On the map, she was a long way out of formation.
“Why is she so far behind us?”
“She had to come all the way from Singapore.”
“Frustrating,” Kurt said. “But it’s worth the wait to get Paul and Gamay on the team. What about the others?”
“Dorado’s here,” Joe said, pointing to a different section of the map well to the east, almost directly under the center of Australia.
“And the Hudson is way over here, south of New Zealand. They just got the equipment delivered. Two days, at least, before they come online.”
Kurt studied the chart. Four tiny ships, just dots on the map in the vast sea. They were the only real hope of finding Thero before he acted.
“You think this is going to work?” Joe asked.
“It all depends on Hayley’s sensors.”
“You don’t seem as certain as before,” Joe noted.
“She’s hiding something,” Kurt said.
“And yet, you like her,” Joe noted.
“All the more reason to be careful,” Kurt said.
At this, Joe nodded. “It’s always the punch you’re not looking for that hits the hardest.”
Kurt took a sip of the coffee and glanced out the bridge windows into the deepening gloom. He couldn’t help but wonder which direction that punch might come from.
* * *
Eighty-six miles behind the Orion, a different kind of vessel loomed out in the darkness. From all appearances, the MV Rama was a containership. A check of her logs and cargo would prove that she spent most of her time transporting goods from Vietnam to Australia and back. In fact, she’d been fully loaded with electronics and only hours from Perth when Dmitry Yevchenko had bought her, lock, stock, and barrel, and diverted her to the south, turning her into a floating command ship for Anton Gregorovich and the commandos the Russian government had put at his disposal.
The Rama was smaller than most containerships of the day, only five hundred and sixty feet at a time when seven-hundred- and eight-hundred-footers were rapidly being dwarfed by thousand-foot behemoths. But what she did not have in size, she made up for in speed, with a top rate of twenty-eight knots.
As Gregorovich gazed at a satellite feed downloaded to them from a Russian satellite, he was thankful for that choice. The Americans had been racing south at nearly thirty knots since the moment Gregorovich had found them.
“Why are we following them?” a man with a heavily bandaged face asked.
“Because you failed to capture the woman,” Gregorovich said.
“We have helicopters and jamming equipment,” Victor Kirov replied. “And twenty trained commandos on board. We could take her now with ease.”
Gregorovich didn’t like having official Russian agents on his team, or even the Red Army commandos they’d sent him, but at least he could trust the soldiers. With an ambitious GRU man like Kirov, that was not possible.
“You’re lucky I allowed you to come aboard, Victor. You’ve lost face with me in more ways than one.”
Kirov bristled at the comment but didn’t respond.
“Don’t you see?” Gregorovich asked. “The Americans know something. They wouldn’t be driving through the waves at flank speed if they didn’t. They are the hounds chasing the fox. We are the hunters on horseback. At this point, it’s best to shadow them from a distance, using the satellite granted us by the Kremlin to keep an eye on them from over the horizon. When they settle on a final location, we’ll act.”
Kirov snorted and shook his head. “If Thero proves to have a workable weapon, the Americans will swarm here like a horde of angry bees. Our little force will be no match for them. We must find him and destroy or take what he is building before he tests it in a way that alerts the world.”
“Take it?” Gregorovich said. “So we have alternate plans now?”
“If some of the technology can be recovered, we are to do so,” Kirov noted.
“Those were not my orders,” Gregorovich said.
“They’re mine,” Kirov replied.
This was odd, Gregorovich thought, but not totally unexpected. He shrugged it off, more concerned with the fact that he hadn’t been told than the actual task.
“And what are we to do with the little toy you brought along?” He nodded toward a case secured to the far bulkhead. A nuclear warhead lay inside. A suitcase bomb. The mother of all suitcase bombs, really.
The Russian designation was RA-117H. While most tactical warheads yield a few kilotons at best — enough to vaporize several city blocks and perhaps devastate a square mile or so — the RA-117H yielded far more. Nearly three times the power of the Hiroshima bomb.
“Once we have samples of the technology, we are to activate the weapon and obliterate the site. There are to be no remnants of Thero or his experiments this time.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Maxmillian Thero walked past a line of his engineers and technicians, a group of misfits he’d molded into a production team. Among them was a North Korean who’d escaped Kim Jong-il, an Iranian couple who’d fallen under suspicion of the radical Ahmadinejad government when their efforts in building his bomb were sabotaged by an American or Israeli computer virus, a Pakistani scientist wanted by Interpol for selling nuclear secrets, a middle-aged German woman whose radical thoughts made her persona non grata in her homeland, and a youth from Chechnya who was brilliant beyond his years but who’d been forced into hiding under the threat of a death sentence for killing Russian soldiers.
In a way, they were his children, Thero mused. But only in a way.
A mixture of fear, promises, and lack of other options kept them at his side, working like devout believers.
“You are the lost sheep whom I’ve gathered beneath my wings,” Thero said, the arrogance in his baritone voice echoing in the semidarkened control room. “Together, we shall witness the fruits of our labor. The brilliance of my genius.”
