Piranha

35

Max kept track of the recovery process from his engineering station in the op center. According to the latest reports from the divers on the Roraima, shoring up the collapsed steel girders was complete and they were beginning to dig through the debris where they’d gotten the radiation readings and found the camera lens. Eddie and Linc were about to go down for their second dive and join the search. If any photo tins were left intact down there, they should be relatively near the surface since the passenger cabins had been at the top of the ship.

“Max,” Mark Murphy said with uncharacteristic alarm, “you better get over here and see this.”

“Are the radiation readings spiking?” Max asked as he went over.

“Worse. I just got an email.”

“From who?”

“That’s problem number one. I don’t know.”

When Max reached Murph’s station, he immediately saw the second problem. The email contained two photo attachments. The first was a picture of the interior of a tourist submarine with two rows of people, sitting back to back, with their wrists bound behind them and blindfolded. In the background was a plastic shipping barrel. The second photo showed what was in the barrel. It was enough dynamite to blast the sub to bits.

The message had only one line: Stay away or they all die.

Max frowned at the screen. “You don’t know how you got this?”

Murph threw his hands in the air, flummoxed. “This is my private Corporation account. Nobody but the people on this ship should have the email address.”

The breach was further confirmation that their security had been compromised.

“What does he mean ‘stay away’?” Murph said.

Max turned to Linda. “Show me the harbor.”

The main screen displayed the feed from one of the deck cameras. It panned left to right until Max spotted an odd white vessel in the distance moving slowly toward them.

“Zoom in.”

Linda magnified the image until they could see a high-definition shot of a submarine that had catamaran pontoons on either side plowing through the rough seas. Armed men in wetsuits and scuba gear braced themselves on both pontoons amid dozens of barrels like the one in the email. Each of them had to have been filled with explosives.

“They’re going to blow up the Roraima,” Linda said.

“I’m getting really sick of Kensit knowing what we’re doing and where we’ll be,” Murph said.

Max agreed. “This took some planning. They didn’t just throw together dynamite and a sub hijacking at the last minute. They’ve known we were coming here as long as we have.”

“Which means Kensit knows what we’re looking for,” Murph said. “Destroying the Roraima is the only way to keep us from finding it.”

“He must also know at least some of our capabilities. That’s why his men brought the hostages. They realized we would have torpedoed them the instant we knew it was them.”

“We can’t let them destroy the ship,” Murph said. “We’ll never find Kensit if that happens.”

“What are our tactical options?”

“Offensive weapons are off the table with hostages inside.”

“And we can’t send divers to attack,” Linda said. “Even with the rough seas, they’ll be spotted long before they could sneak up on the sub. They’d kill everyone on board before we got within a hundred feet.”

“They’ll probably kill everyone anyway,” Murph replied. Given what Max had seen about Kensit and Bazin’s operations, he had no doubt the hostages were in grave danger no matter what they did.

“We have to do something,” Murph said.

“What if we—” Max said and then stopped himself. He suddenly had an idea that might work, but if anyone really was listening in on their conversations, he’d have to risk putting it into play without conferring with anyone else.

“What if we what?” Murph asked.

Max shook his head as if he was frustrated with himself. “Nothing. It’s too crazy. We need to back off.”

“And just let them erase the evidence we’re looking for?”

“We don’t have a choice,” Max said, hoping he sounded convincing. He called down to the moon pool. “Get me Eddie.”

When Eddie was on the line, Max said, “We’ve got company coming, half a dozen hostiles on the outside of a sub carrying barrels of explosives.”

“But we’ve got five men down at the Roraima, digging through it. They’re about to come up for their decompression stops.”

“I know. There are hostages inside the sub, so we need to make sure they’re not harmed. I want you and Linc to take SPPs down with you just as a precaution.”

Eddie sounded confused. “As a precaution?”

“I’m sorry but I can’t explain right now. When you get down there, send your people up and you two hunker down inside the PUH.” Max hoped that the portable underwater habitat would provide a safe haven for Eddie and Linc. “Wait for my signal that the hostages are no longer in danger. You’ll know it when you hear it. You’ve only got about ten minutes before the sub gets here, so hurry.”

“Roger that.” He hung up.

“SPPs?” Murph said. “But you said—”

Max interrupted Murph before he could blurt out anything more. “I need you to trust me.” He addressed everyone in the op center. “We are not going to let those hostages be killed. Do you understand?”

They all nodded, but Max could tell they were confused.

They did trust him, however. That’s why no one asked why he had sent Eddie and Linc down with SPP-1 underwater pistols that fired deadly steel darts, firearms specially designed for Soviet-era Special Forces and acquired by the Corporation.

The crew knew Max was sending his men into battle.