Zero Hour

by Clive Cussler

  “It sounds like it could be connected,” Kurt said. “Might help us narrow down the search zone.”

  Pitt agreed. “What do you need to take your next step, Kurt?”

  “I’ll need a few ships,” Kurt said, “as many as you can spare. We’d like to set up a picket line and listen for anything louder than a peep. And I’ll need some technical help. Paul and Gamay Trout should fit the bill, if you can pull them in. Also, I’m forwarding a list of high-tech equipment that Ms. Anderson has requested. If you can ship it to Perth, that would be great. We’ll arrive there in a couple of days.”

  “A couple of days?” Pitt repeated. “Perth is no more than three hours from Alice Springs by air.”

  “I know,” Kurt said, “but we’re not traveling by air. Joe and I have to escort Ms. Anderson. And she’s deathly afraid of flying. So, apparently, we’ll be traveling by train.”

  Pitt would have preferred to send a jet for them, but it would take several days to get the ships and equipment in place anyway. “Understood,” he said. “Plan on shoving off the minute you arrive at the dock.”

  “We’ll be ready,” Kurt said.

  He signed off, and Dirk Pitt considered the task ahead of them. Pinpointing an experiment in the vast expanse of the Great Southern Ocean would not be an easy task even for a small fleet of high-tech vessels.

  He turned back to Sandecker. “Do these neutrino detectors of yours have a directional-sensing component?”

  “To some extent,” Sandecker admitted, “but not in a pinpoint-accurate kind of way, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  Pitt’s gears were turning. “Any chance we could have them tuned to look for these waves? In case our friends do exactly what Kurt is suggesting but that this sensor Kurt’s scientist friend is building doesn’t pick them up?”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Even if it’s a vague directional vector, three stations receiving a signal means we should be able to cross-reference and triangulate. That’ll help us narrow down the target zone.”

  Sandecker grinned. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  NUMA vessel Gemini

  Indian Ocean, 140 miles due west of Christmas Island

  The NUMA vessel Gemini was a rakishly designed, hundred-and-fifty-foot vessel. In profile, she looked like a bulked-up yacht, thicker and heavier, designed to carry instruments and ROVs and a crew of scientists packed into tiny cabins.

  At the moment, Gemini was moving due west, as the crew tested a new type of sonar designed to penetrate the seafloor.

  With a walkie-talkie in his hand, Paul Trout moved to the very front of the forward deck. He leaned over the railing and gazed downward. Just aft of where the ship’s bow met the water, an eleven-foot triangular flange stuck out from the side of the hull. This protrusion, along with an identical one on the port side, gave the ship’s bow an odd shape, like the head of a stingray, and the crew had nicknamed it the Skate.

  Perhaps it was appropriate. Like her namesake, the Skate was designed to scan the seafloor far below, searching for things hidden beneath eons of piled-up sediment.

  It was expected to be a huge leap forward in the hunt for and development of underwater resources. But first, it had to work, which, so far, had proven hit or miss.

  Paul pressed the talk switch on the radio. “Flange folded down and locked in place. The hookup bars are secured, the alignment indicators are matched up. The Skate is visually in the correct location.”

  “Okay, Paul,” a female voice said over the radio. “We’re still getting an odd signal on the processor.”

  The female voice belonged to Gamay Trout, Paul’s wife. She was in Gemini’s information center, monitoring the data stream from the Skate’s bell-like housing.

  Paul preferred to be out on the deck, partly because the information center was cramped and tight and he was six feet eight inches tall, but also because the idea of signing up for a mission at sea and spending most of it in a darkened room surrounded by computers struck him as the height of absurdity.

  “Do you see any dolphins?” Gamay asked.

  “Dolphins?”

  “During a test run, there were dolphins bow-riding with us, they seemed very interested in the Skate. They kept blasting it with their sonar. It was a similar kind of staccato display.”

  Paul hadn’t heard that one before. He checked both sides of the ship. “No dolphins, no pilot whales.”

