Colleen Gleason

by Siberian Treasure

  The Western Coast of Ireland

  When Junie Peters finally dragged herself out of bed, it was still dark. Four-thirty in the a.m. She’d had a total of three hours of sleep since tumbling into the bed inside a church that had been reorganized as a base for the crew. It was a cot, really; but that was better than one of those inflatable mattresses on the ground, where she’d slept more than once during a clean-up.

  She’d dreamt of oil slickening her hands and her body; smothering her as it did the loons that tried to clean it from their feathers, clogging her breathing as it did the whales that needed to swim in it, blinding and suffocating her as it did to the crabs and lobsters that lived near the oil-drenched shores. Twisting through her hair like evil black braids, liquid ones that closed around her neck and arms and into her nostrils.

  It was always like this. She had the nightmares and dreams during the cleanup, and for months after, with decreasing frequency, until they finally went away … until she was called to the next one.

  She’d worked on ten different spills over her career as a marine biologist, and each one seemed to affect her more deeply. The dreams and images hung in her consciousness longer each time, and her despair with the carelessness of a world so dependent upon oil worried deep in her stomach. She swore she was developing an ulcer.

  Her jeans and waders were slung over a chair next to her cot, and she tried to be silent as she reached for them. The others were still sleeping, and if they were anything like her, they would need it. Too bad she couldn’t keep her eyes closed.

  Once she dressed, Junie slipped into the church’s toilet to relieve herself and wash up. Trying to keep her Wellies from clumping too loudly, she made her way out of the building into the early morning.

  Pulling her grey sweatshirt closer, she zipped it and yanked the hood up to cover her ears. Impossible thing about short hair—it provided no warmth, and it was always cold near the ocean at night. She beamed her torch around, but she’d made the trek to and from the workstation so many times in the last twenty hours that Junie knew she didn’t really need it.

  The walk to the site of the beach where the clean-up crew had been stationed took only ten minutes. Junie moved quickly, as much to keep warm as to get to the area and get to work again. Saving the life of even one more salmon or trout, or using dishwashing detergent to clean the oil off the feathers of one more seabird would help to ease that tension gathering in the base of her spine.

  A tier-three oil spill was the worst of its kind. It would be millions of euros in damage, and decades before the wildlife in the region would completely recover from the infestation of its habitat. A tragedy to this habitat; and yet the rest of the world went on.

  She sniffed the air, drawing in a deep breath of salty sea tang. Junie had loved the ocean since she was a little girl, growing up on the coast of England, and she was fortunate that she’d found her life’s calling, studying something she loved.

  She sniffed again. Fresh, cold, crisp. Familiar.

  Then she realized she smelled only the ocean, the natural smell. The ooze of oil that usually tainted the air at one of the clean-ups wasn’t so strong.

  She walked faster. She must not be as close to the beach as she’d thought.

  The sun had begun to faintly light the sky, and Junie saw that, no, she was wrong—she was right at the beach.

  Odd. The oil smell wasn’t strong; in fact, she couldn’t smell it at all.

  Maybe her olfactory nerves were getting used to it, and so didn’t sense it any longer.

  Junie strode down to the beach, where only hours ago, black oil had swept onto the sand or crashed onto the rocks, mingled with the foamy waves. It would splash onto the boulders or shore, then the water would pull back, leaving slimy black residue to seep into the sand.

  Only, the sand wasn’t black.

  And the water … .Junie stared, flashing her light around. It was dim, and grey in the early morning, but she could see well enough with her flash that the water was just water.

  Junie dashed toward the wave crashing at her feet, and knelt in the sand in her rubber waders. Pulling off a glove, she reached for the water and sand, sifting it through her fingers. No oily residue. Nothing.

  Was she dreaming?

  Her head felt light all of a sudden, and she tilted to one side, her hand bracing herself in the damp sand.

  Suddenly dizzy, Junie pulled to her feet, beaming her light along the shore. The shore where, only hours ago, had been thronged with workers and animals they’d pulled from the oiled water.

  The oil was gone.

  Miraculously disappeared … .and that was her last thought before the ground raced up to slam into her face.

  -13-

  July 6, 2007

  The Mountains of Central Pennsylvania

  The rush of water was coming closer, and Marina felt her adrenaline spike and a welcome wave of energy surge through her limbs.

  Leveraging her toes, bent and aching inside her sturdy boots, she scooted backward. Knees, hipbones, elbows; shimmying, zigzagging, squirming through the narrow passageway, canting from side to side, half-rolling, grunting and groaning, she worked them back through the tunnel.

  A fear that had never been with her before, a tense closeness from confinement, worked into her consciousness. Marina shook her head suddenly as if to throw it off, and her helmet banged against the side of the tunnel. She heard a pop! and everything went horribly black.

  Not dark, not the darkness of the middle of the night, where, if you stared long enough, shadows began to form. No. This was true, ink-black nothingness.

