Riptide

by Douglas Preston

  Just a moment, Hatch thought. That isn't right. The ladder array had never trembled before.

  Then it came again: a slight shudder, barely perceptible beneath his fingertips and under his instep. He looked questioningly at Bonterre, and in her glance he could see that she felt it, too.

  "Dr. Magnusen, report!" Neidelman spoke sharply. "What's going on?"

  "All normal, Captain."

  "Rankin?" Neidelman asked into his radio.

  "The scopes show a seismic event, but it's threshold, way below the danger level. Is there a problem?"

  "We're feeling a—" the Captain began. Suddenly, a violent shudder twisted the ladder, shaking Hatch's hold. One of his feet skidded from the rung and he grabbed desperately to maintain his purchase. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bonterre clinging tightly to the array. There was another jolt, then another. Above him, Hatch could hear a distant crumbling sound, like earth collapsing, and a low, barely audible rumble.

  "What the hell's happening?" the Captain shouted.

  "Sir!" came Magnusen's voice. "We're picking up ground displacement somewhere in your vicinity."

  "Okay, you win. Let's find Wopner and get the hell out."

  They scrambled up the ladder to the hundred-foot platform, the entrance to the vaulted tunnel opening above them, a yawning mouth of rotting wood and earth. Neidelman peered inside, lancing his beam into the dampness. "Wopner? Get a move on. We're aborting the mission."

  As Hatch listened, only silence and a faint, chill wind emanated from the tunnel.

  Neidelman continued looking into the tunnel for a moment. Then he glanced first at Bonterre, then at Hatch, his eyes narrowing.

  Suddenly, as if galvanized by the same thought, all three unfastened their karabiners and scrambled toward the mouth of the shaft, stepping inside and running down the tunnel. Hatch didn't remember the low passage being this dark, somehow, or this claustrophobic. The very air felt different.

  Then the tunnel opened into a small stone chamber. The two piezoelectric sensors lay on opposite walls of the chamber. Beside one was Wopner's palmtop computer, its RF antenna bent at a crazy angle. Tendrils of mist drifted in the chamber, lanced by their headlamps.

  "Wopner?" Neidelman called, swinging his light around. "Where the hell did he go?"

  Hatch stepped past Neidelman and saw something that sent a chill through his vitals. One of the massive groined stones of the ceiling had swung down against the chamber wall. Hatch could see a gap in the ceiling, like a missing tooth, from which damp brown earth dribbled. At floor level, where the base of the fallen ceiling stone pressed against the wall, he could make out something black and white. Moving closer, Hatch realized that it was the canvas-and-rubber toe of Wopner's sneaker, peeping out between the slabs. In a moment he was beside it, shining his light between the two faces of stone.

  "Oh, my God," Neidelman said behind him.

  Hatch could see Wopner, pressed tightly between the two granite faces, one arm pinned to his side, the other canted upward at a crazy angle. His helmeted head was turned to the side, gazing out at Hatch. His eyes were wide and full of tears.

  Wopner's mouth worked silently as Hatch stared. Please . . .

  "Kerry, try to stay calm," Hatch said, running his beam of light up and down the narrow crack while fumbling with his intercom. My God, it's amazing he's still alive. "Streeter!" he called into the intercom. "We have a man trapped between two slabs of rock. Get some hydraulic jacks down here. I want oxygen, blood, and saline."

  He turned back to Wopner. "Kerry, we're going to jack these slabs apart and get you out very, very soon. Right now, I need to know where you hurt."

  Again the mouth worked. "I don't know." The response came as a high-pitched exhalation. "I feel ... all broken up inside." The voice was oddly slurred, and Hatch realized that the programmer was barely able to move his jaw to speak. Hatch stepped away from the wall face and tore open his medical kit, pulling out a hypo and sucking up two ccs of morphine. He wormed his hand between the rough slabs of stone and sank the needle into Wopner's shoulder. There was no flinching, no reaction, nothing.

  "How is he?" Neidelman said, hovering behind him, the air clouding from his breath.

  "Get back, for Chrissakes!" Hatch said. "He needs air." Now he found himself panting, drawing more and more air into his own lungs, feeling increasingly short of breath.

  "Be careful!" Bonterre said from behind him. "There may be more than one trap."

