The Alpha Deception

by Jon Land

  “We’ve come to charter your boat,” Natalya told him.

  “For a guided tour of the surrounding islands,” Blaine added.

  Captain Bob looked surprised. “Well, that’s a new one. Usually I doesn’t come included in the deal. People is usually too smart to bother asking me. They figures with everything I know, I doesn’t need partners.”

  “We’re not here to make our fortunes, Captain,” Blaine told him with as much conviction as he could muster.

  Captain Bob studied him briefly. “No, I doesn’t suppose you are. You isn’t like the rest, not as demanding but a hell of a lot more desperate. What you’s after’s got little to do with yourselves, I’d wager.”

  “It’s got to do with us all right and with you too and with the whole goddamn world.”

  “There’s something out there we’ve got to bring back,” Natalya added. “Millions of lives are at stake.”

  “You’s a pretty good actress, little lady.”

  “The part’s real.”

  “I’ve got a map here,” Blaine said, fishing through his jacket pocket. “Just point us in the right direction. You’ll be paid well for the effort.”

  “Like I says, it ain’t the money. If it was, I could be a rich man without puttin’ up with the bullshit that walks through the door here. And I can’t just point you in the right direction ’cause the reef formations tear the bottom of your boat out ‘less you know by heart where they lie.”

  “Our first choice is to have you come with us,” Blaine reminded him.

  “And I can’t do that neither. Ain’t been back that way for a couple years now when the last of the island folk pulled up stakes. Won’t find any of ’em left in these parts. They just up and vanished. I’s the last one left, far as I know. Don’t know enough to move along. Guess a man oughtta die where he got himself born, ’cept I was born on the …”

  “The island?” Natalya finished for him.

  “Raised there, anyway,” Captain Bob told her. “Ain’t much to the island ‘sides the lighthouse. My daddy first and then me manned it, sweeping that big light to warn ships away from the reef and the shallows. Them waters been a graveyard for ships longer than any of us can possibly imagine. Goes all the way back to Spanish galleons with enough gold pieces still in their hull to buy Miami. Plenty of people tried salvagin’ them and died for the effort even before …” Captain Bob’s voice tailed off, then picked up again. “Worst times started with the quake. That’s what stirred the Dragon Fish awake most in these parts figure.”

  “Quake?”

  “Sea quake, friend. Awful bad one too, shifted the undersea formations all over the goddamn place. Things that’d been unreachable for centuries suddenly rose. Vast treasures the eyes of man was never meant to see again. Floods of people started streaming into the waters, challenging the reefs, once again. Most never made it. Them that did, well, the Dragon Fish took care of them while they was tied up at night, sometimes during the day, too. Thing come up from the depths with the hunger of centuries. Fishermen was the first to disappear, my two sons among them. I used to sit in my boat at night with a harpoon hoping the Dragon Fish would surface. Never thought I could kill it but I had to try. But it never appeared. So I gave up and moved off the island.” Captain Bob paused. “Become sort of a pact throughout the Biminis that the island just don’t exist, plain and simple, but once in awhile people like you come round knowin’ that it does.”

  Blaine assimilated Captain Bob’s story. “This sea quake, would it have occurred about five years ago?”

  “Yup, that would be about right, though the years ain’t meant much to me for too long now.”

  McCracken turned to Natalya. “Professor Clive said seismic changes in the Earth’s crust forced the Atragon crystals up from where nature had stored them for centuries. That sea quake fits perfectly into the scenario. They’re out there, all right.”

  “If there are any left,” Natalya said. “Vasquez could have been a very busy man.”

  “Sure, but the well hasn’t run dry yet, because as of five months ago the fat man was looking for fresh buyers. That’s how Fass came upon his.” Blaine paused. “Question is, how did the fat man mine all that stuff underwater without anyone being aware of it, including the captain here? That Dragon Fish might have needed all of two swallows to get Vasquez down. Maybe that’s what saved him.”

