Текст книги "Zero Hour"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Graham Brown
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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

FIFTEEN

NUMA vessel Gemini

Indian Ocean, 140 miles due west of Christmas Island

The NUMA vessel Geminiwas a rakishly designed, hundred-and-fifty-foot vessel. In profile, she looked like a bulked-up yacht, thicker and heavier, designed to carry instruments and ROVs and a crew of scientists packed into tiny cabins.

At the moment, Geminiwas moving due west, as the crew tested a new type of sonar designed to penetrate the seafloor.

With a walkie-talkie in his hand, Paul Trout moved to the very front of the forward deck. He leaned over the railing and gazed downward. Just aft of where the ship’s bow met the water, an eleven-foot triangular flange stuck out from the side of the hull. This protrusion, along with an identical one on the port side, gave the ship’s bow an odd shape, like the head of a stingray, and the crew had nicknamed it the Skate.

Perhaps it was appropriate. Like her namesake, the Skate was designed to scan the seafloor far below, searching for things hidden beneath eons of piled-up sediment.

It was expected to be a huge leap forward in the hunt for and development of underwater resources. But first, it had to work, which, so far, had proven hit or miss.

Paul pressed the talk switch on the radio. “Flange folded down and locked in place. The hookup bars are secured, the alignment indicators are matched up. The Skate is visually in the correct location.”

“Okay, Paul,”a female voice said over the radio. “We’re still getting an odd signal on the processor.”

The female voice belonged to Gamay Trout, Paul’s wife. She was in Gemini’s information center, monitoring the data stream from the Skate’s bell-like housing.

Paul preferred to be out on the deck, partly because the information center was cramped and tight and he was six feet eight inches tall, but also because the idea of signing up for a mission at sea and spending most of it in a darkened room surrounded by computers struck him as the height of absurdity.

“Do you see any dolphins?”Gamay asked.

“Dolphins?”

“During a test run, there were dolphins bow-riding with us, they seemed very interested in the Skate. They kept blasting it with their sonar. It was a similar kind of staccato display.”

Paul hadn’t heard that one before. He checked both sides of the ship. “No dolphins, no pilot whales.”

A long pause followed. Paul figured Gamay was running through a diagnostic protocol or something. He took the time to stretch out and marvel at the blue sky, the fresh breeze, and the warm sun.

After more silence, he decided to risk prodding her. “Everything okay?”

There was no answer, and Paul imagined the computers crashing and all manner of swearing going on in the control room. For the moment, he was doubly glad not to be down there.

He turned as a figure appeared outside the Gemini’s bridge and descended the stairs toward the main deck.

Paul smiled at Gamay as she approached. At five foot ten, she was relatively tall for a woman, but her proportions were such that she looked neither thin nor reedy the way many tall women do. Glamorous when she needed to be. For now, she was dressed like the rest of the crew, in khaki pants and a NUMA polo shirt. Her dark red hair was pulled sleekly back in a ponytail and tucked beneath a NUMA cap that read GEMINI in gold letters. She flashed a smile at him, and her blue eyes sparkled with a mischievous quality.

“Decide to join me for a stroll?” he said, a New Hampshire accent detectable in his voice.

“Actually,” she said, “I came to tell you the bad news. We have to pull up stakes and head south.”

“South? Why? I’m sure you can get the Skate back online.”

“It’s not the Skate,” she said. “We have new orders.”

Paul sensed the ship beginning a turn to port. “Not wasting any time.”

“Dirk wants us to go help Kurt and Joe with what he called a critical project.”

“Last I heard, Kurt and Joe were on vacation,” Paul reminded her. “Does this project involve bail money or sneaking them out of the country somehow?”

“You know Dirk,” she said, looping an arm around Paul’s waist. “He’s a man of few words. Said we’d be given more details when we arrived on-station.”

Now Paul became deeply suspicious. In addition to Gamay’s words, he could feel the Geminipicking up speed.

“Where exactly are we going?”

Gamay shook her head. “All I know is, Dirk told me we’d better break out the cold-weather gear.”

“So that’s why you’re out here,” Paul said.

“Figured I’d better enjoy the sun while I can.”

Paul and Gamay often worked closely with Kurt and Joe. And, in most of those cases, once the ride picked up speed, they got more than they’d bargained for. If the pattern held, the next day or two would probably be their last chance to relax for quite a while.

