Rising Water

by Wayne Stinnett

  Switching on the topography generator, an opaque map of the ocean floor appeared in front of my left eye. It was like looking at the bottom with all the water sucked away. Though it was dark, I could “see” the bottom, all the way up to the shore. But the image didn’t change as we moved through the water because the antenna was below the surface and out of contact with the GPS satellites.

  The underwater terrain depicted on the heads-up display looked just as John had described, steep with deep fissures, the result of a long-ago volcanic eruption and eons of erosion.

  Soon, the real bottom started to become visible in my right eye, lit in gray and black shadows by the filtered light of the half-moon. The bottom was totally out of sync with the chart. It was odd seeing the static topographic display laid over the real, but I quickly figured out where we were on the chart by identifying ridges and fissures on the bottom.

  At fifteen feet, our floats broke the surface and the image in my left eye changed to one that was almost the same as the real thing. The GPS had updated on the float’s new position, trailing behind me. It looked as if my left eye was looking at the bottom behind me, and my right eye, directly below. Still, I could see a lot of benefit in using the thing. Total black-out underwater ops would be one. It would eliminate the need to count kicks.

  When we neared the shoreline, I could see and hear waves crashing on the rocks. I studied the terrain image in my left eye. There was an area a few yards to our left where the rise wasn’t so abrupt.

  “This way,” I said.

  Jerry’s head jerked at the sound of my voice, probably unaware that we could communicate again.

  I motioned with my hand and started swimming south, far enough from shore that the wave surge was barely noticeable.

  Some fifty feet south, I turned and headed back toward shore. A small, sandy patch of bottom rose up toward us, littered with rocks and boulders; probably a recent mud slide from Hurricane Earl, which had passed just north of the islands only seven years ago. NOAA charts had been updated since then, but not to this accuracy. I silently thanked whatever boater had come by here with his sonar and GPS on.

  The surge was strong as we settled to the sandy bottom in ten feet of water to remove our fins. The seafloor rose steeply, probably close to thirty degrees, and was littered with rocks of all sizes.

  “Put your hands through your fin straps,” I said, tapping Jerry on the shoulder. “One on each. Keep everything else on. Stay on the bottom until a receding wave touches your head, then scramble as high and fast as you can, letting the next wave push you up. Then look for something above you to hold onto when the wave breaks and leaves you high and dry.”

  Six-foot waves smashed against the rocks to either side of us as the low rollers met the relative shallows around the island and were pushed up higher. Just two miles to the southeast, where it was 1000 feet deep and still dropping, these man-sized waves might be mere ripples.

  I went first. The sand was loose and shifting, and I had no way of knowing if the underlying jagged volcanic rock was an inch below it or a yard. Fortunately, we both had worn long booties under our fins that zipped up and had hard soles with treads.

  Using rock outcrops and grabbing at an occasional loose boulder that tumbled downward, I pulled my way toward shore as the sandy bottom rose quickly. The surge got stronger with each wave, and I used it to move forward and upward. My head broke the surface and then my shoulders, as a previous wave receded. The next wave would be in a few seconds. Even before I felt the water rising, I scrambled hard, ignoring the flair of pain in my right ankle.

  The wave lifted me, and I went with it, grabbing and pushing against anything for purchase on the loose sand. Then my head went under and I flattened myself against the rocks and sand as the wave broke against my back and washed me up the steep beach.

  When the wave receded, I pushed off hard with my left leg. I spotted a ledge above and to my right, half covered in sand. I stumbled and dropped to my knees, then quickly came back up, reaching the ledge just as the next wave broke against the shore, crashing around me.

  I rose again, adrenaline coursing through my entire body. I moved higher. The sand-covered ledge led upward at a sharp angle, giving way to rock, which had been cut away in places, creating a steep path with occasional steps.

  “Look to your right when you surface,” I said. “There’s a ledge with a path leading up.”

