She nodded, and he said fiercely, "Don't worry. If anything's got your little girl, we'll make it beg us to take her back. Now this is a Colt dual mode laser mini mortar…"
He continued describing the arsenal of weapons that were strapped to his and Pet's bodies and were in a compact array at his feet. "You're welcome to anything," he said. "Help yourself."
Yana thanked him and wondered briefly if she was going to feel foolish for overreacting if Murel's trouble turned out to be little more than a bout of preteen histrionics. But no, the sick sinking feeling left over from that first shock was still fluttering at the bottom of her rib cage. She took the mini mortar and two air-to-sea missile launchers as well as a stun gun with settings that ranged from a mosquito to a small moon, should a small moon ever need stunning.
Johnny was flying copilot since Rick was more intimately familiar with the landscape.
The glow from the lights of the barge and tug on the horizon let them know they were near even before they saw the covered shark tank and the boat. As the chopper drew closer, Yana briefly considered stopping for Sinead, but decided that making time was more important. If this was happening to someone else's kid and she was advising them, she knew she'd be thinking that it might already be too late.
CHAPTER 14
SEAN SHONGILI HAD been helping pole the shark tank barge away from the sandbar when Murel's cry reached him. Behind him was another river channel and the darkened forest. In front of him the lights of the barge sparkled off the rippling water with an almost blinding effect. Since he was concentrating heavily on directions from his fellow polers and his own physical exertion, it took a little longer for his daughter's terror to register than it had with her mother.
Shortly afterward, the barge cleared the bar. Sean was stripping down when the mobile call came, but the mobile itself was in the way of ridding himself of his trousers. When it fell in the water, he didn't bother retrieving it. Making an arrow of his slim sinewy body, he dived into the river and changed, his sleek seal form maintaining the arrowlike speed and purposefulness of his dive.
The barge, towed by one of Marmie's boats, had made excellent time, taking only the whole of one day and half the night before they reached a point about three quarters of the way to the coast. There, the channel widened and sandbars became a problem.
Sean swam past the brilliant lights cast by the barge, swimming as hard as he could to close the distance between himself and the sea.
The river mouth looked deserted without otters, but unless they had some information about his children, Sean had no time to chat anyway. He had been using his own sonar all along to keep his course straight through the swiftest current of the river channel, but once he hit salt water he slowed and sent out a throaty roar of a signal to try to get a heading.
That was when Ronan's call reached him.
I'm coming, he answered. He sought Murel, but received no clear response. How long he searched, he didn't know, though he had begun swimming hard again. He sent another call to Ronan, I'm not getting anything from her, son, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.
Ronan's alarmed thought reached him a few minutes later: Da, it's a pod of orcas.
Stay calm, okay? Sean told him.
He waited for a response from his son but it was not forthcoming.
Instead, he picked up a confused babble of thought, the orca pod, and homed in on it.
Where'd they go?
I dunno. I don't have 'em. Who has 'em?
Bitfin, you didn't eat both of them, did you?
No! This thought was disgruntled, pained, and angry. I was all set and- Father of seals! Another, clearer thought cut through the pod's chatter, which had begun to recede. They were swimming away from where the children had been.
The Honus greet you.
Where did my kids go? he asked them.
We do not know. Murel fell behind without our knowledge while we swam toward the new home. The next thing we knew, she cried out. The swifter among us swam with Ronan and the otter to try to save her, but although we were swift, your son was swifter. He dived into the pod of orcas and that is the last we saw of him. He made no outcry. The orcas have gone but no seals remain. On the bright side, neither is there much blood taste in the water.
Sean felt as if he would sink to the bottom and stay there at the mention of blood where his children had been.
Picking up on Sean's distress, one of the Honus suggested, One of the orcas had a wounded dorsal fin. Perhaps the blood was his.
Thank you for that. We'll hope so.
We will continue to dive. As soon as it is light enough for them to use their weak human senses, Ke-ola and Keoki will also dive.
Thank you. But tell Ke-ola and Keoki I am coming and can search before sunrise. I don't know how those boys got out there but we don't need to lose them too.
Well before sunrise, though, Sean heard the chopper flying overhead and figured that Sinead had called Yana for backup. By the time he surfaced, the chopper's searchlights and its noise were fading in the distance. It was on course for the emerging volcano.
He reached the Honus as the indigo skirt of the sky bloomed with the scarlet of the rising sun. This had the unfortunate effect of bathing the sea in blood.
THE HELICOPTER HAD picked up Ke-ola and Keoki by the time Sean arrived.
He wondered how the boys had survived the long swim from shore, which would have been far too cold for them to stand for long, if nothing else.
The seal children gave them the shells they carried on their own backs, the Honus answered, although Sean had not posed the question with an intention of receiving a reply.
So the kids gave the boys their dry suits. That would make one less piece of evidence he might find in the water to indicate what had happened to them.
Yana was aboard the chopper, as were Johnny, Rick, Pet Chan, and another man
Sean didn't know but whose face seemed familiar. Pet Chan squatted with Yana in the open side door of the aircraft. Both were dressed in diving gear. When Yana spotted Sean, she waved and said something into the mouthpiece attached to her headset. Shortly afterward, the copter hovered close to the water.
Sean looked up at her, trying to meet her eyes. Escaping strands of her black hair whipped in ribbons across her face. More than ever, he wished Yana and he could speak telepathically as easily as he could with the children. She wanted him to board the copter, he thought, and explain what had happened. She also wanted to dive in with him. In as large a gesture as he could make, he shook his sleek gray brown head from side to side three or four times and dived. No need for her and
Pet to risk themselves. Besides, they could obscure evidence of what had happened to the children. He had a better chance of sorting out the situation alone. Water was his natural element-well, one of his natural elements.
His dive was not solo, however. The Honus dived with him. All of them.
We have searched clear to the bottom but there is nothing except rock, they told him. Silt, plants, and animals were already covering most of the rock. Although the water was very murky, he saw no sign of anything from that quarter that might have taken his kids, nor was there anyplace for them to hide. Not that they would be hiding. If they were here, he would know it.
Sean searched in an upwardly spiraling pattern from the black rock to the surface, combing a square mile without a trace of either of the children. He did, however, spot a piece of black bloody flesh. Before he could reach it, it had become breakfast for a large fish.
That would belong to the whale with the maimed dorsal fin the Honus described.