MacD’s eyes bulged with terror as he looked into the water of the moon pool. His mouth rounded into a scream that Linda couldn’t hear, and he reared back as he threw the tank into the moon pool as if he were trying to kill something rising out of the depths, which was impossible because they hadn’t opened the keel doors yet.
The rest of the technicians in the cavernous moon pool seemed to go just as crazy, running wildly, fighting each other or hurting themselves.
Linda finally understood what she was seeing. It was happening again. The same thing that had affected the crew of the Gator in Rio.
This time, Linda seemed immune. Maybe being in the sub now was preventing her from being affected.
She turned and saw that wasn’t the case.
Raven had dropped the tablet and was prying open the case holding the sub’s emergency life raft at the aft end of the cabin. She seemed to be babbling to herself.
We’re thinking. There sending us to the bottom.
Linda yelled and leaped out of her seat to stop her, but she had only reached the external hatch ladder when Raven yanked the cord on the inflatable raft.
The pressurized CO2 canister began blowing it up, and soon neither of them would have room to move. Linda raced up the rungs, and her head poked out of the hatch as the raft began pushing her feet up and out.
She tumbled onto the deck of the Gator and saw complete pandemonium in the moon pool. MacD had run out of scuba gear and was now frantically tossing any random object around him into the water.
Linda remembered how single-minded and insane she’d been in the same condition. Reasoning with any of them was futile. If the rest of the crew was like this, it was just a matter of minutes before people started killing themselves or endangering the ship.
The op center was the only place where she could get the situation under control. As she raced out of the moon pool, Linda realized she might be the sole person on the Oregon who was unaffected by whatever was causing this.
But she had been affected before. Why not now?
Julia Huxley dashed by in hysterics, which terrified Linda even more because it was so out of character for the normally calm doctor. She was yelling something that the Google Glass interpreted as We’re going to fly. It suddenly hit Linda.
She was deaf. Some kind of sound wave had to be the trigger for all of this panic.
Linda had to keep the crew from self-destructing while also getting the Oregon away from the source of the sound.
When she passed one of the ship’s firefighting stations, she got an idea and snatched a mask with a filter from the cabinet. She put it on as she ran.
When she reached the op center, there were only two people left at their posts. Murph was hunched over his position at the weapons console, tapping furiously on the keyboard and talking to himself. Max sat in the command chair, pointing at the main view screen and shrieking as if he were watching the world’s scariest horror movie. Nothing was visible except the horizon.
Her glasses typed out a jumble of messages from both men that didn’t make any sense.
I see them!
Won’t get us.
Swallow us all!
Nothing left to eat.
Linda didn’t bother with either of them. She headed straight for the nearest console and brought up the controls for intruder countermeasures.
Before she could find what she was looking for, she felt a thump reverberate through her chair. She looked up and saw a flash on the view screen, followed by a trail of smoke.
Linda instantly realized what had happened. The thump she’d felt was the launch of a rocket. Murph had fired an Exocet anti-ship missile.
It headed directly south. She glanced at the radar and realized it was racing toward some kind of boat.
* * *
—
Farouk and Li both leaped to their feet when they saw the Exocet shoot into the sky eight miles away.