Black, gray, green, water under his bow, shadows shrinking, light at the end of the tunnel, better not be that damned "near-death" ring of light.
Shit shit shit shit shit.
Find the Maria. Get back on board. Need both arms to get over the transom, have to have help. Gary not on board, gone, doing his thing, the real attack, this and Dan were just diversions. Girl. Damned girl, guarding Maria, SMG from his armory, he'd tried to kill the bitch, she knew it.
Payback is a bitch. Shit shit shit shit shit.
*~*~*
God, I've missed the sea. Salt air, deck moving underfoot, cry of gulls. I have to get back here more often, spend time with the boat and Jane and nothing else.
Gary scanned the rocky face with binoculars and the naked eye, riding the swells with unconscious ease, listening to the thumps and booms of Ben's diversion play out in the tunnel. So far, everything had gone according to plan. Which was suspicious. What was that line Ben quoted? "No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy."
Aunt Alice had scouted this place out, last spring before Gary had gone in with Caroline to rescue Dad and the girls, and again in the last few weeks when the bodies started showing up. She'd had suspicions. She had some freaky way of talking to bats, strange bats that had lived in the attic of the Haskell House for generations and centuries and had become almost as weird as the House. Bats could find the smallest hole, map caves in the dark with their sonar. And they were smart.
But translating those maps into human terms, to locate holes in a cliff face . . . And Dad had scouted too, but a seal's eyes weren't much help in finding rock-climbing routes up cliffs.
A wisp of smoke flowed from solid granite, followed by another. Black smoke, from the shaped charges that busted the sea gate, then thin white tear gas, then thick white phosphorus pentoxide. Or whatever — his memory of high school chemistry was fading. Four sources, five, he traced them back to blank stone faces and chose the largest, thickest flow. Ben had poured enough smoke into the tunnels that the vent system couldn't handle it all. Now it was leaking out wherever it could.
If this place was anything like the Morgan caves, it had more than one back door. Fox den. Prairie-dog town.
He set the binoculars back into their bracket and turned to Jane. "Stage three. Guard the boat." He glanced at the matte black H&K she had slung under one arm, a 9mm SMG that she caressed like a friendly kitten. After the crap guns she'd carried, that must seem like a diamond engagement ring, two carats at least, laser sight and silencer and all. Welcome to the family.
"You've fired that on our range back home. Anyone you don't know shows up, shoot. Straight sights, or just put the laser dot on your target." He paused and stared into her eyes. "Please don't shoot Ben. I know he's a cast-iron bastard, but he is my father."
She nodded, lips tight and jaw clenched, message heard but non-committal. Best he could expect.
He tugged his wetsuit crotch to smooth a pinch, settled the air tank on his back, held his mask, and tipped over the side. The water burned cold at his wrists and ankles and face, and then warmed from his body heat inside the suit. He'd swim faster, smoother, quieter, in his seal body, but after that he'd need to climb, and need the air tank inside the tunnels. And also Jane would learn something he didn't think she was ready to accept.
The float bag bobbed along behind him, rope around one wrist, tied, wouldn't want to lose his toys. Damn, he hoped Aunt Alice was right and he wasn't swimming into a hornet's nest. But if the black hats were sailing short-handed, Dad and Ben should have pulled off all the watchers. All the guns.
If. Should. Not nice words, put them on the banned list along with all the “fucks and shits and damns.”
And then he reached the cliff face under the thick white smoke plume, bobbing up and down in the slow swells and treading water to look for a landing and handholds. If this place was truly a brother to the Morgan tunnels . . .
There, just where Dad had scouted them out in selkie form. A line of small stepped ledges, that you'd never notice if you weren't looking for them, landings at different tides. Gary looked up, swiping water from his mask to clear his view. Small scoops and dings in the rock face, laid out along a crack and a basalt intrusion that provided natural holds for hand or foot. A climbing route, hard to find but easy enough for anyone who knew it was there.
And a rust-crusted iron ringbolt set under the rockweed at water level to tie off your boat's painter. All the comforts of home.
Gary climbed ashore, tight against the rock to hide from any hostile eyes overhead, opened his rubber float, stripped off his flippers, and slung two satchels from his shoulders. Backpack would be better for climbing, but the air tank killed that idea. And he'd need the tank. A gas mask wouldn't do — with those fires below, there might not be enough oxygen left in the smoke. SCUBA and a Scott Air Pack did pretty much the same job. The diving mask would keep gas out of his eyes and nose.
Up the cliff, hands and feet finding holds like a ladder, you could climb this in the dark, you could climb it with one arm tied behind your back. Or wounded. No wonder Pratts and Morgans had worked together for so many generations. Their twisty little brains thought alike.
A blade of granite stood out free from the cliff where you'd never spot it from the water, and he slipped
