The Girl Beneath the Sea (Underwater Investigation Unit)

by Andrew Mayne

  Free divers spend years training their bodies for this kind of abuse. Their joints have cartilage and deposits built up over hundreds of dives and recoveries.

  I had eight seconds to prepare for this.

  Ninety feet. Everything aches.

  The shadow diver’s right below me.

  He’s wearing body armor and has a knife and gun.

  All I have is speed and surprise.

  Sometimes that’s enough.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CLEAT

  The weight belt hits the back of the shadow diver’s head. Not enough to knock him out, but enough to stun him.

  He probably thinks he’s been attacked by a shark.

  I make him wish he had. A shark would take one bite and let him go. I’m taking him out of the picture.

  I let go of the belt, grab the back of his pack, and start slashing at the hoses going to his regulator, then stab his vest, puncturing the thick rubber, making it impossible for him to inflate it and use it for an air supply.

  My blade slides through his vest, and I accidentally stab him in the shoulder. Blood begins oozing from the wound. His knife hand swings back at me, and we roll in the water.

  His gear is streamlined for combat, but I’m even sleeker.

  I rip his mask from his face, which is instantly hidden behind a mass of bubbles.

  He’s trying to control the hoses, but it won’t make a difference. I cut them all. They writhe around like an angry hydra as the air escapes.

  I see the gun strapped to his chest breather and pull it free. His arm shoots through the water and grabs my wrist. His knife swipes at my wrist, almost catching it. Almost.

  I kick his chest with both feet and slide away. My back hits the Kraken, and I roll over.

  The other diver is coming at me, his knife pointed at my face.

  BANG!

  The gun I took from the other diver is loud underwater, and I feel the concussion in my chest.

  The bullet hits his chest breather.

  I fire again, and a jet of bubbles shoots out, blocking the second diver’s face.

  The knife arm comes at me, and I slip out of the way, but he turns fast. His gun is drawn now, and the muzzle’s swinging toward my body.

  BANG!

  He fires and misses. I think.

  I pull myself over the Kraken and under the far wing.

  Before the diver can reach me, I move to the front of the submarine and catch a glimpse of the diver I cut swimming fast for the surface.

  He’s going to get the bends real bad. But he doesn’t have a choice. It’s that or dying.

  I can no longer ignore the screaming in my lungs.

  BANG! The other diver fires at me, and I shoot back.

  I have no idea how effective these bullets are underwater, but I’m pretty sure at a yard or so they’re not fun.

  I swim farther out of range, my lungs ready to tear apart.

  He’s flattened out over the Kraken, taking aim at me, waiting for me to come closer.

  Oh god. I’m about ready to pass out.

  I either have to head for the surface or think of something fast.

  Everything goes white as something incredibly bright lights up the seafloor like the sun.

  I have to cover my eyes. The diver turns, and I hear something like a scream.

  When I glance up a moment later, I see his body swimming for the surface, a cloud of blood billowing from his leg trailing behind.

  Dad is hovering over the edge of the Kraken, turning off the underwater torch he used to burn the diver. From the amount of blood entering the ocean, the burn went deep. So deep it didn’t cauterize.

  Damn, that’s harsh.

  Dad swims over to me, and I start furiously making hand gestures in our underwater sign language.

  He puts a finger to his mouth, signaling me to be quiet. All of a sudden, I’m thirteen, and we’re hiding from an aggressive bull shark off Bimini.

  Dad holds up his hand and removes his regulator from his mouth and pushes it toward me.

  Breathe, Sloan. Breathe, he’s telling me.

  I take a deep breath and let my lungs fill up with air. He places his spare in his mouth, then takes a small underwater clipboard from his pouch and writes a question mark on it.

  I take the board and the pen and draw a crude picture of the Fool with one man aiming a gun at another and two stick figures swimming to the surface.

  I write “George” under the man at gunpoint.

  Dad nods and looks up. He takes the board from me and erases the picture, then writes, “We have to save him.”

