Pandora's Temple (10 page)

Lipton had started his check of the encampment’s perimeter, the eco-shacks placed where flat land allowed, when he spotted something out of place by the water’s edge. Out of place because he didn’t recall it being there earlier when the sun had still been up. Traipsing through the brush toward the shoreline, he figured it was likely a fisherman’s dinghy, beached with the man’s own camp likely not too far from WorldSafe’s.

Drawing closer to the currents gently lapping up onshore, though, Lipton saw it wasn’t a dinghy at all, but some kind of sleek black craft left in the camouflage of darkness only to be betrayed by a sliver of moonlight. A Zodiac, an inflatable model stretching nearly eighteen feet in length, outfitted with an aluminum floor, Decitex speed tubes, and a sleek outboard motor.

Lipton felt himself shiver, even though the night wasn’t cold at all. This was Zodiac’s assault model, a favorite of the Special Forces.

His senses sharpened, hearing and sight suddenly more attuned. He could only hope the group that had come on the Zodiac had reconnoitered somewhere else, giving Lipton enough time to get his people to safety. He touched the engine, finding some solace in the fact that it was still warm, indicating they hadn’t been onshore for long.

“Hide if you can. Flee the village. You’re in danger.”

Fighting against panic, he reminded himself to stick to darkness and brush cover in taking a circuitous path back to the WorldSafe camp. His plan was to sneak into the outlying eco-shacks and rouse their occupants first to enlist them to help in the process down the line. With luck, any luck, they’d be able to evacuate the camp before whoever had come in the Zodiac stormed the camp.

You’re in danger.

Lipton could only pray Katie DeMarco’s warning hadn’t come too late. He reached the first eco-shack, fortunately occupied by an ex-marine named Ben Holcomb. Lipton slipped through the open door and slid toward Ben’s cot in the darkness.

“Ben,” he said softly before he got there. “Ben, it’s me, Todd.” Lipton leaned over to gently rouse the ex-marine with a shake of his shoulder. Then a bit less gently when this failed to do the trick. “We’ve got prob—”

Lipton’s words lodged in his throat when Holcomb’s neatly severed head rolled off the cot and plopped to the floor. The air was thick with the coppery scent of blood, and Lipton had no idea why he hadn’t noticed it until now. He stifled a scream, stuck part of his hand in his mouth, and started to backpedal from the murdered man’s shack.

Pfffft . . . pfffft . . . pfffft . . .

Lipton had heard suppressed gunfire before only in movies and that’s exactly what it sounded like here in the camp now. The discomforting sound jostled his senses enough to make him twist from Holcomb’s shack with a start, the night suddenly alive with orange muzzle flashes fired by black shapes standing in the doorways of six more of the eco-shacks. The screams that followed seemed to have a delayed reaction, as if the members of WorldSafe had to wake up before realizing they were being killed. More dark shapes slithered about the trees and brush, one with the night.

Todd Lipton was no hero, not even close, and even if he had been, there was no weapon on God’s green earth that could be an equalizer against such a force. A hero, no, but a thinker always, and now his thoughts propelled him back into the night toward the shoreline and his only chance:

The Zodiac.

It didn’t occur to him that he was abandoning his people in cowardly fashion, because he could do nothing for them now other than help avenge their deaths and likely Katie DeMarco’s too. The Zodiac not only provided his means of flight, but it would also deny the killers the means to pursue him.

Lipton broke into a sprint as soon as the relatively flat ridge dropped into a slope that would hide him from sight. The Zodiac was in plain view when an exposed tree branch tripped him up and sent pain shooting through his right ankle. He hit the ground hard, landing on his chin with enough force to rattle his teeth and jaws. Lipton crawled through the saw grass toward the shore, chewing down the pain, feeling the sand finally under the pads of his fingers and then palms.

Then he saw the black, tightly laced boots directly before him.

Lipton didn’t look up, not wanting to see the man attached to them. Just closed his eyes and pressed his face into the ground, hoping it wouldn’t hurt.

“Gentlemen,” Coast Guard Captain Merch began in a deep southern drawl, greeting McCracken and Wareagle in the ready room after Hank Folsom had arranged passage for them to the cutter
Nero
at the Port of New Orleans from police custody, “I don’t know who you are or what the hell your stake is in a Level Six. But all this makes about as much sense as a dog driving through a traffic light.”

