Authors: Alex Archer

Phantom Prospect (7 page)

Annja watched the foam from the splash fade into a sea of bubbles from Cole’s scuba gear. She could see him settling into the depths, looking all around him to make sure the immediate coast was clear.

She felt instantly worried for him. Maybe that old sea captain had freaked her out some. Annja hated that this adventure was unlike how she operated most of the time.

At any other dig site, she’d be up to her elbows in dirt and sand and mud, trying to uncover some long-forgotten treasure. And yet here she was, stuck on board a ship that was presumably being terrorized by a giant shark.

But there was promise here. If Hunter was right about the
Fantome
and its hold of booty, then that would surely make up for the distinct lack of dirt on this particular jaunt.

“He okay?”

Annja saw Hunter watching from the stairs. Annja pointed at Cole’s head, which was visible just below the surface. “Seems fine. He’s just making sure he’s settled and then I imagine he’ll be in better shape.”

“Okay.”

“Anything on the scope?”

“Jax says it’s clear.”

Annja frowned. “You trust her?”

Hunter nodded. “I know she’s difficult, but she’ll raise the alarm if there’s one to sound. She knew Jock and doesn’t want that to happen to anyone else on this trip. Neither do I, for that matter. If someone’s not pulling their weight and compromises the safety of the boat and its crew, they’re gone.”

“Strict.”

“I run a tight ship, even if appearances suggest otherwise.”

Annja smiled. “I can see that.”

Hunter pointed at the cage bobbing a few yards off the stern of the boat. “You let me know if he gets too far away. The only thing keeping him connected to the boat are those heavy ropes securing the cage to the back. If those get cut, then he’s out there alone.”

“Cut?”

Hunter turned around. “Just make sure they don’t.”

Annja moved back to the side of the boat and saw that Cole seemed to be checking in all directions. But she saw nothing from her perspective that would indicate that something was down there with him. Certainly nothing like the giant shark that had appeared on the scope.

Annja took a deep breath and leaned against the gunwale. Maybe this was all a mistake. Maybe it was a whale that had simply not breached the surface while they’d been tracking it. She knew that sperm whales could dive for up to forty minutes on one breath of oxygen. And they hadn’t watched the screen all that long.

It was conceivable, she thought, that something else might be down there.

But what about Jock?

He’d clearly been torn apart by something, but was it a shark? Maybe it was a killer whale. Annja had heard they could be dangerous to humans.

She turned and looked at the cage again. Cole was hovering middepth and seemed fine—

Annja’s instincts were already hauling her away from the side of the boat as the giant head breached the surface, showing a huge gaping maw of serrated teeth.

The head dropped back into the water with a splash.

Annja screamed.

Cole had turned toward the commotion and, even at distance, Annja could see his frantic movement as he registered the massive fish in the water. The dorsal fin broke the surface and stood fully three feet out of the waves.

“Hunter!” Annja shouted.

She heard him racing down the stairs. More crew members joined them on deck. Annja pointed. “Look at it!”

“Jesus Christ,” Hunter said. “That’s huge.”

“Understatement,” Annja said. “How big is your boat?”

“Just over a hundred feet.”

“How big would you say that fish is?”

“Maybe forty feet long?”

Annja nodded. “It’s heading for Cole.”

She watched as the dorsal fin sliced through the water. She could see Cole shifting in the water to brace for the impact.

When it came, Annja thought the shark had lifted the cage almost completely out of the water. But it crashed back down into the surf. Cole’s body seemed to bounce off one side of the cage.

“Haul him in!” Hunter started working on the ropes, undoing the knots that held the cage in place.

Annja and two other crew members helped him. Hunter was sweating furiously. “Jax!” he bellowed.

“Yo!”

“Get us closer to the cage! We’ve got to help Cole.”

“Roger that.”

Annja heard the engines kick into reverse and saw the churn of ocean water kicking up white as the
Seeker
reversed course. Hunter had his knots undone and started hauling the cage toward them.

“Where’d it go?”

Annja frowned. The dorsal fin had vanished. “I don’t know. But we’ve got to get Cole back here. If he was knocked out by that ramming, he might drown.”

They yanked on the ropes and slowly the cage started coming toward them. “That’s it,” Hunter said. “Reel him in.”

Annja’s stomach cramped and she leaned back, yanking the ropes hard.

There was a sudden spray of water as the shark’s head broke the surface again and its teeth sliced through the ropes.

“Shit!” Hunter ran for a gaff and leaned out, trying to hook the edge of Cole’s cage, which floated just out of range.

“I need more room!”

Annja yanked him back as the shark raced through the expanse where Hunter’s body had been a second before. “Get down!”

