Текст книги "Fallout (2007)"

Автор книги: David Michaels

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Now, crouched a few feet away from Legard, Fisher studied the crime lord in the gray-green glow of his NV goggles. The room was pitch-black, except for what little pale moonlight made its way through the upper windows. The rest of Legard's training dummies stood like frozen sentinels down the center of the room, multiplied by the mirrors on both walls.

Legard cleared his throat, then spoke: "What's . . . what's going on? Bruno, are you there? Bruno!"

"Keep your voice down," Fisher whispered. "Raise it again, and I'll put a bullet in your knee. Nod if you understand."

Legard nodded.

"Bruno's taking a nap. You and I need to have a chat."

"Who the hell are you? Don't you–"

"Know who you are? Of course I know who you are, Mr. Legard." People like Legard were predictable. First the indignation, then the threats, then the propositioning. "And just to save time, yes, I know what a mistake this is, invading your home; and yes, I know what you'll do to me if you catch me; and, no, I don't want any money to let you go. Did I miss anything?"

"You're a dead man."

"We've already been through that," Fisher whispered. "Time to move on."

"You can go fu–"

Fisher jammed the barrel of the pistol against the sole of Legard's foot. "Be nice, or you'll be fondling your foil from a wheelchair. Understood?"

"Yes, I understand."

"Okay, here's how it's going to work: I'm going to ask you some questions. I'm a decent judge of character. Now, just because I'm also a nice guy, I'm going to give you two free lies. After that, I'm going to start hurting you. Are you ready?"

"Yeah . . ." Legard grumbled, clearly not yet a believer.

"Tell me about a woman named Carmen Hayes."

"Who?"

"Brunette, late thirties, scientific type. Not the typical blond-haired runaway you sell. She was snatched off the streets of Montreal four months ago."

Legard chewed his lower lip as though giving the question careful thought. "Sorry. Don't know her."

"That's one lie. Okay, we'll come back to her later. The man you were talking about with Bruno–your ill-mannered guest. Who is he, and where's he going?"

Legard shook his head. "There's no one here. I have no guests."

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

"Turn your head to the side."

"What?"

"Turn your head to the side. Now." Legard did so. Fisher said, "Lift your chin a little . . ."

Legard did so. Fisher fired a shot into the training dummy just below Legard's chin. Legard recoiled, nearly tipping on his side. Fisher propped him upright.

Legard blurted, "You're crazy, Jesus Christ, you're crazy."

"It's a distinct possibility," Fisher replied. "I'm going to ask you one more time, and then I won't ask again until you're bleeding and crippled. So answer carefully. Tell me about Carmen Hayes and your mystery guest at Baie Comeau."

Legard started talking.

FISHER'Spistol had in fact four dart settings: one through three, and then level four, which was yet another bit of magic from the shadowed halls and devious minds at DARPA. Fisher had read the scientific name for the dart's contents once and its tongue-torturing complexity made him glad they'd given it a code name, Spigot,which, he assumed was meant to describe what the chemical did to a person's short-term memory–namely, it opened a notional valve on his or her brain and let twenty to thirty minutes of short-term memory leak out.

There are two kinds of memory, short-term and long-term; the former stored by the frontal and parietal lobes, the latter stored weblike throughout different portions of the brain. The bridge between the two, the part of the brain that converts short-term memory into long-term memory, is governed by the hippocampus, which is where Spigot worked its magic. By partially dissolving the chemical glue that holds the hippocampus bridge together, Spigot created a mild version of retrograde amnesia that turned the target's previous thirty minutes of memory into dreamlike recollections that faded within minutes of regaining consciousness.

So, despite his first instinct, the truth was, Fisher had had no intention of killing Legard. As much as the man deserved to be gone from the planet–and Fisher was giving serious thought to paying him another visit after all this was over–his death would stir up a hornet's nest of trouble, especially if he was in contact with whoever he'd delivered Carmen Hayes to and to whoever was about to deliver his latest prisoner, the man Legard had identified as Calvin Stewart.

