Zero Hour nf-11

by Clive Cussler

  They assembled in the shelter of the huge mountain, but the wind still whipped down off it, blowing the snow sideways. Kurt wondered how bad the weather would get. Most of Big Ben was already hidden in the clouds.

  As Gregorovich whistled for the pilots to assemble, Kurt found Joe attaching a rope to his pack and what looked like a spearhead of some kind. He trudged toward him through the buffeting wind. “You get your frequent-flier miles on this trip?”

  “Yeah,” Joe said. “What about yours?”

  “I didn’t sign up,” Kurt said. “I’m hoping never to fly this airline again, so I figured there was no point.” He gestured to the spear. “What’s that?”

  “RPH,” Joe said. “Rocket-propelled harpoon. You can fire it into the face of the ice and avoid having to make a free climb.”

  “Why’d they give it to you?”

  “No one wants to carry it,” Joe said. “The head is made of tungsten and lead. It weighs a ton.”

  “At least that’ll save us some time if we have to go up.”

  “What’d you get to carry?” Joe asked.

  “C-4 charges and some detonators,” Kurt said. “In case we have to blast our way in.”

  “Try not to blow yourself up,” Joe said. “Like that Fourth of July when you bought all those Roman candles from the discount store and—”

  The sound of a Kalashnikov firing cut Joe off.

  Kurt dove into the snow and pulled out the Makarov pistol. He whipped around, brandishing the weapon, as Joe dove down beside him, using the snowmobile as a shield.

  Scanning the landing zone, Kurt saw no attackers, only the other Russians aiming their weapons and likewise looking for a target.

  Finally, Gregorovich marched forward. A thin trail of smoke drifted from the rifle in his hands. “The pilots are dead,” he announced.

  “What?!” Kirov yelled. “Are you insane?”

  “Just cautious,” Gregorovich replied. “I overheard them talking. They were planning to leave without us. To leave us behind and get back to the freighter before the weather made it impossible. That won’t be happening now.”

  The soldiers stirred nervously. Gregorovich stared at Kirov.

  “Perhaps you were going to leave with them,” he said to his rival. “To put a bullet in my back and then run home like a coward.”

  “No,” Kirov insisted.

  “But you do know how to fly?” Gregorovich clarified. “It’s on your dossier.”

  “Yes, but—”

  Gregorovich blasted him down before he could finish his sentence. Kirov fell backward, red blood staining the white snow beneath him.

  “Wrong answer,” Kurt muttered to Joe.

  “I know what to say if he asks me,” Joe replied.

  The Russian commandos looked on in shock. “How are we supposed to get out of here when the job is done?” one of them asked.

  “I will fly you out myself,” Gregorovich said. “I spent three years piloting attack craft in Afghanistan. Mi-17s and Mi-24s. These are not so different.”

  “And somehow we’re all going to fit on just one?” another soldier asked.

  Gregorovich nodded. “Without the equipment, there will be plenty of room. But no one is going anywhere until we find Thero’s lair and set the bomb.”

  The tension between the Russians felt like a pile of gunpowder just waiting to be lit. But Gregorovich had so completely seized the upper hand that the men could do nothing. Not if they ever wanted to see home again. In fact, they might need to guard Gregorovich with their lives.

  They began to stow their weapons.

  “Lucky for us,” Joe muttered. “Caught in the middle of a Bolshevik revolution.”

  “More like Cortés burning his ships in the harbor at Veracruz,” Kurt replied, “to prevent his men from leaving Mexico.”

  “This guy doesn’t miss a trick,” Joe said.

  “At some point, he will,” Kurt said. “Whatever you do, don’t tell him you’re a pilot.”

  Joe nodded, and Kurt began to hike back through the swirling snow to where Hayley stood.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  “No,” she replied harshly. “It’s not okay. I’m pretty sure nothing will ever be okay again.”

  He climbed on the snowmobile and felt Hayley climb on behind him. As she wrapped her arms around his waist, he could feel her shaking. It wasn’t from the cold.

