‘You sure you know what you’re doing there, cap’n?’ Lopez asked.
Ethan scanned the controls once more.
‘Could have done with Bryson’s help, but there’s not much to it,’ he replied, seeing dials registering oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitrogen levels, and others for ballast tanks, battery-charge and navigation. ‘It’s like a very slow airplane. This vessel is good for depths up to three thousand feet, and we’ll only be going down half that far.’
‘Don’t remind me,’ Lopez muttered, looking around at the walls of the hull. ‘It’s still six hundred meters. If the hull fails down there we’ll be crushed like an eggshell.’
Ethan glanced at the ballast-tank controls and turned a series of dials on the panel. The air in the tanks was expelled as seawater flushed in through the open vents, and Intrepid sank beneath the waves. Ethan watched the ocean water slapping against the thick acrylic sphere before him and then the silvery surface of the ocean took the place of the sky. A vibrant cascade of quivering bubbles spiraled up from the underside of the hull like chromium spheres, and then the sounds of the outside world and the thumping heartbeat of waves against the exterior of the hull were silenced.
‘Here we go,’ he said, and pushed one of the joysticks forward.
The Intrepid responded smoothly, her control surfaces tilting and sending the craft down. The battery-powered engines hummed as they descended. Ethan glanced at a pair of dials and saw them registering neutral buoyancy as the Intrepid sank deeper into the ocean.
‘How do we get up again if all the air’s gone from the ballast tanks?’ Katherine asked, clearly nervous.
‘Compressed air,’ Ethan replied, not taking his eyes off the artificial horizon that helped him to keep the vessel upright in the absence of external cues, just like an airplane flying at night. ‘I open the valves, the pressurized air drives the seawater from the tanks and I then close the vents. Instant positive buoyancy, and up we go.’
The thought of an airplane’s instruments punctured Ethan’s mind as he considered the possibility that Joaquin Abell could cripple the Intrepid in much the same way as his father had destroyed Montgomery Purcell’s airplane in 1964. Ethan decided not to voice his concerns, hoping that having already used his mysterious facility to create an earthquake Joaquin would be reluctant to use it again in the same day for fear of further exposing his position to passing satellites.
A small television screen on the control panel provided a computerized GPS map of their location. With communication to the outside world prevented by the electronic jamming of the Sea Hawk helicopter above, Ethan had downloaded their position into the Intrepid’s internal navigation computer before they’d left the ship. Now, he typed in the destination GPS coordinates: a triangulation based upon the electromagnetic pulses picked up by NASA during the earthquake and the gravitational fluctuations detected by the GOCE satellite.
‘There,’ he said, pointing to a small red flag on the GPS screen as Lopez leaned forward to see over his shoulder. ‘He should be there, about four hundred yards ahead of us and right on the seafloor.’
‘Any chance he’s seen us coming?’ she asked.
Ethan shrugged.
‘If you mean has he seen the future, almost certainly. But I don’t know if he realizes exactly how we’re going to find him, or whether or not his signals to the outside world are being intercepted.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘Either way, he’s as much on his own down there now as we are.’
Katherine looked at Ethan.
‘If he’s aware of that, it might make him more dangerous, more reckless. Joaquin’s arrogance has gotten worse with every passing event. He may believe himself to be invincible, especially if he’s seen what’s on that camera of Purcell’s.’
Ethan watched the ever-darkening ocean outside as it passed by, small fish and fragments of debris floating up past the porthole.
‘Charles told us that what Joaquin sees on his cameras can often be interpreted in many different ways,’ he replied. ‘Even if he has seen some future news broadcast that shows his own success, doesn’t mean that we won’t get him in the end.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ Katherine said, sounding unconvinced.
The beams of sunlight from the surface far above had faded, and the blue of the ocean had turned to an inky and impenetrable blackness as devoid of features as the depths of space. Ethan flipped a switch and turned on both his cockpit illumination and a series of low-intensity lights around the interior of the Intrepid. The soft yellow glow of the instrument panel seemed warm and inviting compared to the frigid darkness beyond the portholes.
