The Ocean Dark

by Christopher Golden

  The minutes ticked by and the sun beat down, a strange stillness to the sea air. Her skin crawled with impatience. She studied the sunken ships that sprawled in the water off the island’s coast, then shifted her focus to the lifeboats that had been abandoned in the cove. She swore quietly to herself, then retreated into the shade provided by the walkway above her head.

  She was standing in this shelter, hidden from above and below, when she heard someone clomping down the metal stairs. Stepping out to the railing, she squinted against the sunlight and looked up to see a very tired-looking Rogan descending. He paused and hung out over the railing above her.

  “Hello, darlin’,” Rogan said. With his red hair and broad grin, he looked like a little boy.

  “You don’t look nearly tired enough,” Angie said, heart skipping nervously. “Did you sleep?”

  The grin widened. “Only a couple of hours.”

  He tromped down the last flight of stairs and turned onto the level three walkway. Angie wondered if he could see the fear and deceit in her eyes. She had spent years developing a tough-girl façade, and hoped she could maintain it.

  “That’s a couple more than I’ve had,” she said.

  Rogan reached out and took both of her hands, kissed her forehead. “That’s a lie.”

  Angie feigned a tentative smile. “All right. I had a couple, too, but I’m exhausted and starving and I need to pee.”

  In the time they had been sleeping together, she and Rogan had never pretended what they had was a romance. They genuinely liked each other and they satisfied each other’s urges—sometimes very well, and sometimes merely well enough—but they weren’t in love. Still, there was a sweet tenderness in his eyes now and he softened, reaching out to touch her cheek.

  “By all means, angel, go and take care of that. I was just off to the mess myself. Our cook may be locked up, but someone’s got to have prepared something for breakfast. Bring me something back?”

  Angie gave a soft laugh. If Rogan had slept a while, maybe Miguel had as well. It was possible that they hadn’t gotten to the Personal Locator Beacon yet, or that they hadn’t dared remove it. Maybe breakfast wasn’t Rogan’s only purpose for going down to the galley.

  “Thanks, babe,” she said, and kissed his cheek.

  He caught her face in his hands and brushed her mouth with his. She wondered if he could taste the deception on her lips.

  “I’ll be quick,” Angie said, and hurried away from the rec room.

  The back of her neck prickled and her face felt flushed as she made her way down to the deck. The entire situation had seemed almost surreal to her, but now the crushing reality set in. How had she ever thought that she could go along with the sins of Viscaya Shipping and never pay the price? She’d told herself it had nothing to do with her, that she was just doing a job, but she had never denied the little thrill that ran through her whenever the Rio brothers indulged in their outlaw behavior.

  It had sometimes felt like a bit of fantasy, as though she were playing at something dangerous. But now the danger had turned real and tangible, and play time was over.

  On the deck, she paused for a cleansing breath of salt air, then pushed open the door into the mess hall. Angie hadn’t passed anyone on the stairs and the mess hall was empty as well, making the Antoinette seem more like a ghost ship than ever. She strode across the room and through the open doorway that led into the galley--the point of no return.

  A pan clattered and she let out a tiny cry, raising a hand to cover her mouth.

  Sal Pucillo jumped a bit as he spun from the sink, turning to face her. “Jesus, Angie, you scared me.”

  “The feeling’s mutual.” She offered a half-hearted smile, reminding herself that she was never very friendly to Pucillo and it would seem false if she changed that now. “What’re you doing? Galley’s not your usual gig.”

  Pucillo’s eyes hardened and he picked up a soapy pan from the sink and continued scrubbing. The clatter she’d heard must have been the pan slipping from his hands.

  “Someone’s gotta pick up the slack if Tori and Josh aren’t around to cook for us. I made breakfast, too. French toast and bacon. There’s some left in the plastic over there,” he said, nodding toward the refrigerator. On a shelf beside it was a covered rectangular plastic container.

  “You don’t mind if I take some? I’m starving.”

