CHAPTER 74

The den was snug, no more than two or three times the volume of her own body. The confined space was intentional, chosen to allow her to best care for and protect her brood. Here, she would remain for months tending the eggs until they hatched. And then she would die.

In the darkness, she did not sleep. She used the tips of her arms to caress each strand of eggs, to clean them, ensuring that no parasites or other threats settled on them. Perhaps all of her young would also be dead soon after her, killed by predators before they ever had the chance to descend toward the depths of the abyss. But she had made the journey from her own birthing den. She had survived. So might some of them.

She filled her body with seawater and from her siphons gently blew water over the strands, to keep them oxygenated. The sluggish current moving past would not be sufficient to aerate them.

For the rest of her days, she would remain here, motionless, except to clean and care for her eggs. Conserving her energy so she could persist, only utilizing enough to tend to her clutch while she waited for it to hatch one day. But if anything entered her lair, she would not seek to conserve energy. She would not conceal her form against the cavern walls, or attempt to flee.

She would defend.

 

 

In the beam of his headlamp, Mack finally found the horned rock. There was no trail to this spot, miles away from Oceanus, 212 paces southwest of the intersection of the highway and an old logging road. He’d had to bushwhack in the dark. But when his light struck the geological feature, he remembered it right away, even though he’d only seen it twice before, also at night, many years ago.

Mack had left the house after everyone was well asleep, and then called Mars on his cell. The taxi driver wasn’t happy about being woken, but agreed to pick up Mack after he heard how much the crazy American would pay him. Mack only had one condition: Mars would need to keep his mouth shut.

Back before Mack’s last tour, before he’d lost his leg, he and Breck had come to Andros for some cave diving. His friend had taken him on one special night dive as well. Brought him to help retrieve an object he’d discovered in a coral cleft almost 200 feet down. Under cover of darkness, they’d brought it up to the surface, back to their boat. Before daybreak, over a final beer, they’d hid it here in the bush, in a natural cavity below the low, distinctly shaped rocky rise, where they’d be able to find it again.

A week later, they’d retrieved it and had taken it to a remote inland blue hole to try it out. See how it worked. They knew they couldn’t use it in the ocean, because it generated sound and the Navy’s detection grid would sense it go off.

They’d only used it once. But Breck had always felt bad about the damage they’d caused that day. The reason he’d taken it in the first place was that he was angry about the impacts the Navy’s toys were having on the offshore environment, and for years had refused additional contract work from them. Afterward, they’d secretly brought it back here, and never gone near it again.

But now Mack had a use for it.

Sweating, he walked up to the head-high ridge of rock. A pair of foot-tall horns of pale rock jutted from it, like the twin humps of a Bactrian camel. He set down his shovel and machete and scanned the rocky, uneven ground below the ridge, which was now covered in thick leaves and other forest litter.

They’d agreed to tell nobody else about this, because they both knew they could get in a hell of a lot of trouble. But maybe it wasn’t even here anymore. Maybe somebody had already found it.

Mack ignored the sand flies biting his exposed skin as he shrugged off his empty frame pack and knelt down. He scraped away at the branches and litter with his shovel. After a few minutes, he found a dark opening in the forest floor. That darkness betrayed a large, mostly hidden pock in the ancient coral rock that was concealed under a few exposed tree roots. It was farther to the left than he remembered, and the roots had grown in almost to the point of closing off the hole. He tossed the shovel aside.

He got on his hands and knees and poked his head into the hole. Inside he saw the same few large rocks he’d placed in here himself, resting on what was left of the folded canvas tarp. He reached the machete in and with its tip he cleared the rocks away, and pushed at the tarp.

Then he saw the gleam of metal.