The Ocean Dark

66

Despite the sun bearing down on her, Rachael Voss felt cold. She stood with her arms crossed, staring across at the Antoinette. Nearly half an hour had passed while Coast Guard personnel boarded the container ship and approached every door without entering, under orders to stay out of any closed area. They were armed and careful and there were no more screams, but those of the FBI team Turcotte had sent over lingered in her mind.

Josh and Pavarotti stood behind her, talking quietly with Nadeau and McIlveen — two other members of their St. Croix field division squad. They were all spooked, eyes blank and haunted, and Voss knew their expressions mirrored her own. Only Josh seemed to have begun to recover, if the storm clouds in his eyes were any evidence. He had tried to warn Turcotte. Gabe Rio and the other survivors of the Antoinette had done the same.

Turcotte and O’Connell had barely moved from the place they had been standing when the shit hit the fan, but they were alone there now. Voss had moved up to the bow of the Kodiak, where several off-duty seamen were taking a cigarette break, and the rest of her team had joined her there. They came together in a crisis, her squad. If anything could make her feel safe under the circumstances, it was that.

She watched Turcotte, observed the slump of his shoulders, and felt sorry for him. The guy could be a total asshole, but he had tried to get clever, following orders to the letter but still attempting to hold on to his case. Voss suspected she might have done the same thing in his shoes, or at least considered it. Now most of Turcotte’s squad was dead; only himself, O’Connell, and two others still lived. And all he could do was wait for the shitstorm that would no doubt result from his colossal fuckup, and grieve for good men.

Voss watched the Coast Guard launch surging in the water, returning from the Antoinette with only five people on board. She glanced across at the container ship and its blocky, rusty cargo, and shivered.

“Special Agent Voss?”

She turned to see Cornelius Sykes coming toward her. Behind her, Josh and the other guys came to attention and huddled close. Whatever news Sykes brought, they wanted in on it.

“Lieutenant Commander?” Voss said.

Sykes had about him the grim air of the consummate soldier. He viewed her as the commanding officer of her squad — which, technically, she was — and so he didn’t even glance at the other agents.

“The captain has asked me to update you, ma’am.”

Any other day she would have chided him for the ma’am, maybe even threatened to hurt him. Today it simply didn’t seem important.

“All right. Let’s have it.”

For once, Sykes’s severe manner seemed to relent and she saw the humanity in his face. “Our men who boarded the freighter called through every open door and window, but received no reply. They do believe they heard movement from at least two passages, but no voices.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “No ordinary voices.”

Josh stepped up beside Voss. “They heard singing.”

“What the hell?” Tim Nadeau said. “Singing?”

They all stared at Josh, who had somehow become pale despite all the sun he’d had while undercover on the Viscaya case, and the dull purple and yellow tints of his bruises. Still, Voss thought he looked strong. Somehow, everything he’d been through had hardened him, burned away some of his cool, civilized exterior to reveal the real agent underneath — a man who finished what he started.

“It isn’t singing,” Josh said. “It only sounds like that. It could be their way of communicating with each other out of the water, or just a noise they make when they’re … I don’t know, hunting.”

“Or hungry,” McIlveen muttered.

“Mac, shut the fuck up,” Voss snapped, and the agent shrugged.

Sykes nodded. “Whatever it is, they heard it. Some of the sirens are still on board the Antoinette.”

“Sirens?” Nadeau asked.

Pavarotti glanced at him. “It’s what the Austin woman and Gabe Rio began calling them when it all started going to hell. I was in with Turcotte and O’Connell when they talked to her this morning. In Greek myths—”

“I know the story,” Nadeau said, waving Pavarotti off. “But they’re not trying to say these things are sirens?”

Voss sighed. “It’s just a word — something to call them. They sing, and they’ve lured enough sailors to their deaths.” She gestured toward the shore of the island, where derelict ships thrust up out of the water at jagged angles. “‘Sirens’ is as good a name as any.”

“So we’re assuming no survivors?” Pavarotti asked, shifting the conversation back to Lieutenant Commander Sykes.

Sykes glanced over his shoulder at Turcotte and O’Connell. “Your colleagues disagree, but Captain Rouleau has reported the incident and his belief that none of the agents who boarded are still alive.”

“For their sake, let’s hope not,” Josh said.

His tone filled Voss with dread. She expected one of her squad to ask him what could be worse than death, and was grateful that none of them did.

“Anything else?” she asked.

Sykes inclined his head in an odd sort of salute. “Only that the captain will be out to update Special Agent Turcotte in a few minutes.”

“Why tell me instead of Turcotte?”

