"Le voila!" came Bonterre's excited voice over the comm channel. The image jiggled wildly as she swam toward the crack, shot a small explosive bolt into the rock nearby, and attached an inflatable buoy. It bobbed upward and Hatch looked over the rail in time to see it surface, a small solar cell and antenna bobbing at its top. "Marked!" said Bonterre. "Preparing to set charges."
"Look at that," breathed Rankin, swiveling his gaze from the video to the sonar and back again. "A radiating fault pattern. All they had to do was tunnel along existing fractures in the rock. Still, incredibly advanced for seventeenth-century construction—"
"Dye at five degrees, ninety feet offshore," came another call.
"Are you certain?" Disbelief mixed with uncertainty in Neidelman's voice. "Okay, we've got a third tunnel. Naiad, it's yours. Spotters, for God's sake keep your scopes trained in case the dye spreads before we can get to it."
"More dye! Three hundred thirty-two degrees, seventy feet offshore."
And then the first voice again: "Dye appearing at eighty-five degrees, I repeat, eighty-five degrees, forty feet offshore."
"We'll take the one at 332," said Neidelman, a strange tone creeping into his voice. "Just how many tunnels did this bloody architect build? Streeter, that makes two for you to deal with. Get your divers up as soon as possible. Just mark the exits for now and we'll set the plastique later. We've only got five minutes before that dye dissipates."
In another moment Bonterre and Scopatti were up and in the boat, and without a word Streeter spun the wheel and took off at a roar. Now Hatch could see another cloud of yellow dye boiling to the surface. The boat circled as Bonterre and Scopatti went over the side. Soon another buoy had popped up; the divers emerged, and the Naiad moved to the spot where the third cloud of dye was appearing. Again Bonterre and Scopatti went over the side, and Hatch turned his attention to the video screen.
Scopatti swam ahead, his form visible on Bonterre's headset, a ghostly figure among the billowing clouds of dye. They were already deeper than at any point on the first two dives. Suddenly, the jagged rocks at the bottom of the reef became visible, along with a square opening, much larger than the others, through which the last tendrils of dye were now drifting.
"What's this?" Hatch heard Bonterre say in a voice of disbelief. "Sergio, attends!"
Suddenly Wopner's voice crackled over the radio. "Got a problem, Captain."
"What is it?" Neidelman responded.
"Dunno. I'm getting error messages, but the system reports normal function."
"Switch to the redundant system."
"I'm doing that, but. . . Wait, now the hubs getting... Oh, shit."
"What?" came Neidelman's sharp voice.
At the same time Hatch heard the sound of the pumps on the island faltering.
"System crash," said Wopner.
There was a sudden, sharp, garbled noise from Bonterre. Hatch glanced toward the video screen and saw it had gone dead. No, he corrected himself: not dead, but black. And then snow began to creep into the blackness until the signal was lost in a howling storm of electronic distortion.
"What the hell?" Streeter said, frantically punching the comm button. "Bonterre, can you hear me? We've lost your feed. Bonterre!"
Scopatti broke the surface ten feet from the boat and tore the regulator from his mouth. "Bonterre's been sucked into the tunnel!" he gasped.
"What was that?" Neidelman cried over the radio.
"He said, Bonterre's been sucked—" Streeter began.
"Goddammit, go back after her!" Neidelman barked, his electronic voice rasping across the water.
"It's murder down there!" Scopatti yelled. "There's a massive backcurrent, and—"
"Streeter, give him a lifeline!" Neidelman called. "And Magnusen, bypass that computer control, get the pumps started manually. Losing them must have created some kind of backflow."
"Yes, sir," said Magnusen. "The team will have to reprime them by hand. I'll need at least five minutes, minimum."
"Run," came Neidelman's voice, hard but suddenly calm. "And do it in three."
"Yes, sir."
"And Wopner, get the system on-line."
"Captain," Wopner began, "the diagnostics are telling me that everything's—"
"Stop talking," snapped Neidelman. "Start fixing."
Scopatti clipped a lifeline around his belt and disappeared again over the side.
"I'm clearing this area," Hatch said to Streeter as he began to spread towels over the deck to receive his potential patient.
Streeter played the lifeline out, helped by Rankin. There was a sudden tug, then steady tension.
"Streeter?" came Neidelman's voice.
"Scopatti's in the backflow," said Streeter. "I can feel him on the line."
Hatch stared at the snow on the screen with a macabre sense of deja vu. It was as if she had disappeared, vanished, just as suddenly as...
He took a deep breath and looked away. There was nothing he could do until they got her to the surface. Nothing.
Suddenly there was a noise from the island as the pumps roared into life.
"Good work," came Neidelman's voice from the comm set.
"Line's gone slack," said Streeter.
There was a tense silence. Hatch could see the last bits of dye boiling off as the flow came back out the tunnel. And suddenly the video screen went black again, and then he heard gasping over the audio line. The black on the screen grew lighter until, with a flood of relief, he saw a green square of light growing across the screen: the exit to the flood tunnel.
"Merde," came Bonterre's voice as she was ejected from the opening, the view from the camera tumbling wildly.
Moments later, there was a swirl at the surface. Hatch and Rankin rushed to the side of the boat and lifted Bonterre aboard. Scopatti followed, stripping off her tanks and hood as Hatch laid her down on the towels.
Opening her mouth, Hatch checked the airway: all clear. He unzipped her wetsuit at the chest and placed a stethoscope. She was breathing well, no sound of water in the lungs, and her heartbeat was fast and strong. He noticed a gash in the suit along her stomach, skin and a ribbon of blood swelling along its edge.
"Incroyable," Bonterre coughed, trying to sit up, waving a chip of something gray.
"Keep still," Hatch said sharply.
"Cement!" she cried, clutching the chip. "Three-hundred-year-old cement! There was a row of stones set into the reef—"
Hatch felt quickly around the base of her skull, looking for evidence of a concussion or spinal injury. There were no swellings, cuts, dislocations.
"Ca suffit!" she said, turning her head. "What are you, a phrenologiste?"
"Streeter, report!" Neidelman barked over the radio.
"They're aboard, sir," Streeter said. "Bonterre seems to be fine."
"I am fine, except for this meddlesome doctor!" she cried, struggling.
"Just a moment while I look at your stomach," Hatch said, gently restraining her.
"Those stones, they looked like the foundation to something," she continued, lying back. "Sergio, did you see that? What could it be?"
With a single movement, Hatch unzipped the wetsuit down to her navel.
"Hey!" cried Bonterre.
Ignoring the outcry, Hatch quickly explored the cut. There was a nasty scrape below her ribs, but it seemed superficial along its entire length.
"It is just a scratch," protested Bonterre, craning her neck to see what Hatch was doing.
He snatched his hand from her belly as a distinctly unprofessional stirring coursed through his loins. "Perhaps you're right," he said a little more sarcastically than he intended, fishing in his bag for a topical antibiotic ointment. "Next time let me play in the water, and you can be the doctor. Meanwhile, I'm going to apply some of this anyway, in case of infection. You had a close call." He rubbed ointment into the scrape.