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It was a gorgeous night The stars glittered like diaainst the black velvet of the tropical sky, and the sea was on fire, gloith silvery-green phosphorescence There was little current and no wind, and he covered the distance in good tiainst the reef, he squinted against the darkness and saw the faint white line of breaking waves
He checked the GPS again, and followed the course it suggested to take him to the break in the reef But he ran into trouble as he approached the narrow opening in the coral The water surged in and out of the break to create a barrier of turbulence that tossed the lightweight boat around like a rubber duck in a bathtub
Paddling vigorously, Austin brought the bow around and charged into the opening, but again failed to muster the power necessary to overcome the crosscurrents He made another try This time, he yelled, “Once more unto the breach,” but the inspired words of Shakespeare’s Henry V were no ot for his trouble was a mouthful of seawater
After his failed atte with him, and he paddled away from the reef to reconnoiter As the inflatable rocked in the waves, he caught his breath Then he extracted a lightweight, electric-powered outboard motor and battery from the pack, clamped the motor to the platform, and punched IGNITION Except for a soft huoosed the throttle and ai up around the opening in the reef
The inflatable bounced, fishtailed, and yawed For a second, Austin gritted his teeth, thinking he was going to be thrown sideways into the jagged coral Then the outboard’s propeller blades caught water, and the inflatable squeezed through the opening and glided into the peaceful lagoon
Austin quickly killed theto indicate he had been detected No blinding searchlights, no hail of bullets, to herald his arrival
Austin took the lack of a warear out of the pack, buckling on his lightweight air tank and buoyancy compensator He checked his GPS and saw that the inflatable had been thrown slightly off course after passing through the reef
He began to paddle, until the little black triangle on the GPS’s screen showed he was back on course A fewwhere the satellite showed the dark streak in the lagoon The sube seeoon before it vanished ht The inexplicable disappearance of the Typhoon suggested that there was ical reason to assuoon’s waters were not as shallow as they looked from space, but he look no chances, and had borrowed a tank containing a Trimix mixture from the NUMA research vessel in the event that he had to make a deeper dive than expected
Austin pulled on his face ulator mouthpiece, hoisted hiht pontoon, then rolled off into the lagoon
Water seeped between the neoprene and his skin and gave hi body temperature He held on to the side of the inflatable for a few seconds, then he pushed himself away, jackknifed as he dove under the surface, and descended about twenty feet
As Austin neared the floor of the lagoon, he reached out with his gloved right hand Instead of touching sand, his fingers pushed against a soft, yielding surface His coral-blue eyes narrowed behind the lens of the ht was sand overgroith ular pattern of colors
Austin slid his knife froh, pressed the point into the fabric, and pushed With only slight pressure, the blade penetrated the net He sawed a cut in the net several inches long, withdrew the blade, returned it to its sheath, and glided over the fake ocean botton until he came to where he had seen the streak in the satellite picture
He saw from a few inches away that the streak was in fact a partiallylooked as if it had been done hastily
Austin unhooked a dive light from his vest
Holding the light straight out in front of hiht his body straight up, paddling with his fins as if he were on a bicycle, and spun around slowly About h his three-sixty pivot, he halted and stared onder