  I give Dad a thumbs-up, indicating we should surface. He shakes his head and points to the Kraken, then writes “Fixed” on the board.

  I take another breath of air and swim over to the rear of the submarine, where Dad had been working. A small hatch, not much bigger than a large doggie door, hangs open underneath.

  I stick my head inside and emerge in a tiny compartment filled with air. The interior area is no wider than my shoulders and lined with Pelican cases. At the far end is the porthole Dad peered through. Below that is a small control stick and a display panel.

  Dad swims underneath and pokes his head into the compartment.

  “How much air?” I ask him, indicating the sub’s interior. I hear a small hiss in the background.

  He takes the regulator from his mouth. “Winston put in a rebreather. One oxygen cylinder is good for at least twelve hours. The other one seems to be defective.” He points to the ceiling, where a small aluminum plate is riveted to the hull. “All I had to do was put that patch there and repressurize. Everything else is fine.”

  “Can we take it to the surface?” I ask.

  “You can. Just do your safety stops. The depth gauge will tell you where you’re at.”

  “We need to get back before they do something to George. The divers may be badly hurt, but the guy up there isn’t.”

  “What do you need me to do?” asks Dad.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  BREAKER

  The Kraken glides more smoothly than I expected. I’ve used underwater vehicles before, but they all felt like slow-motion versions of land craft. This is different. Winston designed an extremely low profile that lets it cut through the water like a knife.

  Wedged between the cases in a crouch with no seat doesn’t make for the most comfortable ride, but it works well enough. Going full throttle dislodged the sub from the sand and shot the sub forward, almost hitting Dad, who was guiding me.

  Now that I have it under control, I’m tilting the control stick to the side and spiraling up toward the surface.

  Dad follows along, swimming up the center of my corkscrew. We want to hurry, but going too fast could lead to serious problems as air expands in our tissue.

  I finally surface near the bow of Fortune’s Fool and am immediately tossed to the side and battered in the heavy surf.

  I pull myself backward through the confined space of my minivessel and open the bottom hatch. Water splashes in as the sub tilts and air escapes. The Kraken could sink again, but I’m not worried about that right now.

  I dive into the water and swim for the bowline. My glow stick is still dangling where I left it. About twenty feet away, I catch the outline of a small craft. This must have been what the divers used to sneak up on us.

  Now we’ll see if I can play the boarding game as well.

  I pop my head out of the water and spot a small ladder hanging over the bow of the Fool. It appears to have been attached to a cleat on our boat. That must be how Mario got the drop on us.

  I grab the bottom rung and start to climb the ladder. It’s a challenge in the waves. Half the time you’re being tilted up into the air, the rest you’re underwater.

  I finally reach the top and slide myself onto the bow. The ocean tries to toss me back in, but I hold fast to handholds I improvise from the hatches and navigation lights.

  When I pull myself up to the bridg
e, I can see through the cracked windshield.

  Sonic has George flat on his stomach with the gun pointed at his head while his other hand uses the gaffing pole to help one of the divers, who’s dragging the third.

  Blood is trickling from George’s head across the wet deck.

  Damn it.

  I slide onto the bridge, above and behind Sonic. I could shoot him from here, but for some reason, I can’t bring myself to do that. My hand falls on the fire extinguisher behind the captain’s chair.

  I slip it from its mount and take the ladder down to the stern.

  One of the injured divers sees me and calls to Sonic.

  But not fast enough.

  I smack the metal cylinder across his head so hard he falls backward and cracks it again on the railing.

  Mario raises his gun at me. I fire the extinguisher at him, then hurl the heavy device in his direction.

  When the cloud clears, Dad has a knife to the unconscious Sonic’s throat and his gun in hand. I take it and toss his knife into the ocean.

  George rolls over and sits up. There’s a gash on his scalp and blood all over his shoulder.

  I need to help my father. “Can you manage?”

