Nigel removed a Fonseca from his shirt pocket, carefully cut off the cap, and lit it. Expensive Cuban cigars were his weakness, and one he permitted himself to indulge in only occasionally. Smoking was a nasty habit and bad for his health. In another three years, perhaps two, Nigel would have enough money in his Swiss account to retire. He would stage his own demise and vanish from the world that he’d made his own, reappearing somewhere in the Outback of Australia or Alaska with a new name, a new identity, and the means to live as he chose for the next sixty-plus years. Until then, he would bide his time and provide excellent service for compensation for Grigori Varenkov.
Anuata was wrong. Decidedly wrong. Ree didn’t like traveling by seraphim or whatever outlandish name Alex and the others chose to call it. It was uncomfortable, frightening, and barbaric. Even being crushed in Alex’s strong arms as they hurtled along at breakneck speed didn’t make up for the stench, the stygian darkness, or the sense of utter vulnerability that she felt. It was a lot like the sensations she’d felt when she was ten and her instructors had blindfolded her and shut her in a high-tech capsule that duplicated both a lack of gravity and being in the center of a tornado.
She didn’t want to depend on Alex. She didn’t want to depend on anyone but herself, but in the bowels of seraphim, all dignity was lost. She didn’t scream, because she clenched her teeth together, but she couldn’t stop the tears. Fortunately, they were swept along at such a high rate of speed that any sign of weeping was blown away as fast as it appeared.
They bounced and slammed from side to side in what seemed to be a fun-house tunnel with hard rubbery walls. Weird creaks and moans echoed down the corridors as they tumbled and struggled, sometimes swimming, sometimes bobbing like submerged corks until at last they were spewed violently out into the open sea. Alex released Ree and she slid across the sand bottom, landing on her back, staring up at thrashing forms above.
She rolled off, pushing up onto her knees, and tried to regain her balance. She felt drunk and disoriented, but even the night sea was lighter than the inside of the seraphim’s intestinal tract, and the awful smell had ceased to fill her head. A faint odor clung to her clothes, making her swallow hard. An unnerving, persistent clanging vibrated through the water.
“What’s that ungodly noise?” she asked him.
“Are you unhurt?” Alex was at her side, slipping an arm around her. He pointed up. “See that dolphin swimming erratically? They must have started the drive early. The noise is made by long metal poles that the humans thrust into the water. They bang on the poles with hammers to disorient the dolphins. Whales and dolphins are primarily auditory learners. The noise terrifies them and makes it difficult for them to communicate.”
“It disorients me,” she said, shaking her head.
“I’ve no time to take you to safety. Stay close, and don’t get in my way.”
“The same to you,” she said, rubbing a hand over her eyes. The sick feeling was quickly fading, but the awful sounds still resonated through her body. “How do they get so many dolphins in one area?” she asked.
“This is a migration route. The wild dolphins have traveled the same areas for thousands of years.” Alex motioned to Dewi and Anuata. They separated and swam toward the surface. Bleddyn headed off, swimming at top speed, keeping close to the seafloor.
“The dolphins will panic when they start to close in with the boats and nets,” Alex said. “Take care that you aren’t run down by either. If you see a net, and you think you can cut it without putting yourself in danger, do it. Whatever you do, don’t let any of the humans see you, and don’t kill any of them.”
“Gotten soft in your old age?” she asked. “I thought they were your enemies.”
“They are,” he agreed. “But we don’t kill humans without extreme provocation. The last thing we want are news cameras scanning the oceans searching for extraterrestrials.”
“Alex.” She gripped his arm. “You be careful.”
He nodded. “I’ll do my best. It wouldn’t do for me to end up in a net on the beach, destined to be someone’s sushi, would it?”
Another group of bodies passed overhead. Ree could just make out the silhouette of several large dolphins with smaller calves pressing close to their mothers’ sides. And then, she heard the distinct rumble of an outboard motor. Alex swam for the surface, and Ree followed a few yards behind.
She broke the surface to find black water crisscrossed by spotlights mounted on small boats, breaching dolphins, and the occasional gunshot. The sound of so many motors almost deafened her, and that racket was compounded by the blare of air horns and loudspeakers. A dozen, perhaps twenty, vessels had formed a closing circle and were herding groups of panicked animals through the water toward a cove.