  A long pause followed. Paul figured Gamay was running through a diagnostic protocol or something. He took the time to stretch out and marvel at the blue sky, the fresh breeze, and the warm sun.

  After more silence, he decided to risk prodding her. “Everything okay?”

  There was no answer, and Paul imagined the computers crashing and all manner of swearing going on in the control room. For the moment, he was doubly glad not to be down there.

  He turned as a figure appeared outside the Gemini’s bridge and descended the stairs toward the main deck.

  Paul smiled at Gamay as she approached. At five foot ten, she was relatively tall for a woman, but her proportions were such that she looked neither thin nor reedy the way many tall women do. Glamorous when she needed to be. For now, she was dressed like the rest of the crew, in khaki pants and a NUMA polo shirt. Her dark red hair was pulled sleekly back in a ponytail and tucked beneath a NUMA cap that read GEMINI in gold letters. She flashed a smile at him, and her blue eyes sparkled with a mischievous quality.

  “Decide to join me for a stroll?” he said, a New Hampshire accent detectable in his voice.

  “Actually,” she said, “I came to tell you the bad news. We have to pull up stakes and head south.”

  “South? Why? I’m sure you can get the Skate back online.”

  “It’s not the Skate,” she said. “We have new orders.”

  Paul sensed the ship beginning a turn to port. “Not wasting any time.”

  “Dirk wants us to go help Kurt and Joe with what he called a critical project.”

  “Last I heard, Kurt and Joe were on vacation,” Paul reminded her. “Does this project involve bail money or sneaking them out of the country somehow?”

  “You know Dirk,” she said, looping an arm around Paul’s waist. “He’s a man of few words. Said we’d be given more details when we arrived on-station.”

  Now Paul became deeply suspicious. In addition to Gamay’s words, he could feel the Gemini picking up speed.

  “Where exactly are we going?”

  Gamay shook her head. “All I know is, Dirk told me we’d better break out the cold-weather gear.”

  “So that’s why you’re out here,” Paul said.

  “Figured I’d better enjoy the sun while I can.”

  Paul and Gamay often worked closely with Kurt and Joe. And, in most of those cases, once the ride picked up speed, they got more than they’d bargained for. If the pattern held, the next day or two would probably be their last chance to relax for quite a while.

  “How about that stroll?” Paul asked.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Gamay replied.

  Eastern Siberia, 1700 hours

  Mist fell on the grassy steppes of the Kamchatka Plain. The mottled gray sky obscured the mountain peaks and threatened rain.

  “Pull!”

  With that shout, the gates of several cages were opened. The flutter of wings burst forth.

  Three shots rang out. Three birds, fleeing in different directions, fell in rapid succession, feathers exploding outward like dust.

  Standing in the middle of the carnage, Anton Gregorovich pumped another shell into the shotgun’s breach. Three shots, three hits.

  Grinning at his own prowess, he placed the weapon down and glanced at his two assistants, teenage boys who crouched by a circle of cages. “How many left?”

  “Four,” one of the boys s
aid.

  “All of them, this time,” Gregorovich demanded.

  The boys nodded and rigged the cages. Gray-winged birds jumped nervously in the traps.

  Gregorovich stood calmly. He lowered his head and closed his eyes, listening for the sound of flight.

  Six foot two, two hundred and forty-five pounds, Gregorovich wore fatigue pants in an Arctic-camouflage pattern and no shirt at all, despite temperatures barely out of the thirties. His muscular body was no more than one percent fat. He subsisted on a diet of almost pure protein, engineered supplements, and nutrient cocktails developed by the Russian Olympic Team. Standing motionless, he looked like a statue, like some sculptor’s version of the ideal man carved from a block of stone.

  In many ways, he was more fit than any athlete since his regimen included steroids and human growth hormones and other factors banned by the athletic associations of the world.

  It was only fair. In his world, the consequences of failure were not represented by second-place medals or dismissal from an event. If Gregorovich faltered, he died.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” he said quietly.

