Seismic Surge. Don Pendleton
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two jogged toward the deck.
There, Espinoza stood on a railing overlooking the party deck. All fifty of the passengers were here, and Natalie hadn’t seen such a collection of smooth, unlined faces, flowing hair and tanned skin in her life. There were more than a few with pale patches where they had avoided going topless, as well, but in those same faces, she saw the giddy excitement of an experiment with sexual freedom and the dismissal of traditional bans on nudity. One girl looked as if she were a sneeze away from ripping off the thong that covered the few inches of her flesh that weren’t exposed.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to our ship,” Espinoza said. He began to unbutton his jacket, sliding out of it. The rest of the bridge crew was there. They were younger and in fairly good shape, as well, though as they peeled out of their shirts Natalie could make out the scar tissue on each of them. Captain Espinoza was especially marked up, but that only made him even more interesting. He had lived a life of danger and peril, and her imagination ran away with her.... The brave, blue-eyed captain risking life and limb, battling smugglers and rescuing half-nude maidens from wicked pirates, bringing them to the safety of his bed and the warmth of his strong arms....
“You think that you are quite lucky to be on board this ship,” Espinoza said. “But you each have been chosen to come here for one specific purpose.”
Natalie watched him, but lost herself more in his chest, broad, with salt-and-pepper hair where scars didn’t leave bare patches. He was muscled, but not overly so. Lean and tall, he had lived a life of activity, showing in how he was tightly built without taking on the obscene distortions of a bodybuilder.
He took out a small nylon pouch and began handing out syringes to his bridge crew. He pushed the needle into his pectoral muscle and squeezed the bulb. There was a slight grunt of discomfort, and then he resumed talking.
“We needed your identifications, your luggage, your general appearances,” Espinoza said.
Natalie looked to the fishing boat, growing ever closer. There were women on the deck of that ship, as well as men.
“This was an excuse to get you all together in one spot, with a minimum of cleanup,” Espinoza said.
Suddenly people to Natalie’s right began coughing, jerking spasmodically. The wave of those falling ill spread quickly through the crowd. Natalie took a frightened breath, then she lost control of her hands and arms. Her head snapped upright and she could feel her teeth tear open her tongue as her jaws clenched violently shut like a bear trap. Blood and froth oozed over her lips as her legs gave way and she slumped to the deck. Derek was beside her, vibrating as if he were some child’s doll malfunctioning. The only signs that he was even alive were the spurts of blood through his nose, broken as he’d fallen onto his face, as his lungs tried to suck in fresh breath.
Vomit burst from Natalie’s stomach, and she felt her bladder release, as well.
“The Sendero Luminoso thanks you for the donation of your lives,” Espinoza’s voice echoed in her ears. “We promise to use them well, you spoiled little children.”
Natalie winced, reaching up as Espinoza glared down at her. Her specifically. Those blue, cool eyes she’d once lost herself in were now cold, hard, angry.
Darkness settled on the girl as the nerve gas finally took full effect.
Minutes later, gloved hands would hoist her over the rail, dropping her and the other young murder victims onto the ocean floor.
CHAPTER ONE
One month later
The cold waters of the harbor beyond the boatyard
looked inhospitable to Hermann Schwarz as he walked through the wreckage of what used to be the Heyerdal Hull Company. A month ago, this place had been torched in an act of terrorism by a radical antiwar group. The incident had been investigated thoroughly by the NCIS and Norfolk police and fire departments due to the nature of Heyerdal’s naval contracts and the extensive fire damage. Someone with a lot of skill had torched the facility, incinerating what hulls remained and leaving bodies almost completely unrecognizable in the conflagration.
Schwarz was here with his Able Team partners, Carl Lyons and Rosario Blancanales, and together the three of them were looking for connections. Across the Atlantic, thousands of miles due east, the Canary Islands were experiencing one of the most unusual hostage crisis situations the world had ever seen.
La Palma was one of a scattered assembly of volcanic islands that formed the Spanish Canaries, a dot in the Atlantic that was home to eighty thousand souls and a tourist destination for millions more. It also, strangely enough, was the lynchpin in a white paper about a mega-tsunami that would devastate the East Coast of the United States, as well as the British Isles, Spain, Portugal and potentially the nations ringing the Mediterranean.
Because Heyerdal had been owned by the Jeopardy Corporation, which had also sponsored the white paper, it was a slim lead for Stony Man Farm and its efforts to suss out the situation. While the world’s eyes were locked on a vacation paradise under siege by madmen, the men of Able Team were looking for a handle on why La Palma was the focus of such interest.
Schwarz cast around, realizing that something was wrong but unable to put his finger on it. There was wreckage extending out into the water, the most spectacular of which was a gutted freighter that had been devastated by fire. He kept being drawn back to this, and noted that Carl Lyons, a former Los Angeles P.D. cop, also was focused on the strange vibe.
Schwarz was as comfortable with the metaphysical as he was with the very solid and real world of electronics and computer systems, and one of the things he strongly believed was that the human mind was attuned to pick up data that was outside of the realm of the five ordinary senses. He had been present when Lyons spoke of “the feel” of a crime scene. This was before the popularization of forensic psychology, and Schwarz had always been certain of some more-than-standard instincts displayed by his partners.
“What do you have, Ironman?” Schwarz asked.
Carl “Ironman” Lyons, the leader of Able Team, remained still, his gaze focused on the gutted hulk. “What did they say was in here?”
“Wreckage. It was gutted by the fire,” Schwarz explained. “But you already knew that. You went over the files three times on the trip over here.”
Lyons nodded, his face a grim mask.
“And you’re wondering why someone would start a fire inside a hulk like that?” Schwarz asked.
Again the silent nod of agreement.
“They only found nine of the OSHA team, too,” Schwarz said.
Lyons looked at a temporary gangplank that had been erected for investigators to look within the wreckage. Schwarz followed him up and overlooked the carnage within. Plenty of high-definition images had been taken of the madness left over from the arson inferno.
“Did they bring in divers?” Lyons asked.
“I’m not going to be Watson to your Holmes, homes,” Schwarz quipped. “They moved in as far as they could under the docks, but the wreckage made it impossible to get inside the hull here.”
“And they didn’t drop anyone down into the water here,” Lyons muttered, looking through the doorway. There was no latticework left to stand on, though he could see a small shelf where one of the bodies had been recovered. The flames had been insanely hot, yet there remained a small bit of surviving human tissue, carbonized, that could mark the OSHA inspector’s corpse.
“Underwater metal. Not a safe place to go high diving,” Schwarz returned.
Lyons nodded. He stared at the lifeless, black reflective pool beneath. Schwarz didn’t like the intensity of his friend’s focus.
“I said...” Schwarz started, his voice rising.
That didn’t stop Lyons. He took one step through the door and plummeted