The seaplane touched down on the water near the sleek-hulled NUMA vessel. Alerted by the seaplane pilot, the Searcher had a boat waiting to shuttle Austin and Zavala to the ship. The skipper, a tall, olive-skinned Californian named Paul Gutierrez, was waiting for them. Captain Gutierrez wasted little time and led them to the bridge. In the wheelhouse, Austin's coral-colored eyes stared off at
the sea, where a powerboat was approaching the Atlantis from the navy ship.
“Looks like we're about to have company.”
“The navy arrived within hours. They've been keeping an eye out for further attacks. Let me show you what we've been doing.” He spread out a chart of the area. Sections of the chart were crosshatched with a black grease pencil. “We've been lucky with weather conditions. This will give you an idea of the area we've covered. We've run sonar surveys and sent down our Remote Operated Vehicles.” “Impressive.”
“Thanks. The Searcher's gear can spot a dime at a thousand fathoms. We've covered the entire Lost City and some of the outlying areas where we discovered more fields of hydrothermal vents. The Atlantis has been checking out the ridge as well. The capabilities of the Searcher are awesome, if I say so myself.” He shook his head. “Can't figure it. The Alvin % one of the toughest little subs in the world. She's gone down hundreds of times without a problem.” “No sign of the submersible so far?” “~No Alvin, but that's not the end of the story.” Gutierrez handed Austin a printout showing the bottom as seen on the sonar monitor. “Once we covered the Lost City, we began to look beyond the immediate area. There are at least three other vent cities of comparable or larger size located on the ridge. Check out what we found in one of them, which we're calling ”LC II.“ It's got us baffled as hell.”
Austin borrowed a magnifying glass. Years of survey work had given him a skilled eye in reading sonar, but the markings he saw were puzzling. “What are these strange double lines?”
“We wondered the same thing. So we sent down an ROV and shot these pictures.”
Austin studied the glossy eight-by-ten photos. The tall columns of
the Lost City were clearly defined, as were the tracks that wound through the towers.
“They look like tread marks from a big bulldozer or a tank,” Austin said.
“Very big,” the captain said. “When we used the columns for scale, we estimated that the treads must be at least thirty feet apart.” “What's the depth here?” “Twenty-five hundred feet.”
Zavala whistled. “A respectable engineering feat, but not impossible. Remind you of something, Kurt?”
“Big John,” Austin said with a smile. In answer to the captain's quizzical expression, he explained that Big John was the nickname for a bottom-crawling vehicle NUMA had developed several years before as a moving deep-ocean lab. He pointed to a photo that showed the tracks coming to an abrupt end. “Whatever was down there seems to have lifted off. Unlike Big John, this mechanical turtle can swim as well as crawl.”
“And my guess is that it took the Alvin with it,” Zavala said. “It seems too much of a coincidence having the Alvin disappear near these tracks,” Captain Gutierrez said with a nod of his head.
“There is another strange coincidence,” Austin said. “I understand you were attacked at about the same time as the Alvin % disappearance.”
“As we were starting to panic about the Alvin, we were approached by a strange ship,” Gutierrez said. “It was an old rust bucket of a freighter. The name on the hull was the Celtic Rainbow and it was out of Malta. They called in a Mayday. When we returned the call there was no answer. Only the distress call, repeating over and over again. Then we sighted smoke, apparently coming from a hold.” “Did anyone try to abandon the ship?” "That's what was crazy. No one. Not a soul on the deck. I was
going to send a boat to investigate, but Captain Beck volunteered to go over with a party of his men.“ ”Beck?"
“He ran an ocean security outfit. As you may know, pirates have attacked or threatened research vessels around the world. The institution was working with Beck to set up security procedures for its research vessels. He had three men, all former SEALs like himself, on board for a training mission. They'd been teaching crew and scientists how to react to a pirate attack. He struck me as a very capable man.”
