Something’s Down There

Chapter Two

From the bridge of the converted minesweeper, Chana Sterling scanned the shoreline of Ara Island through the 7 X 35 sporting binoculars. She panned down the dockside with its rickety slips until she came to the southern end where the Tellig would moor.

It was the deepwater area, the only place a ship drawing eight-plus feet could tie up, and even though the Company had a ninety-nine-year lease on the spot, it wasn’t unusual for the islanders to stick some old hulk in there just to get it out of the way. The last two times they had worked in this section they had had to drag out sunken ketches before they could berth.

“All clear for a change,” she said.

At the wheel, Lee Colbert squinted across the water and nodded. The sun had cracked his lips again and he fished in his pocket for the tube of Chap Stick and wetted them down. Many months on the ocean had tanned him deeply, but an exposure after a week away tinged him with a new, subtle redness, a color that shadowed well on his taut frame. The past three days he hadn’t said much to anyone, not that his long silences were unusual, but this was one trip he never had expected to take. The Company had promised him retirement the end of last month, then Monroe had come down with pneumonia, this damn trip had come up and the Company exercised their recall clause in his contract, and here he was back in the Caribbean instead of on his new farm in Vermont.

“Take another look at the channel,” he said. “They had one wild blow here two weeks ago.”

Once again, Chana searched the deep water marked out by the buoys, following the cut all the way to dockside. “Nothing sticking out this time.” She leaned over and checked the depth recorder. There was thirty feet under them and it would diminish to twelve feet at low tide when they were at the dock. Eight years ago the Company had blasted this entry out of the solid coral and hoped the Ara natives would think enough of it to keep it clear, but to them it was just another sign of mainland intrusion and they used the cut as a dumping ground for anything that could sink.

Colbert eased the Tellig into the channel and brought her against the pier so gently that the pelican on the piling didn’t even stir. Chana was first off, fastening the bowline around the iron cleat, then going to the stern to help the crew off-load some of the equipment.

This time it wasn’t much. Their assignment was to make an information contact with the Sentilla and complete an undercover search-and-report analysis of the latest missing boats and ships in the sector IV area. The strange stories that the islanders were telling about the destruction of the vessels in that area had been a bonus for the media when everything had gone quiet on the political scene. Everything that had ever happened in the Devil’s Triangle had been rehashed, two TV networks had flown camera ships over the area and one taped a wild account from a survivor of a charter boat.

Ordinarily, little would have been done about the situation, but the president of a cruise ship line and the captains of some of the longer-ranging charter boats out of Miami had feared a sudden loss of revenue and made their feelings known in political circles where it counted, and Washington began to move in its usual mysterious ways.

For the past three months the government scientific research ship Sentilla had been doing an intricate study of the ocean bottom for reasons not disclosed, but it would be natural for another ship to be sent in to make contact and resupply her; the Tellig drew the assignment.

What nobody realized, however, was that the Tellig was only camouflage for the highly sophisticated scientific machinery on the Sentilla, run by a bunch of Ph.D.‘s equipped to do maritime detection work of almost any nature.

When everything was secure, Colbert left Joe and Billy Haines in charge of the ship and joined Chana on the pier. He took the pipe out of his mouth and pointed it toward the shoreline. “Berger gets fatter every year. Look at him.”

They watched a rotund middle-aged man scan the boats from the safety of the pier.

“He doesn’t have to pass any physicals,” Chana said. “They told me he looked like that when they recruited him.” She waved and the fat man waved back. “I wonder why he doesn’t come down to meet us?”

Colbert grinned and shook his head. “He gets seasick, that’s why. No way he’s going to come down those steps to dockside. Let’s go get a drink.”

Charlie Berger greeted them with a handshake and his famous smile. As hot as it was, he wore a seersucker suit and a stained necktie because he thought it made him look like Sydney Greenstreet in Casablanca. “Hope you had a good trip,” he said.

“No trouble,” Chana told him, “the usual dull journey.”

