The Alpha Deception

Chapter 27

The Biminis lie fifty miles off the coast of southern Florida. They are composed of two major islands sandwiching many small cays little more than a quick sprint apart. The chain offers fewer pleasures than many of its sister islands in the Caribbean. But for big-game fishing it is one of the most sought after locales in the world.

The Biminis are isolated, nearly two hundred empty miles west of the major Bahaman islands. The Biminis’ only airport lies in South Bimini, which provides easy access to all manner of boats and fishing equipment, rented or sold by people totally dependent on tourism for their survival.

McCracken and Natalya had watched the sun come up Wednesday morning on board the plane that had taken them to Miami. There they boarded a small commuter flight which landed in South Bimini just after eight A.M.

“I blew up a whole island last time I was in the Caribbean,” Blaine told her when their small jet at last taxied to a halt.

“You know what they say about playing with matches.”

“Yeah, you get burned. And right now we better get out. The Dragon Fish is probably just waiting for his breakfast.”

“Shall we feed him?”

“Least we can do.”

A small cab took them from the airport to South Bimini Harbor where they planned to rent a boat and plenty of scuba equipment. Of course what they needed most of all was a concrete destination.

“Need a detailed map of the area,” Blaine told the rental shop’s proprietor.

“No problem,” the man returned, reaching into a drawer next to the cash register. He came out with one and spread it atop the counter. “I can recommend some of the best fishing areas.”

Blaine studied the map closely. “What I’m looking for seems to be missing.” And with his eyes fixed on the clerk, “Your map’s one island short.”

The man pretended not to grasp his meaning. “Just tell me exactly what kind of sport you’re out for and—”

“What kind of sport? Say a bit of exploring. My wife and I have this Star Trek fetish. We like going where no man has gone before … and lived to tell about it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do.”

The man lowered his voice. “Fortune hunters, eh?”

“In a manner of speaking, I suppose.”

“Well, I won’t help you get killed,” the man told them, shaking his head. “And there’s my equipment to consider. I doubt you carry enough cash to put up the deposit for the stuff’s full worth and that’s what it’ll take ‘fore I send you to what you’re looking for.”

“You’ve seen the island then.”

The man hesitated. “Never close up. Few of us locals have. When I was a boy my friends and me took a sailboat out and felt brave.” The man’s black face lost its sheen. “Storm came up out of nowhere. They were lost. I got rescued.”

“See any sea monsters?”

The man’s eyes bulged. “You know what’s good for you, mister, you’ll turn around and head for home. I seen plenty like you pass through these parts chasing after legends and mysteries. What I say is some things is better left alone.” He started to fold the map back into sections.

Blaine restrained him with a grasp on his forearm. “Just point me in the right direction. I’ll get the equipment somewhere else.”

The man shook his head, half to say no and half to show his disbelief. “You wanna die that much, mister, I got a shotgun right here under the counter. Put you out of your misery real fast.”

“I’d rather let the Dragon Fish do it. That would make my vacation.”

The man regarded him strangely. “You’re different from the others. I don’t know how, but you’re different.” He tried to hold his stare into Blaine’s black eyes but looked quickly away. “You just might be a match for the Dragon Fish, but don’t expect me to help you find him. Know someone who can, though. Name of Captain Bob. You’ll find him in Alice Town, at the End of the World bar.”

“The name’s symbolic, I assume.”

“You go looking for that island, mister, and it might be more than a symbol.”

Blaine and Natalya took the hourly seaplane from South Bimini over to Alice Town and walked the brief stretch from the airfield to the End of the World bar in the center of town. They did not hesitate before entering but perhaps should have: the End of the World, even at this early morning hour, was two-thirds full with patrons, all of them locals. Many regarded the strangers with hostility as they made their way across the floor in the bartender’s direction.

“We’re looking for Captain Bob,” Blaine told him.

“What’d you want him for?”

“Got a job for him.”

“Captain Bob’s kind of retired.”

“Like to charter his boat.”

“It’s drydocked.”

“Just like its owner,” came a voice from the rear of the bar. Blaine turned and saw a flabby black man with a graying Afro pouring a water glass full of bourbon. “Wet docked would be a better way of putting it in my case, though.” His golfball-sized eyes, the whites creased with brownish-red streaks, turned toward the bartender. “Let the kids come over here. Maybe they’ll buy me a drink.”

McCracken slid a twenty-dollar bill across the bar. “Give me another bottle of whatever he’s drinking.”

“Cost you two of those.”

“Steep,” Blaine returned and reached into his pocket.

“You’re paying for the atmosphere.”

McCracken grasped the bottle by the neck and moved toward the old man’s booth, with Natalya right behind. Too much booze had made Captain Bob’s age indistinguishable.

“If you wanna join me, you’ll have to get your own glasses,” he greeted.

“No thanks,” said Blaine, sliding into a chair.

“What about the lady?”

“Too early in the day for me,” Natalya told him.

“Yeah,” said Captain Bob in what seemed to be the local accent, “me too. Too early in the day but too late in life to worry about it much. Suppose I know why you’re here.”

“Somebody tell you to expect us?” Blaine wondered.

“Didn’t have to. People like you come around regular enough. They heard of me somehow and, like you, they buy me a bottle. Then, like you’re going to, they leave disappointed.”

“We haven’t asked you anything yet,” said Natalya.

“Don’t have to. Questions is always the same. Usually they pulls out a map and offers me a fee to point out what they’re looking for. If I likes ’em, I just says no. If I doesn’t, I sends ’em in the wrong direction. Either way they makes out ahead ’cause they stays alive. ’Course that’s not the way they sees it. They comes here to get rich, they figures, and I’m keeping ’em from it.”

“We’ve come to charter your boat,” Natalya told him.

“For a guided tour of the surrounding islands,” Blaine added.

Captain Bob looked surprised. “Well, that’s a new one. Usually I doesn’t come included in the deal. People is usually too smart to bother asking me. They figures with everything I know, I doesn’t need partners.”

“We’re not here to make our fortunes, Captain,” Blaine told him with as much conviction as he could muster.

Captain Bob studied him briefly. “No, I doesn’t suppose you are. You isn’t like the rest, not as demanding but a hell of a lot more desperate. What you’s after’s got little to do with yourselves, I’d wager.”

“It’s got to do with us all right and with you too and with the whole goddamn world.”

“There’s something out there we’ve got to bring back,” Natalya added. “Millions of lives are at stake.”

