Devil's Sea

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“The Grayback will be surfacing any second now.” Loomis pointed off the starboard side.

Dane and Foreman had returned to the surface on board the Deepflight without any trouble or activity from the gate. The flight back to the Salvor had been made in silence, each man considering what he had seen in the graveyard. Foreman had gone over to the FLIP to coordinate with Nagoya, while Dane reunited with Chelsea on board the ship to await the arrival of his next ride.

Dane watched as a periscope popped up and cut through the water, followed by a conning tower. As the sub surfaced, he immediately noted the two large metal hangars welded to the deck of the ship.

“The Crabs are inside those,” Loomis said.

“How many people can each carry?” Dane asked.

“A crew of two and ten passengers.”

“Weaponry?”

“Thirty-millimeter cannon. TOW missile launchers for land and MK-24 torpedoes for water. The armor can take a direct hit from large-caliber machine guns.”

“How many people are going on the recon?” Dane asked.

“You, me, Colonel Shashenka, and Professor Ahana.”

“Who’s piloting?”

“I am,” Loomis said.

“Who’s handling the weapons?”

“Colonel Shashenka.”

The Grayback circled and came alongside. Dane knew they would be leaving shortly, heading into the darkness. He reached down, rubbing the golden hair on top of Chelsea’s head. He was startled when she gave a short bark. She was staring down at the sub’s deck. At first, Dane thought she was looking at the two hangars, but then he noted a smaller metal box half above the waterline on the far side of the sub. A woman in a wet suit was on the deck, unlatching the end of the box. A gray dolphin slipped out of it, into the open water. It swam about as the woman watched.

“Project Rachel.”

Dane had almost forgotten that Loomis was still with him. He could pick up the dolphin’s happiness that it was finally free. It raced around the submarine, coming between it and the research ship, then paused, coming up out of the water on its rear fin to stare up at Dane and Chelsea before flipping over into the water once more.

“That’s Dr. Martsen, Rachel’s trainer and research specialist.”

“Why isn’t she going with us on the Crab?”

“We don’t need her, just Rachel. The dolphin will swim next to us on the way in. She’s trained with the Crab before. She’ll have a small video camera and transmitter mounted in a pack on her back, just in front of the dorsal fin. Transmits to the Crab. So it’s like having an extra set of eyes on the outside.”

Dane nodded, but he was thinking that Rachel was here for a different reason that Loomis realized. What that was, he wasn’t sure yet.

“Let’s head on over,” Loomis said.

Two men were waiting for Ariana as the Learjet rolled to a stop at Central Airfield in Moscow. Both were dressed in well-tailored suits, wore dark sunglasses, and had that hard, efficient look about them that Ariana had learned to associate with security personnel.

“Ms. Michelet,” one of the men stepped forward, the second facing the other way, toward the Mercedes. “I’m Jonathan Miles.”

“I assume you work for my father,” Ariana said.

Miles nodded. “We were alerted you were inbound.” He indicated the other man. “Jim Getty.” Getty didn’t turn, keeping his eyes scanning his sector of responsibility. Arian noted that behind his sunglasses, Miles was looking past her most of the time.

“Do you know why I’m here?”

“That’s not my business,” Miles said. “My job is to keep you secure. Moscow is not a safe place.”

Ariana pulled out the piece of paper that Atkins had given her. “I need to meet with this man.”

Miles glanced at it, and a frown crossed his face.

“Do you know him?” she asked.

“I know of him,” Miles said. “He’s a black marketer associated with one of the many crime families here.”

“Can you arrange a meeting?”

“How soon?”

“Immediately.”

The frown was back, and Ariana figured that was the way Mile’s face was most of the time as befitted a security man responsible for others’ well-being.

“An immediate meeting might be hard to arrange and worse, difficult to set up in a secure place.”

“I’ll take the chance,” Ariana said.

“Well…” Miles hesitated.

“I know you work for my father,” Ariana said, “but this involves the gates that have been causing all the trouble around the world. This is more important than my father’s concerns.”