  “I’ll hold.”

  I cut George’s plasticuffs and hand him the gun I liberated from one of the SEALs on the sea bottom. “Keep your eye on him.”

  Signaling to my father, I run to the rope attached to our Zodiac and drag the raft alongside the boat. George’s gun glints in the light on the bottom of the craft. I reach down and recover it.

  Good thing I saw that. It could have been bad, considering what I have planned.

  I pull the Zodiac alongside the Fool and toward Dad. “Tell them to get in!” I shout over the wind.

  I yank the fuel line from the engine and toss it into the water.

  Dad understands what I’m doing and pushes Mario and Link toward the raft.

  He backs off and lets the slightly less injured Link climb over and help Mario aboard the Zodiac.

  “This man needs medical attention!” Link shouts. “We both need oxygen!”

  Pure oxygen is how you prevent decompression sickness. We have a cylinder aboard the Fortune’s Fool, but they’re not getting it.

  Dad pulls himself over to the dive platform and pulls himself up. I motion to Sonic’s slumped body. “Help me out.”

  We roll him over the edge and into the Zodiac. George has pulled himself up into a standing position and has the rifle aimed down at them. “What’s your plan?”

  I feed some line out, letting the current drag the Zodiac away, giving us some distance. “Keep them back there. Tow ’em in to shore.”

  George shakes his head. He goes over to the cleat where the line to the raft is fastened and unties the rope. “We can’t have them back there. They’ll kill us first chance.”

  I turn to Dad. He nods. “Rock and a hard place. Besides, they’ll have a rescue beacon on them.”

  That makes me feel slightly better as I watch them vanish behind a wave. Just because they’re cold-blooded killers doesn’t mean I have to be one too.

  Our boat shakes as something metallic hits the hull.

  “What’s that?” asks George.

  “The Kraken. Damn.” I run to the front of the boat and dive in with another line to stabilize the submarine before it does serious damage to both vessels.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  JETTY

  The Kraken gets pulled into an upswell and starts to list to starboard, raising the port winglet out of the water. A tall wave crashes down on the hull like a giant’s fist, and I’m slammed into the Pelican cases, adding another bruise to my shoulder.

  I’ve got to learn how to control this thing better. The trouble is, I’m trying to keep it far enough below the waves not to get tossed around in the surf while also trying to avoid hitting the bottom or, worse, getting trapped on a sandbar.

  The storm is having its way with the ocean, sending wild waves back and forth and surging across the Florida coast. The last time we had something like this, they were using bulldozers for weeks to clean up the sand on A1A.

  The stern camera view is only worth looking at when I’m above the waves. The last one tossed me high enough to get a glance behind me. The lights of the Fortune’s Fool were barely visible at the outer edge. I pray our little gambit works.

  While we cast our would-be murderers adrift, the Vader is still out there, lurking beyond our field of view.

  They tried sending ex-SEALs to take over our vessel. Now they have to know it didn’t work. With the Fool on the move, that leaves two options—rescue their men, who have undoubtedly signaled them, or chase the Fool.

  Dad’s strategy, based upon a lifetime at sea and reading Patrick O’Brian novels, was a ploy to get the Kraken safely away from K-Group while also avoiding another kill team.

  As soon as I tied the Kraken to the stern and swam back up onto the dive platform, Dad told me I had to pilot into the harbor alone.

  “They’re going to board us,” he explained. “If they find the Kraken, we’re all dead.”

  “We could sink its payload,” I replied.

  “It’ll take them two minutes to locate it with their instruments.” He looked out into the distance where we’d sent the divers. “Even if they take the time to retrieve the cases, they could still beat us to shore. Especially if we’re hauling the sub.”

  “I can’t leave you here.”

  Stinging rain pelted our faces, and the Fool rocked so hard we had to brace ourselves on the rail.

  “We have a plan,” said George.

