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  And even if he could, he would have failed in his mission if he succeeded in finding his way out.

  He cursed himself for not having a ready backup light on the boat. He slapped the flashlight once. The bulb flickered, died again. He shook it. The light came on.

  He exhaled a burst of bubbles, realizing he’d been holding his breath.

  He resumed his search. The way grew more treacherous as he neared the aft of the boat. He entered a room of narrow shelves, some littered with bones. The shelves were what once passed for sleeping bunks on the cramped submarine. Men had died in them. The skeletons seemed almost restful, at peace with fate, unlike the twisted jumble of bones in the fore rooms. Those seamen had died in a mad scramble of terror.

  Small lockers lined the walls. He pried open one after another. The decayed remains of sailors’ personal effects spilled out. From one drifted a framed photo. Miraculously, the photo of a little dark-haired girl, smiling, cherubic, was still intact. The locker and picture frame had combined to protect her sweet image from the corrosion of salt and the invasion of sea growth.

  Beyond the bunkroom, he squeezed into another room. His eyes fell upon the sepia collection littering the bottom.

  More skeletons.

  The port wall above was crowded with heavy steel racks angling inward. Piled below him, below the skeletons, were massive tubes, thick as tree trunks, partially covered in silt. He studied them. Pipes? Cases? He didn’t know what they were, but they might be what he was looking for. He scooped aside the bones and gently whisked the silt away. It muddied his vision, but there was no alternative.

  He uncovered a tapering end of the top tube. A long, thin blade of metal projected from it. A fin.

  A torpedo. A pile of unexploded torpedoes.

  Just gets better and better, he thought. He eased away.

  He shone his light aft. Sure enough, there was a portal for rear-facing torpedo launches.

  He was in the stern of the U-boat. No treasure, just death and the machines of death.

  He pulled himself forward. Moving through the bunks and control room, he found more small compartments. One was jammed with boxes. That looked promising. He gripped one and pulled it apart. It gave easily. Inside were jars and cans. The foodstuffs of the ship.

  He checked his pressure gauge. Eight hundred psi.

  Throwing caution aside, he seized box after box, tearing them apart, spilling the contents. Nothing but the remains of what had once been food.

  Moving farther, he found a group of heavier containers. He pried one open. Ammunition. By the look of it, shells for the deck gun. Another container yielded smaller ammo, probably for the anti-aircraft gun on the conning tower.

  Three hundred sixty psi. Five minutes.

  He had to make some educated guesses now. The first was that these boxes would only give up more ammo. He abandoned them and hurried forward.

  Another torpedo room, the main one, bigger than the aft torpedo room. More bones. More spilled torpedoes.

  No storage crates, no lockers. Nothing.

  He returned to the control room. Two-sixteen psi. Three minutes. Not enough time...

  Think, damn it. You’re not going to find a treasure. What’s the next best thing?

  Information.

  He remembered the photo of the little girl, still smiling after six decades under the sea. If that survived, other information could survive.

  He scanned the control room. The gauges and instruments were corroded and covered. He found a locker that he’d pried open earlier. Various effects were inside, mostly dissolved. He found a cup, glinting in the beam of light. A tin cup.

  Tin doesn’t rust.

  He took the cup, turned it over. There, stamped on the bottom, clear as the day it was struck, was a phrase. Unterseeboot-498.

  The name of the vessel. He tucked the cup inside a vest pocket.

  Suddenly, he felt a straining in his lungs. He glanced at his pressure gauge.

  Out of air.

  He sucked hard on the mouthpiece, drawing another breath, and pulled himself toward the gash in the port wall.

  His tank clanged against a steel panel. He heard the groan of metal, and the panel tore loose from its rotted fixtures and crashed into him. A rusted conduit an inch thick speared his thigh, piercing him all the way through, driving him down, pinning him to the floor.

  Pain shot through his leg. A cloud of red billowed from the wound, enveloping him.

  The lamp flickered and went out.