  “Go on ahead. I was just gonna put the rest in the fridge. The whole point of cooking it was so the crew could eat.”

  Angie went to the shelf and opened the container, surprised to find maybe twenty slices of bacon and half a dozen slices of French toast inside. Plenty left over, and her stomach rumbled at the aroma. She thought about heating it up, but didn’t bother. A little maple syrup and two forks, and she and Rogan could have breakfast together up on level three, standing guard over the man who could land them all in jail.

  She glanced at the stove. When she’d first entered, she had avoided looking directly at it, not wanting Pucillo to notice anything. But now he busied himself with the greasy pan, and she let her gaze stray to the wide, silver bulk of the stove, and felt her spirits tumble when she saw that it stood at a slight angle from the wall. Someone had moved it recently, and not been too meticulous about putting it back.

  “Thanks for this.” She searched the drawers and found two clean forks, then took a half-full bottle of orange juice from the fridge. As desperately as she needed coffee, she didn’t have time to make it. “Very cool of you to step up.”

  “Someone had to,” he replied without turning. Studiously keeping his back to her, he cleared his throat. “So is it true? Josh is FBI?”

  Angie weighed the benefits of playing dumb, then decided there weren’t any. “That’s what I hear.”

  Pucillo’s shoulders sagged. “Jesus. My wife’s gonna…”

  He didn’t finish. Nor did he have to.

  “You don’t know anything, Sal. Nobody’s going to tie you to whatever the Rios are up to. The whole crew knows you go out of your way to avoid even hearing anything illegal.” A realization struck her. “Is that why you’re down here?”

  “Damn straight. Cooking. Cleaning. I’ll live in the damn galley if I have to. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. If I have to testify, I want to be able to tell the truth. That’ll save me if anything can. I’m just down here, minding my own business.”

  Angie felt a flash of envy. “You’ll be okay,” she said. “I really believe that.”

  Pucillo kept scrubbing. The steel wool must have been practically gone by now, and the pan had to be clean, but he didn’t stop. “I wish I did.”

  As they were talking, Angie had been moving over to the stove. Now she leaned against the wall, trying her best to be inconspicuous in case he should glance at her, and looked into the space between stove and wall.

  Her heart sank and it was all she could do to keep from swearing aloud. Remnants of black electrical tape made it clear that something had been there, but the PLB was gone. She wondered where it was now. If it had been her, she’d have thrown it into the ocean, let it sink to the bottom. Even if it didn’t short out, no signal would transmit from the depths of the Caribbean. But if there was a chance that the PLB was still on board, she had to find it, which meant searching the whole damn ship.

  Or asking Rogan.

  Angie didn’t like either option, but she knew she had to do something. It was too late to hide down here with Pucillo.

  ~29~

  Gabe stopped about twenty feet up the beach and surveyed the island. From their approach they’d already gauged it at about half a mile wide and three times that in length—not much land, but it could still take all day and more to search if they weren’t smart about it. He tried to think like Ruiz, the captain of the Mariposa. If he’d brought the guns ashore, worried about an attack come nightfall, where would he hole up?

  Closest to the sand were towering, skeletal palm trees, their heavy fronds barely rustling in the light morning bree
ze. At the bases of those trees grew a sparse seagrass. Further inland there were other trees, green and tangled, and prickly-looking underbrush. Gabe didn’t see any obvious footpaths, but there were natural patterns in the growth, almost like coves on the shore, inviting travelers with easier access. Now that he looked more closely, he realized that the island wasn’t as flat as he’d imagined. A ridge of mounds--a sort of spine of natural rises--ran along its length.

  “You ever seen breakers like that?” Bone asked, coming up beside Gabe. He wore a light pack and clutched a water bottle. “Black like that, I mean?”

  Gabe glanced along the beach at the weird rock formations that jutted into the water. On either side of the cove there were places where jagged shards of the same ebony stone thrust up from the sand or the white foaming surf.

  “Something like it,” Gabe replied. “Looks volcanic.”