  A trap? It had not occurred to Hatch that this was a trap. But then, how else could that huge ceiling stone swing down so neatly . . . He tried to reach Wopner's hand to take his pulse, but it was bent too far out of reach.

  "Jacks, oxygen, and plasma on their way," came Streeter's voice over the intercom.

  "Good. Have a collapsible stretcher lowered to the hundred-foot platform, with inflatable splints and a cervical collar—"

  "Water . . ." Wopner breathed.

  Bonterre stepped up and handed Hatch a canteen. He reached into the crack, angling a thin stream of water from the canteen down the side of Wopner's helmet. As the tongue fluttered out to catch the water, Hatch could see that it was blue-black, droplets of blood glistening along its length. Jesus, where the hell are those jacks . . .

  "Help me, please!" Wopner rattled, and coughed quietly. A few flecks of blood appeared on his chin.

  Punctured lung, thought Hatch. "Hold on, Kerry, just a couple of minutes," he said as soothingly as he could, and then turned away and stabbed savagely at his intercom. "Streeter," he hissed, "the jacks, goddamnit, where are the jacks?" He felt a wave of dizziness, and gulped more air.

  "Air quality is moving into the red zone," Neidelman said quietly.

  "Lowering now," said Streeter amid a burst of static.

  Hatch turned to Neidelman and saw he had already gone to retrieve them. "Can you feel your arms and legs?" he asked Wopner.

  "I don't know." There was a pause while the programmer gasped for breath. "I can feel one leg. It feels like the bone has come out."

  Hatch angled his light down, but was unable to see anything but a twist of trouser in the narrow space, the denim sodden to a dark crimson color. "Kerry, I'm looking at your left hand. Try to move your fingers."

  The hand, strangely bluish and plump-looking, remained motionless for a long moment. Then the index and middle fingers twitched slightly. Relief coursed through Hatch. CNS function is still there. If we can get this rock off him in the next few minutes, we've got a chance. He shook his head, trying to clear it.

  There was another tremor underfoot and a rain of dirt, and Wopner squealed: a high-pitched, inhuman sound.

  "Mon dieu, what was that?" Bonterre said, quickly glancing up at the ceiling.

  "I think you'd better leave," said Hatch quietly.

  "Absolutely not."

  "Kerry?" Hatch peered anxiously into the crack once again. "Kerry, can you answer me?"

  Wopner stared out at him, a low, hoarse moan escaping his lips. His breath was now wheezing and gurgling.

  Outside the tunnel, Hatch could hear the thud and clatter of machinery as Neidelman pulled in the cable that had been dropped from the surface. He sucked air desperately as a strange buzzing began sounding faintly in his head.

  "Can't breathe," Wopner managed to say, his eyes pale and glassy.

  "Kerry? You're doing great. Just hold on." Kerry gasped and coughed again. A trickle of blood ran down from his lips to dangle from his chin.

  The sound of running footsteps, then Neidelman reappeared. He slung two hydraulic jacks to the ground, followed by a portable oxygen cylinder. Hatch grabbed the mask and began screwing the nozzle onto the regulator. Then he spun the dial on the top of the cylinder and heard the reassuring hiss of oxygen.

  Neidelman and Bonterre worked feverishly behind him, tearing off the plastic coverings, unfastening the jacks from the rods, screwing the pieces together. There was another shudder, and Hatch could feel the tall shaft of rock shift under his
hand, inching inexorably toward the wall.

  "Hurry!" he cried, head swimming. Dialing the flow to maximum, he snaked the oxygen mask into the narrow gap between the rocks. "Kerry," he said, "I'm going to place this mask over your face." He gasped, trying to find the air to keep talking. "I want you to take slow, shallow breaths. Okay? In just a few seconds we're going to jack this rock off you."

  He placed the oxygen mask over Kerry's face, trying to slip it beneath the programmer's misshapen helmet. He had to mold the mask with his fingers to make it narrow enough to fit around the programmer's mashed nose and mouth; only now did he realize just how tightly the young man was wedged. The moist, panicked eyes looked at him imploringly.

  Neidelman and Bonterre said nothing, working with intense concentration, fitting the pieces of jack together.