They toppled back onto the deck. Hunter disentangled himself from Annja’s grasp. “Jax! I need us back by that cage now!”

The engines kicked up faster and they were closing in on the cage. Hunter got the winch hook ready and handed it to Annja. “As soon as it comes in range, hook it and I’ll get him out of there.”

Annja nodded. “Got it.”

She watched as the cage drifted closer. She could see the dorsal fin still cutting through the surf farther away from the ship. The crew was watching in awe as they saw the fish circling.

Annja couldn’t think about it. She heard Hunter cranking the winch to life. “Get ready, Annja!”

“It’s coming back again!” she shouted.

Annja risked a look and saw the dorsal fin turning back toward the boat. It was on a direct path to intercept Cole’s cage again.

“Hunter!”

“Almost there!”

She saw the cage coming closer. She just needed a little more space. She leaned out, aware that she’d just screamed at Hunter for doing the same thing.

But she couldn’t risk Cole taking another hit like he’d sustained earlier. She didn’t think the cage would handle it.

She could see Cole drifting in the water but he seemed unresponsive. He must have been knocked out against the bars when the shark hit the first time.

“Look!” someone said.

Annja saw the fin dipping below the surface. “It’s going deep,” she heard herself say. And she felt certain this attack would come from the bottom, lifting the cage clear as it hit.

The cage came closer slowly and then Annja realized that she was leaning way out toward it. “Almost there…”

She snapped the hook into place and jerked herself back. “Now, Hunter! Now!”

She heard the hiss of the hydraulics pulling the cage free of the water. Cole slumped as the water receded and then lay down near the bottom of the cage, hoisted at an odd angle by the oxygen tanks.

Annja braced for the sudden reappearance of the shark breaching from far below, but it never came. The only thing breaking the smooth surface of the sea was the steady dripping from the steel cage.

Hunter winched the cage back onto the deck and then Annja waved over some of the crew. “We’ve got to get him out of there. Help me turn the cage on its side and then it’ll be easier.”

Together, they maneuvered the cage until it lay with the opening facing them. Annja scrambled inside and worked her way toward the other end where Cole’s body was.

“Cole!”

She got no response and yanked his mask off and pulled the regulator out of his mouth. She wriggled him out of the oxygen tank straps, then he collapsed against her. Annja struggled to take his weight and, in the close confines of the cage, she found it tough to do so.

“Someone help me.”

Hunter got there next. “Give him to me, Annja.”

Annja backed out of the cage and watched as Hunter dragged Cole free and laid him out on the deck. Hunter tore off the wet suit and pressed his fingers to Cole’s neck, searching for a pulse.

Relief flooded his face. “He’s alive.”

Annja sighed. “Thank God.”

“The attack must have knocked him out,” Hunter said. “He must have clamped down on the regulator knowing what would happen.”

Cole’s eyes fluttered open. “Annja?”

Annja nodded. “I’m here. Are you all right?”

He frowned. “Head hurts. That was some hit I took in the cage.”

“That was some shark that hit you,” Annja said. “Can you stand?”

“I think so.” Cole got to his feet, helped by Annja and Hunter. He stood for a moment and swayed. Annja helped him steady himself. He smiled at her. “Thanks. Glad that you’re here.”

Hunter frowned. “I got you out of there, you know.”

Cole smiled. “Yeah, but you’re not nearly as attractive as Annja.”

Hunter nodded. “Granted.”

“If you two are finished…” Annja said. She stared at Cole. “So, you saw it.”

“I think everyone did,” Cole said. “It’s massive. Definitely a member of the carcharodon carcharias family. But I can’t tell if it’s a meg or not. Going by size, it certainly could be.”

“Could it just be a great white?” Hunter asked. “Maybe a really big one?”

“It might be, but the likelihood of it is remote. There’s not much of an indigenous seal population around here. Certainly not enough to sustain a creature of that size. It must have been forty feet at least. Probably six tons worth of weight on that beast. It was incredible. The dorsal alone—”

“Maybe three feet,” Annja said. “It was terrifying.”

“Did you see it up close?”

Annja nodded. “It made its presence known to me pretty convincingly. Talk about smiling for the camera, holy crap.”

Hunter took a breath. “All right, so what happens now? I mean, we’ve got a monster shark hanging around. How do we handle this? We’ve still got a business to run and something tells me that our being here won’t dissuade this shark.”

“It won’t,” Cole said. “This shark is here to stay.”

“Then how do we handle it?”

“Carefully,” Annja said. “I got a look at those teeth and they’re saw blades, for crying out loud. We don’t play this right, then we’ll all be seeing the business end of them. And I don’t have any inclination to do so. No, thanks.”

