The Paradise Key (Harvey Bennett Thrillers Book 5)

by Nick Thacker

  They were somewhere between the hotel and the second ring, Ben thought, possibly closer to the second ring. There was no artificial beach there like on the outer ring and he hadn’t paid enough attention to what the inside and outside perimeters of the second ring looked like, so he only hoped there was an easy way up and out of the water there.

  It didn’t matter now. They had no more options. There was nothing to do but swim for it, holding as much of their breaths inside as their lungs would allow. He could only focus on the present, on the task at hand. He had no plan except to get out of the shuttle, after the rest of his team was safely out and swimming upward to the surface.

  Julie’s face came up to face his. He looked at her underwater. Her hair floated around her head, small bubbles caught between the strands. The light hit her from behind, darkening her face. Her eyes, however, were lit from somewhere deeper, possibly the lights around the floorboards inside the shuttle. They sparkled with a fiery intensity, the light browns exploded into a million smaller greens, blues, and oranges. He knew those eyes better than his own. He could read them even when they weren’t open.

  And right now he was reading volumes. She was trying to tell him something. She didn’t need to shake her head, but she did anyway. No.

  There it was again. What the hell is she trying to tell me? he wondered. Why doesn’t she want us to leave the shuttle?

  This was their only option. He’d taken their options from them, ruined their chances. He alone had made a rash decision, betting on something that had failed miserably. Is she trying to remind me of that?

  Julie was stubborn — nearly as stubborn as he was — but she wasn’t petty. She wasn’t the type of woman who would play the ‘I told you so’ game. She had no interest in making him feel bad for no reason, and certainly not in a situation like this.

  No, she wasn’t trying to rub it in. She wasn’t trying to make him feel like he’d made a terrible mistake — she knew that he already knew that.

  She was trying to communicate with him.

  No, she was saying. Leaving the shuttle is a mistake.

  He couldn’t imagine why.

  Dying was a far worse option than attempting to escape, in his mind.

  He shook his head and shrugged, then helped Reggie push her out and through the hole.

  They had just finished with Julie when the Subshuttle jumped and snapped sideways, a gigantic crunching sound following. Ben was holding his breath and the sudden movement startled him. He released a few bubbles of air from his mouth, then cursed himself for allowing it to happen.

  The shuttle rocked on the cable, then swung violently sideways. He felt the cable snap before it happened, feeling the tension ratchet through his body even before he reached to the glass wall to steady himself.

  No, he thought. Please, no.

  The cable snapped. It was a strange, otherworldly sound from beneath the water, a bright, zinging high-pitched sound followed by a duller, deeper thud. The shuttle hung for a brief moment, suspended like it was nothing.

  And then it dropped.

  It began to fall through the water, gravity finally achieving its goal and the ocean claiming its prize. Ben looked at Reggie, but the man was holding tightly to the seat back with one hand, his other hand flailing around underwater.

  There wasn’t going to be enough air left in Ben’s lungs, and they still had to get Sarah out.

  Reggie looked at him. He knew it. The truth of it all hit Ben harder than the jolt of the Subshuttle snapping off its cable.

  We’re out of time.

  Down here, trapped inside a glass bubble that was completely full of water and quickly falling to the ocean floor, air was time. And time was life, and they were running out of all of them.

  He wanted to cry. It was an unnatural emotion for him, but it was there. Truer than anything, he felt like he had failed not only his best friend and fiancee, but his teammates and an innocent civilian. He wasn’t sure which of those stung worse; which failure gripped him more with the fear of knowing he wasn’t strong enough to prevail and save them.

  If Julie made it to the surface without him, he’d have failed her, leaving her without the man she’d committed the rest of her life to.

  If she didn’t make it to the surface — that was even worse.

  But there was still a job to be done, and he wasn’t dead yet. The others often talked about his ‘resiliency,’ a word he’d only recently come to understand. It wasn’t about being able to overcome adversity, or stand up to a foe or a demon or a challenge. It wasn’t even about being to bounce back and continue fighting.

