The Ocean Dark

5

Captain Rio double-timed it up the metal steps to the wheelhouse. The bridge, people called it. If you were in the Navy or watched too much Star Trek, that was fine. But Gabe and Miguel had been raised by a fisherman, so it would always be the wheelhouse to them.

Metal clanged underfoot as he reached the landing, whipped the door open, and stepped in. The windows looked out on what seemed like acres of brown and gray steel containers. Beyond them lay the wide ocean, bright aqua all the way to the horizon, where it met the powder blue of the sky. The sun shone down on the Caribbean. Most people, seeing that view, would have thought it looked like paradise, but Gabe had seen men die at sea. He’d known people who had drowned because they were too far away from the help they’d needed to survive. He’d been through storms that seemed like the end of the world. He loved the sea, but had no romantic illusions about it. The open ocean was no different from desert badlands — anything could happen out here.

The second mate, Suarez, had the wheel. That was all right. The old Cuban knew more about ships than Gabe would ever learn. Miguel, the Antoinette’s chief mate, was shouting into the radio handset, and the fire and frustration in his eyes set Gabe off immediately.

Ortega’s house is coming down. That had been the message he sent with Dwyer. Nobody else would know what the hell it meant, just part of the secret language of brothers, the lexicon of shared childhood in a small town on the Gulf Coast of Mexico, when they’d walked up the street in the aftermath of a hurricane and watched as a neighbor’s house, still mostly standing, collapsed under the weight of its own ruin. Ortega and his pretty daughter, Miranda, had died in there. Maybe had been dying while the Rio brothers watched their home slide down on top of them.

It meant disaster. Some people would have said Code Red, but this was more than that. Ortega’s house is coming down meant Code Fucked.

“Miguel!” Gabe snapped, striding across the wheelhouse.

His brother spun around, his eyes alight with fire and frustration.

“Shut up!” Miguel shouted into the radio. “Just be quiet and listen to me!”

“—God has turned from me! They are all damned now, but you can save me! Now, before it gets dark again—”

“Fuck,” Miguel growled, then thumbed the toggle on the radio again. “Slow down, idiot. What happened? Are the guns safe?”

The second the word was out of his mouth, Miguel gritted his teeth, cursing himself, knowing what he’d done.

Gabe strode across the wheelhouse and snatched the radio from his brother’s hand. The man on the other end — someone on board the ship they were supposed to rendezvous with — had started screaming about God again. Terror or madness had given him religion; either one was bad news.

“Mickey, this is Donald,” Captain Rio said. “Go to radio silence, right now. Use your tracer signal. Radio silence, goddammit!”

He took his thumb off the toggle and for a second he thought his words had been heeded. But then he heard the breathing, quick sharp breaths, almost whimpering. Through the radio, they heard the man on the other end begin to whisper the Hail Mary in Spanish.

With a click, the signal died, followed by static.

“Jesus,” Miguel said. “What the hell was that?”

Gabe stared out at the ocean.

“Radio silence.”