Serpent (11 page)

A few strokes and she was at the buoy.

A fusillade opened up, and the lagoon's surface erupted in miniature geysers off to her right side.

No time to build up her air supply

She filled her lungs in a frantic gulp, and her supple body jackknifed in a quick surface dive. Directly under the marker, faintly illuminated by the glow of lights from above, was the stone arch. She wriggled under the arch, reached out until she felt a hard vertical edge, and pulled herself into the the lightless bowels of tire tunnel.

As she swam her fingers brushed the smooth wall like a crude, tactile sonar.

Making it to the end of the tunnel was a long shot without air and fins, but even if this damned hole became her tomb, at least she'd have the satisfaction of knowing her pursuers would never learn her fate. She slowed slightly, trying to keep a steady, even pace. Panic would steal oxygen and energy.

She swam deeper. The wall became rough to the touch. She was in the cave. The going would be trickier here. She slowed even more to navigate the twists and turns. Went down a blind alley and had to back out. It felt like hours since she had taken a breath. Her lungs pressed against her ribs as if her chest were going to explode. How long could she hold her breath? A minute? Two? Maybe, if she'd had a chance to hyperventilate and build up capacity. God, how much farther?

Her head slammed into a hard surface. She was sure she felt the plates in her skull shift. She cried out instinctively and lost more air.

Damn. She'd forgotten about the pile of rubble. She groped over the top of the debris and squeezed her way through the opening. She was past the halfway mark!

The wall became smooth again. Good. She was back in the manmade tunnel. Only a few dozen meters. Her lungs were on fire. She let out a small breath as if that would relieve the pressure and started making sounds like a pigeon. God, she didn't want to drown. Not here. She kicked desperately with no attempt to conserve energy.

The lack of oxygen made her dizzy. Next she'd start to black out and swallow water. A painful, excruciating death. Nina stubbornly resisted taking that first fatal breath. She groped for the wall. Nothing. Then felt for the ceiling. Again nothing. Wait! She was out of the tunnel! She arched her body upward, kicked frantically, and broke the surface, where she sucked in great gulps of air.

In time her breathing became almost normal again. She treaded water, looking toward shore, where lights moved like fireflies. Then she struck off around the tip of the promontory and swam parallel to the beach. When she could swim no more, she angled in toward land. Weeds brushed her feet and her toes felt the cool, mucky bottom. She crawled onto the sand but rested only a few minutes before she got to her feet and walked along the beach. She came to the old riverbed, followed the wadi inland a few hundred meters, then climbed the banking and walked across the dunes until she could go no farther. She crawled into a thicket of high grass and lay down.

The horror of the massacre began to play back in her mind. Dr. Knox. Fisel. Kassim. All dead. Why? Who were those men? Why were they after her? Bandits who thought the expedition had discovered treasure? No, the concentrated fury of the attack was too organized for bandits. It was meant to be a massacre.

Shivering with the cold, Nina removed her flannel nightie, wrungthe water from it, and put it back on over her camisole top and underwear: The wet fabric raised goosebumps the size of eggs. She broke off clumps of grass and stuffed them under the nightie until she looked like a scarecrow The primitive insulation was scratchy, but it helped keep the cold air out. The shivering subsided somewhat, and before long she fell asleep.

Near dawn she was awakened by a murmur of voices coming from the direction of the riverbed. Maybe help had arrived and they were searching for her. She held her breath and listened.

Spanish.

Without a second's delay she slithered into the tall beach grass like a frightened salamander.

5. THE SHARP. BRITTLE GRASS STEMS were like a fakir's bed of nails that ripped at Nina's nightgown and tore the skin on her bare arms and legs. Disregarding the pain, she dug her knees and elbows into the sand and kept moving. She had no other choice. If she stood up to run, she'd be dead.

The killers had found her too quickly, almost as if they had followed a map to her hiding place! She cursed in the native tongue of her grandmother. They did have a map. The harborworks diagram she had painstakingly drawn lay in plain sight on her work table. The tunnel had been rendered as two bold lines and dearly labeled. Once the killers discovered her underwater escape route, they had only to search the beach for footprints and follow them into the wadi.

The voices rose in pitch and volume, became more excited, coming from where she had climbed out of the riverbed. The killers must have found where she'd disturbed the banking. Nina made a sharp turn and crawled parallel to her original route, doubling back until she came to the riverbed. She peered from between blades of grass. No one was in the wadi. She slid down the banking and raced with head low toward the beach. The riverbed was churned up by footprints which indicated that a sizable party was tracking her down. Soon she glimpsed the bluegreen of the sea. The turquoise ship was still anchored off-shore. She paused where the waterway once emptied into the ocean. The empty beach beckoned like a highway in both directions.

Voices and the crunch of footsteps came from behind. Again the killers had spread out like hunters trying to flush a quail. She'd be seen whether she went to the right or the left. As on the previous. night, the watery route remained her only choice.

Nina peeled off her ripped and sandcaked nightgown, tossed it aside, and sprinted in camisole and underwear across the hard-packed gravelly delta washed out by centuries of river flow. She hoped the dune ridge would screen her until she reached the water's edge. Still no outcry as she splashed into the shallows. She was aware how vulnerable she was, completely out in the open with no darkness or tunnel to hide her. Any second the killers would crest the dunes, and she'd be an easy target for their bullets.