“How about that stroll?” Paul asked.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Gamay replied.

SIXTEEN

Eastern Siberia, 1700 hours

Mist fell on the grassy steppes of the Kamchatka Plain. The mottled gray sky obscured the mountain peaks and threatened rain.

“Pull!”

With that shout, the gates of several cages were opened. The flutter of wings burst forth.

Three shots rang out. Three birds, fleeing in different directions, fell in rapid succession, feathers exploding outward like dust.

Standing in the middle of the carnage, Anton Gregorovich pumped another shell into the shotgun’s breach. Three shots, three hits.

Grinning at his own prowess, he placed the weapon down and glanced at his two assistants, teenage boys who crouched by a circle of cages. “How many left?”

“Four,” one of the boys said.

“All of them, this time,” Gregorovich demanded.

The boys nodded and rigged the cages. Gray-winged birds jumped nervously in the traps.

Gregorovich stood calmly. He lowered his head and closed his eyes, listening for the sound of flight.

Six foot two, two hundred and forty-five pounds, Gregorovich wore fatigue pants in an Arctic-camouflage pattern and no shirt at all, despite temperatures barely out of the thirties. His muscular body was no more than one percent fat. He subsisted on a diet of almost pure protein, engineered supplements, and nutrient cocktails developed by the Russian Olympic Team. Standing motionless, he looked like a statue, like some sculptor’s version of the ideal man carved from a block of stone.

In many ways, he was more fit than any athlete since his regimen included steroids and human growth hormones and other factors banned by the athletic associations of the world.

It was only fair. In his world, the consequences of failure were not represented by second-place medals or dismissal from an event. If Gregorovich faltered, he died.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he said quietly.

Silence for a moment. He could sense the boys creeping into position, moving the cages quietly, unwilling to give anything away. He appreciated that they wanted to test him. He kept his eyes closed, his heart rate steady, and his mind clear. Seconds ticked by, followed by the sudden bang of the cage doors opening.

Gregorovich snapped his head up and opened his eyes. In an instant, he’d fixed on the birds, once again flying in different directions. He yanked a pair of Makarov pistols from holsters on his hips like those of a gunslinger from the Old American West.

He spun to the right with a gun in each hand and pulled both triggers. The two pigeons on that side went down simultaneously.

He twisted to the left, spotted the third target, flying low. He took aim with his right hand and fired twice. The pigeon dropped into the long grass. The fourth was fifty yards off by now.

Gregorovich fired both guns at it, clipping a wing. The bird fell in a spiral, like a World War Two aircraft that had been shot down. It hit the ground before he could fire again and finish it for certain.

“Damn it!”

The boys glanced at him nervously, still crouched as low as they could get. He could see fear in their eyes. Before he could reassure them, a new sound reached out across the tundra: a helicopter coming toward them.

Gregorovich turned and saw one of the monstrous Mi-24 models, lumbering beneath the overcast sky. A phalanx of missile pods and multibarreled cannon were displayed on pods beneath its stubby wings. Its six-bladed rotor churned overhead in a great and constant whirl.

The helicopter dropped lower and lower, slowing as it approached and then hovering. Finally, it touched down on the grass fifty yards away. Before the engines even reached idle, a side door had been thrown open and a man in a heavy overcoat had climbed out and begun hiking toward Gregorovich.

Even from this distance, Gregorovich recognized him: Dmitry Yevchenko, one of Russia’s oil billionaires.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, Yevchenko had joined the scramble for wealth, transforming a dying Siberian oil field into a Eurasian empire of sorts. Like many of the new billionaires, Yevchenko had been ruthless on his way to the top. But, unlike most, he’d seen the need to change when the writing appeared on the wall.

His corporation now filled the coffers of Communist Party stalwarts. He hired their friends and family members. He ignored the graft and theft he had to deal with, considering these things another form of taxation and calculating them into his business plan as a separate line item.

But the past was hard to hide, it did not vanish just because Yevchenko wanted it to. A few months back, a reporter had begun probing for the truth, getting fairly close to some answers, before dying suddenly in a plane crash. An overzealous politician who’d asked for too much met a different fate: drowning in the Black Sea.

