Deep Water

by Whitcroft, Isla;

  ‘Hi, Miles,’ said Cate, trying to keep her voice as casual as possible. ‘Been for a walk?’

  ‘What?’ he said irritably. ‘Yeah, yeah. See you later.’

  Maybe he’s been looking for that gun that was left at the drop-off point, thought Cate, suppressing an urge to giggle hysterically at the thought of Miles wandering around the clearing searching for a misplaced gun. When all this is over I’ll retrieve it and get it to Marcus. He’ll know how to deal with it safely.

  Cate was checking her phone yet again, when she heard a commotion coming from the beach. It was Jacob, sounding panicky.

  Michel, Noah and Jacob were near the turtle nursery. At their feet were three black shapes, lying horribly still on the wet sand.

  ‘This is really bad.’ Jacob stood up and pointed at the dolphins. Blood seeped slowly, endlessly, from them. ‘Shark bites.’ Jacob turned the ravaged creatures over with his foot. ‘These poor creatures have been half eaten alive by sharks. It’s the worst attack yet. I’m sorry, guys, but that’s it. Until further notice we’re all staying out of the water.’

  The boat had floated in on the tide, its lights dimmed, almost invisible in the rapidly gathering gloom. Up on the deck, Cate watched Henri looking through heavy-duty binoculars, sighing and tutting impatiently. He turned to Marcus, who was standing behind him, a wire trailing from his left ear giving him, Cate thought, a slightly untidy air.

  ‘Anything back from the divers?’ Henri asked him.

  ‘Not really.’ Marcus sounded frustrated. ‘They’ve been around the island several times and security is very tight. There seems to be no way in apart from the one main entrance, and there’s absolutely no way of getting through there except with a ton of explosives. And that might just alert the Cotians to the fact we’re coming. That’s if they’re there at all, of course.’

  ‘They’re on that island all right.’ Henri spoke confidently. ‘And not just because Cate and Arthur say so. I’ve just been sent some aerials taken at first light this morning. They’re a bit hazy, but there’s definitely been some sort of activity there recently. Some vegetation has been cleared around the entrances to the underground bunkers.’ He snorted angrily. ‘It looks as if they’ve been there for a while and we didn’t even notice.’

  He turned to Cate. ‘You wanted to see some action. I’m afraid that this time you might well be disappointed. If that boy Rafe is in there, and I’m pretty sure he is, then if we try to go in all guns blazing we’re risking a hostage situation. We’ve been in touch with his father and he’s flying out here as we speak. Apparently he’s the personal doctor to the German chancellor. She’s already been onto the Australian PM and rattled her cage.’ He rubbed his forehead. ‘I hate it when politicians get involved.’

  Marcus held up his hand and pressed the other to his ear. ‘Shh,’ he said. ‘I’m getting something on the wire.’

  Henri glared at him.

  Cate tried hard not to giggle. Henri hated being told off.

  ‘One of the divers has found a tunnel entrance in the seabed twenty metres out from the wall,’ said Marcus. ‘It looks like some sort of wastewater chute. The boys have put an underwater camera up there and, as far as they can see, it’s clear. Goes straight through.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Henri cheerfully. ‘That’s more like it. Tell them to let us know as soon as they are on the island.’

  ‘There’s a problem,’ said Marcus slowly. ‘It’s narrow. Our divers are big men. None of them can even get their shoulders into it let alone swim up it.’

  Henri and Marcus looked at each other and then at Cate.

  ‘No,’ said Marcus sharply. ‘No, Henri. Not this time. I promised her father.’

  ‘Cate,’ said Henri, smiling at her. Like a crocodile, she thought. ‘Have you done much diving recently?’

  Henri and Marcus argued almost non-stop for twenty minutes. At one point Marcus actually threatened to resign. It wasn’t until Cate stepped in that things calmed down.

  ‘Look, Marcus, if I didn’t want to do this, I would say. All I have to do is get on the island, do a recce, check out where Rafe is and then report back to you so you can get all the glory. Don’t worry.’ She gave Marcus what she hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘You’ll be able to guide me every step of the way.’ She pointed at the pile of equipment lying on the table in front of her.

