Kronos (24 page)

With three quick bursts, she held the button down, unleashing a strobe of light on the small chamber. With each successive barrage, her eyes adjusted. Then she held the button down. The flash burst brilliantly, twice a second for thirty seconds.

Giona took in the space around her. Blue veins pulsed just beneath the pink flesh above, below, and all around her. At one end of the cavity, a large swirl of taut flesh, like a giant, muscled sphincter, emerged from the darkness. She realized that was how she’d entered the chamber.

The full weight of her situation fell on her as she saw the small chamber for the first time, realizing she was trapped in some godforsaken portion of s sea monster’s gullet. She’d either die of starvation or be digested alive. A chill enveloped her body. She pulled her knees to her chest while leaning against one of the soft walls. Having seen enough of her situation, she dropped the camera and longed for the blessed escape of unconsciousness to return.

She didn’t want to be awake when the beast began to digest her.

36

The Titan—Gulf of Maine

“Bloody hell!” Trevor shouted as he stared at the video feed transmitting to the bridge of the
Titan
from
Ray
below.

He saw it. He saw her as clearly as every other living soul standing on the bridge. In a brilliant display of light, the silhouette of a young woman pierced the skin of the leviathan just as it seemed Atticus would finish it off. The girl still lived. Atticus’s daughter was still alive, in the belly of the beast. “This can’t be happening.”

Andrea placed her hand on the screen display of Atticus placing his hand against the lexan bubble of the submersible. “She’s alive.” Tears rolled down her cheeks, tracing the wrinkles formed by her wide smile.

O’Shea was equally taken aback. He moved away from the screens, deep in thought, his forehead a crossroads of creases. “A miracle.”

Trevor focused on Atticus’s face, watching his expression morph from despair to hope. Of all the accursed things that could have happened, this was not only the most unlikely, but also the worst. His warrior, his brave hero, had been reduced to a blathering father in the thirty seconds that it took him to register the form of his living daughter inside Kronos.

“Do it, Atticus,” Trevor shouted. “Finish the beast! Finish the activation code! Do it, man!” Trevor shook the screen.

“No!” Trevor bleated as he shoved away from the offensive screen. Atticus wouldn’t act. He had the creature safely at the bottom of the sea. He could finish it without posing a danger to the
Titan.

If only his daughter were still dead.

Trevor turned his eyes back to the scene going on below and felt a chill ripple through him. Staring through the central screen and burrowing into his soul were two yellow eyes.

Kronos.

The beast mocked him. Taunted him.

Damn the beast, and damn Atticus!

Trevor slipped back to Remus while the others stared silently at the screen, watching Atticus and Kronos simply sit and gawk at each other. “Are we directly above them?”

Remus pealed his eyes away from the screens. He shook his head slightly, snapped out of his daze, and nodded. Then a smile spread on his face as he read Trevor’s mind.

“Drop a spread of depth charges. Force the beast to the surface. Have a crew take the heli up with a full load of torpedoes, high-yield. Ready the antisub rockets with mortars…and load the 356mm.” Trevor glared at the screens. Atticus had yet to move. “We’re doing this my way now.”

Remus grabbed the captain and two more of the crew, quietly delivering his orders. All three nodded rapidly, mentally preparing for the tasks at hand. As Trevor watched, he couldn’t help but smile. The crew had been trained in the fine art of war as much as how to polish brass. They’d prepared for a moment like this for years. He could see by the sparkle in each man’s eyes that they were ready and eager.

Still, Trevor wished it weren’t necessary, but his hero had betrayed them all. Of course, he blamed himself for the snafu. While there was no way he could have foreseen Giona’s still being alive, it wasn’t wise to allow Atticus access to
Ray
alone. But the man had seemed such a competent and determined killer, Trevor hadn’t considered the idea that there might be a reason to change his mind.

But there it was.

