The Victoria Stone

by Bob Finley

  Chapter 85

  Bereel Jambou had been at the computer work station in the penthouse for almost an hour. His cauldron of anger had gradually dropped to the level of simmering frustration but it wouldn't take much to set it off again. That incompetent fool Banner couldn't even carry out a simple execution against an unarmed wimp of a man. And how had he possibly avoided Leo's attacks? He'd seen it on film, but it still seemed impossible. He seemed to know what Leo was going to do seconds before he did it. It had to be connected with whatever Matsumoto had brought back with him that night he'd boarded the ship. The...whatever it was...that he'd told...no, ordered...Banner to recover. That idiot, Banner. Every time he even thought of the man, his stomach burned. With all his money, why hadn't he hired somebody else, somebody who'd get the job done. And then, as if he didn't have enough problems, Matsumoto had somehow gotten away. Gotten away! How could that be?! Nobody had ever escaped from Leo before. And, now...nothing. He'd just disappeared into thin air. He'd searched every nook and cranny in the place...every place equipped with video monitors, that is. Nothing. Where could he have gone? And, Leo...he looked at Leo's control panel again for the umpteenth time. If the LED readouts were telling the truth, Leo was fully functional. So, why wasn't he finding the runaway?

  Uneasy, Jambou got up from the console and wandered around the penthouse, his thoughts turned inward. His eyes flitted, unseeing, from one place to another. There could only be one answer. This, this...rodent, Matsumoto was supposed to be some kind of a computer whiz, according to what both Justin and Breton had told him. He must have found some way to...the thought stopped him cold. He must have built some kind of...that would...what? Override Leo? No! That was impossible. The security system had triple-redundancy cut-outs that would set off all kinds of alarms, including initiation of a punitive response against whoever tried to circumvent it. But...he slammed up hard against the reality. It had been circumvented. It had to have been. Otherwise, Matsumoto would be a smoking ruin. But if the little nerd had succeeded, to what degree had he done so? Was his whole security system compromised? Would Leo still respond to his commands? Was Leo still receiving, and more importantly, acknowledging the transmissions from the implant in his chest wall? His fingers unconsciously wandered to the small scar on his chest and tenderly probed its outline. How bad could it be, he wondered. If, somehow, Matsumoto had taken over Leo, then his whole future was threatened. He'd have no protection from the hostages, or even from his own security force for that matter, if Leo was no longer dependable as his bodyguard. He shuddered at the thought of being vulnerable to that gorilla Banner. And he wouldn't have any protection from some foreign country trying to force him into submission if Leo wasn't monitoring his heartbeat. Why, he could be killed and nothing would happen. The bombs he'd so carefully planted around the world over these past two years would lie dormant, not knowing that their master had been executed, not exploding as retribution for his death. There'd be nobody to mourn his passing. The possibility galvanized him into action. He whirled about and dropped into the chair, typing as quickly as he could the command for Leo to run a self-diagnostic test. He waited. Not patiently. Finally, the test done, Leo announced his good health. But, what if Matsumoto had somehow written a program that fooled Leo into thinking that he was okay when he really wasn't?

  He snorted and slammed his hand down on the desk surface. What if he was just getting paranoid, he thought with irony. What if none of this was true, and Matsumoto had somehow just gotten lucky? What if...

  He stared at the text of the completed test that had scrolled down the screen.

  "What if he's turned Leo against me...against me?!" he demanded aloud of himself. "What if they're all just waiting out there for me to show myself so Leo can execute me?! Wouldn't that be a sad ending to a promising career?" He got up and walked over to his command chair, idly flipping on the external cameras. The walls lit up with the neon blue of the sea, flooding the room with its diffused light. He wandered slowly over to stare thoughtfully out into the nothingness of the vast sea. This was his, and he couldn't afford to lose it, not now, not when he was so close to having it all. He looked back over at Leo's proclamation that all was well. Walked over and stood before it, slowly stroking the light stubble on his chin with the back of one hand. He decided.