  Silence for a moment. He could sense the boys creeping into position, moving the cages quietly, unwilling to give anything away. He appreciated that they wanted to test him. He kept his eyes closed, his heart rate steady, and his mind clear. Seconds ticked by, followed by the sudden bang of the cage doors opening.

  Gregorovich snapped his head up and opened his eyes. In an instant, he’d fixed on the birds, once again flying in different directions. He yanked a pair of Makarov pistols from holsters on his hips like those of a gunslinger from the Old American West.

  He spun to the right with a gun in each hand and pulled both triggers. The two pigeons on that side went down simultaneously.

  He twisted to the left, spotted the third target, flying low. He took aim with his right hand and fired twice. The pigeon dropped into the long grass. The fourth was fifty yards off by now.

  Gregorovich fired both guns at it, clipping a wing. The bird fell in a spiral, like a World War Two aircraft that had been shot down. It hit the ground before he could fire again and finish it for certain.

  “Damn it!”

  The boys glanced at him nervously, still crouched as low as they could get. He could see fear in their eyes. Before he could reassure them, a new sound reached out across the tundra: a helicopter coming toward them.

  Gregorovich turned and saw one of the monstrous Mi-24 models, lumbering beneath the overcast sky. A phalanx of missile pods and multibarreled cannon were displayed on pods beneath its stubby wings. Its six-bladed rotor churned overhead in a great and constant whirl.

  The helicopter dropped lower and lower, slowing as it approached and then hovering. Finally, it touched down on the grass fifty yards away. Before the engines even reached idle, a side door had been thrown open and a man in a heavy overcoat had climbed out and begun hiking toward Gregorovich.

  Even from this distance, Gregorovich recognized him: Dmitry Yevchenko, one of Russia’s oil billionaires.

  With the fall of the Soviet Union, Yevchenko had joined the scramble for wealth, transforming a dying Siberian oil field into a Eurasian empire of sorts. Like many of the new billionaires, Yevchenko had been ruthless on his way to the top. But, unlike most, he’d seen the need to change when the writing appeared on the wall.

  His corporation now filled the coffers of Communist Party stalwarts. He hired their friends and family members. He ignored the graft and theft he had to deal with, considering these things another form of taxation and calculating them into his business plan as a separate line item.

  But the past was hard to hide, it did not vanish just because Yevchenko wanted it to. A few months back, a reporter had begun probing for the truth, getting fairly close to some answers, before dying suddenly in a plane crash. An overzealous politician who’d asked for too much met a different fate: drowning in the Black Sea.

  It wasn’t by chance that Yevchenko was called the Siberian Butcher, the bodies of his enemies lay everywhere. But the name itself was a misnomer. Yevchenko had never killed anyone. Gregorovich had always done it for him.

  “Take the horses,” Gregorovich said to the boys. “I’ll meet you back in the village.”

  The boys did as they were ordered, disappearing as Yevchenko approached.

  “Playing with children these days, Gregorovich?”

  Yevchenko had always been portly, now he looked rotund, even beneath the heavy coat. Apparently, he’d been eating well in Moscow.

  “Boys from the village,” Gregorovich replied. “Their mother is appealing to me, and they have nothing better to do.”

  “I see,” Yevchenko said. “And do you?”

  Gregorovich pulled a gray shirt over his head. “What are you bothering me for?”

  “I’ve been at an emergency meeting with members of the party,” Yevchenko explained.

  “Are they trying to take control?”

  “No, nothing like that. They have learned that what’s good for us is good for Russia.”

  “Then why do you look as if you’ve seen a ghost?”

  “Because I have.”

  Yevchenko’s hands were stuffed deep into his pockets, the collar of his coat was pulled up high. It was mid-March, and he was freezing. The Siberian Butcher had gone soft. “Why don’t you come to it, my friend?” Gregorovich said to him.