It wasn’t by chance that Yevchenko was called the Siberian Butcher, the bodies of his enemies lay everywhere. But the name itself was a misnomer. Yevchenko had never killed anyone. Gregorovich had always done it for him.

“Take the horses,” Gregorovich said to the boys. “I’ll meet you back in the village.”

The boys did as they were ordered, disappearing as Yevchenko approached.

“Playing with children these days, Gregorovich?”

Yevchenko had always been portly, now he looked rotund, even beneath the heavy coat. Apparently, he’d been eating well in Moscow.

“Boys from the village,” Gregorovich replied. “Their mother is appealing to me, and they have nothing better to do.”

“I see,” Yevchenko said. “And do you?”

Gregorovich pulled a gray shirt over his head. “What are you bothering me for?”

“I’ve been at an emergency meeting with members of the party,” Yevchenko explained.

“Are they trying to take control?”

“No, nothing like that. They have learned that what’s good for us is good for Russia.”

“Then why do you look as if you’ve seen a ghost?”

“Because I have.”

Yevchenko’s hands were stuffed deep into his pockets, the collar of his coat was pulled up high. It was mid-March, and he was freezing. The Siberian Butcher had gone soft. “Why don’t you come to it, my friend?” Gregorovich said to him.

“What do we fear?” Yevchenko asked rhetorically. “Either the failure to get what we desire or the loss of that which we have. Our business, our economy, our nation’s very existence, is linked primarily to one thing and one thing only: energy. Coal, oil, natural gas. We’re now the world’s largest producer of crude, outstripping the Saudis for the past two years. For a decade, we’ve been the largest producer of natural gas, and we possess the most extensive reserves of coal on the planet. These are the resources that will sustain us. We will sell them to power-hungry China, India, Europe for ever-increasing prices. It is nothing less than our life’s blood. But now we face a threat that could take it away in the blink of an eye.”

Gregorovich picked up the shotgun and began walking, more interested in finding the wounded bird than continuing this conversation. Unfortunately, Yevchenko followed him.

“Five years ago, I sent you on a mission,” Yevchenko explained. “The Japanese were developing a way to extract energy from the air around us. They were planning a fleet of purely electric cars, a national grid that did not require power plants of oil, coal, or natural gas. And they were greedily looking forward to exporting the technology to the rest of the world, gaining more wealth for themselves and slamming the door of poverty in our faces yet again.”

“The Yagishiri experiments.”

“So you remember.”

“Of course I remember,” Gregorovich snapped. “I destroyed the laboratory and killed the scientists.”

Yevchenko raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

Gregorovich was looking in the grass for the pigeon. He found feathers and a trail of blood. “What are you suggesting?”

“Much like this wounded pigeon,” Yevchenko said, “it seems you did not obliterate the threat as completely as you claimed.”

Gregorovich stopped his search and turned toward Yevchenko. “The lab was annihilated. We used enough explosives to bring down a city block. The thermite burned everything to cinders. All record of what they were attempting was destroyed. And, before that, I shot every one of those poor bastards myself.”

“Someone survived.”

“Impossible.”

“The experiments have begun again,” Yevchenko explained, “in secret.”

Gregorovich looked away, taking a deep breath of the pure Siberian air. He figured there was a less sinister explanation.

“You knew we were merely delaying the inevitable,” he said. “If this scientific theory is valid, eventually someone else will stumble onto it and complete the work. Even if this theory proves false, change will come from another avenue. One day, there will be a solar panel that is one hundred percent efficient or a way to economically harvest energy from the tides or the waves or the wind. When that happens, there will be no more need for the Gazproms, Aramcos, or Exxons of this world.”

“Yes, of course!” Yevchenko shouted. “But let it happen a hundred years from now. We’ve spent a hundred billion dollars over the last three years, buying up new reserves of oil and natural gas. Huge portions of the government budget have gone into infrastructure for our industry. We cannot have those investments be wasted. Not now, not at this juncture.”

Gregorovich went back to his search, pressing down the long grass with his boots, following the trail of blood. “Even if the Japanese develop this system, it will take decades to build out the infrastructure,” he said. “Decades more to change the world.”

“No,” Yevchenko said. “When the change comes, it comes suddenly. Ten years ago, cell phones were the gadgets of the rich. Now they blanket the Earth. The trillion dollars spent on landlines for the world’s phone companies are fast approaching worthlessness.”

