Undercurrents

by Pamela Beason

  “I sure hope so.” She pushed open her own door. That pile of equipment on the upper bunk represented a lot of money.

  The door to 6, the cabin next to Dan’s, opened. One of the tourists they’d seen earlier, a young man with ragged hair and mustache, emerged. “Speaking of friends,” he said.

  Chagrin washed over Dan’s face. “Sorry to be loud.”

  “It’s not you,” the stranger assured him, smoothing his mustache with a finger. “The walls are made of recycled newsprint.” He thrust out a hand. “Brandon Venning. Welcome to steerage.” He pulled another young man out to meet them.

  Mustachioed Brandon Venning and red-haired Ken Pruitt shared Cabin 6. Grad students from Columbus, Ohio. It seemed odd to Sam that graduate students were vacationing in February, but it was none of her business, and she didn’t have the energy to care at the moment. Barely managing to stifle a yawn, she told them, “If I don’t remember your names tomorrow, just slap me around.”

  “No problem,” Brandon said. “You two want a beer? We’ve got a case.” He inclined his head toward Cabin 6.

  “Thanks, but I can barely stand up now. See you in the morning.” She stepped into her cabin and closed the door behind her, leaving the three men in the hallway.

  Cabin 3 was tidy in a military sort of way, although as she emptied her bags, she realized that not everything would easily fit into the drawers and the tiny closet. Good thing she had no roommate. She dumped the extras onto the lower bunk, changed to an oversize T-shirt, and brushed her teeth in the tiny bathroom—or was it called a head, even on a yacht?

  Papagayo’s engine, muffled by the rush of ocean alongside, throbbed like a heartbeat. She attached the satellite phone to its charger and plugged it into the lone electrical connection in the bathroom, then plugged the laptop into the only outlet in the bedroom. Clearly this floating hotel was not designed for the electronic age.

  She wasn’t used to sleeping in a basement closet of a room. She needed to at least see outdoors, even if there was only a sliver of moon to enjoy tonight. She climbed onto the upper bunk, where a small porthole framed the evening sky between slaps of gray water.

  Turning her head, she stared at the door for a full minute. Dan didn’t seem to mind the lack of a lock. He seemed to take all their setbacks in stride, which was unnerving in itself. Was getting bad air and being tossed out of your hotel the usual routine here? Was she naïve to expect a pleasant trip in a Third World country? Alone in the dark, she felt paranoia creeping back in.

  We are all friend here. Was it true? The crew seemed friendly enough, including Tony. She really shouldn’t condemn the man just because he looked a little like the hostile boat pilot. But had someone in town told Sanders that she and Dan were marine scientists? She hadn’t gotten a look at the driver of the taxi boat. She climbed down from her bunk and jammed the lone chair beneath the knob of the unlocked cabin door.

  The yacht bucked over a wave, and she thought about the beachmaster sinking that panga in Academy Bay. Both of Papagayo’s skiffs were winched out of the water and securely tied up, along with her kayak—she checked before descending the stairs. She’d never slept on a boat before. A boat as big as Papagayo would be difficult to sink, wouldn’t it? She took the life vest from the tiny closet and slung it across the foot of her bunk, where she could reach it easily.

  As she pulled herself back onto the upper bunk, a fin slid past just below the porthole. She pressed her face close to the Plexiglas. A shark alongside the ship? A bad omen. The fin surfaced again, keeping pace with Papagayo. Sam held her breath. The creature rolled, its gray skin gleaming in the dim light. Its head turned in her direction. She expected jagged teeth and a flat cold gaze, but instead the creature exposed a rounded snout and regarded her with a huge intelligent eye.

  A dolphin! The best of all possible omens. Sam chuckled softly to herself. As if in response, she heard hoots of male laughter from the other side of the hall. Brandon and his roommate Ken seemed nice. Eduardo certainly was. Even Jon Sanders had acted friendly.

  Maybe the bad air was accidental. And the hotel, just sloppy record-keeping. Dan seemed to know what he was doing. And Eduardo was looking out for them now. She was being paid to report on nature in the Galápagos, every environmentalist’s dream. She was cruising the islands on a luxury yacht, for heaven’s sake. This was going to be the tropical adventure she’d envisioned when she took the job, no matter what Chase might think. Her dreams alternated between attending a strangely pleasant skinhead party and staring down a big hammerhead to get a really exciting!! photo.

