Something’s Down There

Chapter Nine

The island was banana-shaped, a two-mile-long rising of green, fertile land, edged with a beach of blazingly white sand and populated with hordes of wheeling, screaming birds. The concave side faced the east, the bottom falling away quickly so larger boats could come in almost to the shore. The concrete blocks and support pilings still stood where they had once protected long-ranging German submarines during the First World War, and the rusting ruin of the single large machine shop still contained the aging remnants of forges and tooling to repair their charges.

To the left of all this was the orderly supply center for the Sentilla, crates and barrels of supplies, with two loading barges, their ramps down, ready to transport equipment out to the ship.

In the rear, under the trees, out of the glaring sunlight, were the nearly camouflaged outlines of the hutches the local workers occupied. Well away from the high tide line a dozen small craft sat ready, sails tied down, another two with those almost-antique Johnson outboards that still ran smoothly, and another upside down where several boys were busy repairing the bottom.

The Sentilla was anchored a mile and a half offshore, three smaller boats in its lee. Tenders moved back and forth to the mother ship periodically, then there would be a cessation of activity, a dull boom could be heard, and a geyser of water erupted at the surface of the ocean. Immediately, the activity would resume and sailors with earphones and mouthpieces relayed information and instructions to others out of sight.

On board the Clamdip the three scanned the action while they cruised past the island. When the Sentilla didn’t block their view they saw the sleek hull of Lotusland, her decks lined with avid studio hands waving to the small boats pulling away from the mother ship. The boats were all motorized and shot away rapidly, going around the naval vessel, heading northward. The first two had camera crews aboard, communicating with each other.

Hooker said, “They’re using plain old CB radio there, Billy. See if you can pick them up.”

“Yes, sar,” Billy agreed.

“Damn it, Billy, quit with that ‘sar’ business, will you?”

“Your shark name is trouble, sar.”

“Billy... do you eat mako sharks?”

“Only when I can catch him, sar.”

“Then why are you afraid of them?”

“So I don’t get ‘et’ first, sar.”

Judy grinned at Hooker. “Good thinking. Maybe I should call you something else too.”

“Like what?”

“Oh... good-looking, big boy...,” she teased.

Billy held his hand up and they stopped talking. Billy had nailed the CB frequency and the chatter told them that they were ready to cover anything that could be photographed around the Drifter. Divers were on board with underwater cameras while another crew would film any surface action that happened.

Mako realized that neither ship could try to order anybody away without revealing their identity, and that the only information that would be let out was that Drifter had sustained an accident, probably hitting a submerged object, and Tellig was assisting her to a safe place.

Judy took her glasses from her eyes and pointed toward the southeast. “Mako... check the horizon about one-thirty degrees.”

He raised his binoculars and focused on the area she was pointing to. She was coming up fast, the big, proud hull of the main ship of the Midnight Cruise line. “There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight,” he said.

“You can bet on it.” Judy grimaced. “They’re going to give the tourists just what they’re paying for.”

“And what’s that?”

“Real action. Something to tell their friends about. Stuff from the Devil’s Triangle, an eater tearing boats apart.”

“You think that’s going to impress them?”

For the first time she gave him a deep, serious look, her expression tinged with some hidden sadness. “There are a lot of jaded people on board, Mako. They’re so damn rich they can buy anything they want. Now they’re being given something they can’t buy. Nothing better for them than the blood smell. It’s impending danger. It sends their pulses sky-high and their feet back to the bar again to get back to normal.”

“Judy... you are a part owner of Midnight Cruises.”

“I didn’t start it. Daddy did.”

“You think this is what he planned?” Mako asked her.

She shook her head and stared out at the water. “No, it was to be something different. Daddy got... well, overwhelmed in business.” She paused momentarily, then added, “It’s tough when heavy money gets to be the big prize in life.”