If Fisher was going to follow the trail of clues that appeared to have gotten Peter killed, he needed this pipeline to remain open. Of course, Fisher was painfully aware that by maintaining the pipeline's integrity, he was allowing Legard to send who knew how many kidnapped girls to their overseas buyers. Another time,Fisher thought, another late-night visit.

In quick order, he hit Legard with a level three dart and a level four, then unbound him. He did the same to Bruno, then returned the training dummy to its stand and turned the lights back on. While both men would awake confused, neither would remember anything of the last half hour. Legard was fencing; Bruno watching. And then . . . nothing until they awoke. And if Fisher did his job right, leaving no trace of his presence, and nothing was found missing or out of place following the inevitable security sweep Legard would order, their minds would find a way to write off the experience.

In the end, Fisher felt certain Legard had told him the whole truth. He had in fact kidnapped Carmen Hayes, but the request had come to him anonymously through a series of cutouts, one of whom he trusted. The price had been right–US$500,000–so Legard had taken the job. Calvin Stewart's kidnapping had been the same story: kidnapped off the street after being lured to Montreal by a bogus job offer. Legard knew little about either Hayes or Stewart, except that they were both "science types of some kind," nor did he know where they were ultimately bound. Legard's latest victim, Stewart, was to be initially delivered to the same place he'd sent Carmen Hayes: a waterfront warehouse in Halifax, Nova Scotia. A group of masked men had met Legard's own crew and taken custody of Carmen–as they would, Fisher assumed, take custody of Stewart.

But why? Who was collecting scientists, and why? And what did either of them have to do with Peter's death? Too many questions,Fisher thought, and not enough answers.Perhaps his next stop would remedy that.

Fisher keyed his SVT and said, "Grim, I've got a name for you: Calvin Stewart. Somewhere I think you'll find a missing persons report on him. I need everything you can dig up."

"Got it. Anything else?"

"A warehouse in Halifax." Fisher gave her the particulars. "They're loading Stewart onto a ship in Baie Comeau. That's my next stop. Where's Bird?"

"Idling on the tarmac at St-Mathieu-de-Beloeil. ETA to evac point Charlie is ten minutes."

"Radio him for me, tell him to put on his flying hat. I'll be calling."

Fisher signed off, then slipped out the fencing room door and padded down the hall to the last door on the east side, the one Grimsdottir suspected contained the only personal computer in the house. The door was unlocked. Inside he found what looked like a private study. The lights were off save a single spotlight in the ceiling that cast a dim pool of light on the hardwood walnut floor. He found the PC–a high-end Alienware–on a rolltop desk in the corner and plugged the OPSAT's USB into the PC's port.

"Hooked up," Fisher told Grimsdottir.

"Roger. Scanning . . . Nice firewall . . . nice, but not nice enough. There, I'm in. Downloading now." Thirty seconds passed, then, "Done, Sam."

Fisher disconnected the USB. "I'm ex-filtrating."

TWENTYminutes later he was sliding out the pool's exit chute and climbing down the rocks into the kayak course. He looked east and could see on the horizon the barest hint of reddish pink under a fringe of leaden clouds. This was false dawn, he knew. The true sunrise was at least four hours away. Red skies at night, sailor's delight,Fisher thought. Red skies at dawn, sailors take warn.It was an old nautical saying that he'd found to be more often accurate than not. In fact, he could smell the tang of ozone in the air. Rain was coming.

Having already trail-blazed his infiltration route through the forest surrounding Legard's mansion, he simply followed the course in reverse order, moving more quickly this time and pausing only to avoid the guards and dogs. An hour later he was at the wall. He crouched down and checked the OPSAT to ensure his spot was still dog-friendly, then called up the OPSAT's communication screen, tapped the airplane icon, then selected from the drop-down menu the commands, CALL TO followed by EVAC POINT C. Five seconds passed, then Fisher heard in his ear, "Roger. En route. ETA ten. Out."

