Pandora's Temple (13 page)

“Indian?”

“There’s something still alive here.”

“Not that I can see.”

Wareagle rotated his eyes around the deck, the foreboding and concern on his expression visible even through his faceplate. “That’s the problem.”

McCracken felt another gust of wind slam into him and looked toward the southeast and the approaching storm.

“That storm hits with the kind of wallop it looks like . . .”

“We lose the evidence we need to figure out the truth,” Wareagle completed for him.

“Means we’re on the clock here, Johnny. What do you think we’re talking about for temperatures at the thirty-two-thousand-foot depth their drill had reached?”

“At the earth’s core itself, eighteen hundred miles down, temperatures can reach ten thousand degrees—as hot as the surface of the sun. That level of heat holds fifty thousand times more energy than all global oil and natural gas on the planet. Untapped geothermal energy contained beneath miles of prehistoric rock that runs straight to the earth’s core.”

McCracken scratched at his scalp through his soft helmet. “You suggesting that’s what killed Paul Basmajian?”

“No,” Wareagle told him, “because the effects and force of that kind of geothermal burst, even if the
Venture
’s line had been able to contain it, would look nothing like what we’ve got here. First off, you’d have remains in some form, except for the fact that the integrity of the entire structure would have been compromised to the point of collapsing into the sea.”

“So this wasn’t temperature.”

“Not temperature alone, Blainey.”

McCracken joined Wareagle in gazing about the deck. The remains of the two-hundred-foot-high derrick, the bottom half, had toppled over. The bases of the lifting cranes bracketing it on either side were visible, but the orange extensions were gone, as if shorn off and dumped into the sea, absent of a cut, sheer or otherwise. The other structures on the main deck had collapsed, though not in a pile of refuse-strewn rubble. Just flattened, as if crushed by something bearing incredible weight. In the satellite photo arrays and real-time motion shots, they’d been intact in the moments before the white cloud enveloped the
Deepwater Venture
, then essentially gone afterward.

Even through his faceplate, Wareagle looked suddenly and atypically hesitant.

“What’s on your mind, Indian?”

“I’m wondering if there’s a weapon capable of doing something like what we see before us.”

“Realistically or theoretically?”

“In our experience they’re usually the same.”

“The answer’s no, in either case.”

Wareagle started to shake his head, then stopped. “Thirty-two thousand feet below the surface. . . . Baz and his crew sucked something up never seen in this world before.”

A rumbling sound broke into their analyzing, and both men looked up to see another chopper, a Sikorsky, hovering overhead. A man wearing a tattered leather vest and Grateful Dead T-shirt over his hazmat suit emerged from inside clinging to the sides of a rescue basket.

“Maybe he can tell us what,” said McCracken.

Captain Seven had arrived.

McCracken had no idea what Captain Seven’s real name was, only that he had gotten this one thanks to behavior, eccentricities, and intelligence that had led one military commander to call the tech whiz a visitor from the seventh planet from a distant galaxy. “Captain,” accordingly, wasn’t a real military rank. Even though he’d never spent a day in boot camp or wearing a uniform, his efforts along with his scientific knowledge and creativity had saved countless lives. Captain Seven had been one of those on the forefront of using technology as a prime weapon against opponents of all levels. Though he’d pioneered work with aerial surveillance and mapping, his true strengths lay in weapons analysis and development, both of which might well be required here after his trip to the Florida panhandle in search of jellyfish toxin was cut short.

Captain Seven’s respect for the mysteries filling the world around him came with one special caveat: understanding was the greatest weapon against the unknown. But it had to be an understanding based on that very unknown’s terms, not currently applied ones. That’s where the fluidity in his approach came in, along with the need to write new rules to come to grips with new challenges.

“Dude,” Captain Seven said, as soon as McCracken helped him from the basket, “how am I supposed to toke up through this helmet?”

“Don’t tell me you brought . . .”

Captain Seven winked, his shock of matted-down wild gray hair visible through his faceplate. “How you expect me to get through the day without a little ganja to stimulate my creative juices?”

