The Ocean Dark

67

Alena Boudreau swept along a corridor aboard the USS Hillstrom with David at her side and Professors Ridge and Ernst, the four of them surrounded by a cadre of naval officers. The flight to St. Croix had given her time to think and plan, to spread out papers and focus on her laptop, but the chopper ride out to the location had been hours of wasted anticipation. She was ready to get to work.

A pair of sailors snapped off crisp salutes as they approached the open door to a large conference room — war room, muster room, whatever it really was on board a naval vessel — and she nodded to them as she went by, though of course the salute had not been intended for her. A pair of lieutenants — she’d already forgotten their names — led the way, but once inside they crossed the room and took seats in the back. Ridge and Ernst selected vacant spots in the first row.

Chairs had been fixed to the floor at the front of the room, lined up behind a long table. The Hillstrom’s captain, Arthur Siebalt, made for the table as every naval officer in the room stood and saluted. The Coast Guard officers rose to attention as well, and even the FBI agents stood out of respect. Alena took note of it, pleased. Right now she needed everyone in that meeting to understand and respond to authority. At the moment they perceived that authority to rest with Captain Siebalt, but she had long since become accustomed to such assumptions, and to shattering them.

“Please, take your seats,” she said as she slid her laptop bag onto the table. “We’ve lost enough time as it is. The clock is ticking. The time is just after 1300 hours and every minute works against us if we hope to get this thing done today.”

The FBI agents were the first to sit, shifting their focus to her. The Coast Guard and naval personnel hesitated, looking toward Captain Siebalt for leadership. To her right, David slid into the last chair at the table, reaching over for her laptop bag, unzipping it, and starting to slide it out, as if he were the only person in the room.

“Be seated,” Captain Siebalt said. The man had an air of utter competence about him, and his uniform seemed freshly pressed. A professional officer, used to rank and hierarchy. The Hillstrom was a frigate, most frequently used as a support vessel accompanying carriers or amphibious strike groups, which was useful in two significant ways. First, the crew understood undersea warfare, including torpedoes, mines, and depth charges, and second, Siebalt was used to answering to a higher authority on missions.

As the meeting’s attendees settled into their chairs, the captain began.

“Those of you who are guests on board the Hillstrom, welcome aboard. I am Captain Siebalt. This is my first officer, Commander Aaronson,” he said, gesturing to the man on his left, who nodded a greeting to the small audience. “We will be helping to coordinate this operation, and the Hillstrom will be the command vessel for the duration.”

Alena thought he might go on. Officers tended to feel that, when handing over authority, they had to subtly assert it by making a show, giving permission to their subordinates to obey someone else’s orders. Her estimation of Siebalt had been correct, however. He only nodded to her and took his seat, with Aaronson settling into the chair beside him. Several of the Hillstrom’s other officers took their seats at the table, until she was the only one still on her feet and all eyes were upon her. Alena had worn a black ribbed cotton top and black trousers, which made her silver hair all the more striking. The outfit had been chosen purposefully. It had a kind of uniform-like quality that seemed to make military personnel more comfortable. And it did not hurt that she looked fantastic in black.

“My name is Dr. Alena Boudreau, and I’ll be running this op,” she said, studying their faces, cataloging their emotional responses to her authority in case any of them should become an issue later. Already, she saw that one of the FBI men — she presumed the ranking agent — had a tightness around the eyes and mouth. He’d bear watching.

“The operation will not have a name,” she said. “There will be no log of the events that transpire, except the report that I will be preparing for my superiors. Captain Siebalt and Captain Rouleau will see to it that any log entries already written that make reference to the Antoinette and the situation on this island are eradicated—”

“Regulations are clear—” The Coast Guard captain, Rouleau, began to sputter.

“From this moment on, Captain, I make your regulations. If that makes you uncomfortable, you’re welcome to confirm it with your own superiors. That goes for all of you. I want to have a cooperative interagency effort here, and I encourage you to speak to whomever you need to speak to immediately following this meeting in order to get comfortable with that. After that, you’re either on the team or you’re in the way. And if you’re in the way, you’ll be removed.

“To continue … I’m sorry, which one of you is Agent Turcotte?”

“I’m Special Agent Turcotte.”