Gregorovich still hadn’t found the pigeon. He paused to focus on his old mentor once more. “Not like you to show fear, my friend. Perhaps you’ve lived in the comfort of Moscow’s bosom for too long.”

“No need for jealousy, you could have joined me.”

“And live in fear like you?” Gregorovich shook his head. “You’re screaming bloody murder over a pipe dream and a long-shot possibility. That doesn’t add up to me. What is it that really scares you?”

Yevchenko seemed to shiver a little more. He hesitated and then finally spoke. “I’ve received a threat. It claims we will suffer for what we did. It comes from Thero himself. It includes details only someone who was there would know. It promises that the martyrs of Yagishiri will be avenged, that their blood will be repaid a millionfold. What once was designed for peace will now be used for war.”

Gregorovich considered this. He couldn’t imagine anyone surviving the explosions and fire he’d caused. The lab had been turned into a smoking crater two hundred feet wide. The fire had burned so hot that Gregorovich and another commando had been singed from a long distance away. “Someone is using his name to scare you.”

“Perhaps,” Yevchenko agreed. “But, either way, they must be stopped. And the technology destroyed once and for all.”

Gregorovich paused, wondering who might be perpetrating this hoax. “As I recall, there was a woman, an Australian. She was a colleague of Thero’s, a friend of his son and daughter. She denounced the work as a waste of time, and remained in Australia when Thero and his team went to Japan.”

Yevchenko nodded. “We put tabs on her already, she’s not the cause. But she’s a danger to us nonetheless, especially now that she’s working with the Americans.”

“How did they get involved in your little mess?”

“There was an incident in Australia,” Yevchenko said. “The woman you spoke of was rescued by an American from their National Underwater and Marine Agency. We believe they’re also looking for Thero. Two of their ships have just been diverted toward Perth, a third toward Sydney.”

Gregorovich had heard of NUMA. Though their work was civilian in nature and their staff mostly scientists and environmental do-gooders, some in Russia were convinced that it was an offshoot of the NSA. Gregorovich doubted this. But even he had to admit they ended up in more scrapes than the Central Intelligence Agency.

“Why NUMA?”

Yevchenko shrugged. “No one knows. But, most likely, they intend to steal whatever they discover and develop it for America. As I’m sure you can understand, such an outcome is completely and categorically unacceptable.”

Perhaps this was what Yevchenko and the party leaders feared the most. “You should have listened to me the first time,” Gregorovich said. “I would have brought Thero and the other scientists to you. This would have been your prize to exploit.”

“All we want is the status quo,” Yevchenko explained. “It was your job to ensure that. As far as the party is concerned, it still is.”

Yevchenko’s gaze was harsh, his voice firm and bitter. Apparently, there was a little fire left in his soul after all, at least on this subject.

“What are you saying?”

“You must find Thero or this imposter and destroy him. You must erase from existence all record of their research, all evidence of their efforts. And you must not leave any loose strings to haunt us this time.”

He understood the context. This was not a request. “I did not fail.”

“Something slipped through your grasp.”

Gregorovich fumed at the insinuation. There had to be another explanation. It seemed he would have to find that explanation himself. “If you want to stop Thero, you’ll have to locate him first. The woman is the key. That’s undoubtedly why the Americans and Australians are using her.”

“What do you suggest?”

“You have men watching her?”

Yevchenko nodded.

“Have them capture her and bring her to whatever command post you’re setting up for me,” Gregorovich suggested.

“We have a ship awaiting your arrival. A team of commandos were flown to it yesterday. They have no knowledge of the situation but will follow your orders.”

“I’d rather hire my own,” Gregorovich said.

“No,” Yevchenko said.

Gregorovich turned away, noticing movement in the long grass ahead of him. The pigeon he’d wounded was there, trying desperately to drag its damaged body through the pasture. For a moment, he thought of blasting it with the shotgun. But it no longer mattered to him. He had a new quarry to hunt now.

Yevchenko saw it as well, stepping forward.

“Leave it,” Gregorovich said. “Let it suffer.”

Yevchenko stepped away. He seemed half pleased and half apprehensive. “You’re a very cold man, Anton Gregorovich. This is why we choose you. Do not fail us again or the suffering will be yours.”

