The Ocean Dark

by Christopher Golden

  “I know, man,” another sailor replied. “A lot of guys are dead.”

  Josh steadied his breathing, forced himself to find control in the mire of his pain and fear. His sling remained around his neck, a sodden rag, and he worked it into place, every motion a fresh jolt. Then he stepped up beside Tori and followed her gaze upward.

  “A second bowl,” he said.

  “What?”

  But he didn’t clarify. There was no need; she could see what he saw. They were down in a cave, now. The upper bowl, the original chamber, had looked down into the mouth of the cave, which sloped inward to form what was, in essence, another bowl. At high tide, water would pour in through the cave mouth above them and the water level of the subterranean pool would rise. But the ledge where they had gathered, a slab of volcanic rock, put them twenty feet below the cave mouth. There would be no climbing back up.

  Even if they did, he doubted they would be able to get through.

  The shelf of the upper bowl had shattered and tons of black rock had crashed down like a landslide. Some of it had passed through the cave mouth and plunged into the water with and around them, but huge slabs and chunks had come to rest in the mouth of the cave, lodged there, blocking the rest from falling.

  “We’re cut off,” Josh said.

  “No,” Tori argued. “Look, there are plenty of openings. Tons of light getting through. They can put ropes down and pull us up.”

  Sykes overheard. His boots scuffed the ledge as he turned to them. “No they can’t. Josh is right. All that rockfall is unstable. It could give way at any time. If they put someone through one of those holes, the whole thing could come down and crush us all. They’d never risk it. If they try, I’ll order them not to. So will Captain Siebalt.”

  “Are you kidding me? They have to try!”

  Sykes no longer had his radio, but two of his men had managed to get theirs working. Static and voices hissed. From above, someone tried to hail them. Sykes turned his back and went to take the radio.

  Josh swayed on his feet, pain surging again. If Sykes was right, they were all dead. He turned to see Alena Boudreau and Ridge watching them and made his way over to them, Tori quickly following.

  “Dr. Boudreau, this is your operation. Talk to him. Get on the radio and tell them we’re down here,” Josh said. “Your grandson isn’t going to just leave you here.”

  A line of pain formed on her forehead at the thought of her grandson, but she shook her head. “I’m afraid none of that really matters, Agent Hart.”

  “How can you say it doesn’t matter?” Tori snapped. “I’m not going to die down here.”

  Alena glanced at Ridge and took a deep breath, pressing a hand to her side. Josh wondered if she had broken some ribs or just bruised herself.

  “Paul and I were just talking this through,” she said, a terrible wisdom and apology in her eyes. “Even if they came for us without first trying to remove some of the rockslide, to do so safely would take hours. We can’t afford that kind of time. The sun will keep shifting position and it won’t be long before there’s no direct sunlight down here at all. It may be that most of the creatures hibernate during the day, or that most are out in the deep water around the island, but I consider it sheer luck that we got onto this ledge alive.”

  “All the more reason—“ Josh started.

  Alena shot him a dark look that silenced him.

  “It’s worse,” she said, gaze shifting between him and Tori. “In case you’ve forgotten, the tide is coming in. The water level in the pool is going to rise. And up above, when the tide is high enough, it’s going to come pouring down on top of the tons of rock jammed into the cave mouth above us. That may bring the whole thing down, but even if it doesn’t, the water is still going to pour into this chamber. We don’t have until nightfall. If we stay here, we won’t even make it to high tide. Either we’ll drown, or they’ll come for us.”

  Josh stared at her, feeling a connection with this woman, drawing on her strength. Despite the fate she had just described, she still did not seem beaten.

  “You have an idea,” he said.

  Alena nodded, then turned to Dr. Ridge.

  The geologist clicked on a Maglite he’d had clipped to his belt. The sailors all had them as well, though none had turned them on as yet.

  Ridge turned and shone the thin but powerful beam into the darkness behind him. Four or five yards away, the ledge rose into a jagged slope, at the top of which was the yawning black void of a narrow tunnel.

  “There’s another way out,” Ridge said. “Can’t you feel the draft? The air’s moving in that direction.”

  Now that he’d pointed it out, Josh could.

  “Oh, my God,” Tori whispered, and the hope in her voice was palpable.

  “At high tide, that tunnel will flood,” Sykes said from behind them.

  They all turned to find that the Lieutenant Commander and his three surviving sailors had joined them, and overheard the last of the conversation.

  Alena met Sykes gaze with her own, unwavering.

  “Then we’d better get started.”

  ~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 whoomp 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 further. 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 own life, and to have 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 her. 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—and 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 all of the creatures out—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 echo-location? 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.”

  ~80~

  What frightened Tori the most were the side tunnels, most of them too narrow for a person to fit through. Some were actually fissures, cleaved into the walls as though some giant axe blade had split the black, glassy rock. The darkness inside those clefts was absolute--a blackness unlike anything she had ever seen, like holes in the fabric of the world. From some of them she could hear a trickle of water, and in others a louder, shushing ebb and flow. The tide was rising. Would water eventually come up through those holes and fissures, just as it would from the cave m
outh they had left behind some long, tense minutes ago? She thought it would.

  For now, though, there were only the sounds and, from some, the breath of steam--a hot mist that made the tunnel like a sauna. The volcano beneath them might be dormant—at least according to Dr. Ridge it was—but down in its heart, a furnace still burned.

  The tunnel had widened as they moved deeper into it, enough so that they could walk two by two, although the craggy ceiling remained so low that they could only move in a crouch. Shuffling along, backs bent, had not slowed them at first, but Tori had felt them all slowing down as the discomfort of that hunched progress grew. Lieutenant Commander Sykes led the way with a Maglite, strobing the tunnel ahead, the barrel of his pistol pointed at every sharp edge and turn. Behind him ambled Alena and Dr. Ridge. Ridge had another flashlight, its powerful beam illuminating Sykes as much as it did any of the tunnel. He tried to insist that Alena allow him to help her, but the woman refused. She confessed to having cracked ribs, and she walked as gingerly as their need for speed would allow, one hand pressed to her side, but she never complained and never slowed.

  Tough as nails, Tori thought, with deep admiration, as she and Josh followed behind the two scientists.

  The other three sailors—Charlie, Mays, and Guarino—brought up the rear, their own Maglite beams bouncing around Tori and Josh, illuminating bits of tunnel wall or ceiling for an instant before moving on. She took comfort in those lights, and in having those sailors behind her, and Sykes up front. It didn’t make her safe—none of them were safe—but the illusion pleased her.

  Josh stumbled and fell to his knees beside her, swearing in a low voice, and the three sailors came to a halt, shining their lights on him. In that brightness, the pain etched on his face was terrible to see. Small beads of sweat had formed on his forehead.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  His chuckle held a grim irony. “Not even close. Doc Dwyer gave me a couple of extra Vicodin for the road.” Josh looked up, his smile a grimace. “I took them early, spoiling myself. Half an hour before the cave-in. They aren’t doing shit.”