“I thought reason might prevail,” George volunteered.
“It still can,” she said eagerly.
“No,” he replied sadly. “They’ve come to kill us again. Only a show of unstoppable force will keep them away now.”
She had to think fast. “I can negotiate with them for you,” she pleaded, squeezing his smooth hand. “The Americans have already promised amnesty,” she lied. “All you have to do is return to the States with them.”
“Amnesty?”
“Yes,” she said. “For you and your father,” she added, doing all she could to keep George’s personality engaged and on the surface.
“Why would they offer that?”
“They’re afraid of the Russians getting their hands on it.”
“They’re working with the Russians,” George said forcefully.
“No,” she said. “The Russians kidnapped us. They want to kill you. But if you get me to a radio, I can bring help.”
George hesitated. “Are you sure?”
“I promise,” she said. “I just need a chance to prove it.”
He stared at her for a long moment, as if pondering what she’d said.
“This is why you reached out to me,” she said, “isn’t it?”
Finally, he nodded. “Come with me.”
He led her down the bank of control panels, stopping in his tracks as he passed the final console.
Hayley saw why. Lying on the floor were several men and a few women. They wore bloodstained lab coats. They’d been shot.
“Father, what have you done?”
Hayley tried to breathe. “We have to hurry, George.”
Thero hesitated. He cocked his head to the side. “What do you mean they were traitors?” he asked the air.
She could see what was happening. “No, George,” she urged. “Don’t talk to him.”
“They worked for you,” he said sharply, as if arguing with his father. “They built this for you.”
A strange trancelike silence gripped Thero, and Hayley sensed him wavering.
“Stay with me!”
Thero hesitated. He stood with clumsy effort and let go of her hand.
“George?” she asked.
“No,” he said softly.
“George?”
“No!”
This time, the words were bellowed at her. The harshness returned to Thero’s eyes with a rush, and he grabbed her by the throat with his right hand and slammed her into the wall. The impact stunned her, and Thero’s hand crushing her windpipe seemed to cut off the blood from her brain.
“Please…” she gasped, crying out to the other side of Thero’s mind. “Please!”
Thero released her, and she dropped to the floor beside the heap of bodies.
“How dare you turn my son against me!”
“I didn’t,” she managed. “We were only… trying to help.”
“I don’t need your help!” he shouted. “Or my son’s, for that matter. I will bring the world to its knees. Once they see what I do to Australia, there will be no need for negotiations. They will beg me for mercy.”
He stepped back over to the control panel and shoved the master switch into the on position. She heard the heavy circuit closing and the big generators in the other room switching on. The lights around them dimmed appreciably and then began to brighten.
Soon, the generators were humming, spinning up to a feverous pitch.
“No,” she begged. “Please, don’t do this.”
“I’m so glad you could be here,” Thero shouted. “I will not even wait for zero hour. I will punish them immediately. And you will watch from my side as I wreak destruction on those who persecuted me.”
Out in the spherical cavern, the gears began to churn, and the giant collection of pipes and electrical conduits began to tilt. The weapon turned slowly, clinking like a roller coaster being dragged up the steep track to its release point.
Hayley found herself dizzy as the weapon slowly ratcheted itself toward a new position, an alignment that would aim the wave of distortion through the Earth’s crust at the dormant rift in the Australian outback.
FORTY-FIVE
Kurt and his three newfound cohorts crept through several lengths of tunnel connecting various areas that the miners had quarried until eventually they arrived in a hub containing living quarters for the prisoners.
Every twenty feet or so, there was an alcove with a steel door. At the far end of the hall, a single guard sat at a desk, ostensibly watching the hub.
“How’d you get past him the first time?” Kurt asked.
“We waited for him to take a bathroom break,” Masinga replied.
“Unless he’s been drinking coffee all night, I don’t think we have time for that plan to work again. Get ready to use that skeleton key.”
He took a breath and let the tension fall away from his body. Then, calmly, he stepped out into the hall, leveled the Makarov, and advanced at a brisk pace.
When the guard looked up, Kurt had no choice. With two quick pulls, Kurt triggered the gun. The booming report surged through the narrow tunnel like thunder. The two shots hit the guard in the chest, knocking him off his chair and onto the floor.
He didn’t move, but, to Kurt’s surprise, a second guard appeared at the side of the first.
Kurt fired again. The guard crumpled to the ground, but his hand slammed down on an emergency alarm button as he fell.
The shriek of an electronic alarm rang out, and a thick steel-plated door began to close between Kurt and the guard post and whatever was beyond it. Kurt ran forward, but it shut just before he arrived.
Behind him, Masinga was already rushing to the dormlike cells, letting the other prisoners free. They were shouting and thanking him in several different languages. Soon, they were filling the hall and surging toward Kurt, for whatever good it would do them.
Devlin arrived at Kurt’s side before the rest of the mob. “Now what?”
Kurt slid the backpack off his shoulders and dropped it to the floor. Opening it revealed the explosives he carried. “Get everyone back into their cells.”
“You’re gonna blow this thing?”
