Medusa (NUMA Files 8)

Tequila!

“Maybe you are,” he said.

Zavala’s lips parted in a cracked smile.

/> “A sight for sore eyes,” he said. “When did you get back on board?”

“They peeled me out of my suit around a half an hour ago,” Austin said. “Feel like telling me what happened?”

Zavala nodded.

“Let me warm my outside first,” he said, “then I’ll warm my inside.”

It took fifteen minutes under the hottest shower he could stand before warmth finally seeped into Zavala’s bones. Austin handed him a plastic cup of tequila through the shower-stall door, then went to his cabin, showered, and changed.

By the time Austin returned, Zavala had put on some clothes that Austin had left for him and was sitting in a chair sipping tequila. Austin helped him walk to the mess hall and ordered two pastramis on rye.

They devoured their sandwiches, then Zavala closed his eyes and sat back in his chair.

“That may be the best meal I’ve ever had,” he said.

“I’ll refill your cup if you tell me what happened with the bathysphere,” Austin said.

Zavala held his cup out. The tequila helped loosen his tongue, and he described the harrowing plunge to the bottom of the ocean and the problem activating the flotation bags.

“I still can’t figure out how that cable snapped,” Zavala said with a shake of the head.

“It didn’t snap,” Austin said.

Austin opened the case he’d brought with him and extracted a laptop, which he set on the table. He showed Zavala the video the Hardsuit camera had filmed of his encounter with the AUV.

Zavala uttered an appreciative Ole! as Austin dodged the deadly pincers. When the video ended with Austin disabling the AUV, Zavala said, “Nice work, but don’t quit your day job to become a matador.”

“I don’t intend to,” Austin said. “Bullfighting technique aside, how hard would it be to program an AUV to cut the bathysphere’s cable?”

“Not hard at all, Kurt, but it would take some sophistication to build the AUV in the first place. It’s a slick piece of engineering. Very agile. Learns from its mistakes and is quick to adjust. Too bad you had to mess it up.”

“You’re right, Joe. I should have let it kill me, but I was having a bad-hair day.”

“Happens to the best of us,” Zavala said.

“Any idea where it might have come from?” Austin asked.

“There were at least two dozen boats watching the bathysphere dive. That hungry critter could have been launched from any one of them. Why do you think it attacked you after scuttling the B3?”

“Nothing personal. I think I was what the military likes to call collateral damage.” He pointed at the screen. “Someone sicced Fido there on the bathysphere. It went for me because I happened to be in the neighborhood.”

“Who would want to torpedo the B3 project?” Zavala said.

“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” Austin said. “Let’s see if Doc is awake.”

KANE WAS NOT ONLY awake but quite chipper. He had showered, wrapped his body in a terry-cloth robe, and was sitting in a chair chatting with the medic.

“Now I know what it feels like to be a canned sardine,” he said. “Thanks for the rescue, Kurt. I can’t believe the cable broke.”

“It didn’t break,” Zavala said. “Kurt says that it was cut.”

“Cut?” Kane’s lower jaw dropped open. “I don’t understand.”