Berger glanced toward the horizon and gave a small shudder. “You heard about the Arico Queen?”

Chana nodded. “The Ponteroy had just reached them. They picked up all hands out of the lifeboats. Anything new on it?”

“Nothing came in here. They’ll probably interrogate them in Miami and we’ll read all about it in the papers. That flash the radio operator put out about something grabbing them from the bottom had to be a lot of garbage. They were in water five thousand feet deep.”

“Something sunk them,” Colbert said sourly.

“Sure,” Berger admitted, “but it was more likely something that blew up in their hold. The Queen has been making regular trips down to all those hot spots in South America, and if they were carrying munitions that went off suddenly, that could be your answer.”

“You know something the Company doesn’t?” Chana asked.

Berger felt a sudden chill and wiped the sweat from his face. The crazy tide of politics had squeezed a lot of the lifeblood out of the Company, but it still was a powerful force that could be felt anywhere in the world. And Chana was his immediate superior. “I guess I’ve been in the tropics too damned long,” he said. “I’m getting the Sydney Greenstreet feeling again.” He grimaced at the thought and harrumphed the way the actor did when he played in The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart. It was a damn good imitation, he thought.

They turned into the ramshackle building that had BAR painted over the porch and went inside to unexpected coolness. The concrete slab floor was kept constantly wet from a ten-foot length of half-inch well pipe drilled every two inches or so, and an ocean-fresh breeze blew right across it.

“Didn’t anybody ever hear of water conservation?” Chana asked Berger.

“They don’t need it here,” he added. “That’s artesian water. Been flowing from the ground since the island was formed, I guess.” He led them to a table that had to be his personal spot, considering the size of the chair in the corner. It was evidently handmade, being oversize and extra well braced. He grinned when he lowered himself into it and relaxed with satisfaction. “A man needs a few small comforts,” he said. A wave of his hand brought the bartender over with a pitcher of cold beer and three glasses, and when they were filled he toasted their arrival and said, “Now, where do we begin?”

Chana reached into her pocketbook and took out her compact, laying it beside her glass. It didn’t look like a miniature recorder at all.

“Nice equipment,” Berger said. “How long does it run?”

“An hour fifteen minutes.”

“Won’t take nearly that long,” Berger told her. “You want to ask questions or for me to just tell it?”

“Since we have all your initial reports, suppose you just update them and then we can do the question bit.”

“Sure, but I wish I knew what to tell you. One thing is certain... those boats were sunk. Ain’t no way these islanders would do that to themselves or anybody else either. Trouble is, the stories we get are ridiculous. Each one gets worse than the last one.”

“How?”

Berger spread his hands and shrugged. “Well, these people are... islanders, you know? They believe in a lot of funny things and when it comes to superstition ain’t nobody got them beat. So whatever one says or thinks he sees, then the next one’s got to double it, and believe me, don’t try to change their mind none or say they’re lying. Do that and you’re out, and I do mean out.”

Chana nodded, frowning. “Is there any common point in their stories?’

“Yeah. Something is trying to eat them. Doing a damn good job, too.”

“That’s nonsense and you know it.”

“But they don’t know it. The thing has been seen...”

“Your report said ‘not actually.’”

“True,” Berger agreed. “It was something there in the night. It was seen against the stars. It breathed and smelled bad.”

“Could that be imagination?”

Berger finished his beer and refilled his glass from the pitcher. “Absolutely. I’ve seen them imagine a lot worse. Thing is, you can’t tell. Put them on a polygraph and there wouldn’t be a single indication of them lying. What they tell you they absolutely believe in.”

“What do you think about it, Charlie?”

After a moment’s pause, Berger looked at her seriously. “I’m only contracted to work at a local level, Chana.”

“Fine, we’ll regard it as educated guessing. You’ve been here nearly twenty years, so your opinions could mean something.”

“Okay,” he said. He took out a section of map from his pocket and spread it out on the table.

“Where’s the rest of it?” Colbert asked.