  Looking back, I waited. Finally, Jerry’s head and shoulders appeared as the water fell away below him. He moved quickly, climbing up the beach ahead of the next wave. When it came, it pushed him higher, from which point he continued to claw his way upward until he was on the ledge behind me.

  “What a rush!” he exclaimed, though not too loudly. “You get to do this a lot?”

  I motioned him upward and we climbed higher. “Not every day, but yeah, it’s a rush.”

  Some of the old timers in the Corps had called it the jazz—that feeling of domination when you conquer something, or the sensation that comes from the high-intensity adrenaline boost of combat.

  Finding a wide spot in the steep trail, I shed my shoulder bag, then pulled off my rebreather and mask, laying them to the side along with my fins and weight belt.

  Jerry dropped his equipment next to mine, taking care to put the rebreather on top of the fins to keep the sand out. “Those steps in the rock aren’t natural.”

  “No,” I agreed, taking an earwig from a web pouch around my waist, and putting it in my ear. “You hear me okay, John?”

  Jerry was still wearing the earwig I’d given him and nodded that he could hear me. Then he adjusted the web pouch around his waist, holding the Glock I’d given him.

  “Five by five,” John replied. “And I can see you, too.”

  “See anyone else?” I asked, knowing he had my night-vision scope.

  “No, and no lights from higher up either.”

  Opening the water-tight shoulder pouch, I removed two pairs of night-vision goggles, turning one on and handing it to Jerry.

  He pulled the goggles on and adjusted them to his head. He’d either used them before or was quick-witted. Probably both.

  We reached the top, or at least a spot where the ground leveled out for a ways. We were on the edge of the cliff, a good eighty feet above the water. The terrain before us was grass-covered, with a few low bushes and an occasional small cactus here and there. It rose slightly toward the tree line about 100 yards away. Beyond that, the ground rose more steeply—to about 300 feet, and it was covered with denser vegetation. Up there was where the road and the compound were located. I didn’t see any lights.

  Turning slowly, the only thing I saw that was not a part of the natural landscape was Floridablanca chugging slowly into the current. I couldn’t hear her, but through the night-vision optics, I could see the churning water at her stern.

  There was nothing moving on the escarpment, aside from the leaves and fronds of the trees. We were alone.

  “You go north,” I told Jerry. “I’ll go the other way. Look for any sign of recent activity.”

  I followed the cliff face, staying about twenty feet inland. I hadn’t gone far when I came to the first fissure and had to work my way inland to get around it.

  At the top, the ground was wet and muddy, barren of grass. Water dripped down into the shallow source of the crevice. Over time, storms, waves, and the constant drip, drip, drip, had weakened the volcanic rock, deepening and widening the chasm. The sandy shore where we’d made landfall, precipitous as it was, was probably created by the soil constantly raining down from here.

  Working my way through the grassy field beyond the first mini-canyon, I came across a fire pit set back from the sheer drop-off by only ten or fifteen feet. The grass around it was trampled and worn. Pulling a glove off, I held my hand above the charred remnants of a campfire and felt nothing. I touched the end of
a log that was at the center: cold.

  “I found something,” Jerry’s voice whispered through my earwig.

  “Me too,” I said. “An old campfire, long dead. Whatta you got?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “But I think you want to see this.”

  Rising, I turned and looked back to the north. I could see Jerry looking down at something before him. I angled toward the top of the fissure and hurried back, as fast as my ankle and the terrain would allow.

  When I approached, I noted that there was a lot of disturbed grass. A large mat was arranged inside a partial ring of boulders, right next to a deep fissure. Next to it was a platform of sorts, cantilevered a few feet out over the deep crack in the rocks.

  “What do you think it means?” Jerry asked, looking from the mat to the platform.

  There was another campfire beyond the mat. I went over and felt it too. It was cold, as well.

  “I don’t know,” I replied, turning and looking out toward the boat. “John, can you see any of this?”

