The air smelled of salt, desert sand and metal as Aaron walked toward Huron’s boarding ramp, which rose from the dock up into the ship’s cavernous interior. He strode with purpose, four of his agents splitting off wordlessly from their comrades and escorting him toward the ship’s entrance.
They were almost there when a man appeared in the entrance. Broad, imposing and dark skinned, he glared at the intruders with barely concealed contempt.
‘Who the hell are you and what are you doing to my … ’
‘Captain Youssef Alem,’ Aaron rumbled as he came to stand within arm’s reach of the ship’s captain. ‘Ten thousand dollars, right here and now, if you give up the Americans aboard this ship.’
Youssef stared at Aaron for a long moment, momentarily surprised by the offer. Moments later the veil of enforced confusion fell back down across his dark features.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I will only make the offer one last time.’
Aaron remained impassive, his hands in the pockets of his dark coat despite the growing warmth radiating from the sunrise blazing across the eastern sky.
‘Ten thousand dollars does not go far,’ Youssef replied finally, a mercenary gleam in his eye. ‘Not as far as the payment I already received.’
Aaron took one pace closer to the captain, his voice quiet and yet brittle as ice.
‘Then you have earned enough for your compliance. Ten thousand more for the Americans. If you do not release them to me now, I will ensure that what remains of you will be found floating in this dock by sundown.’
Youssef’s excitement at the prospect of more money flickered out like a dying flame as he glared at Aaron.
‘You would not dare to … ’
Aaron was quick. Perhaps not as quick as he had once been in the jungles of Vietnam, but far too fast for the ship’s captain to prevent the knuckles of Aaron’s right hand from plunging into his throat in a blur of motion.
The impact collapsed Youssef’s windpipe and his eyes bulged as he staggered back into the ship, one hand reaching for a Bowie knife thrust into the belt around his waist. Aaron lunged forward, one hand closing around Youssef’s wrist as he dropped his weight forward behind his forehead and smashed if across the captain’s face.
Youssef’s nasal bridge collapsed as blood spilled across his face and he twisted away, his legs failing beneath him as his eyes rolled briefly up into their sockets. As the captain collapsed toward the deck, Aaron twisted the man’s wrist up and around as he grabbed his hand and folded it over.
Youssef hit the deck and sprawled face down as Aaron folded the captain’s arm over at an awkward angle. Youssef regained consciousness and opened his mouth, sucking in air and screaming as his arm neared breaking point.
‘The offer has changed,’ Aaron whispered softly as his men moved into the ship, their side arms drawn. ‘Your life, in return for the Americans.’
Youssef gagged in agony as he tried to speak above the pain wracking his body.
‘Deck B, port aft quarter!’
Aaron did not need to order his men into motion. With extraordinary fluidity and speed born of Special Forces training they deployed into the ship’s gloomy interior. Aaron looked down at Youssef for a long moment, and then with his free hand he drew the Bowie knife from Youssef’s belt. The blade was long and stained with age, had perhaps sailed the oceans with Youssef his entire life.
‘Who paid you?’
Youssef squirmed and writhed on the ship’s grimy deck.
‘I don’t know, it was all done by telephone and Internet. They paid into my ship’s account and that was it.’
‘Who arranged the American’s presence here?’
Youssef continued to squirm and Aaron lowered the blade to his neck.
‘The American agent,’ Youssef finally spluttered. ‘Willis! His name is Willis!’
Aaron heard shouting coming from somewhere further inside the ship. He yanked Youssef’s arm upwards, forcing the captain to clamber painfully up onto his knees and then to his feet. With the blade pressed firmly against Youssef’s flank and his arm twisted up against his spine, Aaron forced him to walk through the ship’s ugly corridors of unpainted metal toward the uproar.
The odours of damp, salt and neglected machinery grew as they descended toward the sounds of distress. Aaron walked Youssef out into a cargo area deep inside the ship, just above the open holds. Fresh air wafted across them as Aaron saw his men standing in a ring, their weapons pointed down at a man lying face down on the deck, his hands over his head.