‘I can’t see anything,’ Lopez said, peering out into the gloom.
Ethan guided the Intrepid deeper until the pressure gauges were reading forces that could crush a human being like a grape. The GPS marker was now barely a hundred yards away from them, and as Ethan slowed his descent the external lights picked up the barren abyssal plain below. The Intrepid’s engines whipped up small vortices of sand on the surface as he leveled the vessel out some ten feet above the seafloor and glided toward where the IRIS facility should be.
Lopez and Katherine both leaned forward either side of him, their eyes straining into the blackness ahead for some sign of the base.
‘There.’ Lopez pointed ahead and just to their left. ‘Coordinates were slightly out.’
Ethan squinted into the blackness and was just able to make out the faintest light, like a star seen from the corner of the eye glimmering faintly in an endless night. He turned the Intrepid toward the light, and as they closed in more lights began to appear: small, round, glowing yellow balls that penetrated only a short distance into the gloom.
Nobody said anything as the facility resolved itself before their eyes, the Intrepid’s lights reflecting off two large, dull metal spheres surrounded by four smaller ones. Ethan guessed that each of the larger spheres was large enough to hold an Olympic swimming pool, with the smaller spheres the size of a house.
‘This is where he filtered all of that cash,’ Ethan said. ‘It would have taken millions of dollars to construct a place like this. The documents that Charles Purcell stole must have detailed the construction of this site and the funds to finance it.’
Ethan could see a broad, rectangular beam of light glowing from the underside of one of the smaller outer spheres, suggesting some kind of entrance, but all the rest appeared impenetrable.
‘Only one way in,’ Lopez observed. ‘Convenient for an ambush.’
Ethan looked at the vast construction, big enough that in the darkness he could not see across its entire circumference.
Katherine Abell watched as Ethan guided the Intrepid beneath the outer dome toward the docking station. Her face was haunted as she surveyed the complex, clearly stunned that in all of the years that she had been married to Joaquin she had never laid eyes on the site.
‘Joaquin’s father was involved with all manner of secret government experiments after the Second World War,’ Katherine said. ‘Joaquin may have acquired and improved or extended them. And anybody else who was involved in the construction . . .’
‘. . . Suffered unfortunate accidents later on,’ Ethan finished, when Katherine trailed off. ‘Joaquin is willing to do anything to cover his tracks.’
Ethan aimed the Intrepid carefully toward the opening, and as they passed underneath the dome so the glowing veil of yellow light from the interior of the docking station above filled the vessel. Ethan leaned forward and peered up through the porthole above his head. He moved the vessel into position and then reached down and flicked a pair of switches, closing the ballast vents. Ensuring that the compressed air tanks were set to ‘Cross Feed’ he turned the dials open for a brief moment.
A hiss of released gas filled the hull, vibrating gently through the floor panels as the seawater was expelled and the Intrepid rose up and broke the surface of the water into a docking bay. Light filled the cockpit as Ethan looked at the dock through the
sheets of water draining across the acrylic porthole.
‘Nobody here to meet us,’ he said.
Lopez unbuckled herself from her seat. ‘They know we’re here all right.’
Ethan unstrapped, and shut down the engines and batteries to conserve power. He drew his pistol from its holster and hurried to the main hatch of the submersible with Katherine Abell just behind him. Lopez stood ready, one hand on the hatch and the other holding her own weapon.
‘Ready?’ she asked.
‘I’ve got your back,’ Ethan said. ‘The dock exit is to our left,’ he added and pulled a flash-bang grenade out, handing it to her.
‘You set that off, they’ll hear you coming!’ Katherine said in alarm.
‘We’re way past that,’ Lopez replied without looking at her. She holstered her pistol, grabbed the hatch and span the wheel. Moments later she shoved the hatch open and leapt up the ladder, pulling the pin on the flash-bang as she hurled it toward the dock’s exit corridor.