  “All I see is the two of you from about the waist up. You’re too far inland.”

  “Move around so you can look up through this fissure.”

  Floridablanca turned and moved north for a few minutes. “I can see up into it a ways, but it looks like there’s a dogleg. I can’t see where you are now.”

  I made another slow turn. The slope we were on, though devoid of forest, save a handful of bushes and cacti, had no stumps or remnants of the tropical foliage that covered the rest of the island. It wasn’t cleared intentionally but provided a great natural view.

  I don’t claim to be a geologist, but it was easy to see that a landslide had created this mostly flat area; a sudden huge shift of earth from higher on the steep hill. Perhaps it had broken loose in some long-ago storm.

  Eventually, maybe in another fifty or 100 years, this area would be covered too. But I didn’t think this change had occurred in my lifetime. Just long enough ago for vegetation to take a foothold.

  Jerry moved over toward the platform. It had beams that extended across and then under the ground, where a massive boulder rested. There was underpinning bracing the platform out over the crevice.

  “There’s something below here,” Jerry said, stepping out onto the wooden deck.

  Moving around the top of the fissure, I had a better view, though farther away. He was right—some sort of structure was attached to the rock wall of the fissure, starting at the platform and angling steeply down. It ended abruptly over seawater churning at the base. But on this side of the dogleg it was invisible from the sea.

  Jerry knelt and removed one of his gloves. He reached down and touched the wood at the edge of the platform, then rubbed his thumb and fingertip together. Then he rubbed his fingers on the edge of the platform and put his fingers to his nose. “Oh, no.”

  “What is it?” I asked, even though I already knew what the answer would be.

  “Blood,” he said. “Dried, but it’s blood.”

  I hurried around to the other side, approaching the rickety-looking framework carefully. At the edge, I looked down, to see what the angled assembly looked like.

  “What is it?” John asked over my earbud.

  “Some sort of slide,” Jerry said. “Maybe for discarding fish guts, but bigger.”

  I looked up to see a sturdy framework built above the slide. It made sense now. A big fish could be hoisted to the yardarm to drain the blood after severing the head. Once slick with blood, the head, guts, and everything else would slide right down to where the hammerheads would converge, drawn by the blood in the water. It was a chum sluice.

  But it wasn’t for disposing of fish heads and guts.

  The inner circle sat around what looked like a normal conference table, with three pitchers of water down the center and glasses on silver trays. However, the table was only two feet tall, and everyone around it sat on plush mats and pillows. Another oddity was that the meeting was being held in the middle of the night. But not everyone worked dawn to dusk. Some worked dusk to dawn.

  “The search continues,” a young bearded man said, addressing the head of the table. “But we have little to go on. We found a place on the trail where the man slipped or stumbled. He dropped a battery of some kind when he fell. His tracks disappeared after that. Like a ghost.”

  “Keep looking, Ronald,” Sunna said. “There can’t be that many tall white strangers on the island.”

  The man nodded. Ronald Olafson had just moved up to head of security on Norman Island after his friend and predecessor had suffered a debilitating injury at the hands of the intruder.

  Sunna turned a sheet from the stack in front of her over onto another stack off to her side. “Moving on,” she said, looking toward the far end of the table. “Dante, the last shipment of 2000 kilos went out last week on time and actually arrived an hour early.”

  “Favorable conditions that night,” a dark-haired man at the far end of the table replied. “We can’t count on that happening all the time.”

  “But the customer said it was light again.”

  “We’ve isolated who is skimming,” Dante replied, unfazed. “It is one of two people: the owner of the transport vessel out of the Abaco Islands, or the captain of one of the fast boats that comes out to meet the freighter off Miami. Both had fingerprints on this latest shipment. I’ll talk to some people and try to isolate one or the other.”

  “It’s a small amount,” Sunna said. “Three kilos?”