“And you’re how old now, Captain?”

“A day older than yesterday, a day younger than tomorrow. Beyond that, I don’t think much about it.”

If the eerie surroundings or bizarre circumstances bothered him at all, he didn’t show it. Then again, Captain Seven had been solving impossible technological riddles dating all the way back to Vietnam, though his work since had linked him more with a man McCracken judged to be pretty much a younger version of himself.

“How’s Kimberlain, Captain?”

“The Ferryman’s never been better or busier. No shortage of monsters to take to their deaths these days.”

“Nice T-shirt, by the way,” McCracken said, smiling through his mask at the design featuring a peace sign with
MAKE LOVE
above it and
NOT WAR
below. “Especially since war’s what you’ve helped the Indian and me make a whole bunch of times.”

“Yeah, I’m a portrait in irony. Thing is, life hasn’t been nearly as good since Jerry Garcia finally bought the farm. Hey, I know it was a long time coming, but my world just isn’t the same. But when we crack this case, I’ll smoke you boys up with high-end homegrown. What you say to that, big fella?” Captain Seven asked Wareagle. “I hear Indians are veritable master growers born with an herbal thumb.”

“You mind if we get started, Captain?” McCracken prodded. He knew Captain Seven was a long way from home in the form of a pair of linked train cars parked in Sunnyside Yard in Queens, not far from New York’s Penn Station, leaving him to wonder how the captain could grow anything at all. “There’s a storm brewing.”

“In more ways than one, MacNuts,” Captain Seven said, using a nickname reserved only for him.

“What’s that mean?”

“Not sure yet. But if I’m right,” the captain continued, touching an unrecognizable hunk of debris formed of fused-together portions of the rig, “we might not make it until the storm.”

Captain Seven had an overstuffed backpack strapped to his shoulders, containing the various technological tools of his trade that would help decipher whatever had happened to the
Deepwater Venture
. Since none of the machines or technology aboard the rig were likely to be functional anymore, they could only rely on what they could carry, which for the captain was considerable.

“How much do you know?” McCracken asked him, his faceplate starting to mist up ever so slightly.

“I could write books about what I know.”

“I’m talking about what happened on this rig.”

Captain Seven looked about, as if realizing where he was for the first time. “I’m guessing pretty much the same as you. They hit something thirty thousand–plus feet down that apparently took things personally. And the only thing left alive on this thing, apparently, is us. Speaking of which, any of your friends in uniform do thermal-imaging scans?”

“Several. Flatlines on the readouts.”

“Like I was saying.”

With that, Captain Seven began unpacking the contents of his backpack, starting with a small satellite dish.

“Need a wireless relay to connect up with the mainframes at NSA,” he explained.

“Didn’t know you’d been granted access,” McCracken noted.

Which drew a wink from the captain. “Who said I was granted access? I’ve been making their system my own since the IBM 360 Model 90 was state of the art. Anything we need to help us solve this mystery will soon be a click away.”

Once the satellite array, looking like a high-tech version of an old-fashioned rabbit ears antenna, was set up, McCracken and Wareagle helped Captain Seven lay out a varied group of sensors and analytical tools that would help them determine what had transpired here and what exactly had befallen the missing crew. The first device he assembled looked like the kind of metal detector wielded at beaches in search of lost change and jewelry.

“Seems a bit low tech by your standards, Captain,” McCracken noted.

“I made all these myself, so appearances can be deceiving. Know what this one is?” the captain asked him, holding the waist-high wand that looked like a metal detector.

“Nope,” McCracken told him.

“Basically, it’s an organic materials sensor capable of homing in on organic matter, like hair, blood, as well as flesh and bone residue, in the hopes of uncovering the remains of the crew. Even a blast hot enough to melt and re-form steel would leave some of that organic residue behind, and following the trail of it should allow me to trace the final moments of the
Deepwater Venture
’s missing crewmembers.” Captain Seven hesitated long enough to meet McCracken’s gaze through his faceplate. “One of them was a friend of yours.”