Fisher scaled the wall and headed for the water.

13

FISHERlay belly down, his face mask awash in the shallows of the river, for four minutes, gauging the current and watching the rain clouds gather over the treetops, then pushed off, stroked a hundred yards into the channel, and stopped. The current immediately took hold of him, dragging him downstream. Three minutes later he was a half mile away from Legard's estate when he heard the faint thrumming of a plane's engines, followed a few seconds later by the sight of the flat-bottomed, rounded nose cone of a V-22 Osprey emerging from the fog along the southern shoreline.

The Osprey dropped to twenty feet, swooped over Fisher, then banked, its engine nacelles rotating from horizontal to vertical as it slowed to a hover and then began drifting backward until its tail was directly above Fisher. The tail ramp lowered, and a coiled rope rolled out and dropped into the water beside him. Fisher looped his arm into the thick rubber horse collar and gave a thumbs-up at the ramp, where he knew a high-resolution night-vision camera was focused on him.

The Osprey lifted upward, and the winch began reeling him in.

FIVEminutes later, dried off, coffee cup in hand, and changed into a pair of blue coveralls, Fisher sat down in the empty engineer's seat in the rear of the cockpit and said, "So, how's everyone's morning so far?"

The pilot, an easygoing southern boy nicknamed Bird, said, "Peachy, Sam, and you?"

Fisher shrugged. "The usual. Hi, Sandy."

Sandy, Bird's copilot, one of the first women to break into the male-dominated special operations community, nodded back at Fisher. "Sam." Where Bird was a carefree soul, Sandy was the polar opposite: taciturn and all business. Fisher liked Sandy, but he could count on one hand the number of times he'd seen her smile. Together, Bird and Sandy formed a balanced pair.

The newest edition to Bird's crew, the Osprey's engineer/ navigator/loadmaster, was an Annapolis wunderkind graduate named Franklin. Fisher wasn't sure if Franklin was his first name or last, but Bird had dubbed him Franco, so Franco it was. He had a quick, easy smile and could do black-belt-level sudoku, in pen, with one half of his brain while calculating glide paths with the other.

Fisher was very much at home aboard the Osprey, which Bird had dubbed Lulu, per his prerogative as the captain, and had spent almost as much time flying aboard it as he had driving his own car. Billed as both a VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) and STOL (short takeoff and landing) craft, the Osprey was not only Third Echelon's workhorse, used for dicey insertion and extraction missions in "denied areas," but had over the years been Fisher's lifesaver many times.

"Morning, Franco," Fisher said.

"Morning, sir," Franco said with a nervous smile. Though both Bird and Sandy denied it, Fisher suspected they'd been telling their new crewman tall tales about him–that Fisher ate live ducklings for breakfast and he'd been responsible for the Hindenburgdisaster in 1937.

"Bird, how far to Baie Comeau?" Fisher asked.

"Two hundred miles. Should have you there in forty."

Too long,Fisher thought. If Bruno's prediction was right, Stewart might have already been loaded aboard whichever of Legard's ships would be carrying the scientist to Halifax. They'd have to catch the ship at sea.

Fisher grabbed a headset on the bulkhead, settled it on his head, and swiveled the microphone to his mouth. Bird said, "Sit room on button two." Fisher punched the button and said, "You there, Grim?"

"Here."

"Any luck?"

"Some. Calvin Stewart's boss reported him missing two weeks ago. Stewart is a particle physicist at University of Toronto. He's working on a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy; I'm trying to get the specifics, but the DOE is being cagey.

"As for the ship, the only one in Legard's fleet that's filed departure with the Baie Comeau harbormaster is a dry cargo hauler called Gosselin. She left port twenty minutes ago, heading for the Gaspe Passage. She should be passing Pointe-des-Monts right about now."