No matter,
Trevor thought. His prize was within reach, and no man, no matter how liked, had ever stood between Trevor Manfred and his goal. If the depth charges didn’t succeed in killing the beast, they would force it to the surface. Trevor would then unleash a barrage of torpedoes from air and from sea, followed by missiles packed with antisubmarine mortars, and if they were really lucky, they’d get off a clean shot with the big gun and fourteen-inch cannon salvaged from a World War II battleship that Trevor had refitted for the
Titan.
Hidden below decks, the gun had only one barrel instead of three, but it could still sink, and kill, most anything in the ocean.

Remus slid back to Trevor. “The chopper will be in the air in five minutes. The torpedoes are being loaded. The missiles are warming up and the cannon…” Remus smiled. “We’ll take care of that from here.”

Andrea gasped and spun around to find Remus and Trevor speaking in hushed voices, but she had heard them. A single word had trickled through her preoccupied mind and had shaken her out of her emotional stupor. “Did you say cannon?”

Her eyebrows furrowed angrily. She knew they had. As she stalked toward the two men, the rest of the conversation, which she’d heard but not registered, began to penetrate her consciousness.

“Atticus is still down there. His—his daughter is still alive.”

Trevor grinned. “I’m afraid—” Trevor scratched his head through his fluffy white hair, “how can I put this—not for long.”

Andrea couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She knew Trevor was evil. The man reeked of darkness, but she wouldn’t have guessed him capable of this; nor had she ever imagined that the
Titan
was much more than the world’s largest pleasure yacht. It was, in fact, the world’s most luxurious battleship! “You son of a—”

Remus’s backhand caught her across the cheek, nearly breaking her jaw. She spilled across the bridge, falling into a chair and slumping to the floor. She’d never been hit like that in her life, and while it didn’t hurt as much as she would have expected, it left her dazed.

Andrea stood as blood trickled from her mouth. Remus chuckled, enraging her.

But before she could launch herself into action, a pair of strong arms reached under hers and then up and around the back of her head. The hands locked tight and held firm. She grunted and tried to free herself, but it was no use. When the man spoke, she was shocked to hear the voice of O’Shea. “I’ve got her.”

“I don’t need your help,” Remus growled as he took a step forward.

“There isn’t time!” O’Shea shouted. “I’ve seen the eyes of the devil, and it must be destroyed!”

Remus apparently didn’t hear and continued forward, determined to finish her off. But Trevor’s light grip on his arm stopped him cold. “The good Father is right, Remus. There isn’t time.”

Remus snarled at Andrea. “Later…”

“To arms! To arms!” Trevor shouted, his excitement for the hunt returning.

As Trevor and Remus returned to the controls, Andrea whispered to O’Shea, “You bastard.”

“I had no choice,” O’Shea whispered back as he dragged her toward the door.

“Liar.”

“They would have killed you.”

“You could have helped.”

O’Shea sighed. “I promised Atticus I would get you off the
Titan
if things went wrong. And things are going very wrong.”

Andrea’s insides twisted at the thought of Atticus. “What about Atticus?”

“He strikes me as a man who can take care of himself.”

Andrea knew he was right. There was nothing they could do to help Atticus. They were outnumbered and outgunned. Just getting off the
Titan
would be tricky.

O’Shea’s hands slipped away from around her neck. A moment later she felt a hard object pressed against her back. A gun.

“Get moving,” O’Shea said with authority, jabbing the gun into her back.

“Hey,” she shouted angrily, then moved forward to the door. Her head suddenly yanked back, pulled by her hair. She shouted in pain.

O’Shea filled his voice with anger. “Don’t try anything or—”

“And where might you be off to?” Trevor asked, spinning around slowly with a smile.

“The brig. She shouldn’t be here,” O’Shea said.

“On the contrary,” Trevor said. “Her presence here serves to raise the emotional stakes. She must stay and watch. It will be a much more…well-rounded experience.” Trevor fixed his eyes on Andrea. “Don’t you think, my dear?”

“Go to hell!” she shouted.

“Ha!” Trevor threw his head back with the laugh. “I’m afraid the good priest has cleared me of that fate. Though I imagine after this day’s exploits, I may have need of his services in the morning.” Trevor moved his gaze to O’Shea. “Bring her to the window, where she has a good view.”