  Finally a technical advisor was summoned. ‘Kit her out,’ Henri said to the short rather plump man who suddenly appeared in front of her holding a large plastic box. ‘Make sure she has everything the other boys have.’

  The man nodded. He had a brilliant way of explaining how his gadgets worked and best of all, from Cate’s point of view, he completely ignored the fact that she was young and female.

  ‘This is the portable sonar/radar device.’ He picked up a small black box the size of a cigarette packet. ‘You strap this onto your belt and it sends out a sonar pulse when you are underwater and a radar signal when you’re not. It gives you the position of just about everything within a two hundred metre radius. Put these on.’ He handed Cate a small pair of black-tinted goggles. She put them obediently over her head and stared into blackness. ‘Now switch on your pack.’

  ‘Wow!’ said Cate as she pushed down on the tiny button. Her goggles were suddenly lit by red lines which danced across her vision like tiny fireflies. After a few seconds, they settled down and Cate realised that she was seeing an outline of Marcus, Henri, the sides of the boat and even out to sea.

  ‘It’s called Personal Positional Vision,’ he said proudly. ‘Be careful. It costs a lot of money. Now press the switch again and you get normal vision – even in the dark and underwater. Now, most importantly of all – make sure you activate this green switch as soon as you are in the water. It’s a sonar cloak. That’s what those divers down there are using right now. If they weren’t, the Cotians would have spotted them by now. And here’s a hypermagnet. It can scramble most computer security systems. And one more thing.’ The techie reached into his rucksack and brought out what looked like a circle of miniature fireworks and began to strap them to her arm. ‘Waterproof flares that work with the night vision mode. Point it upwards, pull a tab and the whole area will be lit up like bonfire night – but only if you’re using night vision mode. As you – and we – will be.’ He smiled at Cate’s amazed expression. ‘Now that’s me done. Good luck, young lady.’

  ‘Is he always like that?’ Cate asked Marcus, who was strapping a small bottle of oxygen to her back and fiddling with the valve at the top, checking the pressure.

  ‘He’s the best,’ said Henri, ‘and of course, Cate, you’ll be carrying a communicator. You’ll be able to talk to us and us back to you. But not too often. We don’t want to risk the Cotians picking up the transmission. Now, are you ready?’

  Suddenly Cate felt sick. She looked over the edge of boat down to the tiny dinghy that was waiting for her, the black water sucking and sliding like some sinister alien slime. The last thing she wanted was to go down into its depths; she’d just wanted to see these crooks being brought to justice.

  ‘You can still change your mind, you know,’ said Marcus gently.

  She took a deep breath and forced herself to think of Rafe, a young man, not much older than her, who had been held captive for weeks, not knowing if he would see his family ever again. How scared he must be, how desperate. However she was feeling, he must be ten times – one hundred times – more scared. If he was alive, that is, but Cate knew she had to believe he was. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I’m ready.’

  ‘The divers will be waiting for you at the chute entrance,’ said Marcus, as the small dinghy bounced silently across the dark waters. ‘They’ll wait there until you come out. If you get into any trouble we’ll see via the videocam in your headtorch and we’ll think of a way to get to you. Whatever you do, don’t panic.’

  She nodded.

  ‘When you’re on the island just concentrate on locating Rafe. Once you find him,
get the hell back out again.’ He turned to face her, his eyes wide and serious. ‘That’s all you’re there for. No heroics, Cate, you understand?’

  She nodded again.

  Right at that moment, with the chill coming off the ocean biting through her wetsuit, the last thing she felt was heroic.

  The boat was rocking and rolling as the pilot fought to keep it in position using just oars, and through the darkness Cate could see the island looming up above them. It was smaller than she had imagined; wilder, emptier.

  ‘The buildings are mainly underground,’ said Marcus. ‘Easy to defend. I guess that’s pretty much why the Cotians chose it.’

  Marcus looked over his shoulder at the silent sonar screen. ‘We’re over the chute entrance now,’ he said in a whisper. ‘Good luck.’ Cate put out her hand and in the darkness he grabbed it and squeezed it tightly. ‘You can do it,’ he said.

  She clicked on the sonar cloak, pushed backwards off the spongy side of the dinghy and felt the water embrace her. Then she was diving down, down into the inky black waters.