59
The grenade arced across the dock and clattered against the deck panels as it vanished into the adjoining corridor. A terrific blast of noise and light flared outside and Lopez hauled herself up and out of the submersible. Ethan followed her with his pistol drawn as they tumbled down the Intrepid’s hull and leapt onto the dock.
Ethan ducked down behind one of the steel mooring bollards and aimed down the corridor through the faint wisps of smoke writhing from the flash-bang. He saw no movement, no soldiers, no gunfire. Nothing.
‘That was too easy,’ Lopez said from where she squatted behind a similar bollard.
‘Much too easy,’ Ethan agreed, and called back to Katherine. ‘Clear.’
Katherine Abell popped her head out of the Intrepid’s hatch before climbing out and watching as Ethan grabbed a mooring line and secured the submersible.
‘Tie her loosely,’ he said to Lopez. ‘We don’t know if we’ll have to leave in a hurry.’
‘I won’t be hanging around,’ she replied, and looked up at the dome above her, clearly imagining the near half-mile of water pressing down upon it. ‘Trust me.’
The adjoining corridor was lit by overhead panels, and narrow portholes on either side looked out into the darkness; but nothing cluttered their path as they walked into the complex.
‘The other submersible must be docked off one of the other arms,’ Lopez said.
‘The Event Horizon is normally anchored to the northeast of the coral-research station,’ Katherine confirmed, ‘because of the strong currents in the Florida Straits. It means that although Joaquin’s submersibles have to use more battery power to get here against the current, you can float out easily enough on minimum power and get back up to the yacht in the event of an emergency. My guess is that the other submersible will be docked on the southwest side.’
Ethan made a mental note.
‘What’s the time?’ Lopez asked, as they neared the end of the corridor where an open hatch awaited, mindful of the deadline that Charles Purcell had set them.
Ethan glanced at his watch. ‘Twenty eighteen hours,’ he replied, ‘only thirty minutes until Charles Purcell said everything would end. So there’s not long left to—’ He broke off and stopped in mid-pace to stare at the face of his watch.
‘What?’ Lopez asked.
Ethan watched in disbelief as the second hand on his watch ticked its way around the dial. He counted several ticks, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.
‘My watch is ticking too slowly,’ he uttered.
‘Battery’s running out,’ Lopez suggested.
Katherine looked at her own watch, a digital one, and her jaw dropped.
‘No, he’s right, look.’
Ethan looked at the digital seconds counting up on the display. Even the digital watch was being distorted by something.
‘It’s like time has slowed down,’ he said.
‘It wasn’t like it on the way down here,’ Katherine said.
Ethan struggled to comprehend how it could happen.
‘The guys at Cape Canaveral told us that black holes wrap time and space around them,’ he said. ‘But if that’s the case, surely if Joaquin Abell really has one here, and it’s exposed, then it should be consuming the entire facility around it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lopez said. ‘Maybe he’s got it contained, but somehow some of its effects are still getting out, like a leak?’
‘Hell of a thing to spring a leak from,’ Ethan pointed out.
‘You say we’ve only got until 8:48 to finish this,’ Katherine said to him.
‘Yeah, barely half an hour until the time Charles Purcell said everything would end. He wrote a message on the wall of an apartment in Miami, then confirmed to us later that this would all end at 8:48 this evening.’
‘Well then you’ve actually got longer, isn’t that right? If time runs slower here because of Joaquin’s black hole, maybe you’ve got forty minutes instead.’
‘No,’ Lopez replied. ‘Purcell wrote that time on the apartment wall from his point of reference outside of the black hole’s influence. This will be over in normal time on the surface or in Miami, no matter what happens to our watches down here.’
Ethan looked ahead to where another open hatch vanished into the unknown. The two other hatches to either side of it were closed and locked.
‘Whatever he’s got down here, it’s powerful enough to slow down time for us the closer we get to it. Come on.’
Ethan led the way up to the open hatch and he and Lopez took position either side of it.