“No other choice,” Kurt said. “Let’s just hope I don’t bring the roof down in the process.”
Kurt’s instincts tended toward overkill. If a small hammer would do the job, a sledgehammer would leave no room for doubt. In this case, he tempered his basic inclinations, placing two bricks of the C-4 beside the door and jabbing a pair of blasting caps into each of them.
“Are you sure that’s enough?” Devlin asked.
Kurt didn’t reply.
“Could it be too much?” Devlin asked.
The wailing alarm was bad enough, Devlin’s questions only made it worse. “I guess we’re going to find out one way or another,” Kurt said. “Now, get these people back.”
As Kurt attached a wire to each of the caps, Devlin backed down the tunnel, ushering the others to keep away.
Kurt was soon backing away with them, spooling out the wire as he went. He reached the first of the alcoves and ducked into it. The newly freed prisoners crowded around him as he attached the wires from the detonator to a small handheld device that resembled one of those grip strengtheners tennis players are always squeezing.
“What’s that?” Devlin asked.
“Some people call it a clacker,” Kurt said. “It sets off the explosives.”
Around them, the prisoners ducked and covered their ears. Fortunately for Kurt, the clacker was a tiny generator, not a battery-powered object or it would have been drained by the flash-draw that took out the snowmobile.
“Ready?”
Devlin and Masinga nodded in unison. With a quick compression, Kurt squeezed the clacker. The action sent a tiny electrical pulse racing down the wire. The pulse set off the blasting caps, which in turn detonated the C-4.
A thunderous explosion racked the subterranean halls, and a concussion wave surged down the tunnel and into the a
lcove. Kurt felt the air knocked out of him and was thrown to the ground along with everyone else in the cavern.
Getting up quickly, he fought his way through clouds of dust and down the tunnel. As he neared the far end, the dust began to clear. He saw light and an open room ahead. The door lay on its side.
Stepping into the hall, Kurt found no resistance. “It’s clear,” he shouted. “Let’s go.”
Devlin and Masinga came running up first. Kurt handed them weapons taken from the dead guards, and the three of them moved out with the crowd of prisoners close behind.
* * *
The shrill call of the alarm caught Thero’s attention as he began to run through the start-up checklist. He paused, wondering what could be happening.
As he waited, Hayley called out, “George, it doesn’t have to be like this. Tell your father there’s another way.”
Thero looked to his left. His son was there, staring at Hayley like a lovesick schoolboy.
“Don’t listen to her,” Thero shouted. “She never cared for us. She would have come to Japan if she had. She betrayed us and brought these men to our door.”
“I only want to help,” Hayley said.
Thero was trying to concentrate on the start-up procedure. He had no time for his son’s weakness.
“I can get you out of here,” Hayley said. “Both of you. You can fulfill all your dreams peacefully. You know that’s what you really want. You know that’s the right thing to do.”
Thero began to feel confused. His son urged him to reconsider. “Father, I think—”
A reverberating explosion shook the room. It came from somewhere deep in the cavern. Thero’s mind cleared. The alarm, the explosion. They were under attack.
When Thero looked up, George was gone. He must have run off somewhere. “Coward!”
“Please!” Hayley cried.
“Silence!” Thero shouted. He didn’t have time to worry about his son anymore, he had to strike before he was trapped and buried like the last time in Yagishiri. Even if they stopped him, he would lash out and wound the world for what they’d done.
“If you do this,” Hayley said, “they’ll know where you are. They’ll come here and destroy this place and you along with it.”
Thero looked down at her and stepped closer. “Of course they will,” he said. “But I’ll be gone. And I’ll take what they threatened me with to use against them.”
He pointed to an object resting by the wall. The Russian suitcase bomb. He could either use it to obliterate some enemy or sell it for millions.
Thero saw the fear in her eyes as she stared. He relished it and went back to his console, reaching over to the intercom and switching it on.
“Janko!” he shouted. “What’s happening?”
“We’re under attack,” Janko said. “Must have been…”
The staccato sound of gunfire blocked out the rest of Janko’s statement.
“Janko?”
“They’ve released the workers,” Janko shouted. “There’s a riot down here. We’re being overwhelmed.”
“Bring your men up here,” Thero ordered. “We can hold them off from the control room.”
“I’ll send them now,” Janko said, his words punctuated by another blast of gunfire.
Thero turned his attention back to the power grid. The levels were coming up. As soon as they reached the green margin, he began the initiation sequence, and the first ghosts of effervescent light began flittering through the cave on the other side of the window.
The sight mesmerized him, as it had always done before. So much so, he never saw Hayley Anderson sneak up on him.
She tackled him and threw a punch into his face, but Thero had few nerve endings left there. He felt the impact and little more. Enraged further, he flung her off and slammed her head against the console, knocking her cold.
He felt a short spasm of remorse, but it passed. She deserved it. Another traitor.
He stood and went to the window. The orb had locked itself into place. Target: Australia. The system was beginning to draw energy from the zero-point field.
It wouldn’t be long now.
FORTY-SIX
With the gale rising in strength, Paul and the other NUMA commandos had a difficult time boarding the MV Rama, but once they were aboard, things calmed down. They marched to the bridge and took over command of the ship.