  The water was surprisingly warm and, as she switched on her headtorch, she could see that it was also relatively shallow. Roughly twenty metres below her the seabed shimmered in the thin light, lumps of brightly coloured rocks and coral surrounded by waving fronds of a myriad of sea plants. Hundreds of tiny fish swooped and swarmed around them, dodging and weaving in a mass of colour and movement. Cate was so entranced that for a few seconds she almost forgot why she was there but then, up ahead of her, she saw a diver beckoning. As she got closer, he pointed to the chute. It was much smaller than she had expected. Half a metre square, she reckoned, enough for her to go forward or backwards. There was no way she would be able to turn around.

  ‘You can do it, Cate.’ She heard Marcus’s voice in her ear, crackling so much that it hardly sounded like him at all. At least it meant he was watching.

  She swallowed hard, signalled OK to the other divers, said a silent prayer, and pushed herself into the chute. It was quiet, deathly quiet – the only sound coming from the valve as she sucked oxygen into her lungs and from her flippers as they occasionally banged onto the metal sides of the chute.

  As she swam, slimy gobbets of grime and mould that hung down from the rusting walls brushed against her face, making her gag.

  Cate had been swimming for a couple of minutes when she felt the walls beginning to close in on her. She fought to control herself, concentrating on her breathing, on moving her flippers up and down, up and down, but the bitter taste of panic was rising in her and she tried to turn around.

  Her flippers banged hard against the metal, and one edge stuck in a crack. For what seemed like an eternity she thought she was trapped for good, doomed to run out of oxygen and die in that fetid, filthy drain. Then, bizarrely, an image of Nancy flashed into her head from last summer. She was sitting on the top deck of her yacht, telling Cate, ‘My mum always says too much imagination can be a curse.’

  Despite herself Cate smiled. It’s only my imagination doing this to me. She forced her body to relax and her breathing to return to normal. She tugged her foot more calmly and suddenly she was free and swimming rhythmically again through the water. She looked at her watch. It felt like hours but she had only been swimming for around five minutes. She must be nearly there by now.

  A minute later she was gulping in open air, the light from her torch bouncing off the walls of a small concrete chamber. She had made it. She was on Razor Island.

  Cate climbed silently out of the chute and looked around her. The room was dark and airless, two metres high, wide and long. By the look of the grubby tidemarks, the walls had once been used to hold some kind of liquid. On one side of the wall a metal ladder led up to a wooden trapdoor in the ceiling.

  She could hear Marcus in her ear again, anxious, questioning. ‘Where are you, Cate? Talk to me.’

  ‘Through the tunnel safely,’ she whispered. ‘In some kind of tank. I’ll let you know as soon as I find an entrance to the island.’

  Cate removed her flippers and mask and slid her oxygen tank quietly to the ground. After a few seconds’ deliberation, removed her earpiece as well. She worked better on her own, no matter what Marcus and Henri might say. Keeping her eyes firmly fixed on the wall in front of her, she began to climb the ladder. She reached the trapdoor and gave it a cautious push then, as it stayed put, another stronger push.

  It moved outwards, just a tiny bit, but enough to spur her on. She switched off her torch, climbed another step up and put her shoulder to it. This time it shot upwards and Cate felt a rush of fresh air hitting her face. She peered through the gap, her heart beating fast. There was nothing but darkness and silence. She pushed the door again, just enough for her to slither out from under it, and she found herself lying on her front on a rough patch of earth.

  She lay there, enjoying the luxury of the fresh breeze playing over her face, waiting for her heart rate to return to normal. Then she lifted her head a few centimetres off the ground and looked out over the island. It was almost pitch black. The moon was too young to provide anything other than a watery light. Cate reached into her belt for the night vision goggles, feeling a thrill of amazement as the darkness cleared and night became day.

  Razor Island was a desolate place: flat, devoid of vegetation and trees. The only variation in the scenery came from a few small mounds into which small, steel doorways had been sunk. Some of these had been filled in with what looked like rubble, others had been freshly painted. Cate looked about for cover. There was none. Only darkness was on her side.