  * * *

  Charley stared at his watch. Thirty-five minutes. Time up. Grant had ordered him to not wait beyond that.

  Worse, he was blind. No GPS. He had a compass, but that meant little, other than that he could find a general direction back to the island. He had lost his bearings. He didn’t know where the hell he stood relative to Grant’s position. The best he had done was keep the engine churning, the boat nose into wind and waves, guessing and praying that he was applying just the right amount of power to keep her running in place.

  The storm was worse now than when they’d gotten here. Celeste was bearing down on them.

  A wave reared and crashed over the boat, spraying him, staggering him. He shook it off. The boat pitched as the wave lifted it over the crest and dropped it into the trough. He veered a couple degrees to port, turned back into the wind. Had he drifted in that few seconds? He couldn’t know. In this mess, if he wasn’t right on point when Grant surfaced, he could miss Grant entirely. A couple more minutes. He’d give it a couple more minutes.

  The boat might not last much more than that.

  * * *

  Grant didn’t bother with the light. There was no time. He drew the last straining bit of air from the tank.

  His leg screamed in pain, and sudden nausea washed through him like a wave. His stomach knotted. Light or no light, the image of his impaled leg seared his mind.

  He vaguely recalled a medical admonition that impaling objects should not be removed until a doctor is ready to seal the wound. If a major artery is pierced, the object might be the only thing standing between you and bleeding to death.

  Moot damned point. He was pinned to the sub wall by a spear of rusty steel, a bug pinned down in a display case. Bleeding to death weighed less on the threat scale than drowning while impaled on the sea floor.

  His air gone, he unfastened his weight belt and let it fall to the floor. He tried to lift his leg. Impossibly, the shooting pain grew even worse, and the leg didn’t budge.

  No time for pussy-footing. He drew his free leg up under him, braced it against the floor, and gripped the heavy panel attached to the conduit. He gritted his teeth and yanked the panel upward with all his might.

  He could feel the corroded conduit drag through his thigh, the roughness of it tearing at his flesh, scraping against bone like an inch-thick steel file. His mind fogged, threatening to shut down, to end the debilitating pain. Sparks flashed in his mind. He fought his rising unconsciousness.

  His leg came suddenly free. His head struck the wall above.

  His lungs craved air. And he was still inside a shipwreck, fourteen fathoms deep.

  The rupture in the port side of the U-boat was a few yards ahead. He dragged himself toward it, feeling carefully, fighting back panic. He pulled quickly through the wreckage, not worried about the silt that could blind him. How much blinder can a guy get than one hundred percent blind?

  His lungs ached. How close was he?

  His right hand ran along the port wall, the skin of his knuckles getting stripped. Suddenly, his hand fell through into emptiness. He’d found the opening. With a kick, he propelled himself through and clear of the wreck of U-498. He angled up. His lungs screamed for air. He had none, yet the air in his BC vest would carry him upward.

  He pushed toward the surface. Every impulse in his body drove him to rush upward, to get to sweet air as quickly as possible. With all his will, he fought the urge. If he succumbed to temptation and rocketed for the surfac
e, he’d guarantee himself a mortal case of nitrogen narcosis. The bends. His blood, what little there might be left of it, would literally boil with nitrogen and he would die a slow, wretched death.

  Pick your poison, he thought grimly.

  And storm or no storm, he was trailing a river of blood that every shark within a mile would soon scent.

  Starved for oxygen, his mind began to fog. He couldn’t go faster than rising bubbles. How fast did a bubble go, anyway? And he couldn’t see a goddamn bubble. He could count...

  One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi... four…

  The numbers were slipping, sliding over a cliff... what number was next...

  Seconds stretched to forever.

  And then he broke the surface.

  He gasped long and hard, drawing air into his body. Cool, delicious air. Life. For an eternity, he gulped air, uncaring about anything but air.

  Slowly, awareness returned. He was rising and falling across huge tossing waves. He looked around. Lost Expedition was gone.

