Medusa nf-8

by Clive Cussler

  Lee leaped onto the man’s back, clinging to him, but he shook her off and she fell to the ground. He stood there unmoving, staring at her, then the gun dropped from his hand and he crumpled to the ground as if all the air had gone out of him. The beam from his flashlight fell on the wooden handle of the steak knife protruding from his chest.

  As Gamay helped Lee to her feet, Lee gazed at her deadly handiwork.

  “I’ve never done anything like that,” she said. “Never.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Gamay said. “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know. He came up while I was getting my kayak and struck me with his gun. He said he’d been watching me, and that others were coming in a boat to take me away.”

  Gamay suddenly put her hand on Lee’s arm.

  “Listen,” she said.

  Excited voices talking in Chinese could be heard coming along the path. The others had arrived.

  Lee’s kayak was righted and dragged to the water. She produced a spare plastic-and-aluminum paddle for Gamay to use. They both shoved their kayaks off the beach and paddled madly. They were about a hundred feet from the mangroves when flashlight beams probed the water around them.

  The shafts of light reflected off the shiny fiberglass hulls. Gamay told Lee to hug the shore, where they’d make a more difficult target. She tensed, expecting gunfire, but the lights blinked out.

  “They are going back to their boat,” Lee said. “They will come around the other end of the island and intercept us.”

  “How long before they get there?” Gamay asked, without breaking the rhythm of her strokes.

  “Five, ten minutes, maybe. What should we do?”

  “Paddle as if our lives depended on it . . . because they do.”

  They put their backs into each stroke and made it out of the cove, but the sound of a boat engine soon shattered the quiet of the night. A spotlight moved slowly back and forth across the water. There was no place along the shore where they could put in and hide. Thick, gnarly roots extended out from mangroves, forming a formidable barrier.

  A silhouette loomed ahead. They were coming up on the grounded cabin cruiser. Gamay paddled toward the old boat with Lee right behind. They climbed aboard the derelict, pulling their kayaks up behind them, and lay facedown on the rotting deck.

  Through cracks in the hull, they saw the spotlight go past the cruiser. For a second, Gamay entertained a flash of optimism, but that faded as the search boat changed direction, circled the wreck, and came closer. The spotlight filtered through the cracks and fell on their faces.

  The women’s pursuers peppered the cabin cruiser with gunfire, starting with the elevated bow and working back toward the stern. They took their time, pumping round after round into the pilothouse. Splinters showered the two women. Gamay covered her head with her hands and cursed her own stupidity. The only thing they had accomplished by climbing on the old boat was to give these bozos some target practice. It would only be a matter of seconds before the bullets found them.

  Then the firing stopped.

  Gamay expected the attackers to swarm aboard, but instead a bottle filled with flaming gasoline arced through the air and landed on the deck. Crackling fire from the Molotov cocktail spread in a blazing puddle that lapped at their feet. The heat became unbearable. The two women stood up, preferring to be shot rather than be burned to death. But the boat carrying their assailants was moving away from them and picking up speed. By then, the cabin cruiser had become a blazing torch.

  “Jump!” Gamay yelled.

  They dove into the water and swam away from the burning wreck. They struck out for the nearest mangrove and had only gone a short distance before they heard a boat engine again and saw a spotlight coming their way.

  Gamay’s hopes were dashed. The shooters were coming back to finish them off.

  The boat slowed and the spotlight played over the water, finally finding the pair of swimmers. Gamay expected that the rattle of gunfire would be the last thing she would ever hear, but instead a familiar voice rang out.

  “Gamay,” Paul Trout called, “is that you?”

  She stopped swimming and began to tread water. She stuck a hand in the air. The boat edged closer, looming over them, and she looked up to see Paul Trout’s long arms reaching down to pull her to safety.

  CHAPTER 25

  ZAVALA SWUNG HIS CORVETTE INTO THE PARKING LOT OF the Eden Center shopping mall in Falls Church, Virginia, as Charlie Yoo had instructed. The Chinese agent was waiting for Zavala near the clock tower in a black government-issue Ford Crown Victoria. He rolled down the window.

