Medusa

CHAPTER 14

A FEW MINUTES AFTER ONE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING, AN inflatable pontoon boat softly bumped against the hull of the William Beebe and four figures dressed in black-and-green camouflage suits clambered up the side of the ship on rope ladders suspended from padded grapnel hooks. They vaulted over the rail one by one and dashed across the deck as silently as the shadows they resembled.

Except for the night-shift watch on the bridge, the crew was sound asleep in their cabins, recovering from the exertions of the bathysphere launch and rescue. Austin was awake, however, and after staring at the ceiling, his mind churning, he got up and got dressed and made his way to the machine shop.

He switched on the lights, and went over to examine the blade clamped in a table vise. He found a magnifying glass, placed a desk lamp directly over the blade, and examined the tiny ding near the hilt. Through the lens he saw that the flaw was actually a mark in the shape of an equilateral triangle with a dot at each point.

Austin drew the design on a pad of paper. He stared at it for a few moments but nothing jumped out at him. He set the pad down and went out onto the deck, thinking the cool air might blow away the cobwebs of sleep. He took a deep breath, but the sudden influx of oxygen produced a yawn instead. His synapses needed a stronger jolt.

He looked up at the bridge lights glowing in the window of the pilothouse. The night watch always kept a coffeepot brewing. He climbed the exterior stairs to the starboard bridge wing. A man’s voice came through the partially open door. The words were growled rather than spoken, and had an accent Austin couldn’t place, but one word stood out from the others.

Kane.

Austin’s well-honed instincts came into play. He moved away from the door, plastered his back against the outside wall of the bridge, and edged up to a window. He saw Third Mate Marla Hayes, a male crewman, and Captain Gannon standing together in the pilothouse. The captain must have been rousted from his bunk because he had a jacket on over his pajamas and slippers on his feet.

Four figures wearing commando outfits were gathered around the captain, the third mate, and the crewman. Hoods covered the faces of three of the commandos, the fourth having removed his to reveal an Asian face with jade-green eyes and a clean-shaven head. All four cradled short-barreled automatic weapons carried sidearms, and had long-bladed knives hanging at their waists.

“I’ll tell you again: Dr. Kane is no longer on this ship,” Gannon was saying. “He left hours ago on a seaplane.”

The unhooded commando reacted with the swiftness of a striking rattlesnake, his free hand shooting out in a short, stabbing blow to the captain’s solar plexus.

“Do not lie to me!” he snapped.

The captain doubled over, but he managed to gasp out a reply.

“Kane is not here,” he wheezed. “Search the whole damned ship, if you don’t believe me.”

“No, Captain,” his assailant said. “You will search the ship. Tell everyone to come up to the deck.”

Still bent over in pain, Gannon reluctantly picked up a receiver connected to the Beebe’s public-address system. When he hesitated with the receiver at his mouth, his assailant forcefully jabbed a gun barrel into the captain’s side to show his impatience.

Gannon winced, but he stubbornly resisted the impulse to cry out. He took a deep breath and spoke into the receiver.

“This is the captain. All hands on deck. All officers and crew assemble on the fantail.”

Gannon’s assailant barked out an order, and then he and two of his accomplices herded their three prisoners toward the door leading out onto the wing. Austin saw the move and climbed up a ladder that provided access to the radio tower on the pilothouse roof. From his perch, he watched the group descend to the main deck. He climbed back down and peered in a window. One attacker had been left to guard the ship’s control center.

Austin descended the stairs to a lower deck, quietly opened the door to Zavala’s cabin, stepped inside, and poked the mound beneath the blankets. Zavala groaned, then pushed the covers aside and sat up on the edge of his bed.

“Oh, hi, Kurt,” he said with a yawn. “What’s up?”

“Didn’t you hear the captain tell the crew to gather on deck?” Austin asked.

Zavala rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

“I heard him,” he said, “but I’m not crew, so I stayed in the sack.”

“Your skill at splitting hairs may have saved your butt,” Austin said.

Zavala suddenly came to life.

“What’s going on, Kurt?”

“Uninvited company. A bunch of heavily armed gentlemen in ninja suits.”

“How many?”

“Four that I know of, but there may be others. They’re looking for Kane. Gannon told them Doc’s not on the ship, but they didn’t believe him. He was forced to round up the crew.”

Zavala muttered something in Spanish, then bounded out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans and a windbreaker. He yanked his lucky skullcap down over his ears.

“What sort of firepower are we dealing with?” he asked.