  There was nothing he could say to erase what she’d just seen. What’s more, he was pretty certain it wouldn’t be the last bloodshed they’d witness in the hours ahead.

  Gregorovich waved his arm, and the lead commando gunned his throttle and moved off. Kurt strapped on a pair of orange-tinted goggles as Joe followed the lead sled.

  A moment later, it was Kurt’s turn. With a twist of the throttle, he accelerated and tucked in behind the Russians, gliding in their tracks. Gregorovich brought up the rear, unwilling to let anyone out of his sight.

  The terrain map showed a seven-mile ride in the shadow of Big Ben, then a two-hundred-foot climb down a ridge. From there, it was a two-mile hike over the crevasse-infested field. Once across the far side, they’d reach the edge of the Winston Glacier, look for the hatches, and blast their way into Thero’s stronghold.

  It was a simple plan, Kurt thought, only about a million things could go wrong. But with a little luck, they’d be inside the lion’s den by dusk with at least ten hours to spare.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  NUMA Headquarters

  Half the world away, Dirk Pitt had been forced to make a painful decision. With no answers from Hiram Yaeger, he had to risk the Gemini.

  “You have the ship battened down?” he asked over the speakerphone.

  “All watertight doors are sealed,” Paul Trout replied. “The crew have donned survival suits and moved to the upper decks. The boats are ready. If this thing blows a hole in the bottom, or if Thero locks onto us and sends some kind of discharge our way that batters the ship, we’ll be off the Gemini in sixty seconds.”

  Full precautions, Pitt thought. There was nothing more he could do. “Let’s hope we’re just overreacting.”

  “How’s the telemetry link?” Paul asked.

  Pitt glanced at the computer screen. “We’re receiving your data without any hiccups,” he said. “The solar activity has faded a bit.”

  “Good,” a female voice said. “If we blow ourselves up, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “I thought you were ordered topside,” Pitt said to Gamay.

  “She was,” Paul replied. “But she suddenly came down with a case of hearing impairment and missed that order.”

  “I understand,” Pitt said. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  A few seconds of silence came next, and then Paul’s voice. “Initiating power-up sequence in five… four…”

  “Wait!” a voice shouted from Pitt’s outer office. “Wait!”

  Hiram Yaeger rushed in with a set of papers in his hands. “I’ve found something.”

  “Stand by,” Pitt said into the phone. “What do you have, Hiram? Tell me it’s Thero.”

  “Not exactly.” He handed over a printed page with a blue background and a jagged line crisscrossing it. It looked like a game of connect the dots.

  “What is this?” Pitt asked.

  “It’s a ship’s course over the last forty-eight hours,” Yaeger said.

  “What ship?”

  Hiram was panting. He’d run all the way up from the tenth floor when the elevator didn’t respond fast enough. “I don’t know what ship exactly,” he said. “But it’s important — I’m sure of it.”

  Pitt didn’t doubt his friend but he needed clarity. “What exactly are you talking about?”

  “There’s a storm brewing down there,” he said. “Any ships in the area should be getting out of the way, or at least transiting with all due haste, but this one is changing course at odd hours and intervals and all but driving in circles. It’s taken her two full days to arrive where she is now
. Had she traveled straight, she could have done the trip in ten hours. In and of itself, that means nothing. But it is suspicious.”

  Pitt didn’t disagree. But there were reasons some ships took odd courses. One in particular came to mind.

  “There’s a lot of illegal fishing down there,” he said. “The Aussies are always chasing ships off. Every year, they even capture a few. Those ships trawl for the biggest catch. But they stay out of the shipping lanes, and they don’t stay in one place very long because they don’t want to get caught.”

  “My first thought,” Yaeger said, “but this isn’t a fishing trawler, it’s a containership of some kind. And those turns are not as random as they seem. There’s a pattern to them.”

  Pitt looked at the jagged line. “I don’t see a pattern.”

