The crew of seventy or so was half the normal complement, but without the need for weapons specialists it was large enough to do the job. They were promised big paychecks. The captain’s instructions were to surface for an at-sea rendezvous. But a Chinese freighter carrying armed men met them and took over the ship. They were told to sail the ship to the Pacific Ocean. Using a torpedo tube, the kidnappers launched a missile, targeting a surface ship. Then the Typhoon was involved in an operation to move the underwater lab off the ocean floor.
“Where is the lab now?” Zavala asked.
Mehdev pointed downward with his index finger.
“About three hundred feet beneath our hull, at the bottom of a submerged caldera,” he said. “There was an eruption many years ago and the volcano collapsed, leaving the caldera in place of the island that was once here. Coral grew on the rim, establishing the reef you came across.”
“How did your vessel break through the reef?” Zavala asked.
“We didn’t. We passed under it. The Japanese blasted a tunnel through the caldera, planning to use this place as a submarine base in World War Two. They were going to wait until the American fleet bypassed the atoll and come up behind them with German supersubs to sink their ships. A clever plan. But the Allies bombed the German submarine factories, and then the war ended.” Then Mehdev asked, “What do you know of this lab? It must be important.”
“Very important,” Zavala said. “The U.S. Navy has planes and ships out searching. I flew over the lagoon. The water is as clear as crystal. Why didn’t I see you?”
“We’re below a camouflage net stretched across the lagoon. It’s what you Americans call low-tech.”
“What about the island I landed on in the lagoon?”
“That is high-tech. An artificial platform on floats, kept in place through a propulsion system geared to a self-correcting navigational system. It provides an observation post to detect intruders. You were seen long before you landed.”
“Someone went to a lot of trouble to create a hideaway.”
“My understanding is, the people behind this scheme intended to use the atoll for transpacific smuggling.”
A pounding on the door interrupted their conversation. Then the door flew open, and an Asian man holding a machine pistol stepped into the cabin. Right behind him was Phelps. Phelps gave Zavala a lopsided grin.
“Hello, soldier,” he said. “You’re a long way from home.”
“I could say the same thing about you, Phelps.”
“Yes, you could. I see you’ve made friends with the captain and his crew.”
“Captain Mehdev has been very generous with his liquor cabinet.”
“Too bad the party’s over,” Phelps said. “The captain and his boys have work to do.”
Mehdev took the hint and ordered his crew out of the cabin. Phelps told his guard to escort them back to their posts, and then he pulled up a chair and put his boots up on a small writing table.
“How did you find this little hidey-hole?” Phelps asked.
Zavala yawned.
“Dumb luck,” he said.
“I don’t think so. Next question. Anyone else know about this place?”
“Only the U.S. Navy. You and your pals can expect a visit from an aircraft carrier any minute.”
“Nice try,” Phelps said with a snort. “The atoll would be swarming with ships and planes by now if the Navy knew about us. The camera on the island sent a picture of your pretty face directly to my boss, Chang. He’s the one who ordered Mehdev to grab you, even at the risk of being seen by someone. You’ve got yourself in a hell of a mess, Joe.”
Zavala’s lips turned up in a slight smile.
“It only looks that way,” he said.
Phelps shook his head in disbelief.
“What do they give you NUMA guys to drink?” he asked. “Bull’s blood?”
“Something like that,” Zavala said. “Now, I’ve got a question for you: why did you give us the key to the handcuffs and return Kurt’s gun after our skirmish with your boss lady?”
Phelps slid his feet off the desk, put them back on the floor, and leaned closer.
“Actually, I’ve got three bosses,” he said. “Triplets. Chang is in charge of the rough stuff. He’s got a brother named Wen Lo who takes care of business. But the hologram you met back in Virginia is the top dog. Don’t know whether it’s a he or she.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes it’s a man image, sometimes it’s a woman. You never know.”
“What’s with the holograms?”
“They don’t trust anyone, not even one another. They’re crazy too, but you already know that.”