Ree could make out a narrow sand beach illuminated by lights. Several larger boats were anchored just beyond the point where the waves broke. And to her right, behind the circle of boats, loomed a freighter. No lights shone on deck or from portholes. It waited, ominously, almost in total darkness.
Vision was poor, and a light rain was falling. The water was choppy, adding to the confusion. Abruptly, to her left, Ree heard the crack of a high-powered rifle, firing once, twice, and then a third time. She looked at Alex to see if he’d heard. Did he even understand what such a weapon could do? For the first time, she felt a rush of apprehension, not for her own safety, but for his. An Atlantean made as ready a target in the water as a dolphin, and as he’d reminded her, he wasn’t immortal.
“Go to shore!” he called to her as he drew his sword. “That rocky outcrop!” He gestured toward a finger of stone that rose out of the sea about a hundred yards off the south end of the cove. “Wait there until I come for you. Don’t let anyone see you!”
Something heavy struck her foot and knocked it aside. She dove under and swam away, looking back to see a small dolphin, obviously a juvenile, eyes wide and frightened, blood streaming from a gash in its rubbery dorsal fin. Ree wanted to help, but she was at a loss. The dolphin outweighed her by a hundred pounds. How could she communicate with it, or stop its flight toward the beach and certain death?
Feeling helpless, she dove down toward the bottom. Nets. Alex had said that the drivers used nets to entrap the dolphins. Cutting a net should be simple, provided she could find one. She recoiled as she saw the tiny body of a dead dolphin calf, lifeless and floating just above the sandy floor. Another dolphin, larger, clicked and whined, pushing at the baby, but the calf was past heeding its mother’s call.
The churning blades of a propeller ground by overhead. Seething with frustration, Ree considered following the boat and attempting to take it out of action, but she didn’t know where to start. She’d never felt so useless in her life. She was trained for hand-to-hand combat, but—armed with a sword—how was she to stop men with guns?
Suddenly, an explosion knocked her back, nearly stunning her and causing her ears to ring. And, as she tried to recover, she was nearly run down by a huge bull dolphin with bared teeth. Ree twisted aside as the terrified mammal plunged past, not toward the beach, but back toward the safety of the open sea.
Depth charges? The bastards were dropping depth charges?
She surfaced again, determined to leap into the next open boat that passed. To hell with Alex and his do no harm to humans mantra. If she could get within grasping range of some of these dolphin killers, she’d make them wish they’d stayed home in bed tonight.
An idling vessel about forty yards away seemed a likely target. She dropped to a depth of twenty feet and swam toward it, but when she reached the boat, she saw something unexpected. Two muscular women rose from the bottom of the sea carrying a length of cable between them. As she watched, they wrapped the cable around the propeller, bringing the motor to a screeching and grinding stop. At the same time, another tattooed and armored shape pressed something against the hull of the boat.
Ree swam closer and realized that these weren’t members of her team, and the masked female drilling a hole through the wood planking wasn’t Anuata.
Lemorians.
The Lemorians had answered the Atlanteans’ call. As she watched, one of the two who’d disabled the motor caught sight of her and raised a hand in salute. Ree waved back and then made herself scarce.
By the time she’d surfaced again, she saw that half a dozen other boats were having engine trouble, and on one twenty-foot-long vessel, figures were swarming over the sides. A man on deck shouted and fired point blank. One of the boarders fell back into the water, but the others climbed over the gunnel, seized the shooter, and pitched him after his victim.
A fin cut the water near Ree. At first, she thought it was a dolphin, but then the creature slid closer and she recognized the outline of a great white shark. If there was one shark, there would be more, and where there was blood ... She’d started to swim toward the fingers of rock that Alex had pointed out, when she became entangled in a section of net. As she tried to cut herself free with her knife, she saw two dolphins, also caught, attacked by a shark. She wanted to help, but knew the thrashing bodies and flashing teeth were more than she could handle.
Reluctantly, she abandoned the dolphins and turned away from the shore. Those in charge of the drive might be on the freighter, and if it was deserted, she could at least find out why it was here. Who knew? She might get lucky and find Varenkov aboard.