“This is all we need.” He had circled an area to the east of Ara and Peolle Islands and tapped it with his forefinger. “What we’re interested in is here, not the whole supposed Triangle. Now a few accidents have happened recently outside this area, but they were fully explained. All the crazies are right in here.”

“What do the numbers mean?” Chana asked him.

“Those indicate the order they were sunk. Notice that there’s no set pattern except that the early ones weren’t too far off the islands. Then one goes out a hundred miles, the next eighty miles south, then in close, south again, then a hundred fifty miles north, then right up to the Arico Queen, who went down a hundred ten miles due east of here.”

Chana turned the map around and studied it, then passed it to Colbert. When he finished he looked across the table and said, “What’s it mean to you, Charlie?”

“Well,” Berger said deliberately, “whatever’s getting them doesn’t stand still. It goes looking.”

“Nonsense,” Chana almost hissed. Then she stopped and looked at Colbert. The captain’s face had the same expression Berger’s had, as though they were talking about something they couldn’t quite believe but had no choice because the evidence was right there in front of them.

With a laugh, Chana broke the tension. “All right, enough jokes. Let’s just drop the monster theory and zero in on other possibilities. What have you got that’s political, Charlie?”

“Only what I hear from the fishermen. They make observations, never conclusions.”

“That’s our job anyway,” Chana told him.

“Uh-huh. Well, they got a lot of Cubans out there on the water.”

“There have always been a lot of Cubans out there.”

“I know. Number five on the map there was a Cubie and he got it just like the others and was just as shook up as they were too.”

“That isn’t political.”

“No, well, the way another Cubie boat got in and took the two survivors off the rescue craft before they could reach shore could be. The trawler that went down was low in the water as if they had a full hold, but one of the boats that had seen them headed south said they couldn’t have had fish aboard because their nets were just junk, all rotted and kind of hanging there, the same as they was the last time he saw them a month before.”

“What are you thinking, Charlie?”

“They don’t import narcotics into South America. They do import guns.”

“So they had a cargo of Russian armament on board. If that was the case the Company will have a record of it.”

Colbert let out a noncommittal grunt and said, “Maybe that’s why she sunk. The Company likes to let the Cubies know they’re being watched.”

“Possibly,” Berger said. He sipped at his beer again, then put the glass down and leaned forward. “Does the Company know about the three mines that drifted up on the south end of Scara Island?”

Chana and Colbert looked at each other. This was something they weren’t briefed on, so the Company didn’t have any knowledge of it at all. “When did this happen?”

Berger shrugged. “I can’t pinpoint it, but they appeared at different times, maybe four weeks between each sighting, and are still there.”

“Why didn’t you report this?” Chana demanded.

“Because I just heard of it yesterday. Scara isn’t much of an island... no water, little vegetation, some trees... nobody lives there and the only reason the mines were spotted was because the boats pick up a few sea turtles in the area.”

“Did they know what they were?”

“Sure. They saw plenty of them during the war.”

“They should have said something!”

“What for? Those mines weren’t going to damage anything. Whatever grounds itself on Scara stays there. It’s a collect-all around here. The existing currents seem to bring all kinds of crap to that place. What I’m getting at is an old rumor about a ship that went down out there about 1942. Supposedly, a couple of the old hard hat divers went down on her but there was nothing to salvage. The rumor says the deck was loaded with crated mines.”

Colbert tapped the table impatiently, a new look of concern on his face. “That wasn’t a rumor. That was the Alberta. She took a torpedo in the bow, tried to beach on one of the islands but couldn’t make it and went down in three hundred feet of water.”

“How would you know that?” Chana asked him.

“I was on a ship back then too, young lady. On a U.S. destroyer.”

Chana felt her face redden and she had to compose herself. “Make your point, Charlie.”

This time Berger didn’t address her. He looked directly at Colbert and said, “Could time and natural deterioration finally eat out the metal holding those mines down?”

Colbert frowned, his mouth tight. “There would be one hell of a coral formation around them.”

