Текст книги "Devil's Gate"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Graham Brown,Clive Cussler
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

32

Santa Maria Island, Vila do Porto, June 24

AFTER CONCLUDING THEIR PLANNING SESSION in the conference room, Kurt, Joe, and the captain broke away to handle different tasks. Joe went to the Argo’s machine shop to get working on a transmitter that would be powerful enough to hang onto the back of a submarine making 25 knots and also small enough to go unnoticed. He promised a miracle within the hour.

The captain ordered the Argodarkened to a normal state and then made contact with the Vila do Porto police. He requested two cars be sent out and parked at the dockside with their lights flashing. He assumed that would help keep any trouble away and also distract anyone who was watching while the Barracudawas quietly slipped into the water.

Meanwhile, Kurt walked Katarina to the end of the dock, waiting for a car to arrive.

“Your chaperone,” he said, avoiding the word handler.

“I’m not a spy,” she insisted, “but it seems all my life I’ve had someone watching me.” “How do you deal with it?” Kurt asked.

“I’m used to it,” she said. “But you can’t imagine how hard it was to go on a date in Torino.” He had to laugh. “And this guy?”

“Sergei,” she said. “Major Sergei Komarov.” Sounded like a good strong KGB/FSB enforcer. For the first time in his life Kurt felt glad about that.

“Stay close to Sergei,” he said. “Keep your doors locked. I’m pretty sure these people have bigger fish to fry right now, but you never know. They know you’ve seen them, even if it was from a distance and in low light.” “I will,” she said.

“Want to tell me why you were diving on that Constellation?” She smiled, shook her head. “The major might not like that.” “Well, maybe tomorrow or the next day,” he said.

The sad look returned to her eyes. “If I’m right, we’ll be leaving in the morning. I might not see you again.” “Don’t count on that,” Kurt said. “I’ve always wanted to see Russia as a tourist. Maybe even come in the winter and get one of those giant fur hats.” “Come see me,” she said, “I promise you won’t need a hat to keep you warm.” The car arrived.

Sergei got out and stood by the door. Katarina gave Kurt a long kiss and then climbed in.

Thirty minutes later it was all a memory as Kurt and Joe raced through the ink-black Atlantic waters in the Barracuda, making their way to the tower of magnetic rock. They reached it in just under two hours, approaching the area with caution.

“I’m not hearing anything on the sonar array,” Joe said.

“If they were on-site already, it would probably sound like a working gravel pit,” Kurt said. “At least if they’re planning on getting any large amount of material out.” “We should be in visual range,” Kurt said. “Flip on the lights.” Joe switched them on, and the long, thin beams of yellowish light sprayed out over the underwater landscape. Once again, Kurt marveled at the sight of ship carcasses littering the seafloor. He’d once been fortunate enough to dive on Truk Lagoon, site of a World War II battle where the U.S. Navy had sunk sixty Japanese ships and downed over two hundred aircraft. The wrecks were more spread out than this Devil’s Gate, but it was the closest thing he could think of to what he was seeing now.

“Let’s set down beside the wreck of that old Liberty ship,” Joe said. “From there we’ll be almost invisible.” Kurt looked down at the diagram of where the wrecks lay. With an expert hand he glided the Barracudato a spot of sand right beside the great ship. Putting down, he had the odd feeling of being a guppy in a fish tank, settling in beside the ubiquitous sunken ship with a great hole in the side.

“Cut the lights,” he said.

Joe hit a few switches, and the Barracudawent instantly and absolutely dark.

Kurt held up his hand to test the old adage about not being able to see your hand in front of your face. Down here, at least, with daylight yet to break, it was true.

“How much air do we have?” he asked.

“Just under ten hours,” Joe said.

“Well,” Kurt said, trying to get comfortable, “nothing to do now but wait.”

FOUR HOURS LATER Kurt felt a tap on the shoulder from Joe. They’d decided to sleep in two-hour shifts. Kurt hoped Joe’s tap meant their guests had arrived.

“Something happening?” he asked, straightening and banging his head on the canopy and then his knee on the panel in front of him.