Hooker reached out and put his arm around her shoulder. With a childlike gesture she came against him, feeling the hardness of his arms and the taut musculature that pressed against her side. His fingers were wrapped very softly around her upper arm and she wondered briefly what power they could exert if he had wanted them to.

It only lasted a few moments when the radio came alive again with the Drifter and Sentilla both warning the small boats to stand off and saying that they were taking no responsibility for accidents. Divers were being told that they would be in a danger zone under the ships, but apparently nobody paid any attention. This was a once-in-a-lifetime situation and committed photographers would never pass up an opportunity like it at any cost. If they got nipped by a prop their names would go down in the record books of great underwater stunt-men. The occasion would never warn off other divers at all. They’d just want to make sure they stayed well away from ships’ propellers.

Nobody seemed to care about the eater at all.

Commander Sullivan’s face was set in a tight mask of anger. Whatever had slashed through the bottom hull had taken a small gouge out of the inner one and cut right through the main cable that powered the TV receiver on the deck above. Whatever the robot had picked up was lost forever. Disgustedly, he and his mate went back up the ladder, hooked the receiver into a secondary power circuit and flipped it on for a rerun.

And there was the robot’s eye, peering into the green of the Atlantic, watching the flow of sea life slip around its contoured form. For thirty seconds the field of vision was good to seventy-five feet and in its lateral movements it picked up broken streamers of sargassum and a pair of unidentifiable fish darting out of range. Sullivan glanced at his watch. At any second the robot should be in the oval area he had pointed it at.

And suddenly there was something there. The visibility just as suddenly was shadowed into deep gloom, and before the automatic floodlight could cut in, the robot was hit with a wall of bubbles and for a single fraction of a second Sullivan thought he saw a set of the wildest, most formidable teeth he could ever imagine; then the set went blank.

The commander held a breath a moment before letting it hiss out. “You see that?”

“I saw something,” the mate told him.

“Describe it.”

“Beats me. It went by so fast...”

“Damn it, let’s show it again until we know what it is.”

“That’s no guess.”

“Well,” the mate thought, “it was kind of angular.”

“How big?”

“Who knows, Sully? We have nothing to reference it with. It was just there and gone. Hell, it could have been a piece of flotsam or a hunk of that sargassum that floats around out here.” He stopped and squinted at the commander. “Why? What did you think it was?”

Very quietly and deliberately, Sullivan asked, “You think it could have been... teeth?”

“Come on, Sully, quit dreaming, will you?”

“Something hit us, pal.”

“Sure, and there’s a lot of somethings along the bottom here. Yesterday we fouled the prop twice on some old netting if you remember.”

“And I remember whacking that rotted-out old boat that was floating just beneath the surface, but it sure didn’t hole our bottom.”

“Some old wreck...”

Sullivan shook his head. “We would have picked it up on the gauges, pal. Nothing was there. Nothing.”

“Something was there, Sully.”

Outside, the shouting had started and he knew those idiots with the cameras were going to be all over the place. Well, they had been warned. They had acknowledged the warning. They came on anyway. He and the mate went outside the cabin and watched them. Their equipment was new and state-of-the-art, communication between divers and their boat was evident, and they worked in pairs with true professional detachment yet were extremely aware of the danger of their job.

Sullivan and the mate nodded approvingly. They weren’t going to sweat out this team at all. They went back to the TV screen to review the flash shot of what the robot had transmitted before it went out of action.

Captain Don Watts personally welcomed Hooker and Judy aboard the Sentilla. None of them had met, but the captain had made a quick search of military records and media accounts of his guests to realize that these were no mere tourists. Mako’s security clearance rate was ultra-high and a good portion of his service details were still secret. His agency had directed Watts to assist him in whatever area he needed help, stating that he and the crew of Tellig had a joint cooperation in place. However, it was intimated that Hooker’s judgment took precedence in this matter.

On the stern, the three of them had tall glasses of iced tea while they went through the initial stages of investigative introductions. Judy let herself be dismissed as the heiress to Arthur Durant, with only a monetary interest in the Midnight Cruise line and Lotusland Productions.

