No air.
Blackness.
Small space. Crackling sparking wires.
Jesse couldn't stand it. Everything was closing in on him. How long had he been inside? Didn't matter; the air was suffocating him. He had to get out, now, before—before, he didn't know what, but he had to get out.
He phased out of the shack.
And started choking on sea water.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Blue had to hurry to keep up with her, the feral striding purposefully across the base courtyard. Hot tropical sunlight beat down on them both."Miss, wait! Shalimar!" he finally called, taking her arm to slow her down. "Shalimar, there are something like twenty black market types up on that mountain with Mulwray, all of 'em armed to the teeth. You can't possibly take them out yourself, not even as a feral! That's not realistic. You'll get yourself killed, andMulwray too. You'll need an army to break him out."
"I'm not going there alone," Shalimar snarled. "I'm taking a well-armed escort of fighting men."
"Huh?"
"Watch this," she snapped, and leaped up onto a tall pile of crates where everyone could see her. "Yo! Grunts! Listen up!"
There were some fifty men in the vicinity, men who hadn't beennear a woman for several weeks if not months. They would have paid close attention to any woman, no matter how unpleasant or ugly.
Shalimar Fox was considerably better off.
"I've got a friend being held hostage up on the mountain," she yelled. "Anybody interested in helping me break him out? Anybody up for a fight?"
Prospect of a fight: attention-getting. Chance to work off some of the tension building up on base: better chance of fun. Heavy-duty male bonding while performing a good deed: great. Earning the gratitude of the drop dead gorgeous creature parading in front of them: fifty brains went on hiatus and fifty libidos took over. They cheered wildly. And grabbed their guns.
Shalimar looked at Blue. A satisfied smirk crept across her face."I've got my army."
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Lt. Vanderworthy took the explosives from Adam's hands. "Here, let me, Dr. Kane."
Adam looked at the shark mutant suspiciously. Vanderworthy had insisted on accompanying him out to the site of the underwater shack, even unbending so much as to ride in the colonel'sdinghy instead of swimming alongside. The deck rolled underneath their feet, waves lapping at the sides of the craft. Adam shook his head. "I can do it."
"I was trained for this," Vanderworthy said quietly. "I was designed with underwater demolition work in mind; Special Ops. Remember?"
Adam did remember. He also remembered Vanderworthy telling him about Jesse being missing too late to do anything. "Why?"
Vanderworthy didn't pretend not to understand. "Times like this, people die. Nobody wants them to, but it was either your one man or my two dozen. If he had gotten himself out, we would have towed him to the surface and made sure that he got safely back to land. Even if we'd told you earlier, there would have been nothing that you could have done to change the outcome. We knew he was a dead man as soon as ten minutes were up and he hadn't come out. There was nothing you could have done," Vanderworthy repeated.
"He's not dead," Adam insisted.
"I went down there myself, later, just to check," Vanderworthy said gently. "He didn't come out. He was nowhere in the vicinity.I'm sorry, Dr. Kane."
"He's not dead! We'll find him!"
Vanderworthy shrugged; he wasn't going to argue the point. "Give me the charges," he repeated, taking them from Adam's hands. "Johnson, help Dr. Kane gear up."
"You're not objecting to me going down?"
"Would it do any good?" Vanderworthy cocked his head. "Besides, no matter what I find, you're going to want to see for yourself; you're going to want closure for his death. I argue with brass, Dr. Kane, when it will do me some good. I try not to get into hopeless situations. Stay here on board until after I blow the lid off of that shack, and I'll escort you down myself. Safer that way, too; some of the Great Whites—the real ones—are exploring territory that they've not seen for the last several months." With that, he slipped over the side of the small boat and disappeared into the water.
Adam went inside the cockpit and followed Vanderworthy's progress as best as he could with sonar, the mutant swimming through his men on his mission to the ocean floor. He saw one green blip among many seem to hover over one spot when Vanderworthy descended almost straight down, saw the blip stationary while the charges were placed. Then all of the green blips scattered away from point zero in a rush.
