Gamay yelled and pointed at the rotund silhouette of a small blimp floating above their heads. There was a crack of twigs from just under their feet. The Chulos were seconds away. Paul detached himself from the lifting line and walked with some difficulty across the spongy mesh until he reached a mooring rope. He gripped the line and used his weight to pull the blimp down to where Gamay could clamber into the seat hanging under the gas bag. With her weight holding the blimp down, he climbed in next to her.

“Do you know how to operate one of these things?” Gamay said.

“Can't be too hard. Think of it as a boat. First thing you do is cast off.”

Gamay had sailed the Great Lakes as a child, so the comparison was reassuring even if she didn't believe it. They quickly untied the other mooring lines. The blimp hesitated, then made up its mind and rose slowly above the trees. They looked down and saw shadows leaping to grab the dangling lines, but the blimp was safely out of reach.

They rose high above the fog-filled valleys that stretched off in every direction and began to drift like a milkweed seed, wondering if they had simply exchanged one set of dangers for an other.

NUMA 2 - Blue Gold

CHAPTER 11

“Senor? Senor?”

Austin's eyes blinked open to see a white stubble of whiskers covering leathery cheeks and a gap-toothed mouth stretched wide in a jack-o'-lantern grin. It was the face of the Mexican fisherman he and Joe had met on the cliffs the day before. Austin lay on his back in an open wooden boat, his head cushioned by a coil of rope. He was still in his wet suit, but his scuba gear was gone. He pushed himself upright with his hands, a task of no small difficulty because his joints were sore and he was sprawled on a slimy pile of fish.

A fisherman who strongly resembled the first man, right down to the cleft in his dental work, sat at the other end of the boat keeping watch over Zavala. Joe's hair, normally so neatly combed, sprouted in a hundred different directions, and his shorts and T-shirt were dripping wet. He looked dazed but awake.

“You okay?” Austin called out.

A fish flopped onto Zavala's lap. He carefully picked up the creature by the tail and tossed it with the others. “No broken bones. Now I know what it's like to be shot out of a cannon. How about you?”

“A few aches and pains.” Austin rubbed the throbbing muscles of his shoulder, then went to work on his legs. “I feel like I've gone through a car wash and a telephone keeps ringing in my ear.”

“Your voice sounds like it's still coming over an underwater communicator. Do you know what happened? I was coming to get you in the Brogan when all hell broke loose.”

“There was an underwater explosion.” Austin glanced at the mirror-flat sea. The boat lay off the cove entrance. The Sea Robin was nowhere in sight. Austin couldn't figure it. Contos and his crew would have heard the blast. Why hadn't they come out to investigate?