Austin told him about the machine guns and pistols the commandos carried. Zavala frowned. Neither man had thought to bring along a weapon on a peaceful scientific expedition.

“We’ll have to improvise for now,” Austin said.

Zavala shrugged.

“What else is new?” he said.

Austin checked the passageway. Seeing it was clear, he led the way to the bridge, with Zavala a few steps behind. The commando was still inside. He was lighting a cigarette. Austin pointed to his own chest, then to the roof ladder. Zavala curled his forefinger and thumb into an OK gesture. As soon as Austin was on the roof, Zavala tapped on the window and waved at the commando, who burst onto the wing with his machine gun at waist level.

“Buenas noches,” Zavala said, brandishing his friendliest smile.

Zavala’s Latin charm fell on deaf ears. The man pointed his gun at Zavala’s midsection. Zavala raised his hands. The man was reaching for a radio at his belt when Austin called down from the roof.

“Yoo-hoo,” Austin said, “I’m up here.”

The man looked up and saw a steel-haired gargoyle grinning down at him. He brought his gun up, but Austin leaped off the roof and landed with his full weight on the man’s shoulders. The man folded like a rag doll under the impact of more than two hundred pounds of muscle and bone and crashed to the deck.

The machine gun flew from the man’s hand. Zavala dove for the weapon and deftly snatched it up before it skittered over the edge. He held the gun on the man, who lay on the deck without stirring.

“Did you really say, ‘ Yoo-hoo’?” he asked Austin.

“There wasn’t time for a full introduction.”

Austin prodded the man with his toe and told him to get up. When there was no response, he rolled the limp man over onto his back and pulled the mask back to reveal broad-faced Asian features. Blood drooled from the man’s mouth.

“He’s going to need a good orthodontist when he wakes up,” Zavala said.

Austin felt for a pulse in the man’s neck.

“That’s the least of his worries,” he said. “He’d be better off seeing the undertaker.”

Zavala stepped on the cigarette that had flown from the man’s mouth.

“Someone should have told him that smoking is bad for his health,” he said.

They dragged the body inside the bridge. Austin radioed a quick Mayday while Zavala picked up the man’s gun. They descended to the deck. Crouching low and taking advantage of the shadows, they made their way to the fantail. The powerful floodlights used to illuminate night operations had been turned on, bathing the deck in bright light. The crew and officers were huddled in a tight knot guarded by two of the commandos. The clean-shaven man had his machine gun trained on Gannon with one hand while with the other hand he brandished a photo of Kane in Gannon’s face.

The captain shook his head and pointed skyward. He looked more exasperated than frightened.

The man angrily pushed Gannon aside and turned to the Beebe’s crew. He held the photo high.

“Tell me where this man is hiding,” he announced, “and we will let you go.”

When no one took him up on the offer, he strode over to the crewmen, studied their frightened faces, then reached out and grabbed an arm that belonged to Marla. He forced her to her knees, glanced at his watch, and said, “If Kane does not appear in five minutes, I will kill this woman. Then we will kill one of your crew every minute until Kane comes out of hiding.”

Austin lay belly-down on the deck next to Zavala, trying to train his sights on the commando. Even if he took the man out with the first shot, he might not get the other two, who could sweep the deck clean with a few bursts from their automatic weapons. He lowered his gun and signaled to Zavala. They crawled backward until they were in the shadows of the ship’s garage.

“I can’t nail Bullethead,” Austin said. “Even if I do, his pals could go on a shooting spree.”

“What we need is a tank,” Zavala agreed.

Austin stared at his friend and punched him in the shoulder.

“You’re a genius, Joe. That’s exactly what we need.”

“I am? Oh, hell,” he said as if something had occurred to him. “The Humongous? That’s an ROV, Kurt, not an Army tank.”

“It’s better than nothing, which is what we’ve got,” Austin said.

He quickly outlined a plan.

Zavala saluted to show that he understood, then turned and sprinted off to the remote-control center. Austin slipped through a door to the ship’s garage and turned the lights on. The Humongous had been pulled up close to the doors in preparation for the search for the sunken ROV the next morning.

The Humongous was about the size of a Land Rover. It was built with treads that allowed it to crawl along the sea bottom. It had a flotation pack full of foam that held the instruments, lights, and ballast tanks. Six thrusters allowed for agile, precise maneuvering in the water, and it carried a battery of still and television cameras, magnetometers, sonar, water samplers, and instruments that measured water clarity, light penetration, and temperature.

