Every pop, every aquatic sound might have been a beast chasing after them.
O’Neil had been diving a hundred times. In his head, he knew all these sounds were normal. That the sea was constantly alive with creatures small and large, carrying on their lives in a constant chorus of noise.
Did the Oni Agent affect any of these denizens of the deep? What would a shark do if it was exposed to the Agent? Those killer whales he had feared north of Seattle—could they be affected?
After all, prion diseases could jump between species.
Why not the Oni Agent?
He tried to push those thoughts away, trying not to startle himself when the line went tighter than usual or he heard an inexplicable noise.
He turned his mask toward his GPS again.
They were almost there. Almost to the port.
He could hear the clinks of chains against metal and the growl of engines and motors reverberating through the water.
Instead of focusing on the possibility of creatures rising from the black, he turned his attention toward the sounds of people and machines. At least those were noises he could explain.
A dark silhouette loomed before him. A massive shape.
He could just barely recognize the stern of a shipping vessel with its two massive props and a rudder that would dwarf a Black Hawk. Above, O’Neil thought he could make out the dim red glow of lights.
No spotlights speared through dark. No yellow or white lights. Just those red ones.
Perhaps that’s how the Russians had avoided detection for so long. Red lights like those were commonly used on ships and aircraft on missions where stealth was key.
The human eye was far less sensitive to red lights, but they provided enough ambient illumination he could make out the edges of the pier and the shadows of his teammates swimming behind him, still clinging to the line.
They swam toward the piers, and O’Neil thought he could hear the call of human voices. Their words were too garbled for him to tell if they were Russian, but they confirmed that there were indeed people at this port.
As he approached the pier where they would make their insertion, the seafloor tilted up steeply from the inky depths. Trash was strewn between the rocks and silt.
And between the garbage, the white gleam of bones showed, partially buried.
Dozens of bones.
He kicked closer toward the pier, passing over broken skulls and ribcages and long bones. Most of those skeletons were chewed up and torn apart, likely victims of the monsters, but he saw other sights far more frightening. Corpses that appeared to be Skulls were drifting in the gentle current, their ankles chained down to concrete anchors. Crabs and starfish and other underwater scavengers crawled over them. They picked at the bits of flesh between the bone plates covering the dead monsters.
They were nearly to the pier. Just enough red light glowed down into the water, O’Neil could count almost forty of those anchored beasts. While some appeared to be normal Skulls, others had skeletal growths that seemed to have developed in strange patterns, spikes poking out of their eye sockets or spines jutting from their open mouths, bulbous bony growths bulging from random points along their chest and limbs.
For a moment, he thought he was looking at a graveyard of experiments, some that had resulted in Skulls as he was used to seeing them; other specimens looking like failures, like the bony growths had been the death of those creatures instead of a bullet or a blade.
Just as the team gathered between these sunken monstrosities, moving toward the lip of the pier, O’Neil felt the vibrations of someone walking on the pier toward them. Those footsteps were followed by voices and a long, scraping sound.
From what he could tell, it seemed like two people were headed in their direction, and they were dragging something behind them.
For a second, they went silent. O’Neil waited, listening, looking up at the pier, just able to see what he thought were the shapes of the men standing right above them.
Had these people seen the other SEALs?
He started to calculate his next move, how to dispatch these guys quickly. How to stop them before they warned the others on their base. Before he could do anything, something exploded into the water in front of him.
A Skull.
Bubbles burst around him. He saw the silhouette of knifelike claws and the ridges around the beast’s head. His worst fear had materialized. A predator diving into the water to attack.
All he could do was kick away, reaching for his knife, hoping he could stop the Skull before it stopped them.
-20-
O’Neil slipped the knife from his sheath, ready to tear into the beast before it attacked.
Bubbles streamed from its nostrils. But the beast didn’t move. It stared vacantly ahead.
O’Neil willed his panicked heart to settle, realizing what he had just witnessed. The water around the monster began to turn cloudy. Blood dispersed from what appeared to be bullet holes in its forehead and its side. Just like the other beasts in this underwater graveyard of horrors, its ankles were chained to concrete anchors.
He pulled himself through the water, close against the pier, listening for the retreating footsteps of the men who had dropped this beast into the water.
But he didn’t hear any footsteps.
He heard only the click of crabs climbing up toward a fresh meal and saw the silver flash of fish darting in to take bites of the infected monster.
Once those men left, the SEALs could pull themselves up onto the pier and make their way to the main facility.
The men just weren’t leaving.
Instead, a beam of light speared through the water, illuminating all the motes of matter floating in the dirty water, reflecting off the fish and the dead creatures.
Another beam of light soon followed, lancing into the dark. One caught part of Loeb’s wetsuit and his fins. Then he heard the grumble of voices.
The way their lights swished back and forth now, he feared they might have seen Loeb.
He couldn’t wait any longer to be certain. He signaled to Tate. The SEAL made an ‘okay’ signal back with his hand, and O’Neil counted down on his fingers.
Three.
He sucked in a deep breath.
Two.
He coiled his muscles, his knife in his hand. The flashlight beams continued to rake through the murk, quicker now, the SEALs swimming and pressing themselves against the pier as best they could to avoid being spotted.
One.
O’Neil surged out of the water, aiming at the first man he saw. Tate exploded from the water next to him. The two men with the flashlights dropped them, reaching instead for the rifles slung over their shoulders. O’Neil grabbed the ankles of the first man, yanking hard so he lost his balance. The man fell on his spine, his skull thudding against the concrete of the pier, his body going rigid.
As O’Neil pulled the man toward the water, Tate tried the same maneuver. But the other man started to yell, “Pomogi mne!” before Tate reached him.
O’Neil didn’t know Russian, but it was clear the man was either yelling for help or warning his comrades. Tate wrapped his fingers around the guy’s ankles and pulled him down.
The Russian fell to his ass, preventing himself from succumbing to the fate of his friend. He scrambled for purchase, his nails scraping across the concrete as Tate pulled him toward the water. One of his feet broke free from Tate’s grip and kicked him hard into the side of the face.