Piranha

by Clive Cussler

  He also knew the transponder code of Air Force Two and was tracking its movement as it flew over the West Indies. Its takeoff had been pushed up by a half hour, so his anticipated interception with the drones would now take place even earlier, at 8:30 a.m. Governor Washburn would join him to watch the destruction of the vice president’s plane.

  With both sets of planes converging on one screen, he was able to follow Juan Cabrillo’s movements using Sentinel. Cabrillo, Eddie Seng, Franklin Lincoln, and Mike Trono had boarded the chopper, wearing green camouflage uniforms that matched the flora surrounding the cement plant, leaving Max Hanley and Mark Murphy as the senior staff in the Oregon’s op center. All four men on the helicopter had been heavily armed with assault weapons and several RPGs. Instead of having a close view inside the cabin where it would be difficult to listen in on the conversations because of the noise from the rotor wash, he chose to watch the helicopter from the exterior. Once it landed, he’d stay with Cabrillo to relay his movements to Bazin.

  “The helicopter is headed for the eastern side of the cement plant,” he said into his headset microphone.

  “I’ve got a Ratel armored vehicle going there now. But shooting him down will be difficult with all the smoke.”

  Kensit sat forward. “What smoke?” Then he saw it as the helicopter spun around and flew toward the coast. Tracers from the 20mm cannon lanced across the sky, but the shots were nowhere close to the chopper.

  The helicopter descended into the smoke before Kensit could close in on the cockpit. He zoomed in as it plunged into the opaque cloud spewing from the canisters.

  Ten seconds later, the helicopter took off, emerging from the smoke without its passengers.

  Kensit pushed his virtual camera from the neutrino telescope into the smoke, but it was like looking into a glass of milk. He occasionally saw the flash of clothing or an arm and then it disappeared again.

  He rotated his viewpoint so that he was looking straight down on the landing spot, but the cloud had expanded to cover an area bigger than three football fields, all the way from the edge of the cement plant property to the lake and up the closest hillock, which was packed with enough foliage to cover a crawling person’s movements. By the time he pulled back enough to see the Ratel armored vehicle approaching the edge of the smoke, he realized that Juan Cabrillo had vanished.

  Juan and Trono had to get beneath the surface of the lake before the smoke cleared or the entire operation would be ruined. If Kensit even suspected what they were planning, he would instruct Bazin to triple the number of guards inside the cave with the neutrino telescope instead of committing all of his forces to repelling a raid that was literally nothing more than a smokescreen.

  With Trono’s hand on his shoulder to keep them together through the thick smoke, Juan used his phone’s receiver to home in on the tracking signal from the package that Linda’s team had planted. After skirting a few impenetrable brambles, they found it under a bush that had been carefully dug up and then replaced.

  The equipment all specifically designed for cave diving had been prepacked so that it could be donned quickly.

  The Ratel was randomly firing its cannon and machine guns into the smoke, chewing up the ground and trees nearby, so Juan and Trono carried their kits to the water’s edge and hurried into them before a lucky shot found them.

  In less than two minutes, they had the gear on and were stepping into the water. They sunk their clothes in the lake, leaving nothing behind to reveal where they’d gone. With weapons slung across their backs, they slipped underwater.

  Juan was glad Linda had understood his coded instructions. On a mission in Indonesia, he had snuck into the Karamita ship-breaker yard by scuba diving underneath the gigantic door that admitted the cargo ships in to be illegally sawn apart for scrap. She knew he intended to do the same thing at the cement plant, swimming through the now submerged cave entrance to approach the neutrino telescope cave from the unprotected rear.

  Juan was taking a big risk with this method of infiltration. Finding the cave entrance in the lake was going to be challenging, not to mention navigating through the flooded caverns to find the right passage leading to the telescope. He didn’t even know if they had enough air to make the journey.

  Any chance of success hinged on complete surprise. Being outnumbered inside a cave was a recipe for disaster, and retreat wouldn’t be an option.

