Subterrestrial (9 page)

The entire leeward side of the island was slick with a foot-thick layer of ice formed where the heat rising from the mouth of the stone orifice melted the snow. The chunks of granite and ice that once sealed it formed a treacherous slope over which Martin and his men had been forced to use crampons and ice axes to climb.

Martin cast one final glance at the sky and ducked inside the cave. His men followed without prompting. Paul Sullivan and Oleg Renton, who’d been with him since Afghanistan, knew him well enough by now to read his moods. Besides, they were smart men who recognized what was required of them and when.

The screaming wind faded behind him as he descended into a zone of utter silence. It reminded him of wearing earplugs. His own breathing was amplified tenfold and his heart beat so loudly it nearly had an echo of its own. The walls were cold and gray and so narrow that he felt constricted, as though he were crawling down the throat of some monstrous being. He heard the hollow plinking sound of condensation dripping from somewhere ahead of him and felt the faint vibrations in the stone from water flowing beneath him. While they’d worn their Thermoprene wetsuits for just that contingency, he really hoped they weren’t going to need them. Their mission was one of simple reconnaissance: they were to survey the subterranean passages detected by thermal satellite imaging and plant the fail-safes at a point where their detonation would collapse the tunnels. The last thing they could afford was for whatever had surfaced on Little Diomede to reach the mainland, assuming it hadn’t been eradicated in the explosion that rained liquid fire and tons of debris down the air vent. What kind of idiots stored hundreds of thousands of gallons of highly combustible fuel on an island within shouting distance of the most seismically unstable region on the planet anyway? They were just begging for a major catastrophe.

The roof of the cavern lowered as the ground sloped downward. The granite gave way to gneiss and migmatite that sparkled in the beams of their headlamps. The sedimentary layers grew closer together until they fused into sandstone, which abruptly gave way to limestone and jagged karst topography. His light reflected off the placid water maybe ten feet down, where the tunnel vanished beneath it. The subterranean river was still some distance beneath them, flowing high and fast and shunting the overflow into the caverns above it, flooding the warrens with a combination of freshwater and brine that he couldn’t help but equate to bilge water.

He stepped into the cold water and carefully felt his way down the decline. There was maybe two feet of air above the water level, just enough for him to keep out his head and upper chest. He couldn’t quite stand erect, but it was vastly preferable to having to swim. The feel of terra firma under his feet gave him some semblance of control over the situation. After all, he’d been a Ranger, not a SEAL.

Droplets of condensation streaked across his peripheral vision at the very edge of his light. The surface rippled from his exertions and refracted his light onto the stalactites and the earthen roof. His men’s lights swept the cavern from one side to the other. Its dimensions were impossible to divine thanks to the darkness and the flooding. The lack of current caused the sediment to float around them in a murky brown cloud and settle to the ground in a layer so slick that maintaining his traction became a conscious act of defiance.

Renton slipped and went under with a splash. He emerged with a startled gasp that echoed away into oblivion. Martin shot him a glance and continued onward.

He hoped the sonic digital mapping unit was working its magic and finding whatever Butler was looking for. He didn’t want to have to come back down here with the ground-penetrating radar, not that they had that kind of time. They needed to eliminate the problem in the most expeditious manner possible so they could get back to the task at hand. A tunnel connecting two continents was one thing, but an already existing network of tunnels connecting thirty-one locations around the globe? The profit potential for whoever controlled them was limitless.

The water rippled at the farthest extent of his beam. He watched the minute waves roll toward him and break against his upper chest. A subtle current swept past his legs.

“Did you feel that?” Sullivan whispered.

Martin didn’t respond. They were just a little jumpy because of what they’d seen on Little Diomede. That’s why they’d gone a full five miles to the east before entering the caves. Nothing could cover that distance in such a short period of time, especially through these flooded passages. Even if their theory was right and somehow those animals had developed the ability to breathe under—

Movement to his left.