“You weren’t in the water with it,” Cole said. “I may never sleep again. We’re going to have to think about this long and hard because we can’t just go back into the water without a plan. A good plan.”

“Hunter!”

They all turned and saw Jax approaching. Hunter nodded. “Good work on that reversing there, Jax.”

“We’ve got a bigger problem right now.”

“What’s that?”

“You’d better follow me to the engine room to see for yourself.”

With Jax leading the way, Hunter and Annja threaded their way through the narrow corridors of the ship and down into the engine room. Cole stayed on deck to clear his head.

Annja could smell something burning and frowned. Fire on a ship is never a good thing. When Jax pulled open the engine room, clouds of dark smoke billowed out.

“What the hell?” Hunter said.

“Engine’s got something in it. Maybe some water, maybe we ground the gears, I don’t know.” Jax frowned. “But this is bad.”

Hunter waved some of the smoke away. “The
Seeker
has brand-new engines. This shouldn’t be happening.”

Annja peered around him and couldn’t see much of anything because of the smoke. She coughed. “It can’t be very good to stay in here. We’ll suffocate if we do.”

Hunter nodded. He looked at Jax. “Blow the smoke out and get Sammy down here to look at this. The engines are his game.”

“All right.”

Annja turned and found her way out, coughing as she went. Behind her, Hunter coughed a few times, as well. In the corridor outside, Annja stopped and bent low to take a deeper breath.

“Why are the engines doing that?”

Hunter shrugged. “Sammy will be able to tell us. For right now, let’s worry about Cole. Even in a worst-case scenario, we’ll be able to get help from the mainland. It’s not like we’re fifty miles offshore, you know?”

“Fortunately.”

“But fire or anything burning worries me.” Hunter frowned. “I’m just not sure what to make of it all.”

They worked their way back on deck and Annja saw Cole staring out at the ocean. “You feeling better?”

He nodded. “I am now, thanks. And thanks for your help earlier. It must have been a little worrisome for you guys.”

“A little, yeah.”

Cole frowned. “I owe you an apology, Annja.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I wanted you to come in the cage with me.” He shook his head. “I’ve been around sharks a very long time. And I know the limits that are there before safety gets compromised. I thought for sure there wouldn’t be a problem, and yet…” His voice trailed off.

“I think we can all agree this shark is something of an anomaly,” Annja said.

Cole grinned. “Biggest one I’ve ever seen. I mean, whale sharks get huge, too, but not ones like this…well, I guess we’ll call it a great white for right now until the jury comes back on the whole meg thing.”

“Still clinging.”

“Yup.”

Annja sat down next to him. “You must have been terrified when you saw it coming for the cage.”

Cole smirked. “I found myself very glad that I’d insisted on the custom job rather than the stock cage they wanted to ship me. That extra bit of steel helped cushion the attack.”

“Such as it was.”

“Indeed.”

A breeze blew over them. Annja could see the surface of the ocean had gone still again—it looked like the polished glass of a mirror. She marveled at the different facets of an ocean—how it could go from a swirling maelstrom in one moment to pure calm.

And it never revealed the secrets that it kept concealed beneath the waves.

“What happens now?” she asked.

Cole shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m still replaying everything in my head. Not that there’s all that much, mind you. Getting knocked out cold on the first pass wasn’t exactly my game plan for the day.”

“What are you replaying exactly?”

Cole shrugged. “Something doesn’t seem right. About the shark, I mean. Maybe I’m trying to drive the square peg of a great white’s behavior into the round hole of what just happened, but something isn’t making sense.”

“Like what?”

Cole frowned. “Not sure yet.” He glanced at her. “You ever have a gut instinct about something and you can’t actually rationalize it or at least verbalize it? And yet, you know there’s something, something that doesn’t feel quite correct.”

“More times than I can tell you about.”

“Figured you would.” Cole nodded. “I just have to let my subconscious process things for a while and work through it that way. But there’s something there all right. It’s weird.”

Annja patted him on the shoulder. “You going to get changed out of that wet suit before lunch?”

“Guess I should.” Cole stood. “I won’t be so anxious to get you in the water the next time we get a visit from that thing. I’m not sure I’m going to be anxious to see it again, myself.”

Annja nodded. “Well, I guess we’ll handle that when the time comes, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Cole got up and walked toward the crew quarters. Annja watched him go and then turned back toward the ocean. She closed her eyes and felt herself expand outward, searching with her subconscious. What was it about this situation that had Cole upset aside from the obvious fact that something huge was swimming in these waters?

Something didn’t feel right to her, either.

She’d had strange things happen to her before on her adventures. But she wondered what could be going on now that lurked out on the dive site. She knew it had Cole spooked and not just because he’d almost died.

There was more to it than that.

And Annja would have to find out what.