SEVENTEEN

Jakarta, Indonesia, 0540 hours

The sun rose over Tanjung Priok Harbor shrouded in a blanket of haze. It lit up a thicket of cranes and booms sprouting from an endless line of ships and the lengthy concrete piers. Only seven degrees south of the equator, and a recipient of constant humidity from the Java Sea, the harbor was a sweatbox even at this hour of the morning.

At least that’s how it felt to sixty-five-year-old Patrick Devlin, as he meandered along in the early morning sun.

After forty years at sea, Devlin was approaching retirement. That looming thought, and a long night of drinking, had left him in a reflective mood. What exactly was he retiring to? He had no family, no real friends aside from those he crewed or drank with.

“Can’t believe this is the last time I’ll see this stinking place,” he said, speaking to an equally exhausted drinking companion, another Irishman named Keane.

“If it was your last night here,” Keane said, “then you did it up right, Padi. In true Irish fashion… you drank everyone under the table. And left them with the tab.”

Despite Indonesia’s Muslim status, there were plenty of places to drink in the city of Jakarta. A good thing too, because the harbor had become so busy that ships often anchored for days waiting their turn to load and unload. Traffic in the port had doubled threefold in the past decade. Despite frantic levels of construction, the harbor could not keep up.

“Think about it,” Keane added. “Back home, you’ll never wake with dust caking your throat and sweat dripping from your face.” Keane almost tripped but regained his balance. “And none of these damned blaring speakers, waking the dead in the morning like air-raid sirens.”

The call of the muezzins from the mosques in Jakarta was known to be exceedingly loud and to ring out at an exceedingly early hour. Only recently had the time for their song been moved from three a.m. to the somewhat more reasonable hour of four thirty.

Still too damned early, Devlin thought. But, in some ways, he’d miss even that, such was the lure of exotic lands.

“Always thought I’d make captain,” he said.

“And give up all this?” Keane asked, slurring every word.

Devlin laughed. He’d longed to be a captain and ship’s master for most of his life, but an event several years back had made him wonder if he wanted the responsibility. It had also set his drinking on a dangerous course. Captains didn’t tie one on with their crews, they drank alone in their cabins. And they were often forced to make harsh decisions, the kind that haunted Devlin as it was.

“Not on your life,” Devlin said with false bravado. He threw an arm around Keane’s neck in a move that was half headlock and half hug.

The two men were laughing as they reached the motor launch they’d brought from their ship: a freighter loaded with rolls of copper, anchored offshore in the never-ending queue.

As they climbed into the small runabout, Devlin stepped to the controls. Keane, on the other hand, found himself a comfortable spot to lie down, stretching out across a trio of seats and pulling an orange life vest under his head for use as a pillow. Before Devlin had even cleared the bowlines, Keane was passed out and snoring loudly.

“That’s right,” Devlin mumbled, “you sleep. I’ll do all the work as usual.”

He cast off the bowlines and then fired up the small boat’s engine. A moment later, he was picking his way across the crowded harbor.

Small boats moved here and there. A pair of tugs worked to drag a monstrous bulk carrier out into the channel, while crewmen, painting and scraping and fighting the endless battle against rust and corrosion, scampered over other vessels like crabs on the rocks.

Devlin guided the launch past all this and out into the anchorage. He kept a fair course, moving slowly past the waiting ships, until a particular vessel caught his eye.

Slowing the launch just a bit, Devlin stared at a black-hulled vessel with a dark gray superstructure. It looked vaguely familiar, like a small cruise liner, though the dark paint was neither festive nor striking. The more he studied the ship, the odder her appearance was to him. She didn’t seem to carry any lifeboats, radar masts, or even antennas. In fact, she carried none of the normal appendages that sprout from modern ships.

In his inebriated state, Devlin struggled to make sense of it. He saw no one on deck and no sign of activity. The ship itself reminded him of a derelict, stripped for parts. Her black-gray color was like that of charred steal, but the coating wasn’t soot, she’d been deliberately tinted that way.

Subconsciously, Devlin angled the launch toward her, moving closer and then coming around the bow. There he spotted something new, something unmistakable.

“It can’t be,” he said out loud.