  He was alone on the open, thrashing sea.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Her mother, disfigured, radiant, stood amid black ruin, a turbulent red sky framing her.

  She tried to call out but sound would not pass her lips. She tried to go to her mother but could not move her feet.

  Mother raised her arms. Kyoko, my light, my joy. You must find strength. You must. For yourself. For your friends. For everyone…

  I cannot, Mother…

  You must come up from the emptiness, my child. You must do it now.

  Yes, Mother, I will…

  Her mother faded into the red and the red became black.

  All was blackness…

  And Kyoko realized she was awake. And as in the dream, though her eyes were open, all was blackness.

  With wakefulness came a dull ache in her skull.

  She lay still, hoping to let the ache pass. It became a hammering instead.

  She tried to sit up and found herself unable to. Her arms and legs were confined. Cords bound her wrists painfully together behind her. Between her teeth, forcing her jaw open, was a heavy cloth, tied behind her head.

  She struggled against the bonds, but only managed to spike the pain. Her heart raced now, sapping energy. She willed herself to relax. She had to think, to assess the situation.

  She lay on her side, arms behind her. She became aware that her blouse was open in the front. Her bra was gone, her breasts exposed. She had not been that way before, even right before she was overwhelmed in the attack. Of that she was certain. She realized that her belt was also loose and open. She could feel his filthy hands on her. Anger welled up within her.

  The ache in her head worsened, became a sharp localized pain, emanating from the right side of her head. She turned her head and touched it gingerly against the floor in an effort to judge the extent of the wound. She winced with sudden sharp pain, but felt a soft thickness. A pad of some sort was taped over the wound. A bandage, slightly moist. She had no doubt that the wetness was her own blood.

  A sudden remembrance chilled her and she felt the bandage again. It was much too flat against her skull. She remembered the terrible pain, the crunch of steel working through cartilage. She stifled a cry. Her ear! The monster had cut off her ear! Her anger boiled into rage.

  Someone would die for this.

  Shaking, she forced her rage aside, bottled it. Anger would simmer but letting it consume her would not help. She had to think, coolly and distantly from emotion. She was a scientist. All she could do was gather data about her world and make deductions.

  She was on a hard, rough surface. A floor. She moved, trying to understand that little bit of information. Hard, rough. Concrete. No, maybe not. Like concrete. She could feel joints in it. Masonry joints. A masonry floor? That wasn’t a common thing. Was it?

  The masonry was hard and painful against her body. Hard. Not clean. It felt moldy. It reeked of mold. Mold suggested little or no maintenance of this place.

  She had deduced this much; she was being held in a seldom-used place built of masonry.

  She listened.

  Nothing. Not a sound. Unusual in itself. Must be a solid place, to have no sounds at all. Just the ringing in her own ears. Almost any place you went, you heard something. The hum of appliances, footsteps, car doors, the whisper of air conditioning …

  No air conditioning here. The place was hot and muggy, the air stale and dank. A happy home for mold, indeed.

  Mortar and masonry floors. Quiet as a tomb. Seldom used. She was getting an idea of her prison. But she needed to test it.

  With great effort she rocked backward, onto her back, and brought her legs over, their momentum carrying her over onto her stomach. Bits of litter ground into her flesh. She shifted her weight and rolled onto her side.

  With two more complete rolls, she smacked face-first into a wall. The collision stunned her and she relaxed, letting the pain ebb.

  She drew close to the wall and faced it. She reached out with her bound feet and touched the wall, and felt it as far in every direction as she could. It too was of masonry. She bent her knees and scooted a few more inches.

  She felt the gentle concave curve of the masonry in both directions. And suddenly, she knew where she was.

  She was a prisoner inside the old lighthouse. Hammond Lighthouse.

  A distant, muffled sound came to her, the first she’d heard. She placed her ear against the floor and listened intently. There it was again, a distant, sharp sound. Something hard against something hard.

  A key turning a lock?