  * * * * *

  Chase Perez put his toothbrush back into its holder and ran a hand over his shaved scalp. Did he look too Indian? Too Mexican? Nah, he could pass; he’d already passed for a couple of weeks. Charlie Perini. Italian-American father and mother, emphasis on the American. All-American skinhead.

  “Yo, Charlie,” he said to his image. He flicked his earring with his fingernail, set it swinging on his lobe. Weird feeling; lopsided. Maybe it felt different if you had both ears pierced, like Summer did.

  What an ass he’d been. It was way too soon to ask her to move in with him. He was just so damn frustrated. They hadn’t spent more than two solid days together, even counting the crazy backwoods race through Utah when they’d first met. What she was thinking now? Maybe she’d never considered a long-term relationship with him? At Christmas he’d seen a package on her bookshelf, addressed to her from Adam Steele. Why did she still keep in touch with the slimeball who used her to further his own career? He knew the diamond earrings she wore on special occasions had been a gift from the newscaster. But diamonds did not seem Summer’s type, and neither did Adam.

  Now she’d flown off to the Galápagos to swim with iguanas and count fish with another man. A marine biologist, who would be exactly her type. Damn. Chase could envision her reclining on a beach in a bikini, her gleaming silver-blond hair shimmering in the sun over nearly naked breasts.

  “In your dreams, bro,” he snorted. The Summer Westin he knew was unlikely to wear a bikini, especially one that left her breasts nearly naked. Summer’s dresser drawers more likely held two identical blue Speedos designed for swimming laps. Maybe he’d surprise her with one of those one-piece-but-deadly-sexy numbers, black Lycra slit down to her navel, barely held together with laces.

  “In February, Charlie?” he chided himself. He’d have to settle for seeing her in stretchy skiwear.

  No matter what, they’d pledged each other. Now he had to make sure their rendezvous happened; Nicole had already promised she would help. He’d pulled off a few meetings in disguise before, but this was his first extended undercover job, and it was taking forever. They were close to making the right contacts; he could feel it. They’d heard about Dread several times now. It was best to make the target come to you. With luck, that would happen tomorrow. He and Nicole had already spent a couple of weeks laying the groundwork.

  He was always canceling out on Summer; it was hard to kick their affair into high gear when they met only every couple of months. But on the ski vacation, they’d finally share a string of days. And nights. He pictured her in lacy black lingerie.

  How had he developed this desire for a woman he rarely saw? He never lacked for willing women. Carlotta, a friend of his cousin’s, made it clear she was waiting for his call. And Maureen, the evidence clerk at the office, touched her fingertips to his hand this morning and gave him a smoldering look. Maureen would wear black lingerie, he was sure. Or maybe even red.

  Did Summer own lacy lingerie of any color? He’d never seen any on his visits. But then, she was full of surprises. Scuba diving, for chrissake. The Galápagos. He tried to reassure himself that she was safe. Attacks by locals on the international conservation community there had settled down in recent years, hadn’t they? The islands were too remote to be a major conduit for drug runners. These days, there was only the occasional run-in between illegal fishing boats and radical environmental groups.<
br />
  Environmental groups. Like the Natural Planet Foundation. Illegal fishing. Summer was doing an underwater survey. Shit. His imagination filled with James Bond scenes of underwater harpoon-gun shootouts and above-water boat chases and explosions. He headed for his computer to check the latest briefings from the State Department.

  Summer Westin was definitely not boring. Neither was she exactly normal. The woman had a propensity for diving headfirst into hot water.

  6

  “Hello, Zing.” Sam stared at her alter ego on the laptop screen. The muscular young woman wore a sleek black-and-white swimsuit that mimicked the gleaming skin of an orca. Although the front zipped most of the way up to a modest mock turtleneck neckline, the effect was one of barely contained sexual energy. The tattoo of a leaping dolphin graced Zing’s right shoulder, framed by curtains of undulating auburn hair. She looked like she could kayak through a typhoon and then wrestle a shark onto her plate for dinner. It was no wonder the gal was intrepid.