“Why do you want to meet with Roskov?”

“I need to purchase something from him.”

“What?”

“A crystal skull. He offered it to the British Museum.”

Miles didn’t seem surprised at the strangeness of the item. “It is important enough to risk your life for?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Let me make some calls while we drive.” He indicated for her to go to the Mercedes.

Ariana was flanked by the two men as she made her way over. She noted the thick glass and the solid thud when the door shut behind her and knew the car was armored. They sped off the tarmac and onto a road. Miles was in the forward passenger seat, talking on a cell phone while Getty drove.

Miles turned around. “One hour. Roskov says have the money with you.”

“How much?”

“One hundred thousand American.”

Ariana knew he had asked the museum for fifty thousand. “You have cash for your kidnap fund, right?”

Miles nodded.

“Do you have one hundred thousand?”

Mile’s nod was more reluctant this time, Ariana knew her father had these security men all over the world, and each little station had a large amount of cash to buy back employees of any of his many subsidiaries who might get kidnapped. In many areas of the world, particularly South America and Russia, kidnapping was a profitable business, and there were brokers who made their living negotiating between the parties and taking a percentage of the ransom.

“Let’s get it, then?”

Miles pointed past her. “We have a quarter million in the trunk.”

“Good.”

“I have to check with your father to disburse the fund,” Miles said.

“He’ll approve it,” Ariana said. Her father would spend one hundred thousand on a piece of art without blinking an eye.

Regardless, Miles turned back to the front and pulled out his cell phone once more. Ariana stared out the thick windows at the grimy streets of Moscow as they raced toward the center of town. She had never liked the city; it always seemed dirty, and a sense of oppression still lingered over it with a palpable air. It was just at dawn, the first rays of the sun cutting at a sharp angle across the buildings and streets.

Getty cut the wheel hard, and they entered a narrow alley, then came to a halt. There was barely enough room to open the doors on the passenger side.

“Wait inside while I break out the money,” Miles said, his only indication that her father had approved the payment. Ariana knew her father would, given all the years he had worked in concert with Foreman; besides, he would probably get Foreman to reimburse him. She had recently accepted that her father cared more about his business empire than he did about her. The only reason he had been allied with Foreman was to get government contracts; she knew the main reason he was still working with the CIA man was that the Shadow, as a threat to the world, was a threat to his holdings. It was how her father had managed to become so successful: by viewing everything totally through the perspective of its effect on him.

Miles reentered the car, a metal suitcase in one hand; a long, plastic case in the other. He handed the metal one back to Ariana. “One hundred thousand. Roskov has a reputation as a legitimate dealer, which means he shouldn’t try to rip us off. Not good for the business he is in, but it’s not out of the realm of possibilities. I’ll go forward with you to make the meet. Jim” — he indicated the driver — “will cover us with a sniper rifle. I’ve also got some friends in the Omon, the Moscow special police, who will be nearby.”

“How much will that coverage cost?” Ariana wondered.

“Ten thousand.”

“Where is the meeting?”

‘Underneath the Moskvoretsky Bridge near the Kremlin. It’s pretty empty this time of day.”

“Let’s go.”

They pulled out of the alley and continued. The Kremlin appeared on the left as they drove down Alexandrovky Boulevard, then reached the Moscow River and followed the walls as they jagged left. Ariana could see the bridge ahead and the dark section of the road as it passed underneath the iron girders. A pair of headlights flashed out of that shadow.

The Mercedes stopped. Miles opened the plastic case and passed a sniper rifle to Getty. He then pulled out an MP-5 submachine gun, made sure a round was in the chamber, slid two extra magazines into his coat pockets, then looked back at Ariana. “Ready?”

“Do you have a weapon for me?”

The frown was back on his face.

“My being armed isn’t going to change anything except help our situation if we run into trouble,” Ariana pointed out.

Miles reached into the plastic case and retrieved a pistol. “Browning nine millimeter. Do you know how to work it?”

