by Chris Howard
Come on. We’re halfway home with Corkran’s crazy plan. The Serina’s off the floor and will be ready to be moved and lowered in a day.
There was more dive work to be done. At least one more dive. Crane One of the Irabarren was still holding up the bow of the Serina Beliz. On the first dive Telly had manhandled his roller cable and U-bolts into place, releasing Crane Two from its ship-hoisting duties. Damien had spent the whole time with the pod, and hadn’t worked the bow roller cable into place.
Headphones on, Ranav looked up as the captain filled the doorway to Irabarren’s comm room. He quickly spun in the chair and slid the phones down around his neck.
“Captain?”
Balance. It was all about balance, and how to keep the soldiers off theirs. Even if Levesgue wasn’t fooled by the manufactured commotion around the two pod survivors, at least he had been sidetracked, which was half the game plan. Wilraven just had to keep the interference going. It was an odd request, but he had a few ideas brewing around keeping Levesgue distracted. He just had to get them out and start them rolling.
Before he could speak, Ranav leaned toward him and brought his voice down to barely a whisper.
“Thought you might want to know. Paulina just rang up. Seems like we have comm with the outside world again, probably just a narrow window if you’re looking to talk to anyone. We just heard a storm warning over sixteen.”
Ranav grew up in Bangalore and had worked for Google and IBM Global in India. He’d also spent half a dozen years in the Boston area, where he had picked up what sounded like a perfectly even blend of American English and Indian English idiom and pronunciation.
Wilraven’s thoughts jumped the distract-Levesgue tracks and headed down a completely new direction. “Think we can raise the Coast Guard out of Miami or Guantanamo?”
Ranav gave him troubled look. “Without our technically inclined soldiers listening in or being able to trace our call? I don’t know.”
Wilraven nodded. “Okay, you set it up. I will do the talking. If anything heavy comes down from Levesgue it should land on me, not you.”
Ranav gave him an open-handed gesture. “Hey, I’m a comms guy. I’m all for thwarting anyone who stands in the way of open communication.”
The captain started to smile. Only Ranav could use the word “thwarting” convincingly.
“Let’s do it then.”
In five minutes they were on the VHF to Coast Guard Miami, talking to what sounded like a teenager. “Go ahead, Captain. Not in life-threatening distress, but still require assistance?”
“Yes. This is Marcene with the deep-sea salvage platform Irabarren.” He signaled Ranav to key in the coordinates. “I am sending you our long and lat. We have a security detail on board provided by the charterer, and they have . . . ”
The steady hiss over the air went dead.
Wilraven shoved the headphones harder against one ear. “Coast Guard Miami? This is Marcene.”
Nothing.
“Shit.” He motioned for Ranav to cut the call.
“Think that was enough to get their attention, Cap?”
Wilraven sighed. “I hope so. Maybe all we need is a visit. I’d take an inspection right now.”
Ranav fell silent and leaned back in his chair against the side wall of the comm room. He rubbed his eyes. Wilraven handed him the phones and straightened, grabbing the doorframe with one hand, thinking he should have told the Coast Guard he had an oil spill. That would have rounded up attention quickly.
He looked out from the comm room door and had a fairly clear view of the Irabarren’s deck. No sign of Levesgue or his team.
His thoughts drifted back to the reason he had been looking for Ranav in the first place, sparked by Andres’ diversionary tactics after they had recovered the two from the pod.
“Can you do me a favor?”
“Yeah, Cap?”
“Are you cooking lunch?”
Ranav shook his head. “Olad’s got it. I’m doing supper.”
Oladosu Eze was Marcene’s ancient, unmatchable cook. He must have been eighty, a rail-thin Nigerian who had been with the Marcene since her first day in the water.
“Okay, I’ll talk to Olad next.” Wilraven glanced around and lowered his voice. “Start feeding the seagulls. I want them calling their buddies. I want them making noise and shitting all over the place.”