The kneedeep water covering the salt flats seemed to go on forever, slowing her progress but offering no protection. She pressed on, leaping with long strides, and eventually the water got to waist level. She dove under just as angry lead bees filled the air. The water behind her erupted in a patch of angry foam. Nina dove under and swam off at an angle for as long as she could, surfaced for air, and dove again, porpoisestyle. Once beyond the brownish water over the flats and into the deeper blue ocean, she glanced back and saw maybe a dozen figures on shore. Some had waded into the shallows. The gunfire seemed to have stopped.

Pivoting, Nina fixed her eye on the ship, concerned that it would weigh anchor and leave her between the devil and the deep blue sea. A swim to the Canary Islands wasn't in her plans. Rolling onto her back, she looked up at the puffy gilt-edged clouds and caught her breath. At least it was a good day for a swim. She rested only a minute. She had to get the blood moving in her body again.

Pace yourself, rest when necessary, and count your blessings. Calm sea and no wind or currents. No different from the swim phase of a triathlon, except for one thing: if she lost this race, she would die. Taking a bead on the ship's main mast, she threw one arm in front of the other.

Without her wristwatch, there was no telling how long she swam. The water grew colder the deeper it got, and she counted strokes to take her mind off the energy-sapping chill. Waving at the ship would be a waste of time. Her arm would look like tire neck of a floating seabird.

She tried singing sea chanteys. The old shipboard work songs helped keep the rhythm of strokes.

Her repertoire was slim, and after she'd sung "Blow the Man Down" for the fiftieth time she simply chopped away at the sea. She drew closer to the ship, but her strokes were becoming sloppy, and she stopped to rest more often. At one point she spun around and was pleased to see she was leaving the low brown shore far behind her. To give herself courage she imagined climbing aboard the ship and washing away the salty dryness of her mouth with a steaming mug of hot coffee.

The deep thrumming sound was so faint she didn't notice it at first. Even when she stopped to listen Nina thought it might be water pressure in her head, or maybe even the noise of a ship generator. She rolled one ear in the water and listened.

The droning was louder.

Nina slowly wheeled around. A dark object was racing in her direction from shore. She thought it was a boat at first, but as it grew quickly in size Nina made out a squat ugly black hull she recognized as that of a large hovercraft, an amphibious vehicle that moves across land and sea on a cushion of air.

It moved back and forth in a series of sharpangled turns, but Nina sensed this was no rescue boat executing a search pattern. Its course was too determined, too aggressive. All at once it stopped zigzagging and came straight at her like a bullet. She must have been spotted. Rapidly it closed the distance and was practically on top of her when she dove as deep as she could go.

The hovercraft skimmed overhead on its teninch cushion, churning the water into a wild frenzy. When she could stay under no longer, Nina surfaced and sucked in air, only to cough as the purple exhaust fumes filled her lungs. The hovercraft spun around and made another pass.

Again she dove. Again she was tossed and buffeted only to fight her way back to the surface, where she bobbed in the wake.

The hovercraft stopped, settling down into the water with its engines purring, facing Nina like a big cat toying with a mouse. A weary and waterlogged mouse. Then the engines came to life, the hovercraft rose up on invisible legs and charged again.

Nina dove and was tumbled like a rock in a polishing machine. Her brain was numb; blood thundered in her ears. She was reacting on pure instinct. The game would end soon. The damned thing could turn on a dime. Each time she surfaced she had less time to take in air, and the craft was closer than before.

The blunt hull was coming at her again, although she could hardly see it with the exhaust cloud and her eyes bleary and stinging from salt water. She was too exhausted to dive and wouldn't have the strength to fight her way up from the sea again. She made a pitiful attempt to swim out of the way, but after a few strokes she turned to face her attacker as if she could beat it back with her fists.

The hovercraft was nearly on top of her, its flatulent roar filling her ears. She clenched her jaw and waited.

The horror of the past several hours was nothing compared to what happened next. The hovercraft was only seconds away when her ankles were clutched in a viselike grip and she was dragged down into the cold depths of the sea.

6 ARMS FLAILING LIKE A WINDMILL IN a gale, Nina struggled to break free, but the iron lock on her ankles never let up even as the maelstrom created by the hovercraft whipped the water around her to a wild frenzy. She emptied her lungs in one last defiant gesture, an angry, frustrated scream that came out as a muted explosion of bubbles.

The grip on her legs relaxed, and a vaguely human form began to take shape in the turbulent cloud of bubbles kicked up by the hovercraft. Like some alien cyclops from a UFO the amorphous shape came closer and solidified until the plexiglass of a diver's mask was only inches from her face. Peering from behind the lens were piercing light blue eyes that projected strength and reassurance rather than menace.

A gloved hand came up, wagged a regulator back and forth in front of her nose, and pressed the purge button so the belching mouthpiece would get her attention. Nina grabbed the regulator and hungrily bit down. No flowerscented breath of summer was ever sweeter than the lifegiving compressed air that flowed into her lungs. The leveled hand was moving up and down.

Take it easy. Slow down.

Nina nodded to show she understood the diver's signal and felt a gentle squeeze on her shoulder. She continued to breathe off the "octopus" backup emergency hose until eventually her panic passed and her breathing became more rhythmical.

Another hand signal. The forefinger and thumb formed into a vague O.

Okay?

Nina imitated the gesture.