“Broken rib,” the captain said. “Shift him to the other side.”
“Wait!” he yelled. “Vivian!”
“She isn’t coming back to the ship. She’s been spotted.” The captain gestured to the man carrying him. “I’ll be inside soon to explain.”
Joe’s world got hazy. His head bumped some guy’s back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Edison trotting along. The dog didn’t seem worried. If the dog wasn’t worried, then he shouldn’t be either. Wasn’t that the rule?
But Vivian was still out there.
His arms ached. His stomach ached. His side ached. How could he have broken a rib? His head throbbed, and his mouth tasted foul.
The guy carrying him — Marshall, he could see that now — dropped him down on his own bed.
“Stay,” Marshall said, like he was a dog.
Joe tried to sit up, but couldn’t. He’d never felt so weak. Edison jumped up on the bed next to him and licked his face, then his hands. He wanted to pet him, but couldn’t even move his arm.
Marshall was back with a bag and an IV pole.
“I’m a trained medic,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
“Worry?”
Marshall grabbed his hand, swabbed the back of it with a gauze pad, and inserted an IV. It hurt a lot less than Joe would have expected.
“You’re suffering from pretty serious dehydration. Probably had some when you went into the water, and it looks like you’ve been vomiting a lot since then.”
Joe closed his eyes.
“You were vomiting so hard I think you broke a rib.” Marshall pressed his fingers down Joe’s sides until he got a groan. “Yup.”
Joe tried to open his eyes, but they wouldn’t listen to him. He felt himself drifting off to sleep. He tried to fight it, but his eyes were too heavy.
Marshall fussed around with his gear, taking it off. Joe wanted to thank him or help him, but he couldn’t formulate the words. He had to go back for Vivian.
“Vivian,” he said.
But Marshall ignored him.
Chapter 39
Although Vivian’s instincts said to run, she tucked herself next to the submarine and waited for the light to pass. Before the light came back around, she pressed the transponder onto the sub. Hopefully it would stick, because that was as good as she was going to get.
Then she pushed herself and the DPV farther under the curve of the hull. Motionless, the DPV hovered next to her hip. She shouldn’t be visible from the surface.
Still, she pulled out her ridiculous toy gun. She slung the strap around her wrist, making it feel even more like an accessory and less like a weapon. She had only five shots, so she’d better make them count. But hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
Should she flip on her propulsion device and head away from there double time? If she took off, whoever was up there with the light might spot the movement. She’d be hard to pick up on sonar, but not impossible. If they spotted her, she couldn’t outrun either the yacht or the sub with her little DPV. Running away had to be a last resort.
She could escape the yacht if she dove, but the sub could dive deeper than she could, and they had a huge sonar range. Miles. There would be no escaping them. They could either kill her right away, or follow her back to the ship and kill everyone there, too. More bad options.
That only left stealth. She hung motionless in the darkness, shoulder pressed tight against the hull. They were just shining the light around. Maybe they were trying to spot a fish. There’s no point in borrowing trouble, as her mother used to say.
Then a light caught her full on. She fumbled to adjust the buoyancy on her DPV, set it to descend, and hung on. The DPV dropped like a stone, and she swallowed again and again to equalize pressure in her ears.
No good. Six divers entered the water, lights pointing in her direction. She brought up her gun, ready to fire. Then she saw the divers were carrying the same kind of Chinese assault rifle she’d retrieved from the ocean floor in New York. A QBS-06. Its underwater range was nearly a hundred feet. Her little pepperbox, in contrast, had a range of about fifty feet, and the range would shorten the deeper she went.
She was outgunned and outnumbered. Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. She had no option left but to surrender, lie, and try to protect Tesla and Voyager. Assuming the women let her live long enough to question her.
She let go of the DPV. That stopped her descent, and she adjusted the air in her BCD to start a slow rise to the surface. She didn’t want to die down deep. The divers and their lights grew closer.
Wishing she didn’t have to, she unfastened the pepperbox gun and let it drop. As designed, it sank. Captain Glascoe wouldn’t be happy about that. A pang of guilt shot through her at the thought that the she was littering, and she almost smiled. That response felt like hysteria, and she tamped it down. No time for weakness.
She activated the transponder in her pocket and stuck it in her dive bootie. Glascoe and Tesla would be listening, and they could track her, although how they could get her back from the yacht was another issue. She ran through everything else she carried, but there was nothing else to drop. Her suit and scuba gear were commercial, not military. All she needed was a good story to explain why she was over a mile off the coast of Halifax in the middle of the night next to a luxury yacht and a submarine.
As she kicked to ascend, she held up both hands in surrender. If these women were civilians, they might hesitate to shoot if she didn’t look like a threat.
Or they might not.
Chapter 40
Laila had a hundred-fifty-pound problem. That was easily solvable. A bigger problem was the witnesses. Aunt Bibi was standing next to her, looking at the woman dripping on the aft deck. Behind Bibi was a woman Laila knew only as Jin. Jin pointed a gun at the stranger’s chest. Next to her was Ambra, biting her lip. Lined up behind them stood four guards from Aunt Bibi’s ship. All armed. Seven witnesses.
The woman sat on a bench on the ship’s stern. She had short dark hair and wore a black wetsuit and had battered-looking scuba gear with one arm cut open to accommodate a broken arm. She looked frightened. Considering Jin’s gun and impassive expression, Laila didn’t blame her.
Ambra knelt next to the woman and started stripping off her scuba gear.
“Why were you under my ship?” asked Aunt Bibi in English.
Jin raised her gun a centimeter.
“I come to get away.” The woman had a strong Hispanic accent. She held up her arms to make it easier for Ambra, but her eyes never left the gun.
“On the bottom of the boat?” Aunt Bibi trembled with rage. Laila had never seen her so upset.
The Hispanic woman shook her head. “I hide in your boat because I hear it is going to Boston. I work for a bad man in Halifax, and I want to leave there.”
“Show me your identification,” Aunt Bibi demanded.
The woman hung her head. “The bad man, Mr. McKay, he keeps it so we can’t leave. That is why I have to sneak away on a ship like yours.”
“You bring trouble to my boat,” Aunt Bibi said. “Maybe, if you’d asked honestly, I could have helped you.”
“I ask you now.” The woman looked Aunt Bibi straight in eye. “Please help me. Take me to Boston. Let me jump off your boat, and I will swim to shore. I can swim far.”
Aunt Bibi looked torn.
“What’s your name?” Laila wanted to short-circuit any sympathy.
“Elena Torres,” the woman said. “I come from Mexico.”
“How did you get to Canada?” Laila asked.
“In a truck. I paid a man to get me across the border. For work cleaning. With thirty-five women. He took us to Canada. Not North Dakota. And not house-cleaning work.” She spat.