The Collective

by Jack Rogan

  Praise for Jack Rogan’s THE OCEAN DARK

  “The Ocean Dark demands to be devoured in one sitting. A bloody, brilliant thriller centered on a horror rising from the darkest myths and legends. Read it with all the lights on in the house. You’ve been warned!”

  —JAMES ROLLINS, New York Times bestselling author of The Doomsday Key

  “A masterful thriller. The Ocean Dark is a big, sprawling tale filled with smart plotting and flesh-and-blood characters. It races from start to finish like an unstoppable vessel steaming full speed ahead.”

  —JEFFERY DEAVER,

  author of Edge and The Burning Wire

  “The Ocean Dark by Jack Rogan is a gale-force-ten thriller, blending furious suspense with brilliantly speculative science to create a riveting story of violence and mayhem on the high seas. Wow.”

  —DOUGLAS PRESTON, co-author of Fever Dream

  “The Ocean Dark is a fantastic blend of horror and thriller. It has a great combination of character development and an intriguing story that will keep you turning pages.… Rogan’s creatures are creative enough that they will have any reader look at any body of water at night with a bit more trepidation.… Fans of Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child or Subterranean by James Rollins would enjoy this creature thriller.”

  —Monster Librarian

  “With enough story to keep the pages turning and enough description to keep the pages interesting and engaging, Rogan’s first novel proves a successful thriller. And unlike so many authors of the genre, he has mastered the art of a looseends close, with enough pieces left open to carry characters into more novels, but not so blatant as to be too neatly pulled together or too set up for future scenarios. Hats off to you, Rogan, and here’s to hoping we see more from you.”

  —Bookgasm

  BY JACK ROGAN

  The Ocean Dark

  The Collective is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A Ballantine Books Mass Market Original

  Copyright © 2011 by The Daring Greatly Corporation

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-52642-7

  Cover art and design: Jerry Todd

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  v3.1

  For my mother, Ann,

  who always fought for her cubs

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Much love and thanks to my wife, Nicole, for her invaluable input. Thanks to my excellent editor, Anne Groell, for her unerring instinct, and to the following for their expertise and assistance: FBI Special Agent Dana Ridenour, David Kraus, and private investigator Jim Cobb.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Epilogue

  Colonel Phil Greenlaw believed he had outgrown the nighttime fears of his childhood—right up until the day he became a father himself.

  As a small boy, he had imagined endless horrors in the darkness of his bedroom. When the branches of the ash tree just outside the window scraped against the glass on stormy nights, he imagined the fingers of something dead and hungry. When the house creaked all around him, he recognized it as ghosts or intruders or rats in the walls. His parents indulged him by moving his bed twice—first against the wall because he felt too vulnerable, and then away from the wall because he was certain there were spiders hiding in the space between the bed and the wallpaper.

  In time, of course, such fears had come to seem foolish. As a teenager he had thought of sleep only as a last resort, and bed as a place to collapse when exhaustion overwhelmed him. If, as an adult, he had nights when sleep didn’t come so easily and the shadows of his bedroom took on a familiar ominous quality, he would remind himself that he wasn’t a child anymore. He was a soldier.

  Tonight he lay half-awake, listening to the sounds of his home and his sleeping family, wondering what had roused him. He turned onto his side and settled deeper into his pillow, soothed by the soft snoring of his wife, Carla, beside him. Drifting in the fog around the outskirts of sleep, he let the nighttime noises seep in. The hum of the cable box seemed strangely loud with the lights off. The air conditioner whispered through the vents. The little stone fountain Carla had bought at some New Age shop out on Sanibel Island burbled gently.

  But sleep wasn’t coming.

  Phil opened his eyes again, brow furrowed with consternation. Had he actually heard something out of place? Ever since he and Carla had brought the twins home for the first time, he had not slept properly. Neil and Michael were adopted, but they had still been infants when they became Phil and Carla’s children. Too many nights he had woken and wandered the house, checking to see if they were still breathing, or just standing in the half-open doorway of their room to watch them sleep. As the months passed, he had begun to relax a little.

  So what was it tonight?

  He slid nearer to Carla and put one hand on the curve of her hip. Sometimes just touching her helped him to get back to sleep. It was not something an Air Force colonel would ever have admitted to his colleagues, but he loved her fiercely. Bringing the boys home—seeing the joy in her eyes at finally becoming a mother—had been even more rewarding than his own happiness at becoming a father.

  Inhale, exhale, let out the weird tension, and close your eyes against the
shapes made by the shadows in the dark. Go to sleep.