Ranav just stared at him for a moment, then shrugged knowingly and returned half a grin. “Long as I can do it secretly. The crew will kill me if they know I’m attracting the bastards.”
“Absolutely. Just get some noise and shit dropping.”
Ranav snorted a little laugh and set down the headphones. “Will do.”
Wilraven headed across the deck toward Marcene, intending to stop in on Dr. Kozcera to see how Damien was doing—using the visit to check on the newcomers.
He stopped halfway there when he caught sight of Dewayne Binman, the Crane One operator, talking to Andres Jeanpierre, both of them standing under One’s rigging but pointing up at Crane Two.
Chapter Twenty-four
Hit in the Keys
Laeina leaned away from the aircraft’s window, but only for a second, to wipe away the condensation her breath had left. They were racing across the country at close to thirty-five thousand feet, a little under Mach one, in the fastest, newest jet Knowledgenix owned. They had refueled at a small airfield outside Lincoln, Nebraska, and Laeina had remained in her seat, clutching the armrest with an even mix of fear and excitement.
Now they were headed to southern Florida. The stop in Nebraska had been out of the way, but Andreden was playing it carefully. He had told the pilots where they were going only after they were in the air. Not that he didn’t trust them, but who knew what these soldiers or some organization backing them had for tracking gear? Pilots had to plan, had to log speed, locations, had to talk to the outside world—especially at sonic speeds, which now required FAA review and disclosure. If it looked like he was heading toward the northeast, through Nebraska,he almost certainly wasn’t going to take a right and head to the Deep South.
That’s what he hoped.
So far Laeina hadn’t said more than a few words, just watched the plane taxi over the wide concrete space to them, studying the doors as they closed, listening to the engines thunder as they revved up, carried them down the runway, and lifted them into the sky. She had laughed—almost like a child—when the wheels left the earth. After that she sat in awed silence, looking out the window.
An hour into the flight, Laeina started speaking, but not turning away from the window. The view of the sky, breaks in the clouds, and the earth so far below seemed to have captured her completely. “Ekhidna is a monster, and sometimes she is a goddess. Goddesses often have monsters for children.” She managed to make that sound as if it was something everyone understood—of course goddesses have children who are monsters. “As a word, it has been used to refer to vipers, snakes, or someone who is treacherous: ekhidnaios. But it is a monster out of myth. And the Ekhidnadai are its children.”
That raised the hairs on the back of Andreden’s neck. He repeated the word in a whisper. “Ekhid . . . nadai.”
She turned away from the cloud tops and gave him a seriously scary stare. “Ekhidnadai is not myth—in the legendary, unreal sense. It is myth in the story sense. There are stories of it going back a thousand years. The children are not separate, not completely. And they are not children as a mother and father have a child. They are . . . What do you say? They are a reproduction, all alike, mimesis. Clones? They are spawned in some way, and work as one.”
“Like swarming, or schooling in fish?”
She nodded gravely. “That is a good comparison. It makes their purpose clearer. What if the foragers became the predators?”
He scowled back, uncertain about where she was now taking the discussion. “Predators?”
“Yes. Foraging schools of fish often follow large predatory fish—sharks—living off the predat
or’s leavings.”
He was nodding. “Right. Pilotfish, and so on.” He still had no idea where she was going.
“That is what the Ekhidnadai are, or used to be. The foragers became—evolved into—the predators, and they took their schooling behavior with them. Think of large groups of fishes; one shoal or school can contain millions and can sometimes be miles wide. When you think of Ekhidna, think of that, but with a shared mind and the aggressiveness of a predator.”
After a long space of silence, Andreden said, “So, this monster just decided to eat the boat that may have been sent out to investigate the coordinates you sent me?”
She looked angry and shook her head. “I don’t know. I only know what I saw and what I tasted in the water. Ekhidnadai.”
