Medusa (NUMA Files 8)

Since he didn’t have many options, Zavala decided to put his money on his former adversary. He grabbed Phelps by the arm, and said, “We need to talk, soldier.”

CHAPTER 42

THE SEAHAWK HELICOPTER FLEW WITHOUT ITS RUNNING lights twenty-five feet above the sea, almost skimming the wave tops, as it sped toward the atoll at two hundred miles an hour. Tension in the cockpit mounted as the chopper neared its destination, but Austin remained an island of calm. He sat in the passenger’s seat dressed in a lightweight wet suit, his eyes fixed on a satellite-generated hybrid chart spread out on his lap, etching every detail into his brain.

He had marked three Xs on the chart with a grease pencil. The first X showed the position, a quarter mile from the atoll, where the helicopter would drop him off. The second X showed the narrow breach in the coral reef. The third X, from overhead, showed the dark streak in the lagoon.

The pilot’s voice came over the headphones.

“Five-minute warning, Kurt.”

Austin folded the chart and put it in a waterproof chest pack. He pulled a plastic pouch that protected his Bowen revolver out of the pack, checked the load, and tucked it back inside. Then he unbuckled his seat belt and stood by the Seahawk’s open door. The helicopter slowed, then hovered over the predetermined point of insertion.

“Showtime, Kurt!” the pilot said.

“Thanks for the ride,” Austin said. “We’ll have to do it again sometime when I can stay longer.”

The chopper’s copilot helped Austin push a six-foot-long inflatable boat out the door, and they lowered it into the sea using a mot

orized winch. Austin grabbed a two-inch line rigged to the helicopter’s hoist bracket and slid down the rope, his hands protected by thick gloves. He then lowered himself into the sea and let go.

The Seahawk moved away from the insertion point, to prevent its rotors from whipping up the water. Austin breaststroked over to the inflatable and climbed aboard. It was stabilized by the weight of the gear pack secured to its makeshift wooden platform between its pontoons. He detached a flashlight from his belt, pointed it at the noisy silhouette hanging over the water, and blinked it several times to signal that he was set.

Its job done, the Seahawk darted off and, within seconds, disappeared into the night.

Austin undid the tie-downs holding the supply pack and pulled out a paddle. He found a waterproof pouch that contained a handheld GPS and pushed the POWER button.

The tiny green screen blinked on, and it showed his position in relation to the island. He tucked the GPS back in its pouch and began to paddle.

It was a gorgeous night. The stars glittered like diamond splinters against the black velvet of the tropical sky, and the sea was on fire, glowing with silvery-green phosphorescence. There was little current and no wind, and he covered the distance in good time. Hearing the whisper of waves washing against the reef, he squinted against the darkness and saw the faint white line of breaking waves.

He checked the GPS again, and followed the course it suggested to take him to the break in the reef. But he ran into trouble as he approached the narrow opening in the coral. The water surged in and out of the break to create a barrier of turbulence that tossed the lightweight boat around like a rubber duck in a bathtub.

Paddling vigorously, Austin brought the bow around and charged into the opening, but again failed to muster the power necessary to overcome the crosscurrents. He made another try. This time, he yelled, “Once more unto the breach,” but the inspired words of Shakespeare’s Henry V were no match for the power of the sea. All he got for his trouble was a mouthful of seawater.

After his failed attempts, Austin admitted to himself that the sea was just playing with him, and he paddled away from the reef to reconnoiter. As the inflatable rocked in the waves, he caught his breath. Then he extracted a lightweight, electric-powered outboard motor and battery from the pack, clamped the motor to the platform, and punched IGNITION. Except for a soft hum, the motor was almost silent. He goosed the throttle and aimed the inflatable’s blunt bow at the creamy surf welling up around the opening in the reef.

The inflatable bounced, fishtailed, and yawed. For a second, Austin gritted his teeth, thinking he was going to be thrown sideways into the jagged coral. Then the outboard’s propeller blades caught water, and the inflatable squeezed through the opening and glided into the peaceful lagoon.

Austin quickly killed the motor and waited. Five minutes passed, and there was nothing to indicate he had been detected. No blinding searchlights, no hail of bullets, to herald his arrival.

Austin took the lack of a warm reception as an invitation to stay. He dug his scuba gear out of the pack, buckling on his lightweight air tank and buoyancy compensator. He checked his GPS and saw that the inflatable had been thrown slightly off course after passing through the reef.

He began to paddle, until the little black triangle on the GPS’s screen showed he was back on course. A few minutes later, the triangle merged with the circle marking where the satellite showed the dark streak in the lagoon. The submarine he had seen in the satellite image seemed to have sprung from the floor of the lagoon before it vanished magically from sight. The inexplicable disappearance of the Typhoon suggested that there was more to the lagoon than met the eye. Austin had no logical reason to assume the lagoon’s waters were not as shallow as they looked from space, but he look no chances, and had borrowed a tank containing a Trimix mixture from the NUMA research vessel in the event that he had to make a deeper dive than expected.

Austin pulled on his face mask and fins, chomped on his regulator mouthpiece, hoisted himself belly down onto the inflatable’s right pontoon, then rolled off into the lagoon.

Water seeped between the neoprene and his skin and gave him a momentary chill until it warmed to an insulating body temperature. He held on to the side of the inflatable for a few seconds, then he pushed himself away, jackknifed as he dove under the surface, and descended about twenty feet.

As Austin neared the floor of the lagoon, he reached out with his gloved right hand. Instead of touching sand, his fingers pushed against a soft, yielding surface. His coral-blue eyes narrowed behind the lens of the mask. He removed the glove, and discovered that what he thought was sand overgrown with marine life was a loosely woven net covered with an irregular pattern of colors.

Austin slid his knife from its sheath on his thigh, pressed the point into the fabric, and pushed. With only slight pressure, the blade penetrated the net. He sawed a cut in the net several inches long, withdrew the blade, returned it to its sheath, and glided over the fake ocean botton until he came to where he had seen the streak in the satellite picture.

He saw from a few inches away that the streak was in fact a partially mended tear in the fake bottom. The uneven nylon stitching looked as if it had been done hastily.

Austin unhooked a dive light from his vest.

Holding the light straight out in front of him, Austin squirmed through the opening. He brought his body straight up, paddling with his fins as if he were on a bicycle, and spun around slowly. About midway through his three-sixty pivot, he halted and stared with wonder.