“You’s a pretty good actress, little lady.”

“The part’s real.”

“I’ve got a map here,” Blaine said, fishing through his jacket pocket. “Just point us in the right direction. You’ll be paid well for the effort.”

“Like I says, it ain’t the money. If it was, I could be a rich man without puttin’ up with the bullshit that walks through the door here. And I can’t just point you in the right direction ’cause the reef formations tear the bottom of your boat out ‘less you know by heart where they lie.”

“Our first choice is to have you come with us,” Blaine reminded him.

“And I can’t do that neither. Ain’t been back that way for a couple years now when the last of the island folk pulled up stakes. Won’t find any of ’em left in these parts. They just up and vanished. I’s the last one left, far as I know. Don’t know enough to move along. Guess a man oughtta die where he got himself born, ’cept I was born on the …”

“The island?” Natalya finished for him.

“Raised there, anyway,” Captain Bob told her. “Ain’t much to the island ‘sides the lighthouse. My daddy first and then me manned it, sweeping that big light to warn ships away from the reef and the shallows. Them waters been a graveyard for ships longer than any of us can possibly imagine. Goes all the way back to Spanish galleons with enough gold pieces still in their hull to buy Miami. Plenty of people tried salvagin’ them and died for the effort even before …” Captain Bob’s voice tailed off, then picked up again. “Worst times started with the quake. That’s what stirred the Dragon Fish awake most in these parts figure.”

“Quake?”

“Sea quake, friend. Awful bad one too, shifted the undersea formations all over the goddamn place. Things that’d been unreachable for centuries suddenly rose. Vast treasures the eyes of man was never meant to see again. Floods of people started streaming into the waters, challenging the reefs, once again. Most never made it. Them that did, well, the Dragon Fish took care of them while they was tied up at night, sometimes during the day, too. Thing come up from the depths with the hunger of centuries. Fishermen was the first to disappear, my two sons among them. I used to sit in my boat at night with a harpoon hoping the Dragon Fish would surface. Never thought I could kill it but I had to try. But it never appeared. So I gave up and moved off the island.” Captain Bob paused. “Become sort of a pact throughout the Biminis that the island just don’t exist, plain and simple, but once in awhile people like you come round knowin’ that it does.”

Blaine assimilated Captain Bob’s story. “This sea quake, would it have occurred about five years ago?”

“Yup, that would be about right, though the years ain’t meant much to me for too long now.”

McCracken turned to Natalya. “Professor Clive said seismic changes in the Earth’s crust forced the Atragon crystals up from where nature had stored them for centuries. That sea quake fits perfectly into the scenario. They’re out there, all right.”

“If there are any left,” Natalya said. “Vasquez could have been a very busy man.”

“Sure, but the well hasn’t run dry yet, because as of five months ago the fat man was looking for fresh buyers. That’s how Fass came upon his.” Blaine paused. “Question is, how did the fat man mine all that stuff underwater without anyone being aware of it, including the captain here? That Dragon Fish might have needed all of two swallows to get Vasquez down. Maybe that’s what saved him.”

Natalya’s face was somber. “You know all this fits perfectly with the legends of the Lost Continent, don’t you? The waters of Paradise Point right here in the Biminis are lined with precise rock formations that many feel are the remains of its road systems.”

“The only thing lost right now is my patience.” Blaine swung back to Captain Bob. “You’re right, Captain, we can’t make it to this island alone. But you could take us there.”

He shook his head. “Lots of people asked me to over the years. Offered me more money than you ever seen to do it too. What makes you any different?”

“Because if you take me there, I’ll kill the Dragon Fish for you.”

“You’re the first man I ever seen might be able to do it,” Captain Bob said then. “I suppose I been waitin’ for ya. Never did want to die scared of a place I lived most my life. Always figured I’d be going back one last time….”

Four hours later they set off from the Alice Town harbor where Captain Bob’s cruiser was docked. It was a thirty-three footer that had once belonged to a rich couple from the Florida Keys. They’d beached it one summer evening, and Captain Bob got it off the insurance company for a song and rebuilt it himself. That had been ten years back and the cruiser didn’t get out to sea much anymore. He lived aboard it, though, and empty or half-empty bourbon bottles were the only decorations he’d added.

The captain had plenty of scuba equipment and tanks but they needed refilling, which Blaine accomplished in town while the old man and Natalya got the cruiser sea-ready. Captain Bob repeatedly refused to accept money for the charter, nor did he ask for any further elaboration on what it was they were looking for. He seemed quite content to simply head his cruiser out from the harbor and settle it gracefully into the sea. Blaine and Natalya could sense in Captain Bob a resigned acceptance of fate. He seemed to have regained a measure of health.

Captain Bob had already confirmed that the island with no name was approximately 175 miles east of Alice Town. With the cruiser’s top speed at thirty miles per hour, a six-hour voyage was in store at the very least, which, Captain Bob was careful to point out, would leave them precious little daylight. Night was the Dragon Fish’s time and nobody in their right mind would tempt the waters then. But he said it knowing they would anyway and he was glad of that. If he could just see the vile creature that had stolen his sons away destroyed, he would be ready to leave this world.

The island came into view through binoculars about five hours into their voyage. Soon, Captain Bob positioned Blaine and Natalya at opposite sides of the cruiser’s forwardmost point to watch for reefs his bourbon-soaked mind had forgotten about. The formations were treacherous, but the captain squeezed by them, with the hull occasionally scratching against one. In some places the reefs seemed to have gathered like sharks. Blaine had done plenty of diving through the years, including a stretch at the Great Barrier Reef, but he had never seen anything like this. The reefs seemed strategically placed to deter precisely the kind of journey they were making. There was a man-made quality about them.

Gradually the island with no name sharpened in view. It was surprisingly small, no more than a half mile across. It was decorated with lavish green flora and dominated by the center steeple of the lighthouse Captain Bob had manned for years, which poked up above the trees at the edge of the shoreline. The beach was smooth yellow sand. As they drew still closer, Blaine could make out the remains of shacks abandoned years before. The whole scene had the feeling of a graveyard, albeit a lush one.

“We’ll anchor here,” Captain Bob announced three hundred yards from shore. “Beneath us lie the corpses of a thousand ships. Riches and treasures beyond imagining.” He bit his up. “And this is where the Dragon Fish took my sons.”

“What about the center of the quake?” Blaine asked him softly.