  To Ben, resiliency meant something far simpler: it meant he was totally incapable of not caring. Once he’d committed to something, he was in. Period. It was stubbornness taken to an insane level. A level most people rightfully never approached, because at that level stubbornness looked a lot more like certain death.

  He was simply unable to stop caring about the solution he’d determined was right and proper until he stopped breathing altogether. It was unfortunate, really. Everything in him wanted to leave, to escape this hell and float to the surface before it was too late, but there were two other people who needed help. Everything in him wanted to ignore whatever it was still holding out, but whatever it was that was holding out was stronger than anything his conscious mind could throw at it.

  He was resilient, and it was his curse.

  The shuttle dropped, deeper and deeper into the abyss. Reggie was pulling his arm, trying to get his attention.

  I know, he thought. I know we’re dead.

  Reggie pulled harder, and Ben was about to turn his head and try to see what it was Reggie needed from him that was so damned important right now.

  But he couldn’t turn away from the glass, from the ocean outside the bubble.

  Something in the back of his mind crawled forward, creeping ever closer to his consciousness. Something had captured his attention, though his own mind was keeping it from him. It was either due to the fact that it wasn’t worth seeing, it wasn’t something his mind was confident enough about, or it was just a fluke.

  He dared a glance out the glass into the murky waters. It was darker now, the rays of light no longer penetrating and traveling all the way down to their location. He squinted, knowing he couldn’t afford to be focusing on anything other than getting Dr. Lindgren and Reggie out of the Subshuttle.

  Still… there was something out there.

  He assumed it was Julie, seeing the dark shape floating past, but then realized it was not at all possible that a human could take that form, even considering the strange distortions that might be caused by the glass and the lack of light.

  It was something… else.

  Another shadow flicked through his vision, just to the right of where he was staring.

  What the…

  Reggie saw it, too. That must have been why he was tugging at his shirt collar. Ben shrugged it off once again, now focusing fully on the water just outside the shuttle. A deep, intense flicker altered the light around the water, flowing quickly from the left of his sight to the right.

  He knew, then. Without a doubt, he knew. It was what Julie had been trying to warn him about.

  There was something else in the water.

  50

  REGGIE PULLED BEN’S SHIRTSLEEVE TO get his attention. After he’d heard the snap and felt the sudden lurching of the Subshuttle as it began to descend, Reggie was forced to quicken his pace. Two of their team were already safely outside, and they needed to pick up the pace significantly or he, Ben, and Sarah would run out of air long before they made it to the surface.

  He had wanted to tell Ben to speed up as well, to move over, to slide to his left so that Dr. Lindgren could launch herself from the opposite side of the shuttle toward the hole and out into the open waters. Ben’s shirt was floating up, drifting in front of his face, steadily and gently in the calm waters. The shirt was the only thing feeling calm right now, and it contradict
ed the true situation Reggie found himself in. While the shirt flickered back and forth in the waters, Reggie and Ben were hard at work, pushing people out of the vessel and up toward the surface. Their heads were completely submerged now, and Reggie was working on readying his body to leave the Subshuttle after he helped Dr. Lindgren out of the shuttle.

  Ben looked across at Reggie. What? his eyes were asking. And… something else.

  Fear?

  Why would Ben have been afraid now, of all times? There was plenty of time for freaking out, like right after the idiot had smashed the glass and allowed their only lifeline to sink to the bottom of the ocean.

  Reggie searched Ben’s face for any sign of what had spooked his friend. Finding nothing useful, he shrugged.

  What? he motioned again, hoping Ben could read the expression.

  Ben pointed. A long arm and a finger, aimed at the ceiling. Reggie watched the area, but didn’t understand.

  He shook his head.

  He watched, still seeing nothing. He began to shrug, to move his head and try to get Ben to mime what it was he was talking about.

