Zero Hour

by Clive Cussler

  “I’ll explain on the road,” Kurt said, starting the engine. “We’re burning daylight.”

  They drove off the airport grounds and were soon rumbling west, out of Alice Springs and into the desert.

  As they drove, Joe changed his clothes, and Kurt explained the situation, starting with the events in Sydney and his odd meeting with Hayley Anderson and Cecil Bradshaw of the ASIO.

  “The courier had red dust on him. It was packed into the mesh of his clothing. Bradshaw called it a palaeosol. It’s very old and infertile and commonly found here in the outback. Half the reason this place is so barren. The dead guy also had a mix of toxic metals on his skin. The kind usually found in mining operations.”

  “Again pointing in this direction,” Joe said.

  “Exactly,” Kurt said. “The problem was the decompression sickness. I’m certain the guy had the bends, but most of the lakes out here are transient. Even the year-round ones are shallow.”

  He motioned to the surroundings. There was nothing but desert and dust in every direction, right out to the horizon.

  “And yet, you’ve found a place out here where the water is both deep and poisonous.”

  Kurt nodded. “Ever hear of the Berkeley Pit?”

  Joe shook his head.

  “It’s an open-pit copper mine in Montana. It flooded when the miners went too deep and water began seeping in from aquifers in the surrounding rock. Took years to fill up, but at last check the water was nine hundred feet deep and rising. The minerals give the water an odd color, reddish orange. It’s so toxic that a flock of geese landed there a few years ago and never took off again, promptly dying from exposure to the poisons.”

  “Interesting,” Joe said. “But we’re not in Montana anymore, Toto.”

  “No, we’re not, Dorothy. But as it turns out, here in Oz the Aussies have a few open-pit mines of their own. The outback is full of them. And some of them appear to be filled with water.”

  Joe nodded, he seemed impressed. “I’ll buy that,” he said. “Are they deep enough to cause the bends?”

  “Some are deeper than the Berkeley Pit.”

  “Maybe you’re onto something,” Joe said. “But even if you are, why on earth would someone be diving in a poisoned lake?”

  “Not sure,” Kurt said. “But Bradshaw told me these guys were a threat to Australian national security. And a flooded, toxic mine like this has two attributes that might make it interesting to such conspirators.”

  “And those are?”

  “For one thing,” Kurt said, “people stay away from toxic lakes that may or may not leak poisonous gas. And for another, they’re hard to see through.”

  “You think they’re hiding something in the lake,” Joe said.

  “Hiding it very effectively from a world filled with satellites.”

  Joe nodded. “Technically, it’s a world surrounded by satellites. But I get your drift.”

  Kurt almost laughed. “Thanks for that dose of editorial genius. I’m sure it’ll come in handy when the bullets start flying.”

  After two hours on an empty highway, they were a hundred miles from Alice Springs and cruising a secondary dirt road. They hadn’t seen another soul for the last ninety minutes.

  Kurt glanced in the mirror. A thick cloud of dust trailed out behind them, enough that they might have been followed from space. But if someone was tailing them, their engine would have choked out long ago.

  He slowed the truck. They’d come to a gap in the barbwire fence that ran along the side of the road. An even more primitive trail led through it and off toward a low rise.

  “This should be it.”

  Turning the wheel to its stops, Kurt maneuvered the big truck through the opening.

  “Just so I’m clear,” Joe said, “we have no idea what’s going on. No idea what we’re getting ourselves into. But we’re doing all this because some snotty bureaucrat didn’t like your theory.”

  Kurt nodded. “Yep.”

  “You have issues, amigo. Starting with a pathological need to prove yourself right.”

  “The least of my flaws,” Kurt insisted as they neared the top of the ridge, “but it’s not that they didn’t believe me. They didn’t even take me seriously.”

  The big flatbed crested the ridgeline. Ahead of them was a massive depression filled with crimson water. It had once been known as the Tasman Mine, but a thousand feet down the miners had cracked into a pressurized section of the water table. Just like the Berkeley Pit in Montana, the Tasman Mine had slowly filled with poisoned water. By now, it had risen to within a hundred feet of the rim.