  Natalya’s face was somber. “You know all this fits perfectly with the legends of the Lost Continent, don’t you? The waters of Paradise Point right here in the Biminis are lined with precise rock formations that many feel are the remains of its road systems.”

  “The only thing lost right now is my patience.” Blaine swung back to Captain Bob. “You’re right, Captain, we can’t make it to this island alone. But you could take us there.”

  He shook his head. “Lots of people asked me to over the years. Offered me more money than you ever seen to do it too. What makes you any different?”

  “Because if you take me there, I’ll kill the Dragon Fish for you.”

  “You’re the first man I ever seen might be able to do it,” Captain Bob said then. “I suppose I been waitin’ for ya. Never did want to die scared of a place I lived most my life. Always figured I’d be going back one last time… .”

  Four hours later they set off from the Alice Town harbor where Captain Bob’s cruiser was docked. It was a thirty-three footer that had once belonged to a rich couple from the Florida Keys. They’d beached it one summer evening, and Captain Bob got it off the insurance company for a song and rebuilt it himself. That had been ten years back and the cruiser didn’t get out to sea much anymore. He lived aboard it, though, and empty or half-empty bourbon bottles were the only decorations he’d added.

  The captain had plenty of scuba equipment and tanks but they needed refilling, which Blaine accomplished in town while the old man and Natalya got the cruiser sea-ready. Captain Bob repeatedly refused to accept money for the charter, nor did he ask for any further elaboration on what it was they were looking for. He seemed quite content to simply head his cruiser out from the harbor and settle it gracefully into the sea. Blaine and Natalya could sense in Captain Bob a resigned acceptance of fate. He seemed to have regained a measure of health.

  Captain Bob had already confirmed that the island with no name was approximately 175 miles east of Alice Town. With the cruiser’s top speed at thirty miles per hour, a six-hour voyage was in store at the very least, which, Captain Bob was careful to point out, would leave them precious little daylight. Night was the Dragon Fish’s time and nobody in their right mind would tempt the waters then. But he said it knowing they would anyway and he was glad of that. If he could just see the vile creature that had stolen his sons away destroyed, he would be ready to leave this world.

  The island came into view through binoculars about five hours into their voyage. Soon, Captain Bob positioned Blaine and Natalya at opposite sides of the cruiser’s forwardmost point to watch for reefs his bourbon-soaked mind had forgotten about. The formations were treacherous, but the captain squeezed by them, with the hull occasionally scratching against one. In some places the reefs seemed to have gathered like sharks. Blaine had done plenty of diving through the years, including a stretch at the Great Barrier Reef, but he had never seen anything like this. The reefs seemed strategically placed to deter precisely the kind of journey they were making. There was a man-made quality about them.

  Gradually the island with no name sharpened in view. It was surprisingly small, no more than a half mile across. It was decorated with lavish green flora and dominated by the center steeple of the lighthouse Captain Bob had manned for years, which poked up above the trees at the edge of the shoreline. The beach was smooth yellow sand. As they drew still closer, Blaine could make out the remains of shacks abandoned years before. The whole scene had the feeling of a graveyard, albeit a lush one.

  “We’ll anchor here,” Captain Bob announced three hundred yards from shore. “Beneath us
lie the corpses of a thousand ships. Riches and treasures beyond imagining.” He bit his up. “And this is where the Dragon Fish took my sons.”

  “What about the center of the quake?” Blaine asked him softly.

  “Right abouts where we are now. I remembers ’cause of the whirlpool. Never forget that sight. A tunnel whipping through the sea, sucking down anything which was anywhere near it.”

  “And the depth?”

  “Hundred feet at the deepest point.”

  “I’m going down,” Blaine told Natalya and started to climb into his wet suit.

  Natalya reached for hers. “I can’t let you have all the fun.”

