Deep Sea One

by Preston; Child

  Deep Sea One

  Order of the Back Sun - Book 2

  Preston Child

  Heiken Marketing

  Copyright © 2014 by Preston Child

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed "Attention: Permissions Coordinator," at the address below.

  Heiken Marketing

  heikenmarketing@gmail.com

  Publisher's Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author's imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Edited (USA) by Joni Wilson

  Other Books in This Series

  Ice Station Wolfenstein - Order of the Black Sun - Book 1

  Chapter 1

  It had been years since Purdue visited the monastery. He had promised to make it there much sooner, but unforeseen adventure had ensnared him and on return home he found himself lacking a few choice things never before depleted in his home. Coming home. It was a phrase he thought he would not experience again. For a while. It had been months since the treacherous trek and near-fatal adventure he undertook with a team of unlikely colleagues to find out if the fabled Wolfenstein Ice Station actually existed. The discovery of the lost subterranean Nazi compound in Antarctica had only fueled the grandeur of his recorded profile, especially the media attention he received after journalist Sam Cleave utilized his extraordinary writing skills to publicize it—just about when Professor Frank Matlock's book on the expedition hit the shelves.

  After the outbursts about conspiracy theories and naysayers pitting scholar against scholar in the halls of academia, Dave Purdue felt the rather rare need to put his feet up for a bit and embarked on a brisk journey to Ireland to collect some of his favorite wines. He was a refined alcoholic, scandalously easy to appease with the presentation of proper cultivars or even the slightest promise of a hundred-proof alcohol. For once he felt like taking time for himself for a night, not bothering with any of his technological dreams and gadgets. Inventions could wait, he thought. His normally restless demeanor took a temporary cessation to make way for some introspection, something he usually shoved to the back of his needs to accommodate his flamboyancy. Such was the life of an obnoxious billionaire.

  In the late hour of the day he ceremoniously opened his cellar door, craving instinctively for something so sinful that it had to be produced with a rosary around its barrel to contain its iniquitous thrall. Rows of scalloped wooden racks awaited in dramatic form, bearing their dusty bottles under a web of mustiness. It smelled like the Edinburgh catacombs in Scotland and was equally antique. Wrichtishousis held within its ancient walls the whispers of history, practically oozing from its grey stone crevices when the wind turned just right and Purdue, even for his exceptional aptitude for technology, basked in history and its treasures, its mysteries irresistible to his probing.

  His eyes combed the respective corks and colored glass for the sheen of his new batch, undoubtedly noticeable among the thick grey residue prevalent on the rest of the stored pleasures he kept here. After passing the third row from the entrance to the cellar, Purdue passed a stack of wooden crates roughly piled against the wall. They contained exotic concoctions he had acquired while in Argentina and Peru, some drinkable, some turned to nothing short of a substitute for arsenic if he wished to up the challenge of his inebriation. A pale little bulb was suspended from the ceiling, dangling from a modest electrical cord, and it illuminated the back part of the room just enough to help Purdue read the labels.

  Whistling something that had had not yet been written, the thirsty billionaire picked the flavor of the evening, a robust Armagnac he had been saving for weeks.

  "Hello, darling," he purred, as he gently laid the smooth glass bottle's length in one of his palms, running his other hand caringly over the purple and tan label, envisioning the night ahead under the care of the liquid within. A shadow stirred ever so slightly to his right, there where the impotent light could not reach. Purdue looked up at the hanging bulb, imagining that perhaps the wind coming down the staircase from the landing might have disturbed it and caused the play of light and shadow. But it was still, unmoving.

  Purdue frowned. Not a nervous man by nature he did have to admit to feeling a shiver of ice momentarily trickling down his back. Perhaps I'm just tired, he thought, and maybe I am drunk on account already. He smiled at his own wit and held the bottle up to the light. From the corner on the right, now his left as he moved under the light, an almost imperceptible shuffle sounded that made him jump. His heart jolted, but by pure instinct his hands held the bottle firmly. Mice, he reassured himself. In a mansion aged several centuries, rodents and scavengers were part and parcel of the décor and charm of the place.

  In the back of his mind Purdue wished that his loyal Rottweiler bodyguard was still guarding his trail. The blame was squarely on him, as it was his own fault that he had not yet replaced the late Ziv Blomstein as his very capable and deadly sidearm, after the self-sacrifice of the man facilitated his salvation along with other members of the Wolfenstein expedition. Now he would have appreciated an imposing hand to sweep the area. Purdue had a remarkable instinct within him, surprisingly not only for sniffing out lucrative prospects and deadly pursuits to stroke his ego. At this moment his instinct told him that he was not alone and he heeded it immediately.

  "Come out! I am not a fool. And you are apparently not as good at hiding as you might think!" he bluffed and found no response.