Fisher did a quick mental calculation. By the time he was feet-down on the Gosselin's deck, it would be four a.m., the darkest part of the night, but it would leave him only a couple of hours before the day watch began. He'd have to move quickly.

"You get that, guys?" Fisher asked.

"Roger," replied Sandy. Franco, sitting across the aisle from Fisher, was already bent over his folding desk, tapping keys on his navigation computer's keyboard.

Grimsdottir said, "I'm updating your OPSAT with blueprints and specs for the Gosselinnow. What I can't tell you is where they're keeping Stewart."

"I have an idea how we can find out," Fisher replied, then explained his plan. "Once I'm aboard and in place, we'll use it to shake the tree. Bird, you got any ideas about getting me aboard?"

"I can drop you in the drink ahead of her–"

"Not enough time."

"Or I can . . ." Bird trailed off, hesitant.

"What?" Fisher asked.

"Or we can test out a little trick Sandy and I've been practicing awhile."

"And just how much testing have you and Sandy done?"

Sandy replied, "Enough that we're reasonably confident we won't kill you."

"Oh, well, if you're reasonablyconfident . . . Okay, let's hear it."

Bird outlined the plan, then said, "You game?" When Fisher didn't immediately reply, Bird mock-slapped his own forehead. "Sorry, I forgot who I was talking to. Go get a few winks, Sam. I'll call you when we're twenty out."

Fisher walked back into the cabin and folded down one of the bulkhead cots and stretched out. He closed his eyes to sleep but almost immediately knew sleep wouldn't be coming, so he lay still, listening to the hum of the Osprey's engines, and thought.

Peter's dead.Until now, until he'd allowed himself to slow down and open his mind, the truth of the statement had been missing for him. He'd boxed it up and gone through the motions: holding Peter's lifeless and tepid hand, the autopsy report, the cremation and the memorial. He'd detached himself from all of it–yet another skill essential to this business. Learn how to attenuate or shut off altogether any emotion that steals focus from the job at hand. Fisher felt a twinge of guilt that he had, albeit unknowingly, treated Peter's death in the same way. Using his mission mind to deal with something as personal as this felt disrespectful and disingenuous.

And what about his promise to Lambert? His first instinct had been to take a leave of absence from Third Echelon and track down Peter's killers himself, and while that urge still lingered in the back of his head, Fisher also knew there were more important things at stake here. Peter had died of PuH-19, plutonium hydride-19, a substance so deadly most of the earth's First World countries–even the ones incapable of nuclear weapons or energy production–had banned its storage. Where had Peter picked up the poison? Grimsdottir had said there'd been a week gap between Peter's last credit card purchase in Halifax and when he was fished from the Labrador Sea. So far, Grimsdottir's monitoring of the North American and European medical networks had turned up no cases of poisoning similar to Peter's. It appeared as if Peter had been the only one exposed to PuH-19, which in turn suggested it had been intentional. There were only two countries that hadn't signed the ban on PuH-19: the United States and Russia. That didn't, however, mean there weren't other nations producing PuH-19. So where did that leave him? Still only one option: Track back Peter's investigation into the disappearance of Carmen Hayes and hope it took him to the source of the PuH-19 and whoever was behind it.

One way or another, wherever the trail led him or however long it took, someone was going to pay.

" RISEand shine, Sam. Got your target on radar. Eighteen minutes out."

Fisher opened his eyes; he hadn't realized he'd dozed off. Unlocking the emotional box into which he'd put Peter's death had evidently helped. "I'm up."

"Franco's coming back to help. No worries, we used him as a guinea pig on this thing. He knows it backward and forward."

Fisher rolled upright and put his stocking feet on the floor; through the chilled, nonskid metal he could feel the thrumming of the Osprey's engines. Franco appeared at the edge of the cot and handed him a cup of coffee and an energy bar wrapped in plain white wrapping with the words, in black, ENERGY SUPPLEMENT, FRENCH VANILLA, ONE EACH, A/N 468431 stenciled on the side. It was as thick as Fisher's wrist and nearly as long as a paperback book.