Minutes later, she inched her way up the anchor chain and dropped onto the deck. She didn’t know much about freighters, but it was obvious to her that someone had deliberately ordered the deck to be shrouded in darkness. So much the better for her. Keeping in the shadows, she moved from cover to cover. Two men stood at the rail, pointing toward the smaller boats and speaking excitedly in an African tongue, but Ree couldn’t understand what they were saying. She moved around them and cautiously entered the first hatchway she came to.
The heavy door led to a metal staircase. Ree took it and soon discovered that she was aboard a factory ship, designed for processing, packaging, and freezing fish and seafood. Moving from level to level, she saw crews’ quarters, a galley, and refrigerated cargo holds. Deep in the bowels of the ship lay the engine room. A few men were awake, most she supposed were engineers, cooks, and watchmen. Once, an officer passed close enough for her to touch him, but she pressed herself deep into the shadows and he never suspected she was there. Most of the crew seemed to be sleeping, likewise the captain. The door to his quarters was locked, and she had no tools to open it without arousing the alarm.
She’d about decided that her attempts at discovering something worthwhile aboard the freighter were as futile as her efforts to help the dolphins when she heard an odd noise from the interior of one of the smaller cabins. Curious, Ree pressed her ear to the door. It was definitely the sound of crying, and surprisingly, she was certain that it was a child’s voice she heard.
When she examined the door more closely, she found it held shut by a simple bar. Sliding the bar aside, Ree pushed the door open. Her breath caught in her throat as she stared into the dimly lit room. Huddled on the floor, arms around one another, were four—no five—filthy and nearly naked children.
CHAPTER 21
T
he nape of Ree’s neck prickled. A warning, but a warning for what? What harm could these small unfortunates do to her? Ree stood in the doorway, uncertain of what to do. She wasn’t a motherly person. She’d always felt uncertain around children ... at a loss as to how to communicate with them. She’d had no brothers or sisters, and after she’d arrived at the institute, she’d never been in contact with children younger than her own age group.
Still, the sight of this huddled group stunned her, waking some primeval and—until now—dormant urge. She trembled as a powerful need to protect these children swept over her. She had no idea who they were or why they were here. She’d come looking for the Russian, not for mistreated children, but it was all she could do to keep herself from rushing into the cabin and gathering them all into her arms.
The only boy, a white-blond cherub with fair skin and violet-colored eyes, was the smallest. She tried to guess his age. Six? Seven? Tiny for seven, but the expression in his eyes couldn’t possibly belong to a five-year-old. The eyes belonged to someone infinitely older, someone who had known loss and pain ... someone who had lost his innocence centuries ago.
The boy’s huge, soulful eyes held Ree’s for long seconds, and then he hid his face in an older girl’s torn shirt and his shoulders began to quiver. The girls continued to stare, but none uttered a sound. One, a girl of about nine with long black hair, almond eyes, and a delicate beauty, raised a dirt-streaked face as great tears rolled down her hollow cheeks. She hugged herself with thin and bruised arms, but her sobs were as silent as the gray walls around her.
“Who are you?” Ree asked, first in English and then in Spanish. When she got no response, she tried again in French and Mandarin.
When did I learn Mandarin?
she wondered. “Where is your mother?” This time, she spoke in Tagalog, and a flash of comprehension flashed across the almond-eyed girl’s face. “Is your mother here on the boat?”
The child’s expression shuttered and went blank.
Ree took one step into the room, and the children shrank back. “I won’t hurt you,” she soothed, using the Tagalog again. “Do you need—”
She broke off as the shrill wail of a siren echoed through the ship. Obviously an alarm, the ear-piercing sound was followed almost immediately by the creaking of steel doors and the clatter of running feet. “I’ll send help for you. I promise. Someone will come to help you!” Ree ducked back into the hallway and pulled the hatch shut behind her.
Had opening the cabin door triggered the alarm? Were they searching for an intruder?
As Ree started back toward the ladders that would lead her up to the top deck, she felt the ship tilt and sway under her feet. She nearly lost her balance, recovered, and began to run, nearly colliding with a small, Asian sailor in blue work twills and a navy ball-cap.
What had Alex told her about using the power of illusion to deceive humans into seeing something other than what was actually in front of them? There was no time to think. If she was to keep from being discovered, she had to work the trick perfectly the first time. Without hesitation, she imagined herself clad in the same uniform as the little man facing her.