  Kurt eased the truck onto a sloping ramp that snaked its way around the walls of the pit and down toward the water’s edge. To his surprise, a group of vehicles were already parked there. Four dust-covered SUVs and a pair of Jeep Wranglers. They appeared to be new builds. The tinted windows and the matching colors just screamed government motor pool.

  “Looks like they took you more seriously than you thought,” Joe said.

  Kurt put his foot on the brake, slowing the truck until it lurched to a stop. There was something odd about the scene. It took a moment to notice.

  “Where are they?” Kurt asked.

  Joe shook his head.

  There were six vehicles parked at strange angles, two of them with open doors, a third had its tailgate up. There were piles of equipment strewn about on the poisoned beach as if some type of activity were in the works. But there was not a single human being anywhere in sight.

  Kurt scanned the perimeter of the lake and studied the water. He saw no one.

  “Maybe they were abducted by aliens,” Joe said, glancing up at the sky.

  Kurt cut his eyes at Joe.

  “I’m not kidding,” Joe said. “I’ve been reading up on UFOs. Australia is a hotbed of sightings. And this is exactly the kind of place they love to frequent.”

  “And me without my tinfoil hat,” Kurt said.

  He glanced down at the arrangement of parked cars, thinking about the dead geese found near the Berkeley Pit. He wondered if some kind of poison gas had overcome the occupants.

  He opened a cargo bin that sat between the two seats. A pair of compact oxygen tanks, each the size of a large thermos, sat upright in it. Two masks and an air sampler, designed to check for toxic levels of one hundred and seventy different airborne poisons, sat beside them.

  “The Australian EPA lists this place as a danger,” Kurt said, “but only to the water table. The air is supposed to be clean. I figured we’d err on the side of caution.”

  Kurt pulled out the sampler and switched it on as Joe checked the tanks for pressure.

  Kurt cracked the window just enough to poke the nozzle through. After thirty seconds a green light flashed. “Air quality is okay. Better than Los Angeles in the summertime.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt to keep checking,” Joe suggested.

  Kurt nodded and took his foot off the brake.

  The big truck began to coast down the long ramp, rolling slowly. When it reached the flat section by the parked cars, Kurt pulled in beside them and stopped.

  A second green report from the air sampler gave Kurt some confidence.

  He opened the door. It was deathly silent. There was no wind. No birds. No insects. Not a blade of grass or even a sprout of the hardiest weed grew on the poisoned shore.

  “Desolate,” Joe whispered.

  “I feel like we’re on the moon,” Kurt said, clipping the air sensor to his belt and grabbing one of the small oxygen tanks before stepping out of the truck.

  As Joe climbed out the passenger door, Kurt eased over to the closest SUV. The tailgate was up. Several carbines stood untouched in a rifle rack while a pile of windbreakers that read ASIO in big block letters lay folded neatly in a box.

  “Looks like they were planni
ng a raid,” he whispered.

  “A batch of test tubes over here,” Joe said, calling from beside one of the Jeeps. “Some of them are full of water. I’d say they were taking samples. The rest of this is sonar equipment. Maybe they went into the lake?”

  Kurt looked forward. The poisoned lake sat undisturbed, reflecting the sky like a pane of dark glass. Kurt wondered if the bodies of the ASIO team were in there somewhere.

  “They wouldn’t all go in,” he said. “Not by choice anyway.”

  A fly buzzed past Kurt’s ear. The first sign of life he’d encountered since entering the pit. It zipped by him in one direction and then flew off into the distance again. A trickle of sweat ran down Kurt’s temple.

  He glanced up toward the rim. Nothing there, nothing moving, no sign of struggle in front of them. Something was very wrong.

  He pulled a rifle from the rack and slid a clip into place, racking the slide as quietly as he could.

  Joe arrived beside Kurt. “You think someone bounced them?”

  “If they did, it was the neatest ambush of all time,” Kurt said. “You see any bullet holes? Any blood?”