  “You think there’s a volcano here?”

  The captain studied the island again. “Hell if I know. I’ve seen a couple of volcanoes, and it doesn’t look anything like that. But I’m not a geologist.”

  “It’s weird, though, right?”

  Gabe didn’t bother to reply. Bone had answered his own question. He turned toward the others. Tori and Kevonne stood a little further up the beach, well away from where Pang was helping Boggs and the other two sailors dig anchors into the sand to keep the lifeboats from floating away on the first big wave. They were wasting their time; the tide was as high as it would get. But they were good sailors and had procedures to follow.

  “All right, let’s go,” he called.

  Boggs reached into one of the lifeboats and pulled out a long, vinyl bag, unzipped it, and withdrew the rifle from inside. He loaded it quickly, then slung the weapon over his shoulder.

  “Do we really need guns? There’s nobody here,” Bone said, a pleading tone in his voice. Gabe wondered if he’d been this way back in California, if he’d left because he’d been getting on his surfer buddies’ nerves.

  “Maybe not. But the guys from the Mariposa are dead.” The captain wore a 9mm pistol in a holster on his right hip. He reached down and popped the snap that kept it in place. “I’d rather be prepared than join them.”

  Gabe walked down to meet Boggs and the others, who gathered around him.

  Bone hurried to catch up. “Hey, Captain, do you think I could have one, then?”

  “When we find our cargo, you can all have guns for all I care. But let’s get to work. Four teams. Kevonne, take Pang and head west along the shore. Look for any sign of the Mariposa’s crew—footprints, guns, breaks in the tree line. Tori and I will head east.”

  He turned to Boggs. “The rest of you go with the Chief. Split up, two and two. Head inland maybe a hundred yards, then split up, two in one direction, two in the other. Criss-cross that section. They won’t have taken the guns much deeper than that. Don’t waste time with the overgrown areas or the hills.”

  “We should go in as far as the bottom of those hills, though, Captain,” Boggs said. “There may be decent defensive positions there. If the Mariposa’s captain wanted a place to hide, or to fight from, he might have gone that far.”

  Gabe didn’t like to be contradicted, especially by a man like Boggs, but he couldn’t deny that the Chief had a point.

  “All right. Go in as far as the hills, but don’t climb. Even if they wanted the high ground, they didn’t lug crates of guns up those hills, and the guns are what we’re looking for. They’re all that matters. Make sure every team has at least one radio. Let me know the second you run across anything that’s even a question mark. I’ll decide for myself what is and isn’t important. Got it?”

  The men all began to move out. Tori knelt in the sand, double-checking her pack, making sure they had food and water. When they had first set out on this voyage, Gabe had hated the idea of some office girl coming along, looking over his shoulder, reporting back to Viscaya. Now he was glad to have her along.

  Tori had surprised him with her resilience. The typical cubicle slave would be curled up in a weepy fetal ball back in their quarters right now. But Tori had steel in her, a survivor’s edge, and he admired the hell out of that. He had brought her out to the island to make sure that he had a witness that Esper and the rest of his bosses at Viscaya would trust. Gabe would do whatever it took to get those guns, to finish the job, but if they ended up going home empty-handed, he wanted Tori to be able to tell them firsthand that he’d done everything possible.

  True, Tori’s eyes had a glint of fear, but they all looked afraid. The difference was that everyone else seemed content to let him lead, while Tori had an air of determination that had nothing to do with Gabe Rio or his orders. Terrified she might be, but she would do whatever it took to get the job done and get home safe. They were in it together, and he liked that.

  “Thanks,” she said as she shouldered her pack and they started east along the sand together.

  “For what?”

  “Not sending me with Boggs.”

  Gabe had been starting to search the sand and the tree line, but now he glanced at her. “You honestly think I’d have done that to you?”

  “I thought maybe you’d see me as a liability,” Tori said.