The pair of now-folded mechanical manipulators that extended from the forward end could be operated with surgical precision. Their claws could pluck the tiniest of samples from the bottom and store them in a collection cage slung under the front of the vehicle.

A couple hundred feet of umbilical tether had been coiled behind the ROV. Austin stood in front of it, waiting, as precious seconds went by. Then the vehicle’s searchlights snapped on, and the electric motors began to hum.

Austin waved his arms at the camera. Zavala saw him on the monitor and waggled the manipulator arms to signal that he was at the controls.

Austin went around behind the ROV and climbed on top. Zavala gave the vehicle power. The Humongous lurched forward and crashed into the double doors, pushing them wide open. As it emerged onto the deck on grinding treads, Zavala waved the manipulators around and worked the claws, adding to the dramatic effect.

Marla’s would-be executioner whirled around to face the garage doors and saw what looked like a giant crustacean heading directly for him. Marla took advantage of the distraction, scrambled to her feet, and made a run for safety. One of the other commandos saw the third mate trying to escape and aimed his weapon at her fleeing figure.

Austin snapped off a stuttering fusillade that stitched a row of holes across the man’s midsection. The clean-shaven man and the other commando took cover behind a crane and peppered the oncoming Humongous with hundreds of rounds. The unrelenting gunfire blasted away its searchlights, then a lucky shot found its camera.

Inside the control room, the screen went blank. Zavala kept the vehicle moving at full speed, but without electronic eyes he was having trouble controlling it. The Humongous veered drunkenly to the right, came to a jerking stop, then shot off to the left. It went through the same moves again, peppered all the while by the hail of bullets. Fragments of plastic, foam, and metal filled the air until, finally, the shooting triggered an electrical fire.

Austin gagged on the acrid smoke filling his nostrils. He could feel the Humongous disintegrating beneath him. He dropped off the back of the erratically moving ROV and ran to one side of the ship, dove behind a tall air vent, hit the deck, and rolled several feet. He stopped and fired a blast directly above the stroboscopic muzzle flashes in front of him. It was his turn for a lucky hit. One of the guns went silent. Austin kept on shooting until he emptied his gun of bullets.

A moment later, the clean-shaven man took advantage of the lull and ran for the side of the ship.

Austin stepped out into the open, pointed his empty gun at the fleeing man, and yelled, “Hey, Bullethead! Don’t leave so soon. Fun’s just starting.” Austin raised the gun to his shoulder.

The man stopped and turned to face Austin from twenty feet or so away. The Humongous was now ablaze, and the man’s face and strange green eyes were visible in the light of the flickering flames. A smile came to his evil features.

“You’re bluffing,” he said. “You would have shot me if you had the chance.”

“Try me,” Austin said, squinting with one eye as if taking aim.

Either the man didn’t buy Austin’s bluff or he didn’t care. He raised his own gun, and Austin thought he was going to shoot, but instead the man let out a snarl and dashed toward the railing, firing from the hip as he ran. Austin ducked for cover, and when he dared look again, the man had disappeared. He heard the sound of an outboard motor starting and ran to the railing. The boat was already up on plane, and within seconds it had disappeared into the darkness.

He stared at the pale wake foaming the water and was listening to the motor fading into the night when there was a new sound on the deck behind him.

Footfalls.

Austin pivoted into a crouch, only to relax when he saw why the man had decided to bolt. Zavala had emerged from the control center and was trotting toward him. They both grabbed fire extinguishers from a bulkhead and sprayed the Humongous with foam.

“It sounded like World War Three out here,” Zavala said after they had the blaze under control. “Glad to see you’re still in one piece.”

“Thanks to your timely appearance,” Austin replied. “Wish I could say the same for the Humongous,” he added with a tinge of guilt in his voice.

Zavala gazed in wonder at the smoldering ROV, its components scattered around the deck.

“I can see now why the video died,” Zavala said.

“That’s not the only thing that died,” Austin said.

He went over to the bodies lying on deck. He removed the mask from the man who had tried to kill Marla, revealing a cruel face with Asian features. The second man was Asian as well. Austin surveyed the deck, which was covered with cartridge shells. The smell of cordite hung in the smoke-filled air.

“Now we know why the B3 was attacked,” he said. “Doc Kane . . . We’ve got to talk to him.”

“Good luck!” Zavala said. “Doc made it pretty clear that his work was none of our business.”

Austin’s lips tightened in the smile that, in Zavala’s experience, had always presaged trouble.

“That’s too bad,” Austin said in an even tone. “Because I’m making it our business.”