“It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that they’re not playing with a full deck, Phelps. How’d you get hooked up with this bunch of maniacs?”
“I’m an ex-SEAL. Crazy or not, they pay better than the Navy. I was going to retire after this gig.” Lowering his voice, he added, “Like I said, I’ve got family back home. You really think the virus the Triad came up with will hit the U.S.?”
“It’s only a matter of a very short time.”
“Damnit, Joe, we’ve got to stop this thing.”
“We?” Zavala scoffed. “I’m in no position to do much about anything right now.”
“I’m going to change that. I’ve been thinking how to work this out. But I’m gonna need your help.”
Phelps’s cell phone buzzed. He answered the call, listened for a moment, said, “Okay,” then hung up. He told Zavala to stay put and slipped out of the cabin.
Zavala pondered his conversation with Phelps. The man was a hired gun and killer, not the type he normally would choose as an ally, but their goals coincided. They would have to smooth out the wrinkles in their relationship later.
Zavala got off the bunk and walked around the cabin. He went over to the sink and splashed water on his face, then walked some more. He was almost feeling normal when Phelps returned.
Phelps was wearing a black neoprene wet suit and carrying a big duffel bag. There was worry in his hound-dog eyes.
“We’re going to have to postpone our talk,” he said. “That was Chang calling.”
“What’s going on?” Zavala asked.
“Things just got more complicated,” Phelps said. “Feel like going for a swim?”
“I just had one,” Zavala said. “Do I have a choice?”
“Nope,” Phelps said.
He handed the duffel bag to Zavala, who hefted it.
“Is this part of the complications?” Zavala asked.
Phelps nodded.
He told Zavala to suit up and left him alone in the cabin. Zavala opened the duffel and found a wet suit. He stripped out of his damp clothes and pulled on the neoprene top and bottom, then opened the door and stepped out.
Phelps was waiting in the passageway with two men, also suited up for a dive. He motioned for Zavala to follow and led the way through the labyrinthine innards of the giant submarine. They encountered a number of crewmen who gave Phelps sullen looks. At one point, the guards split off, and Phelps stepped into a compartment at midship.
“Escape chamber,” Phelps said, pointing to a hatch over their heads. “There’s one on the other side of the conning tower that our two guard dogs will be using.”
He opened a bulkhead locker and pulled out two complete sets of scuba gear that included full face masks with wireless-communications capability. When they were ready, Phelps climbed up a ladder into a cylindrical chamber. Zavala followed him up, moving slowly under the weight of the gear.
The escape chamber was a tight fit for two men in full scuba gear. Phelps hit a switch that closed the floor, and water poured in. Once the chamber was flooded, he opened the hatch over their heads.
Phelps let air into his buoyancy regulator and swam up the escape shaft. Zavala followed close behind. They emerged from the submarine at the base of the lofty conning tower. The two guards were waiting for them. Each
guard held a gas-powered speargun with a nasty-looking barb on the business end. Zavala ignored them and slipped his feet into his fins.
The greenish light that filtered through the camouflage net bathed the black hull of the submarine in a spectral glow. Zavala had once seen a Typhoon at dock, when the hull was mostly submerged, and had been impressed by its size, but that was nothing compared with seeing the gigantic sub and its massive conning tower in full.
A ducklike voice quacked in his headset, and Phelps waved to get his attention.
“That’s enough sightseeing for now, Joe. Follow me. This is a technical dive. Three hundred feet plus, but you’ve got Trimix in your tank, so you’ll be okay.”
Phelps switched on a waterproof dive light. With a fluttering kick of his legs, he swam away from the deck, propelling himself through the water using expert form, and then angled downward. Zavala came next, with the two guards following his bubble trail.
They headed toward an amber cluster of sparkling lights. As they descended further, Zavala saw that the lights were on the outside of four large globes attached to each other with tubelike connectors. He immediately recognized the lab from the diagrams he had studied.
“Davy Jones’s Locker!” Zavala said.
“Quite the sight, isn’t it?” Phelps said.