He moved to a control panel and flipped a series of switches. Lights came on around them, and a suite of computer monitors lit up. Beyond the panels lay a large Plexiglas window. On the other side, a great cavern was illuminated. Perfectly spherical, it stretched nearly five hundred feet from the polished stone floor to the curved, domelike roof. Much of it was natural, but Thero’s believers and his slaves had worked it into the shape of a perfect sphere.
Inside the sphere sat a mechanical orb, made of metal pipes and scaffolding. It resembled a monstrous gyroscope, and, in a sense, it could act as one, pivoting in any and all directions.
This was Thero’s weapon, the ultimate expression of his genius. With it, he could direct vast amounts of energy toward any point on Earth. But, unlike most weapons, Thero’s would not rain destruction down from above. It would send it surging up from below.
By disturbing the zero-point energy contained within the Earth, Thero could channel this energy through the heart of the globe if he chose to.
One by one, a bank of indicator lights went green.
“All systems go,” announced the Chechen.
“Set for minimal power draw,” Thero said.
The engineers busied themselves with Thero’s protocol. They went through checklists and procedures and soon came to the point of no return.
“Switching from geothermal input,” the German woman said. The lights dimmed for a second and then returned to full brightness.
“Initiating the priming sequence,” the Iranian man said.
Several seconds later, a flashing icon on the panel in front of Thero indicated the priming was complete. The moment of truth beckoned. Thero pressed the ignition switch.
The lights dimmed again, much lower this time. Several went dark. The immense power draw of the ignition sequence was straining the electrical grid.
On a screen placed above the viewport a flat line was displayed. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the line began to oscillate as a shallow wave pattern ran across the screen over and over.
Out in the cavern, a dim sp
ecter of ethereal light spiraled along the tubing and around the interior of the globe-shaped room. It flashed and faded. A second pulse of energy followed. But, unlike the first, this one remained, moving back and forth like a ghost trapped in some kind of man-made purgatory.
“Magnetic containment field holding,” the Iranian woman said.
Slowly, the lights around them came back up.
“We are now running on zero-point energy,” the German woman said proudly.
As the sounds of subdued celebration spread throughout the room, Thero watched the monitor ahead of him. The peaks and troughs of the wave continued to build until a yellow indicator began to flash.
“Something’s wrong,” the young Chechen said. He returned to his desk. “The pattern is unstable.”
“It can’t be,” someone else insisted.
“Look for yourself.”
Thero stepped over to the panel and studied the three-dimensional pattern. It should have been a perfect sphere like the cave, but it was distorted in one section near the top. The lines pulled to the side, snapped back, and pulled again, like the picture on an old television getting bad reception.
“Counteract it,” Thero said.
Even as he spoke, a second alarm went off.
“Modulate the field.”
The Pakistani began tapping the keys on his computer. Out in the cave, the monstrous, gyroscope-like construction began to pivot in the huge rig. It turned slowly like a giant telescope, trying to align itself with a specific section of the sky. As it moved, the second alarm shut itself off. Only a flashing yellow marker on the oscilloscope-like screen continued.
The giant array of pipes locked itself into place. Ghosts of electromagnetic energy chased one another around the interior and across the polished walls of the sphere. The whole setup continued to glow as if it were covered in St. Elmo’s fire.
“The counterbalancing pulse is in effect,” the Iranian man said. “It should be tuned perfectly, but there is still a slight distortion.”
Thero was furious. He was ready to exterminate whoever had failed him. A slight distortion at low power would be fatal at higher energy levels. It would render his threat impotent.
“Explain the failure!” he demanded.
The engineers and technicians pored over their individual screens, checking and rechecking for any sign they’d missed. They chattered among themselves trying to understand what they were looking at.
“Well?!”
“It’s not us,” the German woman said finally. “Our energy output is balanced perfectly.”
“Then what is occurring?”
The Chechen youth spoke hesitantly, as if he were unsure. “Something out there is reading our signal, absorbing part of it. It’s creating an interference pattern, upsetting the balance.”
“Reading our signal?” Thero’s mind whirled.
“Yes,” the youth replied. “I think I can counteract it and restore…”
Understanding came to Thero suddenly, hitting him like a hammer. “No,” he said. “Shut it down. Shut everything down!”
“What?” someone asked. “Why?”
“They’re probing us. Waiting for us to power up and homing in on our signal. Shut the system down!”
Thero went to switch the system off himself, when an arm barred him. He turned to see his son, George.
“How dare you stay my hand!” Thero shouted.
“It’s too late,” his son told him. “Like radar, we’ve already been painted. There’s no point in shutting it down now.”
“That may not be true,” Thero charged.
“You know it is,” George said.
“Then we must stop them,” Thero blurted out.
He looked over to the engineers. “If they can detect us, then we can find them. Pinpoint the origin of this distortion. Quickly.”
The Korean and the two Iranians sprang into action, glancing up at Thero nervously, gawking at him as he conversed with his son.
“Do not raise your eyes to us!”
They looked back down at their work, made a series of calculations, and came up with a solution.
