Текст книги "Piranha"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

Although he was fuming about the failures of the day, Lawrence Kensit couldn’t help but chuckle as he watched Max Hanley look warily around the op center as if he could spy a camera hidden in someone’s lapel. In fact, Juan Cabrillo was correct. There was absolutely no way for him to know that Kensit could see and hear everything Hanley was doing and saying. The control room on Kensit’s yacht was hundreds of miles away from the Oregon, being fed the signal from the Sentinel array buried deep underground.

Despite the focus on his larger goals, Kensit enjoyed the Peeping Tom aspect of his design, based on Gunther Lutzen’s work. With one giant observation screen, plus half a dozen smaller monitors and various keyboards, touch screens, and joysticks, Kensit could view anything he wanted anywhere in the world. It really was like he had a superpower and he felt like a god viewing his subjects from afar, ready to affect their lives at his pleasure or whim. Of course, he saw himself as a benevolent god, having humanity’s collective best interests in mind, but he could be wrathful when it was required for his grand design. The lesser beings didn’t need to understand why things happened the way they did. It was simply his will and they were his servants.

Before he brought Brian Washburn into his control room, he called Hector Bazin. As soon as the call went through, he read the GPS coordinates of the private jet just taking off from Berlin and fed them into the computer, which zoomed in until it found the right altitude for the plane and locked onto it to follow it. In an instant, he was looking at the interior of the cabin. Bazin was alone and answered the phone.

“Cabrillo got part of the thesis,” he said.

“I know,” Kensit replied, “I just heard him talking to the Oregon. What happened?”

Bazin recounted the chase through Berlin. Knowing that Kensit was watching, he began leafing through the portion of the thesis that he managed to save, giving Kensit an opportunity to see the pages.

Kensit nodded approvingly. “Good. At least he doesn’t have the most important equations. Now I’m the only person in the world who possesses all of the secrets of the neutrino telescope. Burn it as soon as you land.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your man Pasquet is dead.” He stated it matter-of-factly even though he knew Pasquet was Bazin’s closest friend. Kensit never understood why people insisted on soft-pedaling bad news.

Bazin looked away for a moment, his jaw tightening. “How?”

“He failed to destroy the Roraima. I told him exactly how to proceed, but once they were underwater, I couldn’t communicate with them anymore to warn them. They didn’t anticipate the Oregon’s tactics. All of them were killed, and the Oregon may have managed to recover some of Lutzen’s photo plates.”

“And if they discover where the Sentinel array is hidden?”

“That’s why I want you to go directly to Haiti. The next forty-eight hours are critical. Your objective is to protect Sentinel at all costs. Once our mission is finished, Sentinel is expendable and we can move on to Phase Two. Do you have enough men to defend it?”

Bazin nodded. “I have two dozen mercs left, and I can call in a favor from the Haitian National Police if it looks like we might be overrun by a larger force.”

“Excellent. Let me know once you’re at the bunker. After you’re there, no one else goes in or out until the mission is over, understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Kensit hung up, and called for Washburn to join him in the control room.

Washburn stepped inside and gawked at the technology that was beyond his comprehension.

“After showing you my operation in Haiti,” Kensit said, “I hope you realize that this is not a small operation. I have the money and resources to back up my efforts to make you president.”

Washburn rolled his eyes, then caught himself. “Yes, you’ve got impressive technology, although I have no idea where that cave is since you blindfolded me on the way there and back. I can’t pretend to know how any of the equipment in there works, but it looked expensive. The question is, so what? How is this going to help me get elected? Even if you make me vice president, there’s the primary and general election to get through. Being VP didn’t help Mondale or Gore.”

“True, but they didn’t have me. Since you will be dependent on me not only for the election but also when you’re president, I wanted to convince you that there is virtually no limit to my power.”

Kensit typed in some coordinates and the foyer of a mansion appeared on the big screen. Washburn frowned until he realized what he was looking at.

“That’s my house in Miami! When did you get this video?”

“It’s not a recording. This is a real-time feed. Let’s see if anyone’s home.” He rolled a trackball and it was as if a camera were moving up the winding stairs until he was looking down from the balcony. He wandered down one hall until he reached a closed door. He pushed right through and a woman in lingerie was putting on a skirt.

Washburn lunged toward the screen. “That’s my wife!” He wheeled around with balled-up fists. “You—”

“No, no, Governor. Remember, I have guards right outside this door. We can do this just as well with you tied up.”

“This is a trick. You’ve planted a camera in my house.”

Kensit nodded appreciatively. “Good for you. That would be a logical assumption. It is, of course, wrong.”

