“Careful with that,” Graff warned. “I don’t think you want to puncture your suit. Not out here. Though the toxic readings are receding, we’d best be cautious.”

Monk sighed. He would be glad to be out of this monkey suit, back aboard the ship, back to his own suite. En route to the island, Monk had pulled strings to have an entire forensics suite airlifted to the cruise ship. That’s where he’d rather be.

But first they needed lab samples. And plenty of them. Blood, tissue, and bone. From fish, shark, squid, dolphin.

“That’s odd,” Graff mumbled. He stood and glanced up and down the beach.

Monk joined him. “What?”

“One of the most ubiquitous animals on the island is Geocarcoidea natalis.”

“And in English, that would be…?”

Graff stood up and glanced up and down the beach. “I’m referring to the Christmas Island red land crab.”

Monk studied the fouled coastline. He had read up on the island’s flora and fauna. The terrestrial red crab was the star of the island, growing to the size of dinner plates. Their annual migration was one of the wonders of the natural world. Each November, timed to lunar cycles, a hundred million crabs made a mad dash from jungle to sea, dodging seabirds and attempting to prove their right to mate by surviving this gauntlet.

Graff continued, “The crabs are notorious scavengers. You’d think all the carcasses out here would attract them. Like the seabirds. But I don’t see a single one here, alive or dead.”

“Maybe they sensed the toxin and kept to their jungles.”

“If they did, such a factor might hold some clue to the origin of the toxin or the bacteria that produced it. Maybe they’ve encountered such a deadly bloom before. Maybe they’re resistant. Either way, the faster we can isolate the source, all the better.”

“To help the islanders…”

Graff shrugged. “Certainly that. But more importantly, to keep the organism from spreading.” He studied the yellowish sluice, and his voice lowered with worry. “I fear this may be a harbinger of what all oceanic scientists have been dreading.”

Monk glanced to him for elaboration.

“A bacterium that tips the scales, an agent so potent it sterilizes all life in the sea.”

“And that can happen?”

Graff knelt to begin the work. “It may already be happening.”

With that dour pronouncement, Monk spent the next hour collecting samples into vials, pouches, and plastic cups. All the while, the sun rose higher above the cliffs, glaring off the water, cooking him in his bio-suit. He began to fantasize about a cold shower and a frozen drink with an umbrella in it.

The pair slowly worked down the beach. Near the cliff face, Monk noted a cluster of charred incense sticks stuck in the sand. They formed a palisade in front of a small Buddhist shrine, no more than a faceless seated figure, long worn by sea and sand. It rested under a makeshift lean-to splattered with bird droppings. He imagined the incense sticks being lit to ward against the toxic pall, seeking some heavenly intervention.

He continued past, nettled with a sudden chill, wondering if their efforts here would prove any more useful.

The throttling growl of an approaching boat drew his gaze back out to sea. He glanced down the beach. While collecting samples, he and Graff had traveled past a spit of land. Their Zodiac lay beached beyond the rocky point, out of sight.

Monk shaded his eyes. Was their Aussie pilot moving the boat closer to them?

Graff joined him. “It’s too early to go back.”

The spat of rifle fire echoed over the water as a blue-hulled, scarred speedboat shot around the point. Monk spotted seven men in the rear, their heads wrapped in scarves. Sun glinted off assault rifles.

Graff gasped, backing into him. “Pirates…”

Monk shook his head. Oh, that’s just great…

The boat turned toward them and skimmed through the chop.

Monk grabbed Graff by the collar and tugged him off the sunlit beach.

Piracy was on the rise worldwide, but the Indonesian waters had always been rife with such cutthroats. The many islands and small atolls, the thousand secret ports, the thick jungles. All of it created the perfect breeding ground. And after the recent tsunami in the region, the number of local pirates had boomed, taking advantage of the chaos and the thin stretch of policing resources.

It seemed this current tragedy proved no different.

Desperate times bred desperate men.

But who was desperate enough to risk these waters? Monk noted the gunmen were wrapped from head to toe in their own makeshift bio-suits. Had they heard the toxic levels were dropping here and decided to risk an assault?

As Monk retreated from the water’s edge, he glanced in the direction of their beached boat. Among the islands, their Zodiac boat would fetch a pretty penny on the black market, not to mention all their expensive research equipment. Monk also noted the lack of return fire by their Zodiac’s pilot. Caught by surprise, the Australian sailor must have been taken out in the first assault. He also had their only radio. Cut off, they were on their own.

Monk pictured Lisa aboard the cruise ship. The Australian Coast Guard cutter patrolled the waters around the tiny port. At least she should be safe.

Unlike them.

Cliffs cut off any retreat. To either side, empty beaches stretched.

Monk dragged Graff behind a tumbled boulder, the only shelter.

The speedboat aimed toward them. Gunfire chattered, pocking the sand in an arrow toward their hiding place.

Monk pulled them lower.

So much for that lazy day at the beach.

Dr. Lisa Cummings smeared the anesthetic cream across the back of the crying girl. Her mother held her hand. The woman was Malaysian and spoke in soft whispers, her almond eyes pinched in worry. The combination of lido-caine and prilocaine quickly soothed the burn across the child’s back, dissolving the girl’s pained cries into sobs and tears.

“She should be fine,” Lisa said, knowing the mother was employed as a waitress at one of the local hotels and spoke English. “Make sure she takes the antibiotics three times a day.”

The woman bowed her head. “Terima kasih. Thank you.”

Lisa nodded her toward a group of men and women in blue-and-white uniforms, the staff of the Mistress of the Seas.

“One of the crew will find a cabin for you and your daughter.”

Another bow of her head, but Lisa was already turning away, stripping off her gloves with a snap. The dining room on the Lido Deck of the Mistress of the Seas had become the major triage point for the entire ship. Each evacuee from the island was examined and divided into critical and noncritical cases. Lisa, with the least experience in crisis medicine, had been assigned to first aid. To assist her, she was given a nursing student from Sydney, a skinny young man of Indian descent named Jesspal, a volunteer from the WHO medical staff.

They made an odd couple: one blond and pale, the other dark-haired and coffee-skinned. But they operated like an experienced team.

“Jessie, how are we doing on the cephalexin?”

“Should last, Dr. Lisa.” He shook the large bottle of antibiotics with one hand while filling out paperwork with the other. The young man knew how to multitask.

Snugging the green scrub pants higher on her hips, Lisa glanced around her. No one waited for immediate care. The rest of the dining room remained in a state of subdued chaos, punctuated by cries and occasional shouts, but for the moment, their station was an island of calm.

“I think the bulk of the islanders have been evacuated,” Jessie said. “I heard the last two tenders from the docks arrived only half full. I think we’re seeing the dribs and drabs from the smaller outlying villages.”

“Thank God for that.”