“Right abouts where we are now. I remembers ’cause of the whirlpool. Never forget that sight. A tunnel whipping through the sea, sucking down anything which was anywhere near it.”

“And the depth?”

“Hundred feet at the deepest point.”

“I’m going down,” Blaine told Natalya and started to climb into his wet suit.

Natalya reached for hers. “I can’t let you have all the fun.”

Blaine smiled at her, not bothering to argue. Together, he and Natalya donned their scuba equipment, starting with the life vests a simple tug on a string would inflate. There was also a tubular sprocket fitted for an extension out of the tanks to draw air with a simple press of a plunger. Next came the weight belt and finally the bulky tank which on land was nearly impossible to tote. Captain Bob helped Blaine pull his over his shoulders and then moved on to Natalya while McCracken worked the straps tight beneath his groin, making sure the tank was centered properly. He and Natalya then rubbed water on the insides of their masks to prevent them from fogging up, adjusted the straps to the proper tightness, and checked both their main and auxiliary regulators.

“You’s got one hour of air each,” Captain Bob reminded them. “If I gets no sign of you after that, nothin’ saying I won’t pull up anchor and leave.”

“Fair enough,” said Blaine, pulling on his flippers.

“Hope you finds what you’s looking for, friend.”

“If it’s here, we’ll find it.”

With that, Blaine and Natalya grabbed hold of their spearguns and tossed themselves over backwards into the black depth below.

Chapter 28

The sights beneath them were breathtaking. Through the crystal-clear water they could see a paradise of sea creatures and plants springing from the nearby reefs. The fish seemed almost friendly, coming forward as if to be petted.

McCracken had always loved diving. The feeling of being underwater soothed him. It was a world where time seemed to stand still or at least pass more slowly.

The depths darkened as Blaine and Natalya kicked with their flippers and angled their bodies to swim lower. They were using the standard set of hand signals, never expecting to be far enough away from each other to actually require them and hoping not to need their spearguns and the underwater knives sheathed on their calves.

Down further now….

Captain Bob had told them that the depth of these waters was between ninety and a hundred feet. The angle of the sun was strong enough now to provide them plenty of light. But each had a powerful underwater flashlight attached to their weight belt.

Blaine wasn’t really sure what he expected to find or what he was going to do with it if he found it. Clearly, even if he could locate the Atragon crystals, salvaging sufficient stores of them would require a professional team like the one Vasquez must have employed. At this point, with time increasingly of the essence, he questioned whether such an operation could be mounted, especially with him being temporarily cut off from forces in the government. Still, an attempt had to be made.

Natalya grasped his shoulder and pointed hurriedly down and to their right. There, almost directly beneath them on the ocean floor, lay the remains of a ship from centuries back. The wood frame had long since fossilized, providing an eerie, ghostlike appearance. McCracken could tell from his maritime background that it was a Spanish galleon dating back to the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. A good chunk of the bow was missing, but otherwise the hull and masts looked reasonably whole.

It grew progressively darker as they swam lower for the wreck, necessitating the use of their flashlights. The beams made a neat dent in the blackness, enough for them to notice the corpses of more dead ships. The island’s reputation was well deserved. Calling its waters a graveyard was an understatement.

What made things even more eerie was the various levels of fossilization the wrecks had undergone. McCracken felt he could date each by the amount of the original frame that was visible. But many of the oldest ships had lain entombed beneath what had been the sea floor until the quake had changed the entire undersea structure. While they were entombed, fossilization had been arrested so some of the oldest relics in view had maintained the most original detail.

The graveyard stretched as far as Blaine could see. The sum of riches buried here would be enormous. No wonder Vasquez had staked a claim to these waters….

They hovered over a partially fossilized frigate, rough on the outer edges with what looked like extensions of the reef above. Blaine guessed it was two centuries old, an escort to protect merchant ships from pirates as they sailed across the Atlantic. Blaine hesitated behind Natalya, as if the frigate were sleeping instead of dead and might stir if touched by human hands. There were plenty of cracks in her hull, but Blaine’s flashlight locked on one that he signalled Natalya to steer toward. Something set it apart from the others, something that didn’t seem right….

Blaine reached the ship and felt first along its fossilized hull, kicking his flippers to hold his position in the water. Even through his glove he could feel its brittleness. He could easily have torn huge chunks away with a minimum of exertion. At last he came to the hole and felt along its perimeter. Totally smooth and unfossilized, the hole itself was, incredibly, a perfect circle. He looked to others for comparison. All were jagged and irregular, victims of the long years. This particular hole was obviously the victim of something else: man. The hole was large enough to allow passage for a diver and could have been carved by an underwater torch. That would explain the perfection of its shape, all of which led Blaine to an inescapable conclusion.

Someone had entered the frigate through this hole, in pursuit no doubt of the treasure it might well have contained. Probably it had been Vasquez.

Blaine stroked the inside perimeter of the hole and drew the flashlight up close to check the shading. It was significantly lighter than the remainder of the hull’s fossilized exterior, so Vasquez had been here fairly recently. Blaine did his best to convey his discovery to Natalya and she nodded her understanding, pointing to the next nearest ship to suggest they check that one out as well. This time she took the lead, and Blaine followed.

She swam for a ship thirty yards away buried up to the halfway point of its hull in the sandy bottom. McCracken saw it was a British clipper ship, much smaller than the frigate and younger by a century at least. The clipper fleet dated back to the time of the American Revolution and several ships like this had, in fact, been used by the British to transport arms, men, and the gold coins on which the colonies were based. Conceivably a great fortune had recently been claimed from her by Vasquez.

Blaine and Natalya probed closely about her fossilized sides with their flashlights. It was Natalya who found the hole, almost identical in size and design to the one they’d found on the galleon. Again, using the rest of the ship’s corpse for comparison, he was able to date Vasquez’s intrusion to the last several years. So the fat man had been busy in these waters well after the appearance of the Dragon Fish.

Blaine checked his watch. Fifteen minutes had passed, leaving forty-five minutes of air. No problem there. He felt Natalya grasp him suddenly with her free arm and point frantically ahead with her flashlight. McCracken looked in the beam’s direction and he saw in the darkness ahead of them a shape far bigger than any of the ships they had already passed. From a distance it looked like a circular pile of rocks and debris gathered high upon the ocean floor, but as they drew closer the shape gained definition and clarity.