  “Where’s your friend Austin?”

  “Delayed,” Zavala said. “He’ll catch up with us later. Or we can wait.”

  Yoo frowned, raised an index finger indicating Zavala should wait, and rolled up the window. Zavala could see Yoo’s lips moving and assumed he was talking on a wireless Bluetooth setup. Then the window came down.

  “The guys on stakeout said to come along now. You can call Austin later and tell him where you are. Hop in.”

  Zavala didn’t like the idea of leaving his prized Corvette in a public parking lot, but he raised the convertible top, locked the door, and slid into the passenger’s seat of the Crown Victoria. Yoo drove out of the parking lot, through Seven Corners, and toward Wilson Boulevard, slowing after a few miles to take an off-ramp. After a short drive, they came to an industrial park consisting of large metal-sheathed buildings spread over several blocks. Except for the amber security lights over the loading-dock doors, the complex was dark and seemingly deserted.

  Zavala expected Yoo to pull over and park before they got to the stakeout so that they would walk the rest of the way. Yoo slowed the car to a crawl, then, without stopping, hooked the steering wheel over to the right and accelerated through an open gate with a sign on it that read GOOD LUCK FORTUNE COOKIE COMPANY.

  Yoo kept his foot on the gas pedal, swerved behind the building in a g-force turn, then pointed the car at a garage door. As the car headed for the big black square, Zavala braced himself for the impact, but then the headlights showed that the door was almost fully open. Yoo finally hit the brakes inside the warehouse, sending the car into a fishtail skid into a wall of cardboard cartons.

  The car’s grille slammed into the cardboard boxes with a loud crunching sound. The boxes split wide open, spilling dozens of plastic-wrapped fortune cookies over the hood.

  The car’s air bags exploded, cushioning the impact further.

  Zavala caught his breath, then reached down and unclasped his seat belt. Pushing his air bag aside, he saw that Yoo was not in the driver’s seat. Zavala’s exit from the car was less than graceful, and he fell onto one knee. He was slow to anger, but as he got to his feet he wanted to rip Yoo’s head off.

  The overhead lights snapped on. Charlie Yoo was nowhere to be seen, but Zavala was not alone.

  He was surrounded by several Asian men, all dressed in black running suits, and all carrying automatic weapons that were pointed at his midsection.

  The closest man poked Zavala in the gut with the barrel of his gun.

  “Move,” he ordered.

  CHAPTER 26

  AUSTIN FLIPPED OVER THE LAST PAGE OF THE VOLUMINOUS file on Pyramid Trading Company, leaned back in his chair, and rubbed his eyes. The picture that the file painted was of a vast corporation with no regard for human life. Pyramid had put out more than three hundred harmful products. It had exported tainted fish, killer pet food, unsafe tires, and poisoned toothpaste, candy, vitamins, and drugs. Under international pressure, the Chinese government had admitted that there was a problem with Pyramid and promised to remedy the situation. But nothing in what Austin had read would explain why Pyramid would go after Kane and his research project.

  Austin went over to a window and gazed down at the lights of Washington as if they might coalesce into a crystal ball that could answer the questions whirling around in his mind. The phone buzzed, and he picked it up to hear the unmis
takable voice of Admiral Sandecker in its full flower of authority and brevity.

  “Kurt. Please be out front in five minutes.”

  Sandecker hung up without further explanation.

  Austin put the Pyramid file in a desk drawer, then turned out the lights and headed for the elevator. Five minutes later to the second, he walked out the front door of NUMA headquarters as a dark blue Chevrolet Suburban SUV pulled up to the curb.

  A young man in a naval officer’s uniform got out of the back of the SUV and greeted Austin, who recognized Lieutenant Charley Casey, an up-and-coming officer Sandecker had introduced him to at a White House reception.

  “Hello, Kurt,” Casey said. “Climb aboard.”

  Austin got in the backseat with Casey, and the SUV swung out into Washington traffic.

  “Nice to see you again, Lieutenant. What’s going on?”