“Typing the location in now,” the Iranian woman said.
A map appeared on the monitor above the Plexiglas viewport. It displayed Thero’s location, his island of Tartarus. It also displayed the waters of the Southern Ocean and the southwestern tip of Australia. A flashing dot indicated the location where the offending distortion was located. Almost due east, only nine hundred miles from the island.
“How could they be so close?” he gasped. “Traitor. There must still be a traitor among us!”
“It must be a ship,” the Korean said.
“Of course it’s a ship!” Thero bellowed.
“Perhaps we should shut down,” Thero’s son suggested.
“Now?!” Thero barked. “I think not! Like you said, it’s too late. Prepare to destroy them.”
“It’s not wise to risk full power without testing.”
The crew continued to gawk at the argument between father and son. The embarrassment enraged Thero even further. “No more questions!”
“The system isn’t ready!” his son pleaded.
“Silence!”
With that, Thero’s son retreated, and Thero gazed out at his crew.
“Set the machine for a short impulse,” he ordered. “Align the dislocation to occur directly in their path. The distortion alone should swallow them whole.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Kurt and Joe were still on the bridge, waiting for a printer to churn out the latest weather map, when it jammed midpage and wouldn’t restart.
“What’d you do?” Joe asked.
“I didn’t touch it,” Kurt said.
Joe stepped to the computer to restart the printing process. “That’s weird.”
“What?”
“No signal.”
“Telemetry’s down,” Captain Winslow told them. “It’s been in and out all day. Something to do with solar flares messing up our satellites.”
Kurt remembered hearing how that would be a problem this year, the sun was entering the most active phase of its eleven-year cycle. Sunspots and flares were stirring up powerful electromagnetic storms in the upper atmosphere, creating incredible displays of light over both the northern and southern poles.
Kurt glanced out the windows. If they weren’t socked in under a thick blanket of clouds, the aurora australis, or southern lights, might have been a treat to see.
“I’m going to get some air,” Kurt said. “Let me know when the link is reestablished.”
He opened the bulkhead door and stepped outside. A chilly blast hit him, chasing away the cobwebs that had been creeping over him. The wind from the ship’s motion whistled past, biting his exposed skin. He pulled his coat tight and shoved his hands into its pockets.
He stepped to the rail and stood there, enjoying the solitude, until a bulkhead door opened behind him.
He glanced back to see Hayley coming out onto the deck. “Kurt,” she shouted, “I think we’ve found them. I think we’ve found Thero.”
She moved toward him, eyeing the rail cautiously. A couple sheets of paper fluttered in her grip as the wind tried to pull them loose.
Kurt took them from Hayley, and she grabbed on to the ship’s rail with both hands.
He looked down at the printouts. On top was a map with arcs and lines drawn on it. They angled off to the west. It looked like nothing but open ocean. On the edge of the page was a numerical bearing to the target.
“They’re on that line somewhere,” she said. “Without a second sensor operating, I can’t get a precise fix, but they’re on that line somewhere.”
“Are you sure?”
“I did the calculations three times,” she said. “I checked everything. There were no errors. Something in this exact direction is disturbing the zero-point field.”
She looked up at Kurt, positively beaming. Then she stretched up and gave him a quick kiss.
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“Just trying out the spontaneity thing,” she said.
Kurt smiled. “I like it.” He reached toward her, slid a hand behind her head, and pulled her toward him for a proper kiss.
“Okay, I like yours better,” she said. “Can we try that again?”
“Let’s talk to the captain first.”
“Do we really need his permission?” Hayley asked. “I know it’s his ship, but…”
“About the map,” Kurt said. “And our new heading.”
“Oh… all right,” she said.
He took her by the hand and stepped toward the hatch, stopping as a flash on the horizon caught his eye.
He turned and gazed directly into the night but saw nothing but darkness.
“Did you see that?” he asked.
“See what?”
“That flash.”
“No,” she replied. “I didn’t see anything.”
As they stood and gazed into the darkness, like two people waiting to see fireworks go off, a strange feeling began to creep over Kurt. He could sense the hair on the back of his neck standing up.
Finally, another flicker of light appeared. This time, Kurt saw it plainly, but it wasn’t a flash on the horizon like a strobe light or even a definable bolt of electricity, it was more like heat lightning in the summer, covering the whole horizon, flickering dimly. Only, it wasn’t coming from the sky. The sea itself was flashing, as if the whole of the ocean were bioluminescencing.
“Could this be an effect of the aurora?” he asked.
Hayley pulled back trembling. “It’s not the aurora,” she said. There was a chill in her voice. The sound of fear.
“What is it?”
“Electromagnetic discharge,” she said. “It’s a side effect of disturbing the zero-point field.”
“Because of your sensor?”
“No,” she said, shaking. “It’s not us. It’s Thero.”
The sea flickered again, much brighter this time, and the ship lurched downward. It happened so suddenly that Kurt and Hayley were flung to the deck. The bow dug into the water, and a towering wall of spray blasted up into the air and then fell in sheets around them.
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