It was some sort of sphere, also fossilized but with strange smoothness, a smaller version of what the top of an indoor sports stadium would look like if severed from its base. It could have been many things, all of them logical, but Blaine felt a gnawing inside his stomach which told him that they were seeing this thing for what it had always been.

Huge solar receptors placed in domed buildings …

Blaine recalled Professor Clive’s words, then blocked them out for the distraction they might cause. He and Natalya slowed up as they drew closer to the dome, as if to respect whatever it was they had happened upon. They saw now that the dome was actually sloped low for the ocean floor at its most distant point and rose at the point closest to them. Drawing still closer, they saw the cause of this to be some sort of support system at the dome’s front, a series of what looked to be pillars; two were whole, though fossilized, and a third, half the size of its neighbors, tilted precariously.

McCracken tried to form a logical explanation for the dome’s presence. Professor Clive had spoken of domed buildings scattered all over Atlantis which when opened drew the great power of the sun into crystals to create the raw energy. The fabled continent used this energy to reach incredible levels of technological proficiency.

The only way to prove whether this dome was part of the myth was to enter its structure and see what it held. Half of Blaine hoped to find great reserves of the scarlet crystal Atragon. The other half hoped that closer inspection would reveal the entire sight to be a trick of the dark, deep waters.

The problem soon became academic. Maybe if Blaine’s attention hadn’t been directed so intensely forward, he would have sensed sooner the pursuit coming from behind. He did catch the disturbance of a sudden cold sweep of water rolling upon him, and he turned around just as a dark shape fired its spear.

Blaine shoved Natalya to warn her. At the same time he kicked his legs upward and flipped his body into a somersault. The spear passed just beneath him.

By his count, five divers were coming forward, four passing the first as he pumped his flippers in a holding position to reload. McCracken pointed down at the huge corpse of a Spanish warship which was immediately to their left, and he and Natalya kicked for it desperately as the divers gave chase.

Two of the opposition stopped to fire but a moving target, especially a swimming one, is virtually impossible to hit. Distance is almost impossible to judge and by how much to lead the target is almost impossible to estimate. A hit can be accomplished at a fleeing target only by the best or luckiest shot.

The two shooters proved to be neither. One of their spears streamed over Blaine and the other beneath Natalya. By the time all five in the enemy’s party were giving chase again, Blaine and Natalya had reached the deck of the warship, where fossilized cannons were still in place behind their firing portals. There was clearly nothing that could provide sufficient cover here, leaving them no choice but to take their chances in the belly of the long-dead warship. Natalya found a large enough hole in the deck twenty feet from the cannons, and Blaine followed her through. Since their pursuers would have to come through this portal in single file, the advantage had swung temporarily to them. But they would still have to make their shots count.

Paddling backwards now, speargun in hand, Blaine saw the first black shape drop headfirst through the portal. He and Natalya moved as far into the darkness as they could while waiting for a second figure to appear. To make the most of their meager arsenal, they would have to eliminate two of the enemy here and now. But the wait, with one target easily in range, was agonizing. At last a second figure slid through the portal and joined the first in giving chase. Blaine and Natalya fired their spearguns at the same moment.

Natalya’s spear tore through the first man’s leg while McCracken’s ripped straight through the throat of the second. The first managed to get his spear off but the shot was hopelessly errant and lodged in the rotted wall behind Natalya. She swam for it, thinking she could use it herself. She had gotten her hand on it when Blaine saw her gesture to him. He swam to her and looked where she pointed, to an insignia printed on the shaft of the enemy spear. It was Russian.

Their attackers were Russians!

Blaine motioned for her to forget the spear and continue on. More figures were pushing through the deck opening now to give chase. Blaine and Natalya swam as fast as they dared through the serpentine corridors, the sensation reminding McCracken of his experience in Fass’s Labyrinth just days before.

Their luck held. A slight brightening up ahead signaled Blaine they had located another way out. The plan was obvious now. Climb back out of the warship and take their chances with a mad surface dash. If they could outswim their Russian pursuit and reach Captain Bob far enough ahead of them, they would have a chance.

Too many “ifs,” thought McCracken, none of which took into account that these Russians hadn’t swum all the way from the Biminis. They surely had a ship nearby with plenty more firepower than the single shotgun Captain Bob had brought along.

Natalya went up through the escape hole first, but her progress was arrested by an arm snaking around from behind her. She swung in time to stop the man whose leg still held her spear from cutting her throat but not her air hose. Bubbles lurched through the water and she knew the horror of having her breath taken from her. She fought against panic and turned the severed air hose on the man, blinding him with bubbles, which gave McCracken enough time to emerge from the portal with his own knife. The Russian turned toward him much too late, seeing only a glimmer as Blaine’s blade whipped across his throat. The blood gushed out in a sudden burst, then swirled slowly through the water.

Blaine paddled fast for Natalya, who had drifted away, and jammed his auxiliary regulator in her open mouth. She breathed gratefully and signaled him to start a rise to the surface. Blaine yanked the cord on his vest which inflated it all at once, then did the same to Natalya’s. To avoid an embolism, never rise faster than your air bubbles, went the popular scuba teaching, but now that seemed the least of their problems.

The remaining three Russians were already even with them fifteen yards to their left. Blaine and Natalya fought to rise faster but sharing air from the same tank proved cumbersome and slowed them up considerably. Blaine looked toward the Russians, and saw yet another shape beyond them coming fast. Oh no, not another one. This figure was not wearing a wet suit, and he moved through the water as gracefully as if it was his home. He might have moved even faster if not for the spearguns he held in both hands. He fired both from twenty yards behind the Russians.

The Russians were unaware of the figure’s presence until his spears sliced through two of their midsections. The two who’d been hit pawed around them as if to grab fistfuls of water, then sank toward the bottom. The third turned and aimed his speargun in the same motion. It would be impossible for him to miss from such close range. The spear leaped dead on target, and what Blaine saw next would have been unbelievable if he hadn’t watched it himself. At the last possible instant the figure reached out a hand and redirected the spear away from him without slowing his pace. Then the figure had his knife out and was upon the last Russian before the man could try anything else. McCracken didn’t see the rest from this distance but he didn’t have to. The sight of the final black-suited figure floating toward the bottom was enough to tell him the results.

Blaine turned his eyes back on the figure drawing closer to them and saw the long hair dangling free. The figure grasped a closed fist to his heart in an underwater signal not of the standard, but of the Indian, variety.