Fisher took it and looked at Franco. "Got some heft to it, doesn't it?"

"Another DARPA product. Coming soon, government-issue Kit Kat bars."

Fisher smiled at him. "Franco, was that a joke?"

"Uh, yeah . . . I guess so. Anyway, I've tried them. Not bad. Three of these a day, and you've got all the nutrients and calories you need."

Next they'll come up with dehydrated water,Fisher thought with a rueful smile.

"When you're ready," Franco said, "I'll meet you at the ramp."

Fisher downed his coffee, gulped down the energy bar, which was, in fact, palatable if not wholly chewable, then donned his tac suit and web harness and settled the SVT strap around his throat. "Up on SVT," he told Bird and Sandy.

"Four minutes to ramp down," Bird replied.

Fisher walked back to the ramp, where Franco was kneeling at the winch, working.

"Ready?"

"Yes, sir. Same principle as fast-roping except for the altitude."

This was a huge understatement, Fisher knew. A standard fast-rope insertion by a hovering helo or Osprey was done at an altitude of fifty to ninety feet. What Bird and Sandy had been practicing was still in the experimental stages: HADFR (high-altitude dynamic fast-roping)–in other words, fast-roping at four hundred to five hundred feet above a moving target. There were a number of problems with this, primarily wind shear and targeting, which were different sides of the same coin. At five hundred feet, the force of the wind on the unfortunate soul dangling at the end of the fast rope–also called the worm–was considerable and unpredictable, often driving the worm far behind and to the side of the aircraft. The other side of the coin–targeting–was dicey because the flight crew would have either a degraded visual fix on the target or, in the case of bad weather or darkness, no fix at all.

Bird and Sandy had solved these problems with a custom-designed clear Lexan fairing that would hang, affixed, to the rope before the worm. Much like the curved shield carried by riot control police, the fairing cut the wind and decreased the drag to nearly zero. The targeting issue was solved in two parts: First, by a wireless transmitter that would feed real-time video from Fisher's NV goggles straight to an LCD screen mounted between Sandy and Bird; and second, by a miniature LTD (laser target designator) pod strapped to Fisher's wrist and index finger that not only uploaded his desired landing point but also his position relative to it. What Fisher saw, Bird would see; where Fisher pointed his LTD would be where Bird steered the Osprey. Fisher had to only look and point and then unhook himself when he was over the target.

HADFR addressed the primary drawback of standard fast-roping: noise. Helicopters and Ospreys were loud. There was no mistaking either the thunderous chop of rotors approaching your position nor the down blast fifty feet above your head as the craft went into a hover to deploy fast-roping troops. For bad guys the din was as good as an early warning alarm.

The issue that could complicate this particular HADFR was that Legard's ship, the Gosselin,had a robust navigation radar with an operable ceiling of seven hundred feet. Bird would have to work some of what Fisher had come to call his "aviational magic," or as Bird himself called it, "sleight of wing."

Franco finished cinching the rig onto Fisher, then patted him on the shoulder.

Bird said in his ear, "Two minutes to ramp down. How're ya feeling, Sam?"

"Like a flying worm."

14

FISHERfelt and heard the Osprey's engines slow as Bird throttled back and rotated the nacelles to three-quarters, bleeding off speed for altitude as he dropped the craft into the Gosselin's radar bubble. The Osprey would be directly over the ship now, Fisher knew, but in one of its radar blind spots–the other being a ring approximately three hundred yards in diameter around the ship at wave-top height, where the radar's signal would be lost in sea clutter.

"One minute to ramp down," Sandy called in Fisher's ear. "We're matching up the couplers. Stand by."