“Yeah,” Joe said. “The sun’s coming up.”

Kurt looked up. A smidgen of light could be seen filtering in from above. And while it was still dark enough down below that the only light he could see came from the glowing phosphors on his dive watch, he noticed the time was almost seven a.m. It had to be plenty bright up top.

He tried to stretch again, but it was no use. “Next time you design a sub, try including a little headroom.” “Absolutely,” Joe said.

“This is worse than an economy flight to Australia.” “At least they serve food on those,” Joe said, “even if it’s just peanuts.” “Yeah,” Kurt said, thinking they could have planned better. Honestly, he hadn’t thought they’d need to. His biggest fear was that they would have arrived and found the killers already at work, which would have made their job either a lot harder or impossible.

“I don’t get this,” he said. “I would have thought they’d use every minute to mine what they could. You hear anything on the hydrophones?” “Nope,” Joe said.

“You sure?”

“I’ve had these headphones on so long, I think they’ve melded with my brain,” Joe said. “But nothing’s going on out there except a few fish swimming around and mating.” “You can actually hear them mating?” Kurt asked.

“Just the groovy music in the background,” Joe said, “but I know what they’re doing.” Too much time sitting alone, listening to the sounds of the sea, had obviously warped his friend’s brain. He rubbed his eyes and blinked repeatedly. Too much time,he thought.

“They’re not coming,” he said. “Turn on the lights.” “You sure?”

“At this point they’d barely have time to mine anything before they’d have to move out,” he said. “So much for my big idea.” Joe started with the running lights and the low-level dash illumination.

Once their eyes adjusted to the presence of the minor lights, Joe flicked on the main exterior lights, and the area right around them lit up in the familiar yellow-green.

“Nothing’s changed,” Kurt said, half expecting the tower of magnetic rock to have disappeared out from under their noses. It still loomed in the distance like a monolith.

Kurt looked to the right, gazing at the dark shadow of the Liberty ship they’d sidled up to. A gaping wound below the waterline seemed to have been the fatal blow to this particular vessel. For a second he wondered if it had gone down in World War II like the ships he’d seen in Truk. Couldn’t have been that old, there was only a modicum of sea growth on the ship. No more than a couple years’ worth, if that.

He looked the other way out across the seafloor to where the next-closest wrecks lay. The first was a small plane, or at least what had once been a twin-engine Cessna. He remembered what Katarina had said about the triple-tailed Constellation being made of aluminum, a nonferrous metal that would not be affected by magnetism. It lay out on the very fringe of the area, but the remnants of this plane were in close. Why? he thought.

He looked at another of the sunken vessels that lay beyond the wrecked aircraft. It was a trawler, maybe 90 feet in length. Standard multinet fishing boat. He couldn’t see it clearly from where they were, but he remembered gliding over it at one point in the initial survey. And, now that he thought about it, that trawler also wore little in the way of growth, even less than the Liberty vessel they’d parked next to.

He wondered if the magnetism was affecting the rate of growth. Some ships of the day used low-level electric charges to inhibit algae growth on their hulls. Maybe this was a similar effect.

He turned back to the ship that loomed beside them, his eyes focusing on the gaping wound in its side. And then it hit him.

“I’m an idiot,” Kurt said suddenly. “I’m an absolute idiot.” “What are you talking about?” Joe asked.

“How could we be so stupid?” Kurt mumbled, still lost in his own thoughts.

“Well, we’ve had a lot of practice,” Joe said.

“You know what else we’ve had a lot of practice doing?” Kurt said. “Hauling ships up from the depths. And also sending them to the bottom.” He turned, trying to look back at Joe. “How many ships have you scuttled as part of the reef-building program?” “At least fifty,” Joe said, “if you count all of the past ten years.” “I’ve been there half the time,” Kurt said. “And how do we sink them?” “We set charges below the waterline,” Joe said. “Blow holes in them. How else?” “Look at the damage on this ship,” he said.

The Barracudaalready had its main lights on, but Joe activated a secondary light that was directional. He aimed it at the hole in the Liberty ship’s side. It left no doubt.