  Craning to get a glimpse into the thinning space, Hatch could see Wopner's face, narrowed alarmingly, his jaw locked open by the pressure. Blood flowed from his cheeks where the edge of the helmet cut into his flesh. He could no longer speak, or even scream. His left hand twitched spasmodically, caressing the rock face with purple fingertips. A slight sound of escaping air came from his mouth and nostrils. Hatch knew that the pressure of the rock made breathing almost impossible.

  "Here it is," Neidelman hissed, handing the jack to Hatch. Hatch tried to jam it in the narrowing crack.

  "It's too wide!" he gasped, tossing it back. "Crank it down!"

  He turned back to Wopner. "Now Kerry, I want you to breathe along with me. I'll count them with you, okay? One . . . two ..."

  With a violent trembling underfoot and a harsh grating sound, the slab lunged closer; Hatch felt his own hand and wrist suddenly squeezed between the tightening rocks. Wopner gave a violent shudder, then a wet gasp. As Hatch watched in horror, the beam of his light angling into the narrow space with pitiless clarity, he saw the programmer's eyes, bulging from his head, turn first pink, then red, then black. There was a splitting sound, and the helmet burst along its seams. Sweat on the crushed cheeks and nose grew tinged with pink as the slab inched still closer. A jet of blood came rushing from one ear, and more blood burst from the tips of Wopner's fingertips. His jaw buckled, sagging sideways, the tongue protruding into the oxygen mask.

  "The rock's still slipping!" Hatch screamed. "Get me something, anything, to—"

  But even as he spoke, he felt the programmer's head come apart under his hand. The oxygen mask began to burble as its airway grew clogged by a rush of fluids. There was a strange vibration between his fingers and to his horror he realized it was Wopner's tongue, twitching spastically as the nerves that fired the muscles burned out.

  "No!" Hatch cried in despair. "Please God, no!"

  Black spots appeared before his eyes as he staggered against the rock, unable to catch his breath in the thick air, fighting to pull his own hand free from the increasing pressure.

  "Dr. Hatch, step away!" Neidelman warned.

  "Malin!" screamed Bonterre.

  "Hey, Mal!" Hatch heard his brother, Johnny, whisper out of the rushing darkness. Hey, Mal! Over here!

  Then the darkness closed upon him and he knew no more.

  Chapter 30

  By midnight the ocean had taken on the kind of oily, slow-motion swell that often came after a summer blow. Hatch stood up from his desk and went to the Quonset hut window, moving carefully through the darkened office. He stared past the unlit huts of Base Camp, looking for lights that would indicate the coroner was finally on his way. Lines of spindrift lay in ghostly threads across the dark water. The rough weather seemed to have temporarily blown the fog from the island, and the mainland was visible on the horizon, an uncertain strand of phosphorescence under the star-strewn sky.

  He sighed and turned from the window, unconsciously massaging a bandaged hand. He'd sat alone in his office as the evening turned to night, unwilling to move, unwilling even to turn on the lights. Somehow, the darkness made it easier to avoid the irregular shape that lay on the gurney, under a white sheet. It made it easier for him to push back all the thoughts and quiet whispers that kept intruding onto the edges of his consciousness.

  There came a soft knock and the turn of a door handle. Moonlight framed the spare outline of Captain Neidelman, standing in the doorway, He slipped into the hut and disappeared into the dark shape of a chair. There was a scratching noise, and the room briefly flared yellow as a pipe was lit; the faint sounds of drawing smoke reached Hatch's ears a moment before the scent of Turkish latakia.

  "No sign of the coroner, then?" Neidelman asked.

  Hatch's silence was answer enough. They had wanted to bring Wopner to the mainland, but the coroner, a fussy, suspicious man who had come down all the way from Machiasport, insisted on moving the body as little as possible.

  The Captain smoked in silence for several minutes, the only evidence of his presence the intermittent glow from the pipe bowl. Then he laid the pipe aside and cleared his throat.

  "Malin?" he asked softly.

  "Yes," Hatch replied, his own voice sounding husky and foreign in his ears.

  "This has been a devastating tragedy. For all of us. I was very fond of Kerry."

  "Yes," said Hatch again.

