Bridger flopped into his bunk, clothes on, thinking:
Since the UEO has turned us into a cruise ship, a tourist attraction, the SS Public Relations, I might as well catch some Zs.
Because—nothing eventful is in the offing.
Bridger rubbed his eyes. The seaQuest was a silent ship. A deep hum, barely audible, was the only indication that it was moving, the twin hydrojets making the mammoth sub move along at a steady 110 klicks an hour. Pushed, it could cruise at a steady 160 knots.
Bridger stared at the ceiling of his cabin.
He thought that maybe his being here was all a mistake. Admiral Noyce had sneaked Darwin onto the seaQuest, and Darwin—able to talk through electronic wizardry—had said that he wanted to stay on the sub.
But, Bridger thought, I'm not married to Darwin. The dolphin could have stayed and enjoyed his new role as an ensign. And I could have stayed on the island.
Should have stayed on the island...
With that, he fell asleep.
Mary was quickly out of her tight dinner dress and into a super-thin kelvar outfit before Cutter even noticed. He was fiddling with the computer.
"What's wrong?" she said.
Cuter shook his head. "Nothing. I'm having a bit of trouble getting—"
Then the machine came on and projected a commercial vid station into the air. It was a sitcom, and Cutter laughed.
Loves his sitcoms, Mary guessed.
"This station okay?" Cutter said, as if feeling her disapproval.
"Doesn't matter," Mary said. Any station would do, any channel, any network. In a few minutes, it wouldn't matter what anyone was watching... anywhere.
Cutter laughed again and Mary shook her head.
It wouldn't matter... because—
Rafael Vargas was sitting off the Mariana Trench, in his modified Skipjack—a very fast sub and armed to the teeth—waiting.
Mary wished he was here. Maybe he'd tell her that it was okay to put her stun gun up against Jack Cutter's stupid head and fire away while he was in mid-laugh.
But Cutter knew all about the new organic explosives, and all about the microdetonators, chip fuses, wireless triggers.
He was important. He had his role—but his part was almost done.
Cutter still wasn't dressed in his kelvar suit.
"Don't you think you should get ready?" she said.
"Ha," Cutter laughed at the screen floating in midair. "You ever see this? It's really—"
Mary looked at her Orlande dive watch, good to ten thousand feet. Who knew, she thought... Before this was all over, that specification might just have to get tested.
It was only minutes away... seconds...
"Get ready, Cutter. It's coming on right—"
There was a blip, and the three-dimensional sitcom vanished, leaving a black hole laced with multicolored specks.
Mary imagined everyone's concern.
Call the TeleNet SysOp, dear. Something's wrong.
But before the world's couch potatoes could leave their perches—wondering, Where's my game show, where's my movie, where's my talk show—the interlaced communications network picked up another signal, traveling the emergency network established by the UEO in 2016.
And there was Rafael Vargas, a familiar visage to the world's governments, any one of which would gladly have had him terminated outright, no questions asked.
This was thrilling.
"Good evening," Rafael said. He had dark eyes, tanned skin, and his smile—so insolent as to be delicious—gave Mary a thrill.
"Let me apologize for interrupting your programs"—the smile broadened—"around the world." He paused, and then a three-dimensional representation of SousMer appeared next to him, as recognizable as the Universal World Park in Southern California. SousMer was the non-plus-ultra of expensive vacations.
And the price was about to go up.
"I regret to inform the guests and staff of SousMer that I have planted a series of explosives, hidden and undetectable, throughout the complex."
Mary looked at Cutter, still struggling to fit his gut into his large kelvar suit.
"God, he's got balls," Cutter said.
Mary had listened to the tape before coming to SousMer; she had helped Rafael script it, reworking each line to make sure that it carried full weight.
Yes, she thought, yes, Rafael certainly does have balls...
It was sunset on the island, and Bridger saw Barbara walking on the beach. Though he knew this was a dream, only another cruel dream, he couldn't resist walking up to her.
She wore one of his denim shirts tied up so casually, so alluringly. A pair of cutoff jeans, bare feet. She turned and saw him.
In the dream, he felt as if he had something to tell her, and something very important to ask her.
He ran now, his feet crunching on the dry, crystalline sand. He called to her, and she waved, the late afternoon breeze catching her hair, playing with it.
And now came the part that felt familiar. He felt himself thinking, hoping, begging. Please, don’t let this be a dream. Let everything else be the dream, everything else that ha pened, her sickness, her death—so sudden that there had been no time to say good-bye...
Let all that be the dream.
"Barbara," he said.