“Prove it.”

“I will. Tell me someplace where you are absolutely positive I could not have planted a camera.”

Washburn shrugged, and said sarcastically, “The Oval Office.”

“I was hoping you’d choose something more unusual, but that will do.”

The White House was one of the easiest places on earth to locate. He typed the name in and a satellite view of the familiar white structure was displayed on-screen.

“Is that all?” Washburn scoffed. “I could do that with Google maps and an iPhone.”

“Really?” Kensit said. “Can you also do this?”

He zoomed down, the roof of the West Wing racing toward them until the view plunged through. Kensit stopped it when it reached the most recognizable office in the world.

If the room had been empty, Washburn might not have been so flabbergasted. But Kensit had anticipated his choice and knew that the president was meeting with his senior advisers that morning.

“This farm bill is causing us all kinds of problems in the polls, Mr. President,” his chief of staff said. “We can’t cut subsidies as much as the Senate wants or our party will get killed in the next election.”

“Let Sandecker handle it,” the president replied. He looked as relaxed as ever, lounging in his chair with a mug of coffee in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other, reading glasses perched on his nose. “He’ll be back from Brazil in a couple of days.”

“Do you think the vice president can talk them down?”

“Sandecker’s a clever guy. If he can’t convince them, they’re certainly not going to listen to me. Now, what’s on the agenda for the military briefing today?”

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs sat forward. “There was another terrorist bombing in northern Pakistan this morning. Six dead, twenty wounded. North Korea is moving a thousand troops to the demilitarized zone, but we think it’s just a planned division reinforcement. And the UNITAS exercise has begun in the Bahamas. Seventeen nations are participating. The Cubans and Venezuelans are sending ships to observe, but we don’t anticipate any problems.”

“Good. What about the trip to California next week that . . .”

Kensit turned down the volume. “Satisfied?”

If Washburn’s jaw were any lower, he could have swallowed an ostrich egg.

“They have no clue we’re watching them?”

“No.”

“And you can see anywhere you want?”

Kensit grinned. “I’ve already explored the inside of some of the most secure facilities on earth: NORAD, Area 51, the Kremlin, the Vatican’s secret archives, NATO headquarters, Fort Knox. Do you want to know the secret formula to Coca-Cola?”

“How . . . How are you doing this?”

Kensit paused as he thought about how much he would have to dumb down his explanation. “It’s called a neutrino telescope. I had been calling it a quantum receiver, but I like Eric Stone’s name for it better. My code name for it is Sentinel, for obvious reasons. Do you know what a neutrino is?”

Washburn shook his head slowly, still gaping like a simpleton at the continuing video feed from the Oval Office.

“A neutrino is a subatomic particle created by nuclear reactions, such as those within the sun or from cosmic rays. Normally, they’re very hard to detect.”

“Why?”

“Because they are so small they can pass through matter without stopping. It would take six trillion miles of lead to stop half the neutrinos flowing through the earth, so the earth and everything on it are subjected to constant bombardment from them. But suppose we had a way to observe those few neutrinos that did interact with their surroundings. My long-lost great-uncle, a brilliant physicist named Gunther Lutzen, anticipated neutrinos decades before they were discovered. Not only that, he provided a basis for intercepting them and deciphering the spatial equations that would allow us to view the matter they had already passed through. If his work had been taken seriously at the time, he would have won the Nobel Prize and been mentioned in the same breath as Einstein.”

“And the equipment in that Haitian cave is the neutrino telescope? That’s Sentinel?”

“Yes. Uncle Lutzen theorized that he would need a very particular environment in which to build the telescope, a cavern that had the perfect level of natural radioactive ore and copper impurities to allow for the right conditions. He tracked a rare sample of the ore to Haiti and was about to return to Germany with his discovery when his ship was destroyed by a volcano. He called the cave Oz, but because of the green tinge from the copper in the cave’s selenium crystals, I think he should have called it the Emerald City.”

Washburn nodded in agreement. “So how are you seeing the images from here?”

“I have a transducer that uses the same technology to beam the images directly here from Sentinel, so I can be anywhere in the world and use it. I prefer to be mobile.”

“But you could make millions of dollars with this technology,” Washburn said in awe. “Imagine the potential.”

“Billions of dollars, actually. Perhaps even trillions. And I will make that much. But you aren’t imagining the true potential. I don’t limit myself to thinking of what I can attain financially. Don’t you realize that with Sentinel at our disposal, we can change the world? And I mean that literally. Shaping the future of the United States is only the first step.”

“What more could there be?”

