Zero Hour

by Clive Cussler

  Shortly after finishing, she jabbed him in the arm with a shot.

  “Oww!”

  “Tetanus and antibiotics,” she said.

  “Sure,” Joe said, rubbing his bicep. “But aren’t you supposed to warn me or tell me that that’s not going to hurt first?”

  “Why lie?” she asked. “Besides, I thought you Yanks were tough.”

  “It’s been a rough day,” he admitted. “Speaking of Yanks, have you treated any other Americans tonight? Maybe a guy six feet tall with silver hair.”

  “Sorry,” she said, packing up her things, “you’re the first.”

  After the nurse left, Joe was taken to a different section of the base. It seemed like basic housing or perhaps quarters for the NCOs.

  His escort/guard opened the door to reveal a room with two bunks, a utilitarian desk placed between them, and cinder-block walls. It reminded Joe of a dorm room, right down to the roommate already lying on one of the beds with his feet up.

  Joe stepped inside, the door was locked behind him, and Kurt Austin sat up.

  “Damn, I’m glad to see you,” Joe said. “They had me thinking you’d become part of the junk pile at the bottom of that mine.”

  Kurt stood and gave Joe a bear hug. “I had a similar fear about you. Didn’t expect to surface and find Bradshaw, sunning himself on the beach unattended. I was afraid those thugs got the drop on you.”

  “I figured he wasn’t up to four-wheeling through the desert,” Joe replied.

  Kurt looked at him oddly. “I’m guessing by the stitches that your chase ended with some extracurricular activities?”

  “No,” Joe said, “I didn’t catch them. I ended up in a ditch somehow. But considering how well I was doing up until that point, I’m thinking about entering the Baja 1000 next year.”

  “You don’t win the Baja by crashing, Joe. You know that, right?”

  “I didn’t crash, amigo, I was . . .” Joe paused. “Okay, I guess I did crash, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my fault.”

  The vagueness of his own recollection was puzzling to Joe. He tried hard to remember. “One second, I was going head-on with them . . . there was a flash, like the glare of sunlight off a pane of glass, and then . . . I must have swerved. Though, I honestly can’t remember.”

  “You sound like Bradshaw,” Kurt noted.

  “How is he, by the way?”

  “Alive, thanks to you. They had him in surgery.”

  Joe was glad to hear that. “Did you find your scientist down there?”

  “Her and another diver from the ASIO. They were basically strapped to a bomb. We escaped, but the station imploded.”

  “Are they all right?”

  “As far as I know,” Kurt said. “I lost track of them for a moment when the station blew. When I found them, both were unconscious. But thanks to the gripper claws you put on the front of the speeder, I was able to grab them and bring them slowly to the surface.”

  Joe smiled with pride. “So the speeder performed like a champ. I knew it would.”

  “You may have a future in this submarine business,” Kurt said. “That is, if you can give up your dreams of middle management and off-road racing.”

  Joe laughed and took a seat at the desk between the two bunks. He rapped his knuckles against the cinder-block wall. “So are we in prison or protective custody?”

  “No idea,” Kurt replied. “Nor do I have any idea what I’ve gotten us into. But if they ever let me talk to someone, I’m damned well determined to find out.”

  “Or,” Joe said, “just go with me on this—we could pretend it was all a big misunderstanding and be about our business.”

  The furrow in Kurt’s brow showed his feelings on that idea. “What fun would that be?”

  Joe knew Kurt so well, he could have predicted that answer. Once his friend sunk his teeth into a mystery, there was no turning back, not until he found what he was looking for.

  Unfortunately, no answers would come for the next few hours. In fact, no one bothered them until well past midnight, when the door was unlatched and a pair of Australian military personnel came in. MPs, or the Aussie equivalent, dressed in fatigues. One male, one female.

  “Mr. Austin?” the male soldier said. “Please come with me.”

  Kurt stood wearily. Joe did the same.

  “Not you, Mr. Zavala,” the female guard said. “You stay here.”