“Those mines had quite a positive flotation, Captain. That constant strain could conceivably crack the coral.”

“No,” Colbert finally said. “The flotation just isn’t that great. The coral would be too much for it.”

“Supposing it was given a little help from outside?”

“What are you getting to?” Chana asked him.

“The Sentilla has been making seismographic recordings of the area where that ship... the Alberta was supposed to have gone down. They touch off two-hundred-pound charges of high explosives in various areas and record the echoes that bounce off the bottom.”

Chana saw what Berger was hinting at and said, “Damn!”

Colbert needed more convincing. “They don’t use explosives now. It’s all done electronically.”

“Their equipment went out and they didn’t want to interrupt their schedule while the repairs were being made and went back to the old method for two days.”

“Well?” Chana asked.

Colbert nodded. “It could happen.”

“Oh boy,” Chana said, “the year of the mines. Let’s hope they all wind up on Scara.”

“It could be that they didn’t,” Berger said. He looked at Colbert again and wiped the sweat off his brow. “I’m no explosives expert, but I picked up something in a technical journal a long time ago that said the United States was making mines with a built-in attrition. After a certain period of time the explosive would have no force to damage. You know about that?”

Colbert nodded. “I heard it, not that I believed it, though. It sounded like propaganda to me.”

“Not necessarily,” Berger argued. “After a war no one wants live mines floating around, not the winners, not the losers, so it could make sense.”

“So,” Chana added, “these loose mines, now still active, but at low power, could be responsible for wiping out those boats. No big blast, just a nice low thud, enough to take them down.”

Berger bobbed his head. “Something like that.”

“You sure do get political, all right. If that theory ever proved out everything would get dropped in Uncle Sam’s lap with a roar heard ‘round the world. Look, all we have right now are three things tentatively identified as mines on the shore of a barren island. Let’s keep it that way until we see what it’s all about. To date, the official position is that these sinkings are a remarkable coincidence.” Chana knew that the skepticism showed in her voice, but she went on doggedly. “As far as anybody is concerned, we are independent shipping resupplying the Sentilla.”

“Good luck, lady. You’re going to need it.” Berger’s eyes were laughing at her.

“Why?”

“Because in a couple of days another ship will be laying off here ready to get in on all the action they can.” Berger grinned then and added, “It’s a motion picture company. They’re doing a movie on the Devil’s Triangle with a sea monster angle.”

“We have nothing to do with them,” Chana snapped. “This is a fairly innocuous mission that hasn’t even been discussed publicly.”

Berger let out a deep-throated rumble again and said, “A Hollywood publicity crew doesn’t wait for public discussions. They make up what they want. They can smell out details like our brunch here. They can put two and two together.”

“Nothing’s been said about our mission,” Chana reminded him.

Berger twisted his lips into a sardonic smile. “You’re going to provide great background for them. They’ve already got shots of the Ponteroy picking up the crew of the Arico Queen. Give them half a chance and they’ll put all the bits and pieces together, and even if they don’t fit they’ll make something up that does.”

“The Company know about this?”

“Right,” Berger said. “They called me an hour before you docked. The admonition given was to keep a very, repeat very, low profile and don’t let any official position rear its ugly head in this case. Or else.”

The way Berger said it made Chana’s skin crawl. She knew how the Company could work under special conditions. “Or else?” She made it sound unconcerned.

“Yeah. The Company scares me sometimes, the way they think ahead so damn far. They’ve had a man over on Peolle for a couple months already.”

“What!”

“Ever hear of a guy named Hooker? Mako Hooker? He’s one of their big heavies. Took out those two Russian rascals right in the subway station in New York. We were still in the Cold War then.”

“Hooker’s retired,” Chana said quietly.

“I thought in his department you had to get killed to get retired.”

“Sorry, but I’m not familiar with his department.”

Berger watched her skeptically. “Well, he’s retired right next door, only twelve miles away. He bought into a damn good boat with a native captain who knows these waters like the back of his hand, and the way he cruises in it he’s going to be as familiar with it himself before long.”