“Watch where you’re going!” he snarled before ducking around her and continuing on down the corridor at a run.
Ree laughed and shouted an appropriately rude insult after him. She wasn’t certain of the Indonesian dialect, but she knew she had the pronunciation correct. Apparently, she decided, being Atlantean, or even partially Atlantean, had its perks.
The ship was a maze of stairs and passageways, but by the time she opened the final hatch and felt rain on her face, she’d figured out that the ship had broken loose from its anchor or anchors and was drifting helplessly on the storm tide. Wind gusts of at least forty knots tore across the open deck, buffeting her and making it difficult to reach the stern.
In the dark, it was impossible to make out the surface of the water, but she had no difficulty seeing the Lemorian warriors scrambling over the sides of the ship. Those of the crew who were on deck had seen them as well. Screaming, they ran for their lives. And when a six-foot tattooed Amazon came at Ree with a raised sword, she took the nearest exit and dove over the side.
It seemed as though she plunged downward forever until at last she sliced into the water and the angry waves closed over her head. The force of her dive carried her deep, and once her momentum slowed, she swam with all her strength for the sea bottom. Above her, Ree could sense rather than see the drifting freighter.
She clamped her hands to her ears, trying to drown out the vibration of the great engines whining and sputtering, and the shriek of twisted steel as the disabled screws ground to a halt. The familiar pain flashed through Ree’s head and with absolute clarity she saw an image of the factory ship washed ashore, tilted crazily onto one side, and beached by the receding tide.
For an instant, Ree thought of the children, trapped and helpless in that cabin, and wondered if they had remained silent or finally given voice to their fear. But the vessel wasn’t going to sink. She was certain of that. They would be safe from drowning, but she could do nothing to help them now. She didn’t know how, but she would alert someone to their plight.
Around her, the ocean boiled with panicked dolphins, hungry sharks, and sunken boats. Bodies—human, Lemorian, and dolphin—rolled on the tide. The salt water was stained dark with blood. Ree could taste it.
She couldn’t remain here. She had no idea where Alex was or where his team members were, and she didn’t know if they had died with so many others. Wearily, she remembered Alex’s instructions. He’d told her to go to the fingers of rock and wait for him there. She didn’t know what else to do. If she could reach the spot, she would do as he’d instructed. Hopefully, he would find her there, and if he didn’t ... If he didn’t, she would have to make her way to shore and then to Pago Pago. If Alex was lost, she still had a goal—kill Varenkov. And once he was dead, she could rescue the children, or at least send the authorities to investigate. Something was terribly wrong, and she couldn’t just walk away from them.
Deciding to swim to the rendezvous point and actually getting there were two different things. The bottom of the sea, here in this bloody cove, was a bad place, but the surface was worse. The storm had worsened; gale winds howled down over the mountain peaks and whipped the waves into a fury.
Boats with disabled motors crashed into one another and capsized. Men swam for their lives, fighting water, tangling in their own nets, and being pulled under by angry Lemorians. And everywhere were the sharks: tigers and great whites, blacktip reef sharks, and smaller species that Ree couldn’t identify.
Twice, she had to fight off attacks by tiger sharks, and once, she was nearly seized by a maddened bull dolphin with huge wounds on his head and side. If she kept to the sea bottom, it was easy to become disoriented, but on the surface, tide and wind made it almost impossible for Ree to fight the current. Finally, nearly exhausted, she pulled herself up onto an outcrop of rock. Here, the wind continued to buffet her and the waves washed over her with ever increasing fury.
“Alex!” she cried. “Where the hell are you?”
As the first purple rays of dawn broke over the horizon, the rain had become a torrent and the winds continued to howl and churn the white caps into a frenzy. The roar of the surf was thunderous, but the cries of the injured and dying had stilled. As Ree had expected, the factory ship lay on one side, hopelessly grounded off the beach. Of the small boats that had darted and raced the night before, there was no sign but a beach littered with wreckage.
Ree’s hands were raw and scraped from hanging onto the rocks. Every inch of her body ached, and somewhere in the hour before the passing of night, she’d given up hope that Alex would come for her. She could imagine him, washing across the seafloor, cold and stiff, his beautiful green eyes devoid of life. Or ripped and shredded by a high-powered rifle or a great white shark. She wanted to believe that it wasn’t possible that he could die, but she knew better. Nick had died. She’d loved him, and she’d believed that he was invincible, and then he was gone.
