Devil's Gate (NUMA Files 9)

“I love you too,” she said, already guiding Rapunzel down toward them.

“Does Rapunzel have a cutting torch?” She nodded, and as the small robotic machine reached them Gamay snapped the acetylene torch on and began slicing through one of the metal beams that had landed on top of the Grouper.

The torch burned through the beam in two minutes flat. It broke in half and fell away with a resounding clang. The Grouper, now at full upward buoyancy, shifted as the weight was released.

It felt as if the little sub was trying to float free. But something still held them.

“You see the cables near our tail?” Paul asked. “Were tangled in them.” Gamay saw the cables, maneuvered Rapunzel one more time, and brought the torch to bear. This section of debris was lighter but more cumbersome. As Rapunzel’s torch cut through each length of steel cable, she had to pull them away to keep them from entangling the Grouper again.

As the last section of cable was dragged away, the Grouper twisted and began to rise. Sliding through the rest of the loose debris, it moved upward.

Inside, it sounded like metal garbage cans being knocked about in the middle of the night. But as the last clang died away and strands of cable slid off them with a scraping sound, they were free.

“We’re ascending,” Paul shouted.

Gamay put Rapunzel into auto surface mode and flipped her visor up.

To see water streaming past the view port instead of a pile of sand and silt was beautiful. To feel the vertical acceleration as the little sub rose was intoxicating.

She took a deep breath, relaxed for a second, and then heard a crack, like a plate of glass had been snapped in two. She turned her head.

The trickle of water forcing its way in had suddenly become a steady stream.

21

THE RESTAURANT WAS NAMED ESCARPA, which was a way of saying “cliff top” in Portuguese. The name fit, as the low, wide building made of mortar and native stone sat high up in the hills above Santa Maria, three-quarters of the way to the top of the Pico Alto. An eight-mile drive on a twisting mountain road had brought Kurt and Katarina to its doorstep.

On the way, they’d passed open fields, tremendous views, and even an outfit that rented hang gliders and ultralights to tourists. Only a dozen times during the ride had Katarina put the wheels of her small rented Focus onto the gravel during a turn. And if Kurt was honest, only three of those times seemed likely to end in certain death, as the guardrails, which had been intermittent the whole way up, were nowhere to be seen.

But having watched the young woman shift and break and mash the gas pedal at just the right moments, Kurt had decided she was an excellent driver. She’d obviously been trained, and so he figured she was just trying to test his nerve.

He chose not to react, lazily opening the sunroof and then commenting on how incredible the valley looked with nothing standing between them and a trip down into it.

“Enjoying the drive?” she’d asked.

“Immensely,” he’d said. “Just don’t hit any cows.”

Having gotten no reaction out of him only seemed to make her drive harder. And Kurt could barely contain his laughter.

Now at a table, watching the sun drop over the island and into the ocean, they had an opportunity to order. She deferred to him and he chose the island specialty: Bacalhau à Gomes de Sá, Portuguese salt cod with potato casserole, along with fresh, locally grown vegetables.

Kurt took a look at the wine list. Despite several excellent French and Spanish choices, he believed a local dish was best accompanied by a local wine. The Azores had produced wine since the sixteenth century, some of it known to be very good. From what he’d been told, most of the grapes were still picked by hand. He felt it a shame to let such work go to waste.

“We’ll take a bottle of the Terras de Lava,” he said, picking a white to go with the fish.

Across from him, Katarina nodded her approval. “I get to choose dessert,” she insisted, smiling like a trader who’d just gotten the best part of the deal.

He smiled back. “Sounds fair.”

Guessing he would be finishing that dessert before he learned her secret, he chose a different subject.

“So you’re here on behalf of your government,” he said.

She seemed a little prickly about that. “You say that like it’s a bad thing. As if you’re not here on behalf of your government.”

“Actually, I’m not,” he said. “Joe and I were here for a competition. We just stuck around at the request of the Portuguese and Spanish governments. To keep the peace between them.”