Sea of Greed

by Clive Cussler

  “But if she has access, she doesn’t need us anymore.”

  “She can’t know when they’re going to cut her off,” Joe said. “That should keep us alive for a while. Long enough to get out of here. Trust me, this place won’t hold us long.”

  “How can you be so confident?”

  “Because Tessa isn’t much of a warden,” Joe said. “She’s a businesswoman. Obviously, a brutal one at that, but she’s not equipped to keep us here.”

  “We’re tied up, in a locked compartment,” Priya said.

  “These zip ties won’t hold us,” Joe said, “not once I find something even moderately rough to use on them.”

  “And the door?”

  “This is an airplane,” Joe replied, “not Leavenworth. It’s designed to be lightweight and flexible. The skin and the ribs of the plane are strong, everything else is paper-thin. We could break that door down with one strong charge, if we wanted to. The problem is, the armed guards on the other side.”

  “You’re quite the optimist,” she said. “Especially since it’s me you’re stuck with and not Kurt. I can’t exactly make a run for it, you know. And I can’t help you fight them unless you want me to trip someone or bite their ankles.”

  “Tripping works,” Joe said. “Ankle biting, not so much. It’ll probably just ruin that beautiful smile of yours.”

  The smile came out. “You should probably make a break for it on your own. I could at least distract them.”

  Joe shook his head. “There are no circumstances under which I leave you here, so you might as well let that thought go right now. As for escaping, we don’t have to walk out of here. This plane is filled with submersibles, Jet Skis, boats. My plan has us riding to freedom in style.”

  “You already have a plan?”

  Joe nodded. “Multistep, with different contingencies. Very organized, unlike that fly-by-night stuff Kurt comes up with.”

  Priya smiled. “Tell me more.”

  “It starts with the guards,” Joe said. “We have to get rid of them.”

  “How?”

  “We use what we have around us,” Joe said.

  “We have nothing around us. This compartment is empty.”

  “We have light,” Joe said. “Light means electricity. Electricity means wires. Would it surprise you to know that most aircraft have several miles of wiring running through the fuselage?”

  “It wouldn’t,” she said. “I worked on a computer program for Airbus when I was in college. All powered systems were fly-by-wire. There were circuits running everywhere.”

  Joe nodded. “This plane also has cranes, ramps, powered flooring to move cargo pallets around. All of it powered electrically from the fuel cells.”

  Priya looked around. “I don’t see any wires.”

  Joe reached over and rapped his knuckles on a sloped footer at the edge of the wall. The impact made a hollow sound. “It’s because they’re hidden. Though they need to be somewhere they can be easily accessed.”

  Priya was grinning now. She could see his plan.

  “We have a few hours until dinner,” Joe said. “I might as well get to work.”

  * * *

  • • •

  HAVING PLACED two men outside the compartment to guard her captives, Tessa met with her two trusted subordinates.

  “Despite everything we’ve done, Austin and NUMA are rapidly putting the puzzle together. I want him eliminated.”

  Woods spoke up. “We could talk to—”

  Tessa cut him off. “I’m not using any more of your local friends. Austin and his group are beyond their ability to deal with.” She turned to Volke. “He almost killed you down on the LNG carrier. That should motivate you. Who can we reach out to? Who among your illegitimate friends can we use to get rid of Austin once and for all?”

  “I have an old acquaintance who could do it for us,” Volke said. “He and his people leave nothing but bodies behind when they act.”

  “Paramilitary?”

  Volke nodded.

  “Do they have the equipment necessary to get at Austin out in the middle of the Mediterranean?”

  “His last operation was flying weapons from Albania to rebels across the mountains, in long-range ex–Russian helicopters.”

  Tessa didn’t like the idea of involving more outsiders, but she was approaching a critical point. A meeting with Arat Buran and his Consortium was set for the next morning. She needed Volke and Woods with her when it happened.

  “Hire them,” she said. “Offer more than they ask for, but make it clear to them that half measures will not get them paid. I want Austin dead. I want his friends and colleagues dead. I want his ship at the bottom of the sea resting beside the Dakar.”

  Volke nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”

  * * *

  • • •

  THE GUARDS placed outside of Joe and Priya’s compartment grew bored and restless long before the dinner hour came. They’d sat and talked, made crude jokes, played cards and even taken turns napping. Eventually, they got hungry.

  “Call Woods,” one said to the other. “Tell him to relieve us or send down some food.”

  “If he hasn’t eaten everything in the galley himself,” the other guard joked.

  A call was placed and a tray of sandwiches was sent down to them. “Two of those are for the prisoners,” they were told.

  The men considered eating the prisoners’ food themselves, but the bread was coarse and dry and the meat gamey and possibly spoiled.

  “I’m not eating garbage,” the first man said.

  “I’ll give it to them,” the second guard said. “Let’s hope it doesn’t make them sick.”

  He walked across the floor of the aircraft and banged on the door. “Step back,” he ordered. “We have food for you.”

  Muffled noises that sounded like shuffling could be heard and the guard considered that to be compliance. He unlocked the door, put the key back in his pocket and grabbed the handle.

