With that note filed away, Joe continued, singing louder with each chorus. He was on the third chorus, really beginning to get the hang of it, finding the acoustics of the inverted Barracuda to be most pleasing to the ear, when he realized he was getting delirious. The air was growing stale.
He stretched out his leg and banged it against the control panel. His feet were so numb, he could only feel the impact higher up on his calf, but he knew he was in the right area. He tapped and tapped again, continuing his awkward attempts, until the air jets came back on.
At the sound of the bubbles racing through, pouring into the cockpit, he rejoiced and began singing once again.
And then, mid-verse, Kurt Austin surfaced through the foam and bubbles, rudely interrupting his performance.
Kurt spat his own regulator out and lifted his mask. “Well, you’re having a lot more fun than I expected.”
“Practicing for American Idol,” Joe managed. His teeth had begun chattering. “What do you think?”
“You may not be going to Hollywood, but I think we can get you out of this sub.”
Kurt held up a green tank of some kind. “One hundred percent oxygen,” he said. “I’m going to cut you loose.”
Joe tried to smile. The sooner, the better, was all he could think.
Kurt was already working, jabbing at the barnacles on the tank’s valve with a screwdriver. He managed to get it partially cleared, then stopped.
He showed the pinhole to Joe. “You think that’s enough?”
“Test it.”
Kurt worked the valve handle for a good minute, even banging it on the frame of the cockpit, until it would move. Finally, it gave. A few bits of debris blasted out of the valve’s opening. Kurt held it underwater. Bubbles poured out in a narrow jet.
Kurt grabbed another flare from the survival kit and ripped a length of aluminum trim off the control panel. The thin strip of metal would be needed in his project. He looked at Joe. “It’s gonna be hot,” he said.
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Joe said. Unlike Kurt, he hadn’t moved for a good twenty minutes, and sitting still in 60-degree waters without a wet suit was enough to bring on hypothermia. He was getting close to that point.
“I’ll be careful,” Kurt said, pulling his mask back down.
“Kurt,” Joe said very seriously. “I’m not dying down here. If you have to take my hand off, do it. I can’t feel it anyway.”
“And deprive the boxing world of your pugilistic skills?” he said. “Perish the thought.”
“Kurt, I’m just saying—”
“Why don’t you go back to singing,” Kurt said. He held up the bottle, “I’m making a little request: ‘Light My Fire’ by the Doors.”
With that, Kurt put his regulator back into his mouth and submerged.
Joe knew Kurt would do his best, but he also knew Kurt would do as he’d asked if necessary. And to save Joe from thinking about it, he wouldn’t tell him in advance.
To take his mind off it, he did as Kurt had suggested… almost. This time, he’d give it everything he had, really belting it out.
“We all live in a yellow submarine…”
OUTSIDE THE BARRACUDA, Kurt heard Joe’s warbling voice and was secretly glad to be out beyond the confines of the sub. Still, it made him smile.
He got up beside the lift bar. Joe’s hands were curled up into balls from the cold. He pulled Joe’s right hand as far from the left as he could. He then lit the new flare and held up the strip of aluminum.
He pressed the pointed end of the strip into the narrow links of the hardened steel chain that held Joe’s hands together. Then he brought the oxygen bottle awkwardly to bear and turned the valve.
The jet of bubbles burst forth once again. He directed it toward the aluminum strip and Joe’s chains and the burning tip of the flare. Immediately, what looked like a jet of fire burst forth.
It was awkward work. Kurt felt like he needed three hands, but by holding the flare and the aluminum strip in one hand and the oxygen bottle in the other he was able to keep his little torch operation working.
While it seemed like the oxygen was burning, Kurt knew it was actually an oxidizer. It didn’t burn. It caused other things to burn hot and fast — in this case, the aluminum and, once a little cut appeared in Joe’s chain, the steel in the chain links.
The jury-rigged setup smoked and bubbled and snapped unevenly. For a moment it looked as if it would go out, but it stayed lit. After thirty seconds he pulled the torch away. The links were glowing red but not yet melted. He brought the torch to bear once again. After another fifteen seconds, Joe’s hands suddenly snapped apart.
He was free.
Kurt shut off the oxygen, thinking they might need it, and moved back into the sub.
Joe was all smiles. “I’d hug you,” he said, holding up his balled fists, “but I’m too damn cold.”
“How long we been down here?” Kurt asked.
“Thirty minutes,” Joe said.
That sounded right to Kurt. Thirty minutes at one hundred feet. They’d need at least one decompression stop. With Joe’s survival bottle largely untouched and what was left in his own, along with the green oxygen tank, Kurt was certain they could make it without any problem.
He slid Joe’s mask over his face and forced the swim fins on his feet. With the life raft and the ELT beacon under his arm, Kurt led Joe out of the sub.
Outside, he twisted the beacon until it began to flash, released it, and watched it shimmy toward the surface.
He looked to Joe and pointed upward. Joe nodded and began to swim, kicking slowly for the surface.
Kurt took one last look at the Barracuda and noticed something shiny on the ocean floor beneath the lights. The knife. The same knife once again. Another taunt from Andras.