Like Pave Low special operations helicopters, this generation of Osprey was equipped with what was called a hover coupler. When engaged, the coupler could lock the craft into either a precise fixed spot over the earth's surface or slave its position to a designated target, in this case the Gosselinas it steamed out of the St. Lawrence Seaway and into the Gaspe Passage.

"Not going anywhere," Fisher replied. Yet.He felt that familiar and welcome anticipation/adrenaline flutter in his belly. He closed his eyes and slowed his breathing, centering himself. As it always did, the image of his daughter Sarah's face appeared before his eyes. This had become a ritual for Fisher, a good luck touchstone he performed before each mission. He opened his eyes. Focus, Sam. Time to work.

Outside, over the roar of the engines, he could hear the hail-like splatter of rain on the fuselage. "Weather report, Sandy?"

"True winds light, three to five from the northwest; relative winds between us and the target's deck, fifteen to seventeen knots; heavy and steady rain; temperature forty-eight degrees Fahrenheit."

"All in all," Bird added, "a downright lovely day."

"I'm sure they've got coffee aboard," Fisher replied. "I'll see if I can scare up a cup."

"Altitude, four hundred ninety-one. Ramp down in thirty seconds. We're slaved to the target. As soon as you're out the door, steering and cable slack on your command."

The cabin lights blinked out, then glowed back to life in night-vision-friendly red.

"Roger," Fisher said, and pulled up the hood on his tac suit and settled his goggles over his eyes. A thought occurred to him. He leaned closer to Franco, who was buckling into a safety rig on the bulkhead, and said, "The fairing–"

"Freshly coated in DARPA's own version of Rain-X. Water should bead up and roll away."

"Right."

"Ramp coming down."

A moment later Fisher heard the whirring of the ramp's motors. Accompanied by a sucking whoosh of cold air, the ramp's lip parted from the curved edge of the fuselage's tail, and a slice of black sky appeared. The ramp continued descending, then stopped, fully open. Outside, Fisher could see skeins of clouds whipping past the opening and, in the breaks between the clouds, the distant twinkling of lights; the ships moving up and down the St. Lawrence showing up as individual specks, the cities and highways along the Seaway as threads and clusters.

Franco patted him on the shoulder again and called into his ear, "Whenever you're ready."

Fisher nodded, performed a final check of his rigging, then turned around so he was facing forward, then back-stepped up to the edge of the ramp until his heels were dangling in space, then coiled his legs and launched himself backward.

Per the plan, Franco let out an immediate four hundred feet of cable, which brought Fisher to a halt a hundred feet above the Gosselin's mainmast, still unseen in the darkness. Though the true wind speed was negligible, Fisher's relative speed through space was almost eighteen miles an hour, which was enough to turn the otherwise vertical rain into a diagonal, slashing deluge that peppered the fairing like blown sand. True to Franco's prediction, however, the water beaded up and sluiced away before it could obscure Fisher's vision. Through his harness he could feel the cable thrumming with the tension, like a plucked guitar string.

"Cable stopped and locked," Bird said in his ear. "On you now, Sam."

"Roger."

Fisher powered up his NV goggles and heard, very faintly in his ear, the familiar hum. His vision went to gray green. And directly below his feet, not more than a third of a football field away, he could now see the top of the Gosselin's mast and the crescent-shaped dish of the navigation radar making its slow rotation.

Fisher pushed a button on the LTD pod on his wrist and then extended his index finger, aiming it at the ship's afterdeck. He'd chosen this spot for his insertion primarily because of the weather. In this rain, if a stern lookout was posted, he or she would have likely withdrawn to the overhanging awning on the second-level aft superstructure. Same for anyone taking a smoke break. He switched his goggles to IR and scanned the afterdeck and superstructure for human-shaped thermal signatures. He saw none. God bless bad weather,he thought and switched back to NV.

"Reading your LTD clearly," Sandy said. "Confirm designated aim point as afterdeck, midline, twenty feet forward of stern."

