Medusa

room and saw identical carvings and daises on each wall.

He moved in closer, tracing the contours of one of the jellyfish with his fingers, as if doing so would connect him with the ancient cult of healers. Then he backed off several feet and dug out the throwaway flash camera. He clicked off a dozen shots, then tucked it away.

Eager to tell Lee what he had found, Austin swam out of the temple and wriggled through the outer and inner walls. Looking up to get his bearings, he saw the boat silhouetted against the shimmering surface. As he ascended, his ears picked up the muted buzz of a boat engine. The high-revving noise grew louder. Austin wondered why anyone would be speeding through the peaceful canal. Then an alarm went off in his brain.

He followed the anchor line up. His head broke the surface a few feet from the boat. Pushing his mask up on his forehead, blinking into the bright sunlight, he saw an inflatable pontoon boat coming from the entrance of the canal and speeding his direction. It was too far away for him to see the passengers’ faces clearly, but the sun glinted off the shiny bald pate of Chang, the Triad’s gang leader who had attacked the Beebe. The needle on Austin’s danger meter swung into the red zone.

Song Lee was sitting in the rental boat, oblivious to the looming threat. Austin yelled, pointed at the fast- moving inflatable coming in their direction. The smile Lee had greeted his reappearance with became a puzzled frown. Austin glanced back at the inflatable. He was close enough to see the grin on Chang’s face as he knelt in the bow with a weapon up to his shoulder. He would have been on them in seconds, but the kayaks seen earlier entered and blocked the way. The inflatable swerved to miss the kayaks, but its wash capsized two of them.

Austin took advantage of the seconds lost in performing the tricky maneuver.

“Jump!” he yelled to Lee.

She put her hands on the boat’s gunwale and leaned over the water, not comprehending the danger she was in, until she saw the muzzle flashes and heard the rattle of gunfire. A line of geysers erupted across the water that led directly to her boat as inexorably as a buzz saw. She froze with fear.

Austin pushed himself out of the water as high as he could go, reached up, and grabbed Lee by the front of her blouse and pulled her back down with him. She tumbled over the gunwale into the canal just seconds before Chang’s bullets ripped into the boat, sending up a shower of fiberglass splinters.

Lee’s additional weight dragged them both down several feet. Austin then expelled air from his buoyancy compensator and they sank even deeper. He put one arm around her waist, as if leading her through a waltz step, and with his free hand pointed the flashlight at his face. She had reflexively taken a gulp of air before hitting the water but now had used up her supply and was flailing in panic. Austin released her, took a deep breath, then removed the regulator from his mouth and pointed to the bubbles streaming from the mouthpiece.

Lee’s eyes were wide with fright, but she understood what Austin was trying to convey. She took the mouthpiece and clamped it between her teeth. As she filled her lungs, the panic in her eyes subsided. She then passed the mouthpiece back to Austin.

Buddy-breathing would keep them alive, but there was still Chang and his men to deal with. This became abundantly clear when Austin saw a foamy splash in the water, then another. Chang’s men were diving off the boat.

The men easily could have tracked Austin and Lee in the shallow waters of the canal by following their air bubbles on the surface. Eventually, Chang might get lucky, or he simply could wait until the two used up their air supply. But he was impatient.

Austin drew air into his lungs, passed the mouthpiece back to Lee, and pointed with his index finger.

This way.

Taking Lee by the hand, he swam deeper, toward the entrance of the temple enclosure. Chang’s men were at a disadvantage without air and were quickly outdistanced. By the time their prey vanished through the temple wall, the men were swimming back to the surface. Chang’s boat moved back and forth, searching for telltale bubbles. Not seeing any, Chang assumed that his targets had slipped past him. He ordered that the inflatable move farther out into the canal. By then, Austin and Lee were inside the temple.

Lee was buddy-breathing like a pro, but she almost gulped down a mouthful of water when Austin showed her the wall carvings. Like Austin, she too put her hand on the jellyfish. She shook her head in frustration at not being able to talk. Austin pointed to the camera clipped to his vest and signaled OK with his thumb and index finger.

They perched on the edge of the temple pool, sharing the air supply and taking in the marvelous carvings. Austin checked the supply, then tapped his wristwatch and pointed toward the temple entrance. Buddy-breathing was using up the air in the tank twice as fast. Lee nodded in understanding. They swam side by side, as if joined at the hip, until they came to the outer wall. Austin signaled Lee to wait. He slipped out of his vest and swam out into the canal. All was quiet. He looked up at the surface but saw no sign of Chang or the rental boat.

He heard the sound of a engine, but to his practiced ear it sounded different from the inflatable’s high-revving one. He decided to take a chance. Moving closer to the foundation of the islet, he surfaced and peered out from behind an outcropping where the basalt base had collapsed.

A tour boat was moving along the canal toward the rental boat, which was submerged except for the bow, which stuck out of the water at an angle. More important, Chang and his men had vanished.

Austin waved until someone in the tour boat saw him. When the boat turned his direction, he took a deep breath and went back for Song Lee. He gave her a thumbs-up, then pointed upward. She repeated the OK, and together they slowly rose to the surface.

CHAPTER 37

SHORTLY AFTER THE SIKORSKY SEAHAWK LIFTED OFF FROM Pohnpei, Zavala had slipped a chart from the TOP SECRET pouch Austin had put in his safekeeping and matched the specks on it to the islands and atolls he could see from the helicopter. Ensign Daley tapped him on the shoulder and pointed directly ahead, where silhouettes of ships dotted the ocean sheen.

“Looks like we’re coming up on an invasion fleet,” Zavala said.

“We’re entering the search area,” Daley replied. “We’ve got six Navy ships working the waters around the lab site. A research vessel from NUMA has come in to help out. My ship is the command center. We’re coming up on her at twelve o’clock.”

The Seahawk quickly covered the distance to the Concord, hovered over the stern for an instant, then dropped slowly onto the large circle painted on the deck. Zavala slid the helicopter’s door open and climbed out. He was greeted by a gray-haired man in a khaki uniform.

“I’m Hank Dixon, Mr. Zavala,” the man said, extending his hand. “I’m commander of the guided-missile cruiser Concord. Welcome aboard.”

“Thanks, Captain. You can call me Joe. My boss, Kurt Austin, is busy in Pohnpei, but he’ll be coming along in a couple of hours. Ensign Daley told me that the Concord is acting as central control for the search flotilla.”

“That’s right. C’mon, I’ll show you what we’ve been doing.”

The captain led the way to the midship’s search-and-rescue center, just off the main deck. A dozen men and women, sitting in front of computer monitors, were processing information that was streaming in from the ships and planes involved in the search.

“How close are we to the actual lab site?” Zavala asked.

Dixon pointed down to the deck at his feet.

“It’s approximately three hundred feet directly under the ship’s hull. We had been on standby patrol for the lab, acting as backup for the support ship, Proud Mary. When we heard the Mayday, we got to the site within hours.”

“Where is the support ship now?” Zavala asked.

“A Navy salvage vessel is towing what’s left of her to a ship-yard, where the forensics folks can take a closer look at her. We were busy taking care of the survivors, so it took some time before we got around to checking on the status of the lab. When we couldn’t raise it on the radio, we erroneously assumed at first that the communications buoy got shot out. We carry an ROV for hull inspections, and we got it down.” He stepped over to a