It was Johnny Wareagle.

McCracken steered for a dark shape on the surface with Natalya by his side. They surfaced not more than ten yards from the cruiser.

“We’ve got visitors,” Captain Bob shouted at them. He pointed off the stern of the cruiser.

Blaine started swimming for the boat while he looked where Captain Bob pointed, toward a fishing trawler about three hundred yards away. Now that its occupants had seen them surface, the results of the underwater battle would be obvious and they were certain to attack.

Johnny Wareagle surfaced just as Blaine pushed Natalya up to Captain Bob’s helping hand. A small powerboat lay a hundred yards off their bow, obviously the vehicle the Indian had miraculously steered to their rescue.

“Who the hell is that?” Captain Bob wondered as Blaine joined Natalya on the deck.

“Charlie the Tuna,” McCracken told him. “Starkist finally gave him the call.”

Captain Bob’s mind was elsewhere and he moved for the bridge. “I’d better get this heap moving ‘fore the shootin’ starts.”

“They’ve probably got enough firepower on board to sink another fleet of ships,” Blaine shouted at him grimly.

“Won’t do ’em no good nohow if I can run ’em onto the reef.” He gunned the engine and gazed up at the sky reflectively. “Night’s comin’ and we’s headin’ straight into the feedin’ waters of the Dragon Fish.”

If there was regret in the captain’s voice, Blaine couldn’t find it. “That’s the least of our worries,” he told him.

The fishing boat was already steaming forward, chancing the reef, and Johnny Wareagle was barely halfway on board when Captain Bob finally gave his cruiser gas.

“Spirits guide you out here, Indian?” Blaine asked Johnny.

“Not this time, Blainey. I just followed the men in the boat behind us. Their presence in Bimini seemed too great a coincidence.”

“Sure beats Club Med if you ask me.”

The humor failed to impress Wareagle. He was breathing hard. “The scientist Sundowner is dead, Blainey.”

“What? How?” Blaine shook his head. “Never mind. The Farmer Boy must have got to him, probably before he reached the President with the truth about the replacement satellite. Damnit, I should have known….”

“No, you couldn’t have, because there’s more. Just before the scientist left, he learned that Atragon has been discovered in Colorado.”

“Colorado?” It was Natalya, numbed to the bone.

They both looked at her. Wareagle spoke.

“A town called Pamosa—”

“Springs!” completed Natalya abruptly. “In the plane to Algiers I overheard Raskowski and Katlov speaking about that town! Troops mobilized to hold it. But what would he want with—” She stopped, the realization striking her at the same time it struck McCracken.

“The Atragon!” he exclaimed. “The source for his death beam!” Then, thinking it out as he continued, “His first satellite blows up, and all of a sudden he needs more. The Farmer Boy somehow learns it’s there in Colorado, so Raskowski takes the town over. Mines all of the crystals he can use.” A puzzled look crossed McCracken’s features. “Only what does he do with it then? He used his deception to get his reflector into orbit but he still would need—”

The first bullets started blazing from the fishing boat, a few smacking into the sides. The three of them dove for cover.

“Their boatman’s damn good,” Captain Bob called from behind the wheel. “Knows these waters almost as good as me. But he won’t know the shallows. Ain’t a man alive who knows ’em like I do.”

Blaine watched the Soviets draw to within a hundred yards. Winds and currents were playing hell with their aim, though the narrowing of the gap would take care of that before long. If they were going to survive, it would depend on Captain Bob’s savvy. The captain was making sharp maneuvers to avoid the reefs; a few times he miscalculated and the shrill grinding sound of reef rubbing against boat frame was frightening to hear.

“Blainey, I sense something,” Wareagle said suddenly.

“Probably just our boat getting a massage.”

“No, a disturbance in the great fields, a large imbalance. Listen close and even you will be able to hear the warnings of the spirits.”

Blaine and the others watched as fifty yards back their pursuers’ boat was jostled steeply to the side, the Soviet gunmen losing their balance. It wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened. The underside of the Russian boat had hit the reef and a good portion of its underside was probably torn to shreds. The pilot tried to veer aside at the last instant and succeeded only in crashing his stern into a huge reef near surface level. The fishing boat turned lazily, desperately, starting to sink into the sea. Blaine and the others watched in silence. The remaining Russians dropped their weapons in favor of life jackets and inflatable rafts. The boat was dying.

“Told ya, didn’t I?” Captain Bob beamed from the bridge. “Told ya, told ya, told ya so, I did!”

“There’s your imbalance, Indian.”

“No, Blainey, what I feel is still …”

Wareagle stopped when a huge swell of water rose over the dying Russian boat. It came with incredible fury. Then the very ocean seemed to open up beneath it, revealing a huge shape rising claws-first from the depths.

The Dragon Fish had finally arrived.

Chapter 29

Captain Bob began chanting words in a language Blaine couldn’t understand, his grip on the wheel relinquished as he moved forward in a daze. The boat began to spin with the currents as he ripped his shotgun free of its perch. The rest of them watched transfixed, unable to move.

The creature had the look of a giant black crab with twin claws on either side, one of which was swooping down toward the largest concentration of the doomed Russian crew. Their screams almost covered the awful crackling that resulted when the claw splintered what remained of the fishing boat.

Captain Bob rushed to the bow, raised the shotgun, and squeezed off a pair of shots.

“Don’t waste your bullets or your time,” Blaine advised. “You’ll only let him know we’re here.”

“He knows,” Captain Bob said madly. “He knows.” And he fired twice more before pausing to reload.

The creature’s claws continued to sweep the waters for Russians. Blaine estimated the Dragon Fish to be over two hundred feet from claw tips to its strangely shaped tail. Wait a minute, the tail …

His thoughts were interrupted when their ship at last struck the reef, lodging there and pitching all its occupants violently to the deck. Natalya struck the gunwale hard and would have gone over if not for the quick hand of Johnny Wareagle who reached out and grabbed her. Captain Bob was not as lucky. The collision pitched him to the deck on his head. He was plunged into unconsciousness as the creature which devoured his sons loomed close.

Off their stern, the Dragon Fish continued to compress the dying boat and crew within its claws, more interested in pure destruction than dinner. Wareagle concentrated on the regular rhythm with which its claws opened and closed, opened and closed….

“It’s not alive!” he shouted.