  Finding the cave entrance might have taken them days under normal circumstances, but Juan was depending on the same device that had let them unearth the tin of photos. He took out the Geiger counter and descended to forty feet, the depth they estimated the cave to be below the lake’s surface. They were hoping that radiation from particulates in the cave carried through the water would lead them in the right direction.

  Poor visibility from the silt made it harder to see more than twenty feet in front of them, but that also made it impossible for anyone to see them from above the surface. The Geiger counter, which had been tuned for maximum sensitivity, didn’t register anything above the level of the natural background radiation.

  Based on the photo, Juan was sure that the cave was near the cement plant, so he kept swimming in that direction. He swept the counter back and forth, looking for even the most modest uptick.

  They had traveled another hundred feet when Juan saw a slight bump in the reading. He stopped and moved the Geiger counter up and down.

  There it was, ten feet above them. He kicked and a gaping maw rimmed by rocks that looked uncannily like teeth yawned before him, a black hole he would have missed without the radiation detector showing them the way. He signaled to Trono, who nodded in acknowledgment, and they switched on their dive lights as they were swallowed by the darkness. They were already ten minutes into the forty-minute deadline.

  —

  Linc, who had been hiding under a bush, waited until the Ratel was only a hundred yards away. At this range, he couldn’t miss. He lifted the RPG-7, so commonly seen in newcasts around the world, and triggered the weapon. The rocket-propelled grenade shot from its tube and made a direct hit on the armored vehicle, igniting the ammo inside and setting off a huge fireball.

  “One down, three to sizzle,” he said, dropping down prone again.

  “Nice shot,” Eddie said as they crawled away, “although my grandmother couldn’t have missed from this distance.”

  Linc paused to reload the metal tube with their one remaining RPG. “I didn’t know your grandmother had a Navy rifle marksmanship medal, too.”

  “Oh, she’s quite skilled,” Eddie said, grinning.

  Using the cover of some trees and the lingering smoke, they sprinted to a low hillock, where they found a depression.

  Another Ratel was coming their way. The driver must have seen their new position and was pumping 20mm shells into the dirt in front of them, making it impossible for either of them to rise up and take the Ratel out with the RPG.

  “A little help would be much appreciated,” Eddie said into the headset radio identical to the one Linc was wearing. “We’re right about where the Ratel is plowing a new field with its weapon.”

  “I see you,” Linda replied. “We’re on our way.”

  Seconds later, a piercing howl preceded the impact of a rocket from the PIG. It blew apart the second armored vehicle. Two down, two to go.

  From farther in the distance came the sound of another cannon firing a murderous barrage. Linc peeked over the lip of the hillock and saw the PIG take a beating.

  Two of the shells smashed right through its windshield and another took off part of the hood. Eric gunned the engine, followed by the whoosh of the nitrous oxide injecting into the cylinders. The PIG screamed down the road as cannon shells tore apart trees on either side of it. It went past an outcropping and found shelter from the onslaught.

  The Ratel didn’t pursue, likely expecting an ambush as soon as it was exp
osed. It waited out of range, its main gun trained on the spot where the PIG would have to come out.

  It was a standoff.

  “Linda, how’s Max’s baby doing,” Eddie said.

  “He’s going to have a conniption when he sees what we’ve done to it,” she said. “Eric tells me the targeting control is gone. He can fire the mortars, but they’d be blind shots. There’s one rocket left, plus plenty of machine gun ammo, but the thirty-caliber rounds won’t penetrate the Ratel’s armor. He can shoot them, but he’ll need line of sight from the onboard cameras to target them.”

  “That doesn’t sound so good. Maybe we should—”

  “Hold on,” Linda said, “something’s happening.”

  The smoke was lifting, and Linc could make out the central part of the cement plant. He raised his binoculars and could see armed mercenaries kicking and pushing scores of bedraggled men in tattered clothes from one of the buildings, assembling them in two rows in front of the plant. He estimated there were sixty of them in all. The fourth armored vehicle took up position behind them.

