The Ocean Dark

76

Special Agent Tim Nadeau had no love for profanity, but he cursed a blue streak as he picked himself up off the rocks in front of the grotto mouth, the surf rolling up to soak through his shoes and pants legs before he could rise. He’d torn a hole in the knee and blood had begun to soak into the fabric. When he’d thrown out his hands to catch himself, he’d scraped skin off his left palm and ended up hitting his head on a rock anyway. Now he felt the lump rising and winced at the tenderness of it, his fingers coming away streaked with red.

“What the fuck?” he whispered.

For those few seconds, the rest of the world had retreated. Now, like throwing a switch, the rest of his senses opened up and reality rushed in. He heard voices shouting in panic and looked up. That simple movement nearly made him lose his balance, and he understood that he had a concussion. But he understood other things as well.

The left side of the bowl had given way. One of the descent team, planting explosives on the walls of the sub-chamber, had screwed up royally and a charge had detonated. Whoever had fucked it up, it no longer mattered. The Navy would have a hard time finding enough pieces of him to put in a box for a funeral. But the running and shouting up on the rim — people were being careful not to get too close now that some of it had sheared off and fallen in — told him that the guy who’d exploded was the least of their concerns.

Nadeau grabbed his radio. “Josh, it’s Tim. Come in.”

Static hiss. No answer. “Agent Hart, this is Nadeau, do you read?”

Off balance, Nadeau started to scramble across the rocks toward the nearest sailor — a blond kid who looked completely frantic.

“Hey!” he shouted, and the sailor twisted toward him. “Any casualties?”

The sailor looked mystified, so Nadeau passed him, working his way over to a severe-looking dark-haired woman wearing an ensign’s bars. She had a small comm unit tucked into her ear, the cord dangling past her cheek.

“What’s the story?” Nadeau asked. “Ensign! I’m talking to you! Did we lose anyone?”

The woman turned to him, her eyes haunted, and threw a hand up toward the ruined bowl. “Take a look! What the hell do you think?”

Steadying himself, Nadeau put a hand up to the bloody lump on his skull, his head throbbing painfully. “You can do better than that.”

The ensign shook her head. “Christ. Sorry, come with me.”

As they climbed the steep, rough hill beside the grotto, she started talking. “At least one casualty — whoever set off that charge — but they’re trying to figure out who it is. When the thing gave way, seven of my shipmates went with it, including Lieutenant Commander Sykes. Dr. Boudreau fell into the hole, too, along with the geologist she had with her.”

“What about Agent Hart?”

The ensign gave him a blank look.

“The other FBI agent who was here? With his arm in a sling? He had the woman from the Antoinette with him?”

But the ensign’s only reply was a shrug of apology.

Nadeau swore under his breath and kept climbing. When they reached the rim of what had once been the bowl, his heart sank. A third of the stone shelf that had made up the bottom of the bowl had given way, crumbling into the dark chamber far below. There was no sign of Josh and Tori, and he knew they must have fallen as well. Nadeau saw sailors moving, lowering lights into the darkness, and members of the descent team abandoning the explosives they had set on the walls below to work their way lower on their ropes, calling into the void, then pausing to listen.

Echoes were their only reply.