The Ocean Dark

79

Thunder roused Gabe from his chair, but even as he got up, he tried slotting that sound into a different category. Not thunder at all. Three sequential booms like the whomp of a fireworks finale, the sound lingering in the air. Something had exploded.

The room they had locked him into had two windows, but from the one on the right all he could see was a curved, horizontal trail of smoke. He shuffled left, craning his neck, and saw burning wreckage in the distance, sinking slowly into the ocean. Gabe spent several seconds making sense of it, trying to tell himself they had towed some of the derelicts away from shore and detonated them to kill whatever sirens might be nesting inside. But even blackened and twisted, he knew that curve of hull. His face went slack as he watched the last of the Antoinette go down.

He sought within himself for the fury he thought he should feel, but found a curious alternative. Gabe Rio felt free. She had been his ship, more his home than the apartment he had shared with Maya. In all the ways that had mattered in the end, he had chosen the Antoinette over his own wife.

He hated the bastards for blowing her up, and he would miss her, yet Gabe found himself glad the ship was gone. If they had been kind enough to give him a bottle of whiskey or even a can of beer, he would have toasted the Antoinette’s destruction. That part of his life had been over ever since they had found the Mariposa adrift, but now there could be no going back. Not ever.

For long minutes he stood and watched the smoke curl into the air, losing track of time. His stomach growled, a deep down hunger that he had somehow failed to notice, and he wondered what kind of meal he could persuade his Coast Guard wardens to rustle up. His thoughts drifted a bit, and then his stomach growled again, and this time the hunger was enough to force him away from the window. There had to be at least one seaman on guard out in the corridor. If he banged on the door, they’d open up. Even a few crackers would be better than nothing.

Before Gabe even reached the door, he heard the lock click and it swung inward. He expected a sailor, or maybe Special Agent Turcotte, but it was Agent Voss who strode into the room. The broad-shouldered Mac stepped into the room beside her, crossed his arms, and stood next to the door — apparently just in case he should try to escape.

“So much for your case—” he started to say, but the look on Voss’s face made him falter. The woman seemed on the verge of either screaming or puking, and he had no desire to witness either one. “What happened?”

Voss steadied herself, lips pressed tightly together as though desperate to control whatever words came out next.

“On the island,” she said. “While you were searching for the guns, did you find any other caves that had water in them?”

Gabe frowned. “Water?”

“The water table under the island,” she said, gaze fixed firmly on him. “Some of the caves are tunnels. Water runs underground. Did you see or hear water in any of the other caves?”

He hesitated. “I don’t—”

“Think! It’s a simple goddamn question.”

Gabe stared at her, dreadful understanding seeping into his thoughts. He nodded. “One for sure. Probably others, but—”

“Which one?”

“Where we found the guns. I could hear running water, and the cave definitely went back farther. There were crevices, maybe going down into the bedrock. What happened? Is Tori—?”

“They were planting charges in the grotto. Every cave they can find is getting the same treatment. But one of the explosives in the lower part of the grotto triggered early. Seven casualties, all Navy. Miss Austin is still alive, and so is my partner. I intend for him to stay that way. They’ve found a side tunnel, but now they’re under tons of rock and we’ve lost contact with them. We need to get down there and lend a hand, try to find them before the rising tide drowns them or the sirens realize they’re there.”

Gabe put his right hand over his mouth, ran his palm over the stubble on his chin. He and Tori had never been especially close, but they had survived the previous day and night together, and the news rocked him. He hated Josh — would never get past the man’s deceit, just doing his job or not — but Tori … all she had wanted was to escape her old life, and to have a new one that would be hers alone. Dr. Boudreau had asked him to go, and he had refused. Tori had gone in his place.

He ran his hand over his eyes, pressed on the lids as though just waking up. And maybe he was. Gabe had used Miguel as an excuse for too long, had told himself he had given up life as one of the good guys so that he could take care of his little brother. But that had been convenient. He had never wanted to be involved with crime — with guns and drugs — but he had gone along with Viscaya not only on his brother’s behalf, but his own. He liked the money, and he liked knowing the Antoinette was his ship.

He had blamed his infidelity on the cold distance between himself and Maya, but it was a distance that he had created. Miguel had come first, and then Viscaya had come first, but always and forever, the sea had come first. And for that sin, his brother and his wife had both betrayed him. But Gabe had not been blameless.