  "I remember," the Captain went on, "leading a team working deepwater salvage off Sable Island. The graveyard of the Atlantic. We had six divers in a barometric pressure chamber, decompressing after a hundred-meter dive to a Nazi sub loaded with gold. Something went wrong, the seal of the chamber failed." Hatch heard him shifting in his chair. "You can imagine what happened. Massive embolisms. Blows apart your brain, then stops your heart."

  Hatch said nothing.

  "One of those young divers was my son."

  Hatch looked at the dark figure. "I'm very sorry," he said. "I had no idea . . ." He stopped. I had no idea you were a father. Or a husband. In fact, he really knew next to nothing about Neidelman's personal life.

  "Jeff was our only child. The death was very hard on both of us, and my wife, Adelaide—well, she couldn't quite forgive me."

  Hatch fell silent again, remembering the stark outline of his own mother's face that November afternoon they learned of his father's death. She had picked up a china candlestick from the mantelpiece, polished it absently with her apron, replaced it, then picked it up and polished it again, over and over, her face as gray as the empty sky. He wondered what Kerry Wopner's mother was doing at that moment.

  "God, I'm tired." Neidelman shifted again in his chair, more briskly this time, as if to force himself awake. "These things happen in this business," he said. "They're unavoidable."

  "Unavoidable," Hatch repeated.

  "I'm not trying to excuse it. Kerry was aware of the risks, and he made that choice. Just as we all did."

  Despite himself, Hatch found his eyes straying involuntarily to the misshapen form under the sheet. Dark stains had seeped through the material, ragged black holes in the moonlight. He wondered if Wopner really had made the choice.

  "The point is"—the Captain lowered his voice—"we must not let this defeat us."

  With an effort, Hatch pulled his eyes away. He sighed deeply. "I suppose I feel the same way. We've come this far. Kerry's death would be even more pointless if we abandoned the project completely. We'll take the time we need to review our safety procedures. Then we can—"

  Neidelman sat forward in his chair. "The time we need? You misunderstand me, Malin. We must move forward tomorrow."

  Hatch frowned. "How can we, in the wake of all this? For one thing, morale is rock-bottom. Just this afternoon I heard a couple of workers outside my window, saying the whole venture's cursed, that nobody will ever recover the treasure."

  "But that's exactly why we must press on," the Captain continued, his voice now urgent. "Stop the malingering, make them lose themselves in their work. It's not surprising people are rattled. What would you expect after such a tragedy? Talk of curses and supernatural folderol is a seductive, undermining force. And that's really what I'm he
re to discuss."

  He moved his chair closer. "All these equipment troubles we've been having. Everything works just fine until it's installed on the island, then inexplicable problems crop up. It's caused us delays and cost overruns. Not to mention the loss of morale." He picked up his pipe. "Have you thought about a possible cause?"

  "Not really. I don't know much about computers. Kerry didn't understand it. He kept saying there was some kind of malevolent force at work."

  Neidelman made a faint sound of derision. "Yes, even him. Funny that a computer expert should be so superstitious." He turned, and even in the dark Malin could feel his stare. "Well, I have been giving it a lot of thought, and I've come to a conclusion. And it's not some kind of curse."

  "What, then?"

  The Captain's face glowed briefly as he relit his pipe. "Sabotage."

  "Sabotage?" Hatch said incredulously. "But who? And why?"

  "I don't know. Yet. But it's obviously someone in our inner circle, someone with complete access to the computer system and the equipment. That gives us Rankin, Magnusen, St. John, Bonterre. Perhaps even Wopner, hoisted on his own petard."

  Hatch was secretly surprised that Neidelman could talk so calculatingly about Wopner with the programmer's broken body lying only six feet away. "What about Streeter?" he asked.

  The Captain shook his head. "Streeter and I have been together since Vietnam. He was petty officer on my gunboat. I know you and he don't see eye-to-eye, and I know he's a bit of an odd duck, but there's no chance he could be the saboteur. None. Everything he has is invested in this venture. But it goes deeper than that. I once saved his life. When you've been at war, side by side in combat with a man, there can never be a lie between you."

  "Very well," Hatch replied. "But I can't think of a reason why anyone would want to sabotage the dig."

  "I can think of several," said Neidelman. "Here's one. Industrial espionage. Thalassa isn't the only treasure hunting company in the world, remember. If we fail or go bankrupt, it would open the door to someone else."

  "Not without my cooperation."