The agents separated to let Aaron through. He shoved Youssef inside the ring of agents and looked up briefly to the massive hatch open in the decks above them, a crane suspended above the ship’s cavernous interior and the blue sky flawless beyond it. A massive shipping container was dangling from the crane’s hooks, suspended ready to be transferred to the dock alongside the ship.
‘We caught him fleeing here,’ one of Aaron’s agents said. ‘Looks like he was going to climb up to the deck from this cargo bay.’
Aaron looked down to see the man lying before him, peering up with fearful eyes.
‘Agent Willis,’ Aaron said. ‘Where are Ethan Warner, Nicola Lopez and Stanley Meyer?’
Willis’s brow creased in confusion. ‘Who?’
Aaron looked up at the crane above them and then he gestured to Willis. His men grabbed the terrified agent and hauled him to his feet. Aaron stepped across and in one fluid motion he swung a giant bunched fist into Willis’s belly. The agent’s face bulged and he doubled over as his legs gave way beneath him, the agents dragging him to one side as Aaron turned his attention to Youssef where he lay on the deck.
The captain scrambled backwards and away, but Aaron stomped one heavy boot across the captain’s ankle with a furious effort. A sharp, brittle crack echoed across the storage hold and Youssef screamed once again, the cry bouncing off the walls and escaping out into the brightening sky above.
Before Youssef could suck in enough air for another sob of pain, Aaron stamped down on the other ankle and it snapped with an equally sickening crackle of fractured bone. Youssef gagged, his face sheened with sweat as he slumped, weeping, onto the deck.
Aaron turned and left the crippled captain where he lay and walked toward Agent Willis, held in the firm grip of Aaron’s men and with a pistol jammed against his ribs. The smaller man cowered and blubbed without further provocation.
‘I’ll tell you where they are,’ he cried. ‘I’ll tell you!’
Aaron turned away from Willis and strode across to a control panel affixed to one wall of the hold. Usually manned by the crane’s operator but currently abandoned, Aaron surveyed the controls only for a moment before he spoke.
‘Where did they go?’
Aaron activated the controls and the crane above them hummed into life, the massive shipping container shifting position slightly in the light breeze.
‘They jumped ship,’ Willis mumbled. ‘They didn’t trust me to keep them safe ashore.’
Aaron grinned without warmth as he pressed a button and the massive shipping container above them began descending to the sound of whining hydraulic winches. Youssef yelped in fright as he looked up from where he lay crippled in the centre of the hold and saw the huge container descending toward him.
‘What the hell are you doing?!’ Willis cried out in horror.
Aaron watched as Youssef began trying to pull himself out from beneath the container, dragging his ruined legs behind him and crying out in pain as he did so, his yellowing teeth gritted against his dark skin.
‘Don’t do it!’ Willis gasped in grief, his voice trembling.
‘Please!’ Youssef wailed in agony as the descending container’s shadow consumed him, the base of the weighty container now just four feet from the deck.
Aaron did not look at Willis as he spoke.
‘Who was Ethan Warner’s direct contact at the Defense Intelligence Agency?’
>
Willis’s features collapsed in defeat and he shouted his response.
‘Jarvis! It was some guy called Jarvis!’
Aaron flipped a switch on the control panel and the container hissed to a halt, swinging just a couple of feet above the deck as Youssef appeared, tears glistening on his face as he crawled toward the edge of the container. Aaron looked at Willis.
‘Where did they go?’
‘The airport,’ Willis blubbed. ‘They got a jet to some place in France, I have the tail code. Take it, just take it!’
Aaron nodded slowly in satisfaction. He glanced at Youssef and then hit a button on the control panel. The crane’s hooks released and the container dropped the last two feet and slammed down onto the deck with a deafening crash, Youssef vanishing beneath it. Willis cried out and turned away from the grisly scene.
Aaron stepped down from the control panel and moved slowly to tower over Willis, the agent coughing and spitting the acrid taste from his mouth as Aaron spoke.