“Yes.” She pulled back slightly on the slide and noted there was already a round in the chamber. She stuck it in her belt, underneath her jacket. He handed her a couple of extra clips, which she stuck in her coat pocket.

“All right. Are you ready now?”

In reply, she opened her door and got out. She could see a car parked on the side of the road a hundred meters ahead. It was still early in the morning, and traffic above on the bridge was light, to judge by the sound. There was no one else on this road, and she wondered if that was because of the early hour or the Russian police or a combination.

Miles joined her, the submachine gun tucked under his coat, hanging from his shoulder on a sling. They began walking forward, and someone got out of the car they were headed toward. It was a BMW, also riding low on its tires, probably as well armored as their Mercedes. A tall man with a shaved head, wearing a long leather coat, walked around and put the car between them and him.

“Is that Roskov?” Ariana asked as they got closer.

“I have no idea,” Miles said. “I would assume so.”

Ariana halted ten feet from the car. “Are you Roskov?” she asked, not sure if he spoke English. Miles repeated the question in fluent Russian.

The man nodded and answered in English. “Yes.”

“Do you have the skull?” Ariana asked.

“Yes, I have it.”

“Can I see it?”

“No.”

Ariana was losing patience with people. “I’m not here to play games.”

“Why are the Omon surrounding this place?” Roskov asked.

“To make sure our meeting is uninterrupted,” Ariana said.

“If you have the money to pay off the Omon to guard this meeting,” Roskov said, “then my asking price is much too low.”

“We agreed on the price,” Miles said.

“That was then; this is now” Roskov smiled.

“How much?” Ariana asked.

“Half a million.”

Ariana knew they didn’t have time to get that much money. “I’ll double the agreed price. Two hundred thousand.”

“Half a million,” Roskov repeated.

She turned to Miles. “Kill him.”

It was hard to tell who was more surprised, Miles or Roskov.

Roskov held up his hands. “Let’s not be hasty.”

“I don’t have time to play games with you. Your asking price with the British Museum was fifty thousand. We doubled it, and I just doubled it again. Take it or die.”

“You are not a good negotiator,” Roskov said. “I did not come here alone.” He nodded his head up in the darkness of the girders.

Looking up, Ariana could make out a pair of men with rifles perched on a couple of girders, aiming down at her.

“You aren’t a good businessman,” Ariana said. “Two hundred thousand.”

Roskov smiled once more. “You may have the Omon, but I have the Mafia. They now surround your policemen and are better armed. I made some calls while I was waiting for you. You have Van Liten’s skulls and one from the American Museum of Natural History and the British. They must be very important. More than just a curiosity.”

Ariana looked at Miles. She realized they could stand here forever playing games. She didn’t have the money here that Roskov was asking for, and she knew that leaving, getting the money, and arranging another meeting would take too much time. She smiled at Miles and the frown was there, larger than before.

“All right,” Ariana said. She put the briefcase on the trunk of the car. “That’s your first hundred thousand. Is that enough for me to see the skull and make sure it’s what I want?”

Roskov’s shoulders went down slightly in relief. “Certainly.” He used a remote control to unlock the trunk. He picked up the suitcase and opened the lid. He placed the briefcase next to an item wrapped in a blanket inside a cardboard box. He opened the briefcase and checked the money, then nodded at the box.

Ariana reached in. The weight felt right as she lifted the object out. Carefully, she unwrapped it, knowing before she saw it, that it was a pure ancient from the aura. The skull glittered, even in the shadow of the bridge. She wrapped it back up and placed it back in the box.

“We have the rest of the money in our car,” Ariana said.

“There is another issue,” Roskov said.

“And that is?”

“You are the daughter of Paul Michelet. There are those who think that is worth much more than the skull. So I am to tell you the price is a half million for the skull and one hundred million for you. An insignificant sum for someone like your father.”