  “Sorry to be evasive, Kurt, but the admiral has asked me to hold off answering any questions for now.”

  “Okay. Then how about telling me where we’re headed?”

  “Not us. It’s where you’re going.” Casey pointed. “Right there.”

  The SUV had only gone a couple of bocks from NUMA headquarters before pulling over to the curb again. Austin thanked Casey for the ride, got out of the SUV, and walked up to the entrance of a restaurant. A neon sign spelled out the name AEGEAN GROTTO.

  The restaurant’s owner, an ebullient native of Naxos named Stavros, ambushed Austin as he stepped over the threshold.

  “Good evening, Mr. Austin. How are things at the Fish House?”

  Stavros used his nickname for NUMA headquarters, where many of his patrons worked as scientists or technicians.

  “As fishy as ever,” Austin said with a slight smile. “I’m meeting someone here.”

  “Your friend arrived a few minutes ago,” Stavros said. “I’ve seated him at the admiral’s table.”

  He led Austin to an alcove at the rear of the dining room. Admiral Sandecker had often dined at the restaurant when he was NUMA director. The table offered a modicum of privacy and a view of the dining room. The blue walls flanking the table were decorated with pictures of squid, octopi, and various other denizens of Stavros’s kitchen.

  The man seated at the table gave Austin a quick wave of recognition.

  Austin pulled out a chair and sat down opposite Max Kane. “Hello, Doc,” he said. “This is a pleasant surprise.”

  “I’m shocked that you were able to see through my masquerade so easily.”

  “You had me for a second, Doc, then I noticed your hairline was listing to starboard.”

  Kane snatched the thick black wig from his head. With a flick of his wrist, he sent it gliding like a hairy Frisbee toward a nearby table where two men were seated. The wig almost landed in a bowl of avgolemono soup. They glared at Kane, and one man stuffed the hairpiece under the jacket of his dark suit, then went back to his dinner.

  Kane burst into laughter.

  “Don’t look so worried, Kurt. Those guys are my babysitters. They’re the ones who insisted that I wear the rug out in public.”

  Austin gave Kane a tight smile, but he was in no mood for idle talk. In the short time he had known the colorful microbiologist, Austin had almost lost one of his team, seen the B3 project scuttled, and fought an undersea robot a half mile down. He wanted answers, not wig tosses, however skillful. He signaled Stavros by holding two fingers in the air, then turned back to Kane and skewered him with his coral-hued eyes.

  “What the hell is going on, Doc?” he asked.

  Kane sagged in his chair, as if the wind had gone right out of him.

  “Sorry, Kurt. I’ve spent the last few days with those creeps in a safe house subsisting on pizza and Chinese fast food. I’m starting to get a little loopy.”

  Austin handed Kane a menu.

  “Here’s my antidote for fast food. I’d recommend the psari plaki, fish Athenian-style. Tsatziki and taramosalata for appetizers.”

  When Stavros arrived with glasses of ouzo, Austin ordered two of the succulent fish plates. Then he raised his glass. Looking Kane straight in the eye, he said, “Here’s to a discovery that is going to affect every man, woman, and child on the planet.”

  “Joe must have told you about my near-death confession.”

  “He said the prospect of a watery grave made you forthcoming, up to a point.”

  Kane clamped his lips in a smirk.

  “I guess I owe you an explanation,” he said.

  “I guess you do,” Austin said.

  Kane took a blissful sip of ouzo and put his glass down.

  “For a couple of years now, I’ve been chairman of a scientific advisory group called the Board on Marine Biology . . . BOMB, for short,” Kane said. “The board includes some of the most brilliant minds in the field of ocean biomedicine. We work with the National Research Council, and advise the government on promising scientific discoveries.”

  “And what was your promising discovery, Doc?”

  “About a year after I had moved the lab to Bonefish Key, we acquired a rare species of jellyfish related to the sea wasp. We named it the blue medusa because it had an amazingly bright luminescence, but the toxin that the thing produced was what really blew our minds.”

  “How so, Doc?”