“T
HAT’S THE PROBLEM
.”

Hunter stared at the rusted three-inch-long screw and frowned. “Where’d you get that? A yard sale?”

Sammy, the boat’s mechanic, wiped a layer of soot from his face. He stood about five feet tall and almost as wide, leading Annja to wonder how he could work in the close confines of the engine room. He huffed and pointed at the screw. “That’s your culprit. Jammed up the gears on the engine transmission. That’s why we started smoking. And if I hadn’t found it in time, it probably would have wrecked the engines outright.”

Hunter picked up the screw. “But what’s it doing in our engines? Ours are brand-new. This thing looks ancient.”

Sammy shrugged. “That’d be a bit beyond my department, boss. The fact that it was in the engines leads me to wonder who might have put it there.”

Annja stared at him. “You think someone sabotaged the engines?”

“Screws like that don’t appear out of nowhere. Someone had to put the damned thing in where I found it, which was tucked back nicely so a cursory examination would have missed it on the first few passes.”

Hunter frowned. “A saboteur on the boat?”

Annja stared down at her chowder. In truth, she hadn’t felt like seafood, but there wasn’t a lot of alternative cuisine on the boat, so she tucked into it and found it delicious. The warmth of the soup made her feel a bit more relaxed than she had been when she’d come in from the deck.

But now, the idea that someone on board was actively looking to disrupt the treasure hunt made her worry. Especially when she thought back to her own encounter with the person or persons who attacked her.

Cole took the screw from Hunter and turned it over in his hand. “How well do you know your crew, bro?”

Hunter frowned. “I thought I knew them all well enough to trust them with the delicate aspects of this operation.”

“It would seem that’s not exactly the case. Someone might be playing for the other side.”

Annja looked up. “What other side?”

Hunter smirked. “Cole gets a bit paranoid about this stuff.”

“It’s not paranoia. It’s a genuine concern.” He looked at Annja. “Any time you’re talking about treasure, there’s always the risk that someone else will hear about your hunt and then take steps to, shall we say, throw up challenges to your operation.”

“So you think this is an active attempt to derail this treasure hunt?” Annja frowned. “That would mean the traitors are still among us.”

Hunter glanced around at the few other diners in the galley and frowned. “I don’t like looking at any of my people like they’re criminals.”

Sammy cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, like I said earlier, that screw didn’t find its way into the engines by itself. You’ve got a rat on board, Mr. Williams. God knows what they’ll try next.”

Cole watched as Sammy ambled away. “He’s right.”

Hunter nodded. “I know it, dammit. But the prospect of treating everyone like a suspect doesn’t sit well with me. I’ve had my own run-ins with the law before. I know what it’s like to face questioning. It’s not something I take lightly.”

“No one’s accusing you of being a hard-ass,” Cole said. “But for the sake of this trip, we’ve got to find out what’s going on. Our investment’s at risk and our lives could very well be in jeopardy. Combine this with the attack on Annja and we’ve got a real problem to tackle.”

“And the shark?” Hunter asked.

Cole chuckled. “Well, fortunately for us, the last time I checked, sharks don’t come on board the boats they stalk. I think he’s innocent in the engine room sabotage and the attack on Annja.”

“I meant, what about studying it?”

“I know what you meant, bro.” Cole took a drink. “But I think that we have to put a stop to everything until we get to the bottom of this. We can’t risk being distracted with anything else right now.”

Hunter stared at his brother and then nodded. “You’re right. We’ll get this done and then finish the hunt.”

“Good.”

“Where do we start?” Annja asked.

Cole looked at Hunter. “You have personnel files on everyone on board?”

“Not exactly.”

“Why not?”

“Things in this business are a bit looser than that. Hell, you think I’d have gotten Jax if she had to fill out some elaborate background check?”

Cole shrugged. “Not sure that would be a big deal, honestly.”

“She’s good, bro. She knows her stuff. And if wasn’t for her putting the boat into reverse earlier, Annja would never have been able to snag your cage and get you out of the drink. You were on a dead run with that shark when we winched you out of the water.”

Cole looked at Annja. “That true?”

“Yeah. Jax might be rough around the edges—”

“They’re serrated.”

“But she knows her stuff. It’s obvious.”

Cole took a breath. “Guess I wasn’t sure how dangerous things got out there. Me being out of it and all.”

“It was hairy.”

Cole looked at Hunter. “All right, so what do you have?”

“Résumés and the like. Everyone gave me one of those.”

“But you didn’t check any of them out?”

Hunter nodded. “I called the reference numbers.”

Cole sighed. “Easy enough to dummy those up. We don’t have any leads to go on.”

Annja finished her chowder and stood. “Well, there’s always the direct approach.”