  Blaine smiled at her, not bothering to argue. Together, he and Natalya donned their scuba equipment, starting with the life vests a simple tug on a string would inflate. There was also a tubular sprocket fitted for an extension out of the tanks to draw air with a simple press of a plunger. Next came the weight belt and finally the bulky tank which on land was nearly impossible to tote. Captain Bob helped Blaine pull his over his shoulders and then moved on to Natalya while McCracken worked the straps tight beneath his groin, making sure the tank was centered properly. He and Natalya then rubbed water on the insides of their masks to prevent them from fogging up, adjusted the straps to the proper tightness, and checked both their main and auxiliary regulators.

  “You’s got one hour of air each,” Captain Bob reminded them. “If I gets no sign of you after that, nothin’ saying I won’t pull up anchor and leave.”

  “Fair enough,” said Blaine, pulling on his flippers.

  “Hope you finds what you’s looking for, friend.”

  “If it’s here, we’ll find it.”

  With that, Blaine and Natalya grabbed hold of their spearguns and tossed themselves over backwards into the black depth below.

  Chapter 28

  THE SIGHTS BENEATH THEM were breathtaking. Through the crystal-clear water they could see a paradise of sea creatures and plants springing from the nearby reefs. The fish seemed almost friendly, coming forward as if to be petted.

  McCracken had always loved diving. The feeling of being underwater soothed him. It was a world where time seemed to stand still or at least pass more slowly.

  The depths darkened as Blaine and Natalya kicked with their flippers and angled their bodies to swim lower. They were using the standard set of hand signals, never expecting to be far enough away from each other to actually require them and hoping not to need their spearguns and the underwater knives sheathed on their calves.

  Down further now… .

  Captain Bob had told them that the depth of these waters was between ninety and a hundred feet. The angle of the sun was strong enough now to provide them plenty of light. But each had a powerful underwater flashlight attached to their weight belt.

  Blaine wasn’t really sure what he expected to find or what he was going to do with it if he found it. Clearly, even if he could locate the Atragon crystals, salvaging sufficient stores of them would require a professional team like the one Vasquez must have employed. At this point, with time increasingly of the essence, he questioned whether such an operation could be mounted, especially with him being temporarily cut off from forces in the government. Still, an attempt had to be made.

  Natalya grasped his shoulder and pointed hurriedly down and to their right. There, almost directly beneath them on the ocean floor, lay the remains of a ship from centuries back. The wood frame had long since fossilized, providing an eerie, ghostlike appearance. McCracken could tell from his maritime background that it was a Spanish galleon dating back to the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. A good chunk of the bow was missing, but otherwise the hull and masts looked reasonably whole.

  It grew progressively darker as they swam lower for the wreck, necessitating the use of their flashlights. The beams made a neat dent in the blackness, enough for them to notice the corpses of more dead ships. The island’s reputation was well deserved. Calling its waters a graveyard was an understatement.

  What made things even more eerie was the various levels of fossilization the wrecks had undergone. McCracken felt he could date each by the amount of the original frame that was visible. But many of the oldest ships had lain entombed beneath what had been the sea floor until the quake had changed the entire undersea structure. While they were entombed, fossilization had been arrested so some of the oldest relics in view had maintained the most original detail.

  The graveyard stretched as far as Blaine could see. The sum of riches buried here would be enormous. No wonder Vasquez had staked a claim to these waters… .

  They hovered over a partially fossilized frigate, rough on the outer edges with what looked like extensions of the reef above. Blaine guessed it was two centuries old, an escort to protect merchant ships from pirates as they sailed across the Atlantic. Blaine hesitated behind Natalya, as if the frigate were sleeping instead of dead and might stir if touched by human hands. There were plenty of cracks in her hull, but Blaine’s flashlight locked on one that he signalled Natalya to steer toward. Something set it apart from the others, something that didn’t seem right… .