  The irony of the comment, given what he’d just been thinking, made him shake his head. “I don’t.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  They walked near the tree line, where the sand did not give way so readily beneath their feet. Beyond the cove, the black rocks were not so prominent, but there were many places where patches of dark stone were visible under the sand, as though it had been worn away to reveal the rocks beneath, like the beach was only a disguise for the real island under it.

  In one spot, they came upon a great hump in the sand, but as they drew closer Gabe saw that it was an old rowboat, overturned and half-buried in the sand, wood bleached white by time and sun. As they stood puzzling it out, Tori tapped his arm and pointed into the trees further along the beach, where what had once been a small yacht—forty feet or so—lay amongst the trees and brush, partially overgrown, two downed palms evidence of its violent arrival on shore.

  “Must have been a hell of a storm,” Tori said.

  “They’re born around here all the time,” Gabe replied, though when he glanced at the blue sky, felt the baking warmth of the sun and the bare whisper of the day’s wind, it was hard to imagine a hurricane striking this tiny island.

  Further along they came upon another outcropping of the black rock where the remains of at least two lifeboats were scattered. There were derelict ships half-sunken—and some completely submerged—off the island here as well, but they were not as numerous away from the cove. In the surf, a small boat with an outboard—a Whaler no doubt used as a runabout by the rich owners of one of these ruined yachts—swayed back and forth with the waves.

  “I don’t see a thing,” Tori said when they had gone perhaps three-quarters of a mile. “Are we even sure the Mariposa stopped here?”

  Gabe glanced at her, a dozen harsh replies playing on his lips. What came out instead was honesty. “I’m not sure of anything, but it feels like someone’s been here.”

  Tori actually laughed, and he glanced at her sharply, only to see her gesture toward the nearest off-shore wreck. “It feels like plenty of people have been here. The place is like the Bermuda Triangle’s backed-up drain.”

  He had been trying to avoid such thoughts. “I don’t believe in that crap.”

  They walked half a dozen steps before Tori replied. “I don’t either. But the only other thing I can think of is pirates. Could be they attack these other ships, kill the crews, steal whatever they can, then take them here and scuttle them. Like home base or whatever.”

  “Could be,” Gabe said.

  But he didn’t believe it. Not only did it feel like bullshit, but they had yet to see any sign of visitors. No remnants of a camp or a cooking fire or even prints in the sand. The weather could eradicate such things, but not if they
were recent. And if it wasn’t pirates, he didn’t have the first clue what had happened to all of these ships.

  Tori paused to check out a gap in the tree line, but only for a moment before moving on. Gabe started to do likewise, but the breeze lifted slightly and rustled the fronds of the palm trees, and he looked up.

  The gap provided a perfect view of the nearest of the island’s hills. They were green and brown and thick with vegetation in some places—making him wonder how far seabirds might carry seeds—but there were peaks and ridges made of that same glassy black, and he realized that his thoughts about the beach hadn’t been completely off. Much of the island’s spine consisted of that ebony stone. He’d never seen anything like it.

  Tori had kept walking and now Gabe picked up his pace to catch her. They must have traveled nearly a mile by now--half the distance they’d need to meet up with Kevonne and Pang on the other side, with no sign of any visitors to the island except the ruined boats. None of it made any sense.

  Gabe paused to examine an area of undergrowth that seemed to have been disturbed, but the ground around it showed no sign of passersby, and he figured it had been bad weather or some kind of animal, though they hadn’t seen anything at all so far.

  “What is it, Captain?” Tori prodded.

  He turned to her, raising an eyebrow. “You don’t have to call me ‘captain’ out here, Tori.”

  “Okay. What’s on your mind, Gabe? You’re distracted, and it isn’t just this.”

  Something about her cool, brown eyes brought the truth out in him. “Just thinking about Maya. About how things ended.”

  Tori thrust her hands into her pockets as they continued along the sand. “It got ugly, huh?”

  “Very. If I end up in prison over this, I don’t think she’ll care,” Gabe said, thinking that Maya might even be happy. Then she could carry one fucking whoever she wanted and never have to worry about his jealousy again.