Was it the same with Alex? Had her loving him killed him? She’d tried so hard to keep her emotions from interfering with her life. She hadn’t wanted to ever risk her heart again. But she’d failed. Somehow, Alex had gotten past her defenses and made her care again ... made her love again. And now, she’d lost him, too.
Ree felt as broken as the shattered hulls on the beach. Her entire life had changed from the moment she’d laid eyes on Alex. She’d changed. And she had the feeling that there was no going back ... that without Alex to guide her, what future she had would be short and empty.
If she could end Varenkov’s reign of terror, her life might have some meaning. At this moment, she doubted her ability to do that as well. What use had she been to anyone in last night’s slaughter? She was caught, impossibly, between two worlds, and without Alex she didn’t have a place in either.
She lowered herself into the water, letting the current catch her and drag her under. She half expected to choke, but she didn’t. Beneath the surface, she felt stronger, more alive. She’d taken the first few strokes toward the beach when Alex loomed up in front of her.
He was grinning.
“You took your sweet time about getting here,” she said, then flung herself into his arms. “Are you hurt?” She covered his face with kisses. “Are you all right?”
“If you don’t drown me, I’ll be all right.” He laughed, kissed her back, and then broke free of her embrace. “Let’s get out of here. This water is unclean.”
“Where?”
“Pago Pago, eventually. The others are on their way there now.”
“They’re okay? All of them?”
“Dewi nearly lost a leg to a great white, but Anuata came to his rescue. If he didn’t have a soft spot in his heart for her before, he does now.”
“Will he be—”
“He’ll heal fast enough, but he won’t be of much use to me for a few days. Anuata will take care of him. Bleddyn has gone ahead to scout out Varenkov.”
“We’re going for him?”
Alex nodded. “But if he’s on the island, on Samoa, he can’t go anywhere in the next day or two. The weather’s only getting worse. Planes are grounded, and no captain would put out to sea under these conditions. We have a few hours to unwind ... to be alone. That is, if you want to be with me.”
“I do,” she answered without hesitation. “But what happened here ... what the Lemorians did. Won’t that cause trouble for your people? Someone must have seen something. They killed humans. I saw them. And the boats—they sank the small boats.”
Alex shrugged. “It’s true. Men died, but innocent dolphins died as well. I won’t lose sleep over those butchers who got caught in their own trap. Without the Lemorians, Dewy, Bleddyn, Anuata, and I wouldn’t have made much difference. But they came, and they put an end to the drive. Most of the dolphins escaped, thanks to them.”
“But if they were seen. What will happen when the men tell what they saw?”
“Most of the men in the boats died. And if any survived, they may not say a word. In a storm like that, boats overturn. Men drown. Sharks feast on the bodies.”
“And on the living,” she said.
“And on the living,” he agreed. “It’s what sharks do. And any man who’s lived through this will be thought a liar if he starts spouting tall tales about fish men coming out of the water to attack the boats. Sensible men will hold their tongues, and the fools will probably be laughed at.”
“But you told us no killing,” she insisted.
“I did. And I held by my order. I didn’t kill anyone. If the Lemorians got a little over enthusiastic, that’s not my fault. I didn’t ask for their help. It was my brother the king and the high council. It had to be. So the blame, if there is any, falls on them.”
“I was on that factory ship, before the Lemorians cut the anchor lines and destroyed the screws and bow thruster.”
“Why? I told you to go to the rocks and wait for me.”
“I wanted to make sure Varenkov wasn’t on board.”
“Did you find him?”
“No. He could have been aboard. Hell, half the U.S. Navy could have been aboard. I didn’t realize how big it was inside. But I did find something disturbing, five children. They looked starved.”
“Probably children of the factory workers. There are a lot of women workers. They cut up and process the fish and dolphins. They aren’t supposed to bring their children on board, but you know mothers. They probably sneaked them on.”
“But they seemed so frightened ... They were terrified.”
“Probably thought they’d be put ashore. Separated from their families.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I think it was something worse than that.”
“But you don’t know for certain.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then, let it go. If there are children on that ship—”