  No daylight, no illumination however faint, to allow her eyes to adjust to the light.

  Just black. Like someone had wrapped her head to toe in black construction paper.

  Cold swept over her. Pitch darkness, in a cave. Water rushing in.

  She had to ignore the chill that came from the inside out. Marina took the chance and let go of one of Dennis’s hands. Gingerly, she pulled her own hand toward her body, barely able to bend her elbow in the narrow space to bring her arm back to her side where she needed to pull her extra light from her ride-side belt clip.

  Maneuvering that move wasted precious seconds, and was nearly as difficult as bringing Strand through the tunnel. At last, she grasped the light, pulled it from her belt, and switched it on. With that in her hand, she could only hold onto one of Dennis’s hands now … .unless she continued to move in solid darkness.

  Solid darkness. She could do that. There wasn’t anywhere to go but through the tunnel … .

  Marina crabbed herself backward, craning half-around on her side, curling back to spear the light through the tunnel behind her, just to see where she was going to be navigating in the pitch dark … .and suddenly she saw it.

  She’d forgotten!

  The one part of Close Knocks that could save them!

  Marina gauged the distance, feeling her breath slow. She could do it. She would do it.

  And she had to; for that steaming sound of water pouring through the area was filling her ears. Getting louder. Soon it would fill this small tunnel, smashing them against the walls, slamming them into the low ceiling, carrying their bodies.

  Clipping the waterproof flashlight, still lit, to her belt, she grasped Dennis’s other hand and reaching for her extra line, wrapped it around the only part of his body she could reach, his wrists; then tied it to her belt. At least she wouldn’t lose him in the rush of water. Then, with renewed strength and purpose, she began to move backward quickly and painfully. She had to get them a little further before the water came blasting in.

  Six inches. Twelve. A yard.

  And then the wash of water spewed around a curve in the tunnel, smashing suddenly onto the inert body in front of her, slamming into her face. She let it come. It picked her up, and she allowed it to, holding onto Dennis’s bound hands with one hand, and reaching out, grasping above her head, and—yes!

  She caught it!

>   A heavy ledge, the only part of Close Knocks that actually branched off onto a second level. She caught it, grabbed the arm-like formation she’d targeted with her light only moments before, and pulled up above the rush of water.

  Her weight was dragged by Dennis Strand, but Marina was able to use her feet on the bottom of the low tunnel to push herself half upright. As she came up, she wrapped an arm around Dennis’s waist and shoved him onto the ledge, only shoulder height from the ground.

  But high enough, she thought—she hoped—to be safe from the swell of water in the narrow tunnel.

  It was the only chance, and they’d only find out after waiting.

  The water bubbled and swirled against her as she scrambled up after him, again using the force of her legs to launch up from the bottom of the tunnel. She barely made it onto the ledge; another few inches, and she would have missed it. At last, she collapsed on the narrow space at Strand’s feet, and gasped for breath as the water rose and fell and whorled below. Marina didn’t watch it; instead, she tried to see what condition Dennis was in.

  The ceiling bumping against her helmet, she struggled closer to him. The ledge was long but narrow, and the ceiling low, and she had move alongside his limp body. It took some effort to tip him to the side, and then she lay next to him, pinching his nose and blowing into his mouth. Only two breaths, and he jerked, coughing. She tipped him to the side to let the water pour out.

  In the narrow space, she counted his faint pulse, and the labored breathing after his coughing told her he was holding on … .but for how much longer? The rescue operation had been going on for hours, it was well past midnight … and he’d been in the bottom of that winze for at least five before.

  Marina shined her light to the right, into the area that branched off from her ledge. Did she dare try to follow that course if the water continued to rise?

  It was brushing the top of her ledge, spilling water over her feet, lapping at them like a tease.

  She watched it, watched it, terror numbing her more than the chill … staring in the pool of golden light as the cold black liquid splashed over, surging over her shoes, ebbing back, and surging again.

  And then, suddenly, it wasn’t pooling over the top any more.

  Marina looked again. It did look lower.

  And it seemed to be moving slower.

  She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and then opened them again. Yes. It was lower.

  It was lower. She’d done it.

  As she watched, the water slowly receded. Minute by minute, centimeter by centimeter, it ebbed back, slowed, sank.

  Now it was just a matter of time until someone came in after them.

  * * *

  It was later, three hours after the water in the tunnel began to recede, that Marina helped ease Dennis Strand through the last narrow passage into the main cavern of the old mine to cheers and applause.

  She was freezing, exhausted, filthy, and screamingly sore.

  But she’d never been more exhilarated.

  Darin McCarty, an EMT who had remained in the main cavern waiting for the injured man, helped to lower Strand’s body onto a full litter. The lines of concern in McCarty’s face etched deep, and Marina quashed a pang of regret. She’d done what she had to do to get Strand out. At least he was alive.