They touched down several hours later at Key West International, and Laeina left the plane reluctantly—studying the lines along the fuselage from the top of the landing stairs, walking under the wings to run her fingers along the smooth, white-painted carbon fiber and aluminum. She whispered a few words in her language, which Andreden, now with some experience, figured had some relation to Greek, but not modern, and he wasn’t—like Rebekah Kahley—anywhere near fluent in Attic, Aeolic, or any other of the ancient dialects.
Andreden had sent off Theo—the most sophisticated machine in the Knowledgenix arsenal—before leaving Monterey, telling the machine to meet him in the Florida Keys. “I’ll probably be staying in Islamorada, and I’ll have gear and a boat leased. That’s the plan.”
Theo had been silent for a few seconds, apparently chewing on his instructions,then came back with a question that made Andreden proud. “Any extended travel protocol advice, Jon? Strict legal or lenient?”
He had smiled, one side of his mouth lifting with the connection to the silly project name. “Let’s go lenient on this one. Just curious. What does that involve, Theo?”
The autonomous sub didn’t take long to think it over. “For starters, I’m not going all the way around the cape—not doing a reverse Ferdinand Magellan. I will hull-ride through the canal at Panama.” The autonomous underwater machine showed off some magnetic grips in the palms of its claw-like “hands,” something Martin had cooked up the year before to give Theo a way to attach to oil and natural gas platforms.
Andreden’s smile had broadened, making it all the way to the other side. “Good. I’ll see you on Wednesday then.” He had laughed, and as he waved to Theo, said, “I wouldn’t go around the cape either.”
Just up from the airport, Andreden rented an enviously lime-green compact Ford, and in half an hour they were on Route 1—the Overseas—with several hours of driving ahead of them. They stopped for a quick lunch in Marathon, and fifteen miles out of town, just passing a turn-around on the southbound side, a big white van rammed them from the back, driving them off the asphalt and into the bleached gray gravel.
Andreden turned into the slide, corrected, caught some traction, throwing rocks into oncoming traffic, and hopped a wide pothole to get back to the highway. Honking and brake lights flashing to his left. He was already breathing hard, glancing at the rearview, jamming the pedal to the floor. “Don’t think that was an accident.”
Laeina was slipping out of her seatbelt, spinning around in the seat to see out the back window. The van drove right up to their bumper, gave them another bump, the driver waving them to the side of the road.
“Fuck that.” Andreden glanced around the dash and console, looking for anything that might get the little car to go faster.
Laeina had been quiet the whole way from the airport. That hadn’t changed with danger. Giving the two occupants in the front of the van a fixed glare, she whispered, “How far to the sea?”
“What?” Andreden looked over at her, to see if she was talking to him. They were in the fucking Florida Keys. There was sea all around them.
She remained completely calm, still not turning to face him. “The water. When does the road go over the water?”
He nodded, got it. “Just ahead. Maybe half a mile if I’m remembering right. Been a while since I’ve been down here.”
He felt one of her hands rest on his shoulder, a quick squeeze, almost like a signal. “The one in the passenger seat is checking the magazine in a handgun. I believe he is going to shoot at us.”
The back window blew out, with Laeina thrown back and into Andreden’s seat, pushing him into the oncoming lane for a second. He cut the wheel right, got back in the lane, his foot stamping the gas pedal to the floor.
A rapid snap of shots, and Laeina was thrown into him again.
“Did you catch those?”
She didn’t answer. The van hit him hard, with a slight angle that shoved the little Ford into the gravel. He almost lost control, the car sliding more than rolling. He was looking through the passenger window to see where they were going. Fighting the skid, he pulled the wheel in line with the road, got the car back onto the asphalt.
“How the fuck are these guys following—”
He saw splatters of blood across the front windshield. Some of it in big dark clumps that gravity and centrifugal forces pulled back and forth in zigzags as he shifted all over the road, a web of red running across the glass toward him as the car bounced across both lanes. Headlights coming at him again, and he pulled right, overcorrecting to kick up more gravel along the shoulder. Then the soft shoulder ended, and green paint and sparks shot up across the passenger side. The Ford was running along the steel barrier leading up to the bridge—he knew they called it something different here, a viaduct? The car came inches from hitting the sharp concrete Jersey barriers that started where the steel rails ended.
