Strength In Words

Stokes held a plastic ice-pack to her left cheek. She was struggling to keep her head up straight to look dignified. But her chin kept dropping onto her chest. The muscles in her neck felt torn and weak.

Weed laughed at her across the planning table. He was marking the latest dives on the wall map. He had poignantly placed a red marker on the spot near the French wreck where she had been diverting herself. "Someone looks tired. Are you exhausted from all that time under water?" She ignored his question. "Ms. Stokes? I'm talking to you."

"It's just pain, Weed." She frowned, but had to keep her face tilted downward. "It's not something that bothers me. I'll get over it soon." She could meet his theatrical gaze on most occasions, but today she could not even look up at the strip lights on the cabin roof. "Or maybe, I'll go home for a rest."

"You should have stayed away from that wreck. Like I said." Weed seemed almost pleased that he had been proved right. "Those currents aren't predictable. And with someone of your experience..." He paused. "Even with your experience, it would have been dangerous." He placed a green triangle off to the side, in the margin of the map. It joined a first green triangle to indicate a diver out of action.

Stokes waited before responding. "It was just a big bit of debris. But it was swirling around, like you said," she lied.

"I was worried," he giggled childishly, "that the monster might have got you."

Now she tilted her eyebrows up, swivelled her eyes to throw at least some kind of glare from her side of the conversation.

"Just like the saucer, you mean?" She could not help but smile.

"The saucer was hit by rocks," Weed answered almost instantly. "You saw the scrapes. Big scores along the top of the shell." He pointed out of the cabin window by way of emphasis. A couple of snake-lights outlined the protective shell of the mini-sub, hung up by a rigging in the center of the camp.

"You want to joke that I was hit by some ancient sea monster, but you can't see those scrapes on the top of the mini-sub? They look like teeth marks to most normal people." Now she gestured vaguely out of the plastic window. The flat shimmering oval was scored with great parallel lines, some thick, some thin.

"I'm just joking with you, Ms. Stokes. Can't you tell when I'm telling a joke by now? But the boss almost got killed in the sub. That's not funny is it? He could have suffocated, or drowned."

"I agree. It's very serious. Why didn't you send him off to a proper hospital, even just for tests? All we can do is give him more coffee and and check his B.P. every half-hour."

"He'll be fine. We just need to finish checking the equipment, then we can finish up here and leave. You'll get back to your big-city caffe latte soon enough. Vauxhall told me himself to get on with testing the equipment."

"If this whiplash doesn't cool off, I'll be out of action for sure." Stokes tilted her head back to its most comfy position. "Then you'll only have one person left to do the deeper dives."

Weed said nothing. Perhaps he was worried about plunging into the depths of the lake himself. In all the months he had been on site, Stokes had noticed him volunteering for the command seat on many occasions and only pulling on a dive-suit for the shoreline sweeps or inspecting the saucer sub in the dock.

"I'll step up if I have to. Don't you worry. I've done more dives at depth than you would know." He was unconvincing. "A lot of them weren't even commercial. At depth for fun." His eyes flitted back to the chart. There was one green triangle left on the chart, fixed firmly in the area circled to mark the compound.

"Until that shell is fixed we can't run the sub either," Stokes noted. "And unless you have some fancy panel beating kit left over from repairing a battleship, that shell is going to stay like that."

"We don't need that particular shell," Weed replied.

Stokes closed her eyes, letting herself relax. "Did you order a spare? Something like that doesn't just sit on a shelf at Wal-Mart."

Weed turned to face her. "Stokes. You don't know everything about this mission." She wondered if he was going to reveal something to her. He looked like he had a secret, and she wanted to know it.

"I know from the records you file with the trust that you're running it too quick and too cheap to be plausible." She kept her eyes facing down. She needed to share something with him to persuade him to talk. "It's like you don't even need the money from the research grant."

One of the Panama twins knocked impatiently on the cabin door, and stepped in. "Mr. Weed sir? We have an intruder. Just one man I think." Stokes gritted her teeth.

Weed focused easily on the new situation. "Yeah? Is he a local? Or is he proper trouble?" His eyes flickered to the steel cabinets at the back of the cabin. Stokes could almost read his mind, see him desperate to pull out a hand-gun.

The twin shook his head. "Probably a local. A pretty stupid one, I think. There was a face in the trees. I could see it thru the low-light goggles. Although it wasn't a man's face."

Weed's eyebrows arched. "Not a man's face? What does that mean?"

The twin laughed. "Don't worry. It's just someone messing around. Must have got drunk and wandered up from the town. He was wearing a big old wooden mask. Trying to look like an animal. "

Weed raised his eyebrows. "Oh, like an Indian mask? You know those Native American things we bought in Vancouver."

"I don't remember us paying for much in Vancouver," the twin smirked, "but - yeah - one of those traditional masks. Too heavy to really fight in. Just for show. Now, Central America, that's different. We prefer face painting. Easier to fight while your foe is staring at your decoration."

Weed nodded. "Don't make too much fuss. Keep an eye on whoever this joker is. But I'm just a bit worried how far away from town he is. He must have a vehicle. It would be too far to walk."

"He won't get away from us." He nodded reassuringly to himself. "But I'll do a search for a vehicle. "

"Good idea. Call it in if you need any kind of back-up." The twin left, the door closing heavily behind him.

Weed turned back to the wall map, tapping various points. "Injuries. Equipment damage. Intruders. We don't want things to start falling apart now."

"I report to Vauxhall. We both do. We should get a decision from him."