With the screeching of the cruiser on the reef, McCracken didn’t hear Johnny, but he was forming his own conclusions. The monster moved too stiffy and its tail — yes, its tail. It remained unexplainably stiff. There were no bends in the monster’s joints, none of the supple motions one would expect from a seagoing beast. It seemed … mechanical.

“It’s a fucking submarine!” Blaine realized.

Which seemed to make little difference as water gushed through the gaping holes in their boat’s bottom. As the deck lowered beneath them, Wareagle propped up Captain Bob against the cabin which was the cruiser’s highest point. The Dragon Fish was swinging toward them now, snapping together its outstretched claws and making the hollow sound of steel meeting steel. Blaine could see the mourn now, could see that the huge teeth, which had looked razor sharp and deadly from a distance, were merely painted on.

It was a submarine all right, and now it was slowing to a drift before them as they clung to whatever parts of the deck remained above water. The body of the beast was a near-perfect sphere, perforated by holes for piston jets to promote drive on the surface. It had oblong windows for eyes and lines in its hull marking hatch points.

Blaine’s eyes returned to the claws, raised high, when a hatch at the top of the Dragon Fish’s head opened and a pair of machine gun wielding guards appeared. Behind them was a figure McCracken recognized all too well. “Please,” said Vasquez, “come aboard.”

“Welcome to the Dragon Fish,” the fat man said politely after the last of them had climbed down into the submarine’s bridge followed by a pair of guards carrying the unconscious Captain Bob. More armed guards watched them from every angle. “I had thought about devouring you, McCrackenballs, but I was worried what you might do to my baby’s digestion.”

“You were never one to turn down a good meal, fat man.”

Vasquez made himself laugh. “You’re too tough for my taste. At least you used to be.”

The belly of the beast was oval shaped and lit by a soft orange glow. Blaine gazed around and saw the most advanced computerized equipment available for any submarine. Diodes and display gauges stood out everywhere, with Vasquez’s technicians manning their stations in neatly starched, lime-green uniforms, totally uninterested in the action around them. A technician moved slightly to his right and the soft green glow of a CRT screen cast a dull light over Vasquez’s expression.

“Steal this from Electric Boat, fat man?”

“No, McCrackenballs, but they were generous enough to furnish most of the parts.”

“Your own private Trident …”

“And then some, as you have already seen.” Not a strand of Vasquez’s slicked back hair was out of place as he patted his cheeks with his ever-present handkerchief. The sweat was starting to soak through his jacket. “Professor Clive was kind enough to reveal your destination. Imagine, coming all the way to the Biminis in search of those mysterious crystals…. ”

“Since you weren’t about to part with the ones you’d already lifted, I didn’t have much choice. Yup, it all makes sense, even those holes Natalya and I found in the old wrecks down there. After that sea quake made their treasures accessible again, you created — or resurrected — the myth of the Dragon Fish to assure yourself of sole salvage rights.”

Vasquez gazed around him fondly. “Far more than a myth, as I’m sure you can see.”

Blaine feigned looking about in order to meet Johnny Wareagle’s eyes. The Indian, never one to give up easily, was obviously gauging methods for a possible turning of the tables. McCracken’s unspoken instructions held him back.

“So the island with no name becomes your exclusive territory, thanks to this contraption here. I guess it doubles as a damn good salvage vehicle.”

The fat man nodded, impressed with the analysis. “Parts of its lower frame are detachable: smaller robot and manned submersibles with incredible range and equipment. We’ve been able to plunder just about every treasure chest.”

“But you’ve stayed around.”

“Because there’s still a fortune we haven’t gotten to yet, McCrackenballs. Strange things were happening in these parts well before the Dragon Fish was even conceived. Someday I’ll find a way to bring up the rest of those crystals.”

“You mean they’re still down there?”

“Besides some modest reserves that were relatively easy to salvage.”

“Which you offered to the highest bidder.”

Vasquez nodded. “A shame I didn’t have more, though. One party paid an astounding price for my meager stores. Big Russian with a patch for a left eye.”

“Katlov!” Natalya said loud enough to draw the armed guards’ attention to her. Her eyes locked with McCracken’s.

“Then,” Blaine realized, “Raskowski was after the Atragon here as well. Unlike him to give up so easily.”

“He didn’t give up,” Natalya said. “He found what he needed in Pamosa Springs. The Biminis became superfluous. If anything he’d want the reserves here buried forever, so we wouldn’t be able to get to them either.”

“Stop the games!” Vasquez barked. “All the stories in the world won’t save you this time, McCrackenballs.”

“No story this time, fat man. I was after those crystals to power an energy shield, against a death ray controlled by a Russian madman. Once he wipes out America the rest of civilization will fall like dominoes. Think about it.”

“You’re lying!” Vasquez insisted, but his voice sounded tentative. “Holding to tricks, deceptions, till the very last.”

“The deception’s not mine this time, fat man. It belongs to a mad Russian general named Raskowski to whom you so kindly delivered your reserves of Atragon.” McCracken stopped to put things together for himself. When he spoke again, it was mostly to Natalya. “That shipment must have powered the satellite he lost. When the need for more came up, he turned to Pamosa Springs. He could launch his reflector on board the replacement for Ulysses and save himself the bother of moving the crystals by constructing the generator gun right in the town. But one thing doesn’t fit. The second communiqué he sent, the one containing the three-week ultimatum, was sent after he lost his first satellite and way before the work in Pamosa Springs was finished. I don’t get it.”

“Another deception,” suggested Natalya. “He wanted to make your government believe they had more time than they actually did, so the element of surprise would return to his side. There won’t be any more ultimatums or messages. He’s going to begin firing just as soon as his reflector achieves orbit.”

“Twenty-four hours from now,” McCracken said. “Maybe less.”

“Stop!” ordered Vasquez. “Very well rehearsed, I grant you, but—”

“Give it up, fat man. The story’s true and you know it. Think about the fact that we weren’t the only party to end up in your private waters. Or have you forgotten those Russians you devoured a few minutes ago?”

“Russians?”

Blaine nodded. “Raskowski’s men, as I see it. He’s not just after us anymore, either. He wants you and your Atragon out of the way, too, and it’s my guess we’ll have proof of that before long. If I penetrated your guise as Salim, it’s a sure bet he did as well. Once I arrived on the scene you became too much of a liability. He’s probably had you under watch since the very beginning.”

Vasquez’s huge jowls puckered in grim determination. “Fitting, since I have kept tabs on his one-eyed bandit all this time too.”