  “The medusa’s toxin didn’t kill. It immobilized the prey so that the medusa could dine on food that was still alive. That’s not an unknown practice in nature. Spiders and wasps like to keep a fresh snack handy.”

  Austin nodded in the direction of the restaurant’s lobster tank.

  “Human beings do the same thing.”

  “You see my point, then. The steers and hogs that we turn into steaks and pork chops have better medical treatment than many humans. We even load those animals down with antibiotics and other medicines to keep them as healthy as possible until we can eat them.”

  “Animal husbandry isn’t my strong suit, Doc. Where are you going with this?”

  “The blue medusa toxin is the most complex naturally produced chemical I’ve ever seen. It puts up a wall that keeps pathogens at arm’s length. The doomed prey enjoys the best of health while it waits to be devoured.” Kane leaned across the table and dropped his voice. “Now, just suppose we could put those same protective qualities in a drug for humans.”

  Austin pondered Kane’s words.

  “You’d have an all-purpose pill,” Austin said. “What the snake oil salesmen used to call a cure-all.”

  “Bingo! Only this was no snake oil. We had found a medical miracle that just might neutralize some of the greatest scourges of mankind, the ailments caused by viruses, from the common cold to cancer.”

  “So why all the hush-hush?” Austin asked. “If people knew you had discovered a cure-all, the world would build statues in your honor.”

  “Hell, Kurt, at first we were nominating ourselves for the Nobel Prize in Medicine. After the initial euphoric thrill, we realized that we were about to open Pandora’s box.”

  “You wouldn’t get any love letters from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries,” Austin said. “But, in the long term, you’d get a healthier world.”

  “It’s that long term that worried us,” Kane said. “Say we give this boon to the world, no strings attached. An easily accessible cure-all goes into production. The average life span increases stratospherically. Instead of six billion souls on the planet, we’d have ten or twelve billion. Picture the pressure that would put on land, water, food, and energy resources.”

  “You could have riots, wars, governments toppled, and starvation.”

  Kane spread his hands apart as if to say Voila!

  “Now imagine what would happen if we kept the discovery secret.”

  “Nothing is secret forever. Word would leak out. Those who didn’t have access to the medicine would resent those who did. People with life-threatening diseases would be pounding down the doors of city hall. Chaos again.”

  “The scientific board reache
d the same conclusion,” Kane said. “We were in a quandary. So we compiled a report, which we transmitted to the government. Then fate intervened. An epidemic broke out in China, an influenza-type virus with the potential to set off a worldwide pandemic that would kill millions. And guess what? Our crazy little lab held the key to the cure.”

  “Blue medusa?”

  “Yup.”

  “Is that what you meant when you said your research could impact everyone on the planet?”

  Kane nodded.

  “Turns out our research held the only hope to fight this thing,” he continued. “The government took over the lab, locked the doors, and worked with the Chinese government to keep the research under wraps until we could come up with a synthesized form of the chemical. They put out a cover story suggesting that the new virus was simply an outbreak of SARS and thus controllable. Which it isn’t. It’s a mutated strain that’s even more virulent than the virus that caused the 1918 flu pandemic. In one year, that virus killed millions.”

  Austin let out a low whistle.

  “With the ability people have to globe-hop now,” he said, “that 1918 figure would be a drop in the bucket.”

  “This time, it’s the whole bucket, Kurt. The feds classified our findings and made all the lab people government employees, so that anyone talking out of turn could be prosecuted for treason. They also added White House and military people to the board. Then they moved most of the research to a secret undersea lab.”

  “Why not stay at Bonefish Key?” Austin asked.

  “Too public, for one thing. But there were practical reasons too. We wanted to be near the resource. The blue medusa once covered a wide area, but now it is found primarily in and around a specific deepwater canyon. And we wanted to quarantine our work. We were developing an enhanced version of the medusa, a sort of superjellyfish, a dangerous predator, not the kind of thing you’d want to find in your swimming pool.”

  “Are you saying you were working with malignant mutant life-forms, Doc?”

  “Essentially, yes.”