She played the game well, having been in it a long time. She could seem aloof or distant during a conversation involving a great deal of technicalities, yet remain totally aware of its substance and intent.

The captain was one of those naval officers who thought the whole world should be wet. He was only happy when he was on the deck of a military vessel, engaged in a military action surrounded by military personnel. Anything else was a major nuisance, and although this had an interesting aspect to it, he preferred to deal with it quickly and get it over with without too much bother.

There was something imposing about the captain. A subdued military demeanor hinted that this man had been through the deadly fire of the war and come through intact and more wise than before because he was born to command and win; yet as imposing as he was, his attitude was direct and friendly.

He said, “Washington has sent me all your credentials, Colonel.”

Judy’s eyes made a small movement when she heard Mako called by rank.

“Forget the title, Captain. It’ll make my work easier.”

Captain Watts nodded. Being a player in any covert action wasn’t part of his makeup, but if he had to be, he felt better being among friendlies. At least the army had a reservist here who was an old pro who knew what the angles were all about. “Tell me, how can I help you?” he asked, waving toward the deck chairs a sailor had brought out.

When they sat down Hooker said, “This operation you’re on... what clearance do you have?”

“You don’t know?”

Hooker shook his head. “This came up suddenly. I just happened to be on the spot so they called me in.”

“There is no security risk on this operation at all, Colonel.”

“Hooker... or Mako, okay? Forget the title.”

“Certainly. Anyway, this is a very public and very standard type of action for us. This time we have been ordered to participate in an underwater exploration of certain geological movements of the earth’s crust that seemed to emanate from this area. We have aboard twenty-three government specialists who are in charge of monitoring this activity, and their results and opinions have all been made public too. They go directly to Washington, uncoded, and are later published in scientific journals.”

“Something’s raising hell,” Mako commented.

Watts shrugged and sipped at his iced tea. “That all started after the detonations were substituted for the electronic impulses. The equipment hasn’t been repaired yet.”

“That sure drew everybody’s attention.”

“Col... Hooker, when stories about boats being eaten by some strange sea creature leak to the press, on comes the sordid publicity that interrupts a scientific fact-finding operation.”

“Something’s doing it,” Hooker told him.

“Something’s always doing it. You know how many boats on the islands were lost last year? Just lost, not to hurricanes or collisions. Not to sea creatures, just plain lost?”

“How many?”

“There were fourteen by official records. There were twenty-seven rescued. Their reasons for losing the boats were sound enough. A loose plank, fire from cooking areas, gasoline leaks on outboard-powered crafts, a couple of collisions with subsurface debris. Nothing that ate them, though.”

“How do you treat their stories, Captain?”

“I give them a great deal of thought, Hooker, a great deal. I’ve been out to sea too damn long not to pay attention to detail even if I don’t understand it. This ‘eater’ concept is ridiculous. You agree?”

For a few seconds Hooker just stared at the sea. “I haven’t given it a great deal of thought yet. You think those mines on the sunken hulk had anything to do with it?”

“Anything’s possible, but after the few breakaways, we managed to secure the rest on the bottom for the time being. We know about those that reached Scara Island, but that’s as far as they will go anyway. Later we’ll dispatch a detonation team to blow them and that should end that. Two have already been destroyed. The Tellig took care of one.”

“You planning anything for the rest of the mines on the wreckage?”

“They’ll be wired before we leave the post and blown when everything’s clear. It ought to make a real show for the Midnight Cruise lines.”

Judy looked up and nodded toward the camera ship. “And Lotusland. You’re giving them a million dollars’ worth of publicity.”

“Uncle Sam is happy to help,” Watts offered. He looked over their heads toward the south and told them, “That crew of divers should add another million to the budget. Drifter and Tellig are getting major roles in this movie.”

