The noise continued for several minutes before it stopped, to be replaced by the vibration of powerful engines. The speed dial on the control panel began to move even though no power had been given to the thrusters.
"We're moving," the pilot said, his eyes glued to the speed indicator. "What should I do?"
He turned to the captain. They were up to ten, then twenty knots and still accelerating.
"Nothing," Pulaski answered. Turning to Logan, he said, "Captain, if you would give a message to your crew."
"What do you want me to say?"
Pulaski smiled. "I think that is fairly obvious," he said. "Tell them to sit back and enjoy the ride."
-3- THE BLACK SEA
THE SIXTEEN-FOOT ZODIAC inflatable boat sped toward the distant shore, its flat bottom thumping against the wave like a hand beating a tom-tom. Hunkered down in the bow, hands clutching the lifeline to keep from being bounced out, Kaela Dorn looked like a finely carved figurehead. The spray that splashed over the blunt prow stung her face and her dusky features dripped with water, but she turned away only once, and that was to yell at the man who knelt in the boat with his hand on the tiller.
"Mehmet, crank this thing up, crank it up!" She made circular motions with her hand as if she were twirling a lariat.
The wizened Turk answered with a toothless grin that was wider than his face. He goosed the throttle and the Zodiac porpoised over the next wave and slammed down with even greater gut-wrenching force. Kaela reinforced her grip on the lifeline and laughed with delight.
The two men jouncing around in the boat like dice in a shaker were less enthusiastic. They held tight to keep from being thrown into the sea, their teeth clacking with every jolt. Neither passenger was surprised to hear Kaela tell Mehmet to kick up the speed. After three months of working with the young reporter on the Unbelievable Mysteries television series, they were accustomed to her recklessness. Mickey Lombardo, the crew's senior member, was a short, thickset native New Yorker with arms made powerful from hefting sound and light equipment in and out of every conceivable means of transport around the globe. A wave had extinguished the cigar clenched between his teeth seconds after their wild ride began. His assistant, Hank Simpson, was a blond and muscled Australian beach boy Lombardo had nicknamed "Dundee."
When they'd first learned that they would be working closely with the beautiful reporter, neither man could believe his good luck. That was before Kaela had led them through a dung-filled bat cave in Arizona, down the rapids in the Green Hell of the Amazon and crashed a voodoo ceremony in Haiti. Lombardo said Kaela was living proof of the old axiom: Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it. She'd turned out to be a cross between Amelia Earhart and Wonder Woman, and their libidos had diminished in direct proportion to their growing respect for her audacity. Instead of regarding Kaela as a potential conquest, they now guarded her like a precocious kid sister who had to be protected from her own impetuousness.
Lombardo and Dundee could hardly be classified as shrinking violets themselves. The crews that worked for Unbelievable Mysteries had to be physically fit, aggressive in pursuing a story and preferably brain-dead. The cable TV series had a high turnover and injury rate. With its emphasis on high-risk adventures, the series was tough on production crews - in fact, the misadventures of the crews, rather than their main assignments, often became the topic of each episode. It was the logical continuation of the "true-life" adventure inspired by the success of the Survivor series and its clones. If a reporter or technician were swept into the sea or pursued by cannibals, it made for a better story. As long as a crew didn't lose expensive equipment, management didn't care how hazardous working conditions were.
They had arrived in Istanbul a few days earlier to launch a search for Noah's ark. The ark was an overworked cliché that even the supermarket tabloids had consigned to the back section with Elvis sightings and the Loch Ness monster, so Kaela had kept a sharp eye out for other leads in case the ark story didn't pan out. Their first day, while Kaela was looking for a fishing boat to take them into the Black Sea, she'd struck up a conversation with a colorful old Russian seaman she met on the docks. He had served on a Soviet missile sub and told her about an abandoned submarine base, even drew her a map showing the base's location in a remote comer of the Black Sea, after hinting that a gift of money might refresh his failing memory.
When Kaela approached her colleagues and excitedly poured out the story of the abandoned Soviet submarine base, they lost no time planning a side trip. The sub base might make a good backup if the search for Noah's ark fell apart, as it probably would. The fishing boat had been hired to take them to a rendezvous with a research vessel from the National Underwater and Marine Agency.
Captain Kemal, the boat's owner, was paid by the day, and said he knew of the sub base and would be happy to go there before they hooked up with the NUMA vessel. However, the fishing boat had engine trouble as they neared the base and the captain wanted to turn back to port - he'd had a similar problem before and it would take only a few hours to fix it once he had the part - but Kaela had persuaded him to drop her and her crew off and come back for them the next day. Mehmet, who was the captain's cousin, had volunteered to run them ashore in his Zodiac.
Now, the Zodiac was approaching a wide beach that rose gradually to a ridge of sand dunes. The waves grew higher and closer together, and Mehmet reduced their speed to half. The old Russian sailor had said that the base was underground, near an abandoned scientific station, and they would have to search for telltale air vents. Kaela wiped the water from her sunglasses and squinted toward the grassy hills, but saw no sign of human presence. The countryside was bleak and desolate, and she began to wonder if they had bitten off more than they could chew. The bean counters at U.M. frowned at unproductive expenditures.
"See anything?" Lombardo shouted over the buzz of the outboard.
"No billboards, if that's what you mean."
"Maybe this isn't the right place."
"Captain Kemal says this is it, and I have the map from the Russian."
"How much did you pay that scam artist for the map?"
"One hundred dollars."
Lombardo looked as if he had sucked on a lemon. "Wonder how many times he's sold the same map."
Kaela pointed toward land. "That high spot over there looks promising."
Thut!