Angrily, he reached out and grabbed it, and then he began to swim after Joe and the distant flashing light from the ELT.
THEY BROKE OUT INTO THE DAYLIGHT ten minutes later. Kurt tried to keep their ascent to one foot per second, as per the old Navy standard rules. But just to be sure, he and Joe stopped at forty feet for two minutes and then at twenty feet for three more.
Finally breaking into the sunlight was a glorious feeling. Kurt pulled the inflation cord on the raft. The CO2 charge filled and expanded the small raft in a matter of seconds. It unfolded and stiffened with full inflation.
“Ready for passengers,” Kurt said.
He helped Joe climb aboard and then pulled himself in.
Once they’d made it into the raft, lying still and flat was highly recommended. Kurt was pretty certain he could do nothing else.
He lay there breathing, aching and exhausted. He was surprised at how cold and numb he felt now compared to their time down below.
After several minutes with no sound but the slap of the water against the side of the raft, Joe spoke. “Where’s the driest place on earth?”
“I don’t know,” Kurt said, thinking. “The Atacama Desert maybe.”
“Next adventure we’re going there,” Joe said. “Or somewhere hot and dry.”
“I’m not sure the National Underwater and Marine Agency has a lot going on where it’s hot and dry,” Kurt said.
Joe shook his head. “Dirk and Al spent some time in the Sahara once.”
“True,” Kurt said. “I’m not sure they would recommend it though.”
“Hot and dry,” Joe said firmly. “I won’t take no for an answer.”
Kurt laughed. It really didn’t sound too bad right now.
He was painfully aware how close they’d come to dying. It wouldn’t have taken much to tilt the scales from life to death for either of them. Kurt knew his overconfidence about what their foes were doing was half the reason for that.
He looked over at Joe, who was finally beginning to show some color in his face.
“I was wrong,” he said to Joe.
Joe turned his head awkwardly. “What?”
“I was wrong about St. Julien,�
�� Kurt added. “He’s a gourmet. He would never chow down at some all-you-can-eat buffet.”
Joe stared at him for a moment and then started laughing and coughing all at the same time. Kurt laughed too. He knew Joe understood what he was trying to say.
“We all screw up, Kurt,” he said. “You just do it bigger than the rest of us.”
Kurt nodded. It sure seemed that way.
He looked out over the surface of the water. Thirty yards away he saw the emergency locator beacon, riding the swells and flashing. He hoped rescue would come soon because there was still work to be done.
The way he saw it, Andras had screwed up even bigger than he had. He’d left Kurt alive and stirred the bitter embers of vengeance in his heart.
38
Off the coast of Sierra Leone, June 26
DJEMMA GARAND STOOD near the edge of the helipad on the false oil platform given the number 4. This platform contained the control center of his weapon and would be his command post if he ever needed to use it.
The control center sat three stories above the helipad, the glass enclosure of its main room jutting out like the bridge on a ship. At the moment Djemma’s attention lay elsewhere.
He stood, leaning up against a rail, in the shadows, his eyes hidden behind the ever-present green shield of the Ray-Bans he wore. Out in the center of the helipad, wilting under the blazing equatorial sun, stood the captured scientists from the various teams who had flocked to the lure he’d offered. The Azorean magnetic anomaly.
Djemma smiled at his own cunning. So far, all things were falling in line with his plan.
With the scientists forced to line up as if for inspection, he waited. Each time one of them tried to sit or get out of line, Andras or one of his men would march out and threaten them with reprisals far worse than standing in the sun. At all times a few men roamed the perimeter with machine guns in their hands.
Finally, when the moaning and complaining began to lessen, Andras came over to where Djemma rested in the shade.
“Leave them out there any longer and you’re going to fry their brains,” Andras said. “Which, if I’m not mistaken, isn’t what you brought them here for.”
Djemma turned to Andras. He would not respond to the man’s questions.
“There were thirty-eight experts in superconduction, particle physics, and electromagnetic energy on Santa Maria,” he said. “I count only thirty-three prisoners. Explain the discrepancy.”
Andras turned his head, spit over the side of the rig, and looked back at Djemma. “The French team took a core sample of the tower. It could have blown the whole operation before we made our move. I had to eliminate them. The Russian expert turned out to be a spy. She tried to escape twice. I killed her as well.”
Andras did not blink as he spoke, but he did not seem to like explaining himself.
“And Mathias?” Djemma asked.
“Your little key master forgot his place,” Andras said. “He questioned me in front of the others. I couldn’t allow that.”
For a moment Djemma was angry. He’d placed Mathias with Andras to watch him, perhaps to keep him under control. No doubt that was half the reason Andras had killed him.
Still, Djemma could not show his anger. Instead he began to laugh. “What leader could afford such insolence?”
He pushed off the rail and stepped away from Andras, walking out into the hot sun to address the assembled group.
By the time he’d reached a spot in front of them a trickle of sweat was running down the side of his face. The scientists looked as if they might soon pass out. Most were from cooler climates, America, Europe, Japan. Seeing their weakness, he took his sunglasses off. He wanted them to see his strength and the fire in his eyes.