She kept waving. And—closer now—he saw her tanned stomach, the skin brown, her blue eyes catching the setting sun.
And he was there, with her again.
Not a dream, not a dream, it must be—
He remembered what he had to tell her.
It was about their son. It came to him. The bad news he had. How their son was dead, how he had died playing war in Antarctica. "You'd be proud of him," his captain had said, but Bridger shook his head and thought, No, you don’t understand. With him gone, there's nothing.
In the dream, he spoke to Barbara, telling her.
"He's gone. Our son—"
But the breeze stopped. The orange sunlight began to fade so quickly. Clouds filled the sky, and Bridger looked around, thinking. That never happens here. Not on the island. No clouds, no rain, not now—
And Barbara looked around too, disturbed—as if she also knew that this was a dream. And she said, quietly, softly...
"Nate, I... miss you."
Bridger started crying, heaving in his dream, crying in his cabin, digging at his pillow, aboard the seaQuest...
"What the f—"
Harry Gooding's companion stood up. A deadly silence filled the cafeteria. Everyone was watching the VidScreen, listening to world famous terrorist Rafael Vargas speak quietly about the place that they happened to be in, a mile under the water...
"The explosives have been placed both inside and outside SousMer. In fact, we have even placed certain charges to serve as demonstration should Geoffrey Harpe of Harpe WorldWide Enterprises or any authorities require proof that this threat is in deadly earnest."
Then—a neat touch—a portion of the 3-D resort dancing in front of Rafael exploded with a noisy bang and virtual smoke that swirled about him.
Mary heard noises outside her cabin. People scrambling, panicking. Some perhaps heading toward the twin sub bays of SousMer.
That headlong rush should end in a moment, Mary knew.
"There can be no escape from the resort," Rafael continued. "Should any sub escape attempt be made by anyone, I will destroy a section of the resort..."
Each module of the resort could exist separately, Mary knew from the schematics. There were watertight doors and all sorts of emergency provisions.
But all of the modules were linked to and depended on the power plant and oxygen system. Emergency supplies of energy and air would last only a short time.
Mary grinned. There were a lot of disappointed fat cats packing overnight bags even as Rafael spoke.
But they wouldn't get far.
The clouds turned into a gray ceiling, and then there was a ringing sound, a high-pitched electronic noise above the hum, above the sound of seaQuest gliding through the water.
And a voice.
"Captain... Captain Bridger." And this world, the real world, was back.
Bridger's exec, Commander Ford, stood there.
"Captain, we're picking up something that you should see." Bridger's VR screen was linked with all the ship's systems, and it could download from any station on the Net if the sub wasn't down too deep.
Ford didn't wait for permission to turn on the screen.
Bridger rubbed his face, feeling the wet sheen on his cheeks, that part of the dream real enough.
On the screen he saw a man talking... while a hologram of Geoffrey Harpe's SousMer resort floated to the man’s side.
Bridger blinked and listened...
"Any attempt to escape the resort, in a submersible or by EVA suit, will trigger an explosion. I will be monitoring the entire resort." Rafael paused.
Bit of an overstatement there, Mary thought, but who'd know?
Now the resort ominously disappeared from the screen.
"And what do we want? Not much... only a hundred million in gold bullion to be dropped in the Pacific Ocean, at 13 degrees, 25 minutes north, and 145 degrees, 33 minutes east. An exact map is being downloaded to all the primary data bases as I speak. The bullion is to be dropped within the next twenty-four hours. There should be no ship of any kind within a hundred miles of the drop range."
Mary knew that Rafael was sitting there right now, waiting. And after the drop, he'd get the gold aboard his Skipjack and hide in the canyons and valleys of the trench. With a hundred-mile arc, he'd have no trouble getting out.
Mary imagined the world listening to this message, the calls from the U.S. President's office as she tried to track down Harpe, and the council of the UEO trying to decide if they'd pay. Or rather, if they'd make Harpe pay.
They might need some convincing.
The on-screen map of the Pacific showed the drop zone.
"There will be no further messages. Unless confirmation is received within the next sixty minutes, I will detonate one of the explosives..."
"You mean I will," Cutter said.
Rafael smiled "...to demonstrate our sincerity. Other explosions will follow in course, until the drop is continued via a message on the Net. And remember—"
Here it was, Mary thought. The big finish.
SousMer was back on the screen again.
"If the gold is not dropped in"—Rafael looked down at his watch, as if this were live—"exactly twenty-three hours and forty-four minutes—" He paused.
The on-screen resort exploded... while Rafael's smile remained, like the Cheshire cat's.
The sitcom came back on, and Harry Gooding stared at the show, his mouth open.