Kaela jerked her head back at the weird sound. Then she saw the ragged hole that had opened in the rubberized fabric a foot to the right of her head. She thought one of the many patches on the inflatable's skin had popped off from the beating the Zodiac was taking, and she turned to tell Mehmet - but the Turk had risen from his kneeling position, an odd expression on his face, his hand clutched to his chest. Then he crumpled as if the air had gone out of him and pitched overboard. With no hand to steady the tiller, the boat went broadside and was caught by an incoming wave. The breaker lifted the boat at a sharp angle, then it was caught by another wave and flipped over, spilling the passengers into the sea.
The sky whirled over Kaela's head, then cold water shocked her body. She went under a few feet, and when she came up, sputtering, to the surface, the lights had gone out. She was under the overturned raft. She ducked her head and came up in the open. Lombardo's bald head bobbed up, then Dundee surfaced.
"Are you okay?" she yelled, swimming closer.
Lombardo spit out the remnants of his cigar. "What the hell happened?"
"I think Mehmet was shot."
"Shot? Are you sure?"
"He grabbed his chest and went over the side." With Lombardo following, she swam over to the front of the boat. "This is where the first bullet hit a second before the second one got Mehmet."
"Jeez!" Lombardo said, sticking his finger in the hole.
"Poor bastard." Dundee breaststroked over to join the other two and they all drifted together, holding on to the raft. They agreed to stay with the raft where Kemal would find them, rather than risk going ashore. The Zodiac was low in the water, but some compartments still held air. Several times they tried to flip the boat over, but the weight of the outboard and the slipperiness of the rounded sides made it impossible. They were tiring fast and the waves were pushing them ever closer to the beach.
"That's it," Lombardo said, after an unsuccessful effort that left them all breathless. "Looks like we're going in after all."
"What if the guys who shot at us are still there?" Dundee said.
"You got a better suggestion?"
"The gunshots look as if they came from directly ahead," Kaela said. "Let's hide under the raft and move it off at an angle."
"We don't have a hell of a lot of choice," Lombardo said. He ducked underneath.
When the other two joined him, he was smiling. "Look at this," he said, grabbing onto the waterproof bags that were suspended from the seats, where they had been tied. "The cameras are okay."
Kaela let out a whooping laugh that had a damp echo in the enclosed space. "What are we supposed to do if somebody points a gun at us, Mickey, take their picture?"
"You'll have to admit it would make a good story. What'ya think, Dundee?"
"I think you two Yanks are bloody crazy! But so am I, or I wouldn't be here with you. Tell me, luv," he said to Kaela, "didn't your Russkie friend say this place was abandoned?"
"He said the Russians had left a long time ago."
"Maybe it's like one of those islands in the Pacific where the Japanese soldiers hid in the jungle, not knowing the war was over," Lombardo suggested. "Maybe the guys here haven't heard the Cold War ended." He was clearly excited at the prospect.
"Sounds pretty far-fetched," Kaela said.
"Yeah, I agree, but do you have a better idea of who took the potshots at us?"
"No, I don't," Kaela said. "But if we don't start kicking, we're going to find out real soon. I'll check things out." She disappeared for a few moments. When she returned, she said, “The beach looks deserted. I suggest we start moving this thing off to the right. Otherwise we'll drift straight in."
They grabbed onto the boat, and began to kick. The Zodiac moved, but the rollers pushed them toward shore. The muffled roar of waves breaking on the beach grew louder. No more gunshots came their way and they began to hope that the shooters were gone. That optimism would have eroded quickly if they had been able to see beyond the grass crowning the dunes. A line of razor-sharp sabers was raised high in the sun like the blades of a giant threshing machine, ready to cut them to ribbons as soon as they crawled ashore.
-4- HIGH ABOVE THE overturned Zodiac, a turquoise aircraft that resembled a winged canoe wheeled in a lazy circle. The broad-shouldered man at the controls rolled the ultralight airplane into a tight banking turn and peered down through tinted goggles, squinting against the reflected glare with eyes the color of coral underwater. His wind-burnished face was creased in a look of puzzlement.
Moments before, he had seen swimmers in the water next to the overturned inflatable. He glanced away to get his bearings, and when he looked again the swimmers were gone.
Kurt Austin had been chasing the Zodiac like an aerial motorcycle cop hot on the tail of a speeder, and had seen the boat flip over. He couldn't figure out why it had gone out of control. The seas were moderate, and no rocks or other submerged objects were visible. Austin wondered if the inflatable, or the fishing boat he had seen steaming away from the coast, had anything to do with the television crew he was looking for. Probably not. The crew should be on its way to meet the NUMA survey ship Argo, not heading for this desolate stretch.
Austin was aboard the Argo as a deep-ocean consultant on loan from his duties as leader of NUMA's Special Assignments Team. The other members of the team, Joe Zavala and Paul and Gamay Trout, had been given different and undemanding assignments in scattered projects around the globe. NUMA director James Sandecker had insisted that they take working vacations after the team had crossed swords with the hired killers of a megacorporation that wanted to take over the freshwater resources of the world. He had been particularly worried about Austin's attachment to the beautiful, brilliant Brazilian scientist who had sacrificed herself to bring down the conspiracy.
The Argo was in the Black Sea, collecting information on wave and wind action for an international data bank. With his master's degree in systems management from the University of Washington and his vast practical knowledge as a diver and undersea investigator, Austin had been invaluable in helping to set up the sophisticated remote-sensing survey instruments.
As the cruise had gone on and systems were set in place, however, his expertise became less necessary. He read some philosophy books he'd brought from his extensive library, but he started to grow bored and restless. The ship seemed like a prison surrounded by a very wide moat. Austin was aware that his psyche had been bruised and that Sandecker had his best interests at heart, but he needed strenuous physical and mental activity, not a cruise ship atmosphere.