Ariana didn’t hesitate. She had her pistol out and shoved the muzzle into Roskov’s side. Miles whipped out the MP-5 and braced it on the top of the trunk, aiming up at the two snipers, the metal lid between the two groups.

“You have one hundred thousand,” Ariana said. “I meant what I said. Take it or you die now.”

“You’ll never get out of here alive,” Roskov hissed. “This is not my idea.” He nodded at the metal briefcase. “That is all I get. There is nothing more I can do. They do not care if you kill me.”

“Too bad for you,” Ariana said. “Where are the keys for the car?”

“In the ignition.”

A pair of cars came down the street from the right and stopped twenty meters away.

“They got through the Omon or gave them a bigger bribe,” Miles said, the submachine gun still steady on the top of the trunk aimed at the two snipers.

“My boss owns the city,” Roskov said. “There is no way you will get out of here.”

Looking the other way, Ariana could see that Getty was behind the door of the Mercedes, the sniper rifle resting on the top of the frame.

“There’s only one way out of here,” Ariana said.

“And that is?” Miles asked.

‘Through there,” Ariana pointed at the trunk.

“Go,” Miles said.

Ariana shoved Roskov out of the security of the heavy trunk lid and dove into the trunk, Miles right behind her. She heard shots fired, and as Miles pulled the lid down on top of them, saw Roskov staggering back as bullets slammed into his chest. Then they were in darkness as the trunk locked shut.

There was that thud of rounds hitting the metal all around, but nothing came through the armor. A thin beam of light punctured the darkness; Miles had a small flashlight clenched between his teeth.

“Excuse me,” he said, as he slithered on top of Ariana and pointed the muzzle of the sub at the seat back visible between the metal frame. He fired a quick burst, ripping through the material, then another and another and finally a fourth, stitching out a square pattern about two feet on each side. He pivoted, his hip digging into the small of Ariana’s back, and brought both feet to beat at the center of the square. He kicked with no result, then kicked again, and the leather and springs gave way and sunlight flooded the trunk through the small opening.

Miles crawled through, Ariana following, cursing as a spring dug a gouge out of her shoulder. By the time she was in the backseat, Miles was already in the driver’s seat and had the engine started. Bullets were smacking into the heavy glass on all sides and ricocheting off. Ariana climbed into the passenger seat as Miles threw the BMW into gear.

Ariana took a quick look around. Getty was firing while the Mercedes was also taking incoming bullets. There were men spread all across the street from the two cars that had just arrived, all with automatic weapons. The two snipers under the bridge were also firing. She could see more cars coming from both directions as Getty jumped into the temporary security of the armored Mercedes and started its engine.

Miles raced by the Mercedes only to face four white vans coming toward them. He slammed on the brakes and expertly skidded the car in a one-eighty turn. He accelerated in the other direction, Getty following. The men who had gotten out of the cars fired, bullets smacking off the bulletproof glass, leaving cracks in places. They drove out of the way as Miles continued to push down on the gas.

“Oh damn,” Miles muttered. There were four more vans blocking the way under the bridge. “Better buckle up,” he said as he threw the wheel counterclockwise, and the heavy car lifted slightly on two wheel before settling back down as they headed toward the up ramp for the bridge, between it and the Kremlin.

A bullet hit the glass right next to Ariana’s head, and she ducked as a spider web of cracks appeared. She had just managed to buckle her seat belt when the car came to an abrupt halt and she was slammed forward, the belt keeping her from bashing her brains out on the dash. She looked up. Fifty meters in front of them, the ramp was blocked by two vans parked in a V. Behind the vans, a half-dozen men with automatic weapons and one man with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher waited. The eighty-eight millimeter wide round stuck out of the forty-millimeter tube, filled with explosives and waiting to be fired. The high-explosive warhead could penetrate over a foot of tank armor, which meant the cars were vulnerable to it.

Miles’s hands were tight on the wheel, his foot on the brake. Getty pulled the Mercedes up next to them, Miles looked to the left and Getty nodded.

“What is he doing?” Ariana asked as the Mercedes began moving.