“Welcome to Africa,” he said. “You are all intelligent people, so I will dispense with the games and secrecy. I am Djemma Garand, the president of Sierra Leone. You will be working for me.”
“Working on what?” one of the scientists asked. Apparently, they hadn’t steamed the starch out of everyone yet.
“You will be provided with the specifications and requirements of a particle accelerator I have built,” Djemma said. “You will have a single job: to make it more powerful. You will of course be paid for your work, much as I was once paid for working in the mines. For your efforts you will each receive three dollars a day.”
To his right one of the scientists, a man with short gray hair and uneven teeth, scoffed.
“I’m not working for you,” he said. “Not for three dollars a day or three million.”
Djemma paused. An American of course. No people of the world were less used to being powerless than Americans.
“That of course is your option,” he said, nodding to Andras.
Andras stepped forward and slammed a rifle butt into the man’s gut. The scientist crumpled to the deck, was dragged away toward the edge of the platform, and summarily thrown off.
His scream echoed as he fell and then stopped suddenly. The water was a hundred twenty feet below.
“Check on him,” Djemma said. “If he lived, renew our offer of employment.”
Andras motioned to a pair of his men and they double-timed it over to the stairwell. Meanwhile, the rest of the scientists stared at the edge over which their associate had just been thrown. A few covered their mouths; one of them went to her knees.
“In the meantime,” Djemma said, quite pleased that someone had been stupid enough to resist right off the bat, “I will explain our incentive program. One I know you will find most generous. You will be divided into four groups and given the same information to work with. The group that comes up with the best answer, the best way to boost the power of my system, that group will get to live.”
Their eyes snapped his way.
“One member from each of the remaining groups will die,” he finished.
With that, Djemma’s men moved in and began to separate them.
“One more thing,” Djemma said loudly enough to stop the proceedings. “You have seventy-two hours for your initial proposal. In the event I have no satisfactory answer by then, one member of each group will die, and we shall start again.”
As the now thirty-two members of the world’s scientific community were separated and hustled toward the waiting elevators in the center of the rig, Djemma Garand smiled. He could see the shock and fear in their faces. He knew that most, if not all, would comply.
He turned to Andras and another African man in uniform, a general in his armed forces.
“Get back to the Onyx,” he said. “Get her into position.”
Andras nodded and moved off. The general stepped up.
“It is time, old friend,” Djemma said. “You may begin to take back what is rightfully ours.”
The general saluted and then turned and was gone.
39
Washington, D.C., June 27
KURT AUSTIN STEPPED OFF the elevator on the eleventh floor of the NUMA headquarters building on the shore of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. He moved slowly, his body battered, his ego suffering from the badly missed call that had taken them out to the tower of rock in the dark of night.
He was walking with noticeable pain. His face and arms were peeling from saltwater sores and eight hours waiting for rescue in the burning sun. His ribs were sore from the pipe attack, and his cheekbone, the bridge of his nose, and his lips were creased with healing scabs where Andras and his thugs had pounded him and split the skin.
Adding insult to injury were the hours sitting in the Argo’s tiny conference room, answering questions from the Spanish and Portuguese authorities with Joe and Captain Haynes, and then a fourteen-hour trip by plane from Santa Maria to Lisbon and over to D.C.
The least someone could have done was spring for business class.
Now fighting jet lag, exhaustion, and his wounded pride, Kurt pressed forward toward another conference room, where he and Joe would discuss with Dirk Pitt and members of the U.S. Navy and the National
Security Agency everything they’d already explained a half a dozen times. All the while, whatever trail Andras had left grew colder and faded away.
He neared the end of the hall and despite the pain and fatigue spotted a reason to smile and keep going. At the door to the conference room he saw Gamay Trout. It troubled him that she was alone.
They hugged, and he could feel that much of her usual self-assurance was missing.
“You don’t look so good, Kurt. How do you feel?”
“Never better,” he said.
She smiled.
“Paul?” he asked.
“He’s still unconscious,” she managed.
“I’m sorry.”
“His EEG is improving, and a CAT scan showed no damage, but I’m scared, Kurt.”
“He’ll come back,” Kurt said hopefully. “After all, look what he’s got waiting for him.”
She tried to smile, and then grabbed the door handle and pushed through.
Kurt followed her in and sat protectively beside her. Joe arrived a moment later and sat on her other side. Dirk Pitt, Hiram Yaeger, and some brass from the Navy held positions down the table from them. At the head of the table, a suit from the NSA took center stage.
Dirk Pitt stood and explained. “I know you’ve all been through a lot, but we’re here because the situation has gone from bad to worse.”
He waved toward the man in the suit. “This is Cameron Brinks from the NSA. He and Rear Admiral Farnsworth are spearheading the response to what we believe is a very present threat to international peace.”
Cameron Brinks stood up. “We have to thank you men for discovering and bringing this threat to our attention. Like you, we believe a well-financed or even nationally backed group has developed a directed-energy weapon of incredible power. If the extrapolations from the data are correct, this weapon could undermine the current world socio-military balance.”
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