaela had persuaded him to drop her and her crew off and come back for them the next day. Mehmet, who was the captain's cousin, had volunteered to run them ashore in his Zodiac.

Now, the Zodiac was approaching a wide beach that rose gradually to a ridge of sand dunes. The waves grew higher and closer together, and Mehmet reduced their speed to half. The old Russian sailor had said that the base was underground, near an abandoned scientific station, and they would have to search for telltale air vents. Kaela wiped the water from her sunglasses and squinted toward the grassy hills, but saw no sign of human presence. The countryside was bleak and desolate, and she began to wonder if they had bitten off more than they could chew. The bean counte

rs at U.M. frowned at unproductive expenditures.

"See anything?" Lombardo shouted over the buzz of the outboard.

"No billboards, if that's what you mean."

"Maybe this isn't the right place."

"Captain Kemal says this is it, and I have the map from the Russian."

"How much did you pay that scam artist for the map?"

"One hundred dollars."

Lombardo looked as if he had sucked on a lemon. "Wonder how many times he's sold the same map."

Kaela pointed toward land. "That high spot over there looks promising."

Thut!

Kaela jerked her head back at the weird sound. Then she saw the ragged hole that had opened in the rubberized fabric a foot to the right of her head. She thought one of the many patches on the inflatable's skin had popped off from the beating the Zodiac was taking, and she turned to tell Mehmet – but the Turk had risen from his kneeling position, an odd expression on his face, his hand clutched to his chest. Then he crumpled as if the air had gone out of him and pitched overboard. With no hand to steady the tiller, the boat went broadside and was caught by an incoming wave. The breaker lifted the boat at a sharp angle, then it was caught by another wave and flipped over, spilling the passengers into the sea.

The sky whirled over Kaela's head, then cold water shocked her body. She went under a few feet, and when she came up, sputtering, to the surface, the lights had gone out. She was under the overturned raft. She ducked her head and came up in the open. Lombardo's bald head bobbed up, then Dundee surfaced.

"Are you okay?" she yelled, swimming closer.

Lombardo spit out the remnants of his cigar. "What the hell happened?"

"I think Mehmet was shot."

"Shot? Are you sure?"