Darkness (3 page)

MORE OBJECTS—
an iPhone, sunglasses, a coffee cup—bobbed around the boat. Sick at heart, she watched a man’s large black wing-tip dress shoe tumble past on a wave. Everywhere she looked, she could see the dark blobs of more debris. Farther out, the plane’s tail, still upright, was visible. There was no sign of the fuselage.

Bile rose in her throat at this irrefutable evidence of the utter destruction of the plane. Swallowing hard, she forced it back. Grabbing her binoculars again, she focused on the triangular blade of the tail as it rose and fell with the waves, wincing at the scorch marks on it at the same time as she once again registered the insignia: a circle above two wavy lines. The logo meant nothing to her, but the fact that the tail was able to remain upright despite the turbulence did. The tail might be still attached to the fuselage, or at least some portion of the fuselage, which was acting as a kind of anchor to keep it erect.

Lowering the binoculars, Gina took a deep, meant-to-be-steadying breath. Her nostrils wrinkled with distaste. The frigid air reeked with the acrid smell of burning combined with the strong scent of airplane fuel. She could taste the metallic tang of the fuel on her tongue, feel the burn of it in her nose. It brought the reality of the crash home to her as nothing else had done.

It brought the
memory
of the crash she had barely survived home to her as nothing else had done. For a moment she thought she could once again actually feel the searing heat of flames licking at her skin, hear the screams of the others as they died.

Making a small distressed sound, she shuddered.

Stop it
, she ordered herself fiercely.
That’s gone, over with. In the past. You weren’t on board this time
.

The people who had been on board this time—what about them?

The thought that there might be survivors was electrifying. It was what she needed to bring her sharply back to the present. Gina got a grip and scrambled back onto the seat. From there she could see parts of the plane scattered in a wide circle around her.

The boat’s sudden steep rise as it was borne aloft on a particularly tall wave gave her an excellent, if brief, view of her surroundings: parts of the plane were everywhere. The debris field was large and rapidly changing as some objects sank and others were carried away.

Could anyone have lived through something like that?

You did
, she reminded herself, then pushed the unsettling memories aside in favor of using the binoculars to visually search the water. The tail was the largest visible piece of debris. If there were survivors, logic dictated that they would be near the tail.

She was looking in that direction again when her attention was caught by a small object sliding across the black rubber deck toward her foot: the radio. Dismayed by how close she had come to losing the thing—the ability to communicate was all-important out here—she dropped the binoculars, snatched up the radio, and spoke urgently into it even as she slammed the throttle forward and steered toward the tail.

“Arvid? Anybody? Can you hear me?”

Nothing. Static was the only reply. Frowning as the heavy swell bounced her up and down, she watched a small black suitcase float past and winced at the thought of the probable fate of its owner.

Scrunching her face up against the bite of the wind, she desperately searched the sea for any sign of life.

Again, nothing.

The boat was small and lightweight enough, and the swells were growing big and powerful enough, that the stability of the craft was becoming a real concern: what she didn’t want to do was let a wave catch her sideways. Nosing into the waves, she tried the radio once more. Still just static. Giving up for the moment, she clipped the radio to her pocket, where it would be safe and she would be able to hear any transmission sent her way.

The force of the wind made her eyes water as she scanned the area. Using the binoculars at least protected her eyes and gave her a better view of what was out there. What she saw was disheartening: debris, debris, and more debris. Blinking to refocus as she lowered the binoculars, she cast an anxious glance at the approaching storm that confirmed her worst fear:
it’s coming in fast
.

When her small group of scientists had left Juneau, the week’s forecast had been ideal for their purposes, calling for the weather to be moderately cold and clear with occasional light flurries, she recalled, aggrieved. The expedition members had confirmed it before boarding the ship that had carried them to Attu. Looked like things had changed.