  Joe feigned great indignation. “What? Nobody wants to interrogate me? I might know a thing or two.”

  Kurt moved to the door. “I’m sure they’ll bring you in when I’m done. Don’t wait up.”

  The male guard allowed Kurt to pass by and then escorted him down the hall.

  Joe lost sight of him and leaned stoically against the wall. To his surprise, the female guard remained behind even as the door was shut.

  Joe studied her. She was pretty, despite the lack of makeup and the baggy uniform. It occurred to Joe that she might be there to conduct a surreptitious interrogation. He figured he’d make it easy on her and attempt to find out what she might know in the process.

  “Here to keep an eye on me?” he asked.

  No reply.

  “You know,” he said more smoothly, “there’s something I love about a woman in uniform.”

  Still nothing. If she was supposed to charm him, the statue routine was not going over with high marks.

  “Not a people person, are you?” Joe said. “So how do you feel about . . . UFOs?”

  She still didn’t speak, but this time the corners of her mouth curled into a slight but apparently irrepressible smile. Joe smiled back. Now he was getting somewhere.

  • • •

  WHILE JOE ATTEMPTED to charm his guard, Kurt was led on a hike across what seemed like half the military base. They passed the infirmary and continued on until they reached a long hallway. Additional guards or MPs stood at the far end.

  “Third door on your right,” Kurt’s escort said.

  The corridor was gloomy. The paint on the walls peeling. Equipment covered by dusty tarps lay stacked against the wall, as the fluorescent lights flickered. It looked like the kind of place where they might keep the electroshock therapy equipment.

  “Aren’t you going with me?” Kurt asked.

  The guard stood with his hands behind his back. He said nothing.

  “Guess not.”

  Kurt took a deep breath and moved slowly down the hall until he reached the third door. He twisted the handle and stepped into a moderately lit room with all the equipment of an ICU. Lying in a bed on the right—with an oxygen line attached to his nose and an IV drip hooked up to his arm—was Cecil Bradshaw. He did not look well.

  Kurt closed the door.

  Bradshaw turned his head. His eyes were dark, sunken, and half closed.

  “Glad to see you,” Kurt said. “Thought I was about to get hooked up to the power grid for a moment.”

  Bradshaw’s eyes crinkled a bit, the closest he could come to a smile. He stretched for the switch that controlled the hospital bed, but he couldn’t reach it.

  “Prop me up, will ya?”

  Kurt found the button that raised the back of the bed and pressed it, holding it down until Bradshaw was almost in a sitting position.

  An alarm began to flash on the monitor for a second, indicating Bradshaw’s pulse had dropped into the fifties and that his pressure was a little low.

  “That’s what happens when you lose half your blood,” Bradshaw said. “They’ve been pumping it back in all night.”

  “Surprised you had any left to begin with,” Kurt said.

  “I’m a heartless bastard,” Bradshaw insisted. “We don’t require much.”

  “Lucky for you.”

  “I made them take me off the painkillers,” the ASIO chief went on to explain, �
��so I could talk to you clearly. First, I want to thank you for being the type of idiot who doesn’t know when to quit. I reckon that Hayley, Wiggins, and I all owe you our lives.”

  Kurt appreciated the sentiment. “There’s a rugby match I’ve been wanting to see. Get me good seats, and we’ll call it even.”

  Bradshaw laughed a little, but it made him cough. “The other night, after you intervened at the Opera House, I almost asked you to help out. I had a feeling about you. But once you mentioned the decompression sickness, I was able to put the puzzle together, so I let it go. Good thing I did or you’d have been right alongside us when we got hit. And then we’d all be dead.”

  “A bit of luck,” Kurt noted.

  “Seems so,” Bradshaw agreed. “I hope there’s more where that came from. I don’t have enough wind to beat around the bush, so I’ll just say it straight. I want you to take over the investigation.”

  Kurt’s eyes narrowed.