“Why don’t you start with anything you can tell us about the
Venture
’s crew,” McCracken said, thinking of Paul Basmajian.

“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t. Not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t know, not a damn thing.”

“Then tell us what you do know.”

“F-16s out of Barksdale made the call and rightly so five hours ago. Homeland Security assumed jurisdiction and next thing I know the Coast Guard’s local command center is overrun with plain-faced men who don’t bother with introductions or anything traditional like showing an ID. I guess that means this is now all yours. We’ve been relegated to the sidelines to follow your lead, which suits me just fine ’cause whatever’s going on here is way out of my league,
anybody’s
league. Explains why they called you, I guess.”

“They called us because we’ve got a friend on board.”

“Had.”

“Talk to me in English, Captain.”

“So what exactly did the button-downs from Homeland tell you?”

“Nothing,” McCracken told him, as Johnny Wareagle looked on in silence.

“Sounds like they treat all their people with the same consideration they give grunts like me.”

“We’re not their people, Captain.”

“You always get the call when so much shit hits the fan the blades jam up?”

“Used to. We’re kind of retired now. Isn’t that right, Indian?”

“Not so much anymore it would seem, Blainey.”

“What the big fella means,” McCracken picked up, “is that we’re here because we were told a friend of ours running a deepwater oil rig is missing along with his entire crew. If you’ve got more to say on the subject, let’s hear it.”

At that point, Merch switched on a wide-screen television monitor and started working the keys of a wireless laptop computer. “Here’s satellite imagery taken of the
Deepwater Venture
this morning at ten hundred hours when it was about to break the record for a deepwater drilling rig.”

A number of images rotated across the screen, each picturing scenes typical to someone who understood the workings on board an oil rig.

“And here’s satellite imagery starting seventeen minutes later,” Merch continued, working fresh keys on his laptop.

This satellite image pictured the
Venture
’s entire structure immersed in a white cloud like nothing either McCracken or Wareagle had ever seen before. Almost like the white squalls of legend known to spring up out of nowhere and disappear just as fast. The next image showed an eruption of light like that of a giant flashbulb. The third showed a burst of what looked like white-hot flames that had burned out by the fourth image.

“What’s the time lapse between shots?” McCracken asked.

“Just over six seconds.”

McCracken exchanged a glance with Wareagle, both of them awaiting Merch’s next words.

“Either of you boys care to tell me what kind of fire burns out in six seconds?”

“This wasn’t a fire,” McCracken told him.

“Come again?”

“You heard me, Captain.”

“But you haven’t heard the bridge tapes yet. Soon as they triggered the blowout preventer, automated audio transmission began via an emergency channel. Unfortunately, it makes no more sense than anything else we’ve got here.”

“Give us the short version.”

“Okay: they were dealing with something they couldn’t make any more sense out of then than we can now.”

Merch put on a pair of reading glasses to consult the transcript on his laptop, highlighting the portion he wanted to play before hitting the Enter key. With that, a series of scratchy unidentified voices rose through the laptop’s tiny speakers.

“Something’s coming up, sir! Something in the line!”

“Shut it down! You hear me? Shut it down!”
Paul Basmajian’s voice, provoking an eerie chilled feeling in McCracken.

“System’s not responding, sir! System’s not responding!”

“Go to Failsafe!”

The highlighted portion completed, Merch said, “Apparently Failsafe didn’t work either.”

“Play the recording again, Captain,” McCracken requested.

And this time he reached over and stopped it after
“Something’s coming up, sir! Something in the line!”

“I’m open to ideas, gentlemen,” said Merch.

“How deep were they?” Wareagle asked.

“Just past thirty-two thousand feet. New record, like I said.”

“A whole other world,” Wareagle followed, words aimed more at McCracken. “The Sioux always looked to the sky for their legends and mysteries in times past. They could just as easily have been looking toward the seas.”

“In other words, Captain,” McCracken said, “right now your guess is as good as ours. Have any of your people gotten up close and personal with what’s left of the rig?”