“Hooker retired,” Chana insisted. “State practically forced the issue.”

Berger snorted and went back to his old island-gruff manner. “State is a bunch of dummies. Fat-assed, pantywaist slobs who can only mess things up. If they let the Company handle it we’d never be jammed the way we are now. Damn jerks.” His eyes raised and caught hers in an unguarded moment. “I didn’t know you knew Hooker.”

“We met,” she said.

Her tone was convincing enough and it was only Colbert who saw the tautness in her hand that was lying on the table.

The tip of an orange-red sun was hovering on the edge of the horizon, taking a last look at the sea for the day. It was another calm time, the water’s surface rolling gently under soft two-foot swells. A large school of menhaden suddenly blackened an area the size of a football field, made it roll and sparkle in the fading sunlight, then disappeared as suddenly as they came. A loose group of birds cruised behind them, disinterested because their feeding was complete and they were racing toward home grounds. Their flight course was exact and unwavering.

When the first bird uttered a raucous, piercing scream the small flight twisted and split up in sudden terror, evading the area where the menhaden had been only a second before. The birds were not hatchlings. They had made these flights hundreds of times and instinctively recognized the workings of a nature they were a part of.

But apparently they were seeing something too foreign to be natural. It was not something they could even identify and be sure of, but it meant danger, the presence of a predator. It was only a dark thing, huge and deadly, and it was lurking, that they could sense. They were around it in seconds, then regrouped again on their course line home. A moment later they had no memory of the incident, but on subse quent flights instinct would trigger them into circumnavigating that particular area.

For a moment the shadow became substance, rippling the water with the tip of its forward parts. It had direction and motion, heading south-southeast fast enough to just barely make the water bubble. Then, as though it had seen or smelled enough to satisfy it, the shadow left the surface and dropped deeper and deeper until it was no longer visible from above.

It was likely that Joe Turkey was the oldest man on either Peolle or Ara. At least none of the natives doubted it. He knew the history of everyone and everything as far as anyone’s memory could reach. Some said he could remember as far back as the Great White Fleet, the United States Navy ships that had made the famous world tour at the turn of the century.

But Old Joe Turkey was not a man who stayed on the beach. Twice weekly he put to sea alone in his hand-built sailing dory, made sure the forty-year-old two-cylinder Johnson outboard would start, then shut it down and hoisted his single sail. The antique outboard motor was really not for general use. It was Joe’s sign of prestige, like his friend Lula’s electric washing machine in a house that had no power hookup. But it was there also because Joe was a careful man.

This night they sat around him at the fire to hear the story told again. It had been a good day, a very good day, and he was two hours away from his island with enough fish to make many weeks happy. Oh, there had been some boats missing and the stories had started, but Joe knew the ways of the people and had only nodded at the accounts without putting any belief in them at all. Twice, he himself had been nearly wrecked by migrating whales and some years ago something had torn the rudder right off the steel pins on the transom. On the night in question he had taken a big swig of beer from the last bottle in the ice chest and had set back with his arm around the tiller bar, watching the night close in. Ahead of him he could see the little yellow dots of light as the lamps were lit in the houses on Peolle.

He must have dozed. It had been a good day and a tiring one and he was old. But the tide was right and the wind was behind him and he knew any change of condition would awaken him. And he was right about that. He came awake with a start, his nose sniffing the air, suddenly alert because now there was no wind at all and he was sitting there behind a sail that hung totally limp in absolutely still air. Even the water seemed dead, with not enough swell to make the boat rock. The tidal drift had turned him sideways, still taking him toward Peolle, but so slowly it was hardly noticeable.

Still, there was nothing to worry about, was there? He could still see the lights of the island; the stars overhead were bright sparkles in a dense black sky and surely the wind had to start blowing again. Or, at the very least, he could always start his engine and be able to tell everyone how it took him safely home from such a great distance offshore.