  “Nope,” Joe said.

  “Maybe you’re onto something with this UFO business. Grab a rifle just in case.”

  As Joe pulled a weapon from the rack, the sound of rocks sliding turned Kurt. He spun just in time to see a trickle of pebbles coming down the side of a dune made of red Australian soil. He crouched and drew a bead with the rifle, but no one came at them.

  Joe crouched beside him. “What do you think?”

  Kurt’s eyes were on the dune. “Cover me.”

  Joe nodded, and Kurt eased to a new spot and then dashed toward the small dune. He scrambled up the side and popped up over the top, ready to blaze away at whatever might be there.

  The tension in his body vanished. Replaced by remorse.

  Down below lay a pile of bodies. Men and women thrown in a heap. They were dressed ruggedly, but they were clean-cut. Their gear and clothing looked almost identical.

  Kurt slid down toward them, tracking a series of marks in the sand made by someone who’d tried, and failed, to climb out. He arrived beside a burly man with a buzz cut who looked all too familiar.

  “Bradshaw,” Kurt shouted, crouching beside him and rolling him faceup.

  As Kurt checked for a pulse, a slight groan of pain escaped Bradshaw’s lips.

  “Joe, get over here!”

  Joe came over the top of the dune.

  “Check the others.”

  As Joe slid down, Kurt ripped a piece of fabric from Bradshaw’s shirt and tied a tourniquet around his leg where the worst wound seemed to be. He spotted two other wounds, but they looked superficial.

  With the tourniquet cinched up, Kurt pulled out his canteen and splashed some water on the ASIO chief’s face.

  “Bradshaw can you hear me? What happened?”

  Bradshaw moved his lips, mumbling something incoherently.

  Kurt took his small oxygen bottle and placed the mask over Bradshaw’s face. As the O2 began to flow, Bradshaw became more animated. He pawed at the mask. Kurt held it in place until Bradshaw’s eyes began to focus.

  “What happened?” Kurt asked, pulling the mask away.

  “They went down,” Bradshaw replied.

  “Who went down?” Kurt asked.

  No response.

  “Bradshaw, can you hear me?”

  Joe returned. “The rest of them are dead. Gunshots. Close range. I’d say they were thrown on the ground and machine-gunned.”

  “Damn,” Kurt said.

  Joe’s eyes were searching the sloping walls that rose up like cliffs around them. “I don’t like this, amigo. We’re sitting ducks in a shooting gallery.”

  “We’d be long dead if someone was watching,” Kurt replied. He kept the oxygen mask on Bradshaw’s face and turned the valve to full. Bradshaw’s eyes opened a fraction more. Finally, he seemed to become more coherent.

  Kurt pulled the mask away once more.

  “Austin?” Bradshaw muttered in disbelief. “What are you . . . What are you doing here?”

  “Playing a hunch,” Kurt said. “What happened?”

  “I . . . don’t . . . know,” Bradshaw said. “Somebody waylaid us. Next thing I knew, I was on the ground, listening to gunfire.”

  Bradshaw coughed like a man choking on dust, and Kurt put the mask back against his face. Bradshaw pushed it away. “Must have been a setup,” he said. “You were right. There has to be a leak.”

  “Did you see who it was?” Kurt asked. “Where they came from?”

  “No,” Bradshaw managed. He seemed about to fade out.

  “We have to get you out of here,” Kurt said, trying to lift the big man. “Joe, help me.”

  Joe ducked under one of Bradshaw’s arms while Kurt ducked under the other.

  “Hayley . . .” Bradshaw mumbled.

  Kurt looked around. He didn’t see her among the dead. “Was she with you?”

  Bradshaw nodded. “She went down.” He pointed toward the lake. “She went down with the other diver.”

  “What’s down there?”

  “A structure of some kind. We thought it might be the device. But it’s huge. More like . . . some kind of lab. She went down to look because only she would know. But they hit us, and then . . .”

  “And then what?”

  The chief wavered but recovered, his face displaying great pain.