He’d seen something from the corner of his eye. A vague shape, barely cutting the surface.

All that remained now was a series of ripples that died before reaching him.

“There’s something in here with us,” Renton whispered.

Martin shushed him, but this time didn’t look back. He focused on the water at the edge of his beam as he swept it across the surface ahead of him and drew his Heckler & Koch MK23 from the holster under his arm. It was a little heavy and unwieldy in comparison to other semiautomatic pistols, and the .45 rounds weren’t as convenient as the 9mm bullets most used, but it was corrosion-resistant and waterproof. More importantly, he knew that if he pulled the trigger, it would shoot the bullet exactly where he wanted it to go.

He sighted the cavern down the length of his barrel and switched on the laser sight. The red dot passed from one stalactite to the next and vanished in between.

The ground dipped underfoot and started a more severe decline. The water rose from his collarbones to his chin.

A splash off to his right.

He whirled and watched his light dance on the ripples, beneath which he could have sworn he saw a dark shape knife through the swirling cloud of silt.

Another splash from behind him and Sullivan shouted.

“Something touched my leg!”

“I’m telling you,” Renton said. “There is definitely—”

He disappeared under the water. The sediment billowed upward in slow motion like a mushroom cloud. An expanding wash of red diffused into the water.

“Jesus Christ,” Sullivan said. “Did you see that? He was there. Right there. And then he was gone.”

“Shh.”

“He didn’t even get off a shot.”

Martin slowly distanced himself from Sullivan. He kept his arms and legs as still as possible and did everything in his power to keep from generating ripples.

Sullivan’s light swung wildly across the cavern. He turned in circles, swinging his pistol in front of him.

Martin lowered his chin into the water and breathed through his nose. The barrel of his weapon barely breached the surface. He used just his toes to inch away from Sullivan as he shed his backpack and removed the fail-safes. The CL-20 charges were the most powerful nonnuclear explosives on the market and chemically stable enough to withstand the inherent geological volatility of the region. They were wired to a remote detonation system, which, when triggered, would effectively shunt this entire network of tunnels from the mainland, if not blow a hole straight through the planet.

A shadow sliced through the water between them. The distorted shape produced a current that buffeted his legs.

Sullivan cried out as he was jerked down. A flash and a muffled report and the water took on a crimson cast.

Martin felt the warmth diffuse around him.

Something moved quickly past his hip. What felt like fingers grazed his thigh.

He affixed the charges to the limestone between the bases of two stalactites and activated the remote trigger.

The water slowly stilled. He watched the silt settle around him as though he were trapped in a filthy snow globe.

Condensation dripped from the stalactites with a faint
plink
. . .
plink
. . .

His heartbeat thundered inside his head. He worried the force of its beating would betray him.

With painstaking slowness, he brought the com-link on the inside of his wrist to his mouth and raised his chin just high enough that he could speak. He watched the surface for the slightest hint of movement, any shift in the sparkling sediment beneath it. He used his chin to open the channel and cringed at the resultant hiss of static from his in-ear receiver.

A subtle shift in the current to his right.

Plink
. . .
plink
. . .

“Speranza Base,” he whispered. “This is Echo Four. Copy?”

Movement to his left. It looked almost like the arched back of a seal breaking the surface in his peripheral vision. By the time he turned, only ripples remained.

“Speranza Station. Do you copy?”

The static crackled like an electrical current.

Plink
. . .
plink
. . .

Something brushed against his side. It was all he could do not to propel himself away from it.

He lowered the pistol under the water, slowly so as not to generate ripples. Tightened his finger on the trigger. He was only going to get one shot at this.

Plink
. . .
plink
. . .

Sharp pain in his left thigh. He opened his mouth to bellow in pain and tasted water, felt it flood into his lungs. He managed to get off a single shot as his blood diffused into the water and he was dragged down into the darkness.