‘If I should hear that you have spoken to anybody in Washington, ever, about anything you have seen here, I will return and another tragic accident will occur. Do you understand?’
Willis, barely able to stand, nodded, his face pale and his eyes glazed with tears.
‘The flight number, now,’ Aaron demanded.
Willis blubbed a tail–code, weeping openly.
Aaron turned and Willis sank to his knees as Aaron and his guards left the storage hold.
As he left the docks in the white sedan, Aaron did not see the dark skinned man watching him quietly from the deep shadows thrown by the rising sun across the quay.
Assim Khan watched Mitchell’s convoy depart from the dock, noted the registration plate of Mitchell’s vehicle, and then flicked away the cigarette he was smoking into the nearby black water as he strode to a motorcycle and climbed aboard.
***
XXV
ITER,
Cadarache, France
‘Wow.’
Lopez’s voice sounded small as they climbed out of the car they had leased for cash, in Euros, from a small dealership in Roquemaure alongside the Le Rhone river that wound its way through the picturesque valleys of southern France.
The flight out of Abu Dhabi that Ethan had booked had resulted in them abandoning Agent Willis in the city, an act for which Ethan felt some degree of shame. However, Stanley and Amber were his priorities and he felt certain that Majestic Twelve would have located them before Huron had gotten far from the docks. Jarvis had texted him and warned of a possible breach, confirming Ethan’s suspicions and urging him to make alternative plans. A commercial flight out of the city using the cash and fake documents Jones had provided a better option, and they had landed in France tired but beyond the reach of the Saudi authorities, for now at least.
‘It’s a temporary victory,’ Lopez had warned him. ‘The Saudis have strong ties with our own administration. They could easily demand our arrest and extradition to face charges.’
‘One thing at a time,’ Ethan had replied with more confidence than he had felt. ‘Let’s just get back to America first – we’ll be better able to operate on home ground.’
A vast facility was arrayed before them containing many huge buildings, many of which were still under construction. Ethan could see heavy trucks moving to and fro, cranes operating and countless workmen labouring beneath the warm sunshine.
Stanley Meyer looked up at the vast construction site with his hands on his hips and a scowl on his features.
‘Biggest waste of the world’s money I’ve ever seen,’ he muttered.
‘What is this place?’ Lopez asked.
‘ITER is Latin for ‘the way’,’ Amber explained, apparently well enough versed in her father’s work to know about the site. ‘It’s an international research and engineering project to build the world’s first nuclear fusion reactor.’
‘The project is funded and run by seven member entities,’ Stanley said as they began walking toward the massive site. ‘The European Union, India, Japan, People’s Republic of China, Russia, South Korea and the United States. All of them have agreed to waste enormous sums of money building what is really just a giant plasma accelerator using a tokamak chamber.’
‘A torus to contain the plasma in magnetic fields,’ Ethan recalled from a previous investigation for the DIA, deep beneath the waves of the Florida coast.
‘Indeed,’ Stanley said, raising a surprised eyebrow at Ethan. ‘The reactor uses deuterium fuel, which is easily extracted from seawater, and tritium which is generated once the fusion reactions begin, thus creating a runaway reaction which is effectively self–sustaining. It’s being designed to produce five hundred megawatts of output power while only needing fifty megawatts of ingoing power to operate.’
‘Free energy,’ Lopez remarked. ‘How come that’s possible?’
‘It’s the same process going on inside our sun,’ Stanley explained as he glanced up at the bright orb in the hard blue sky. ‘The sun’s gravity is so immense that it attempts to crush itself under its own weight. This compresses the nuclei of hydrogen that mostly make up the sun so much that they fuse together, a process known as nuclear fusion. Immense volumes of energy are emitted during this process, in line with E=mc2, and are emitted from the sun as the heat and the light that we feel on our faces right now.’
‘Isn’t that what all nuclear power stations do?’ Lopez asked.