  “Three-point-two, Sunna,” Dante replied. “About 10,000 pills. A street value of $250,000 in Florida.”

  “But it’s more about the principle for you?”

  At the far end of the table, the man’s dark eyes smoldered. He nodded soberly. “Yes. If other outsiders in the network learn of this weakness, they may start stealing product as well. We can’t have that.”

  Sunna turned the last page of the agenda over. “Bring them both to me on Norman Island tomorrow. I will learn which is the thief.”

  “The owner of the ship is a woman,” Dante said, his eyes practically glowing with evil intent.

  “Then you will stay after delivering them to me.” Sunna turned to the others. “I can’t stress enough the enormous importance of this endeavor. The capital this brings in will allow us to expand, to bring the word of Onay to more people. Already we are looking at property in the U.S. Virgin Islands for a new introduction facility, while work continues at our new headquarters in the mountains above the Sonoran Desert. The cash flow new followers bring us pales in comparison to what you people are doing. Thank you.”

  With that, most of the others, all trusted members of the upper tier of Onayan society, rose from their cushions and exited the room. Sunna turned her laptop toward her, checking numbers on a printed page against those on the screen.

  Ronald Olafson and Dante Buccho stayed back and approached Sunna after the others had left the room. The tiny woman looked up at the two men standing over her, smiled and motioned them to sit.

  “Thank you for taking the time to come down here tonight,” Sunna said to Dante, as she leaned back on a lush pillow. “Dante, I want you to help Ronald get up to speed on security protocol outside the Norman Island facility.”

  “Yes, Sunna.”

  “Do you have something else?”

  “A body was found last week,” Dante said. “Up on Little Thatch island.”

  “Oh?” Sunna said, her ice blue eyes showing no concern.

  “It is part of my job to listen and report,” he said. “I asked Ronald to stay because I think it may concern him.”

  “In what way?”

  Just then, something jingled in Ronald’s pocket. He took his phone out and looked at it nervously. “It’s one of our security people out by the cliffs.”

  “Take it,” Sunna said.

 
Ronald touched the screen and held the phone to his ear. “Olafson.”

  He listened for a moment. “Hold on, I’m putting you on speaker.” Then to Sunna he said, “There are intruders at the east end of the island.”

  “Who is it?” Sunna asked.

  “I’m not sure,” a woman’s voice said, obviously a bit shaken. “I’ve called two others to my position. There are two men out by the cliffs.”

  “Anything unusual about them?”

  “They’re both tall,” the woman said. “Dressed in black from head to toe, with some kind of mask thing over their faces.”

  Sunna looked up at Ronald. “Call out every person you can. I want them captured.”

  Ronald snatched up the phone. “Thanks, Erin.” He ended the call and immediately made another, telling someone to get everyone up and go quickly to the cliffs.

  When he ended the call, he turned to Sunna. “They will catch them.”

  “Back to the matter of the body that was found.”

  “We think it was that woman from last week,” Ronald replied, nervous eyes averted.

  Sunna put a finger to his chin, turning his face toward hers. “The couple that wouldn’t succumb?”

  “Yes,” he replied, looking directly into her eyes.

  “I thought they were disposed of in the usual manner.”

  Ronald swallowed hard, obviously hiding something from her. “They were.”

  “Then how did a body get discovered?”

  “I’m sorry,” Ronald said, Sunna’s fingertip still on his chin. “We were rushed. I figured the sharks would still take care of her…after the boyfriend.”

  “How much time elapsed between the man and the woman?”

  “About an hour,” he admitted.

  With a flick of her wrist, the fingernail of Sunna’s index finger left an inch-long cut in Ronald’s cheek, just above his meager beard. He flinched, but didn’t put a hand to it, even as the blood trickled through his facial hair. Ronald’s eyes showed terror as Sunna put a finger to his cheek again.

  She delicately wiped a smear of blood onto her finger, then licked it clean. “Why did you wait an hour after disposing of the man?”