If he had done the right thing and agreed to help Dr. Boudreau in the first place, he would have been the one trapped underground with the sirens, not Tori. She didn’t deserve that. Maybe he didn’t, either, but if it came to a choice between the two of them, he knew which of them fate ought to have sacrificed.

Gabe dropped his hands to his sides and met Voss’s stare with a single nod.

“Let’s go. I’ll show you where.”

In the Kodiak’s ready room, David Boudreau could not manage to keep still. He paced to be moving, because when he stopped moving he felt suffocated by the temptation to surrender to grief. And if he surrendered, then Alena might as well be dead.

Might as well be? Hell, she might be dead already. What can you do for her?

A terrible question, but unavoidable. He paced the ready room and listened to the men in charge of the three branches of the operation conjecture about faulty munitions, the safety and possibility of excavations, and how much knockout gas they had on board the various Coast Guard and Navy ships combined, except all David heard was the ticking of the clock on the wall.

On a monitor screen, Captain Siebalt — still in the ready room over on the Hillstrom and joining them in video conference — started to debate the safety of digging out the caved-in grotto yet again, and David snapped.

“Enough!”

The three others in the room — Rouleau of the Coast Guard, Turcotte of the FBI, and his team biologist Sarah Ernst — turned to look at him in surprise. On the monitor, Siebalt did the same. David almost laughed at the surreality of it all.

“All of you just listen,” he said. He knew they saw a young guy, clean cut and frayed with panic, and he wouldn’t deny the impression. But with Alena off the board for the moment, this operation had fallen under his command.

“If we use enough gas to knock out all of the creatures — even if we had that much — we could kill any survivors down there. We do not have time to excavate. The afternoon is waning, and the tide is coming in. And, all due respect, Captain Siebalt, right now I don’t give a fuck what set off the charge. Manufacturer’s mistake or human error, what difference does it make? My grandmother is down there. She means more to me, and, frankly, to the Department of Defense, than you could imagine. None of that matters. We have to talk about reality here, and I mean this instant.”

He turned to Dr. Ernst. “Sarah, from what you know about CMA-3, what are the odds that any of our people are still alive down there? Are the sirens fully conscious during the day? Can they hear things that are out of the water, or sense them, if they’re not using their echolocation? What about in the water? Can they smell blood, or sense motion at a distance?”

Even as he spoke, Ernst slowly raised her hands. The woman looked sick, but he had no time for empathy.

“I’m sorry, David, but we just don’t have anything concrete. It’s all guesswork. Mr. Sykes radioed before they went underground, right? So at that point they were out of the water and had seen no sign of attack. We can extrapolate some hypotheses from that, and maybe when I examine the one you just brought over from the Antoinette, I’ll have a better idea, but—”

David held up a hand. “I get it. And you’re right. I shouldn’t be wasting your time here. Go, see if you can learn anything from it that can help us. Don’t worry about keeping it alive, but don’t let it burn. We need answers.”

Ernst nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

She departed quickly, not looking back, her focus already on the task ahead. Once she had closed the door behind her, David turned to the others.

“All right. We’re not just going to wait for her. We go in after them.”

“Now hang on,” Rouleau began.

On the monitor, Captain Siebalt started to argue as well. “Dr. Boudreau, we’ve got to advise against it. Right now you’re heading up this operation. But one of the people we’re hoping to save is your grandmother, and questions of judgment—”

“I’m going,” David said. All of his life he had been underestimated by people who judged his character and fortitude based on appearance alone. He had learned to show both in his eyes when they could not see past his youth.

“It’s a question of protocol—” Turcotte began.

“Screw protocol. And that’s the end of the discussion. We’re wasting time. Agent Voss has Gabe Rio ready to go. I’m taking a team through the cave where Rio found the guns. If they’re alive, and we can reach them, we’ll get them out.”

For a moment, the three men were silent.

Finally, it was Bud Rouleau, the Coast Guard man, who asked the question they must all have been thinking.

“And if you don’t come out?”

David thought of his first glimpse of the sirens, but the image gave way to the look of pride his grandmother had worn on the day he received his doctorate — that gentle, knowing smile that she had always reserved for him, marking the kinship that ran between them, so much stronger than mere blood. She’d always had faith in him. Today, he would fulfill that faith.

“If we’re not out of the ground by dusk, we’ll all be dead,” he said, striding toward the door. He opened it and paused. “At that point, detonate the whole damn island. Kill the bastards. That’s why we’re here.”