  But the tiniest of squeaks made him open his eyes again. Not a mouse. This had been a strangely metallic squeak. Another sound followed—a shifting of weight on wood, the creak of a presence that did not belong. A cold fear trickled through his heart and he propped himself up in bed, listening. It could be nothing … was probably nothing. Just the house, the wind, a shift in air pressure, the air conditioner, a towel finally dropping off a doorknob from which it had slipped by infinitesimal fractions over the course of hours.

  He had climbed out of bed and checked on the boys dozens of times, had gone downstairs to investigate strange sounds hundreds of times before he and Carla had even had children. And he always made the rounds before going to bed, checking locks and shutting off lights before he carried two glasses of water upstairs—one for him and one for Carla.

  But that peculiar metallic squeak lingered in his mind. And though he heard nothing more to alarm him, he could not erase it.

  Then he heard a muffled voice, probably a moan, and he understood—Neil must be having another nightmare. The boy sometimes had bad dreams and would talk in his sleep.

  Phil slipped out of bed, careful not to uncover Carla. The air-conditioning made her too chilly to sleep without the covers. He took a sip of water from the glass on his nightstand. Even with the A/C running, the ice had long since melted. The clock on the cable box glowed the time, 2:12 a.m. He waited half a minute but heard nothing more. Half-asleep, he scratched his head and thought about lying down again, but he had already committed to investigating the noise, and now that he’d sat up he felt a dull fullness in his bladder that urged him on.

  Standing, he rubbed at the sleep in his eyes and shuffled toward the door. He would just peek into the twins’ room. If he woke them now, especially if Neil had been having a bad dream, they’d want him to stay and he would end up asleep on the carpet between their beds. Carla would have to get up when his alarm went off, and he’d be stiff as hell from hours on the floor.

  Gingerly, he drew open his bedroom door and stepped into the hall.

  “Phil?” his wife said sleepily. “What are you doing?”

  He turned and glanced back into the room. Her brown hair looked black in the dark, and it spilled across her face in a lovely mess.

  “I thought I heard something,” he said.

  A drowsy, playful smile touched her lips. “Nudge me when you come back to bed.”

  Phil grinned, his anxiety vanishing. He had learned early in their relationship that Carla enjoyed the soft, tangled, dreamy intimacy of late-night sex. Sometimes she stroked or nibbled or licked him awake in the small hours of the morning.

  “Guess I’m not the only one who’s restless tonight,” he said.

  She arched an eyebrow. “Are you complaining, Colonel?”

  “Not even a little.”

  “Then hurry back.”

  Brain buzzing with the anticipation of sex, he turned away, toward the boys’ room. An unfamiliar shadow loomed in the hall, half-silhouetted in the twins’ open doorway, and his smile faded. For the tiniest moment, Phil hesitated, presuming this was yet another in a lifetime of illusory nighttime shadows, but as he blinked, the shadow lunged at him.

  His training kicked in along with his fear, but not fast enough. That tiny hesitation cost him his life. His skull slammed against the soft green paint of the corridor wall and powerful hands gripped his throat. He heard Carla screaming in the bedroom, heard her struggle to disentangle herself from the sheets as the footfalls of a second shadow rushed to attack her.

  From the boys’ bedroom, however, he heard only silence.

  Alexandria’s Old Town reeked of money and history. Gabled buildings overlooked tree-lined cobblestone streets where finely dressed men and women slipped out of expensive cars and into exclusive restaurants and boutiques. Many of the best and brightest of Washington, D.C., strolled through Old Town on any given night, enjoying the view across the Potomac from Virginia to D.C. and happy to be away from the capital for a while.

  There were other facets to Old Town, of course—plenty of theaters and coffee shops and less expensive restaurants. Josh Hart had sometimes wandered through its antiques stores and bookshops. It would be hard to think of himself as a tourist—his apartment was less than half a mile away—but neither did he feel like a local. In the handful of months he had lived in Alexandria, he had rarely been at home for more than a few days in a row. Alexandria offered plenty of nightlife, but he had so little opportunity to take advantage of it that most of the time he felt like a foreigner. And he sure as hell didn’t have time for a relationship.

  The very idea of dating amused and wearied him. During the occasional flirtation, he had been called things like sweet and funny and charming, but there always seemed to be a distance between himself and women that he could not bridge. He made them nervous. Or maybe it was the job that created the uneasiness.