  Blaine reached the ship and felt first along its fossilized hull, kicking his flippers to hold his position in the water. Even through his glove he could feel its brittleness. He could easily have torn huge chunks away with a minimum of exertion. At last he came to the hole and felt along its perimeter. Totally smooth and unfossilized, the hole itself was, incredibly, a perfect circle. He looked to others for comparison. All were jagged and irregular, victims of the long years. This particular hole was obviously the victim of something else: man. The hole was large enough to allow passage for a diver and could have been carved by an underwater torch. That would explain the perfection of its shape, all of which led Blaine to an inescapable conclusion.

  Someone had entered the frigate through this hole, in pursuit no doubt of the treasure it might well have contained. Probably it had been Vasquez.

  Blaine stroked the inside perimeter of the hole and drew the flashlight up close to check the shading. It was significantly lighter than the remainder of the hull’s fossilized exterior, so Vasquez had been here fairly recently. Blaine did his best to convey his discovery to Natalya and she nodded her understanding, pointing to the next nearest ship to suggest they check that one out as well. This time she took the lead, and Blaine followed.

  She swam for a ship thirty yards away buried up to the halfway point of its hull in the sandy bottom. McCracken saw it was a British clipper ship, much smaller than the frigate and younger by a century at least. The clipper fleet dated back to the time of the American Revolution and several ships like this had, in fact, been used by the British to transport arms, men, and the gold coins on which the colonies were based. Conceivably a great fortune had recently been claimed from her by Vasquez.

  Blaine and Natalya probed closely about her fossilized sides with their flashlights. It was Natalya who found the hole, almost identical in size and design to the one they’d found on the galleon. Again, using the rest of the ship’s corpse for comparison, he was able to date Vasquez’s intrusion to the last several years. So the fat man had been busy in these waters well after the appearance of the Dragon Fish.

  Blaine checked his watch. Fifteen minutes had passed, leaving forty-five minutes of air. No problem there. He felt Natalya grasp him suddenly with her free arm and point frantically ahead with her flashlight. McCracken looked in the beam’s direction and he saw in the darkness ahead of them a shape far bigger than any of the ships they had already passed. From a distance it looked like a circular pile of rocks and debris gathered high upon the ocean floor, but as they drew closer the shape gained definition and clarity.

  It was some sort of sphere, also fossilized but with strange smoothness, a smaller version of what the top of an indoor sports stadium would look like if severed from its base. It could have been many things, all of them logical, but Blaine felt a gnawing inside his stomach whi
ch told him that they were seeing this thing for what it had always been.

  Huge solar receptors placed in domed buildings …

  Blaine recalled Professor Clive’s words, then blocked them out for the distraction they might cause. He and Natalya slowed up as they drew closer to the dome, as if to respect whatever it was they had happened upon. They saw now that the dome was actually sloped low for the ocean floor at its most distant point and rose at the point closest to them. Drawing still closer, they saw the cause of this to be some sort of support system at the dome’s front, a series of what looked to be pillars; two were whole, though fossilized, and a third, half the size of its neighbors, tilted precariously.

  McCracken tried to form a logical explanation for the dome’s presence. Professor Clive had spoken of domed buildings scattered all over Atlantis which when opened drew the great power of the sun into crystals to create the raw energy. The fabled continent used this energy to reach incredible levels of technological proficiency.

  The only way to prove whether this dome was part of the myth was to enter its structure and see what it held. Half of Blaine hoped to find great reserves of the scarlet crystal Atragon. The other half hoped that closer inspection would reveal the entire sight to be a trick of the dark, deep waters.

  The problem soon became academic. Maybe if Blaine’s attention hadn’t been directed so intensely forward, he would have sensed sooner the pursuit coming from behind. He did catch the disturbance of a sudden cold sweep of water rolling upon him, and he turned around just as a dark shape fired its spear.

  Blaine shoved Natalya to warn her. At the same time he kicked his legs upward and flipped his body into a somersault. The spear passed just beneath him.

  By his count, five divers were coming forward, four passing the first as he pumped his flippers in a holding position to reload. McCracken pointed down at the huge corpse of a Spanish warship which was immediately to their left, and he and Natalya kicked for it desperately as the divers gave chase.