  I was sure the two of them had talked this over while I was bringing the Kraken aft. I didn’t like the idea of them making decisions without me—especially ones dedicated to putting my safety first . . . if piloting an untested undersea vehicle in a tropical gale could ever be called “safe.”

  “Once you’re on the way, we’re going to haul ass for shore and call the coast guard for help,” George explained.

  “But the Vader’s still jamming us,” I replied.

  “They’ll have to turn it off closer to shore,” Dad said. “Either way, we’ll start sending up flares.”

  “What if they catch you?” I asked.

  George answered, “As long as we don’t have the money or the files, they won’t risk killing us and losing any chance of recovering them. If we stay free, the coast guard will help us in to port and either impound us or let us go. What matters is you getting the Kraken somewhere safe.”

  Somewhere safe. We still hadn’t figured out where that was. Dad told me I should go with my gut. Worse case, ride the surge across Fort Lauderdale beach and park it in front of the tourist bar that always stays open during storms.

  I check my compass, the one instrument I can reasonably trust as I’m bounced above and below the waves, and make sure my heading remains steady.

  My only goal at this point is to get out of range of the Vader’s jammer and close enough to shore to use my cell phone. If I can get a signal, I can call for help—that is, send help to Dad and George.

  I steer the Kraken down and glide over the ocean floor, watching the depth gauge. It’ll indicate my distance from the seafloor but won’t warn me about anything in front of the craft. Winston added some kind of sonar to the craft that could help, but I’m not sure how to read the display. I’m left using the porthole to keep an eye out for anything about to slam into me.

  The craft bounces, and I get a view of lights along the shore. That would be the city of Jupiter. Okay, where exactly could I go?

  I know there’s a big boat ramp a mile or so past the Intracoastal. There’re also a bunch of nice hotels with marinas for luxury boats.

  Those are viable, but they won’t help me keep this submarine on the down low. I’d likely be swarmed by police and covert K-Group operatives in no time. While I could slip away without the Kraken, that would mean leaving Bonaventure’s evidence behind.

  Jupiter . . . Keep t
hinking. What else? Why is something buzzing in the back of my mind?

  Blue Ocean Marina. It’s near there . . . Why am I remembering that?

  Oh snap. Run’s buddy owns the place. They have a lift and a huge warehouse where they store boats. It would be ideal for hiding the Kraken.

  I bring the nose of the sub up and breach the surface. The vessel’s belly slams down into the water, and I bump my head into the porthole.

  Pain can wait. I take out my phone and check for signal.

  One bar.

  Good enough.

  I dial the only number I can think of.

  “Hey! Are you okay? We’re worried sick,” Run answers in a near shout.

  “I’m in a stealth submarine off Jupiter Beach. Dad’s aboard Fortune’s Fool and needs help right away before a team of rogue ex-SEALs kills him and George.”

  To Run’s credit, he doesn’t miss a beat.

  “What can I do to help?”

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  GUNWALE

  Tropical Storm Baker is raining billions of gallons of water into the Everglades and the streets of Jupiter, causing a massive current of water to flow through the inlet and out into the ocean, which makes navigating the Kraken underwater next to impossible.

  The surge is so powerful the craft begins to get dragged backward and almost smashes into a seawall until I realize that piloting it close to the surface, limiting the amount of drag, is the only way I’m going to keep it going upstream.

  The battery gauges are flashing, warning that the drain is too high and I’m going to be drifting soon. I already tried to start the engine that recharges the batteries but gave up when I couldn’t figure out Winston’s controls.

  At the moment, I’m cruising through the inlet, exposed for anyone to see. Thankfully it’s dark out, and no sensible person would be on the water right now.

  I bring the Kraken around the next bend, trying to navigate from memory. When the tall metal warehouse for Blue Ocean Marina comes into view, I feel a wave of relief.

  A smile spreads across my face when I see Run standing out in the rain by the ramp next to a boat trailer, his black polo shirt drenched and his tan legs poking out from equally soaked shorts.