  He liked to blame the job for his divorce. It was convenient. But he knew that a large part of the blame lay in his own hands. The only way to sustain a relationship was to effectively persuade a woman that she was more important than the job, and he had never been that good an actor. The job came first, always.

  “So, you actually work for Homeland Security?”

  Josh arched an eyebrow and smiled, studying the woman sitting across the table from him. Molly Bechtel, thirty-one. Never married, no kids. Shoulder-length blond hair, blue eyes, a few freckles, mouth a little too wide and nose a little too long, but the pieces all fit together into a very attractive whole. In fact, what he liked most of all was her spark, the feisty gleam in her eyes. It wasn’t a small thing, considering he hadn’t expected to like her at all.

  “I do,” he said. “Why, did you think Mikayla was lying to you?”

  “I thought she might be exaggerating,” Molly replied. “It wouldn’t be the first time she’s done so in order to get me on a date.”

  The waiter brought their salads, sliding them onto the table with an almost ghostly grace before vanishing again. Josh had chosen Hannah’s for several reasons, the wait staff among them. The place was a little pricey, but unlike in similar restaurants he had patronized, the servers didn’t hover. Perfect for a blind date.

  Not that Josh was an expert. The last blind date he’d been on had been his sophomore year in college, and he’d ended up marrying the girl. But when Mikayla, one of the trainers at his neighborhood gym, insisted on setting him up with Molly, he had been unable to come up with a reason to refuse. He had been sure it would be a terrible mistake, but Molly had turned out to be anything but. With eyes full of wisdom and a playful smile, she had shocked him into foolish babbling for the first thirty seconds. They were only on the salad course, and already he wanted to see her again.

  Josh took a sip of his wine. “So, have you been on a lot of blind dates?”

  She relented, one corner of her mouth lifting in a playful smile. “No, actually. Just the one. It didn’t go very well.”

  “And is this one going well?” he asked, watching her through the glow of the candle in the center of the table.

  A sly smile stole over Molly’s face. Josh liked the way that smile made him feel. She pretended to be thinking it over, but as she glanced past him, her expression faltered. Her brows knitted in curiosity, and whatever she had been about to say was forgotten. “Can I ask you a question?” she asked instead.

  “Fire away.”

  Molly smiled again, but it seemed forced. “What does your ex-wife look like?”

  “Rebecca? Why?”

  “There’s a woman sitting at the bar. Small, blond, mid-thirties, looks like she’s in great shape. She came in a few minutes ago and she keeps looking our way, like she has something she wants to say.”

  Josh glanced over at the bar and saw the blond hair, not to mention the slight bulge at the small of the woman’s back that gave away the presence of a weapon. Not sure if he was irritated or concerned, Josh
pushed his chair back. “Excuse me a second.”

  “If it’s your ex, just tell me now and I’ll go. I like you, but I don’t like complications.”

  Josh sighed. “She’s not my ex, she’s my partner.”

  Molly raised a dubious eyebrow. “And does she usually stalk you on your dates?”

  “Not usually, no.”

  Leaving Molly behind, Josh weaved through tables to reach the bar, where Rachael Voss sipped at a strawberry margarita. As he approached, Voss saluted him with the paper umbrella from her drink.

  “I did try to call,” she said. “Bad boy, turning your phone off.”

  Josh tried not to smile at her gentle chiding, but couldn’t manage it. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m on a date.”

  “So you said. And I’ll hand it to you, she’s very pretty. I figured a blind date would be more like Quasimodo than Esmerelda.”

  “I’d remind you how long it’s been since your last date, but I assume you didn’t come down here just to tell me to turn my phone back on.”

  Voss slid off the stool and dropped a ten-dollar bill on the bar. Her expression softened as she looked at him. They were partners, yes, but she was also his best friend, and an electric current of temptation often crackled between them, daring them to become more than that. They had not succumbed to that temptation yet, unwilling to risk their partnership, but Josh was closer to Rachael Voss than to anyone else in his life.

  “I’m sorry,” Voss said. “It looked like the date was going well. I hope she’ll understand.”

  “Shit.” Josh glanced over at Molly, who watched him curiously and a bit suspiciously, perhaps thinking that Voss really was his ex-wife. “Where are we headed?”

  “Florida. Quadruple homicide in Fort Myers with possible terrorist involvement; multiple agencies and police departments are en route to the site. The plane’s already waiting for us.”

  Josh exhaled, nodding. “I’ll meet you outside.”

  Voss started toward the door. She’d only managed three steps before she turned back. “Josh?”

  He gave her a questioning look.