  Yaeger had a second item in his hand. It was a transparent overlay. He’d printed something on it.

  “The angles are slightly off,” he said, “and the legs aren’t exactly the right lengths, but it’s pretty close.”

  He placed the overlay down and lined up the edges of the page. The left side of the pattern on the transparent sheet matched closely with the legs and courses the wandering mystery ship had taken.

  Pitt recognized the full pattern instantly. “The constellation of Orion.”

  Yaeger nodded. “For reasons I can’t begin to guess at, this lost containership has been tracing out half of the constellation. It’s a mighty accurate effort at that.”

  “Could it possibly be a coincidence?” Pitt wondered aloud.

  Yaeger shook his head. “Ten million to one for a ship to randomly make these turns and steam legs of the proper length. Add in the fact that our Orion just went down hours before this pattern started in the very same area, and the odds might hit a billion to one.”

  Pitt nodded. Someone on that ship, someone in control of that ship, was trying to tell the world something. He couldn’t fathom what circumstances might be creating this oddity, but he had a good idea who might be sly enough and intelligent enough to pull it off.

  “Kurt,” he said almost unconsciously.

  Yaeger nodded. “He’s the biggest astronomy buff in the department. He’s always up on that roof with his telescope.”

  “Where’s the ship now?”

  “Here,” Yaeger said, pointing to a position on the map. “Three hundred miles east-southeast of Heard Island. It was holding station for a while, but now it’s heading northeast at what must be flank speed.”

  Pitt turned toward the speakerphone. “Paul have you been listening to this conversation?”

  “Both of us have,” Paul said. “In fact, Gamay’s hearing seems to have made a rapid improvement. Not to mention both of our spirits.”

  “Mine as well,” Pitt said. “But let’s not get carried away. Get everybody back to their stations. Keep that device switched off, and tell the captain to head due west at flank speed. Don’t spare the horses.”

  “Should we try to contact them by radio?” Paul asked.

  Pitt thought for a second. “No,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but if we do have someone aboard that ship and he had access to a radio, he’d have called by now. Remain on radio silence until we know more. I’ll have more orders for you in a while, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start planning a boarding party.”

  “Yes, sir,” Paul said. “Gemini out.”

  For the first time in days, Pitt felt a surge of positive energy. He looked back at the course line to make sure he hadn’t imagined it.

  “Find out what you can about that ship,” he said to Yaeger. “I want to know who owns it, where it’s been, and what it might be doing on the bottom of the world.”

  Yaeger nodded. “Should we give this info to the NSA?”

  Pitt hesitated and then shook his head. “Let’s make sure we’re not fooling ourselves first.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Heard Island

  Janko strode through a dimly lit tunnel several hundred feet below the surface of Heard Island. He traveled alongside a small conveyor belt that ran the length of the tunnel. The belt rumbled along continuously, carrying rock and other material in the opposite direction. At the far end, he came to a large, irregular-shaped room carved out of the rock.

  The space was over a hundred feet in diameter and dropped down in sections like terraces. The air was thick with dust and the sound of hammering as two dozen workers toiled in the space under flood lamps. They dug with jackhammers and picks and carried the results of their labor to the conveyor belt in wheelbarrows.

  Janko made his way to a burly foreman, who watched over the workers like a prison guard on a chain gang.

  “Surprised to see you down here,” the foreman growled over the clamor.

  “The yield has dropped,” Janko said angrily. “You’re sending up nothing but rock.”

  The foreman shifted his weight, turning his stubble-covered face toward Janko with a sneer.

  “I told you this would happen months ago,” he said. “The diamonds in this mountain came up in kimberlite pipes. Brought to the surface by volcanic activity over the eons. The vein doesn’t run horizontal, it runs vertical. We were lucky to find the top portion so rich. But the old man took the lion’s share of that, didn’t he?”

  Janko didn’t react.

  “Well, anyway,” the foreman continued, “the yield is gonna keep going down until you get me some heavy equipment, preferably the kind that can be used underwater.”