‘Ready?’
Lopez nodded, and then with one swift motion they plunged through the hatch, weapons trained on the broad open hangar before them. And then they stopped, jaws agape. Ethan lowered his pistol, words piling up in his mind but unable to break through the seal of disbelief that tied his lips.
‘That’s impossible,’ Lopez stammered. ‘How could they be down here?’
Ethan shook his head, his mind devoid of an adequate explanation for what they were looking at.
Parked in what clearly was being used as a storage space, their hulls and wings sagging with age, were the remains of countless boats and aircraft.
60
June 28, 19:59
‘They’re inside the hangar. Shall I intercept them?’
Dennis Aubrey watched as a bank of remote cameras followed Warner, Lopez and Katherine Abell as they advanced through the complex. Olaf stood by Joaquin’s side, one hand already moving toward the pistol in his shoulder holster.
‘No, let them come,’ Joaquin replied. ‘We are ready.’ Joaquin stood with his hands behind his back and his chin held high, comfortable in his conviction that he was now entirely unassailable. Surrounding him were ten highly trained, highly disciplined soldiers. Aubrey knew that all of them were mercenaries and former members of the United States’ finest regiments, who had been plucked from desolate warzones around the world to serve IRIS. Money – more even than they had been paid by various foreign governments – secured their absolute allegiance.
‘We will engage them just before they reach us, in the hangar,’ he decided. ‘No sense in risking a wild shot breaching the black-hole chamber and dragging us all to oblivion.’
He pointed ahead and the troops jogged away in a neat phalanx toward an exit hatch that led through a bulkhead into the next sphere. As soon as the rumble of their combat boots had faded, Joaquin turned to Aubrey.
‘Contact the Event Horizon,’ he ordered the physicist, as he donned a slim microphone and earpiece. ‘Have them prepare to sail. I’ll need to be ashore by this evening or there’ll be no spokesperson to coordinate the media response to IRIS’s intervention in the earthquake crisis.’
Aubrey keyed a communication channel, opened it and selected the yacht’s frequency. Almost immediately a burst of high-pitched static howled through amplifiers on the control panel.
Aubrey scrambled to turn the volume down as Joaquin whirled, his face twisted w
ith outrage as he tore off his microphone.
‘What the fuck are you doing, Dennis?!’
Aubrey shut the channel off and stared at the panel before him.
‘Nothing. We’re being jammed,’ he said. ‘Static interference from the surface.’
Joaquin looked at Aubrey for a moment, then at Olaf.
‘The three of them came down here alone, correct?’ he asked the big man.
‘We tracked them here in one vehicle, the Intrepid,’ Olaf confirmed. ‘They are only three.’
Joaquin looked at Aubrey, the first mild tremor of apprehension in his expression.
‘They must have had help, on the surface,’ Joaquin surmised, realizing the extent of his sudden and unexpected isolation. ‘The yacht must have been compromised.’
Olaf understood immediately and unclipped his pistol from his shoulder holster.
‘We will bring Warner and his friend here,’ he promised Joaquin. ‘Then we will go to the surface and retake the yacht.’
Joaquin nodded, but his features had paled slightly.
‘Do it, and feel free to use whatever force you deem necessary.’
Olaf’s broad jaw creased with a cold grin of satisfaction as he turned and strode purposefully toward the bulkhead where the soldiers had dispersed, ducking through the hatch and shutting it behind him.
Dennis Aubrey stood still behind the control panel and looked down at Joaquin as the tycoon stared vacantly into space for a moment, no doubt considering his next move. There would be no other chance to do this, Aubrey realized. For the first time since he had been transported down into this godforsaken prison beneath the waves, he was both alone with Joaquin and had the element of surprise on his side.
He reached into the back of his jeans and felt the pistol nestled there. If he waited until Olaf and his goons returned, he wouldn’t stand a chance. They would gun him down within seconds. He reminded himself that he would probably be gunned down soon enough anyway, so there was little to lose by procrastinating over—
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