  “And then they went down after her,” he said. “They’re down there now. All of them.”

  Kurt and Joe dragged Bradshaw to a spot by one of the SUVs. He had three bullet wounds. He’d lost a lot of blood. Kurt doubted he would survive for long.

  He grabbed a first-aid kit and tossed it to Joe.

  “Do what you can for him,” he said. “And find a way to call for help. If you can’t reach anyone, get him out of here.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Kurt was climbing onto the back of the flatbed, yanking the tarp off the one-man submersibles. “I’m going in.”

  “But you don’t know what’s down there.”

  “A laboratory and a device,” Kurt said, repeating Bradshaw’s cryptic explanation as he dropped from the side of the flatbed and landed back down on the beach. “And a young woman who’s in way over her head.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Joe asked. “Just swim around looking for this device?”

  Kurt jumped back into the cab of the boxy truck and turned the key. “No,” he said. “I’m going to drive.”

  The big diesel rumbled to life. Kurt jammed the truck into gear and began to roll forward. He turned slightly to the left, toward the deadly lake, and pressed down harder on the throttle.

  Had anyone but Joe Zavala been watching him, Kurt might have explained in greater detail what was about to happen, but Joe knew vehicles like no one else. He’d eyed the truck strangely at the airport and most likely put two and two together shortly thereafter. If he hadn’t figured it out already, he’d understand any moment now.

  The rig accelerated across the slope, its heavy tires carving deep tracks in the soft red sand as Kurt drove it straight into the water. It quickly came up off the wheels and began coasting forward.

  As soon as he was afloat, Kurt grabbed a stainless steel lever on the dashboard and forced it upward and over into a notch, where it locked. The truck’s big wheels rose up, pulling free of the water, while a propeller attached to the drive shaft extended from the rear.

  Kurt glanced at a monitoring board. All the lights were green. That was good news. It meant the prop was connected to the power train and there were no detectable leaks.

  Kurt stepped on the gas. The prop churned the red water behind him, and the amphibious craft began to plow forward, completing its convers
ion from slow-moving truck to an even slower-moving boat. It drove like a nose-heavy barge, but fortunately Kurt didn’t have far to go.

  Flipping another set of switches, Kurt activated a sonar system he’d brought along. A weighted spring kicked the small towed array off the back of the truck. It began to sink, spooling out a cable behind it and bouncing mid-frequency sound waves off the bottom of the lake. A pattern soon appeared on the display screen.

  As Kurt moved away from the sloping edge of the pit, the bottom dropped away sharply. The pit was a mile across at the very top but shaped like a giant elongated V, with a wide, flat bottom.

  “Six-forty and dropping,” he said to himself as the numbers continued to change. “Let’s see how deep you are.”

  The top of the rim was over a thousand feet from the original bottom, but the water level was at least a hundred feet below the rim, and most likely years of erosion had begun to fill in the pit. He noticed a leveling at eight hundred and fifty. It was hard to fathom being in the middle of the desert and floating on a lake so deep that a World War Two submarine would be crushed if it went more than halfway down, but there he was.

  At roughly the center of the lake, the sonar picked up a dome-shaped object. It appeared something like a sleek water tower, rising above the cornfields of the Midwest, bulbous at the top, with a group of pipes descending from the bottom in a tight bunch. As far as Kurt could tell, they went right down into the center of the lake bed.

  He wondered what he was looking at. What was its purpose?

  Bradshaw had used the term device, which conjured up images of a nuclear warhead of some kind. Unfortunately, in today’s day and age, one didn’t need to build a giant tower with a sixty-foot dome on top to unleash atomic fury.

  The dome passed out of sight and a new target came into view. This one didn’t have the curving, artistic lines of the dome. It looked more like a pile of cylindrical pods and shipping containers stacked on top of one another. From top to bottom, it was the height of a seven-story building. It appeared to be anchored to the steeper wall of the lake and connected to the dome by gantries and thick cables. An intermittent response on the sonar suggested guide wires anchoring it to the wall.