  “We tried that,” Janko said. “The ASIO intercepted the shipment.”

  “Then you’d better get us more employees,” the foreman said without emotion.

  Janko glanced around. Once, they’d had over a hundred workers, men and women captured or lured in by offers of big contracts. But the work was harsh, and accidents were common. Over the last year, half the crew had been killed, most in accidents, a few in escape attempts, a few others tortured and killed as examples to show the rest that working was better than rebelling.

  An intercom box buzzed on the wall. Janko picked up the heavy receiver and was surprised to hear Thero’s voice.

  “We have a problem,” Thero said.

  “What kind of problem?”

  “We’re no longer alone on our deserted island.”

  Janko’s body tensed. “Is it someone we can allow to leave undisturbed, like those seal poachers who came ashore last year?”

  “No,” Thero said. “They’re inland on snowmobiles. They must have been airlifted onto the glacier. That means they’re military.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Get the hovercraft ready, and go deal with them.”

  “On my way,” Janko said.

  He hung up and exchanged glances with the foreman.

  “The jig is up, isn’t it?”

  “Not necessarily,” Janko said. “But we knew this wouldn’t last forever. Maybe you’d better get the last shipment ready. If everything goes south, we’re going to need some portable wealth fast.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  Stephenson Glacier, Heard Island

  The group of snowmobiles crossed the winter landscape with deliberate caution. The heavy clouds, falling snow, and gusting winds were creating a whiteout effect. It made the terrain hard to navigate.

  Twice, the lead snowmobile got caught in deeper, softer snow and had to be pulled out. At one point, the grade became too steep for the machines to safely climb, and they were forced to back out and find another way.

  Paused in a sheltered area while Gregorovich studied a map, Kurt flipped up his goggles and turned to Hayley. “Are you okay?”

  “Freezing,” she said. “Can’t feel my toes.”

  She flipped up her own goggles, her cheeks were windburned, her lips were blue, strands of blond hair that had slipped out from under her cap were coated with ice.

  He climbed off the seat. “We should walk around while we’re stopped. Get our blood pumping.”

  Hayley agreed, and Ku
rt helped her off the machine.

  “Where are you going?” one of the Russians asked.

  “Out for a walk,” Kurt said. “It’s such a beautiful day.”

  “Don’t get lost.”

  Kurt considered the statement. The blizzard would have been good cover if he’d wanted to make a break for it, but there was no point in that. There was nowhere to go.

  He took a few steps and pointed up the slope. “Tell the commissar I’m climbing that ridge to get a better look at what’s ahead. Won’t be gone long.”

  With that, Kurt took Hayley’s hand and began to hike upward. The exertion of trudging up a hill through knee-deep snow at a thirty-five-hundred-foot altitude was enough to get his heart pumping, all right. By the time they were halfway to the top, Kurt felt he’d lit an inner furnace, even his face was flushing.

  “Feeling any better?” Kurt asked.

  “I’m warming up, yes,” Hayley said. “Any chance there’s a ski lodge at the top?”

  “Doubtful,” Kurt said. “But just in case…”

  He never finished the sentence, as his ears picked up an odd sound above the wind. It was a high-pitched whine, almost like a small jet engine. It faded and then returned.

  Looking around, Kurt realized the confining ridge was shaped in a rough semicircle, a half bowl almost perfect for catching distant acoustics.

  When the sound returned, he looked across the ice field. The falling snow made it hard to see anything. He flipped the orange-tinted goggles down to get a better contrast. In a second, he caught sight of movement. A group of small vehicles coming their way.

  There was something odd about the way they moved, gliding over the snow with almost effortless ease.

  “Houston, we have a problem.”

  “What is it?”

  “Trouble.”

  He grabbed Hayley’s hand and they began to climb down, hopping and jumping and sliding down the steep sections to cover as much ground as possible. They reached the bottom, just about tumbling into the group. “Someone’s coming,” he said sharply.