Merch shook his head. “No, sir, just reconnaissance from afar. Those were our orders. I can tell you the air checks out fine. I can tell you there are no contaminants or toxins whatsoever. But I can also tell you there’s no one on board left alive, no trace anyone was ever there at all. It’s like the whole crew just vanished.” Merch scratched at the bridge of his nose, leaving a blotchy red mark behind. “What I can’t tell you is what happened to them or how a fire, or whatever the hell it was, leaves no sign of burning or charring. Just . . .”

“What?”

“Better you see for yourself, sir.”

“Fine. When do we leave for the rig?”

Merch hesitated before answering. “There’s something else you need to consider first.”

“What’s that, Captain?”

“A Level Six runs the gamut anywhere between extinction event to alien invasion. In other words, a threat like nothing else we’ve ever faced before.”

“Also nothing new for Johnny and me.”

“Then consider this: maybe whatever did this to your friend and the others is still on that rig.”

The Bell 430 helicopter sliced through the sky over the neat blue ribbon of the Gulf below. Storm clouds gathering to the south and east, meanwhile, darkened the horizon ominously and similarly darkened McCracken’s mood once more.

They soared over the perimeter the Coast Guard had set up a mile around the
Deepwater Venture
with cutters, crash ships, and patrolling helicopters. Drawing closer, McCracken and Wareagle could see that the rig’s tension leg platform, superstructure, and massive support columns were still intact, the
Venture
left stable by whatever had befallen it. Her main deck was something else again. McCracken felt his breathing go thick and labored, slogging up his throat as the first of the carnage left behind by whatever had destroyed the rig came into clear view.

The deck looked to be a molten mass of bubbled steel, with no evidence of char or any residue typical of a massive blaze.

“You said you checked for airborne contaminants and toxins?” McCracken raised.

“Yes, sir, we did and found no trace whatsoever,” Merch told him. “But I’ve been advised you need to wear hazmat suits, masks, and breathing apparatus.”

“What about something organic?”

“Wait a minute,” Merch said, adjusting his headphones in the Bell 430, “you suggesting something
alive
was responsible for this?”

McCracken and Wareagle exchanged a glance, both of them thinking the same thing.

“Something’s coming up, sir! Something in the line!”

“I’m not saying anything. I’m only asking.”

“Then let me answer you. No, nothing on this earth could’ve done what we’re looking at down there.”

“You mean nothing we know of.”

The helicopter settled a safe distance over the deck well away from either of the
Venture
’s two vacant helipads.

“No way to be sure they’re stable enough to handle the weight,” Merch told them. “We’re going to have to winch you down, as long as you don’t have a problem with that.”

McCracken exchanged a glance with a grinning Wareagle. “Captain, the Indian and I have spent most of our adult lives being dropped into hot LZs by helicopter, so I don’t think we have any problem with a nice comfortable ride downward. What about that tech expert I requested?”

“En route now, sir. Turned out he was close by in the Florida panhandle collecting jellyfish. Any idea why?”

“My guess is because panhandle jellyfish are incredibly toxic. The captain is a specialist in weapons development.”

“Jellyfish?”

“
Nontraditional
weapons development,” McCracken told Merch.

“Look, sir, I’m told Homeland has its own experts on pretty much everything scientific standing by.”

“My man has a reputation for solving the unsolvable, and he’s no stranger to the bizarre or the danger that comes with it.”

“Vietnam?”

“And every war since.”

Merch consulted his clipboard. “I think we may have written his name down wrong.”

“What have you got?”

“Seven. No first name. Just Captain Seven.”

McCracken couldn’t help but smile at the thought of the captain’s imminent arrival. “Right as rain.” His eyes focused on the shape of the
Deepwater Venture
, growing as they neared it. “You ever play with Erector sets when you were a kid?” he asked Wareagle.

“Only if I could make them out of what the reservation had to offer.”

“I did. Imagined myself building superstructures of steel. Problem was I didn’t like following directions, preferring instead to either re-create intricate real-life structures from pictures or conjure up something totally on my own. Except there were never enough parts to finish what I started. I threw a tantrum once and stomped my erected concoction into the floor, pounded the pieces with my shoe until I couldn’t recognize them anymore.”