The three of them stood and went to the rail. Chana’s crew had nudge Drifter to the large platform attached to Sentilla’s hull, and two dozen sailors secured her properly and got lines from the Sentilla’s cranes around her hull. In thirty minutes the area was cleared and the winch operator on the crane began the lift. The Drifter moved in its sling, then began to come out of the water like a toy.

Handheld cameras operated by the divers and others on their small boats recorded the entire event. Lenses zoomed in as Drifter rose and little by little closed in, and they all got a firsthand look at the single, six-foot-long gash in the bottom, the edges peeled upward into the hull as though a giant ax had slashed through the metal with one enormous stroke. Water poured out like a miniature Niagara and the crane held the ship in that one position until the flow ceased. Only then did one sailor walk up under the Drifter and snap close-up pictures of the bottom. When he walked away he waved off the divers with silent authority, then he stood back and gave a wave to the crane operator, and the Drifter started to rise to the Sentilla’s deck.

Hooker nudged the captain and asked, “Would you have done that with a civilian vessel?”

“It would be an option under extreme circumstances. In this case it’s a necessity.”

“Then I take it Drifter is military equipment.”

“So to speak, Hooker.”

“The government’s pretty raunchy, isn’t it?”

“When it has to be,” Watts told him. He looked at Hooker again, his smile grim. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“Not really,” Hooker said. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m more like an accident.”

“Just waiting to happen,” Watts put in.

“Something like that,” Hooker told him.

Judy joined the men at the rail, watched while Drifter was lowered down onto chocks on the deck, then said, “The captain of the Midnight Cruise line has requested that the three of us join him and his passengers for supper on the beach tonight.”

Watts gave her a sharp glance. “Requested how?”

She pointed toward the cruise ship off their side and waved. A light flashed on the bridge, so they knew they were being watched through a telescope.

“Answer?” Judy queried.

“That’s code,” the captain said sharply.

“I can read Morse, Captain. Well?”

“How’s he going to get all those passengers on the beach?”

Judy let out a gentle laugh. “Not that many will want to go, Captain. Some will be adventurous, but the rest will prefer the bar or the gaming tables. One thing you can be sure of: the food will be exceptional. In fact, the whole evening might be exciting. I’m inviting the crew of the Tellig there too.”

Hooker gave her a questioning look, but she didn’t explain any further.

Very gradually, the sun was completing its arc in the heavens, beginning its slow descent into the ocean. Seabirds winged their way back to the islands and the shadows that danced off the wave tips grew longer. A lone palm tree, somehow uprooted from its island, bobbed aimlessly. The branches slapped the surface and the small, fingerlike clump of root system made eerie wriggling motions, the tips white with salt froth. Its shadow had no mass to it, just a black streak that formed and broke continuously.

Small fish that liked to dive and play around floating objects and their shadows made a myriad of sparkles and splashes, and here and there a small, violent disturbance indicated something bigger had zeroed in on them for a quick kill and fast meal. The reaction would be immediate as the others fled to safety, but their memories were short and they returned within minutes as though nothing at all had happened.

Outside the perimeter of the great palm the predators waited, darting in at their own convenience, selecting their victim when they were ready, not conscious of any danger, because in this area they were safe. They would eat at their own pace, and when they were sated, they would move off as a group to other natural activities.

They knew no danger.

Here they were the only predators.

Realization took time, even for them. They felt a pressure from below, an upward push that shouldn’t have been there at all, and the predators knew that something else was there, something bigger and more deadly than anything they had ever experienced before—and instinct told them to flee. They left fluorescent streaks in the water that was beginning to darken with the dusk, and a great oval calmness started to form as though the ocean suddenly had a gelatin shell, and the ghastly blue form of it just below the surface seemed to turn in an agony of birth; then, as sheet lightning lit up the sky in the east, the thing glided away and the sea returned to normal.

The great palm was totally unconcerned by it all. The few frightened forms of sea life that had stayed hidden in its branches swam out, but not too far. They too were guided by instinct.