  Sparks exploded from the aluminum handle the instant he touched it. The guard was thrown across the fuselage, hurling the tray up in the air as he went. He landed on his back with smoke wafting from his hand and the scent of burned skin filling the cabin.

  The lights dimmed and the sandwich tray clattered to the floor.

  The second guard was so surprised that he failed to see Joe charging through the now open door. By the time he looked up, Joe’s fist was hurtling toward his face. The impact snapped his head to the side and put him out cold.

  Joe enjoyed throwing a good punch and he felt that was one of his best. He dragged the guards back into the compartment, passing Priya, who remained crouched by the door with the leads of two long wires in her hands.

  “That was shocking,” she said, grinning and suspending the wires separately where they wouldn’t touch the floor, the wall or each other.

  Joe laughed. It was dark on the lower deck now, with only the emergency lighting coming on. “I think we tripped a breaker. That could be good or bad. Let’s not wait around to find out.”

  He crouched down next to her. “Climb on. This is no time to be shy.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself up. Standing, Joe grabbed her legs, held them tight and ducked out into the main section of the fuselage.

  He moved toward the ladder, finding Priya easy to carry. Her arms were strong and she held on to Joe’s neck and shoulders without any problem, even as he descended a ladder to the lowest deck on the aircraft.

  “So far, so good,” he said. “Now to get the aft door open.”

  Weaving around a Ferrari and Mercedes SUV, Joe accidentally bumped Priya’s head on an overhanging section of the fuselage.

  “Ouch.”

  “Sorry,” Joe replied. “Took that turn a little wide. Been some time since I ha
d anyone traveling piggyback.”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Don’t slow down. I want to get out of here.”

  Making their way to the tail, Joe bypassed the tarp-covered cars and stopped beside a fiberglass powerboat. It sat on a pallet connected to a conveyor belt system that allowed Tessa and her crew to move the vehicles and cargo around. Reaching down, he flicked a switch, brought the battery online and checked the fuel supply. “Three-quarters of a tank. That should get us away from here.”

  “What about the submersible?” Priya said. “They can’t chase us if we’re underwater.”

  The sub was up in its cradle. Joe shook his head. “The crane will be slow and noisy. We need to lower that door and use this conveyor belt to get ourselves out of here ASAP.”

  He gently lowered Priya into the boat and then moved to the controls. The setup was standard, although Joe noticed the writing on the pressure dials had been done in Cyrillic. Apparently, Tessa had built her plane from Russian parts.

  He pressed a button to power up the system, turned the handle to unlock the door and waited for the light on the panel to go green. As soon as it did, he moved the door handle from up to down.

  The hydraulic pumps kicked in and a crack of light appeared around the edge of the ramp.

  As the ramp dropped, wind began whistling over the top, bringing a swirl of dust and an odd scent with it.

  “Something’s not right,” Joe said.

  The ramp was only a quarter of the way down when the power was cut from somewhere else in the plane.

  “They’re onto us,” Priya said.

  “No problem,” Joe said. “I have a contingency for that.”

  He pulled the emergency release handle. The hydraulic pressure vanished and the ramp—which weighed several thousand pounds—fell hard and locked itself into a full-open position. Instead of a large splash, it hit with nothing but a solid thud, which raised an additional cloud of dust.

  Joe stared out the back. He’d assumed they were on water. The Monarch was designed to operate on water, but all he could see behind them were acres of bone-white desert and a cloud of swirling dust.

  51

  “NOW I KNOW how Kurt feels,” Joe said.

  Out beyond the tail of the Monarch, swirling winds were lifting the bleached and dried soil and whipping it through the air, cutting the visibility to a few hundred feet. There wasn’t a drop of water in sight, but even if the ocean lay beyond what Joe could see, there was no possible way to get a boat to it.

  “Tell me you have a contingency plan for your contingency plan,” Priya said.

  “Of course,” Joe said. “Who wouldn’t?”

  She gave him a look that suggested she’d like to hear it and quickly.

  “If we can’t float, we’ll have to drive,” he said.

  He picked her up once again, carried her back toward the boxy Mercedes G 63 and put her down.

  “This should be at home in whatever desert this happens to be,” he said.

  Before he could open the door, the sound of boots pounding on the deck came rushing toward them.

  “Get down,” Joe said.

  Priya rolled under the Mercedes as Joe took cover by the cargo controls.

  Two men raced by them without a glance, headed for the open ramp. Joe noticed they were running on the conveyor belt. He glanced at the controls. It still had power. He tapped the control for the aft belt, activated it and pushed the dial to full speed.

  The belt engaged instantly and the men were thrown off balance, stumbled and landed on their hands and knees.

  Joe stopped the belt, then turned it full speed in the other direction. This time, conveying the men forward, onto the ramp and into the dust bowl beyond.

  Joe turned back toward the Mercedes and froze.

  “Mighty clever of you,” the big man named Woods said. He stood there with a pistol in his hand. “These are only rubber pellets, son. But I promise you, they’ll dig into your skin something fierce.”

  Tessa had equipped her guards with something that wouldn’t punch gaping holes in the one-of-a-kind aircraft. TSA agents carried similar cartridges.