“None better,” said a man in a navy uniform who had stepped into the pilothouse. “From what I've heard, Beck was a real pro. I'm Ensign Pete Muller. That's my ship over there,” he said, pointing to the cruiser. Austin extended his hand. “Nice to meet you, Ensign.”
“Always a pleasure to talk to folks from NUMA.”
“What happened to Captain Beck and his men?” Austin said.
“I'm afraid they were all killed,” the ensign said.
“I'm very sorry to hear that.”
“We found the captain's body in the water, but no sign of his men or the ship,” Muller said.
“How could a freighter simply disappear?”
“Our ship was the closest vessel when the Atlantis sent out the SOS. By the time we arrived, the attackers were gone. We secured the situation here, then we chased after the attackers. We knew their direction and with our superior speed we would have overtaken them. We had them on radar when the blip disappeared. We found debris and an oil slick, but no ship.”
“I don't get it,” Austin said. “SEALs are among the most highly trained special warfare people on the face of the earth. Boarding a potentially hostile ship is one of their specialties.”
“I'm afraid they ran into something they never trained for.” Austin noticed something in Ensign Muller's expression that he rarely saw in the face of a military man. It was the look of fear.
“I have the feeling that there is more here than I've been told. Maybe the captain can tell us about the attack.”
“I can do better than that,” Gutierrez said. “I'll let you see it.”
THE SHAKY IMAGES on the video screen jumped spastically making it obvious that they had been shot with a handheld camera under unsteady circumstances. The camera showed three men seen from behind. They were wearing bandannas wrapped around their heads and automatic weapons were slung over their shoulders. The men were in a moving inflatable boat, and the scene rose and dipped with the waves as the boat approached a rusty freighter of medium size. A hard-edged voice could be heard over the buzz of the outboard motor.
“Approaching target. Heads up, boys, this isn't a joy ride. We'll try a false insertion to see if we can draw fire.”
The man closest to the lens turned and gave a thumbs-up. Then the picture froze.
Ensign Muller rose from his chair and stood beside the flat wall screen. He pointed to the dark-skinned man grinning into the camera lens.
“That's Sal Russo,” he said to Austin and the others seated in the room. "Top-notch; savvy and tough as nails. Helped form SEAL
Team Six, the antiterrorism unit. Picked up a basketful of medals for his Persian Gulf service before mustering out to join Beck's company."
“And that must be Captain Beck's voice in the background,” Austin said. He was seated in a folding chair next to Zavala and Gutierrez.
“That's right. Beck had a video camera on a chest harness. He used it as a training tool to show his teams where they made mistakes and what they did right. He was still wearing the camera when we plucked his body out of the water. Fortunately, it was in a waterproof housing. The picture gets a little jumpy from time to time, but it will give you a pretty good idea of what they encountered.”
Muller punched the resume button on the remote control and returned to his chair. The man on the screen came to life and turned with his back to the camera again. The buzz of the outboard ratcheted up several decibels, the bow lifted as the boat rose on plane and headed directly toward the boarding ladder that hung down the starboard bow. A hundred feet from the ladder, the boat veered off and sped away from the freighter.
“Attempt to draw fire was unsuccessful,” the voice said. “Let's check out the n
ame on the stern.”
The camera showed the boat coming around behind the ship, where the words CELTIC rainbow, and below that MALTA, were visible on the peeling hull. Then the boat moved alongside the larger vessel and headed back to the ladder. As they came up to the side, a man grabbed a rung and held the boat in place.
Everyone put gas masks on and two SEALs clambered up the ladder. The bow man pushed the boat off a few yards and brought his gun to bear on the deck, ready to pick off anyone trying to ambush the boarders. The two men climbed to the deck without incident. The point man waved the boat back in.
“Slick insertion with no resistance,” Beck said. “Backup going in now.”
With the boat tied up to the ladder, Beck and Russo began to climb. There was a jumpy picture of the side of the ship and the microphone picked up the sound of heavy breathing. Beck's voice could be heard muttering, “Getting too old for this crap. Puff. Hell of a lot more fun than sitting at a desk, though.”