  “Who are those guys?” Linc asked under his breath.

  “Forced labor,” Eddie said. “Believe me, I know it when I see it.” Linc knew that wasn’t an exaggeration because Eddie had experienced it firsthand.

  The factory’s PA system squealed. “Linda Ross,” said a Creole-accented voice that had to be Hector Bazin, “you know who I am. And I know where you and your men are.”

  Eddie and Linc looked at each other. Kensit had spotted Linda with his neutrino telescope.

  “Your assault is futile. Tell Cabrillo and the rest of his men to stand down from this pointless gesture.”

  “At least he doesn’t know where the rest of the team is,” Linc said.

  “I have placed a call to the Haitian National Police,” Bazin continued. “They will be here with a hundred more men within twenty minutes. Leave now or you will all be killed. If you attempt to continue your attack, you will have to go through these innocent men.”

  “Can you take him out?” Eddie asked Linda.

  “Negative,” she said. “MacD doesn’t have a shot. Bazin hasn’t revealed himself.”

  “Leave now or die,” Bazin said. Another squeal signaled the end of the announcement.

  “We gotta give the Chairman more time,” Linc said.

  “I don’t think the part about the police is a bluff,” Eddie said. “He could very well have a whole battalion on his payroll. I don’t see many options for us unless we can get in there somehow, but the foliage stops long before we could get to the factory grounds.”

  Linc looked at the motionless Ratel and had a brainstorm.

  “Kensit doesn’t know where you and I are, right?”

  Eddie frowned at him. “It doesn’t seem so.”

  “Then we can sneak into the cement plant if we can get inside that Ratel.”

  Eddie’s eyes flicked to the armored vehicle and then back to Linc in sudden comprehension.

  “Return of the Jedi?”

  “Right. Where Chewie and Han take control of the Walker and trick the base commander outside. If we can get inside the Ratel, we can do the same thing. Drive right up to them, take out the other one before they know it’s us, and wipe out the rest of them with that big bad cannon.”

  “I like it,” Eddie said. “Now we just have to figure out a way to get over to it without them seeing us.”

  “Maybe we can bring it to us,” Linc said. He activated his radio. “Linda, don’t say anything. We heard everything Bazin said and we’ve got a plan. I hope you’ve seen Return of the Jedi.”

  As Juan and Trono swam, the reading on the Geiger counter grew stronger, far below dangerous levels but enough to guide them in the right direction. Still, they ran into dead ends and passages that were too tight to traverse, requiring backtracking that significantly cut into the time they had left. If they didn’t turn back soon, they wouldn’t have enough air to make the trip. This was why cave diving is considered one of the deadliest sports in the world.

  They reached an air pocket and surfaced. There was just enough room for both of their heads.

  “How’s your air?” Juan asked.

  “Getting close to the halfway mark.”

  “Me too. The radiation signature is strengthening, but I can’t tell how far we have to go. At least we’re going up. If we don’t surface anywhere else in the next five minutes, you’re going back.”

  “You mean, we’re going back.”

  “Kensit’s planning something for today, so we need to get to his telescope before that happens.”

  “Then I’m going with you. If you think we can make it, that’s good enough for me.”

  Juan saw that Trono wasn’t going to let him continue on by himself no matter what he said, so he didn’t argue.

  “All right. If we don’t find some dry floor in five minutes, we’ll turn around.”

  They put their masks back on and kept going. Juan tried to imagine Gunther Lutzen climbing through these caves over a hundred years ago with nothing more than some rope and a lantern and carrying his bulky camera with him the entire way. He might have explored the caves for weeks before happening upon the one that would prove his theories correct.

  Five minutes later, Juan still saw no sign that they were coming up into the cavern Lutzen called Oz. He continued going past where he should, counting on his and Trono’s ability to conserve more air on the way out than they’d consumed on the way in.