“The steel plates are blown outward,” Joe said.

“Someone scuttled this ship,” Kurt said.

“It could have been an internal explosion,” Joe said. “You never know what she was carrying. Besides, that’s a much bigger hole than any of us would have made.” “That’s because you want the ship to settle slowly and securely, landing bottom down so it can form a nice reef. But if you were trying to sink something quickly and not have anyone see it, this might be the way.” Kurt powered up the impeller, and the Barracudalifted off the seafloor. He guided them across the mouth of this Devil’s Gate toward the trawler. There they found the same type of damage. A large outward blast had sunk the ship. A third freighter was the same.

“None of these ships have more than a year’s sea growth on them,” Kurt said. “The only thing that did was that Constellation out there. This place hasn’t been collecting ships for ages. These all went down at the same time.” “How could we not have seen this?” Joe asked.

“We were too busy with the scientists,” Kurt said. “Everyone was obsessing over that tower of rock, and, aside from Katarina, no one did more than a cursory examination of these ships.” As they settled in front of the gaping wound in the third ship, Kurt racked his tired brain to put it together. “This whole thing is a hoax.” “Sure seems that way,” Joe added. “But why? What’s the point? Who could even pull such a thing off?” Kurt guessed they both knew the answer to that last question but not the reasons behind it.

He went over the events in his mind again, desperately looking for a connection. He felt something ominous approaching, like a storm he couldn’t outrun. There seemed little of value anyone could get out of such a hoax.

If the same people who’d attacked the Kinjara Maruwere in on this, how did it help them? It didn’t get them any materials. It couldn’t really bring them any more money. In fact, it had to have cost a small fortune to set up the hoax to begin with.

“Some terrorist groups are big on publicity,” he said.

“There are more effective ways to get it than this,” Joe said.

He was right. So far, aside from a few low-level reporters, Kurt hadn’t seen any great flood of interest.

In fact, after the initial announcement, few in the outside world seemed to care what they’d found. The only people who’d shown up in droves and stuck around were the experts in magnetism and superconduction.

Kurt gasped as he realized the truth. “The scientists,” he said. “That’s what they’re after.” It took the briefest instant for Joe to agree.

Apparently, the group that needed more of everything had included know-how on their shopping list. If Kurt was right, they’d baited a trap to bring experts from all over the world here. He only hoped they hadn’t snapped it shut yet.

Kurt grabbed the controls and gunned the throttle. As soon as they were moving again, he angled the nose of the Barracudaupward, and they began accelerating and climbing toward the gray light filtering in from above. They had to get to the surface and send a message to the Argo.

The science teams needed to be warned.

33

SEVERAL HOURS EARLIER, shortly after Kurt and Joe had first settled in on the seafloor beside the Liberty ship, Katarina Luskaya was packing her suitcase under the watchful eye of Major Sergei Komarov.

With everything that had happened, the high command had decided to abandon the mission for now.

“You became romantically involved with the American,” he said, sounding as if he disapproved.

“Not as involved as I would have liked,” she said brashly.

“This is not what we sent you here for,” he reminded her.

She’d almost forgotten that, so much had gone on. “He was in charge of the dive area,” she said. “I thought it would be better if he took a liking to me. That’s what I see in all the old movies, you know.” The major eyed her suspiciously and then smiled just a bit, a slight crease appearing in his permanent five o’clock shadow. “That is a good answer,” he said. “Whether it is true or not, you are learning.” She offered a sheepish grin in return and went back to packing as a knock at the door sounded. The major wasn’t so bad. More like a big brother than Big Brother.

He went to answer the door, putting one hand inside his jacket where his Makarov pistol rested.

OUTSIDE IN THE HALLWAY, two men stood at the door. A short man with dark hair held what looked like a small monocular, his taller partner held what looked like a length of pipe, though it had frost on its curved top and some type of heavy electrical battery pack on one side.

The shorter man placed the monocular on the peephole in the door. “Movement,” he said, looking into the scope. “It’s the male. Three seconds.” He stepped away from the door, and the man with the pipe moved in, holding one end of it against the door chest-high.