“His job,” Miles said.

She watched in horror as the Mercedes raced toward the two vans, picking up speed. The men began firing, bullets bouncing off the car. Miles switched from brake to gas, and fell in twenty meters behind the Mercedes. The man with the RPG took careful aim and pulled the trigger. Getty swerved, but the distance was too close to make him miss but not as close as Getty had hoped. The rocket grenade needed ten meters of flight to arm. He almost made it, but impact came at twelve meters. The round hit the Mercedes just below the right headlight, punched into the engine, and exploded.

Ariana ducked as the heavy engine hood of the Mercedes came flying over the burning car and smashed into the roof and the BMW, denting it. The Mercedes was still moving, four tones of momentum smashing into the point of the V, shoving both lighter vans back and clearing the way, before the car came to a halt, fire engulfing the engine.

Miles darted them through the gap, then swerved to the driver’s side of the Mercedes. “Covering fire!” he yelled at Ariana as he kicked his door open and sprayed the dazed gunmen with the MP-5.

She opened her door and fired as fast as she could pull the trigger, emptying a fifteen-round clip in four seconds. Then she looked at the driver of the Mercedes, Getty was held in place by the seat belt, but his head drooped. He was either dead or unconscious.

“Cover me,” she yelled across the top of the BMW to Miles as she abandoned the safety of the door and pulled at the driver’s door. It was locked. She looked over her shoulder, but Miles had already seen the problem and had his remote opener in hand. He pushed a button, and the lock clicked. She pulled the door open.

One of Getty’s legs was gone from the knee down, blood pulsing out. But she took the sign of the blood flowing as a positive; it meant he was still alive. She tucked her pistol in her belt and then grabbed his arms. She turned her back to him, his arms tight over her shoulders, and dragged him.

A string of bullets whizzed by her head. “Sorry,” Miles yelled as he fired another burst that narrowly missed her, giving her covering fire at whoever was behind her.

She shoved Getty into the passenger seat, then sat on top of him, pulling the door shut. Miles slid into his seat, and they were on their way. Bullets thumped on the back window as he pulled away.

As Miles raced through the streets of Moscow, darting through narrow alleys, Ariana pulled her belt off. She slid it under the stump of Getty’s right leg, then pulled it as tight as she could. Then she stuck the muzzle of the Browning under the belt and twisted, tightening down the makeshift tourniquet.

“Where are you going?” she finally asked Miles, satisfied that at least there was no more blood coming out of the stump.

“The airfield.”

She shook her head. “We need to get him to a hospital.”

“The Mafia would have him in a heartbeat if we did that,” Miles said. “We’re coming with you.”

Dane flexed his knees, allowing his body to roll with the slight swell that the Grayback bobbed in. There was one Crab in each of the two hangers, and the one on the right was being prepped for the upcoming mission.

The Crab looked like a cross between a Bradley, Fighting Vehicle and a miniature submarine. It had a tubular body ten meters long by three in diameter with a turret on the top center that mounted the thirty-millimeter chain gun and the TOW and torpedo launchers. At the rear were dual propellers and horizontal and vertical dive fins, while along the lower half on either side were treads, both powered by the same powerful engine, the changeover made by shifting the power train to either tread or propeller. Entry was by means of doors on either side near the rear, just in front of the power plant, that were hinged on the bottom and swung down to become ramps.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Colonel Loomis asked.

“Impressive was the B-52 bomber stuck vertically in the ground that was in the Angkor gate,” Dane said. “Impressive is destroying Iceland. Impressive is sending a tsunami to wipe out a hundred miles of the coast of Puerto Rico as a by-product of doing something else. It’s also destroying Atlantis so completely we thought it was simply a literary device used by Plato.”

“What’s your problem?” Loomis asked. “Ever since you’ve come here, you’ve been gloom and doom.”

