"If we can't use the U.S. Marines or the Mounties, he might be all we have."
"Hmm," Sandecker said. "Can he be trusted?"
"He can be trusted to do whatever he can to find his relics. Beyond that I can't say, other than to remind you that he saved my life on two occasions."
Sandecker tugged at his precisely trimmed beard. The idea of using the Basque appealed to the admiral's unconventional side, but he was reluctant to lose control of the situation. On the other hand, he had complete confidence in Austin and his team.
"Use your best judgment," Sandecker said. "There's something else," Austin said. He told them about the overnight closing of the museum exhibition and the accident in- volving Senator Graham.
"But I know Graham well," Sandecker said.
Gunn nodded. "And guess what his commerce committee has been involved in lately? Legislation trying to close loopholes that would allow biofish to be shipped into the U.S."
"Quite a coincidence, isn't it?" Austin said. "Especially since he was returning from a party hosted by Oceanus."
"Are you suggesting," Sandecker said, "that this exhibition was an elaborate cover for an assassination crew?"
"It fits. With Graham out of the way, those loopholes may never be closed."
"I agree. There are certainly enough party hacks around to raise the possibility of bribes," said Sandecker, who had a low opinion of Congress.
Austin said, "Oceanus has cleared away a major obstacle. I think they're about to make their move."
Sandecker rose from his seat and glanced around the table with his cold blue eyes. "Then it's high time we made ours/9 he said.
When Austin returned to his office, a message was waiting for him from the captain of the NUMA research vessel William Beebe, work- ing with the Danes in the Faroe Islands. Call immediately, the mes- sage said, and left a phone number.
"I thought you'd want to know," the captain said, when Austin reached him. "There's been an accident out here. A research vessel working with a Danish scientist named Jorgensen blew up some- how. They lost eight people, including the professor."
Austin had forgotten about Jorgensen's plans to continue his re- search near the Oceanus plant. Now he recalled warning the profes- sor to be careful.
"Thank you, Captain," he said. "Any idea what caused the expio- sion :-
"The lone survivor said something about a helicopter in the area before the explosion, but she didn't make sense. She was the one who suggested that we call you, in fact. Seems she was on the boat as a guest of the professor. Name was Pia something."
"She's a friend of mine. How is she?"
"Few broken bones, some burns. But the doctors expect that she'll pull through. Sounds like a tough lady."
"She is. Could you give her a message?"
Of course.
"Tell her I'll be over to see her as soon as she's feeling better." "Will do."
Austin thanked the captain and hung up. He stared into space, his jaw muscle working, his blue-green eyes at the topaz level on Moh's scale of hardness. He was thinking of Jorgensen's horsy smile and pia's kindness. Barker, or Toonook, or whatever his name was, had made the mistake of his life. By killing the professor and injuring Pia, he had made it personal.
30
THE SINGLE-ENGINE floatplane flew low, looking like a toy against the vastness of the Canadian wilderness. Therri Weld sat next to the pilot in the front passenger seat, where she had a good view of the ranks of sharp, pointed treetops, any one of which could have ripped the belly out of the fuselage.
The first part of the flight had been spent in white-knuckled ter- ror. Therri had not been reassured when she saw the pair of fuzzy dice hanging in the cockpit. But as the flight proceeded without a hitch, she had concluded that the pilot, an enormous, grizzled man whose name was Bear, actually seemed to know what he was doing.
"Don't get up here very often," Bear shouted over the roar of the engine. "Too remote for most of the 'sportsmen' who come up to go hunting and fishing. Their idea of roughing it is staying at a lodge with inside plumbing." Bear pointed through the windshield at the featureless terrain. "Coming up on Looking Glass Lake. It's really two lakes joined by a short connector. Locals call it the Twins, al- though one's bigger than the other. We'll drop down on the little guy
in a few minutes."
"All I see is trees and more trees," said Marcus Ryan, who sat be- hind the pilot.
"Yeah, bound to find trees in these parts," Bear said, with a cheer- ful grin. He glanced over to see if Therri appreciated the joke on Ryan. She smiled gamely, but her heart wasn't in it. She would have felt far more confident if Ben Nighthawk were with them. Her calls to his apartment had gone unanswered. She'd wanted to keep trying, but Marcus had been in a hurry to get rolling.
"You can pull out if you want to," Ryan had said. "Chuck and I can go it alone, but we've got to move fast because the plane's wait- ing for us." Therri barely had time to pack before Ryan picked her up. Before long, they were piling into the SOS executive jet with Chuck Mercer, the former first mate of the Sea Sentinel. With his ship on the bottom, Mercer was eager to see action.
Therri would have been more enthusiastic if she didn't think Ryan was making up his strategy as he went along. Thanks to the infor- mation from Ben, Ryan knew where to go. Ben had told him the name and location of the lake. It was Ben, too, who had given him Bear's name.
The bush pilot used to be a drug smuggler and was known to work with no questions asked, if the money was right. He hadn't even blinked when Marcus had spun a cock-and-bull tale about doing a documentary film on native culture and wanting to observe Ben's village without being seen.