In front of him lay the overlapped plating of a hasty repair job. Plates of different thickness and consistency had been welded and riveted into place to cover a breach in the hull. The heavy black paint covered it all, but the jagged, H-like shape of the repair was unmistakable.

He shouted to Keane. “Wake up,” he said, “you have to see this.”

Keane grunted something and rolled over.

“Keane?!”

No response. Devlin gave up on him and turned back to the ship. He was wide awake now.

“You’re a bloody ghost,” he whispered, edging closer to the black hulk. “A bloody ghost or a bloody trick.”

He was still muttering various curses of disbelief when the launch bumped up against the ship. He reached out and touched her. There was an odd, almost rubbery feel to the paint. But the ship itself was real enough.

A sense of uncontrollable anger began to well up inside Devlin, a dark Irish rage. Years of guilt and self-hatred fueled it. Someone was tricking him, or had tricked him years ago.

He passed around the bow and headed for the stern. A gangway sat in the lowered position, resting diagonally across the aft end of the ship. Its bottom step was eight feet above the harbor’s oily waters. Devlin pulled up next to it.

He cut the throttle and lazily tied a line to the sloping stairs. He didn’t bother with Keane and instead climbed onto the launch’s roof. From there, he clambered awkwardly up onto the gangway.

It shook with his weight and banged against the hull, but it held. Despite the racket, no one appeared to welcome him aboard or shoo him away.

Devlin began to climb. He moved slowly at first on shaky legs, and then faster as he became more certain of the truth. “I saw you go down!” he shouted at the ship. “I saw you bloody well go down!”

He stumbled as he neared the top and sprawled out on the last few steps, breathless and almost weeping. He could see raised letters on the stern. They were hidden beneath the rubbery black paint, but they hadn’t been scraped off before the new paint was slapped over the top.

He ran his hand across the letters he could reach. They were real, just like the ship itself.

Pacific Voyager.

Like a man caught in the surf, Devlin was bowled over by waves of emotion. Confusion, sadness, and elation hit him almost simultaneously, one after another. How could the ship be here? Had someone salvaged her? Last he knew, the wreck hadn’t even been located.

He sat there, sobbing like a child and hoping he wasn’t in the middle of a dream, until the sound of footsteps came from above. The squeak of a gate followed as a section of the rail was pulled back where the gangway met the main deck.

Devlin looked up as a man appeared. The face was bearded now but familiar to him. An odd moment passed as two sets of eyes tried to connect what they saw to distant, faded memories.

The bearded man won the race. A sad smile crept over him. “Hello, Padi,” he said in a kind and melancholy way.

“Janko?” Devlin said. “You’re alive? But you went down with this ship.”

The bearded man offered a hand and helped Devlin to his feet, bringing him aboard and steadying the inebriated old sailor as he stood on the main deck.

“I wish you hadn’t found us,” Janko said.

“Us?”

“I’m sorry, Padi.”

With that, Janko shoved a handheld device into Devlin’s ribs. The blow stunned the old sailor, but the massive shock that followed did more damage. Devlin convulsed as he fell backward. He was unconscious by the time he hit the deck.

A watertight hatchway opened behind Janko, and two other men came running out.

“Is everything all right?” one of them asked.

Janko nodded and slipped the device back into his pocket. “Check the launch.”

One of the men raced down the stairs. The other glanced at Devlin, lying still on the deck. “How the hell did he know who you were?”

“He was the chief on the tug I signed on to,” Janko explained. “The one who cut us loose in the storm. From the look of it, he’s been beating himself up ever since.”

“What should we do with him?”

“Take him below,” Janko said. “Bodies bring attention. Disappearance is more easily explained. Especially that of a drunk.”

A shout came up to them from the launch below. “There’s another man in the boat. He’s passed out cold.”

“He must have been unconscious when they got here,” Janko thought aloud. “Doubt he’ll remember a thing. Untie the launch and let it drift. By the time he wakes up, he’ll think this one went overboard. Another sad accident at sea.”

The man below untied the launch and shoved it off before coming back up the stairs.

“We need to get under way,” Janko said as the two men picked Devlin up and carried him toward the hatch.

“And then what?” the first crewman asked. “What do we do with him when he wakes up?”

“We show him what became of the ship he lost,” Janko explained. “And then we toss him in the pit, along with the crew from those Korean freighters. He can dig for Thero’s diamonds like all the rest.”