Katlov! Natalya and McCracken thought together.

“Then you have tabs on Raskowski!” she blurted.

“Only if they’re together. The information’s a phone call away, that’s all. But that assumes I—”

The sonar operator broke in, turning toward Vasquez as he spoke. “Sir, I have three aircraft coming up on our position. Range, 5,000 meters and closing.”

“Prepare to dive,” ordered Vasquez, and a bell chimed three times within the huge belly of the Dragon Fish. He waited a few seconds longer, giving the armed guards ample opportunity to solidify their positions around their captives at what promised to be a most vulnerable moment. “Dive.”

The Dragon Fish dropped gracefully beneath the sea, lights growing immediately dimmer and hazing over with red.

“Aircraft 4,000 meters and closing,” reported the sonar operator as three additional blips appeared on his screen. He gazed back at the fat man once again. “I also show three large ships steaming this way. Range four miles. Speed increasing. Trying for a signal fix now….”

“Join us, fat man,” Blaine urged. “There are some things important enough to bring even you and me together.”

“Planes closing,” sonar reported. “Range now 2,000 meters. Range of boats three-and-one-half miles.” He checked his screen, punched in a few commands onto his computer console, and read the results out loud when they flashed across his screen. “Sir, I have a signature now on those approaching ships. They’re trawlers, big ones.” He swallowed hard. “Soviet H-class complete with several high-powered deck guns and missile launchers. Warships in disguise.”

Vasquez looked at McCracken, then at nothing in particular. “Maybe they know I’m here, McCracken, but they couldn’t possibly know about the Dragon Fish.” Then, to the uniformed figure standing by the periscope, “Commander, set an intercept course for us with those trawlers and prepare the surface-to-air missiles. Our baby is hungry again.”

Chapter 30

“Would a baked you a cake with a file in it,” Clara Buhl had told Dog-ear and Sheriff Junk six hours earlier at five P.M. “But I forgot the recipe.”

“How’s things in town?” the mayor asked her.

“Real quiet since you boys became jailbirds. Our mysterious killer seems to be taking a break.”

“You and Isaac T. been around to the people?”

“Yeah, and I can tell you …”

The conversation was held within earshot of three of Guillermo Paz’s soldiers. And it was all a front for Dog-ear to figure out a way to slip Clara the note he and Heep had composed on a tattered piece of newspaper they found under one of the mattresses. They had actually composed it two days before, but Clara had been the first visitor they were allowed.

They were under watch almost all the time and had stolen the minutes required to write the note, with Heep distracting the guards. Paz had jailed them in the right cell, the one nearest the street, where Heep had stowed two crates, one each of grenades and Laws rockets. He’d had plenty of experience with bazookas in Korea and these damn things couldn’t be much different. He’d seen how they worked on television. Problem was figuring out what to make them work on. Oh, they could do plenty of damage from here before Paz’s men caught on, but what would that accomplish? No, what they needed was to get the hell out of jail and get word to the outside world that they needed help. Neither man knew exactly how they were going to accomplish all that.

Dog-ear kept coughing into his hand as he spoke with Clara. He hoped the guards would be bored with the small talk and the gesture which was meant to disguise his passing over the note at the proper time. He was just about ready to figure that the proper time was never going to come when Clara, bless her, feigned a slip on the slick floor and had to use the bars to hoist her beefy frame back up. As she gripped them low at the start, before the soldiers had a chance to approach, Dog-ear slipped the note into her hand. She accepted it without expression, figuring all along the mayor would have plenty to say he wouldn’t want heard and attracted by his coughing into a bit of white crumpled in his fist.

“I always wanted to be mayor, you know,” Clara said at the end.

“Looks like you got your wish,” said Dog-ear, forcing a smile.

Clara waited until she was back home before reading the note; she had to, really, since the printing was too small to manage without her magnifying glass. She ran it over the wrinkled page methodically, shocked and excited by the enlarged letters passing before her:

Clara sat back to think.

Dog-ear and Sheriff Junk had almost given up hope by eleven, but a commotion in the streets at 11:15 drew them to the barred window of their cell. It wasn’t easy, but if they strained their necks they could see almost the whole street.

And coming down it right now, six-guns strapped to his side in an ancient leather holster, was Isaac T. Hall. The pistols were his prized possessions, said to have once belonged to Wyatt Earp himself, and there wasn’t a better use for them than the one he was about to provide. He’d nodded his head dimly at Clara’s plan for his original role in the distraction, knowing all the time that the whole plan stood no chance of working. So he’d come up with this alteration by himself without telling her because he knew she would have argued him down.

He used to practice with the guns every day until the arthritis got too bad and the best he had been able to manage for the past few years was once a week when he remembered. The guns were oiled and loaded, twelve shots at his disposal. If he got them all off he’d consider it a victory even if none found their mark.

“Look, it’s Clara!” Sheriff Junk whispered to Dog-ear.

There, across the street, Clara was waddling in the shadows toward one of three parked jeeps. She ducked down out of sight when she reached it.

Down Main Street, in front of the bar, Ike Hall had stopped and drawn his pistols outside the fringed jacket that was probably a century old.

A dozen or so soldiers on patrol in the streets had sighted their rifles on him, waiting. One ran to get Major Paz.

Outside the jail cell, the three on-duty guards’ eyes were glued to the proceedings. Sheriff Junk slid away from the cell window and moved to the cot, beneath which lay a pried-open crate of grenades.

Ike Hall didn’t know where he found the strength to draw both guns in a single motion or why he chose that particular moment to do so. The swiftness of the action surprised the soldiers, and they hesitated long enough for Ike to get a shot off from each as he dove to the ground and rolled for cover behind a parked jeep. One of his shots actually winged a soldier in the instant before a dozen of them opened fire. Ike might have been shot; he hurt so much already he couldn’t tell.

Inside the jail cell, Sheriff Junk pulled the pin on the grenade he had lifted from the crate and rolled it across the floor toward the three guards by the window. It exploded with Heep and McCluskey pressed tight into the comer with their faces covered. The explosion rocked the jailhouse and caught the attention of the guards who were moving on Ike.

It was then that Clara settled her bulk low in the driver’s seat of the jeep and felt blindly for the key. She’d driven jeeps plenty of times back in the old days, but she hadn’t driven anything in the six years since her eyes went, so it was with eyes closed and a silent prayer in her mind that she depressed the clutch and gunned the engine.

