Hot Zone (13 page)

The Black Hawk smashed hard into the water, bobbing for a moment before turning nose down and began sinking like a rock.

* * *

Beau had fired a rocket propelled grenade or R.P.G as the Legion called them. It was a direct hit to the overhead rotors on the Black Hawk and sent it spinning out of control. He sat, watching the disfigured craft sink to its watery grave, waiting and half expecting someone to appear on the surface.

No one did.

Then Beau felt something. A dull pain in his lower left side. He reached down and felt it. A small entry wound from the gunfire he took. Then he felt the exit wound!

A gaping hole in his front side the size of a fist. He had been so charged up during the battle he hadn't even noticed he'd been shot. Looking at the wound now, Beau realized he was in serious trouble. He was losing blood and losing it fast. In fact the small deck of the zodiac had been coated by the red ooze. Beau decided he needed to finish this. He was concerned about Marcus and what had happened to him.

Believing the threat from the Americans was now over he turned the zodiac around and headed in the direction he last saw Marcus traveling.

Dazed and confused by the impact, Storm hung limp from the sniper harness as the Black Hawk began sinking to the ocean floor. A brief gush of cold water whooshed through the cabin and snapped Storm back into reality. Struggling for a moment he finally released himself from the harness and swum across the cabin to where he thought the dive equipment was.

Sinking with furious speed, Storm began to feel the pressure build up in his lungs and sinus cavity.

Frantically groping around the cabin for dive equipment, he came across his A-12 and re-breather but no mask.

Storm grabbed his re-breather, placed the regulator into his mouth taking in deep breaths and kicked the A-12 into gear taking him out of the wreckage and into the big blue beyond.

Free and clear, Storm began rising to the surface. With some awkwardness he managed to get the re-breather unit on his back and continued to breathe through the regulator all the while holding onto the A-12 tightly with one hand. Not being able to read his depth gauge without a mask meant not knowing how deep he had actually sunk. Without a moments hesitation he headed for the surface. The risk of the Bends, while clearly on his mind, did not out weigh the threat of the Manta Ray that lurked in the shadows.

18

Skip's fighting instincts told him to dive the second he felt off balance on the boat; therefore he didn't fall uncontrollably into the water but instead dove out six feet away from the boat and clear of Marcus, who was still underneath the zodiac.

Immediately, Skip surfaced and turned around to find Marcus swimming towards him underwater.

He had a knife!

Skip timed it right, inches from the knife thrusting at him, he reached down and grabbed Marcus's wrist, squeezing on the pressure point with surgical precision. With his other hand he grabbed the knife and wrenched it from Marcus and tried to plunge it into him.

But Marcus wasn't defeated yet.

Exploding up and out of the water he grabbed the knife back and at the same time punched Skip square in the nose. Blood splattered across Skip's face, his nose leaned to the left, his eyes filled with tears as he felt a knee go straight into his groin.

The two matched strengths and even with the pain he felt, Skip's grip on the knife did not weaken as he struggled to regain control. With his other hand he grabbed Marcus by the throat, dunked him under the water and crushed his larynx. In return Marcus clutched at Skip's shirt and pulled him under.

As the pair struggled they started to sink. Skip managed to draw the hand wielding the knife clear of Marcus and with one quick jab, stuck the knife into Marcus's abdomen. All the resistance Marcus had been putting up suddenly ceased as his body went limp. A cloud of red began to seep out around them. Skip pushed Marcus away and watched his lifeless body disappear below as he rose to the surface.

He immediately rushed for the zodiac, which now had very little air in it but was still useful for a floating device. Skip unhooked the engine so it wouldn't pull the deflated zodiac under and then rested.

He was exhausted.

In the distance he saw another zodiac approaching. Focusing hard he could tell the figure in the zodiac was
not
Storm.

* * *

Beau could see the remains of the zodiac and just passed that a body floating face down in the water. He was starting to feel faint, his legs were going numb. He slowed the zodiac, pulling it up next to the body, which was shirtless.

The next thing Beau knew he was in the water, he felt a large knife being stuck into him, repeatedly, and was overcome with a sudden rush of terror followed by calm and a sense of peace.

Beau was dead before Skip stuck the knife in for the fourth time. He pushed the bloodied corpse away from him and climbed into the zodiac, gasping for air. He sat silently for a brief moment and then realized something must have happened to Storm for Beau to have escaped. It suddenly occurred to him he could see or hear no Black Hawk in the sky.

Skip started the engine on Beau’s zodiac and headed in the direction Beau had just come from. He had to find his friend.

* * *

He found him floating on his back, still as could be, a survival technique that was taught at the school. Skip yelled to Storm who immediately responded.

"Skip, mate, thank god."