  Joe raised his hands in surrender, only to be surprised by the deafening echo of a car horn.

  Woods flinched and turned instinctively to look behind, Joe was on him before he realized his mistake. Tackling the big man and snatching the gun out of his hand.

  Woods threw Joe off like he was a small child, but Joe held on to the gun. He stood and fired. The first bullet hit Woods square in the chest, but the man only flinched and charged forward. Joe fired three more rounds, hitting Woods in the knee, shin and foot.

  The bullet to the toes was what finally stopped the charge. Woods tumbled to the ground, rolling away and grabbing his foot.

  Leaving him behind, Joe raced to the Mercedes, where he found Priya sitting in the driver’s seat. She’d climbed up and gotten inside without a sound. How, Joe couldn’t be sure, but he vowed not to put anything past her.

  She held up a set of keys that she’d found above the visor. “How’s this for a contingency plan?”

  “It’s fantastic.”

  Joe climbed in and pulled the door shut as gunfire erupted from the open ramp. The men he’d sent out the door had recovered from their unceremonious exit and were rejoining the fight.

  The rubber bullets hit all around, ricocheting off the windshield and the walls around them with a strange sound.

  “A little help,” Priya said.

  Joe stepped on the brake as she started the engine and put the car in gear. As soon as the motor fired up, he stomped on the gas. The big vehicle surged forward, slammed into the powerboat in front of them and promptly bulldozed it toward the opening.

  Tessa’s guards fired as they charged and then dove out of the way as the powerboat went tumbling toward them and the Mercedes rumbled down after it.

  Priya turned the wheel to swerve around the wrecked speedboat and Joe kept his foot to the floor.

  “Which way?”

  “Take your pick.”

  Priya turned to get them out of the line of fire, drove a hundred yards or so, then turned again. They sped on into the swirling dust, until the wing, engine and tail of another huge aircraft appeared.

  Priya swerved, drove under the wing and turned to avoid the dangling engine pod.

  “Did we drive in a circle?” Priya said.

  “No,” Joe replied. “That’s a different plane.”

  Roaring off in a new direction, they soon encountered another aircraft and then another. The aircraft were everywhere. Before they’d finished passing one, another wide-body would appear from the blinding dust. Some had missing engines, others had been stripped of their tails or wings or fuselage panels. Several of them sat on the ground like beached whales, their landing gear long removed.

  “I’ve been wondering why we haven’t been spotted,” Joe said. “Now it makes sense. We’re sitting in an airplane graveyard. I doubt anyone would ever look here. And if they did, it would only take the slightest bit of work to disguise the Monarch and make it look like another derelict.”

  The farther they drove, the more aircraft they encountered. Each time they passed one, they expected to find a gate or a fence, but, so far, an exit remained elusive.

  “This place is huge,” Priya said.

  “It’s probably an old air base,” Joe said.

  Smaller aircraft appeared. Older transports and Cold War–era fighter planes that Joe recognized as old MiGs.

  Finally, a dilapidated fence appeared through the dust. Razor wire crested the top, dangling in places where the fence sagged. Priya took aim. “We should be able to crash through that.”

  “Do it,” Joe said.

  They sped toward the fence, hitting it between two loose poles and ripping the mesh from the nearest sup
ports. It caught on the hood and they dragged it some distance before it finally scraped across the top of the SUV and fell off behind them.

  A service road ran along the perimeter of the fence. It looked as forlorn as the rest of the complex. Priya turned onto it, but Joe let his foot off the gas.

  “Turn us around,” Joe said, looking back through the rear window.

  “The other direction?”

  “No,” Joe said. “Back inside the fence. Hurry.”

  “But we just escaped from there,” Priya said, turning the wheel as Joe pushed the gas pedal down once more.

  “We escaped from the Monarch,” Joe corrected. “If they find this section of the fence torn down, they will assume we smashed through it and took off. They’ll think we’re running for the hills—or whatever’s out there on the other side of this dust storm—but the moment this weather clears, we’ll be sitting ducks. They’ll spot us with ease, but we can hide back there in the junk just as easily.”

  Priya was already turning the wheel as Joe pressed the gas pedal. They were soon back inside the fence, moving through a section filled with smaller aircraft. “We just need to find one of those big old transports and pull up inside it.”

  As Joe spoke, his eyes darted from side to side. He caught sight of headlights coming through the dust off to his left. He pointed to the right.

  “Behind that one,” he said, indicating a three-engine transport that had once served Aeroflot and sat on its side with one wing down like a wounded bird.

  Priya drove with great precision, especially considering someone else was working the gas. They ducked behind the tail of the old plane, swerving and missing the aluminum skin by less than a foot.

  Up ahead, Joe noticed a huge Russian helicopter sitting flat on the ground with its aft door missing.

  “In there,” Joe said. “That’s our spot.”

  As Priya lined them up, Joe gave the vehicle a bump of gas and then took his foot off the pedal. They coasted forward, slowing as Joe reached over and put the transmission in low. They bumped up into the back end of the big military helicopter, still moving forward.