‘No,’ Stanley said. ‘They use nuclear fission, the opposite process: once again, mankind chooses to use the opposite method to nature for producing energy. They split the atom, releasing vast amounts of energy but also radiation with it. A fission reactor can melt down in a runaway chain reaction should it overheat, as witnessed at Chernobyl in 1986. A fusion reactor, however, will simply cease to operate if the temperatures or pressures fall below the required level. Fusion also produces very little waste product – it’s the perfect energy supply for mankind if it can be harnessed.’
‘Then why are you so against it?’ Ethan pressed.
‘I’m not against it, I’m against the methods employed to achieve it,’ Stanley insisted. ‘All of this, some sixteen billion dollars of investment, all to produce what is in effect nothing more than a proof of concept. This reactor won’t be able to power the world even if it works perfectly and confounds the critics who say it’s a waste of time. Our National Ignition Facility in California has already proved the concept on a smaller scale and initiated nuclear fusion reactions, and the aerospace giant Lockheed Martin has announced plans for a fusion reactor small enough to fit on the back of a truck that may be commercialized within a decade, long before this monstrosity even gets fully completed.’
Stanley huffed and puffed his way to a low ridge of dirt alongside the edge of the compound where the reactor was to be built and surveyed it through the high fences that surrounded the enormous site.
‘I have witnessed energetic reactions emitting excess heat phenomena in an apparatus made from things you could buy in a local hardware store,’ he said gloomily. ‘It’s all about efficiency, not a free lunch. Our governments are building this not because they need it, but because they want to show the people how much they need their governments and leaders to achieve such things. If only the people knew that they don’t, that if they simply made an effort to research these things themselves they could take their own futures into their own hands and shake off these ridiculous gestures of power.’
The reply to Stanley Meyer’s oratory came from one side of where they stood.
‘The cynic as ever, Stanley.’
Ethan turned to see an elderly man watching them from the foot of the ridge, his hands in the pockets of his jacket and a kindly smile on his face.
‘Hans!’
Stanley hurried down the ridge with remarkable agility for one so old and the two men embraced briefly.
‘This is Hans Furgen,’ Stanley introduced his friend, ‘the best electrochemist I ever knew and some
body who knows more about nuclear reactions than everybody else in the world combined.’
Furgen appeared to almost blush as he shook Ethan’s hand.
‘That’s something of an exaggeration,’ he murmured in reply.
‘Blah blah,’ Stanley said, more animated than Ethan had ever seen him. ‘You’re the top dog, Hans, it’s why these damned fools picked you to run this project.’
‘You’re ITER’s project leader?’ Lopez asked.
‘I’m in charge of developing the tokamak chamber,’ Hans replied. ‘It’s a crucial part of the assembly and one so large has not been built before. Stanley’s right that excess heat phenomena have already been achieved at the NIF in California, but only on a very short time scale and at lower energies than we plan to achieve. This facility is to prove that it can be done at a commercial scale, and thus will hopefully pave the way to a future devoid of fossil fuels and the dangers of fission meltdowns and radioactive waste.’
‘That’s a big responsibility,’ Ethan noted with considerable admiration for Han’s role. ‘And if somebody else were to come along and do the same thing on a desktop with some beakers and electrodes they bought at Walmart, how would that go down at ITER?’
Hans sighed and his shoulders slumped as he glanced at Stanley.
‘I wondered why you had come all the way out here,’ he said to his fellow scientist. ‘I thought that you’d given up on that pipe dream a long time ago.’
Stanley offered his friend a tight smile. ‘That’s the thing–I didn’t, and it paid off.’
Hans shook his head. ‘That’s what you said the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that. You do realise the entire Department of Energy has been studying cold fusion for years and they’ve come to the same conclusion as I did: it doesn’t damned well work.’
‘They fudged it all,’ Stanley argued in desperation. ‘It worked, Hans. I powered an entire town for weeks with it and everybody had all the power they needed for nothing more than the water I was siphoning out of the stream that ran through the middle of Clearwater.’
The Fusion Cage (Warner & Lopez Book 2) Page 18