The camera panned the deck to show the SEALs crouched low, weapons at ready. Smoke drifted over the deck from the billowing cloud. As set out in their preplan, Russo took one man and made a heads-down dash to the other side of the ship, and then they worked their way toward the stern. Beck and the other SEAL did the same on the starboard deck and the team rendezvoused at the stern rail. “Port side's clear,” Russo said. He squinted at the smoke. “Looks like the fire's going out.”
“You're right,” Beck said. “Smoke is thinning. Remove your masks.”
The men did as ordered, tucking their masks into belt bags.
“Okay, let's check the bridge to see who's sending that message.”
The camera showed the men moving in leapfrog fashion, first one team then the others, so that the lead team was always covered. They climbed the companionways, pausing at each deck before going on, reaching the bridge wings with no incident.
The voice of someone calling “Mayday” was coming through the open door of the wheelhouse.
Speed, surprise and stealth are the essences of a SEAL mission. Having to board the ship in broad daylight ruled out two of those elements, so they wasted no time outside the wheelhouse. The camera followed them in and Beck's voice could be heard saying, “Good job. Hell. Damn place is empty.”
The camera showed a 360-degree sweep of the wheelhouse, and then Beck went over to the ship's radio. A hand, obviously his, reached out and picked up a tape recorder next to the radio's microphone. The Mayday message they had heard was repeating over and over. The hand clicked off the recorder and the Maydays stopped.
“Goddamnit!” one of the men said. “What the hell's that stint^?”
Beck's voice could be heard in the background, calm but with an unmistakable sense of urgency, ordering his men to cock their weapons, stay sharp and make their way double time back to their boat.
Then the gates of Hades opened.
Someone or something launched itself through the door, shrieking like an angry banshee. Then came the thundering blast of a shotgun at close range. More shrieks and lunging bodies and the rattle of automatic weapons fire. There were blurred flashes of dingy white hair or fur and glimpses of faces out of a nightmare.
“This way, Captain!”
Chip Russo had his back to the camera, blocking out most of the picture. More gunfire and hideous screams. Then a whole series of blurred images.
Beck was out of the wheelhouse and appeared to be half-falling, half-climbing down the companionways. His breath was coming out in great hoarse gasps. Russo could be heard in the background yelling:
“Move it, Cap, move! I nailed one of the red-eyed sons of bitches, but they're on our asses.”
“My men ”
“Too late Move. Aw hell.”
Another blast of gunfire. Then a man screaming.
Beck had made it to the main deck. He was running now, huffing like a locomotive climbing a steep hill, his boots pounding. He was near the bow within a few feet of the ladder.
There was an inhuman scream from off-camera. More white hair and lunging bodies, then another shotgun blast. A glimpse of luminous red eyes. Then a gurgle and whirling sky and sea. The screen went dark.
Austin broke the stunned silence that followed. “Your video raises more questions than it answers.”
“Beck almost made it back to the boat,” Muller said, “but someone or something ambushed him as he was about to climb down the ladder. When his body was found his throat, had been torn open.”
“Could you go back a few seconds in the video?” Zavala said. Muller complied. “Okay, freeze it right there.”
The burning red eyes almost filled the screen. The image was fuzzy, but the vagueness didn't diminish the feral intensity. A silence ensued in the room, broken only by the hum of the ship's ventilator. Finally, Austin said, “What do you make of this video, Ensign?” Muller shook his head like a man who'd been asked to explain the mysteries of the universe. “The only thing I'm sure of is that Captain Beck and his men got themselves into a hell of a mess. Whoever, or whatever, ambushed them didn't expect to run into an armed SEAL unit.”
“My guess is that they intended to attack the Atlantis, but changed their minds after the fight with Beck and his men,” Austin said. “That was my take on it, too,” Muller said.