  “You guessed right,” Bradshaw explained, “I have a leak in my department. I don’t know how it’s possible, but it’s the only logical explanation. Despite my efforts, someone seems to know what we’re doing almost before we do. They’re batting a perfect record at beating us to the punch.”

  “Is that why we’re here on the air base instead of in a civilian hospital?”

  “That’s exactly the reason,” Bradshaw said. “My men are being told I’m still in surgery, and then they’ll hear that I haven’t regained consciousness. Aside from Wiggins and Hayley—who are temporarily being held in solitary like you and Zavala—no one is being informed of your presence or interference.”

  “These things have a way of leaking out,” Kurt noted, “especially if we start poking around asking questions. Which, considering that we’re Americans, might be a little tricky down here on Australian soil.”

  “It would be tricky,” Bradshaw agreed, “if you were staying on Australian soil.”

  Kurt leaned against a desk. “What are you saying?”

  “We’re dealing with terrorists here,” Bradshaw replied. “We believe the next phase of their plan will be launched from somewhere offshore.”

  “Based on what?”

  “Our informant,” Bradshaw said. “We’ve been told the project in the outback has been superseded by a larger, more dangerous plan. Evidence bears that out. Considering the effort it must have taken to build and hide that lab—or whatever you might call it—it’s completely irrational to blow it up unless you have something else to fall back on.”

  Kurt nodded. It made sense to him.

  “In addition to that,” Bradshaw added, “the shipment of mining equipment we intercepted was some of the latest self-contained, oceangoing gear available. It’s designed for use in the most hazardous environments and the worst weather. We plucked it off a freighter that left Perth and was officially bound for Cape Town, but the ship’s track was southbound, toward Antarctic waters, not west to South Africa.”

  “There’s no accounting for bad navigation these days,” Kurt joked. “Where do you think they were headed?”

  “We think Thero is hiding on the Antarctic shelf.”

  “Thero?”

  “The leader of this mess.”

  Kurt pulled up a chair, swung it around, and sat down with his arms resting on the back, leaning toward Bradshaw. He considered what the man was asking. His own curiosity spurred him on, but there were bigger issues.

  “NUMA is not exactly a law enforcement agency. Maybe you want to contact Interpol.”

  “And wait six months for the paperwork to clear?”

  Bradshaw shook his head in answer to his own question. “Besides,” he added, “this is a science problem as much as it is a terrorist threat. From what I’ve heard, you NUMA guys seem to specialize in that combination. And if they’re using the ocean as cover . . . well, that’s right up your alley, isn’t it?”

  Kurt nodded. “It is.”

  “Then let me pass the baton.”

  “It’s not my call,” Kurt explained. “All this . . . our involvement . . . It was just me being an idiot, like you said. But if we’re going to involve NUMA officially, I have to run it up the flagpole. I can’t promise you anything. But from what you’ve told me, I think our Director will see it your way.”

  “Pitt?” Bradshaw said. “Yeah, I’ve heard of him. Sounds like a good man.”

  “The best,” Kurt said. “But before I go to him, I have to know exactly what we’re dealing with. What are these people up to? Who is this guy Thero and what does he want?”

  Bradshaw didn’t hesitate. He’d brought Kurt here to talk and he was ready. “Have you ever heard of zero-point energy?”

  Truth was, Kurt hadn’t. At least not until he’d done the Internet search on Hayley Anderson.

  “I saw the term on a scientific paper,” he admitted. “Can’t say I read more than a paragraph or two, but it sounded like some type of power source.”

  “I won’t pretend to understand the physics,” Bradshaw said, “but the concept involves drawing energy from background fields that are supposedly all around us. As the theory goes, tapping into these fields would provide an unlimited and inexhaustible source of energy for the whole world, one that would cost almost nothing to use and distribute.”

  “Sounds like a pipe dream,” Kurt said.

  “Maybe it is,” Bradshaw said. “Who knows? But this group we’re dealing with believes in it. They claim they’ve unlocked its secret.”

  Bully for them, Kurt thought. “How does that turn into what we saw today? If free energy is all about peace, love, and kilowatts, why are people getting shot and blown up?”