  Sam pulled up her own photo on Out There’s website. Wilderness Westin was a platinum blond pixie. Okay, there was a certain brazenness to the image: she did have a rainbow boa constrictor draped around her neck, and a pixel-poker in Seattle had erased her tank top straps so she appeared to be wearing nothing but the snake and a strategically placed drape of jungle vines and blossoms. But next to Zing, Westin looked a definite wuss.

  A quiet tap on her door interrupted her thoughts. Dan stuck his head in. “Ready, partner?” His voice was barely above a whisper. “Eduardo’s loading up to take us out.”

  It was only six thirty, not quite daylight. She wanted to dive into coffee and scrambled eggs, not into a liquid abyss. She forced a smile. “Coming.”

  “Meet you on the stern platform.” The door closed softly behind him.

  She turned off the computer, rose from the chair, and slid it under the desk to make enough space in the tiny cabin to pull on her wetsuit. In the bathroom, she scraped her hair back into a bun, fastening it in place with hairpins. Flexing her neoprene-covered arms, she said forcefully to the mirror, “I am Zing.”

  It didn’t make her feel any more intrepid.

  She dropped the pose and slung her camera strap over her neck. Pre-coffee, it took all her focus not to bang her gear against the walls as she trudged up the narrow stairway.

  Eduardo had thoughtfully packed sweet rolls and coffee. Twenty minutes later, as they crossed open water, the sugar and caffeine had improved both her mood and energy level. The sea was almost flat, the quiet water reflecting the silvery pink of the sunrise. She tried to absorb the serenity of the surroundings but found it difficult to drown out the buzzing anxiety in the back of her mind.

  Three hundred feet of water. Anything could be down there. Woman-eating monsters. Dolphins could be down there, too, she argued with her fears. That would be wonderful, to swim with dolphins. Another sea turtle would be welcome. According to her guidebook, whale sharks frequented the Galápagos, and she’d dearly love to see one of those harmless giants. Nudibranchs—she wanted to see the flamboyant sea slugs featured on her identification DVD.

  Dan applied the oxygen meter to both their cylinders, taking care to show her the reading. It was 20.9 percent, right where it should be. Eduardo watched from his position at the rudder. If he thought it was odd that they were checking the air, he didn’t show it. She assembled her gear, listening carefully for air leaks, breathed twice from both her mouthpieces, double-checked the protective housing surrounding her camera to make sure it was sealed. She finished just as they arrived at Buoy 3492, a black-and-red-striped structure topped by two balls, in the midst of endless water. As Eduardo cut the panga motor and they drifted close, the buoy tilted slightly. When Eduardo snagged the buoy with his hook, a bell clanged loudly, but he tied the panga off to the structure nonetheless, and turned around to help Sam with her camera.

  Now there was no choice but to do her job.

  “Bit of a current here,” Dan told her. “Stay close to the seamount.”

  As soon as she was in the water, the reason for the buoy’s location became evident: the marker was anchored to a pillar of lava that leveled off less than fifteen feet below the surface. Buoy 3492 was a warning to keep large ships from colliding with the obstacle. For most boats the seamount wouldn’t be a problem, except perhaps in rolling waves. She was relieved to see that the seamount was not a thin needle of volcanic rock, but at least a couple dozen feet across at its coral-encrusted summit. Lower down, it became even more substantial, its jagged plateaus alternating with steep drop-offs, like a volcanic wedding cake rising from the cobalt depths.

  Dan quickly dropped into the lee of the rock formation. Sam descended more slowly, cradling her camera in one arm and sliding her free hand down the buoy chain. Saying there was a “bit of a current” was an understatement. The force of the moving water stretched her body horizontally like a flag snapping in the wind. But at least the water flowing past was lukewarm here, not ice cold like some of the other currents in the Galápagos. And the rock below beckoned with clusters of corals, sponges, and rainbow-colored fish.

  A cluster of yellow groupers dispersed from the base of the anchor chain on her arrival, leaving behind confetti-like shreds of the unfortunate creature they had been feeding on. After the current blew her across the summit like a tumbleweed, the large fish regrouped behind her. She fought her way downward, and was relieved when she reached the protection of the broader rocky flank. After she got her breathing under control, she located Dan some thirty to forty feet below her. He was largely obscured by schools of darting fish above him, but his bubbles rose in measured, steady bursts, which was reassuring. They had agreed that he would work on his counts alone today; he knew that she had to gather material for her first blog post.