“I should be dancing with joy?” Dane asked. He faced the officer. “I’ve been in a gate before. I watched my team get decimated. This” — he slapped the side of the Crab, producing a dull thunk—“is not going to defeat the Shadow. It’s a ride, that’s all. We have no clue what we’re going to find over there,” Dane nodded toward the dark wall on the northern horizon. “Not in the gate and especially not once we go through the portal, if we can go through the portal.”

“I know all that,” Loomis said. “But we’re taking the fight to the Shadow for the first time instead of reacting. I think you’d be a little more positive.”

“What makes you think this is the first time man has taken the fight into a gate against the Shadow?” Dane asked.

“What do you mean?” Loomis was confused.

“Nothing.” Dane said.

“We go in thirty minutes,’ Loomis snapped.

“Fine.” He noted Dr. Martsen near the bow of the Grayback, looking down into the water. He walked away, not saying anything else to Loomis, and headed forward. As he got close, he could see Rachel’s dorsal fin cutting through the water and then the dolphin’s head as Martsen tossed a small fish to her.

“Hello,” he said as he walked up. “I’m Eric Dane.”

Martsen was short and slender, with dark hair cut tight against her skull. There were deep lines around her eyes. “So this is your idea?”

“Who told you that?” Dane was taken aback at the anger in her voice.

“I was told you were the expert on that…” she pointed at the gate.

“As much as anyone is an expert,” Dane said.

“So it was your idea to go in there and ask for Rachel to accompany you,” she said.

“I didn’t ask for her,” Dane said. He could pick up the anger from Martsen and realized it mirrored the anger he had just shown toward Loomis. He glanced at the dark wall of the gate and realized being this close was affecting everyone.

The muscles on the side of Martsen’s mouth were working as she tried to control her temper. “Who did then?”

“I don’t know,” Dane lied. “I’m not even sure why the two of you are here, but I think Rachel has an important role to play.’

“Why do you think that?”

Dane told her about what had happened on the beach in Japan. As he spoke, he could sense her relaxing slightly.

“You can read minds?” she asked when he was done.

“I can sense things.”

She nodded. “Sometimes I feel like Rachel is communicating with me.”

“I know Chelsea does with me,” Dane said. He looked down at the water. “To be honest, I don’t know much about dolphins. Aren’t they supposed to be intelligent and able to talk among themselves?”

“Rachel’s a Tursiops truncates,” Martsen said. “What most people call a bottle-nosed dolphin.”

“She’s big,” Dane noted as Rachel surfaced, then dove.

“Three meters,” Martsen said proudly. “I’ve been with her for eight years now.”

“Always with the Navy?” Dane asked.

“It’s the only way to get funded,” Martsen replied defensively. “And our work has been related to submarine rescue and mine mapping. Nothing offensive.”

“How long can she stay under?” Dane asked. He was watching where Rachel had gone under, and she still hadn’t come up yet. Martsen saw him looking.

“She can stay under for fifteen minutes,” she said. “And go down six hundred meters.”

“Isn’t she an air-breather?’ Dane felt ignorant, but he had rarely been to the ocean.

“A mammal, just like you and me. Air-breathing, warm-blooded.”

“How can she dive so deep and stay under so long then?”

“Her lungs are more efficient than ours. She can exchange a much higher percentage of the contents of her lungs than we can.”

“And she’s intelligent,” Dane said.

“More intelligent than humans in some ways,” Martsen said. “They don’t have wars and kill each other.”

“I hear that,” Dane said. “One has to wonder exactly what we mean when we talk about intelligence.”

“A lot of people confuse dolphins with porpoises, but porpoises have a rounded head with no beak, and their dorsal fins are smaller. And dolphins are smarter,” she added.

Rachel surfaced. There was a puff of spray from her blowhole, then she began circling lazily.

“She shuts the blowhole when she dives and has to clear it when she surfaces,” Martsen explained.

Dane’s attention was caught by the FLIP, a quarter mile away and closer to the gate, as a bulbous bow slowly went underwater and the stern lifted. Slowly, the forward end of the ship disappeared below the waves, taking the muon generator down. In less than five minutes, the majority of the ship was underwater, the stern bobbing in the slight swell.