  Bradshaw coughed and winced in pain. “I’ll give you a file with everything we think we know, but here’s the short version. As I told you, it starts with a guy named Thero, Maxmillian Thero. He’s an American, actually. A nuclear engineer by trade and a self-taught physicist. He spent eight years in your navy, working on submarines and aircraft carriers. He was discharged in 1978 and began work at Three Mile Island a few months before the meltdown in 1979.”

  “Great timing,” Kurt noted.

  “It was for him, apparently. Feeling like the world had narrowly avoided an epic disaster, he began to rethink his career choice. He bounced around a lot and eventually launched a crusade to find an alternate system of generating power. At some point, he hit on the idea of zero-point energy. As near as we can tell, he spent years trying to get funding and prove the concept was workable. Unfortunately, he was never taken seriously.

  “After a while, he came to believe there was a sinister reason for this, that his efforts were being thwarted by big shots in the nuclear industry, the oil companies, and other power brokers in your Energy Department. He claimed in an interview that your government had tapped his phone lines and bugged his home and his laboratory. An IRS investigation into his funding only added fuel to the fire.”

  “Sounds like a persecution complex.”

  “A CIA profile your government shared with us concluded exactly that. He’s a paranoid bugger. That seems to be what drives him. Shortly after Y2K, he fled the U.S. and came to Australia.”

  “Why Australia?” Kurt asked. “From what I recall, you guys don’t even use nuclear power.”

  “We don’t,” Bradshaw said. “And that’s exactly why he came here. He figured that would level the playing field. That, along with the fact that Australia and New Zealand were pushing back against visits by American nuclear warships. From what I understand, he seemed to think my government would embrace him.”

  “Did they?”

  “At first,” Bradshaw said. “He received the first real grant he’d ever seen and found work as a professor at the University of Sydney, while trying to perfect his theory. By ’05 he claimed he was only a year away from a workable system. But before he could run his big test, my governmen
t got involved and shut him down.”

  “Why?”

  “I have no answer to that,” Bradshaw said, “but there were people who thought his experiments were dangerous.”

  That really wasn’t a surprise. Paranoid nuclear scientists doing unregulated trials in the dark tended to make people nervous.

  “How does Hayley fit into all this?”

  “She’s a physicist. She was a grad student when Thero arrived. She worked with him the entire time he was here. Hayley, along with Thero’s son, George, and his daughter, Tessa, all of whom were physicists, formed a tight little triangle looking up to Thero.”

  “All part of the crusade,” Kurt guessed.

  “True believers.”

  “So you guys shut him down eight years ago,” Kurt noted. “Somehow, I’m guessing that’s not the end of his story.”

  “It’s not. Thero and his family were ordered to leave the country or be deported. They might have gone back to the U.S., but a Japanese venture capitalist named Tokada gave him a lifeline. As near as we can tell, Tokada promised that Japan, unlike your country or mine, would support his work.”

  “Makes sense,” Kurt said. “Japan has always been dependent on imported energy.”

  “Massively dependent,” Bradshaw said. “They import ninety-eight percent of their oil and ninety percent of their coal. Their nuclear industry is pretty large, but because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear power has always been a sore spot, even before the tsunami wiped out those reactors on the coast.”

  Kurt could see the dominoes lining up. “So if Thero could tap into this zero-point energy, Japan could do away with all of that, and the whole country would hail him as a hero and probably make him a billionaire overnight.”

  Bradshaw nodded again. “Thero moved there in ’06, setting up shop in a secret laboratory on a small island in the north known as Yagishiri. His son and daughter went with him. Hayley stayed behind.”

  “Why?”

  Bradshaw tried to make himself more comfortable, pulling at a pillow. “Well, for one thing, she’d begun to think they were headed down a dangerous path. Beyond that, she suffers from a debilitating fear of travel. She doesn’t fly, doesn’t even own a car. She mostly walks or takes the train. Until yesterday, she hadn’t been out of Sydney for nine years.”