  Determined to relax, she turned her attention to the rock shelf in front of her. Among the ragged protrusions of lava lay several pieces of boating debris. Many items were made unidentifiable by splotches of pink or lavender—new patches of corals and sponges—but she could make out the shapes of an old anchor and a length of chain. She spied a wicked-looking fish gaff that had been lost recently enough to have only a few spots of growth beginning on it; she could even make out a few letters on a small metal plate that clung to it, held in place by a screw on one end. The fish zipped around over the debris field, feasting on pinkish masses there, zooming into tight clusters to snatch bites and then darting out to swallow them at a safe distance from their fellows.

  A barracuda hovered not far from her left elbow. The toothy predator was no longer than three feet, but its flat black gaze and its total lack of motion were eerie. She eyed it warily. It seemed focused on the cloud of bright blue fish in front of her, but she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t eyeing her appendages or the silver hoop earrings she now realized she’d forgotten to remove. The barracuda suddenly darted forward. She backpedaled with a little squeak of alarm, and the blue fish exploded outward in all directions, abandoning their meal. The barracuda flashed in a tight circle through the suddenly empty space, snapped up a large chunk of flesh it located between sponges, and then hovered above the remains of a gray corpse wedged among spiky orange corals.

  Sam made herself breathe out slowly as she brought up her camera. With the premises momentarily absent of fishy forms except for the ’cuda, the little plateau was a grisly scene. The carcasses of at least half a dozen sharks lay scattered over the lava landscape. On two corpses that had not yet been chewed to shreds, she saw that steaks had been hacked from their sides. The fins were missing from their backs, sides, and tails.

  She snapped a couple of close-up stills of the carnage, then switched to video and filmed the scene. Farther below she could see other bits and pieces of flesh snagged on rock shelves, attended by darting shapes. Curious, she released some air from her buoyancy vest and sank.

  The current sucked her away from the pillar. Her pulse leaped into overdrive. She kicked hard to move back into the protection
of the rock face and made herself inhale slowly and take stock of her surroundings. As she glanced upward, she was startled to see a hammerhead glide only a few feet over her head. The shark was not more than five feet long. But still, a hammerhead!

  After she remembered to breathe again, she realized she was still sinking, and added air to her BCD to level off at seventy feet. Tearing her focus away from the hammerhead, she looked below for Dan, and spotted another hammerhead, this one at least a seven-footer, only a few yards below her fins. Sweet Jesus! She had a sudden urge to streak for the surface, but she forced herself to take a deep breath and stay in place. I am Zing, she told herself. She focused the camera on the shark below.

  The hammerhead spiraled in on a large chunk of carcass snagged on a ragged lava outcropping. Waggling its stalk-eyed head, the shark raised a flurry of small crabs before it managed to rip off a satisfactory bite. Very impressive, in a weird alien cannibal sort of way. She was amazed that the shark didn’t whack an eyeball in the process of eating. The hammerhead backed away and swam in a tight circle, shadowed by a fleet of fish snapping up the scraps that drifted from its mouth. Then the shark returned for more of its cousin’s flesh.

  Zing really should dive down there for a closer shot. Right. Wilderness Westin wasn’t buying it for a minute. She settled for switching to still photos at maximum zoom.

  Sam backed farther away from the seamount, keeping one eye on the hammerhead as she searched the dark blue water below for Dan. Her heartbeat tripled as she spotted a huge mass rising from the depths. Gray-blue, it moved unnaturally, seeming to writhe as it rose from the shadows. Giant squid? Octopus? Great white? She glanced quickly back at the large hammerhead, which remained intent on its meal. Turning her back on the shark, she focused the camera on the creature from the abyss. In a startling movement, a piece of it broke away, swimming upward in wobbling movements, and then she saw that it was not one monster, but three hammerheads moving like a pack of wolves, dogging another type of shark. Their prey could barely swim, she saw now, because its dorsal and pectoral fins had been sliced off. The poor creature didn’t have a prayer of escape. It was dragged in one direction then another by the attacking sharks. A remora detached itself from the dying shark and circled uncertainly, searching for a new ride. She filmed in fascinated horror as two of the hammerheads ripped chunks from their live victim.