Over twenty minutes later, with no reply from the Empress, Verity leapt up and turned her back to him. “Help me off with this thing.”
Words he’d give anything to hear under any other circumstance.
“We’re swimming the rest of the way?” he asked.
“No choice, I’m afraid.”
The chilling finality hit him. Something had happened on the surface, and if it worried someone like Verity… “We could wait a bit longer, see if they-”
“No. We’ve waited long enough,” she said.
“But what if it’s just a problem with the communication cable? Say something bit through it. They’ll hoist us up after a set time has elapsed without word, surely.”
Verity’s dripping hair appeared almost gunmetal brown in the dimming light. “Yes, and that time has elapsed.” She wound the dynamo once more. “The auxiliary diver checks in every five minutes. After fifteen without contact, the deck crew automatically begins hoisting. Trust me, Embrey, we are on our own. Whatever happened to Djimon may have happened to the Empress as well. Now get this thing off me.”
He obeyed, but the thought of finding an empty deck-he’d left Billy and Reardon up there, for Christ’s sake- turned his stomach. Even the sight of Verity in her underwear served only to remind him of how vulnerable they were and how much he needed this ordeal to be over. He wasn’t Garrett Embrey right now-he was simply another creature in the primordial soup, snatching at survival. Nothing else mattered.
She helped him out of his clingy suit and they both peered into the moon pool.
“Remember to exhale steadily all the way up.” Her words were soft, distracted.
“I will.”
“I’ll take the clock part.”
“No, the strongest swimmer should carry it.”
Verity blinked at him, her pink-and-white face elfin and beautiful. “Embrey, I do this for a living.”
“But I haven’t done a damn thing to help on this dive. At least let me take this risk for you.” He picked up the kaleidoscope and slid into the water, gauging her reaction.
Verity shook her head slowly.
He sighed, then handed her the clock part. “Can’t blame me for trying.”
“Crazy fool. You’d never have made it like that anyway.” She cut a length of rope, tied one end to the gadget and the other to her ankle.
“Ah.”
She gently splashed his face. “Don’t look back, omafimbo odula. Whatever happens, kick until you taste home. I’ll be with you all the way.”
“Promise?”
After her quick nod, he took three deep breaths and submerged. He kicked away from the bell, confident that he could swim the breadth of an ocean if Verity were beside him. He climbed with a muscular stroke, never doubting, never looking back. The cream umbilical cable stretched forever upward. Lighter hues flickered above him like an emerald stampede on a glass ceiling.
He finally surfaced, gasping for his life on the starboard side of the Empress. Verity sprang up beside him, equally spent. But no one greeted them from the open hatches across the bulwark or through the porthole windows.
“Remember, we’ve surfaced far too quickly after such a long dive,” she said. “It’s dangerous. If you should start to feel sickly, use the oxygen canister or drink plenty of-Look! The bow!” She pointed him to a dent in the iron plane, then to several harpoons floating near the stern, still attached to their lines. “They’ve been attacked all right. Ahoy! Kibo! Anyone aboard? ”
Embrey yelled with her but they received no response.
“Come on.” She urged him to swim after her. “They may have abandoned ship.”
“Yes, and it must have been for a good reason,” he called after her, but she didn’t stop. “Hey, wait for me.”
As they climbed aboard, spilling streams as they crept, the empty ship groaned. She set the kaleidoscope down on the quarterdeck. Blood speckled the deck around two of the open starboard hatches and one of the port ones as well. One of the two lifeboats was also missing.
Embrey noticed a V shape floating off the starboard bow. It appeared heavy, as it didn’t bob with the undulating lake. He glanced at the erect davits that had lifted the lifeboat over the side, then at the V shape again. “Please tell me that isn’t what I think it is.”
She gave a deep sigh. “I’m afraid so.”
“How many would it have held?”
“All of them, Embrey. God help us, I think we’ve lost them all.”
Chapter 13
How a mission could at once be successful and yet fail so utterly tore Verity’s thoughts in two as she wandered B-deck, trying to figure out the chain of events leading to this disaster. For one, the iron rig for the bell winch was bent, which explained why the crew hadn’t been able to hoist them up. But why was it bent? Had the leviathan they’d faced on the lake bed become snagged in the umbilical somehow? Had that same monster attacked the Empress out of spite? Perhaps it had the ability to leap out of the water, as high as the ship’s deck. With the dinosaur’s sixty-foot length, that wasn’t much of a stretch.
Broken rifles and smashed harpoon launchers described a desperate last stand. The bulwark was damaged around virtually every open hatch, so the leviathan had to have attacked repeatedly on all sides. And poor little Billy. What a horrible nightmare for such a young boy. She should have insisted he and Reardon stay on A-deck with Tangeni.
A bitter welling in her throat made her swallow hard several times but it was no use.
This was her fault, her unforgivable blunder.
Without Reardon, it’s all been for nothing.
She ran to the nearest open hatch and threw up over the side.
“How long before Tangeni returns?” Embrey asked.
“Until we signal. He’ll keep circling until we signal.”
“I don’t see him.”
Verity spat the noxious taste from her mouth and wiped her lips. “You will. But it’s all for nothing now.” They would have to survive here until they died, in this prehistoric nether-world, with no hope of seeing home ever again.
“Nothing we could have done, Verity. It was only a matter of time.” His glistening Adonis physique seemed alien, a mirage. Seeing his full collar-to-hip scar for the first time made her feel a little sorry for him-he’d been through so much and had worked tirelessly to protect the others, and for what? “I daresay fate was set against us the minute we arrived,” he said. “It was a forlorn hope after all.”
“And a cruel twist. It didn’t have to end like this. We could have-”
“ Garrett! You made it!”
They both spun toward the engine room at the stern. Men in blue uniform filed out, elated and self- congratulatory, as though part of some obscene April Fool’s prank. It took a moment for Verity to register the change of events. If these crewmen had been here all along, why hadn’t they answered her calls? But then-she hadn’t called since climbing aboard…
“Garrett!” Young Billy sprinted for his half-naked guardian, and Embrey flung his arms around the boy and lifted him high. Still she couldn’t quite take it in. Had the undersea pressure affected her more than she realised? Yet, seeing Professor Reardon appear at the engine room door, his shirt sleeves rolled up and bloody, plucked her heart and made it thrum.