The lieutenant commander wet his lips and blinked, and Voss realized that this part of the message had not really been meant for her. Sykes had his own reasons for passing it along.

“I’ve already informed him,” Sykes said. “I just thought you might like to hear what the captain has to say.”

Voss smiled, feeling the fakery of it and knowing Sykes must see it. “Thank you for that, Lieutenant Commander. I appreciate you keeping us in the loop.”

With that, Sykes turned and strode purposefully back along the starboard deck and vanished through the nearest door, as though he couldn’t wait to get out of there.

“What do you suppose that was about?” Josh asked.

Voss didn’t look at him, or any of her squad. Instead, she focused again on Turcotte, studying the sag of his shoulders.

“I’d say Mr. Sykes is concerned about Turcotte’s leadership and wants to make sure he’s not the only FBI agent on this tub with a clue as to what’s going on.”

Pavarotti leaned over the railing, glancing sidelong toward Turcotte and O’Connell, who were fifty or sixty feet away. “Is Sykes concerned, or is the captain?”

They all looked at him, but quickly turned to Voss. She had seniority on the squad. There were nine of them altogether, but aside from Josh, who’d come on more recently, these guys had been with her the longest. The other four were back on the impounded drug lord’s boat they’d used to get here, awaiting instructions.

Nadeau was a little guy, only five-five, whip-smart and whip-thin. Sometimes they called him Timmy because he seemed so young, but he was five years older than Rachael herself, and like the burly, ursine McIlveen, had been on the squad prior to her own arrival. Pavarotti was the only one she had slept with, and the only one who seemed like he wanted more from his life than just being FBI. Voss had screwed him because she wanted to, and because she had known right off that Pavarotti wouldn’t let whatever happened between them interfere with the job. He didn’t love her, so his heart wouldn’t get in the way.

Josh, though … Voss looked in his eyes and knew that he would take a bullet for her, just as she would for him. It wasn’t romance, but love could kill no matter what you wanted to call it. She knew those eyes all too well, and right now, she saw the doubt in them.

“This isn’t going to go well, Rachael,” he said.

Pavarotti leaned in, smiling, trying for some levity. “Special Agent Voss hates being called by her first name.”

“Shut it, Opera Boy,” Nadeau said. “No time for games.”

“There’s nothing Ed Turcotte hates more than not being in charge,” Josh went on. “I don’t know who’s going to command this operation, but we’re going to have to make sure Turcotte plays along.”

Voss nodded. “He will. He just wanted to close out our end of things before the … extermination, or whatever, got under way.”

McIlveen cocked his head, cracking his neck as he stretched. “You almost sound like you like him, boss. Did you forget how hard he worked to steal this case from us in the first place?”

“Fuck off, Mac. You really think I could forget that? It’s only been hours since he even let us back into our own goddamn case. But he’s a professional, and we’re all FBI. Anyone they send down here is answering to the Joint Chiefs, and they answer to the president, so I don’t think Turcotte’s going to say anything but ‘Yes, sir.’”

“I guess we’ll find out soon,” Josh said, nodding to port.

Voss turned to see the Navy ship approaching off the port bow. It looked small in the distance, but it wouldn’t be long before it had joined their little fleet, and they received their orders. She only hoped those orders consisted of something more than Sit and wait, or worse, Go back to St. Croix.

As far as Voss was concerned, it had started with her squad, and they would see it through to the end.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Captain Rouleau, who emerged from the same door Sykes had vanished into a couple of minutes earlier, nodded to them, then turned to make for Turcotte and O’Connell.

Voss followed him, the squad falling in line behind her.

“Captain,” she said, “any word on what’ll happen next?”

“Not many specifics, I’m afraid,” Rouleau replied as he headed for Turcotte, who nudged O’Connell, both men turning to greet the Kodiak’s captain.

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Josh said, addressing the captain. “Any idea who’s on that Navy ship? Who’s taking command?”

Rouleau stopped, turning toward them, even as Turcotte and O’Connell strode up to join them all. The captain frowned.

“From what I’ve been told, Agent Hart, the commander of this operation is not on that ship.”

Turcotte caught this and muttered a quiet and profane exclamation. He was frustrated, and Voss couldn’t blame him.

“Then where is he?” Turcotte asked.

Even as the words left his lips, Voss frowned. Without her even realizing it, she had been hearing a new sound added to the mix of wind and ship’s engines for a minute or more, growing from a subtle buzz to a kind of roar.

A second later, a helicopter passed above them and turned to circle around.

Captain Rouleau lifted his face toward the sky. “I believe this is her arriving now.”