Zavala noticed something else. Ghostly blue forms were moving slowly in the shadows just beyond the reach of the lab’s searchlights.
“Are those blue medusae I see?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Phelps said. “You want to stay away from those puppies. They’re hot-wired. We can do a nature tour later. We’ve only got a few minutes to talk. We’re the only ones wearing communications gear, so don’t worry about those guys on your tail. I was gonna keep you on the sub so we could work out a plan, but Chang said he wanted you in the lab. Didn’t say what he’s got planned, but, one thing’s for sure, he won’t be throwing you a welcome party.”
“I didn’t expect one,” Zavala said. “How about you throwing me a lifeline?”
“I’ll do my best. I’ll let you know when I make a move. Meantime, be a good boy and don’t give those guys with the spearguns an excuse to use you for target practice.”
They were directly above the hemispherical-shaped structure at the hub of the lab complex. Zavala remembered it as the transit module where the airlock for the shuttle vehicle was located. Phelps swam under the transit module, past four minisubmersibles attached to the underside like feeding puppies, then up into a shaft that opened into a round pool at the center of a circular chamber.
Phelps removed his mask and communications unit, and Zavala followed his lead. The guards surfaced seconds later. By then, Phelps and Zavala had used a ladder on the side of the pool to climb out. The guards emerged from the pool, and all four men hung their air tanks and gear on wall hooks. The guards took their masks off to reveal hard Asian faces. They put the spearguns aside and produced machine pistols from their waterproof backpacks.
Phelps pressed a switch and a door slid open. He led the way along a tube-shaped corridor to another door that opened into a small room. Phelps told the guards to wait in the passageway, and then he and Zavala stepped inside.
Half of one wall was made of glass, allowing a view of a laboratory containing several workers dressed in white biohazard suits. The workers looked up when Phelps rapped his knuckles on the glass. All went back to work except one, who waved in acknowledgment and disappeared behind a door labeled DECONTAMINATION.
Minutes later, Lois Mitchell stepped into the room. She was wearing a lab coat and slacks, and her raven hair was still damp from the decontamination shower. Despite his predicament, Zavala signaled his appreciation of Lois’s striking good looks with a slight smile. Lois saw it, and the corners of her lips turned up.
“I know you,” she said.
Zavala did a fast mental check of the hundreds of women he had dated through the years and drew a blank.
“Have we met?” he asked cautiously.
Lois laughed.
“I saw you on TV,” she said. “You were the engineer from NUMA who made the dive with Dr. Kane in the bathysphere.” She furrowed her brow. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” Zavala said.
Phelps said, “Dr. Mitchell, this is Joe Zavala from NUMA.”
“Lois,” the scientist amended, extending her hand.
“Hate to break up this party,” Phelps said, “but things are moving fast, Dr. Mitchell. My boss is on his way to the lab. My guess is that he wants to check on your project.”
“Actually,” she said, “he’s coming to get the vaccine.”
Phelps narrowed his eyes.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“While you were away, I told one of those people you have following me around that we’ve synthesized the toxin.” She turned and gestured at the glass partition. “This is our fermentation, cell-culture, and analysis lab. Your boss will be able to take the vaccine culture with him and go into full-bore production immediately.”
Scowling, Phelps said, “That’s not good.”
“Why?” Lois asked. “Wasn’t that the purpose of this whole project, to produce a vaccine that can be given to the world?”
“You tell her,” Phelps said with a shake of his head.
“Once they have the vaccine,” Zavala said, “they’ll let the epidemic run until they bring down their government. Then they’ll offer the cure to the rest of the world. Pay or die. You and your lab have become expendable.”
The color drained out of Lois Mitchell’s already pale features.
“What have I done?” she wailed.
“It’s what you’re going to do that counts,” Phelps said.
There was a hard knock on the door. Phelps opened it and one of the guards leaned in close and whispered in his ear. Phelps stepped back inside.
“You haven’t said what you want me to do,” Lois implored.
“Whatever we do, it better be fast,” Phelps said. “Chang’s chopper has left Pohnpei for his ship.”