"What the hell happened man, where's the chopper?"

"Gone."

"Where?"

"Two thousand leagues under the sea. Pilot, too! The son of a bitch fired a R.P.G at us. Who the Christ has R.P.G's out here?"

"The Legion." Skip answered and added: "Well if it makes you feel any better that dickhead got what was coming to him...several times."

Skip helped Storm into the zodiac. He stripped the dive tank off his back then leaned against the side.

"What do
we
do now?" Storm asked.

"Gotta get in touch with Ice, let him know he's gonna have company down there. Did you see those other's dive off the zods before we got there?"

"Yeah, there’s only one problem. My radio doesn't work. It must have been damaged in the crash. We're all alone out here mate, just you, me and the deep blue sea."

Skip shook his head in frustration. He had no idea what to do. They only had one set of dive equipment, and no radio. He couldn't find Ice and the team's exact location without knowing his current coordinates.

"There's only one thing we can do mate. We gotta go back to the ship."

"We can restock, recharge our batteries and head back out." Storm agreed.

And with that Skip pointed the zodiac north and headed for home.

19

Descending side by side Ice, Jordan, Roo and Ghost all had thoughts of the two men above in the Black Hawk. Listening over the Black Hawk's radio frequency they had heard gunfire.

Then there had been nothing but silence.

Ice had attempted to contact both Skip and Storm repeatedly to no avail. As much as Ice wanted to turn around and go searching for his men he knew it was pointless.

Using the A-12's the group made a steady, controlled dive towards the formations below. Their eyes darting from side to side; Roo dropped back to the rear and watched for anything that might sneak up from behind. They were still on edge from the morning dive. Jordan couldn't get the theme music from the movie "JAWS" out of her head. The SEALs all had thoughts of Shooter at one time or another during those first fifteen minutes and also now had to wonder about their other team members while carrying on with what seemed to be a life threatening dive.

The water was crystal clear now, visibility of one hundred yards, which was as good as it could get and the polar opposite of just hours before.

Diving deeper, sinking closer to their destination, their surroundings began to darken. Again, coming into visual range, sprawling valleys, monstrous peaks and ominously dark caves painted an underwater canvas that none of the divers could believe they were seeing.

"It really is something down here, isn't it." Ghost said, seeing it for the first time.

Looking at the expanse with her archaeological eye, Jordan was certain that what she was looking at below was land that used to be
above
the water. The rock face of the major peaks appeared to show signs of wear from thousands of years of
running
water. Just as a river winds through mountain ranges, cutting its way through the rock with a million pounds of water pressure over time, there were distinct marks in the rock Jordan could see, even amongst the coral formations.

"You guys think that this could have been another island of some kind and something caused it to fall below the waterline?" Jordan asked.

Ice turned to her: "Why, what do you see?"

"I see a land mass here. I see hills and valleys, rock formations that just aren't possible to form under the ocean. Just try to image this without the water. Doesn't it look like any other island in this area?" Jordan asked, not knowing the area herself.

"Looks a little like parts of Tahiti." Roo agreed

"This is all new to us, too. According to the G.P.S, we're still three quarters of a mile from where we saw the structures this morning. And a hundred and fifty feet higher...” Ice added.

Every direction the team looked gave them a different perspective, a different landscape. To the east they saw a flat, moonscape surface where the ocean floor appeared to rise. To the west, a much more mountainous view stretched for as far as they could see.

In certain areas the sea bed seemed to fall away into dark holes of nothingness. Jordan didn't want to know how deep those holes went, she certainly wasn't interested in exploring them. What lurked within their limits could well be the very creatures from the deep that had taken Art Montoya and Shooter.

Descending further, at a slightly steeper angle now the team came across the side of an enormous crater that fell into darkness on the left hand side. Jordan knew immediately what it was. She had studied volcanoes at school enough to recognize the remnants of one when she saw it.

"What the..." Ghost gasped into his radio.

There was a collective silence as the group gazed in awe.

"Guys. I know what this is. It's the rim of a volcano. Or at least what's left of it." Jordan said.

"I hope for our sakes it's dormant." Ghost added.

"I'm not much of an expert on these but I did study them in school. Just by it's size I would guess that it suffered a large eruption, which tore the cone from the top and what we're looking at is a volcano that no longer has it's peak."

"You mean it exploded?" Asked Roo.

"Yeah, many many years ago. Thousands, maybe millions."

"We have to adjust our direction." Ice interjected, "We need to head away from the craters edge. If we track it's down slope we should come up to what we saw this morning. Once we get there the show is yours Jordan. Whatever you want to look into we look into. Ghost, you bring up the rear, watch our backs. Roo, you flank us, keep an eye up front."