Fire Ice (NUMA Files 3)

"He grabbed his chest and went over the side." With Lombardo following, she swam over to the front of the boat. "This is where the first bullet hit a second before the second one got Mehmet."

"Jeez!" Lombardo said, sticking his finger in the hole.

"Poor bastard." Dundee breaststroked over to join the other two and they all drifted together, holding on to the raft. They agreed to stay with the raft where Kemal would find them, rather than risk going ashore. The Zodiac was low in the water, but some compartments still held air. Several times they tried to flip the boat over, but the weight of the outboard and the slipperiness of the rounded sides made it impossible. They were tiring fast and the waves were pushing them ever closer to the beach.

"That's it," Lombardo said, after an unsuccessful effort that left them all breathless. "Looks like we're going in after all."

"What if the guys who shot at us are still there?" Dundee said.

"You got a better suggestion?"

"The gunshots look as if they came from directly ahead," Kaela said. "Let's hide under the raft and move it off at an angle."

"We don't have a hell of a lot of choice," Lombardo said. He ducked underneath.

When the other two joined him, he was smiling. "Look at this," he said, grabbing onto the waterproof bags that were suspended from the seats, where they had been tied. "The cameras are okay."

Kaela let out a whooping laugh that had a damp echo in the enclosed space. "What are we supposed to do if somebody points a gun at us, Mickey, take their picture?"

"You'll have to admit it would make a good story. What'ya think, Dundee?"

"I think you two Yanks are bloody crazy! But so am I, or I wouldn't be here with you. Tell me, luv," he said to Kaela, "didn't your Russkie friend say this place was abandoned?"

"He said the Russians had left a long time ago."

"Maybe it's like one of those islands in the Pacific where the Japanese soldiers hid in the jungle, not knowing the war was over," Lombardo suggested. "Maybe the guys here haven't heard the Cold War ended." He was clearly excited at the prospect.

"Sounds pretty far-fetched," Kaela said.

"Yeah, I agree, but do you have a better idea of who took the potshots at us?"

"No, I don't," Kaela said. "But if we don't start kicking, we're going to find out real soon. I'll check things out." She disappeared for a few moments. When she returned, she said, “The beach looks deserted. I suggest we start moving this thing off to the right. Otherwise we'll drift straight in."

They grabbed onto the boat, and began to kick. The Zodiac moved, but the rollers pushed them toward shore. The muffled roar of waves breaking on the beach grew louder. No more gunshots came their way and they began to hope that the shooters were gone. That optimism would have eroded quickly if they had been able to see beyond the grass crowning the dunes. A line of razor-sharp sabers was raised high in the sun like the blades of a giant threshing machine, ready to cut them to ribbons as soon as they crawled ashore.

4

HIGH ABOVE THE overturned Zodiac, a turquoise aircraft that resembled a winged canoe wheeled in a lazy circle. The broad-shouldered man at the controls rolled the ultralight airplane into a tight banking turn and peered down through tinted goggles, squinting against the reflected glare with eyes the color of coral underwater. His wind-burnished face was creased in a look of puzzlement.

Moments before, he had seen swimmers in the water next to the overturned inflatable. He glanced away to get his bearings, and when he looked again the swimmers were gone.

Kurt Austin had been chasing the Zodiac like an aerial motorcycle cop hot on the tail of a speeder, and had seen the boat flip over. He couldn't figure out why it had gone out of control. The seas were moderate, and no rocks or other submerged objects were visible. Austin wondered if the inflatable, or the fishing boat he had seen steaming away from the coast, had anything to do with the television crew he was looking for. Probably not. The crew should be on its way to meet the NUMA survey ship Argo, not heading for this desolate stretch.

Austin was aboard the Argo as a deep-ocean consultant on loan from his duties as leader of NUMA's Special Assignments Team. The other members of the team, Joe Zavala and Paul and Gamay Trout, had been given different and undemanding assignments in scattered projects around the globe. NUMA director James Sandecker had insisted that they take working vacations after the team had crossed swords with the hired killers of a megacorporation that wanted to take over the freshwater resources of the world. He had been particularly worried about Austin's attachment to the beautiful, brilliant Brazilian scientist who had sacrificed herself to bring down the conspiracy.

The Argo was in the Black Sea, collecting information on wave and wind action for an international data bank. With his master's degree in systems management from the University of Washington and his vast practical knowledge as a diver and undersea investigator, Austin had been invaluable in helping to set up the sophisticated remote-sensing survey instruments.

As the cruise had gone on and systems were set in place, however, his expertise became less necessary. He read some philosophy books he'd brought from his extensive library, but he started to grow bored and restless. The ship seemed like a prison surrounded by a very wide moat. Austin was aware that his psyche had been bruised and that Sandecker had his best interests at heart, but he needed strenuous physical and mental activity, not a cruise ship atmosphere.

The serious scientists aboard the ship had been grumbling about the impending visit from the TV crew. They saw them as intruders who would interrupt their work with dumb questions. The fact that they were from a tabloid show on a mission to find Noah's ark didn't add to their appeal. Austin's outlook was the exact opposite. He looked forward to their arrival as a diversion from his shipboard boredom.

The television people had been due that morning, but they'd never arrived and attempts to reach them by radio were unsuccessful. After lunch, Austin had climbed to the wheelhouse to run an idea past the skipper. The Argo's commander, Captain Joe Atwood, was clearly annoyed at the TV crew's failure to show up or contact his ship. He'd paced from one side of the bridge to the other, scanning the sea with binoculars. The Argo was supposed to be moving to another station, and the captain was unhappy about the delay.

"Any word on our guests?" Austin said, although he knew from Atwood's dour expression what the answer would be.

Atwood scowled at his watch. "I think they're lost," he declared sharply. "The next time those idiots in public affairs want me to entertain some crazy TV people, I'm going to tell them to stick their request where the sun don't shine."

The captain was in no mood to be told that the job done by NUMA's public affairs department in proclaiming the agency's accomplishments helped loosen the congressional purse strings and attracted grants for projects like the Black Sea survey.