After a quickly whispered “sorry,” O’Shea led Andrea to the bridge’s front window. Two decks below, she could see a large, gray gun rising out of the deck, its ominous fourteen-inch barrel at the ready.

She looked back at the video display. Atticus and Kronos still sat silently, staring at each other.
Move, Atti, move
, Andrea willed him, but he remained fixated on Kronos. Whether it was the beast’s stare or shock over his daughter’s being alive that held him so still, Atticus failed to budge, locked in the path of a madman’s destructive fantasy.

“The chopper is in the air,” Remus said. “The hedgehog is ready to deploy the depth charges.”

“You’re going to get us all killed,” Andrea spat.

Trevor smiled widely. “A coward turns away, but a brave man's choice is danger.”

37

Ray—Jeffery’s Ledge

Gloom fell over the seafloor below Atticus and Kronos. Two hundred feet above, the
Titan
blocked out the midmorning sun. Kronos swirled into motion. It rose from the seafloor in a flurry, building speed, preparing to flee. But why? The
Titan
posed no threat to it.

Then he saw them, caught in
Ray
’s lights. Yellow cylinders like oversized coffee cans tumbling toward the seafloor. Atticus spun in his seat. They were everywhere. “What…”

Recognition slammed into Atticus a second before the first shock wave.

Ray
shook as the first depth charge exploded fifty feet to the rear. The metal shell of the submersible groaned as it pitched forward, burying its nose in the sand. The second explosion, ten feet closer, but to port, almost knocked Atticus from his seat. His mind whirled as he fought with the control stick, urging the sub to free itself from the sand.

“What the hell are you doing, Trevor?” Atticus’s eyes settled on the radiant, yet determined, face of his patron. Had Trevor gone insane?

Atticus realized the truth. He had become expendable, a mere obstacle standing in the way of Trevor’s goal.

Atticus pushed the throttle full ahead and pulled back on the control stick.
Ray
’s nose lifted out of the sand, pulling up a mound of the terrain with it. The extra weight made
Ray
unstable and sluggish. Two more explosions rocked the sub. A second to port and another dead ahead. The shock wave from the second, much closer explosion, lifted
Ray
’s nose toward the surface. The sand slid down the surface of the sleek, black sub, covering the lexan bubble. Visibility became totally obscured, but with the throttle still at full,
Ray
broke free from the seafloor and shot up toward the surface, shedding the sandy covering.

Atticus looked up and saw the hull of the
Titan
high above—a black swath surrounded by sparkling blue sea. Motion to his right caught his attention. He caught his breath when he saw Kronos rising alongside him. The explosions that continued to pound the seafloor had startled the beast.

Kronos’s movement through the water became erratic, undulating left and right as well as up and down. Atticus realized it was trying to bunch up, away from the explosions below. While he was 100 feet above the explosions and still rising, a large portion of Kronos’s 150-foot body still remained near the seafloor. The creature moved faster than anything Atticus had ever seen in the ocean, but its massive size made attaining that speed a lengthy process.

As a large portion of Kronos’s body moved his way, Atticus rolled
Ray
over and around the bending body. For a few moments their movements were entwined, each rising and falling, moving in and around, like two synchronous fighter jets. A shallow explosion rocked Atticus to the side.
Ray
spun away from Kronos, and they ascended on two different paths—Kronos up and away from the
Titan,
and Atticus up and directly toward the
Titan
’s bow.

The bursting depth charges shook the
Ray
as they detonated closer and closer to the surface. It was dumb luck that Atticus hadn’t been struck by one yet. He guessed the charges had been dropped in a radius, designed to force Kronos to the surface. Trevor knew the charges couldn’t kill it. But what did he have planned for it at the surface? What kind of weapons did the
Titan
have on board?

A projectile shot across Atticus’s field of view in answer to that question; then four more. Atticus recognized them as MK-54 lightweight, high-yield torpedoes. But they moved like nothing Atticus had seen before. As they shot through the water, he could see a pocket of air blasting bubbles away from the nose of each projectile.

They’re cavitating!
Atticus thought.