Bear was usually discreet, but he had become careless living in a community where everyone was aware of his past. He'd let a few Words slip about his job for SOS while he was fueling up the plane. He could not have known that sharp ears were listening, or that un- friendly eyes were watching as his plane took off and headed into the interior.
The lake loomed up suddenly. Therri glimpsed water shimmer- ing in the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun. Seconds later, the plane dropped as if it had hit a downdraft. She felt her heart in her mouth, then the plane bottomed out and slid into a gradually angled trajectory. The floats skimmed the lake's surface a short distance be- fore the plane settled into the water and slowed.
Bear taxied close to shore. When the plane neared a sharply banked beach a few yards wide, he climbed out of the cockpit onto a float and jumped feetfirst into water up to his waist. He tied an an- chor line onto a strut, pulled the other end over his shoulder and towed the plane closer to shore. He tied up to a stump, then helped the others unload a large package and several smaller ones. They untied the largest bundle, and with the help of a CO capsule, quickly pumped up an inflatable boat about eight feet long. Bear watched with interest, hands on hips, as Ryan tested a quiet, battery-operated outboard motor.
"I'll be back tomorrow/' he said. "You've got the radio if you need me. Watch your ass."
The plane taxied to one end of the lake, took off and headed back the way it had come. Therri went over to where Ryan and Mercer were checking through the pack. Mercer unwrapped a block ofC-4 explosives and examined the detonators.
He smiled and said, "Just like the old days."
"Sure you're up for this, Chuck?"
"You're talking to the guy who sank an Icelandic whaling ship practically single-handed."
"That was a few years ago. We're a lot older now."
Mercer fingered a detonator. "Doesn't take much energy to push a button," he said. "I owe these bastards for our ship." Mercer had been steaming since he'd learned that Oceanus's ships were serviced at the same Shetlands boatyard where the Sea Sentinel could have been sabotaged.
"We can't forget Josh, either," Ryan said. "I haven't forgotten Josh. But are you sure there's no other way?" Therri said.
"I wish there were," Ryan said. "We've got to play hardball."
"I'm not
arguing with the need to do something, but the means. What about Ben's people? You're risking their lives."
"We can't be diverted from our prime goal. We know from our contacts on Senator Graham's staff that Oceanus continued the trans- gendered fish experiments that were halted in New Zealand. We've got to stop this abomination before it is unleashed."
Abomination? You're scaring me, Marcus. You're talking like a Biblical prophet."
Ryan's face flushed, but he held his temper. "I have no intention of making Ben's people collateral damage. Oceanus will be too busy dealing with our little gifts to do anything. In any case, we'll call the authorities as soon as we're finished here."
"It would only take a few bursts from an automatic weapon to kill
Ben's people. Why not call in outside help now?"
"Because it would take time we don't have. We're talking search warrants and legal process. The villagers could be dead by the time the Mounties decide to investigate." He paused. "Remember, I tried to bring NUMA in on this, and Austin refused."
Therri bit her lower lip in frustration. Her loyalty toward Ryan was intense but not uncritical.
"Don't turn your sights on Kurt. If it weren't for him, you'd be eat- ing sardines in a Danish prison cell."
Ryan beamed his lighthouse smile. "You're right. I'm out of line.
But there's still time to call Bear and have him take you out of here."
"Not on your life, Ryan."
Mercer had finished organizing their backpacks. He strapped on a pistol belt and handed one to Ryan. Therri refused a weapon. They piled their supplies into the inflatable, shoved it off the beach and started the engine. It ran with a low hum and pushed them through the water at a slow but respectable speed. They hugged the shoreline even after they had passed through the channel into the larger lake.
Ryan was using a topographic map with notations based on Ben's information. He stopped the boat at one point and peered through his binoculars at the opposite side of the lake. He could make out a pier and several boats, but no structure matching Nighthawk's de- scription.
"That's funny, I don't see any dome. Ben said it rose above the trees.
"What should we do?" Therri said.
"We'll go to Ben's village and wait there. Then we'll head across the lake, leave our calling cards where they will do the most good and set the timers for late morning, when we'll be well on our way out of here."
They got underway again. The sun was falling behind the trees when they saw the clearing and the dozen or so houses that made up Ben's village. It was deathly quiet, with only a faint soughing in the trees and the lap of the waves against shore breaking the silence. They stopped about fifty yards offshore while Ryan, then the others, checked out the village with light-gathering glasses. Seeing nothing, they cruised straight on in, beached the boat and came ashore.
Ryan was careful, insisting that they check out the houses and store. The village was deserted, as Ben had described. They had something to eat. By the time they finished, darkness was complete, except for a blue-black sheen on the lake and pinpoints of light on the opposite shore. They took turns standing watch while the others slept. Around midnight they were all awake and preparing to move out. They slid the boat into the water and pushed off.
Halfway across the lake, Ryan peered through his glasses, and said, "Jesus!"
The sky across the lake was lit up. He handed the binocs to Therri, but even with her naked eye she could see the dully lit greenish-blue structure that mounded above the trees. It seemed to have dropped from space.