"Confirmed," Fisher replied. "Give me sixty of cable."

"Sixty feet of cable," Franco repeated. "Spooling now."

Fisher felt himself dropping through the air. He was now aft of the mainmast. The cross-girdered tower, partially obscured by the rain, appeared before his eyes, seemingly rising disembodied from the darkness. He was forty feet above the afterdeck and twenty above the superstructure, almost dead center on the ship's midline.

Fisher felt himself bump to a stop.

"Cable stopped," Franco called.

"Confirm cable stopped," Fisher replied.

Again he scanned the superstructure and afterdeck and again saw neither movement nor heat signatures. He knew better than to do an EM scan; this close to the Gosselin's navigation radar, all he would see is a blinding swirl of electromagnetic waves that would leave him with a three-day headache. He switched back to NV. Down the length of the superstructure he could see the faint yellow glow of light escaping from the pilothouse's port and starboard bridge wing doors–and cast in shadow on either wing a lone figure standing at the railing. Port and starboard look-outs. Not a concern right now. Their attention would be focused forward.

Fisher said, "Give me thirty of–" He stopped. On the afterdeck, a door opened on the superstructure, revealing a rectangle of red light. Standing in the rectangle was a man-shaped shadow. "Disregard my last. Hold cable."

"Holding cable."

The figure stood still for a second, then lifted its cupped hands to its face. Fisher saw the flare of a lighter. The hands dropped away, revealing the glowing tip of a cigarette.

Fisher said, "Stand by. Got a crewman on a smoke break."

Fisher dangled in space, swaying slightly in the wind, which was partially blocked by the ship's superstructure, for another five minutes until finally the crewman finished his cigarette and then leaned forward and swung the door shut.

"Clear," Fisher radioed. "Preparing to deploy."

He heard the double squelch of "Roger" from Franco in his ear.

He scanned the afterdeck for a clean drop zone. There. A patch of open deck bracketed by a barrel-size bollard near the port rail and the raised, glassed-in control cabin for the stern winch. Fisher pointed his LTD at the spot.

"Read distance to deck."

Sandy replied, "Thirty-eight feet. Stand by. Calculating vertical variance."

In the cockpit, Sandy would be using the flight computer to read the rise and fall of the Gosselin's deck on the waves. Nothing got your attention or tended to break ankles like landing on a deck that was bucking up to meet you. It was like stepping off what you thought was the second-to-last step on a stairway only to find one more beneath your foot–only much worse.

"Variance of two feet, Sam."

Four feet in either direction,Fisher thought.

He said, "On my mark, give me a sharp drop–thirty-four feet."

"Roger," Franco said. "Sharp drop of thirty-four on your mark."

Fisher watched the deck heave and drop below his feet. In the corners of his eyes, beyond the port and starboard deck railing, he could see the roiling, curled white edges of the waves. For a fraction of a moment he felt a wave of vertigo; he focused on the deck and blocked out the peripheries.

Wait for it . . . wait . . .

The deck heaved upward, paused, then dropped again.

"Mark."

He felt his belly lurch into his throat as Franco quick-spooled the cable. Half a second later Fisher jerked to a stop. He hit the rig's quick release, felt himself dropping, then hit the deck on the balls of his feet, dropped his shoulder, and rolled right, behind the bollard.

"Down, safe, and clear."

"Retrieving cable."

"Thanks for the ride," Fisher said. "I'll call you when I'm ready to shake the tree."

"At your service, boss," Bird said.

Fisher did a quick NV/IR scan of the deck around him, then sprinted, hunched over, to the superstructure, where he flattened himself against it. Palms pressed against the aluminum bulkhead, he sidestepped until his shoulder was pressed against the jamb of the hatchway in which he'd seen the smoker. He crouched down, then undogged the hatch a half inch and inserted the flexicam. The lens revealed a red-lit passageway, ten feet long, and ending in a split ladder way, one going up and one going down.