  She picked out a route to a green door twenty metres away and made a run for it, zigzagging across the dry earth, terrified that she would hear a shout or, worse still, a bullet whizzing towards her. She reached the door and paused, listening. It was still eerily quiet. Had she and Arthur sent the IMIA, not to mention a few members of the Aussie navy, on a wild goose chase? Her cheeks burnt at the thought. She forced herself to concentrate. No lock was visible, the door was secured fast from the inside. She reached into her pouch and brought out the hyper magnet. Slowly and methodically, she moved it over the door from top to bottom and halfway down she heard the click that told her she had found the lock. She pressed the small button in the centre of the magnet and felt the power surge. Suddenly the door was free, opening to her gentle push.

  Cate stood in the cold darkness of a concrete tunnel that led down into the bowels of the earth. The door shut firmly behind her. There wasn’t much to see – just grey walls either side of her, a low ceiling above her and endless concrete steps in front of her.

  She cautiously began to move down, her hands outstretched to either side feeling along the walls as she went. She counted twenty, then thirty steps, then turned a corner and ahead of her saw a light so faint that at first she thought she was mistaken.

  She pressed back against the wall and listened. She could hear a low murmuring of voices, regular and monotonous. Someone was watching TV. The light brightened and she saw it was coming from a slit under a doorway.

  She reached for the door and turned the night vision off. She could hear another noise now – snoring. Cate pushed slowly at the metal door. It opened soundlessly to her touch and there in front of her, sitting on a low beige chair, she saw the source of the snores. She knew him well. He had a bald head and a scar running from his scalp to his left ear. And next to him, his hands tied tightly to the wooden arms of a chair, his grey eyes wide open and staring at her with a mixture of fear and relief, was a boy. He was not much older than her, thin, with a shock of white-blond hair. His legs were bare beneath his shorts and Cate could see a large jagged wound on the front of his right calf that was oozing pus. She stared back at him, her heart pounding. She had found Rafe.

  CHAPTER 18

  Cate put a finger to her lips. Rafe nodded in return, then rolled his eyes sharply above her head. She followed his gaze and her heart sank. In the shadows, a CCTV camera was casting its eye over the roo
m, clicking and whirring as it changed position every few seconds. Cate watched the sleeping guard carefully, alert to any sign of awakening and she could see that Rafe was doing the same.

  She reached up beneath the camera and, standing on the tip of her toes, pushed it just enough to change its trajectory. Despite herself, she grinned. For the time being at least, whoever was watching was going to get a pretty continuous view of the bald head of a snoring bodyguard. She ducked under the camera and knelt beside the boy.

  ‘Who are you?’ The boy was speaking German, his voice low and hoarse as if he hadn’t spoken for some time.

  ‘I’m Cate.’ She knew she was whispering but in her heightened state it sounded to her as if her voice was booming. ‘I’ve come to find you, Rafe. Help is on its way. I’m going to leave you now, but you won’t need to wait long.’

  He looked at her pleadingly. ‘Don’t leave me. I’m so frightened. They have been talking about whether or not to kill me every day. Do you know how that feels? It’s like torture. I’ve been trying to convince them that I’m worth more to them alive than dead . . . Please, Cate, take me with you now!’

  ‘I can’t,’ Cate said, trying to sound reassuring. ‘I’m sorry, really sorry. It’s just too risky. If he wakes up and finds you gone we’ll both be in danger. Just hang on – an hour or so, that’s all. Half the Aussie navy is just off the island, waiting to come and rescue you. I just have to get back to them and give them your location.’

  They gazed at each other for what seemed like minutes.

  Cate sighed inwardly. She knew what Marcus had said, knew that it made sense to follow his orders, but it felt like the height of cruelty to turn her back on Rafe, to leave him frightened and isolated in this cell.

  He seemed to sense her indecision. ‘Cate, please. It could be that they have decided to kill me now. It could happen any time. Before your friends get back to me even. Then how would you feel?’

  Cate shook her head, both at his audacity and her weakness. She did a quick calculation in her head. She could free Rafe and with any luck they would be up the stairs and down to the chute before anyone realised something was amiss. But what if the Cotians saw them and came after them before they could escape? Then they would both end up prisoners. She shuddered – it didn’t bear thinking about.