Just the one she’d thought. He sat up straighter in his chair. It did not escape her notice that he had corrected her use of his title. Alena was surprised that he hadn’t gone so far as to use his full title of Supervisory Special Agent in Charge, but apparently he was at least self-aware enough to know how foolish that would have looked. She would have to keep him close, try to make him feel important, bend him to her own purposes. Or she would have to keep him out of it entirely. Attitude would cost lives.

“With apologies, Special Agent Turcotte, that goes for the FBI as well. No record of the Antoinette, case files expunged, et cetera.”

His face darkened and Alena saw the bitterness start to spread to the other three FBI agents in the room. The least affected seemed to be the man wearing a sling on his left arm, his face badly bruised from some kind of altercation. That had to be Agent Hart, who had survived the previous night’s horrors.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you have all worked hard on this case. But at the end of the day, every single person in this room — military, law enforcement, or civilian — works for the same employer, the United States government. Trust me when I say that making this case vanish will have a positive rather than negative impact on your career and future prospects, and that you will have the personal satisfaction of having dealt with a threat to human life and potentially national security.”

That seemed to settle them down, so she forged ahead.

“The only record of this operation will be my own reports to my superiors. In order to reassure you, I am willing to allow Captains Rouleau and Siebalt and Special Agent Turcotte to review those reports before they are submitted.”

Even Turcotte gave a grudging nod at that.

“This is going to be the strangest and probably the most dangerous day of your lives, with the exception of Agent Hart, who has already lived his,” Alena said. They all sat a bit straighter, ready for the challenge or at least curious. “In extreme situations, I am empowered to extend limited intelligence clearance to anyone who I determine is vital to the success of an operation. I am extending that clearance to everyone in this room, effective immediately. When we’re done here, you will not leave without providing your identification to David.”

She nodded toward him, and David raised a hand in a semi-wave without ever looking up from the laptop. He tapped away at the keyboard.

“Dr. David Boudreau,” she went on, indicating him again. “Nepotism at its finest. Yes, my grandson, but also smarter than anyone else in the room, myself included, and the only other person involved in this operation aside from myself who has encountered these particular bio-forms before.”

A rumble of voices filled the room, mutters of surprise and astonished whispers.

“Excuse me,” Agent Hart said. He wore a look of amazement that turned his handsome face boyish. “You’ve seen the sirens before?”

Alena arched an eyebrow. “Sirens? Ah, the bio-forms. Clever, but please don’t think for a moment that these creatures are anything but an unknown species of marine life. As Dr. Ernst will tell you, they are unusual, dangerous, even terrifying, but they are hardly unnatural. Their ‘song,’ if you’d like to pursue the siren metaphor, is not dissimilar from bats’ echolocation, aiding their sensory perception when out of the water.”

She started to go on, but Agent Hart interrupted again. All eyes were now on him and the room seemed to have grown smaller.

“Wait. Seriously,” he said, growing agitated. The one female FBI agent in the room, who Alena presumed must be his partner, put a hand on his arm, but Hart ignored her. “‘Hardly unnatural’? They’re underwater vampires, for fuck’s sake. They burn in sunlight.”

Alena frowned. She had gauged the potential problem that Turcotte might represent, but had not counted on Agent Hart posing difficulties. She knew the trauma he had been through, and she could see how shaken it had left him, but she had no time to comfort him.

“Sarah?” she said.

Professor Ernst stood. Attractive in a disheveled, academic sort of way, Sarah Ernst was forty-seven, her hair dyed an auburn just close enough to red to be serious and daring in equal turns.

“Dr. Ernst is a former MIT professor with PhDs in astrobiology and marine biology. She’s been part of my team for three years.”

“Thank you, Dr. Boudreau,” Ernst said. She looked out over those gathered in the room, then focused on Hart. Alena had taught her well. Crisis management was often about personnel management. “Let’s get this clear right up front. There is no evidence that anything remotely resembling horror movie vampires exists, or ever existed.”

Professor Ernst smiled and they all seemed to relax. “Based upon the records I’ve read of the prior encounter with these … with the ‘sirens,’ the best reference point I can provide is a rare skin condition called xeroderma pigmentosum, in which the flesh is not protected from ultraviolet light and is therefore burned. With a lack of pigment, UV light damages DNA, causing cellular mutation that — in such cases — can cause the skin to burn or blacken. As the cells divide, the mutation spreads, and so does this burning effect. What happens with these creatures is obviously a radical example of this phenomenon—”

“They don’t just blacken,” Agent Hart interrupted. “They catch fire.”