So he lay back and watched the stars. He could smell the sea too. Whenever the wind stopped, the water gave off its heat and smelled different, as if the smells were coming from the very bottom, where it guarded all its secrets. Here and there he picked up the odor of a dead fish, its flotation bladder keeping it on the surface.

One by one, he picked out his favorite constellations, always amazed at their absolute steadiness in the universe. A faint rank odor made his nose twitch, a pungent fish smell like the red tide brings, but even that was not a new thing to him, so he went back to watching the stars again and felt the dory bob gently. Good, he thought, the wind must be picking up. But he looked at the sail and frowned. It was still limp, the silk streamer at the tip of the mast lying against it, unmoving.

The dory bobbed again and that smell seemed to be coming from the port side. Then Joe Turkey looked up and saw that his favorite star cluster that lay low on the horizon wasn’t there anymore. Oh, it was there, but he just couldn’t see it. Something was in the way, something blacker than black that was shielding the stars, and even while he looked it rose still further to blot out another segment of the night sky, and whatever it was began to breathe the horrible death smell down on him. All Joe Turkey could do was push the Johnson off its chock and try to get the cord wrapped around the flywheel—with hands that fumbled until sheer habit got everything set and he yanked the starter rope with all the strength he had. The Johnson spit, coughed and snapped into life and old Joe swung the dory toward Peolle and never even looked back until the self-contained gas tank went dry a quarter mile offshore.

But by then the wind had picked up and he docked, unloaded his fish and knew he had a story to end all stories on the island. Later, he would embellish it, but right now it was pretty good just as it was.

The islanders sat up close to Joe Turkey. Not only did they not want to miss any of his words, but his tone of voice, his inflections were as descriptive as his narration. No one spoke, not even a slight movement interrupted the moment.

Behind them Berger and Colbert were listening intently, their expressions bland. Only Chana showed any emotion at all, her face reflecting what she thought of native beliefs and their acceptance of strange stories.

Charlie Berger squashed his cigar butt out under his heel and glanced over at Chana. “Now that’s a firsthand account. What do you think?’

She tried to repress a smile. “Well, they haven’t got television.” She watched the small group, each one now adding something he had heard, seen or suspected, and they reminded her of when she was a child, listening to the stories someone told her on rainy days.

“You’re wrong,” Colbert told her abruptly.

“What?”

“Five years ago I would have turned you in for a retraining program, girl. Everything is showing in your face now. Quit that stupid simpering. Those are people there, maybe not as educated as you are, but they have their own ways and own knowledge that lets them survive in places that would wipe you out.”

Chana felt the fury eat her up and her mouth went dry. Colbert’s status was at least equal to hers and there was no way she could take him down for being so insufferable. But she knew he was right and said, “You don’t believe this bull, do you?”

“Why not?”

Deliberately, she took a deep breath, waited a moment until her composure was back and said, “Keep it on a scientific level, Col... sea monsters are figments of the imagination. Nothing, repeat nothing, eats boats.”

“What sinks them, then?” He was taunting her and she knew it, but she had to answer.

“There is a reason. There has to be a reason.”

“They get hit from the bottom in water nearly a mile deep, there is eyewitness evidence of something, so I guess there damn well has to be a reason, all right.” Colbert took his pouch out, refilled his pipe and lit it. “You have any answers?”

“I’m not guessing.”

“Then speculate.”

“Balls,” she said.

“Well, at least you’re beginning to sound like a sailor.”

Charlie Berger let out a muffled laugh and said, “Welcome back to the islands. It’s gonna do you good to get away from the political scene and live where the monsters do.”

“Listen, Charlie...”

“Oh, come on, young lady, take a little kidding. You can’t be serious every minute of your life.”

“The hell she can’t,” Colbert muttered.

The fat man gave them one of his best Sydney Greenstreet smiles. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah, really,” Chana told him nastily. She didn’t like being the only woman caught between two overbearing males.

“Then let’s go have a beer,” Berger said. “You can get serious again. Your friend Hooker came over an hour ago and you guys can have a reunion.”