  A heavier sound. And then a soft, regular padding. Footsteps, coming nearer.

  She heaved back away from the wall, and rolled over and over, back to where she guessed she had been deposited.

  A rattling, metallic sound, a key turning in a lock. There was a loud click, and the rasp of a heavy bolt being slid.

  By sheer will she ratcheted down her rapid breathing. Her eyes narrowed to slits. She pretended to sleep. Her captor didn’t need to know she’d learned a thing or two.

  A door opened and yellow light poured in. A dark silhouette stood, framed in the light of the doorway. A man. Who, she couldn’t tell. All she could see was his silhouette.

  He fastened his light on her and stood, silently watching. He took a step closer, stopped. The light flicked around the room briefly, along the walls, across the floor, and returned to settle on her again. Looking at her. Studying her.

  Go away...

  She made a decision; she would feign unconsciousness only up to a point. If he put one filthy hand on her one more time, he was going to pay. She would swing her bound legs together, bringing the force of her knees straight for him. With a little luck, she might even connect with him right in the temple. A well-placed knee to the temple could kill.

  She tensed the muscles of her leg and back, readying herself for her one desperate attack.

  * * *

  Grant rose and fell with the growing waves. All about was darkness and wind-lashed water. He shouted, his voice lost in the rush of wind and water.

  He shook the lamp, tried the switch on and off. A wave crested and blew over him. He submerged and bobbed to the surface again.

  He blew more air into his BC vest. The vest lifted him slightly higher in the water.

  The pain in his leg grew. He reached down and touched the wound, and could feel the warmth of his blood escaping into the water.

  Charley had gone, just as Grant had ordered him to. Ninety-nine percent chance of that. But that left one percent contrary. That was something. And the lamp was his only hope if Charley was still out there looking for him.

  He tried the lamp once more. It failed. He gripped the rubber casing that held the lens plate intact, and twisted. It resisted then began to slip. He carefully unscrewed the casing and withdrew it. He tucked it into his swimsuit and gently tapped the exposed bulb. No response. He twisted it looser, then tighter. The bulb
flickered, went out, and came to brilliant life.

  “Ha!” Grant shouted.

  He held the glowing lamp aloft just as a wave washed over him. He kicked hard with his fins, driving himself higher in the water. Couldn’t let this baby short out. The wave rolled past, and Grant quickly replaced the lens casing and screwed it tightly into place.

  A wave suddenly struck and tossed him, tearing the lamp from his grip. It sank beneath the surface.

  Grant plunged under after it, caught it, and returned to the surface, his heart pounding.

  He swept the beam of light all around him, a full circle. He waved it up and down. He zigzagged it across the waves. He shined it up into the rain and clouds, the beam glowing against them. Anything that might attract attention.

  He listened intently for an engine.

  A sudden movement to his left caught his attention. He spun and aimed the beam in that direction. No boat. An angular black shape cut the surface and disappeared some twenty yards away.

  His leaking blood had rung the dinner bell.

  He reached down to his lower leg, unsheathed the dive knife he kept there. Puny, worthless thing, but it was all he had.

  He studied the nearby water, all the while waving the lamp.

  Below the rush of the wind, he heard a low throaty rumble. An outboard engine.

  He looked in every direction, sweeping the light.

  Two hundred yards away, a black button lifted above the waves. Two tiny lights, one red, one white, blinked above the waves. The running lights.

  The boat plowed toward him, rising and falling.

  “Yeah, Charley, over here,” he cried, waving the lamp.

  Something bumped his foot. Something big.

  He drew his legs up under him and slashed down with the knife, striking nothing.

  The boat drew nearer. A hundred yards now. Ninety.

  The bump came again, against his calf. He felt the shark’s rough skin, sandpaper, scrape against his skin. He kicked it, his heel making contact. It darted away.

  It was a big one, powerfully built. He had a good idea that it was a bull shark, the nastiest, deadliest creature in the Gulf of Mexico.