Kensit sighed. He supposed he shouldn’t have been so surprised at such limited thinking. “In this day and age, there is only so much one country can accomplish on its own. Think what I can do when I have control of Russia, China, and the European Union.”

“You? What about me?”

Kensit shook his head. “You still don’t understand, do you? I am the only indispensable part of this equation. I’m the only one who knows how to build the neutrino telescope. And you’re looking at Phase One. Currently, I can see only a single location at a time, a distinct disadvantage that I will improve upon soon. I’ve found a second underground cavern even bigger than Oz and I’ve already purchased the land around it for miles. Once Phase Two is built there, I will be able to view as many as a dozen locations at once. With advances in real-time translation software, I will be able to pass on secrets even the NSA can’t deliver to you when you’re president.”

“And that’s how you plan to get me elected,” Washburn said, finally comprehending the possibilities.

“You will know every strategy your opponents plan to use, every secret they want to keep, every scandal they try to hide. You’ll be able to anticipate their every move. Or I will, and then I will pass it on to you. So don’t ever think about betraying me or getting the deluded notion that you could do any of this without me. Because I will find someone who does understand that I am the one making the rules from now on.”

Washburn swallowed hard and nodded. He understood. Kensit had no doubt he would do as instructed.

“You said the first step is to shoot down Air Force Two. How, exactly?”

Kensit manipulated the controls so that the telescope descended on Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida until he had the orange-tipped QF-16 drones on the screen. Then he switched to the drone pilots’ control room.

“Those are modified F-16s, with all the same performance capabilities of the actual fighter jets. I did a test a few days ago. I could take over any of the planes’ command streams by mimicking the encrypted frequencies that the satellites use to connect them with their control base. The pilots couldn’t tell anything was wrong even when I tried a slight maneuver to make sure I had control.”

“You can fly those drones?”

Kensit nodded. “And they won’t even be missed, because I can spoof the video feed and data relays. Air Force Two is currently sitting on the tarmac in Rio de Janeiro, having taken the VP there for a South American trade conference. In two days it will take off for its return flight to Washington. At the same time, this flight of six QF-16s will be flying toward the UNITAS exercise in the Bahamas for a demonstration. I will commandeer control of those planes and intercept Air Force Two when it’s over Haiti.”

Washburn leaned in, now more fascinated by than appalled at the prospect of killing to reach his goals. “I get it. You’re going to use the drones’ missiles to shoot it down.”

“No, of course not,” Kensit said, pausing for effect. “The drones don’t carry any missiles. I’m going to fly them right into Vice President Sandecker’s plane.”

It was nearly midnight when Juan and Eric rendezvoused with the Oregon in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Juan felt proud of his quick-thinking crew as he read the after-action report about the events at Saint-Pierre. The Oregon had sailed from Martinique after Max and the crew gave statements to the local authorities, corroborated by the submarine passengers, that the ship’s crew were simply innocent bystanders who happened to be in the right place at the right time to rescue the grateful hostages. When he assumed command again, Juan took a calculated guess as to where the evidence from the Roraima would lead them and ordered the ship to head west.

He and the rest of the senior officers had slept during their respective journeys, so he called a late-night meeting in the boardroom to plan their next move. Along the way, he stopped by Maria Sandoval’s cabin. She answered the door wearing a pair of silk pajamas that Julia Huxley had loaned her. Juan thought they suited her well, but he made no comment.

“Thanks for seeing me, Captain Cabrillo.”

Juan leaned against the door, creating the unspoken impression that this would be a short visit. “Are you being treated all right?”

“Every amenity I could ask for. Your facilities are marvelous. I wish we had them on my ship.”

“The benefits of our chosen profession.” He left it at that to keep up the appearances that they were simply smugglers. “I understand you called your company and your friends to let them know you’re alive and safe.”

“Yes, thanks for letting me do that.”

“There was no point in holding back the news any longer. Your survival of the shipwreck is known to the conspirators by now.” He didn’t add how he came by that knowledge. “You’re still free to go at any time, of course, but your life might be in danger until we resolve our current situation.”

“I will have to go soon. My company is demanding to debrief me.”

“I’m hoping we can get some more evidence that Admiral Ruiz was behind the attacks in a few more days. That should clear your name completely with your company.”

“The admiral is why I wanted to speak with you. The shipping industry captains in my country are tightly connected and one of them told me he saw her at Carúpano, a minor port on the eastern side of Venezuela. I also talked to a few friends who are still involved with the Navy and don’t have a particular fondness for her. They told me she had left headquarters with members of her staff to join the Cuban Navy in observing a joint U.S.–Caribbean exercise going on in the Bahamas.”