The ominous appearance of the tumbling clouds rushing inexorably toward her made her hands clench around the wheel. The temperature was steadily dropping. The wind was cold enough now to bite at her exposed skin. Waves rose up around her in frothy, white-tipped peaks, reminding her momentarily of a bowl of fresh-whipped meringue. The boat was starting to plunge up and down like a roller-coaster car. Attu was famous for blizzards with cyclonic winds that blew up out of nowhere, and she was afraid she was staring one right in the face.

She turned her back on it. A harried search of the waves as far as she could see turned up no signs of life. Probably she was a fool to keep looking. The wheeling birds that had filled the sky earlier were gone now, although whether from the explosion or the oncoming weather she couldn’t be sure. But the absence of birds was generally a bad sign.

Gina knew she needed to get to shore, but she couldn’t just turn tail and run. If there were survivors, she was the only hope they had.

Firmly closing her mind to the memories that threatened to overwhelm her, she narrowed her eyes against the wind, picked up the binoculars, and set herself to searching the waves again.

The snowfall was increasing in intensity. Fat white flakes swirled around her as she guided the boat toward the tail. Scanning the water for anything that resembled a person was nearly useless: there was so much debris that it was difficult to know where to even begin to look. Plus, the water was growing so choppy that it was impossible to see more than a narrow slice of the total picture at a time.

“Can anybody hear me?” she screamed, and pushed her hood back to listen for a reply. Her hair was honey brown, midback length, straight and thick as a horse’s tail. The wind caught long tendrils of it, whipping them free of her bun to send them flying around her face. It was blowing harder now, making the snowflakes feel like tiny bits of grit when they hit her skin. Keeping a wary eye on the advancing storm front, she knew that she didn’t have much longer before she absolutely had to head for shore.

The thought of abandoning anyone who might be in the water made her chest tighten.

“Hell-o-o-o,” she tried again at the top of her lungs. “Is anyone out here?”

The rushing sound of the wind and waves made her shout seem impossibly small. She couldn’t be sure, but she didn’t think it had carried very far. Certainly there was no response.

Some kind of search-and-rescue operation was needed on the scene
now
. But given the remote location, and the storm, and the time frame before it hit, she knew it wasn’t going to happen. Jittery with alarm at the idea that she was the only help there might be for days, she picked up the radio again.

“There’s been a plane crash,” she said into it. “Arvid, can you hear me? Call the Coast Guard and get help out here. I repeat, there’s been a plane crash. Can anyone hear me?” She gave her location and coordinates in hopes that Arvid or someone could hear her even if they couldn’t respond. If a couple of her fellow scientists could join her with the other boat that was docked at the main camp, that would be way better than having just herself out here alone. But even as she had the thought, she realized that there wasn’t time. She was probably a good half hour away by sea from the former Coast Guard station, and the storm would hit way before any of them could reach her.

Reluctantly accepting that she was on her own, Gina was grimly listening to more static in reply to her latest transmission when she spotted something floating past that was definitely human.

Her stomach dropped as she stared at it.

A man’s leg, severed below the knee. Bare and white as a fish’s belly except for the dark sock that still covered the foot.

Gina was watching its progress in mute horror when a movement a few hundred yards out caught her eye.

Looking up—and thankful to the core to have her attention diverted—she carefully clipped the radio to her pocket again, lifted the binoculars, and peered through the wind and blowing snow as she sought to verify what she thought she’d seen.

Yes, there it was again.

Adrenaline raced through her. Somebody was bobbing in the water. Somebody with open eyes and a gasping mouth and flailing limbs. Impossible to be certain, but from the size of him she thought it must be a man.

A survivor
.

Gina’s heart beat faster.

Chapter Four

H
e should be dead. In fact, Cal had been pretty sure that he was dead until he’d caught a glimpse of an orange boat glimmering above the icy blue world in which he’d found himself. The explosion, the hurtling into utter blackness, the sudden immersion in freezing cold water, the lack of air, the sense of being separate from his body, all made a kind of twisted sense in the context of having just lost his life.

An orange boat did not. An orange boat had no place in the Hereafter. An orange boat meant that he’d fallen into the sea instead of some icy, watery version of hell, which was where he’d always assumed he would end up when he died. Now he was freezing, and drowning, and maybe even bleeding to death, but he was not dead.