Zavala’s head was still reeling from its encounter with the six-hundred-foot-long Typhoon, and he was suspicious of Phelps’s abrupt change from foe to friend. But the announcement that the Triad’s enforcer would soon arrive at the lab had been more effective than having a bucket of cold water thrown in his face.
Since he didn’t have many options, Zavala decided to put his money on his former adversary. He grabbed Phelps by the arm, and said, “We need to talk, soldier.”
CHAPTER 42
THE SEAHAWK HELICOPTER FLEW WITHOUT ITS RUNNING lights twenty-five feet above the sea, almost skimming the wave tops, as it sped toward the atoll at two hundred miles an hour. Tension in the cockpit mounted as the chopper neared its destination, but Austin remained an island of calm. He sat in the passenger’s seat dressed in a lightweight wet suit, his eyes fixed on a satellite-generated hybrid chart spread out on his lap, etching every detail into his brain.
He had marked three Xs on the chart with a grease pencil. The first X showed the position, a quarter mile from the atoll, where the helicopter would drop him off. The second X showed the narrow breach in the coral reef. The third X, from overhead, showed the dark streak in the lagoon.
The pilot’s voice came over the headphones.
“Five-minute warning, Kurt.”
Austin folded the chart and put it in a waterproof chest pack. He pulled a plastic pouch that protected his Bowen revolver out of the pack, checked the load, and tucked it back inside. Then he unbuckled his seat belt and stood by the Seahawk’s open door. The helicopter slowed, then hovered over the predetermined point of insertion.
“Showtime, Kurt!” the pilot said.
“Thanks for the ride,” Austin said. “We’ll have to do it again sometime when I can stay longer.”
The chopper’s copilot helped Austin push a six-foot-long inflatable boat out the door, and they lowered it into the sea using a mot
orized winch. Austin grabbed a two-inch line rigged to the helicopter’s hoist bracket and slid down the rope, his hands protected by thick gloves. He then lowered himself into the sea and let go.
The Seahawk moved away from the insertion point, to prevent its rotors from whipping up the water. Austin breaststroked over to the inflatable and climbed aboard. It was stabilized by the weight of the gear pack secured to its makeshift wooden platform between its pontoons. He detached a flashlight from his belt, pointed it at the noisy silhouette hanging over the water, and blinked it several times to signal that he was set.
Its job done, the Seahawk darted off and, within seconds, disappeared into the night.
Austin undid the tie-downs holding the supply pack and pulled out a paddle. He found a waterproof pouch that contained a handheld GPS and pushed the POWER button.
The tiny green screen blinked on, and it showed his position in relation to the island. He tucked the GPS back in its pouch and began to paddle.
It was a gorgeous night. The stars glittered like diamond splinters against the black velvet of the tropical sky, and the sea was on fire, glowing with silvery-green phosphorescence. There was little current and no wind, and he covered the distance in good time. Hearing the whisper of waves washing against the reef, he squinted against the darkness and saw the faint white line of breaking waves.
He checked the GPS again, and followed the course it suggested to take him to the break in the reef. But he ran into trouble as he approached the narrow opening in the coral. The water surged in and out of the break to create a barrier of turbulence that tossed the lightweight boat around like a rubber duck in a bathtub.
Paddling vigorously, Austin brought the bow around and charged into the opening, but again failed to muster the power necessary to overcome the crosscurrents. He made another try. This time, he yelled, “Once more unto the breach,” but the inspired words of Shakespeare’s Henry V were no match for the power of the sea. All he got for his trouble was a mouthful of seawater.
After his failed attempts, Austin admitted to himself that the sea was just playing with him, and he paddled away from the reef to reconnoiter. As the inflatable rocked in the waves, he caught his breath. Then he extracted a lightweight, electric-powered outboard motor and battery from the pack, clamped the motor to the platform, and punched IGNITION. Except for a soft hum, the motor was almost silent. He goosed the throttle and aimed the inflatable’s blunt bow at the creamy surf welling up around the opening in the reef.
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