Captain Gutierrez rose from his chair. “I've got to get back to the bridge. You gentlemen let me know if there is anything further I can do to help.”
Austin thanked Gutierrez and, after he left, turned to Muller. “I suppose you'll be going back to your ship.”
“Not quite yet. A relief vessel is coming in to stand guard duty. Should be here in a few hours. I've got time. Now that the captain has gone, I'd like to talk about this situation if you don't mind.”
“Not at all,” Austin said. “From the little I've seen, there's a lot to talk about.”
Muller smiled. "When I first heard this crazy story, I thought we
might be dealing with pirates, although there was no evidence that they were operating in this part of the world."
“You've changed your mind about the pirates?” Austin said.
“I've discarded that theory. I neglected to mention that I'm an intelligence officer with the navy. After I saw the video, I contacted my staff in Washington and asked them to research everything they could on 'red-eyed monsters or fiends.” You should have heard the disrespectful replies I got, but they went through every source they could, from Dracula, photography, Hollywood movies. Did you know there's a rock group called “Red-Eyed Demons'?”
“My rock education stopped with the Rolling Stones,” Austin said.
“Me, too. Anyhow, I spent some time going over their reports and kept coming back to this.”
Muller took a sheet of paper from his briefcase and handed it to Austin who unfolded it and read the headline.
TV CAST, CREW STILL MISSING POLICE BAFFLED
It was a Reuters news story datelined London. He kept reading.
Authorities say they still have no leads in the disappearance of seven participants and four technical crew members who were filming an episode of the Outcasts television show on a remote island off the coast of Scotland.
Under the rules of the game, the other members of the so-called clan vote an “Outcast” off the island each week. A helicopter sent to pick up the latest exile found no sign of the others. Police, working with the FBI, found traces of blood, suggesting the possibility of violence.
The lone survivor, who was found hiding, is recuperating at home. She has been quoted as saying the survivors were attacked by
“red-eyed fiends.” Authorities have discounted this account, saying that the victim was suffering from hallucinations brought on by shock.
The popular TV show, a spin-off of earlier Survivor-type productions, has been criticized by some for encouraging even greater tension among participants and subjecting them to risky tests involving mental and physical stress. The network has offered a $50,000 reward for information.
Kurt handed the article to Zavala, who read the story and said, “How does this tie in with the Alvin's disappearance?”
“It's a tenuous connection, I'll admit, but try to follow my convoluted line of thinking. I went back to those undersea tracks. It was clear that something was going on in the Lost City and someone wanted the activity kept a secret.”
“That sounds right,” Zavala said. "Whoever made those tracks wouldn't want anyone nosing around the thermal vents
“If you had a secret like that, what would you do if a submersible loaded with cameras dropped into your backyard?”
“Simple,” Zavala said. “The expedition was publicized, so I'd move my equipment out.”
Austin said, “Not so simple. Someone was bound to see the tracks and ask questions. You'd have to eliminate the outside observers. And you'd have to take care of any witnesses.”
“Then that would explain why a shipload of red-eyed freaks was unleashed on the Atlantis,” Zavala said.
Austin said, “Suppose the Atlantis vanished. A while later the Alvin surfaced and when it sees the support ship has disappeared it calls for help. A massive search would be launched. There's always the chance that a search would pick up traces of the Alvin and attract more attention.”
“Which means whatever made those tracks may have snatched the Alvin” Zavala said.
“Gutierrez says the submersible isn't down there, and I believe him,” Muller said.
Austin glanced at the news article again. “Red eyes here. Red eyes there. As you say, a tenuous connection.”
“I agree. That's why I ordered up a series of satellite photos of the waters surrounding the Outcasts island.” From his briefcase, he took a stack of photos and spread them out on a table. “Most of the islands have small fishing villages that have been there for years. On others, the only inhabitants are birds. This one was unusual enough to catch my attention.”
He slid a picture toward Austin. The photo showed several buildings, most of them clustered away from the shore, and some primitive roads.