Below Speranza Station

Bering Sea

Ten Miles Northwest of Wales, Alaska

65°47′ N, 169°01′ W

Calder stared down at the remains. There was something about them . . . something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. It was more than the mere fact that the carcass was mammalian, which by itself was well outside of her area of expertise. Her brain was positively screaming for her to recognize something staring her right in the face, but, for the life of her, she just couldn’t see it.

She had changed into the wetsuit provided for her in a matter of seconds, while the others were still hopping around trying to squeeze into theirs. The Thermoprene was heavier and considerably more binding than her own neoprene wetsuit, although it was immediately obvious that the company had spared no expense. The Thermoprene boots had molded soles that formed to the contours of her feet and made her feel as though she were barefoot.

The sound of voices grew louder from the cavern behind her. They were nearly done changing. In her experience, people tended not to be too talkative while they were bouncing around in their skivvies amid a group of strangers. She didn’t have long before they would catch up with her. She just wanted a few minutes alone to see if she could figure out what was setting off the alarm bells in her head.

It wasn’t the skeleton itself, per se, but rather something about it. She understood why the others were here. For them, this had to be a dream come true. Why was she here, though? She might have been hundreds of feet below sea level, but she was totally out of her element.

The answer was right in front of her. She could feel it.

She traced the edges of the stone recess. They weren’t as smooth as they’d appeared from a distance. A brown crust reminiscent of dead moss clung to them. She peeled off a section and rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger. It wasn’t plant matter at all. Its tensile strength was considerable, almost as though it were made of collagen or some other fibrous protein aggregate. She let it fall from her hand and touched the inside walls. There were crisscrossing scratches so deep they felt like a hand rake had made them. The sandstone had broken away from them in chunks.

She glanced at the carcass, at what was left of the skeletal hands resting at its sides. The broadened tufts at the tips of the fingers were cracked and misshapen. Again, she looked at the gouges in the sandstone, then back at the remains. Now that she really scrutinized them, she could see other subtle irregularities in the bones.

There were shallow grooves in the cortex—the outermost layer of bone—of the forearms and the lower ribs, on the broad wings of the ilia and the lumbar spine, on the collarbones and the neck. They were asymmetrical and of inconsistent depth, from nearly imperceptible scratches to deep gouges. She’d seen similar markings before, although not in bone. That was what her subconscious had recognized. She’d seen those same scratches on the shells of nautiloids and other cephalopods, and on the hard pleura that formed the trademark carapaces of trilobites.

“Find what you were looking for?”

Calder flinched at the sound of the voice right behind her. She spun around and nearly collided with Thyssen, who stood with his head cocked to one side. She’d been so lost in thought that she hadn’t heard him approach. The others picked their way over the rubble behind him in their matching wetsuits. For the first time, Calder wondered just how much time they would be spending underwater and what distances they would need to cover with a team of inexperienced divers and a paltry fifteen minutes of canned air.

“Yeah.” She forced herself to smile. The expression felt stiff and unnatural. She suddenly understood exactly why she was there. “I’ve seen everything I needed to see.”

Only deep down, she wished she hadn’t.

“Excellent.” Thyssen glanced at his watch. “We should really head out before the tide comes in.”

She was surprised to see him wearing a wetsuit, which meant he intended to stay with them. She wanted to talk to the others privately. The fact that he hadn’t mentioned the markings on the bones made her uneasy. They were obviously the reason she’d been brought here. Either he wasn’t privy to that information or he was pretending to be oblivious, and if that was the case, she could only speculate as to what else he wasn’t telling them.

Thyssen led them deeper into the tunnel and away from the banks of lights, which faded rapidly behind them. Their headlamps barely produced enough illumination to see where they were, if not where they were going. Condensation dripped from the earthen roof with a plinking sound that seemed to originate from all around them at once. His voice echoed from the walls, which seemed to close in on them with each step. She couldn’t focus on his words; her mind was still reeling at the implications of what she’d seen.