The Vietnamese captain then led them to the sick bay, where Captain Winslow and four members of the Orion’s crew were being held. They also found several of the Russian commandos laid up and dehydrated.
“Grab their weapons,” Paul said to the Gemini’s chief. As his men traded in their wooden rifles for real ones, Paul felt a sense of control building.
He made his way to Captain Winslow, who eyed him strangely.
“Paul?” the captain said, glancing at the Australian flag armband. “You make a career change recently?”
“Sort of,” Paul said. “Gemini is standing by to help. What’s the story here?”
Winslow explained about the sinking of the Orion and the rescue/abduction of the survivors at the hands of the Russians.
“How’d you get control of the ship?” Paul asked.
“Obviously, we didn’t.”
“But this ship’s been tracing out the path of the constellation of Orion for the past thirty hours,” Paul said. “That can’t be a coincidence.”
Winslow smiled. “Kurt,” he explained. “He had those Russians chasing their tails. Zigzagging all over the place. He said it was to keep the final destination secret. Who’d have thought he was sending up a message at the same time.”
“Where is he?” Paul said. “We haven’t found him.”
“The Russians took him, Joe, and the Australian woman with them. They’re staging some kind of raid on Heard Island. That’s where Thero’s base is. That’s where he’s hiding.”
Paul turned to the Vietnamese captain. “Where’s your communications center?”
* * *
The news that Kurt, Joe, and at least some of the Orion’s crew had survived was met with joy in Washington, D.C. It was tempered by the hands of the clock. Zero hour was a hundred and twenty minutes away.
Pitt looked at Heard Island on the map. Printouts of the Russian spy photos indicating Thero’s assumed location were coming through on the fax machine. The more Pitt studied them, the more precarious the situation appeared.
“Everything this guy has done is underground,” Pitt said. “Looks like he followed the pattern here. I have to give this info to the NSA.”
Yaeger looked grim. “They’re going to put a spread of missiles on that target.”
“I know,” Pitt said unemotionally.
Yaeger leaned in close. “Kurt and Joe are probably there right now.”
“I’m well aware of that,” Pitt said.
“So they’ve been brought back from the dead just to be obliterated by Tomahawk missiles from our own submarines?”
Pitt glanced up at his old friend without a hint of malice. He understood exactly what Yaeger was saying. “I don’t do this lightly, Hiram. But we have no other choice.”
He pressed the intercom button. “Get me Jim Culver at the NSA.”
FORTY-SEVEN
Joe Zavala felt the rumble of the explosion as it surged through the cave. He and Gregorovich pricked up their ears and soon heard gunfire. It sounded as if a chaotic battle were raging in the cavern.
“It’s coming this way,” Joe said.
Gregorovich nodded his agreement.
Joe went back to working on his freedom, straining and pulling and trying to rip his left hand free. It was no use, this cuff fit tighter.
Gregorovich pointed with his chin. “Over there,” he said. “Pliers. Maybe you can reach them.”
Joe looked at a cluttered desk across from them. Pliers, brass knuckles, and a few other tools of the intimidation trade rested on it. He stretched toward them, but they were at least six inches out of reach.
“What am I, made of rubber?”
Gunfire and shouting echoed right outside the door.
Joe stretched again but flailed inches from the table.
The door swung open. One of Thero’s men backed into the room, his eyes and his rifle aimed out through the door and down the hall.
As he fired off a burst at some unseen enemy, Joe lunged for him, wrapping his free arm around the man’s neck and yanking him backward.
The man dropped his rifle and grabbed at Joe’s forearm, trying to pull it away from his windpipe. Joe held on, every muscle in his body straining, his powerful arm locked in a sleeper hold.
The man flailed and kicked, but Joe had all the leverage. Strangely, being anchored to the wall only helped. Soon, the man went limp in Joe’s arm.
Joe held him like that for another full minute and then let him go. The man splayed out on the floor, and Joe stretched down and retrieved the rifle.
Twisting his body, he tried to aim the weapon at the chain cuffing his left hand to the wall, but the barrel was too long. He turned toward Gregorovich. “Looks like you’re first.”
Gregorovich stood and leaned away from the wall. “Better make it quick. Before someone else shows up.”
Awkwardly, Joe tried to aim the rifle at Gregorovich’s chains with only one hand on the grip.
“Watch it,” Gregorovich said as the rifle swayed toward his body.
Before Joe could steady his aim, the door flew open again. Joe swung the rifle toward it.
“Hold on, buddy!” a familiar voice called.
“Kurt!” Joe blared. He lowered the gun. “It’s about time you showed up. I almost had to rescue myself.”
“I don’t know, you look like you have things well under control,” Kurt said. “Can I offer some assistance?”
“Maybe you’d better do this,” Joe said, handing the rifle over.
Joe tensed as Kurt took careful aim and blasted the chain off his arm and then did the same for his feet. He stepped forward, glad to be free. Kurt freed Gregorovich the same way seconds later.
Zero Hour nf-11 Page 28