  He went over to a small closet on the far side of the room, removed a short, lethal-looking machine pistol from it and slung its strap over his neck. Then he crossed back to the console and pulled the keyboard closer. He typed in a series of commands, each followed by verification codes, that instructed Leo to turn off the program that monitored personal identification badges, leaving only the topside and the internal perimeter defense systems active.

  "Now then, Mister Matsumoto," he murmured aloud, "you may be safe from Leo, but I'm safe from you. And I'm the one you'd better be watching for, because, unlike my incompetent ‘sergeant of the guard’, I don't fail!"

  The sudden dimming of the lights so corresponded to his keystroke confirming the new security configuration that he thought for just a moment that he'd somehow caused it. But then the quiet of his quarters was shattered by the loud rip of what had to be a machine gun in a sustained firing mode. He leaped up, forgetting for a second that he had a weapon of his own slung around his neck, until the butt of it swung in a violent arc and whacked him in the ribs. Startled, he looked down, then grabbed it in a death grip.

  "What..." was all he managed to say. Stunned, he had frozen in a crouch, his eyes wildly scanning the room, his head whipping from side to side as he tried to identify and localize the source of the trouble. Because it was trouble, he had no doubt of that.

  He straightened and hustled across the room. Putting his ear to a door, he listened, but heard nothing. Whatever it was, it had to have come from the hallway beyond the door. The problem was, nobody but him even knew there was a hallway beyond the door. So, what? Or, rather, who? Whats didn't shoot guns.

  It didn't make sense. There couldn't be anybody out there. And, if there was somebody out there, who could it be? There was only one way to get to that hallway, and that was through him.

  No. Not so. There was another way. But... His eyes widened and he heard his own breath as he gasped.

  "They wouldn't dare!"

  The realization flooded over him and left him weak in the knees. The only way to get to that hallway, other than through this very room, was to come in through the escape exit. His ‘back door’. That now seemed to have become somebody's front door. How could anybody even know about the secret door under the carpet at the end of the hallway that led to the secret tunnel, that led to the secret submarine, that was his last-ditch, no-hope way out of here? He'd told no one. No one! His mind struggled to understand what his common sense told him was impossible.

  The second burst of automatic fire almost catapulted him away from the door. It was closer! But this time the lights didn't go dim.

  "Leo got one of them!" he realized. But they must have learned where the sensors were located in the walls of the corridor. That would explain it. They were advancing, whoever ‘they’ were, shooting the sensors out of the walls as they came! That meant they were almost...

  He whirled and ran the width of the room, ducking into the L-shaped hallway leading to the heavy door that opened onto the cavern just as another burst of gunfire sounded somewhere behind him, muffled this time. His hand found the cocking mechanism on his weapon and he worked the slide lever, the nasty-looking weapon snicking into readiness.

  Swinging the armored door open, he remembered to look outside, still not sure whether Leo had been defeated and there might be a mob of hostages, or even guards, waiting to ambush him. Then he remembered, surprisingly, that Leo couldn't have been defeated, since there'd just been an execution, or at least an attempt at one, in the no-longer-secret hallway he'd abandoned. Then he realized that he'd probably been too hasty in disabling the ID function that would automatically kill anybody not wearing it. But it was t
oo late to fix that now.

  He hastily switched on the moat bridge, desperately fidgeting in place as its motor slowly extended the section of catwalk. While there was still a three-foot gap, he jumped across the void and ran to the retraction gear. He jabbed the switch and, knowing it would automatically withdraw the bridge without his further help, he pivoted and broke into a run along the narrow catwalk. He had to slow down some after the first few seconds because his running caused the catwalk to begin swaying dangerously. He hadn't known it would do that, since he'd never had cause to run across it before.