  And then he, too, saw it.

  The briefest of movements, nothing but a deep shadow that simultaneously matched and contradicted the shadows cast by the deeper hues of the surrounding ocean.

  It was like he hadn’t seen anything at all, and he did a double-take, still staring at the ceiling where Ben had pointed.

  It came again, and went again, just as it had before, but this time it was off to his right, farther in the distance. He was sure of it now: it wasn’t just a shadow, an apparition caused by strange dancing light or some other natural phenomenon.

  It was an animal.

  Some sort of sea creature, huge and menacing, judging by the only part of the animal his peripheral vision had allowed him to glimpse: the tail.

  And it was a monstrously long tail.

  He wanted to open his mouth and gape, but they were out of time. Ben was pulling his arm now. For some reason wanting him to leave. To get out of the shuttle.

  But…

  He wasn’t sure how to tell Ben.

  I know what you’re talking about now, buddy.

  He wanted to tell him. To say, yeah, I saw it.

  But he also knew what Ben wanted. Ben was motioning with his head and eyes now, screaming even in the silent infinity of the ocean.

  The Subshuttle sank.

  Deeper, every second deeper. Ben was yelling and saying nothing all at the same time.

  Let’s go, he was saying.

  We have to, but we can’t, Reggie was saying back to him.

  He ran a mental calculation, checking and estimating his vitals. He didn’t have much air left. Possibly enough to get back to the surface, but hardly more than that. And that was assuming he knew where the surface was. It was impossible to tell how fast they were sinking. Hopefully there was still a bit of air left in the ballast, inside the rubberized plastic wall compartments, and other small spaces within the craft. It would slow them down a bit, up until everything was filled with water.

  He wasn’t sure about Ben, but he knew the man wasn’t trained like Reggie was. He was no Navy SEAL, but he was a very capable swimmer, kept himself in peak physical shape, and knew he could hold his breath for nearly three minutes without unnecessary exertion.

  There was no way to measure exactly how much exertion he was placing his body under, but it was clear it was more than ‘none.’ He also hadn’t been tracking the time, but he looked at his watch anyway out of habit. Has it been two minutes? One? There was no way to be sure. It felt like an eternity had passed, but time had slowed to a crawl ever since Ben had smashed their lifeline and allowed the shuttle to sink.

  He tried to push the thought away. It wasn’t Ben’s fault — if Reggie had thought about it first, he would have done the same thing. The man was trying to avoid a certain death-by-firing-squad, and without being able to control the Subshuttle’s motion from inside the boat, it had been their only option.

  Reggie knew that, but he felt betrayed that Ben hadn’t consulted him first.

  Ben pointed. Up.

  Then he nodded. Now. Let’s go.

  Reggie shook his head. There was still one more member of their team who needed to get out. Dr. Sarah Lindgren had helped Susan and Julie out of the shuttle, and now it was her turn to swim out to safety.

  Or into the mouths of whatever the hell those things are.

  Another one of those ‘things’ swam eerily close to the glass just behind Dr. Lindgren as Reggie looked over at her. Long, black, slender. It looked like no fish Reggie had ever seen, but it was also fast — too fast to get a good look at it.

  She was ‘crouching’ on the back of a chair on the opposite side of the aisle, her hair floating freely above and around her head. He was about to motion for her to swim over when he saw why she was still halfway across the shuttle in the first place.

  Sarah was struggling with her right foot, which had become caught between the glass of that wall of the shuttle and the chair. Apparently when the Subshuttle had detached from the broken cable and shifted, the glass on that side had swelled and swayed, temporarily widening the gap between it and the side of the chair.

  Shit.

  She was pinned, completely unable to move her foot. It looked painful, judging by the look in her eyes as she frantically worked to free her leg.

  Ben pulled at Reggie’s shirt, but Reggie brushed his hand away.