“Yes,” the deep Russian voice of Major Komarov said through the door. “What is it?”

“Now,” the shorter man said.

The pipe man pressed a button. A split second of buzzing and then a sudden thud, and splinters frayed out around the end of the pipe where it was pressed against the door. It was a mini rail gun powered by superconducting magnets and carrying a two-pound sharpened metal spike as a projectile. At the press of a button it instantly accelerated the spike to 100 miles per hour, more than enough to fire it through the door and the Russian major.

The pipe man stepped back and delivered a kick to the door. The jamb snapped, and what remained of the door swung open.

KATARINA LUSKAYA HEARD an odd sound and looked up. Slivers of wood were flying through the room. The major stumbled backward, clutching his stomach, a short spearlike piece of metal sticking out from his abdomen. Blood soaked his white shirt. He hit the ground without a word.

Katarina reacted slowly at first, but then she moved with all the speed in her body. She lunged toward the major as she heard the door being kicked in. Landing beside him, she grabbed for the weapon in his coat. She pulled it from its holster, thumbed desperately for the safety, and turned toward the door.

A boot slammed into her face, snapping her head to the side, before she could fire. She tumbled, lost her grip on the pistol, and felt someone on top of her an instant later.

Already stunned from the blow, she struggled only an instant before a rag soaked with chloroform was pressed to her face. She felt her hands go numb, and then nothing but darkness.

34

AS THE BARRACUDAraced for the surface, Kurt could hardly contain the anger he felt at being so foolish. He’d jumped to conclusions early on, assuming he and the Argowere the targets of these madmen even though in hindsight it was obvious that they held little real value.

He and Joe had to get a call off. They had to reach the surface so the shortwave radio could be used to contact the Argothirty miles away in the harbor at Santa Maria.

He thought of the dead French scientists, wondered why they hadn’t been taken, and then remembered that it seemed as if they’d put up a hell of a struggle. He guessed all of the scientists would face the same choice, fight or surrender. Most would give in; some would die.

He wondered what would happen to Katarina. He hoped she and her “chaperone” from the State were already at the airport and boarding a plane.

“Forty feet,” Joe called out.

Kurt eased back on the throttle just a tad. Crashing the surface at full speed was a good way to catch air, and possibly even flip the sub.

He leveled out and they broke the surface.

“Make the call,” he said.

He didn’t have to give the order. He could hear Joe flipping the switches and the sound of the surface antenna extending.

“ Argo, this is Barracuda,” Joe said. “Please come in. We have an urgent transmission to complete.” While both of them waited, Kurt held the Barracudasteady. She was designed to fly underwater, but she rode less well on the surface.

“ Argo, this is Barracuda.” The next voice they heard was Captain Haynes’s, which was a surprise in and of itself, although Kurt could understand him waiting up all night worrying about the dangerous operation Kurt and Joe believed they were attempting.

“Joe, this is the captain,” Haynes said. “Listen, there’s a problem here. We’ve tried to—” A sharp crack rang out, and the cockpit canopy was suddenly covered with dimples and pits. A shadow crossed toward them from the left. Another crack sounded, and Kurt realized it was a shotgun blast. This time, he saw a gaping hole appear in the left wing.

He gunned the engine and turned hard to the right.

Looking over, he saw a powerboat bearing down on them.

It looked like it was about to cut them in half. He had no choice. He pushed the nose down, and they went under. Water poured in through tiny holes in the canopy. The boat crossed over them, passing with a roar and a loud bang that jerked the Barracudasideways.

Kurt looked to the right, seeing that the winglet that acted as a rudder had been torn off the right side. He felt water pooling at his feet, and noticed how sluggish the sleek little sub had already become.

He pulled back on the stick, and the Barracudaturned upward, breaking the surface and skipping across a wave before coming back down.

“Be quick,” he said to Joe.

“Captain, are you there?” Joe said.