  Bruce pushed his way through the crowd and slung an arm around her shoulder, crushing her against him. Their helmets clunked like two dull marbles. “Thank God,” he muttered near her ear. “Thank God.”

  At that moment, flush with adrenaline, exhausted beyond measure, Marina wanted nothing more than to sink fully into his embrace, to sag against him and let it all go. She wanted to respond to the bald need in his eyes, to see what he would taste like. She wanted comfort. She wanted someone.

  Drawing a deep breath, she pulled back, because if she didn’t….. “God, I need a shower—no, a hot bath,” she said with a laugh, looking away from Bruce and smiling at McCarty and the others. “With a glass of wine. And something to eat.”

  And then, bed. Alone.

  Unfortunately.

  “Marina Alexander?”

  An unfamiliar voice dragged her attention from the rescue team and she turned to see two men standing near the mouth of the cave.

  They weren’t rescue workers, or EMTs, or even journalists. The pair looked cold and out of place in their dark suits and thin leather shoes, standing close to a heater running on a generator, and holding matching BlackBerrys.

  “They’ve been here for hours,” Bruce murmured. “Wouldn’t tell us who they were or what they wanted. Just waited for you. Darin said they looked like Men In Black.”

  “No sunglasses.” Feeling curiosity, apprehension, and some kind of dread, she kept her expression cool as she turned toward them.

  One of the men looked about sixty. He wore glasses and his top-thinning hair brushed neatly over his scalp. Even from a distance, she noticed the sharpness in his eyes, and the air of authority emanating from him. He was handsome for his age, but his belly puckered out beneath the open buttons of his suit coat, giving him a gentle pear shape.

  He was above average height, but his shoulders slumped in toward his chest, making him appear less imposing than the average man of over six feet. Shorter, and slighter than the tall, sturdy man next to him, he gave her the impression of an easy-going, fatherly persona. Except for those penetrating eyes.

  The other man, younger by perhaps half his age, and closer to Marina’s own thirty-two, had short-cropped dark hair going prematurely grey. His body was tall and rangy, like a soccer player. His good-looking face was just as serious as his colleague’s, but unrelieved by even the slightest hint of good humor. In fact, he looked outright annoyed.

  Flipping open her chin strap, Marina sighed with relief as her jaw released. It was like taking out a tight ponytail, or removing a well-anchored hairpin: you didn’t notice how painful it was until you removed it.

  “Tammy,” she called over her shoulder as she walked toward the two men, who’d simultaneously shoved their cell phones into matching belt-cases. “I’ll need you and Ken to manage the de-rigging—tomorrow, when the water has subsided all the way; I’m sure we’ve lost some of the equipment, but a good portion of it should still be at the top of the winze.”

  Satisfied that everything was as under control as possible —McCarty had Strand on the way to the hospital and Bruce was debriefing with the rest of the rescue team—Marina turned to her uninvited guests. “I’m Marina Alexander.”

  “We gathered that.” The younger man spoke dryly, and she noticed that the bottom half of his trousers were soaked. Probably from standing too close to the mine entrance during the pounding rain.

  He gave her what was probably supposed to be a disarming smile, but it had an edge to it that told her his patience was about at its limit.

  So was hers. After all, she was the one who was bruised, sweaty, dirty, and physically and emotionally exhausted. She was the one who’d been crawling through a cave for ten hours.

  She was the one who’d almost died.

  “Gabe MacNeil and Colin Bergstrom,” the older man said, gesturing to himself as Bergstrom. “CIA.”

  The other guy, MacNeil, flipped open a battered leather case to show the glint of a badge. She looked down at it, her helmet tipping awkwardly because she’d released the chin strap.

  CIA. An officer in the Directorate of Operations, whatever that was.

  Dad?

  Absurd for that to be her first thought.

  Talk about out of the blue. A non sequitir. And a place she didn’t want to go even if it was the topic of conversation.

  It couldn’t be about Dad. Why would it?

  The Lam Pao Archive, then. She relaxed a bit. That, she could handle.

  Whatever it was, she wasn’t in any mood to be hassled. “Am I under arrest?” That, at least, was pertinent to the situation.

  “No, Dr. Alexander, you aren’t—“

  “Good.” Suddenly, her
limbs felt like lead. She needed food and a shower. In whatever order they came. “Then it can wait until I’ve cleaned up. I’m out of here.”

  “Shouldn’t you get checked out first?” Bergstrom asked.

  She felt the crusted mud crack above her eyebrows. “At the hospital? I’m fine. Nothing wrong with me a hot shower and a glass of cabernet won’t cure. You’re welcome to follow me back to State College to find a hotel, but I’m not going anywhere else until I clean up. I’ll drive my own car. Wouldn’t want to get your government-issued vehicles all dusty with bat dung.”

  Bergstrom laughed like a dog barked. At least one of them had a sense of humor.