Phantom Prospect

by Alex Archer

  “What the hell do I care?”

  “I don’t know, why don’t you care?”

  The guard looked at her. “You know what kind of life I had back in the States? I came home from Iraq and my government forgot about me. I lost my house and my car. Then my wife. It all went to shit because all I was good for was holding a gun and killing terrorists. No one cared. At least with Henderson there’s a chance of getting ahead.”

  “But you’re still just toting a gun.”

  “So what? I don’t care anymore.” He looked at her. “Now shut up. I don’t want to have to punch you in the face, but I will if you talk to me anymore.”

  “All right, fine.” Annja fell silent and watched as a submarine she hadn’t noticed before drifted down a tunnel. “Is that the rest of the workers?”

  “I said be quiet, lady.”

  “Just wondering.”

  “Yeah, okay? That’s them. That tunnel leads out of the cavern. And that’s where we’ll be heading once we finish strapping you and your friend to the bomb that Henderson had built for him.”

  “Who built it?”

  The guard chuckled. “Some Pakistani scientist who thought he was working for al Qaeda. It was actually pretty funny. Imagine his surprise when Henderson killed him after he took delivery of it.”

  “Just a trail of bodies in Henderson’s wake, huh?”

  She heard a noise and saw the top of Cole’s head appear out of the conning tower. The second guard helped him out and then the first guard emerged huffing and sweating after the exertion. “Well, that sucked,” he said.

  “Help me get them ashore so Henderson can leave.” The second guard elbowed Annja. “Let’s get a move on.”

  Annja walked over toward the gangplank, amazed that the sub had stayed close to the dock despite none of the ropes still holding it there.

  As she came abreast of the gangway, Annja spotted a familiar face. Sheila was walking toward her. And the smile on her face was anything but friendly.

  “Hiya, Sheila, sorry about the wrist.”

  Sheila punched Annja in the gut. Annja retched and bent over, trying to get her wind back. When she came back up, Sheila was in her face. “I wanted to kill you myself. But Henderson insisted. Here’s the good news, though. I’m going back to the Seeker and I’m going to kill everyone on that damned boat. Hunter, Dave, Sammy, all the rest of them. And then I’m going to have a real nice time playing with Jax.”

  “Isn’t that going to be a little tough with a busted wrist?”

  Sheila shrugged. “I’ve had worse injuries.”

  “What about the explosion? It might destroy them all before you have a chance to,” Annja said.

  Sheila thought about that for a moment and then shrugged. “The hell with it. As long as they die, I’m good.”

  Henderson’s head popped out of the conning tower. “Sheila, darling, are you coming?”

  Annja glanced back at Henderson and then at Sheila. “So, that’s the deal, is it? You guys shacking up on the sub ride back to the processing facility. That’s sweet.”

  Sheila punched Annja in the gut again. “It’s nothing like that at all.”

  “Okay.” Annja gasped and sucked in a breath. “Well, have fun, anyway. He looks like he might need his diaper changed.”

  Sheila frowned at the guards. “Make sure you put the bomb right between her legs. I want no chance that she can survive.”

  The first guard cleared his throat. “It’s a nuclear bomb. Don’t think there’s much chance she’s going to survive.”

  Sheila stormed off.

  Annja glanced at the guards. “She’s really a big fan of mine.”

  “Yeah, we can tell.”

  They led her and Cole off the gangway. Cole kept his head down and basically had to be carried by the first guard. Annja hoped he was okay, but she had no idea what they’d done to him before she got into the submarine.

  “What happened to him?” she asked finally.

  The first guard shrugged. “Probably lingering effects from the Taser session he had earlier. Maybe all the fight’s gone out of him. He’s ready to die.”

  “That makes one of us,” Annja said.

  “You don’t have a choice,” the guard said. “Give us any grief and we’ll just shoot you. Play your cards right and you and the quiet man here can have some valuable alone time before the bomb blows.”

  “Nothing like going out with a bang,” the second guard said with a laugh.

  “Oh, that’s hysterical,” Annja said. “Henderson really does hire the brightest boys he can find, huh?”

  They walked up the slope toward the lower level and Annja heard the submarine’s engine switch on. The guards stopped long enough for her to see the submarine head off down the tunnel toward the cavern’s exit.

  “That’s it,” the first guard said. “Now it’s just us left.”

  The second guard nodded. “Let’s get this done and hightail it out of here. I don’t like being left behind. I’ve been expendable before and it’s no fun.”

  “Good point.”

  Annja let herself be guided to the lower level into a section that she hadn’t seen before. She could see the shaft that led down to the bedrock that Henderson wanted blown up.

  At the bottom of the shaft, she could see a yellow circular case with the international symbol for nuclear material on it.

  She looked back at the guards. “That’s it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Annja nodded. “You know, come to think of it, I don’t really want to die in this place.”

  34

  Annja summoned the sword and it appeared in her hands in the blink of an eye. She slashed down on the first guard’s gun, knocking it from his hand. The second guard brought his gun up but, at that moment, Cole’s head snapped up and he kicked the guard square in his crotch.