Ike T. Hall felt the bullets. A burst of energy surged through him, and he swung around with both guns firing at the same time. Wyatt himself would have been proud. He thought he might even have hit one of the soldiers, but he crumbled over before he could be sure.

The soldiers were rushing the jail from all sides now, some appearing in T-shirts and still zipping up their pants. But Heep already had an armful of Laws rockets ready and as expected they were simpler to use than any bazooka he’d ever seen. He flipped a catch, extended a stock backwards from which the thrust exhaust would belch and aimed the Laws for the middle of Main Street. A single squeeze of the trigger and the projectile hit on macadam and sent debris showering upward. A number of soldiers went down writhing and screaming.

“Another!” Heep yelled to McCluskey, who tossed a second Laws up to him.

Sheriff Junk had it cocked and ready an instant later, his target the empty K Mart across the street from which a number of soldiers were still emerging. The whole front of the building went up in a single blast of orange and black, with shattered glass flying in every direction. The soldiers were on the defensive now, searching for cover instead of culprits. But Junk wasn’t finished with them yet.

As he readied his third Laws, Clara Buhl brought the jeep around in a screeching U-turn to the front of the jailhouse. Heep’s third target was the telephone pole containing the junction box for all of Main Street. The pole shattered as if struck by lightning, and all of Pamosa Springs was plunged into total darkness. With that, Heep rushed to the door and hoisted a heavy boot into the latch. The rusted catch gave on contact, and the cell door flew outward. He started to grab crates.

“You mean, we coulda done that anytime since we been here?” wondered Dog-ear.

“I don’t tell you everything, Mayor.”

By then they were out the cell and heading for the front room. Heep toted crates under both arms, barely feeling the sting in his ankle, while Dog-ear grabbed a pair of the guards’ scratched-up rifles. They seemed in good enough working order and he led Heep forward with one ready in either hand.

Outside the jailhouse, Clara had just screeched the jeep to a halt. But the soldiers were regrouping and the mayor found himself with plenty of targets when he led Sheriff Junk out of the building. Both rifle barrels blazed orange, aimed at similar colors flashing in the darkness or at moving shapes. By the time the clip of his first rifle was exhausted, Heep had gotten the crates into the jeep and was signaling him forward.

“Come on!” Sheriff Junk screamed, and Clara backed the jeep up alongside him.

McCluskey leaped in and bumped his head on the extended stock of an attached .50-caliber machine gun.

“Well, I’ll be damned….”

He yanked back the bolt and balanced himself precariously as Clara spun the jeep around for the other side of town. The .50-caliber had more of a kick than he remembered — or maybe he had just gotten older — but with the jeep picking up speed, McCluskey kept pointing the weapon toward anything that moved, holding the trigger and feeling his teeth gnash together from the gun’s kickback.

The soldiers were giving chase now. Up ahead was Bill Hapscomb’s filling station and from there a road that would lead part of the way into the San Juans.

McCluskey was still firing, the clip melting into the machine gun and shells flying everywhere, when Sheriff Junk grasped another Laws and popped the stock out as they drew near Hapscomb’s. He fired as they moved, aiming at the first of the three gas pumps. His aim was good enough.

First a flash of flame and then a huge mushroom of black smoke sprouted from the pump island. Gasoline sprayed outward from the ruptured lines, spreading the flames, until a wall of fire stretched across Main Street between their fleeing jeep and the charging troops, effectively blocking the enemy behind it. The flames climbed higher as numerous secondary explosions added fuel and heat.

“Heeeeeeee-yahhhhhhhh!” screamed Dog-ear and Sheriff Junk together.

The wall of flames had shrunk in the distance behind them when they saw a jeep charge through it. It wavered for a few seconds but then straightened, a soldier in it rising to his feet to steady its machine gun. The jeep was coming fast, gaining, bullets churning outward in a continuous stream, a few clanging off the leading jeep’s frame.

“Shit!” yelled the mayor, ducking low. “We’re out of ammo.”

“Not quite,” said Heep as he reached for another Laws.

“It’s up to you now, Clara.”

Clara didn’t say anything, just kept on driving. The road ahead seemed one big black blur and she was squinting like crazy just to keep the jeep reasonably straight. She hoped her expression wasn’t giving away the knifing pain she felt in her chest. She thought at first she’d been shot but the tightness down her whole left arm all the way from her jaw told her the old ticker had finally had enough and was calling it quits. Just hang on a little longer, she urged. Keep pumping. Come on!

She saw stars from the pain and her vision clouded over even more. The jeep wavered slightly as the narrow road that would take them into the San Juans came up fast. Sheriff Junk had managed to steady another Laws with the bullets just clearing his head, but Clara’s sudden turn into the mountains made him drop it.

“Shit!” he wailed, feeling for it desperately.

Clara clutched and downshifted into the hairpin turns, afraid to use the brakes and sacrifice their lead over the trailing jeep. Her vision had been reduced to simply steering her jeep between the mountainside and the deadly edge. She was gasping for breath now and each thud in her chest stole more of it away. The pain felt like bubbles bursting inside her. She could feel her hands stiffening, and the night was starting to go from dark to black. The jeep keeled left and sideswiped the mountain. Clara overcompensated and almost plunged them over the side.

“Easy!” screamed Dog-ear.

She got the jeep straight again, holding her breath now because it seemed to keep down the pain. Sheriff Junk had the Laws steady once more. The trailing jeep was now ten yards back. But the steep grade and sudden turns confused his aim and denied him the certain kill shot he felt he had to have.

“Fuck it,” he said and rose in the jeep with Dog-ear clutching his knobby legs for support.

Heep’s knees cracked and popped. He fired as Clara swung over a rise, which forced his shot down too low. But the jeep was close enough for the powerful explosion to send road fragments crashing upward into it. The driver struggled with control only briefly before the jeep smashed first up against the mountainside and then careened wildly across the road and over the edge.

Junk and Dog-ear failed to see any of this. They had both fallen to the floor of the jeep, which came slowly to a halt. Both men struggled to their feet, looked back and saw there was no more pursuit.

“We did it! Goddamnit, we did it! Got those bastards good! Hey, Clara, we—”

Dog-ear stopped when he saw Clara Buhl slumped over the wheel.

“Oh shit,” he said. The San Juans loomed ahead of them, and Pamosa Springs was nothing but a dark patch below.