  What bothered him most was the possible loss of his wine, not his life, should he go on and peer around the old massive wooden rack against the border wall and find himself forced to use a broken bottle as a weapon. Purdue's ineptitude at covert stalking became evident as his shadow lunged clumsily ahead of his creeping frame, posting itself against the wall to betray his action. Holding the bottle hidden to the side, he turned his back to the room and dared peek behind the rack. With a rapid heart and rushing blood elevating his concentration, he pulled the rack aside with a quick and swift jar, ready to attack the lurking danger in the corner. Roaring, he held out the bottle in defense, only to behold a hole at the foot of the wall in which a dry leaf was caught, scraping about in the breath of the breeze that emanated from a large crack, which had been spalling for some time.

  "Bugger!" he shouted, half-smiling at his foolishness. "Thank God I did not break my wine bottle and miss communion."

  A large body shot toward the staircase from the opposite side of the room, its footsteps so light that Purdue almost did not hear it. Numb with fright his fingers lost their grip and the sublime elixir spilled across the floor among shards of green glass, which threatened his steps. His eyes focused just in time to see the human shape lift itself over the last three stairs with remarkable agility.

  "What the fuck?" he screamed, and slammed the red security button at the bottom of the second shelf of the older wines. A mechanical droning announced the activation of the large iron doors just outside, and immediately an alarm was dispatched to his security guards. Purdue, fuming about the loss of one of his best wines, took his time to ascend the staircase, unperturbed now by the intruder's escape attempt. His system was infallible and he could afford to walk leisurely to collect his quarry.

  Through the cellar's heavy wooden
door he crossed into a large predominantly white room strewn with modern furniture and several LED screens linked to inventions in the making. On the counters that lined the sides of the room a collection of carelessly disarranged tools lay about among scattered sheets of design blueprints. Bright white fluorescent lights were fixed to the slightly concave ceiling, illuminating the work below. It was as if Purdue had stepped out of the Middle Ages and right into the Space Age as he crossed the threshold.

  Down the corridor out of the lab-like workroom, which led to the now-locked iron doors, he could hear a mad scuffling and a smile cracked his face.

  "Are you secure, sir?" a tall, heavyset security guard asked as he came through the iron doors, which he had unlocked from the other side. Purdue's smirk faded, "Where is he?"

  "There is no one here, sir."

  "What do you mean there is nobody here? I chased the bastard out of the cellar and locked down before he could get this far!" Purdue insisted, dumbfounded by the apparent disappearance of the intruder.

  "Sir, we just opened the doors, locked and loaded. And all we found was you," the man in the all-black task force suit reported with a frown. Two others were with him. There was no way anyone could have exited the room without their attention and intervention. He turned to look back into the room with a chilling feeling, "Could you check the room, please, gentlemen?"

  "Sweep the place!" the captain of the security unit barked and the three of them shot in different directions while Purdue remained in his spot. He could not fathom the effortless flight of the burglar. Surely there was ample reason for him to host a break-in, but he had never met a prowler who could elude his security team. Now they were running around like cockroaches on fire, while he waited for their expertise to render his home safe again. In the meantime he had locked down the rest of the mansion, which would notify the wing guards.

  With a sudden whoosh the shape bolted down from above the iron doors and made for the dark adjacent room and a side window, which was ajar.

  "Here! Here!" Purdue cried to his men, as the shape leapt onto the windowsill. A clicking of hungry automatic weapons stopped the prowler in the window.

  "Don't move! Put your hands on your head!" shouted the tall security superior with a roar of authority. Slowly the shape lifted its arms in the frame of the window.

  "Get the lights on," the security guard ordered, and Purdue walked to the light switch of the small room where they had cornered the burglar. The sound of a metal canister hitting the floor froze Purdue's blood. He was no soldier, but he knew the sound of a grenade.

  "Take cover!" the men shouted, the captain heading straight for Purdue to shove him with great force to safety. From the high window the intruder swiftly slipped along the stone ledge to the north side of Wrichtishousis, where the wild cold wind whipped angrily in the night rain.

  Inside the dark room the men awaited the explosion, but nothing happened. Reluctantly the superior raised his head to check the location of the grenade. It was lying a few meters from them, motionless. Could it be delayed? A dud? He could not ascertain the potency of the strange-looking canister, but he was not about to lie around all night waiting for it to do something. Finally he crept closer to the metal thing and shoved it with his foot, pinching his eyes in a stupid expression of anticipatory trauma, but nothing happened.

  "I believe you've been had, gentlemen," Purdue's voice cut through the silence of the darkness.

  "Alpha 2, come in," he heard the superior call on the wire. A crackling static was the only answer he got and he repeated his call. After a long delay, a distant and obscured voice answered, "Alpha 2 here."

  "We have an intruder. Check the perimeter."

  "Roger."

  "You seem awfully calm, captain," Purdue said, with casual condescension.

  "Yes, Mr. Purdue, I am. Just because he got out of the residence does not mean he runs faster than my dogs," the captain said smoothly, almost completely disguising his annoyance at Purdue's manner. He had been employed by Mr. Purdue for several weeks now, and only his employer's generous remuneration kept the captain leashed from his natural instinct to lash out.