Ernst nodded. “So I’m told. Right now, I’m theorizing the presence of crystalline proteins in the skin that will burn on exposure to sunlight. Look, honestly, if I had read about the existence of these things, I would never have believed it. But there have been many things found in the ocean that nobody expected. And obviously, presented with them as a reality, I can only theorize until I have one of them to study. One thing I’m confident of, though …” She smiled. “There’s no such thing as vampires.”

“Thank you, Dr. Ernst,” Alena said as the woman sat down. Then she gestured to the slender African-American man beside Ernst. “The final member of my team is Dr. Paul Ridge, whom I stole from the geology department at Northwestern. Thanks to his experience with primordial cave formations, I needed him more than his students did.”

Professor Ridge waved a hand to identify himself, then cast an expectant look at Alena, silently urging her to move on. Ridge didn’t like the spotlight at all.

“Now, normally I would have to mislead you about the nature of my employment, but this is a crisis management scenario, so there’s to be no bullshit.” Nobody flinched at her profanity and she nodded her approval. They weren’t looking at her like an aging civilian anymore. “I’m a specialist in extraordinary discoveries. That’s the best way to describe it. It’s much more interesting than ‘analyst,’ which is the word I use when I want to bore people into not wondering about me anymore. My team is an under-the-radar division of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is part of the DOD.

“Beyond that, all you need to know at the moment is this: The U.S. government has had two prior encounters with life-forms that sound substantially similar to what the crew of the Antoinette encountered on the island, and both of them were also island-based infestations. The first habitat was off the eastern coast of Africa and was eradicated. That was in 1967. Fishermen discovered the second habitat in the South Pacific only seven years ago. I was involved with both cases.

“As you can see, I survived. Both habitats were destroyed, along with their inhabitants. The sun will kill them, as you know, but so will firepower. Seven years ago, we tried to put to use lessons I learned in ’67, but failed.”

“Failed how?” Captain Siebalt asked, genuinely curious.

“Our job is twofold — destroy the threat, and learn everything we can about it. Most of my team died in ’67 because we focused more on acquiring a research subject than on containing the threat. This time, things will be done differently. We will bring one of these things home to study, but eradication is our first priority.”

“You want to bring one of these things back alive?” Agent Voss asked. “If you’ve seen these things, then you must know—”

Alena held up both hands to forestall any further interruption. “It won’t be easy, of course. In order to fulfill that part of the mission, we will have to catch one in the dark. I’d prefer a living one, but a dead one will do. That means bagging one and then keeping it out of the sunlight long enough to get it back here and locked away in the dark. Just keep that in mind. If it helps, tell your people that there will be a reward for the first person to bring me—”

“Absolutely not!” Captain Rouleau said.

Alena narrowed her eyes. The old Coast Guard officer had reddened, either with anger or embarrassment.

“Captain?” she said.

“Pardon me, Dr. Boudreau,” Captain Rouleau said, “but that sort of thing leads to competition, which is a distraction that could get good men and women killed.”

She let out a breath, nodding. “I’m sorry, Captain. You’re right, of course.”

“Besides, Navy sailors don’t need a reward to motivate them,” Captain Siebalt added, glancing sidelong at her from his place at the table. “If there’s any way to bring one of those things back whole, you’ll get one.”

“That’s all I can ask,” Alena said. She glanced over at her grandson, who had paused and looked up from his laptop. “David, anything to contribute before we continue?”

He gave her his typical insouciant smile and scratched at his chin. “Only that you’ve been at this nearly ten minutes already. Tick, tick, Alena.”

Little shit, she thought, with all the love in her heart. She couldn’t help but chuckle, though she knew it would be her last for a while.

“All right,” she said, turning to look at them all again. At Captain Siebalt and his officers to her left at the long table, at Captain Rouleau and his people, at the FBI agents who had more invested in this situation than any of them.

“What we’ve got ahead of us is little more than carefully executed destruction and extermination. You’ve all been drafted for pest control. These things can’t be allowed to continue to thrive, and certainly can’t be permitted to breed and spread.

“So here’s the plan …”