Medusa (NUMA Files 8)

He zoomed the satellite camera in on the tiny speck. Typical Pacific atoll: a minuscule island with a few palm trees encircled by a lagoon and ringed with a coral reef that was mostly solid and with no opening big enough for a massive Typhoon-class submarine to pass through with the lab in tow. Nothing could be seen in the clear waters of the lagoon.

Zavala called the Search Command ship and reconfirmed that planes had flown over the island and ships had come close for a look, but it was too insignificant to merit further investigation.

Despite his doubts and those pesky facts, he kept coming back to the name: Trouble Island. Someone had designated the island as a source of misfortune. What kind of trouble?

Zavala tried Austin’s phone number, but there was no reply. He stared into space and contemplated his course of action. He could stay on the NUMA ship and twiddle his thumbs waiting for the search flotilla to hit pay dirt or he could join in the search, well aware that he was probably wasting time and fuel.

He hated inaction. He picked up an intercom phone, called the bridge, and told the captain he would need the helicopter to take a closer look at the atoll.

Crew members helped Zavala haul the emergency raft from the storage shed and load it onto the helicopter. He got into the cockpit and started to work the controls. Moments later, the chopper lifted off the pad, made one circle around the ship, and shot off on a northerly course.

Zavala kept the helicopter at an altitude of five hundred feet and a cruising speed of one hundred fifty miles per hour. Seen from this high up, the ocean was a sun-sparkled blue-green blur. He passed a couple of ships from the search flotilla, but most of them were looking in other areas. The blinding sheen off the water prevented him from seeing the atoll until he was almost on top of it.

He banked the helicopter and looked down at a handkerchief-sized patch of sand with its few palm trees. The atoll looked exactly as he had seen it on the satellite image. He confirmed that there was no break in the reef wide enough to have allowed a boat of any size to pass through. He headed down for a closer look, and brought the helicopter onto a soft pontoon landing a few hundred feet from the atoll’s island, which was oddly located at one end of the lagoon rather than at its center.

As the rotors whirled to a stop, Zavala unbuckled himself and stepped out onto one of the pontoons. It was absolutely silent except for the whisper of the waves on the shore. Looking down into the crystal clear water, he saw a crab scuttling along the bottom.

The raft was in an orange-colored plastic container that he muscled out of the cockpit. He set it in the water and yanked an inflation cord. There was a hiss from the carbon dioxide capsule, and the raft writhed into full inflation. Zavala climbed into the raft and paddled to shore.

He pulled the raft up on the blinding white sand and walked around the perimeter of the island. He felt like a shipwreck victim on one of the miniature desert islands that cartoonists like to draw.

The tropical sun beat down like a blowtorch on his uncovered head. He sought shelter in the shade of the few pitiful palm trees. He surveyed his surroundings, absorbing the remote beauty of the atoll, with its otherworldly light and color.

He walked the perimeter of the island again, retracing his own steps. He frowned. This insignificant speck of sand could never have been Trouble Island. It was just a rinky-dink atoll. He walked back to his raft and turned for a last look. A glint of light came from near the top of a palm tree.

Zavala went back and stood under the tree. He craned his neck but couldn’t determine the source of the reflection. He clambere

d onto the palm’s trunk, which grew at an angle, and climbed up to where the broad fronds branched out. He found the source of the reflection immediately. Sunlight was glancing off the lens of a miniature video camera attached to the trunk.

Zavala realized, as he looked at the lens, that it was possible the camera was looking back at him. He backed down the palm’s trunk only to stop halfway. The tree had a slick, unnatural feel to it. He unsheathed the knife at his belt and dug its point into the trunk, but it went in only so far. He peeled back a section of the trunk and got another shock: it seemed to be made of woven plastic fabric covering a hard metal core.

Zavala reached up and sliced off a section of palm frond. He stuck it between his teeth and bit down: more plastic. He sheathed his knife, and shimmied down the trunk to the sand. He walked several paces to the right, then to the left. The camera swiveled to follow him.

Oh, hell.

Zavala sprinted across the atoll, shoved his raft off the beach, and dug into the water with his paddle. He had to get back to the radio in the helicopter. He looked over his shoulder, expecting all the demons of hell to be after him, but was encouraged that no attempt was being made to stop him. A few more paddle strokes and he’d be in his helicopter.

Then the oddest thing happened. The bottom of the lagoon rose up to meet him, burst from the water in a long, shiny mound directly in front of him. Then the mound parted, and a huge black fin ripped through the bottom of the lagoon, rising until it towered more than forty feet above Zavala’s head. He was looking at the conning tower of a giant submarine. Seconds later, the submarine’s deck lifted the raft into the air. The helicopter headed skyward at the same time, and it teetered for a moment before sliding off the rounded deck at an angle. When the helicopter hit the foaming water, the water poured into the cockpit.

The raft slid off the rounded sides of the submarine, and water flowed into it. Zavala tried to climb back on the sub’s deck from the upended raft, but his fingers slid off the slick, wet metal, and the fast-flowing torrents pushed him back into the lagoon.

He choked on seawater, gasping for breath like a beached fish. Then something like a baseball bat slammed into the side of his head. He saw a brief explosion of brightness before his eyes and then felt a numbing pain. Then someone pulled the shades down, and Zavala was in darkness.

CHAPTER 40

THE TOUR BOAT CAPTAIN WASN’T SURE WHAT TO MAKE OF the people he had pulled out of the Nan Madol Canal. The half-drowned young Asian woman seemed harmless enough, but he wondered about the muscular scuba diver in the wild surfing trunks.

Checking out Austin with a wary eye, the captain asked, “What happened, man?”

Austin pointed to the rental boat, which was sinking at a sharp angle, with only a foot or so of the bullet-riddled bow sticking out of the water.

“Leaky boat,” he said.

“I heard a lot of noise,” the captain said. “Sounded like guns.”

Austin clamped his hand on the captain’s shoulder and turned him around.

“See that bag floating over there?” Austin said, pointing. “That’s mine. Can we pick it up?”