"Son of a bitch," Billy Carullo said to Harry. "This is great, this is damn terrific. We're hostages and we get to die if Harpe doesn't cough up a hundred million."
Harry looked around. The cafeteria was abuzz with noise. Another face appeared on the screen, rudely pushing aside the sitcom.
"All SousMer staff immediately report to your supervisor."
Right, thought Harry, who had been working up the chutzpah to tell someone what he had seen stuck to the side of the power station.
Carullo turned to him. "Hey, Harry—you don't think that thing you saw, the—"
"Fish," Harry offered. "It was a fish..."
Carullo shook his head. "You don't think that it might be one of the—"
Oh, this was bad, real bad. Forget losing a job. This was about people's lives. My life, Harry thought. And—for the moment—Harry Gooding accepted all the responsibility for the predicament SousMer found itself in.
"Now, that's an interesting situation," Bridger said. "A billion dollar resort, five hundred, maybe six hundred people's lives versus a hundred million from Harpe's coffers. Kinda spoils his day."
"Sir—you think he'll pay up?"
Bridger swung around on his cot. "Oh, I would say he'll have to, Mr. Ford. It might be a bluff, but how can they test it?"
Then Bridger had the thought that, hell, they might just do that. There was no discounting anyone's stupidity, not when money was involved.
Ford still stood there, as if waiting for something.
"Er, thanks for waking me up, Mr. Ford. Keep me posted as to what's going on. Right now, I want to have a quick shower..."
"Captain..." Ford paused. "Do you thing the UEO will want us to get involved?"
Bridger was rubbing his chin, feeling the stubble, longing for his beard, the loss of which signaled that the real world was far away.
He looked up at Ford, who was offering a concept that hadn't occurred to Bridger.
"What's that, Commander?"
"Sir, it's only that we're within cruising distance of the resort. I don't know what action the UEO might want to take."
"Well, don't ask, keep our course. Harpe's got the money—"
Bridger caught himself, caught the edge to his voice. Harpe and he went way back. But their parting of the ways couldn't have been more severe.
"Let him buy his way out of this—like he has everything else in his life."
Ford nodded. "Right, sir," he said and stepped out of the cabin.
Bridger stood up and stretched. It would be interesting to follow this negotiation, he thought, while they leisurely cruised to Panama. He walked to the shower in the corner of the comfortable stateroom.
Then his VidScreen signaled an incoming personal message.
A soft tone, followed by Communication Officer Bachmann.
"Captain, we've got a private communication link coming in for you from Nor-Pac UEO."
Bridger shook his head.
"Can't it wait?" Bridger felt grimy; the hot shower would feel so good.
"Captain—it's Admiral Noyce."
Bridger laughed.
Thinking: How come my exec saw this coming and I didn't?
Boy ... am I rusty or what?
"So," Cutter said, "we wait?"
Mary nodded. "For about forty-five minutes, and then we give everyone here a sample of your expertise."
Mary checked both their stun guns while Cutter walked back and forth in the small cabin.
At the SousMer maintenance station, the computers were scanning the complex.
Not my department, Harry Gooding thought. I don't understand computers. He saw his chief though, Sachio Kodei, studying the monitors, snapping orders at a crew.
"Keep screen one on life-support. Now bring up the data on guest quarters on screen two. Okay, okay—now—"
The smell of fear in the electronic nerve center of the resort was enough to make Harry sick.
"Chief," he said, then realizing he had said it much too quietly, he cleared his throat. "Chief—"
Kodei turned to him.
"Harry—what is it, Harry? We can't use you, you know. No one's going outside. Didn't you hear..."
Harry edged closer. He didn't want the room full of technicians to hear.
"I thought... I should tell you something."
He scratched the back of his neck.
Kodei studied him with his glasses low on his nose, wrinkling his face.
Harry cleared his throat again. "I saw something last time out."
Kodei's face started to curl into a frown.
"On one of the power plant modules. Plant two."
Kodei didn't turn away. "Put plant two on screen four,” the chief engineer said without turning away.
This wasn't going well, Harry thought. No, I think I'm about to make a sudden, involuntary career change.
"I saw something stuck to the underside of plant two. It looked like a fish. But now—"
An exterior camera showed the plant, but the shot didn't show the area where Harry had seen his sucker fish.
"I-I thought it was a sucker fish. But now I don't know..."
Kodei turned to one of the technicians. "When did that camera go off-line?"
"About five hours ago. We lost image for about ten minutes."
"Damn," Kodei said, and he whipped out a TeleCom unit while Harry wished he could melt into the floor.