  “What do we fear?” Yevchenko asked rhetorically. “Either the failure to get what we desire or the loss of that which we have. Our business, our economy, our nation’s very existence, is linked primarily to one thing and one thing only: energy. Coal, oil, natural gas. We’re now the world’s largest producer of crude, outstripping the Saudis for the past two years. For a decade, we’ve been the largest producer of natural gas, and we possess the most extensive reserves of coal on the planet. These are the resources that will sustain us. We will sell them to power-hungry China, India, Europe for ever-increasing prices. It is nothing less than our life’s blood. But now we face a threat that could take it away in the blink of an eye.”

  Gregorovich picked up the shotgun and began walking, more interested in finding the wounded bird than continuing this conversation. Unfortunately, Yevchenko followed him.

  “Five years ago, I sent you on a mission,” Yevchenko explained. “The Japanese were developing a way to extract energy from the air around us. They were planning a fleet of purely electric cars, a national grid that did not require power plants of oil, coal, or natural gas. And they were greedily looking forward to exporting the technology to the rest of the world, gaining more wealth for themselves and slamming the door of poverty in our faces yet again.”

  “The Yagishiri experiments.”

  “So you remember.”

  “Of course I remember,” Gregorovich snapped. “I destroyed the laboratory and killed the scientists.”

  Yevchenko raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

  Gregorovich was looking in the grass for the pigeon. He found feathers and a trail of blood. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Much like this wounded pigeon,” Yevchenko said, “it seems you did not obliterate the threat as completely as you claimed.”

  Gregorovich stopped his search and turned toward Yevchenko. “The lab was annihilated. We used enough explosives to bring down a city block. The thermite burned everything to cinders. All record of what they were attempting was destroyed. And, before that, I shot every one of those poor bastards myself.”

  “Someone survived.”

  “Impossible.”

  “The experiments have begun again,” Yevchenko explained, “in secret.”

  Gregorovich looked away, taking a deep breath of the pure Siberian air. He figured there was a less sinister explanation.

  “You knew we were merely delaying the inevitable,” he said. “If
this scientific theory is valid, eventually someone else will stumble onto it and complete the work. Even if this theory proves false, change will come from another avenue. One day, there will be a solar panel that is one hundred percent efficient or a way to economically harvest energy from the tides or the waves or the wind. When that happens, there will be no more need for the Gazproms, Aramcos, or Exxons of this world.”

  “Yes, of course!” Yevchenko shouted. “But let it happen a hundred years from now. We’ve spent a hundred billion dollars over the last three years, buying up new reserves of oil and natural gas. Huge portions of the government budget have gone into infrastructure for our industry. We cannot have those investments be wasted. Not now, not at this juncture.”

  Gregorovich went back to his search, pressing down the long grass with his boots, following the trail of blood. “Even if the Japanese develop this system, it will take decades to build out the infrastructure,” he said. “Decades more to change the world.”

  “No,” Yevchenko said. “When the change comes, it comes suddenly. Ten years ago, cell phones were the gadgets of the rich. Now they blanket the Earth. The trillion dollars spent on landlines for the world’s phone companies are fast approaching worthlessness.”

  Gregorovich still hadn’t found the pigeon. He paused to focus on his old mentor once more. “Not like you to show fear, my friend. Perhaps you’ve lived in the comfort of Moscow’s bosom for too long.”

  “No need for jealousy, you could have joined me.”

  “And live in fear like you?” Gregorovich shook his head. “You’re screaming bloody murder over a pipe dream and a long-shot possibility. That doesn’t add up to me. What is it that really scares you?”

  Yevchenko seemed to shiver a little more. He hesitated and then finally spoke. “I’ve received a threat. It claims we will suffer for what we did. It comes from Thero himself. It includes details only someone who was there would know. It promises that the martyrs of Yagishiri will be avenged, that their blood will be repaid a millionfold. What once was designed for peace will now be used for war.”

  Gregorovich considered this. He couldn’t imagine anyone surviving the explosions and fire he’d caused. The lab had been turned into a smoking crater two hundred feet wide. The fire had burned so hot that Gregorovich and another commando had been singed from a long distance away. “Someone is using his name to scare you.”