Not yet, anyway. Not ever, if he could help it.

If he was going to live, he had to have air. Not easy when an ocean’s worth of water kept slapping him in the face, smashing down on top of his head, pulling him under and spitting him back up again, toying with him like a cat with a mouse before closing in for the kill. Not easy when water gushed up his nose every time the sea bucked around him and he found himself gulping down gallons of salt water whenever he opened his mouth for air.

He was so weak it was ridiculous, so cold he was almost paralyzed with it.

What it came down to was, did he want to live or die?

If he died, would it even really matter? To whom, besides himself?

His mother was dead, killed in a car crash when he was five. His father was a tough old bastard, a now retired Air Force officer who prided himself on being a man’s man. His idea of raising a son had consisted of beating the crap out of him for the smallest transgression until Cal had gotten big enough to turn what had started as a beating into a fight. After that, they’d pretty much circled each other like snarling dogs until he’d graduated high school and left home. They barely kept in touch. Would the old man grieve the death of his only offspring? Cal snorted inwardly. He’d be more likely to shed a tear over getting a dent in his car.

His business partner, John Hardy, another former AFSOC, would keep the company running. Nobody who worked for them would even be out of a job.

His latest ex-girlfriend was still mad at him over the fact that he’d failed to be forthcoming with a diamond ring. She might, possibly, shed a tear over his demise. She might even give a home to Harley, his dog.

Harley would grieve. Part Irish wolfhound, part German shepherd, part God knew what else, Harley was a rescue that another previous girlfriend had left with him when it had become clear that the animal was going to grow to the size of a moose. He was six years old, clumsy as a camel on roller skates, and absolutely devoted to Cal.

Cal came to the semireluctant conclusion that he could not abandon Harley.

Besides, if he died, no one would know what had gone down on that plane. No one would know that his mission had gone catastrophically wrong, or start asking why.

He was in shock from the accident. His mind was befuddled by cold and lack of oxygen. But he knew that it was vitally important to get that information to his employer. And he was the only one who could do it.

Summoning every atom of strength that remained to him, he kicked and pushed against the angry violence of the water and forced himself up above the surface of the waves. Sucking in burning lungfuls of the briny, scorched-smelling air, he waved a leaden arm at the boat.

Hope springs eternal and all that.

The sea took instant revenge, rolling over him, carrying him under, doing its best to drown him, but not before he saw that there was only one person in the boat, a mistake if whoever it was intended to try to finish him off with a final coup de grâce. Probably, he thought as he battled back to the surface and the breath he’d been holding exploded from his body, if the boat was indeed intended as backup to the downing of his plane, they hadn’t expected to find anyone alive. The boat, and the person in it, was out there as a fail-safe.

After all—and here he greedily sucked in more of the tainted air before another wave crashed down on him with what felt like all the force of Niagara Falls—how many people survived being shot out of the sky?

He probably wouldn’t have survived if he hadn’t been leaning against an outside wall at the exact moment when what had to have been a surface-to-air missile hit them.

It had taken off the nose section. Even as he was blown into what he’d thought at the time was oblivion, he’d watched Ezra and Hendricks and Rudy, who’d all been in or near the cockpit, disintegrate into a bloom of pink mist, taken out by the concussive force of the explosion that had brought down the plane.

His mind might not be firing on all cylinders at the moment, but he retained enough of his wits to know that if his plane had just been shot out of the sky by a surface-to-air missile, then somebody on the surface had to have been close enough to have shot it. Like, say, the figure currently racing toward him in the orange boat.

Chapter Five

T
he survivor
was
a man. His hair, the shape of his face, the width of his shoulders—Gina was certain about his gender even though she only had a few seconds before a swell got between them again, blocking him from her view. If he was calling to her, Gina couldn’t hear him over the noise of the sea. Couldn’t see him now, either, as the boat plunged down the back of a wave and tall peaks of steel-gray water topped with foam and littered with pieces of wreckage rushed past her on all sides.