“Somebody tell you that?”

“Nobody had to.”

McCracken took a deeper breath, letting it out slowly. “Indian thinks we might not be alone up here.”

Captain Seven stiffened briefly, then relaxed again. “We’ll know soon enough,” he said with uncharacteristic evasiveness.

“What is it you’re not saying, Captain?”

“I’m not saying.”

Next McCracken and Wareagle watched Captain Seven assemble a similar-looking device with a smaller, flatter head.

“’Nother one of my techno concoctions. A minerals and elements analyzer to better help figure out what got done to the rig in those missing six seconds.”

“We’ve got confirmation that whatever did this is localized to the rig,” McCracken said, as the captain tested the assembled devices to make sure they were fully operational. “No evidence of any similar phenomenon anywhere in the Gulf, surrounding barrier islands, or land. No reports from any other ships or rigs. But there is a vague report of an undersea seismic disturbance below us right around the same time.”

“Seismic disturbance?” Captain Seven echoed, as if it bore some special significance to him.

“That mean something?”

“Been there, done that is all,” Captain Seven said, his eyes even more glassy than usual.

“It’s all we know for now.”

“We’ll know a hell of a lot more than that soon,” Captain Seven assured him. “Hey, do either of you have a joint?”

The sky directly overhead had storm darkened considerably more by the time the captain was ready to survey the ship with his two separate sensing devices, as well as a digital camera and something that looked like a Geiger counter hanging from his shoulder. The wind had shifted, and McCracken could feel the first taste of rain on the air. No light or sound emanated from Captain Seven’s high-tech instruments, looking more like toys assembled without benefit of batteries. But McCracken knew all the data was being recorded by the machines’ miniature hard drives to be linked with NSA’s pilfered mainframe once their sweep of the rig was complete.

McCracken and Wareagle walked the
Venture
with him, starting with the unrecognizable remnants of the rig’s debris-strewn main deck. They moved stiffly, suddenly missing the weapons they’d originally seen no reason to bring. But now, as darkness descended, the hulking shapes of what had been fully functional equipment seemed ready to burst upon them at any moment in some concerted attack. Each gust of wind created a creaking shift of movement somewhere nearby that could just as easily have been the stealthy approach of their unseen enemy.

“There’s something still alive here.”

Johnny’s words now seemed more like a warning.

McCracken tried to shake the stiffness from his frame, but failed. The
Venture
’s five decks, the main with four below, had remained structurally intact and sound underfoot, although he thought he could feel heat radiating up through his feet. The sensation was strange, almost soothing, and he wasn’t sure if the rig was the actual source or if the tight-fitting hazmat boots were to blame instead.

“I feel it too, Blainey,” Wareagle said on the rig’s second level, seeing the discomfort in his steps. “But there’s no blast residue,” he noted, as they continued along the rig’s second level, “no heat signature whatsoever.”

“Any explanation for that come to mind, Captain?” McCracken wondered.

Captain Seven replied without looking up from the LED readouts on the sensors he held in either hand like walking canes. “Well, I’ve seen the results of underwater volcanic eruptions that reach the surface, but neither that nor anything else is really comparable to what we’re facing here. Yo, boys, has anybody raised the possibility that this wasn’t an accident?”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning what I just said.”

“There’s no weapon on the planet that can do what was done to this rig.”

“You mean, there didn’t used to be,” the captain reminded him.

“The real question being,” McCracken followed, “if you’re right, who was wielding it?”

His scan of all five levels complete, back on the main deck Captain Seven started to assemble a makeshift technological and communications center beneath a thin reinforced tarpaulin suspended over poles magnetically affixed to the deck. McCracken and Wareagle helped him ease the poles into place at the proper intervals, befuddled when they refused to stick.

“Please tell me there’s something wrong with the magnets,” said McCracken.

“Oh, there’s something wrong all right, but not with them.” The captain struggled to readjust his leather vest with his hazmat gloves. “The steel forming the deck’s been demagnetized.”