  “Annja, my hands,” Cole said.

  Annja cut the chain between his cuffs and then turned back to the first guard, who had backed away from Annja after seeing a mystical sword appear out of thin air.

  “Still thinking about blowing us up?” she said.

  He held up his hands. “I was just following orders.”

  “Of course you were.” Annja advanced on him and he stumbled over a crate. He landed hard but then rolled backward. As he came up, Annja saw that he had unholstered his pistol and was bringing it to bear on her center mass.

  She slashed down and the guard fell under her blade.

  Annja swung back to Cole, who was busy wrestling with the second guard. She saw the second guard score a kick into Cole’s stomach and Cole fell toward the shaft. Annja leaped forward and steadied him with the flat of her blade before he could topple over the edge.

  As she guided him from the edge, the second guard grabbed his gun and turned it on them.

  “Stop!”

  Annja froze, her sword held horizontally by her right side. “All right, just take it easy.”

  The second guard backed away to check on the first guard. Annja shook her head. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  The guard looked and blanched at the sight of what Annja’s sword had done. He stared at her. “Where did you get that thing?”

  “What thing?” Annja asked.

  The guard didn’t hesitate and raised his gun. As he did so, Annja flicked her hands toward him and sent the sword spinning right at his head. His neck spouted a fountain of blood before he fell forward, a spreading pool expanding outward toward the shaft with the nuclear bomb.

  Annja helped Cole to his feet.

  “Are they dead?” he asked.

  Annja nodded. “Yeah, the sword saw to that,” she said as she willed the sword back to the otherwhere.

  “Good. The bastards.” Cole looked around. “Can we leave now? I’m tired of being here.”

  Annja smiled. “I wish. We’ve got to take care of some other business first.”

  “What business?”

  “First, my handcuffs, then the b
omb.”

  Cole grabbed a set of keys from one of the dead guards. He freed Annja’s hands and then removed the broken cuffs from his own wrists.

  Cole shook his head. “I must have missed some of the details after they knocked me out. What did you say about a bomb?”

  Annja pointed at the shaft. “You see that?”

  “Yeah, you saved me from falling down there. What about it?”

  “Take a look at what’s inside.” Annja waited until Cole crawled over to the lip of the shaft and looked down. The color drained from his face and he stared back at Annja. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “That’s a nuclear device, Annja.”

  Annja nodded. “Yep. That’s what Henderson is using to open up the reservoir of oil that’s buried beneath the bedrock in this cavern.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I wish.”

  Cole frowned. “So, we’re sitting atop a nuclear bomb right now. Any idea when it’s going to go off?”

  Annja frowned. “Don’t know. Those two were supposed to put us down there and then take one of the mechanical sharks to rendezvous with Henderson at another facility.”

  “He’s waiting for them?”

  Annja shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Why maybe?”

  Annja sat down on the lip of the shaft and dangled her legs over the side. The bomb sat thirty feet below her. “Depends on how much you trust Henderson’s word.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “The guy’s a fruitcake. Banking on his word would make as much sense as trusting a politician. What I think is going to happen is Henderson is going to get a safe distance away and then trigger that bomb. If the guards are gone, well and good, but I don’t think for a moment he really gives a damn about them.”

  “Which means we don’t have a lot of time,” Cole said.

  “Exactly.”

  Cole cleared his throat. “I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but why the hell are we staying here instead of getting out?”

  Annja pointed at the bomb. “Because if that thing goes off, then hundreds of thousands of people might die.”

  Cole frowned. “The bomb’s not that big, Annja.”

  “Henderson’s got this thing positioned atop a fault line. As in earthquake fault lines.”

  “So it will cause an earthquake.”

  “What it might do is precipitate a massive quake that would result in a tsunami that could take out part of the eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada.”

  Cole’s eyebrows shot up. “No way!”

  “We’ve got to stop that thing from going off.”

  “Just like that?”

  Annja faced him. “Got a better idea?”

  “Hey, my specialty is sharks. Bombs weren’t on my course electives, Annja. I’m fairly useless in this situation.”

  “Well, you can always amuse me with your comedic gold routines.”

  “Great.”

  Annja looked at the walls of the shaft. The drilling had left a series of pockmarks that Annja thought could make decent hand-and footholds. She lowered herself over the edge and found her way onto the first one close to her feet.

  “Jesus, you’re really serious about this,” Cole said. “You think you can do something?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ve got to try.” She looked up at him. “Look, it’s not fair for me to ask you to stay. Why don’t you take that shark and get out of here?”

  “Don’t tempt me,” Cole said.

  “I’m serious.”

  Cole nodded. “Yeah, I know you are. But what good will it do me if I run? Even if I get out of the cavern, there’s no guarantee I’ll make it out and back to the Seeker. And if this thing is below the ship, then the Seeker and my brother might be in mortal danger, too. That’s not cool.”

  “Agreed.”

  “I’ll stay.”

