“What’s that mean?”

“It’s a line from Hamlet that means that the world is stranger than we can possibly imagine.”

“You don’t believe him, do you?”

“About giant metal snakes? No, but he saw something out there that scared him.”

“I bet it was a surfacing submarine. The South African Navy must have some that patrol these waters.”

“That could be it,” Sloane conceded. “And we have more than enough sites to investigate without looking for sea serpents or submarines. We’ll meet up with Luka this afternoon and figure out how we want to proceed.”

They were back in their rooms at the swanky Swakopmund Hotel just as the sun began to rise. Sloane took a long shower, washing sand and the clinging feel of salt from her skin. As much as she needed to shave her legs, she put off the chore and stood under the pounding spray, letting the hot water work at the knotted muscles of her shoulders and back.

After toweling off she slipped nude between the sheets of her bed. Her dreams were filled with the images of monstrous snakes fighting each other on the open ocean.

5

AS Juan Cabrillo jogged to the boat garage located just aft of the superstructure he listened to damage reports on his comm unit. The bilges were dry, which wasn’t a surprise. The riverbed was silty mud, nothing that could breach the hull. What he was worried about were the keel doors. At the bottom of the Oregon were two large doors that opened outward, creating a moon pool. From here the pair of submersibles the ship carried could be launched directly into the sea. Used mostly for covert insertions and extractions, one of the minisubs had a diving capability of a thousand feet and a manipulator arm, while the smaller minisub, a Discovery 1000, was limited to shallower water.

To his immense relief, a tech on duty at the moon pool reported the two doors hadn’t been damaged and the subs were safely stowed in their cradles.

Juan reached the boat garage at the ship’s waterline. The large space was lit by red battle lamps, giving it a ruddy cast, and it smelled of salt water and gasoline. The large door that opened along the Oregon’s flank was tightly sealed as crewmen prepared a black Zodiac inflatable. The big outboard on its transom could push the craft well past forty knots, though it also had a small electric motor for silent operations. The garage also housed a deep-hulled SEAL assault boat capable of even greater speed and with the capacity to carry ten armed men.

Eddie and Linc reported in a moment later. It had been Eddie Seng who’d played the part of helmsmen when Linc was acting as captain. The two couldn’t have been more physically different. Linc’s body bulged with muscles hewn from hours of pumping iron in the ship’s weight room while Eddie was rapier lean, his physique the result of a lifetime of martial arts training.