  Looking back several times as he hurried across the hundred-foot cavern, he was fearful that whoever was pursuing him would come through the penthouse door before he reached the safety of the tunnel on the far side. His fears were realized when he looked back for the third time, just yards from the end of the catwalk. At least three men, all dressed in black, burst from the penthouse and checked hard against the rail on the elevator landing. He jerked his weapon up and hastily sprayed them with a half-clip volley. Through the muzzle flash he saw them, miraculously, dive back inside. His failure to hit them, even one of them, infuriated him. He snatched the skeleton stock to his shoulder, took quick aim, and emptied the rest of the clip in their direction. Maybe some of the bullets would get through the still-open doorway and take some of them down.

  With only a second's hesitation to see whether he'd hit any of them, he turned and bolted for the safety of the tunnel. As soon as he cleared the opening, he practically smeared himself against the inside wall, in case they tried the same tactics he had. They didn't. After a few seconds, he decided they wouldn't waste ammo on a target they couldn't see, and jogged down the tunnel a few feet. Turning left, he ducked into the main computer room, squatting, then crawling to avoid being seen through the massive glass windows that looked out onto the cavern. He mentally cursed the high-visibility of the room. When it was built, the windows that angled out from their bottom edges allowed an operator to see the 20-ton overhead traveling crane that was needed in the early construction stages of the huge cavern. Later, he'd come to enjoy the feeling of power that looking down on his creation through the massive windows gave him. Now he saw the vulnerability to which his ego had exposed him. He was half-way across the room when he remembered where the light switch was. So he crabbed back across the room and, reaching up with one hand, turned off the lights. He still had plenty of light in the room from the cavern's ceiling lights, but he didn't feel quite so exposed.

  Risking a quick look, he could see men down on the floor of the great room, rooted where they'd been when they'd heard the gunfire he'd loosed at his pursuers, straining to see what had happened far above them. One or two were beginning to drift away. Maybe to take cover. He couldn't blame them. He wished for a more secure place himself.

  He squatted back down, then slowly slid to a sitting position on the cool stone floor with his back against a computer cabinet.

  "Now what?" he wondered. "Who are these people, anyway?"

  Then he remembered Marc Justin's words. "Not ‘words’, but warning," he corrected himself. Could these people really be the super cops Justin had told him...bragged to him...about? Or somebody else? Who else? Did it really matter? These people had guns. And they seemed to be after him. And, he remembered, Leo had probably already killed one of them, which was the same as if he had killed one of them, he suspected. And cops, by any name, supposedly held a real special place in their hearts for cop-killers, no matter where they were from.

  He slumped further down and thought hard. No matter who they were, they'd caught him completely by surprise. And, worse, by coming in through his escape route, they'd not only denied him access to his only sure way out of here, they'd avoided his own personal army, those pigs who were supposed to protect him from any kind of threat, including any invasion he'd been sure would never happen. So, he was up here in the rafters with the enemy, and his soldiers were down there, a hundred feet below them, with no way to come to his rescue but an elevator from which both they and he were cut off.

  He gritted his teeth and slammed his elbow back against the cabinet in frustration. It didn't help. And it hurt.

  "This should never have happened. Not in a million years!" he hissed to the darkened room. "They'll ruin everything! Don't they know that? Don't they care?!"

  The sound of metal against metal rang through the stone walls, the sound carried by the metal girders that were anchored in the walls. He sucked in his breath and held it, listening intently. There it was again.

  He pivoted his body to face the computer cabinet and slowly rose to peep over the bottom edge of the window sill. At first he didn't see anything. But then his eye caught a distant movement, blurred a little by distance and dim lighting, as he peered between the steel girders and ceiling sub-structure. He rose a little higher. And squinted. And saw what looked like short ropes swaying beneath the girders. A low moan escaped him.

  They were climbing. And they were coming for him. He pulled the clip from his weapon and looked at it. It was empty.