Ryan directed Mercer to steer off to one side, away from the pier. They beached a few minutes later, pulled the inflatable onshore and piled brush around it. Then they made their way along the beach to- ward the pier. When they were a few hundred feet away, they cut in- land and came upon the road that Ben and Josh Green had used to get to the airship hangar. The muddy ruts Ben had described had since been graded and blacktopped.
They were looking for a particular type of building, and found what they were looking for in a structure that hummed with the sound of pumps. Mercer made short work of the padlocks with a tiny cutting torch.
Large glass tanks stretched from one side of the building to the other, and the air inside was heavy with the smell offish and the hum of motors. The room was in semi-darkness, but large pale shapes could be seen moving behind the glass. Mercer got right to work. He placed packets of C-4 in strategic places, molding the putty-like explosive around pumps and electrical conduits where explosions would do the most damage. What was left, he placed on the outside of the tanks.
They worked fast, arming the charges and setting the timers, and were done within thirty minutes. The only people they had seen were those moving in the distance, but Ryan wasn't going to press their luck. They made their way back toward the lakeshore, again with- out encountering anyone. Ryan was beginning to feel uneasy, but he pressed on. If all went as planned, Bear would be picking them up just before the big bang.
Unfortunately, all did not go as planned. Their boat was missing to begin with. Thinking that they may have misjudged the distance in the dark, Ryan sent the others down the beach to look for the boat while he stood watch. When five minutes had passed and they hadn't returned, he struck out after them, and he found Therri and Mercer standing side by side looking out toward the lake.
"Did you find it?" he said.
No answer. They remained motionless. When he moved in closer, he saw why. Their wrists were bound behind their backs with wire, and they had tape across their mouths. Before he could free his friends, the bushes behind the beach erupted and they were sur- rounded by a dozen burly figures.
One man took Ryan's gun away and another came closer and flicked on a flashlight, its beam illuminating the man's hand. Dan- gling in his fingers was one of the charges Ryan had set in the fish house. The man threw the explosives into the lake and put the beam on his own face so that Ryan could be sure to see the pockmarked jack-o'-lantern features and the fierce grin.
He drew a white-bladed knife from his belt and put it under Ryan's chin so that the point dimpled his skin and drew a droplet of blood. Then he uttered something in a strange language and re- turned the knife to its scabbard. Together, they began to march back toward the airship hangar.
31
AUSTIN EXAMINED THE satellite photograph through the magnifying glass and shook his head. He slid the picture and magnifier across his desk to Zavala. After studying the photo for a moment, Zavala said, "I can see a lake with a clearing on one side and some houses. Could be Nighthawk's village. There's a pier and some boats on the other side, but no airship hangar. Maybe it's hidden." "Maybe we're setting off on a fool's mission, old chum." "Wouldn't be the first time. Look at it this way: Max said this is the place, and I'd trust Max with my life."
"You may have to," Austin said. He checked his watch. "Our plane will be ready in a couple of hours. We'd better get packed."
"I never packed from my last trip," Zavala said. "See you at the airport."
Austin did a quick turnaround at his boathouse and was heading out the door, when he saw the light blinking on his telephone an- swering machine. He debated whether to listen to the message, but when he pushed the button, he was glad he did. Ben Nighthawk had called and left a phone number.
Austin dropped his duffel bag and quickly punched out the num- ber. "Man, am I glad to hear from you," Nighthawk said. "I've been waiting by the phone hoping you'd call."
"I tried to get in touch with you a couple of times."
"Sorry for being such a jerk. That guy would have killed me if you hadn't stepped in. I wandered around and hung out with some pals feeling sorry for myself. When I got back to my apartment, there was a message from Therri. She said that SOS was going off on its own. Ryan talked her into it, I guess."
"Damned fools. They'll get themselves killed."
"I feel the same way. I'm worried about my family, too. We've got to stop them."
&
nbsp; "I'm willing to try, but I need your help."
You ve got it.
"How soon can you leave?" "Whenever you want me to."
"How about now? I'll pick you up on the way to the airport.' "I'll be ready."
After Zavala left the NUMA building, he drove his 1961 Corvette convertible to his home in Arlington, Virginia. While the upstairs was spotless, as would be expected of someone who routinely dealt in microscopic tolerances, Zavala's basement looked like a cross be- tween Captain Nemo's workshop and a redneck gas station. It was crammed with models of undersea craft, metal-cutting tools and piles of diagrams marked with greasy fingerprints.
The one exception to the jumble was a locked metal cabinet where Zavala kept his collection of weaponry. Technically, Zavala was a marine engineer, but his duties on the Special Assignments Team sometimes required firepower. Unlike Austin, who favored a custom-made Bowen revolver, Zavala employed whatever weapon was handy, usually with deadly efficiency. He eyed the collection of firearms in the cabinet-wondering what, short of a neutron bomb, would be effective against a ruthless multinational organization with its own private army-and reached for an Ithaca Model 37 repeat- ins shotgun, the primary weapon used by the SEALs in Vietnam. He liked the idea that the shotgun could be fired almost like an automatic weapon.
Clive Cussler - KA04 - White Death Page 29