He could see the speedboat turning back toward them on a wide curve to the right. Out beyond it he saw another powerboat racing in to join the fight. He didn’t know what they were going to do to escape, but he knew they had to finish the call. He heard Joe keying the mike, but there was no feedback, no static.

“ Argo, this is Barracuda,” Joe said. “The scientists are the target. Repeat, the scientists are the target.” Kurt heard a click as Joe let go of the transmit switch. They waited.

“No answer,” Joe said.

Kurt turned his head, ready to order Joe to try again, when he saw the tail end of the Barracuda. The high-frequency antenna was gone. The sheet metal looked as if it had been chewed up by the prop of the passing boat.

“I got nothing,” Joe said.

The powerboats were racing toward them again, in a staggered formation. The Barracudahad no hope of outrunning them. And the only other radio on board was the underwater transceiver, which had a max range of about a mile.

“Use the speed tape,” Kurt said. “Plug over these holes.” As Kurt angled away from the approaching boats and slammed the throttle to the firewall, Joe thrashed around in his seat.

In a moment he’d retrieved the tape from a small compartment and was ripping short lengths from the roll and trying to seal up the holes in the canopy caused by the pellets from the shotgun blast.

“Here they come,” Kurt said.

“You know this won’t hold at depth,” Joe said.

“I’ll try to stay near the surface,” Kurt said.

He heard the ripping and slapping of the speed tape, the roar of the approaching boats, and the muted boom of another shotgun blast. This time, the spray of pellets missed, splashing a foamy hole in the wave beside them.

“Dive,” Joe said.

Kurt pushed the nose down. The water swirled over the canopy, and the Barracudatucked in underneath the waves, leveling off at ten feet. Plenty of water was still seeping in, but it wasn’t spraying like before, and Joe continued to peel and slap on the tape.

As soon as he was finished, he grabbed what looked like a tube of toothpaste but was actually an epoxy resin hardener. Ammonia-like fumes filled the cockpit as Joe smeared the resin all over the tape. The hardener would react with other resins in the speed tape and harden the patches in under a minute.

Eight feet under, Kurt watched as one wake and then another flashed across the top of them. He immediately turned left, a direction the Barracudaseemed to favor after the damage they’d suffered.

“You see any other holes?” Joe asked.

Kurt looked around. The patches and smeared resin made it look like someone had sprayed graffiti over half the cockpit. The fumes had his head pounding and eyes burning already. But the water was no longer pouring in. And as the patches hardened it would almost cease.

“Good work, Joe,” he said.

“Not my most aesthetically pleasing job,” Joe said, “but it’s not meant to be patched while submerging under fire.” “Looks like art to me,” Kurt said, straining to see past the mess and locate the powerboats he knew had to be approaching.

“In a future life I’m going to work on a NASCAR pit crew,” Joe said.

“Let’s just work on extending our current lives a little bit,” Kurt said. “Can you think of any way to contact the Argo?” Silence reigned as both of them racked their brains. Kurt certainly couldn’t.

“The data link,” Joe said. “We can e-mail them.” “E-mail?”

“Not exactly, but we can send them a data message. It goes up to a satellite and then comes down. As long as someone sees the telemetry equipment go on, they’ll get it.” Kurt wondered how likely that was, picturing the screens on the telemetry unit coming on and no one there to see them. Certainly there was no reason for anyone to be monitoring them right now.

“Anything else?”

“Either that or we paddle all the way back to Santa Maria and use semaphores,” Joe said.

“That’s what I thought,” Kurt said. “Key up the telemetry system, let me know when you’re ready.” “We’ll need thirty seconds on the surface for the satellite to lock.” “I don’t think we’ll have that long,” Kurt said. As if to prove the point, he saw one of the wakes coming back toward them, not racing this time but rather matching their speed and then paralleling their course. The second wake did the same on the other side and to the rear.

Kurt turned hard to the left, back toward the undersea graveyard. The boats followed.

“They can see us, Kemo Sabe,” Joe said.

“We’re like a dying fish leaving a trail of blood,” Kurt said, thinking of the bubbles the sub was probably venting.