  "Alpha-Actual, come in," the crackling voice came over the radio, and the captain answered eagerly, his eyes darting from side to side as he listened intently. Purdue had taken one of his men and inspected the contents of the white room to determine if anything specific, if at all, was missing. "Sir, we have visual of someone on the north-face ledge. Proceed with caution. We are bringing the dogs. Over," the voice echoed through the radio, as the captain immediately started moving briskly to the noted location, motioning to his other men to follow.

  "Roger that, Alpha 2. Proceed. Over and out."

  Purdue checked everything on his tables; his data disks were there and his desk drawers still locked. Nothing was amiss, which was more disturbing than finding his safes raided or his work disturbed. What the hell was the intruder looking for?

  Outside the dogs went wild, barking like bloodhounds on a hunt as the black figure negotiated its way over the breaks between ledges. Regrettably the ancient architecture of the house made it easy to mount and climb with all its ornate protrusions and decorative niches, and they watched the spider-like moves of the trapped burglar from two stories down.

  "Shall we shoot?" asked one of the security guards.

  "No, hold fire. We don't know what he wants. If we kill him, we will not know who sent him," the captain said plainly. Then he stepped closer to where the intruder was crouched and shouted upward, "Looks like you have run out of ledge there, lad!"

  Obviously desperate not to be apprehended, the intruder gave him a quick look, and then tested the footing of the wet stone.

  "My God, is he going to jump?" Purdue cried from his vantage point, behind the safety of the window. He watched the burglar look right, up, left and then jump. It was an impressive leap, found unfortunately short of sufficient reach, and with a blunt thump the burglar's body scraped the loose masonry and plummeted to the bushes below. Immediately the hounds were on the fallen prowler, and the guards quickly gathered, guns at the ready.

  "Don't do anything! Wait, I want to see who had the balls to break into my house," Purdue called to them.

  Two of the powerfully built guards pulled the culprit from the thick brush. They noticed that the intruder was a lot smaller now. One of the men pulled the hoodie off to reveal a woman's dainty face. Her large, brown eyes were filled with an expression of pain as she whimpered in their grasp.

  "What have we here?" Purdue sneered, intrigued beyond measure at the interesting revelation.

  "Keep the dogs away!" she cried. "Please."

  Purdue gestured for them to remove the dogs. Her hair was black as coal, taken into a ponytail that reached to the small of her back. He noticed a big scar at the left corner of her mouth.

  "You are afraid of dogs but not guns?"

  "I have selective fear. Besides, your boys can't shoot for shit," she snapped in a faint accent of Latin in her impeccably English tone.

  "Is that so?" Purdue smirked in amusement. "And what makes you worthy of judging? What were you doing in my house? You were nowhere near the safe, you know, and it would be impossible for such a small-fry criminal to crack anyway."

  "Oh, don't flatter yourself, old boy. You don't have anything I want," she said, "besides food."

  They grew silent. Purdue stepped away from her in mock surprise, but truthfully, he was taken aback by the absurd excuse. Then they burst out laughing.

  "Bring her inside. Her right arm needs medical attention," he ordered.

  In Purdue's large west-wing living room a hearty fire was toasting the immediate vicinity. The woman was given a towel to dry her hair and face while one of Purdue's men splinted and wrapped her sprained wrist.

  "Let us start with your name," Purdue said, as he poured himself a whisky, refusing her any.

  "Calisto," she mumbled. Now that she sat in the light, her beauty was evident. He guessed her at ab
out thirty-seven years old, hardened by life. Next to the large security men she was dwarfed, but there was no mistake that, on her own, she was by no means tiny. Calisto was physically staunch and tough, although the femininity of her ponytail and her face contradicted her body's threatening frame.

  "What were you doing in my house?" he reiterated his question.

  "I was looking for food! Don't you pay attention?" she barked, winding at the pain in her arm.

  "I'm not buying your bullshit, dearest," Purdue said calmly, as he drank his liquor, grunting as it burned in his throat.

  "Listen, pal, if I wanted to steal shit from you I would have stolen it, wouldn't I?" she clenched her jaw. "Have you checked your fridge?"

  He hadn't. Why would he?

  "Captain, get the coppers, would you?" Purdue nodded and stood up. He waited for her to protest, to come clean, but she did not.

  "Yes, sir."

  The captain knew by his employer's tone that he was bluffing—for now—and waited before actually making a call to the police to arrest the thief. She did not move. In fact, something about her mannerisms told them that she was quite comfortable just sitting in the warm glow of the hearth. Purdue checked his kitchen, shaking his head to himself at actually giving her the benefit of the doubt. In his main fridge he found missing the last half of his zigeunerbraten, which old Franz Grutzmacher had made especially for him the night before. Franz was a dear friend and chef who worked at a posh little place in Queensbury.

  "No!" he gasped.

  Storming into the living room, exasperated, he cried, "You ate my pork? You ate my pork! My favorite dish!"

  "Told you."

  "What kind of savage takes a man's meat?" he exclaimed, throwing his arms up.

  "A hungry one," she mumbled.

  Purdue looked at the intruder in astonishment—for once, speechless.