  The risk paid off when his light reflected off a mirror sheen where water met air. He kicked toward it, hoping it wasn’t merely another tiny air pocket.

  He poked his head from the water and instead of his regulator being muffled by the closeness of a bubble, its rasp echoed off widely spaced walls and a high ceiling.

  He removed his mouthpiece, did a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn, and saw no signs of light. He signaled Trono. They crawled out onto the damp limestone and shed all their scuba gear except the wetsuits. They unslung their MP-5 submachine guns, equipped with suppressors, which were reliable close-quarters weapons ideal for the underground setting. After shaking water out of the barrels and receivers, they continued following the path set by the Geiger counter.

  The winding caves often split off in multiple directions, but each time only one showed a stronger radiation signature. It was after the third intersection that Juan spotted a glimmer of light in the distance. He kept his hooded flashlight pointed at the floor so that it wouldn’t be seen as they approached.

  When they got within fifty yards, Juan noticed that his light was starting to be reflected by green crystals embedded in the limestone walls and ceiling around them. This must have been where Lutzen had taken his photo of crystals.

  As they got closer to the ghostly green light spilling from the main cavern, Juan and Trono split up to opposite sides of the passageway and kept their backs to the walls to stay out of sight as long as they could. It wasn’t going to be possible to sneak into the cavern when it was so well lit. They had to depend on total surprise and the expectation that most of the armed men would be outside at the cement plant.

  Juan set aside the Geiger counter and held out three fingers to Trono, who had his MP-5 against his shoulder. Juan counted down silently with his fingers. When his fist closed, he and Trono rushed into the cavern.

  At first, Juan focused on nothing but the men inside. Two Caucasians were seated in chairs at an equipment console, dressed in short-sleeved shirts and khaki pants. He immediately dismissed them as non-threats. His eyes then shifted to movement more than a hundred feet away at the opposite side of the cavern, which he was just beginning to realize was larger than he had expected.

  Two men stood guard at a man-made tunnel entrance, which had to be the one leading to the cement plant. Both were dressed in camo gear and carried assault rifles a
nd both looked bored with their duties babysitting the cave.

  Juan and Trono’s appearance happened so quickly and unexpectedly that the pair of mercenaries had no time to react. Juan put a three-round burst into the one on the right and Trono took care of the man on the left. The muffled blasts echoed around the cavern but likely wouldn’t travel all the way to the cave exit.

  Juan scanned the rest of the cavern, but it was clear. The terrified seated men had raised their hands high without being asked, Juan finally able to take in the glory of the cave itself.

  The center was packed with electronic equipment, stainless steel conduits, and scientific gadgetry that reminded him of the inside of a nuclear reactor. The entire apparatus stretched from floor to ceiling and was the size of a semi-trailer truck. The machine was surrounded by a metal grating that served as a floor to access the equipment from a level surface. Several large crates marked “Fragile: Scientific Equipment” were stacked near the tunnel entrance.

  It had to be the neutrino telescope. The design was both complicated and elegant.

  But as amazing as the telescope looked, it wasn’t even the most awe-inspiring part of the cave.

  The rest of the cathedral-sized space was crisscrossed with translucent green crystals. If Eric was correct, they would be selenium infused with copper impurities. It suddenly hit Juan that this was what Lutzen had photographed. It wasn’t a geode that he’d documented. It was a picture of the cavern itself.

  The reason they’d been misled was because none of them imagined the sheer immensity of the crystals themselves. Many of these crystals, beautiful and jagged diagonal pillars with edges as sharp as butcher knives, were the size of redwoods. Some of them hung from the ceiling, some went all the way to the floor, and scattered between them were huge piles of crystals jumbled like rock candy. Juan spun around, gaping at the splendor of a billion facets.

  Gunther Lutzen had been absolutely right. It really was as if Juan had stepped into the Emerald City of Oz.