  And then he was surprised to find himself on the floor and everything around him undulating in a strange dance. His eyes went wide. For the first time, he remembered that eccentric man...what was his name?...Shepherd...and his wild claims that his home, this castle he'd built himself, safe from the rest of the world, was going to blow up. Stupid man. But...? This was the worst tremor...no, earthquake, he forced himself to think...whatever, it was the worst one he could remember. What if the old fool was right? What if the ceiling did collapse? And the sea poured in? What would he do then? Where would he be safe? What about his...diamonds?!

  Whatever else Bereel Numolani Jambou was, he was a survivor. He rolled onto his belly and quickly slithered further into the computer room, looking for a hiding place. He was already planning ahead. First, this bunch of thugs that had somehow violated the sanctity of his home, shooting at him, no less! And now, this dormant volcano that was supposed to be as dead as petrified wood threatening to collapse and destroy everything he'd worked for...

  He squeezed in between two cabinets and propped his back against the wall.

  "Why couldn't they have just..."

  His eyes roamed the room, seeing nothing, yet seeing with a clarity that astonished him. And then, in almost measurable graduations, they took on a look that was hard, and darkly reptilian. And he smiled that tiniest of smiles.

  Chapter 86

  Marc, Frank, Bill and Janese had been inseparable since Banner's failed attempt to execute Kim. For a couple of minutes after Kim's headlong plunge into the tunnel at the top of the winding stone stairs, they'd all been afraid that, in his rage, Banner would shoot them all down where they stood for their part in the escape. Even some of the guards seemed afraid of what Banner might do next, especially after he told the five he'd sent after Kim that he'd personally shoot every one of them unless they brought their prey back for him to finish off. Mostly, the small band of hostages tried to be wherever Banner wasn't.

  They were startled, and more than a little curious, when they heard the metallic ringing of feet running across the catwalk high above their heads. Especially since, in the dim light near the vaulted ceiling, it looked like the running figure was none other than Jambou.

  They passed startled and went straight to scared when excited shouts were answered by an Uzi opening up on full throttle. The maniacal roar of the machine pistol on full automatic made even the guards around them wince and dive for cover. The whine of bullets ricocheting off metal and stone, then tumbling through the air in their vicinity like the low flutter of tiny, panicked birds made Justin close his eyes and hold his breath. In the uneasy silence that followed, nobody moved. Ten seconds ticked by.

  When Frank suddenly grabbed Janese's and Bill's arms, they both jumped, though it had been more than an hour since Kim's miraculous getaway. They both looked at him in alarm because of the expression on his face.

  "What is it?" Bill demanded.<
br />
  "There!. Do you feel that?" Frank almost whispered, his eyes searching the cavern.

  "Feel what?" Janese asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.

  "The tremor," Marc answered for him.

  "Yes!!" Frank responded eagerly, glad that someone else had felt it, too.

  When Marc slowly turned to look at the pool in which the VIKING lay, Janese and Bill followed his gaze. Frank, instead, stared intently upward toward the ceiling.

  "What's the water doing?" Janese asked no one in particular. The water along the edge of the pool was dancing in tiny wavelets. Their action spread a jitter of nervous water across the entire surface.

  "Wait..." Frank murmured, "...it's coming."

  They all looked up then, to see the lights ninety feet above their heads begin to sway in rhythm, a slow undulation. Finally, the shock rolled through the great cavern, booming ominously. Forewarned, they all abruptly dropped to the floor again and waited for the dizzying motion to stop. But instead, it was followed by an even greater shaking, joined by the sound of unseen things falling, clanging and breaking. One of the lights overhead exploded as the fixture whipped against a hard surface in the ceiling structure and glass fragments rained down to the stone floor far below, tinkling as the pieces shattered. In the relative quiet that followed, a slight haze filled the air from debris sifting down from the glassine "cork" in the vent plug of the dormant volcano that was their prison.

  "Whaddaya think, Frank?" Marc asked, looking uneasily around them.

  "I don't think this old pot-bellied stove can take much more," Frank observed quietly.