A strange concussive sound reached them, and Kurt saw spray patterns in the water above and ahead. He guessed their pursuers were shooting into the water with the shotguns. Not a real danger, but one more sign of an impossible situation.

Maybe if they went deeper.

He put the nose down a few degrees.

The depth meter read 15 and then 20 and then – Crack!

One of the taped sections broke away, and a new spray of water came in.

As Joe slammed the section back into place and began taping it over, Kurt brought the sub back up, leveling off at ten feet. He changed course again but to no avail.

“They’re probably wearing those Maui Jim sunglasses,” Joe said. “You know, the ones that let you see fish in the water.” Kurt felt like a fish in a barrel. Or a whale being hunted from above by a couple of harpoon boats. Sooner or later they had to surface, if not to send the message, just to survive.

Despite Joe’s efforts, the Barracudawas slowly taking on water, not just from the buckshot holes in the windshield but from the damage in other places. Compartments normally sealed against water were now filling with it.

And, like whales, Kurt and Joe were faced with pursuers above that were faster, bigger, and well armed. At this point they had to do little more than follow Kurt and Joe in the Barracudaand wait for them to come up for air.

A flash lit the sea ahead and to the right. A concussion wave shook the sub even as Kurt turned hard left. A few moments later a second flash went off directly in front of them. Kurt actually saw the water expand, contract, and then crash into the nose of the Barracuda.

“Grenades,” he said.

Cracks were beginning to appear in the canopy. Tiny almost invisible lines were spidering out from behind Joe’s tape job as the Plexiglas weakened and began to fail.

When another explosion shook them, Kurt knew they didn’t have much time. “Get your message ready,” he said.

“We won’t last ten seconds up there.” “We will if we surrender,” Kurt replied, realizing that once Joe hit “Enter,” there would be no visible sign of the data message being sent, and they could stand there with their hands up, hoping not to be shot as a distraction.

Joe said nothing, but Kurt heard him tapping away at the keyboard. “Ready,” Joe said.

Kurt pointed the nose toward the surface, hoping they wouldn’t get machine-gunned on sight. Just as they breached the surface, he cut the throttles.

The Barracudaslowed instantly, and the pursuing boats passed them.

“Now,” he said.

Joe hit the “Enter” key as Kurt pressed the canopy switch and the cockpit rose.

“Come on,” Joe was muttering. “Rápido, por favor.”

Kurt stood, hands raised high in surrender, as the boats circled back toward him.

The Barracudarocked back and forth on the waves, and the powerboats pulled up next to them. A half mile off Kurt saw a larger boat headed their way too.

“We surrender,” Kurt said.

Two men with shotguns pointed their weapons at him.

An almost inaudible beep chirped from the rear of the cockpit, and Joe stood up as well.

“Message sent,” he whispered.

Kurt nodded almost imperceptibly. Whatever happened now, whatever fate held for them, at least they’d sent their warning. He only hoped it was in time.

Across from him, one of the men put his weapon down and threw them a line. In a moment the Barracudawas tied up to the larger of the two powerboats, and Kurt and Joe were standing on board it with their wrists chained in proper cuffs.

Apparently, their foes had come prepared.

The larger boat approached, a 60-foot motor yacht of a design Kurt had never seen, it appeared far more utilitarian than anything he could remember in that class. It almost looked like a military vessel done up to pass as a pleasure craft.

It sidled up next to them, and Kurt saw a man in jungle fatigues standing at the bow, gazing down at him. It was the same man he’d seen the night before and also on the Kinjara Maru. The grin of a conqueror beamed from his face, and he jumped down onto the deck of the powerboat before the yacht had even bumped up against it.

He strode toward Kurt and Joe in their defenseless positions, looking ready to inflict pain. Kurt stared him down the whole way, never blinking or looking away. “Andras,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Friend of yours?” Joe asked.

Before Kurt could answer, the man hauled off and slugged him in the jaw, sending Kurt crashing to the deck.

Kurt looked up, blood dripping from his mouth, his lip split open.

“Sorry,” Joe said. “Forget I asked.”