  Again, Ben yanked at Reggie, this time grabbing his collar. Reggie spun around, shaking his head. He pointed at Sarah. Ben looked, then turned his attention up at Reggie.

  He shook his head.

  Reggie was stunned. His friend was telling him it was too late; there was nothing they could do for her now.

  Reggie exploded into action. He kicked off the back of the chair he had been balancing on, the water holding him straight and steady. It was strong enough of a motion for Ben to lose his grip on him and still carry him through the center of the Subshuttle and across to Sarah’s location.

  He turned around and quickly looked at Ben. The man’s expression was startling: a smorgasbord of fear, confusion, and sadness.

  This is it, Reggie thought. He’s trying to say goodbye, but he can’t.

  It was hell that they were underwater right now. Whatever Ben was thinking about telling him would have been good.

  Reggie nodded. It’s been good, friend.

  There were no smiles. No hugs exchanged, or high fives. It wasn’t a happy parting, nor was it as solemn as he would have expected.

  Ben was stoic, Reggie was reserved. This was true for both of them, and both were trying to stay true to form, even in this situation. It was understood. Neither would bend, even now. They were who they were, and neither of them was going to change that about the other.

  He’d felt this before, long ago.

  He was barely a man then, but man enough to have his life’s compass set in the direction of his own true north. There was no lying to a compass like that, no fooling the natural order of things. He remembered the moment like it was yesterday, remembered the feeling of betrayal, loss, anticipation, desire for something he would never feel.

  He swallowed. His lungs were panicking now, adding to the panic of the rest of his body. He wanted out, to ignore Sarah and just get on with it, but he was committed.

  Ben would understand. He saw it on his face.

  You save her, he was saying, but I have to save Julie.

  Reggie understood. He knew it had to be this way. Reggie couldn’t leave an innocent woman to die like this, right in front of his eyes, without even trying.

  That, too, was a road he’d been down before.

  He thought he had tried then, so long ago, but he knew that was just a lie he tried to tell himself to calm the nerves, to ease the pain.

  Sarah’s eyes were wide, frantic still. He grabbed her wrist, pulling it up. There was blood, coming from either her ankle or her fingers, either
from the tightness and pressure on her leg or from the scratching, desperate clawing to free herself.

  She was like an animal in a hunter’s trap — she would have done anything to free herself.

  He only hoped he’d be able to help. There wasn’t enough air in his lungs to do much — either help her or try to get to the surface. There’s a good chance we can’t do both, he thought.

  He pulled. One hand, then two. Then she added her hands to the mix, and all four hands pulled up and around and back and tried to dislodge her foot.

  It held. Her prison was simple, but effective. Her foot was stuck, and there was nothing they could do to free it with their combined strength, especially underwater.

  His lungs were starting to poke outward, the pinpricks of flashing pain alerting him that he was dangerously close to expelling the pent-up carbon monoxide and replacing it with a huge gasp of deadly seawater.

  He could tell Sarah was in the same predicament, though she continued to work her hands down and around her foot. He tried pressing on the glass, even kicking it a few times, but it was solid. It barely budged, nothing but a quick reverberation up his leg telling him that he was even making contact.

  Ben was gone. He’d left at some point, obviously having decided that it was more prudent for him to check on Julie and the OceanTech employee Susan rather than wait around and watch Reggie and Sarah die a horrible death.

  Good for him.

  Reggie felt no anger, no remorse. They’d made their decisions, and if the situation had been even slightly different he would have made the same decision. Further, he would have forced Ben to make the decision he’d made no matter what. He had more skin in the game than Reggie. Julie was far more important to Ben than Reggie, and Reggie wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  No, there was nothing Reggie would have changed.

  He smiled, even as the shuttle slipped deeper still into the depths, the water turning from blue to black and then to a permanent nothing. The darker shapes melted into just shapes, then disappeared completely. He thought he could feel them swimming circles around them, waiting.