Martsen signed. “I know why the Navy wants her for this mission. Colonel Loomis said that they were going in blind, no electromagnetic emissions. So they’re going to use Rachel as their sonar.”

“What do you mean?” Dane asked.

“Rachel uses sonar, what we call echolocation, to navigate and find prey. She sends out a series of clicks that she makes with the blowhole and emits through her forehead. Then she picks up the bounce-back with her jaw. Her brain can then analyze the information and form a sort of picture of her surroundings using these sound images. There are some researchers who speculate the dolphins can even use their emitter to send high-frequency bursts that stun their prey.”

“Can you communicate with her?” Dane asked.

Martsen tapped a device on her belt. “This holds recordings of sounds that I’ve determined the meaning of. Many researchers say now that dolphins don’t communicate with each other or have a language, but my experience has been that Rachel clearly understands these noises.”

She pushed a button, and a high-pitched whistle came out of the box. Rachel stopped her circling and came over, staring up at them.

Dane could sense the intelligence in Rachel’s eyes, and he had the strange feeling that she was getting a reading on him also.

“That was Rachel’s name,” Martsen said. “Every dolphin has its own name, a specific sound that identifies it. A lot of dolphin language, such as it is, we can’t hear because the frequency’s too high. Rachel can hear up to one hundred fifty kilohertz, far beyond what we can. To give you an idea how far up that is, a bat can only hear up to one-twenty. So there’s a whole spectrum that most researchers ignored for many years.”

“So, how intelligent is she?” Dane remembered the pod of dolphins that had looked at him off the coast of Japan. He had no doubt that they were watching him and evaluating.

Martsen shrugged. “I don’t know. Her world is so different from ours that it’s hard to make an accurate comparison. Just because they haven’t built cities doesn’t mean they aren’t as smart as us. Dolphins live in harmony with their environment, unlike humans. Sometimes I wonder when they made the shift from living on land to water.

“What do you mean?”

“I told you that they’re mammals. They developed on land, and then some time in the course of their evolution they went into the ocean.”

“That’s strange,” Dane said. “Why would they do that?”

‘Maybe to get away from us,” Martsen said.

“Why?”

“Because we’re their worst enemies. It’s amazing that Rachel even works with us.”

“How are we their worst enemies?”

“We kill them, Mr. Dane. By the millions. Commercial fishers set out thousands of kilometers of drift nets that catch everything in their path, including dolphins. It’s estimated over five million have been killed in the last ten years here in the Pacific alone. The Russians have practically wiped out the dolphin population of the Black Sea.”

“That’s present day,” Dane said. “That doesn’t explain millions of years ago.”

Martsen shrugged. “There’s more that we don’t’ know about dolphins than we do know. Sometimes I wish I could escape into the ocean.”

“You don’t like people much, do you?”

“I like people,” Martsen said defensively. “There are some doctors who used dolphins in therapy for cancer patients. I’ve gone with Rachel on some of those missions.”

“What?” Dane’s attention was back on Rachel, the eye closest peering up at him as she swam past.

“There are doctors who think that the dolphin’s echo-sounding ability can affect the brain.”

Now Martsen had his complete attention. “How?”

“No one’s quite sure. Some think the energy of the sound dolphins transmit can actually change cellular metabolism. There have been several documented cases of people with severe brain cancer going into remission after dolphin therapy.

“What do you think?” Dane asked.

“I think there’s a lot more to Rachel than she lets me know,” Martsen said. “Sometimes I think she’s the one trying to train me.”

Dane laughed. “When I take Chelsea for a walk back home following her with a pooper-scooper, I often think that if aliens were watching, they would think Chelsea the master and me her pet.”

Dane could hear Colonel Loomis calling for him, but he didn’t turn. If dolphins could affect the brain… Loomis called again, and a Klaxon sounded, followed by a loudspeaker ordering all personnel to clear the deck in preparation for diving.