He cut the wheel left. He was back on concrete, the accelerator rammed into the floor, winding the engine as fast as it would go. The big van loomed over them from the back. And Laeina was leaning heavily against him.
“Are we over water yet? Please tell me,” she whispered the words right in his ear, her voice rough, her breathing choppy.
A green highway sign with “Tom’s Harbor” on it flashed by, another sign beneath it telling them not to stop on the bridge.
“We’re over water.” He snapped out the words, cold and fearful.
And Laeina started singing, a sharp climb of notes. Her hand on Andreden’s shoulder gripped him painfully hard, her fingers digging in, sharp touches of different pressures as if she was playing keys on a piano. She moved with the song, shifting into him for a beat, then away, dancing or swaying with the tones. He caught a few words, but nothing certain. He heard the word for sea, then Kaleomenon pont-own, which was call or maybe summon the sea, ponton, pontos was Greek. In Latin, the sea was pontus or mare.
The white van came in for another hit. With no shoulder on the road, nothing but concrete and other cars to take the impact, Andreden braced himself and gripped the wheel hard, glancing at the rearview in time see the big dark squares of the grille and headlights lift into the air over the shattered hatchback window, with its broken little windshield wiper shuddering feebly in the wind like an accusing finger. The van’s wheels slid into view, above the open window, a shift in the road and wind noise, a sharp shadow cutting across the back of the Ford.
With a glance over his shoulder—over Laeina, who was draped against him—Andreden saw a massive coil of ocean spinning up out of the blue. It was like some living, flexing tentacle of the sea that had reached in and plucked the van right off the road. It looped over the old narrow bridge running parallel to the highway and pulled the van into the sky, twirling it like a toy. The back doors flew open, spewing gear, packs, and other objects into the sea.
“Hold on, Laeina. Getting you to a hospital.”
Cars were braking on the southbound side, drivers gaping at the spout of water and the white metal box of a vehicle, tumbling five hundred feet in the air. Andreden glanced over every few seconds, keeping the gas pedal down, trying to catch the van’s trajectory. Minutes. It hit the water just as they reached the far side of the bridge,
pancaked against the blue, a spray of window glass and water, suspension, linkage and heavy pieces of steel framework from the vehicle’s undercarriage flying off, wheels skipping across the shallows. The metal body twisted into unrecognizable shapes, none of them looking like they had ever driven.
Then it was gone.
Laeina stopped singing and rolled into the passenger seat, one arm wrapped around her middle, clutching her other arm. There was blood everywhere, splattered across her face, in her hair, a big dark spread of red up one side of her shirt.
She closed her eyes, a long, painful sigh escaping before she whispered, “Take me to the water. Please.”
Five minutes later he was off the highway, shooting across a parking lot and visitor area with beach access. He cut the engine, kicked the brakes, and slammed up against a curb. Then he was jumping out of the car to come around the other side. Andreden pulled the passenger door wide, grabbing Laeina before she could fall out. He dropped into a crouch, swung one arm under her legs, dug the other behind her lower back, and lifted her out of the seat. She fell into him, breathing in soft, choppy sobs against his neck. He was vaguely aware of a few others—looked like tourists—watching him from other cars, or standing next to the central building with the bathrooms. He moved mechanically across the paved patio area with benches and big plastic umbrellas, and didn’t stop at the sand.
The ocean sloshed around his ankles, pushed and pulled him as he walked right into the surf. He carried her, bloody and weak, over a shallow, sandy plain and then into deeper water, slowly loosening his grip on her body and letting the Atlantic hold her instead. She smiled up at him, eyes squinting against the bright sun. “I need to go . . . home. Thank you, Mr. Andreden. I will find you when I am healed.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Pry Bar
Dewayne looked over at Wilraven as he approached. “Glad you’re here, Cap. Want you to see something.”