Private Johnson pulled the scientist outside. "You'll want to watch this out here," he said.
The shark mutants in the area were all fleeing the scene to escape the blast. The shock wave would travel quickly through the water, and no one wanted to be caught. There wouldn't be any electricity with this particular explosion, but plenty of power up close and personal.
Water geysered up, the sound of the explosion muffled by thirty feet of sea water. At the same instant, ten shark mutants leaped out of the water, shooting themselves as high into the air as they could.
Adam understood instantly. "Of course! They escape the shock of the explosion by changing their environment. The energy of the shock wave is diminished by changing from water to air."
Johnson nodded. "You got it, sir." He jerked his thumb toward the pile of equipment in the corner. "Let me give you a hand with the wet suit. You'll be wanting to inspect the ruins yourself." Like his superior, Johnson seemed to have no doubt that Jesse Kilmartin was not alive and well in that shack. Adam felt a shiver of fear run up and down his spine. These are shark mutants, able to sense the electrical fields from any living being. They would know if Jesse was alive…
But Lt. Vanderworthy boiled up from the ocean floor before Adam could finish donning his gear. "Dr. Kane! Dr. Kane! He's not there!"
"What?" Adam rushed to the side of the boat. "He must have phased out after you abandoned the area." He glanced at the cockpit of the boat, thinking. "I'll need to calculate the flow of the tides, wind velocity. We'll set up a search pattern—"
"No need." Vanderworthy slapped the water with the flat of his hand: a signal. "Sharks! Listen up! Mega search pattern Beta Delta Delta! Go! Go! Go!" Shark mutants leapt away at his order, twenty fanning out in a semi-circle, half at a lower depth. Only a couple remained behind to search in the opposite direction.
"But—"
Vanderworthy's smile was a little crooked. "You can do your calculations, Dr. Kane, but we can feel the way the water's going. We'll cover all the bases, but if he's in the water, we'll find him. Stay here."
As if Adam had a choice. He dumped his oxygen tank back onto the pile of equipment.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Crap.
Everything hurt, from his tush to his toes and up to the top of his head. He felt hot, he felt cold, he felt like crap.
This was so not good. Brennan could feel the electricity leaking out of him like water through a thoroughly soaked paper towel, puddling onto the floor around him. His captors wouldn't notice, not being shark mutants, but he had no doubt that Blue would take one look and go flying off in the opposite direction. Which meant that Adam, Jesse, and Shalimar would have no help in breaking him out of this island prison. Which meant that he was stuck, because although the three were good, Brennan had already counted over two dozen black market types with lots of guns to keep him right where they wanted him. Even if Mutant X could break him out, there would be a lot of death and destruction wreaked which Brennan didn't particularly want on his conscience.
Yes, perhaps just lying here and dying swiftly would be the best option. It would certainly make him feel better.
They wouldn't let him.
"Give him some water," one voice said. Brennan strained to remember who it belonged to, then wished he hadn't: Captain Caruthers. Second in command. Hard-boiled ass, lots of soldiers looking up to him and, apparently, making mountains of money off of assaulted shark mutants. Nothing like a fortune or two to ensure loyalty. Somebody raised Brennan's head, and another held a glass to his lips. Brennan gulped greedily, unable to help himself, unable to slow down until the hands forced him to back off. Then there was the feeling of nausea as his stomach debated whether or not to cooperate in the process of relieving his thirst. Brennan fought to keep from moaning. About the only fight I can put up right now. Crap.
And his comm. link was missing. Caruthers was no fool. Even with his head spinning, Brennan understood the plan: use Brennan to capture shark mutants to feed the black market. Lose Brennan, with the island going up in flames, and shark teeth were likely to come into play. Vanderworthy's men wouldn't wait for a court-martial.
"How is he?"
"Not too good, captain."
Truer words were never spoken. Brennan resolved to die and end his misery as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately for his plans, they wouldn't let him.