“I have to go,” Dane said.

Martsen nodded. “Take care of Rachel.” She took the box off her belt. She pointed at a small LED screen. “You can scroll through and see what vocabulary I’ve got in there.”

“And what about understanding her?” Dane asked.

“ I don’t think you’ll have a problem with that.”

Dane turned. Loomis was standing on the left-side ramp of the Crab, waving at him. “You better get below,” he told Martsen.

“Good luck,” she said to Dane.

“This way,” Loomis pointed at the Crab in the right hangar.

Dane noticed that a long, torpedo-like object had been added on the front deck. “What’s that?”

“Nagoya’s plug.”

The Learjet’s medical kit wasn’t designed for dealing with the type of trauma that Getty had suffered. The tourniquet had stopped the bleeding, but the man was till unconscious, slumped in one of the plush seats as the plane rolled toward takeoff position.

Miles was looking out the portholes. “I’m surprised the airfield hasn’t been shut down yet.”

“The Mafia is that powerful?” Ariana asked as she went through the meager contents of the kit.

“Capitalism at its worst,” Miles said. He finally relaxed and sat down as the plane rocketed down the runway and was airborne.

The best Ariana could do was give Getty an injection of antibiotics and morphine. She ordered the pilot to head for Berlin and to have an ambulance waiting for them.

“And after Berlin?” Miles asked.

That was a good question, Ariana realized. She now had eight skulls, but she had no clue where others might be, although she had people in her father’s employ making inquiries.

“I don’t’ know,” she finally said.

“The skull was that important?” Miles asked.

She could tell by the tone of his voice that he thought she was on some rich person’s lark, something he had probably seen often enough in his business. “It’s connected to the gates.”

“You said that earlier. How?”

“We don’t know exactly.”

“Important enough for my friend to lose his leg?”

“Probably not to him,” Ariana said.

“The Mafia thought you were more important than the skull.”

Miles didn’t’ say anything, and Ariana went over to the fax machine. A small pile of paper was on the tray, and she grabbed it and brought it back to her seat.

A report from Nagoya on his latest theories on the gates and what he was proposing to do with the Crab was the first thing that caught her attention. She quickly read it through, not completely understanding the physics but grasping the concept. She had never really considered that the tectonic activity might be more than just a destructive activity but instead, a by-product of the Shadow’s desire for energy. Humans had only stumbled on the theory of plate tectonics in the last thirty years, and much still wasn’t understood about the forces involved.

“We’re going to New York after Berlin,” she told Miles.

“What’s in New York?” Miles asked.

“There’s something I want to see.” She picked up the SATPhone to make the necessary arrangements for what she wanted.

It had been christened Anak Krakatoa — Child of Krakatoa — in 1925 when its cone first peeked above the water. In 1950, a minor eruption raised the height to sixty meters above sea level. The next fifty years saw an additional thirty meters added.

The Shadow’s probing undid that in less than a minute. The main lava tube underneath Anak Krakatoa was a hundred meters wide and fed by the pressure of the molten mantel below. For years it had been blocked by the weight of a quarter mile of cooled rock above it in the caldera.

The probing changed that, hitting a crack in the plug, widening it. As if sensing the weakness, the lava wormed its way into the opening, expanding it. And then the plug blew.

The explosion was heard by those who lived on the south end of Sumatra and the north tip of Java. They knew what it was immediately and hurried for high ground, just beating the tsunami that struck their shores minutes later.

“How much time before the entire rim goes?” Foreman asked Nagoya as the information about Anak Krakatoa’s eruption was relayed from various seismic stations to the control room in the FLIP.

“Hard to tell,” Nagoya answered. “Remember that the Shadow used nuclear weapons to induce what happened in Iceland. Now it’s using the power it’s tapped from Chernobyl. The only thing I can do is try to match the power levels.”

“And?” Foreman pressed impatiently.

“And I think we have twelve hours, with a twenty percent margin of error either way.”