  Annja continued climbing down, using the holds until she at last made it to the small ledge sitting next to the yellow container. She looked at the top of the container and saw the variety of symbols, all of which were clearly designed to scare the bejeezus out of anyone who got too close.

  Annja took a few deep breaths and looked at the four claps securing the lid to the main body of the bomb. “I screw this up and we’re going to glow in the dark,” she said.

  “You screw that up and we won’t have to worry about glowing,” Cole said. “There won’t be enough pieces of us left to glow.”

  Annja nodded and released one of the metal clasps. It popped back and Annja heard a vague hiss of escaping air. Cripes, she thought, have I already released radioactivity into the air? Was she already breathing contaminated air? I have no clue what I’m doing here, she thought.

  “How’s it going?” Cole asked.

  Annja shrugged. “Here goes another clasp.” She undid the clasp and heard another hiss of escaping air.

  “That sound freaks me out,” Cole said.

  “You and me both,” Annja replied. She released the third clasp. She took a breath and sighed, trying to stay focused. A line of sweat broke out along her hairline and she wiped some of it away before turning back to the device.

  “Fourth time’s the charm?” she called out.

  Cole laughed. “Let’s hope so.”

  Annja bent back and looked closely at the device. All right, she thought, just one more to go and then maybe I’ll get a better look at what this thing is all about.

  She undid the fourth and final clasp.

  Another hiss of air escaped.

  “I’m ready to lift the lid off,” Annja said.

  “Go slow,” Cole said.

  Annja looked up at him. “What makes you say that?”

  He shrugged. “Every movie I’ve ever seen they always say that. Maybe bombs don’t like being rushed. Damned if I know.”

  Annja tuned back to the bomb and lifted the yellow lid off. She stood and threw it up at Cole. “Hang on to this, will you?”

  He caught it and set it down next to him on the lip of the shaft.

  Annja peered down at the wiring and the digital display on top of the bomb. To the right of the display, a small remote receiver with a wire sticking out was situated next to a bunch of wires.

  “It’s rigged with a remote,” she said.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.” Annja examined the rest of the area. “There must be a hundred different colored wires twisting this way and that all over the place.” Annja peered closer and saw a metal cylinder in the center of the device. She tried to remember any facts she might have come across relating to nuclear bombs.

  She couldn’t think of a single one.

  She took another calming breath and started touching the various wires, trying to see if there was a single one that looked as if it might initiate the reaction that would trigger the bomb.

  “What do you see, Annja?”

  “I don’t know what I’m looking at. It could be any number of things here. There are so many wires. It’s confusing as hell. It probably takes an atomic scientist to make sense out of this thing.”

  “Well, you’d better hurry up or it won’t matter anymore.”

  “I need a knife to cut these wires.”

  Cole frowned. “Annja, don’t you have, like, the biggest knife in the world, in that sword?”

  Annja laughed. “That’s a bit like using a hatchet for surgery.”

  “Sometimes a hatchet does this job,” Cole said. “And I don’t think anyone’s going to complain about your bedside manner as long as you get results. Like, soon.”

  Annja nodded. “Good point.”

  She drew the sword again.

  “I’m going to cut the wires,” she said. “First for the remote and then for what I think is the timer.”

  “Go for it,” Cole said.

  Annja eased the tip of the blade through the mass of wires closest to the remote receiver. “If this is the receiver and initiator, then I’m ho
ping this takes it out.”

  “And if not?”

  “Then we’re screwed.”

  “Well,” Cole said. “Good luck. Here’s to choosing right.”

  Annja nodded and carefully started slicing into the mass of wires. The sword divided them one after the other until she’d cut through a dozen of them. Annja removed the sword and leaned back.

  “Did it work?”

  The display suddenly flashed and a digital readout lit up showing a rapidly dwindling clock.

  “Damn.”

  Cole’s voice floated down to her. “What’s that mean?”

  Annja looked up at him. “I think it means that I made the wrong decision when I cut the wires.”

  35

  “Are you sure?”

  Annja nodded. “As soon as I cut the wires leading from the receiver into the center of the bomb, the clock sped up.”

  “How much time is left?” Cole asked.

  Annja looked at the clock. “Two minutes.”

  “Two minutes?”

  “Yeah.”

  Cole said nothing for a moment. Then he cleared his throat. “Well, that’s not much time to do anything except hope that there is an afterlife, huh?”

  Annja smiled. “Pretty much.”

  “Nice knowing you, Annja.”

  “Likewise,” Annja said. But she kept peering at the clock. What if she cut the wires leading from the clock? Were they booby-trapped? Would that simply initiate the detonation? She frowned. They had so little time left that if she chose to cut the wires it wouldn’t make much difference if she was wrong.

  “I’m going to cut some more wires,” she said.

  “You always face death this calmly?”

  Annja shrugged. “Maybe I’m just used to it.”

  “That’s really sad.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.” Annja bent over the timer with her sword and saw where the wires came away and led into the metal cylinder. If I can just get those cut before the clock runs out, she thought, then there might be a chance to stop this.

  She eased the blade below the wires and watched as it sliced through them cleanly. Then she leaned back and checked the clock.