“What was she doing in Carúpano?”

“He didn’t know, but she was boarding a small cargo ship. She wasn’t wearing her uniform. It was the government-issue car that drew his attention.”

“Any idea what the cargo was?”

She shook her head. “Nothing but a stack of shipping containers.”

“I appreciate the information. It’s probably something to do with her smuggling operation. I’ll let you know if we learn anything else about it.”

Juan said good night and continued on to the boardroom. When he entered, Murph was recounting the events of the sub encounter to Eric.

“That’s when I drove Little Geek under the falling girders on the Roraima,” Murph said, his hands behind his head. “It destroyed the ROV, of course, but I didn’t have a choice.”

Eddie took up the story. “Although Little Geek kept me from getting crushed, I was still pinned. I had my hands on the photo tin but I couldn’t get away, and I knew the bomb inside the barrel was ticking down. Linc’s the one who pried me out of there. My legs were numb by then, so he had to drag me until I got blood flow back in my feet.”

“I just wish I had gotten us fully behind that piece of coral before the bomb went off,” Linc said, munching on an apple. “Doc said you won’t be going into the water for a few weeks.” The only injury among them was a perforated eardrum Eddie suffered.

Juan took his seat at the head of the table. “Good job, everyone. I’m going to have to stop taking excursions like this or you’ll start thinking you can get along without me.”

“Not a chance,” Max said. “I was sweating fifty-caliber hollow points the whole time.”

“That was a tough call to keep your plan a secret, but I would have done the same thing. Where are we with the fruits of your labor?”

“Kevin Nixon worked with the techs in the lab to open the tin,” Linda said. “It was lined with zinc and sealed with paraffin, so it hadn’t rusted through and water hadn’t penetrated the gaps. We found four photo plates inside.”

She removed a cloth covering a white canvas sheet on which lay the five four-and-a-half– by six-and-a-half-inch glass plates. The silver bromide emulsion had been perfectly preserved. Two of the plates had cracks down the center, but the others were completely intact.

“You can look at these originals, if you want,” Linda said, “but I wouldn’t handle them. Not only are they delicate but we found traces of radioactivity on them.” When she saw Hali edge away, she added, “Not enough to be dangerous, but it doesn’t hurt to be careful. They were transferred to digital so we can see them in more detail.”

She lowered the screen and turned on the overhead projector. The first image showed a man standing on a dock in a dark coat and trousers, boots, and a wide-brimmed hat. He wore a serious expression, but his eyes shone with an intensity visible even in the old photo. The Roraima’s name was stenciled on the hull of a ship behind him.

“He’s a happy-looking guy,” Murph said. He looked at Eric. “Is that Gunther Lutzen?”

“I don’t know. We never found a photo of him.”

“It’s probably him,” Linda continued, “but there’s no way to be sure. I’m showing these photos in reverse order to try to backtrack his travel from the time he reached the Roraima. As you can see, the numbers of the photo plates are noted on the bottom right corner. Unfortunately, there aren’t any indications where this photo was taken. There’s nothing distinguishing the port.”

She moved on to the next photo. This one showed a jumble of crystals embedded in rock, the facets reflecting the camera’s burst of flash powder. The image was marred by the crack through the middle.

“That looks like a geode,” Eric said.

“Yeah,” Murph agreed, “but without anything else in the photo, we can’t get a handle on its size. The crystals don’t look clear, though, like the quartz crystals in a typical geode. They look darker than that. It could be amethyst.”

“Or they could be green. Lutzen’s thesis mentioned that his detection method would rely on crystals of selenium, copper, and uranium, and copper impurities in crystals give them a green hue. The uranium would also explain why the plates are radioactive.”

“Maybe he was collecting gems,” Linc said. “Whatever this is could still be buried in the Roraima. Not that I want to go back to look for it.”

Linda snapped to the third plate. Again the image was split by a crack, which bisected the interior of a cavern teeming with stalactites and stalagmites. A tunnel faded into black in the distance.

Juan felt a ray of hope. “Now we’re getting somewhere. This narrows down our search area considerably.”

“Why?” Hali asked.

“Because caves like that form only in certain limestone terrains, in what’s known as karst topography. It rules out Martinique and any other volcanic island.”

Linda nodded. “Juan’s right. The problem is that it still leaves a lot of land to cover. Even if we’re limiting ourselves to the Caribbean, it could be anywhere from Puerto Rico to Mexico and up through Florida.”

“I think it’s a good chance we’re looking at Haiti,” Juan said. “Remember, that’s where tram enthusiast Hector Bazin hails from.”

“The last photo might help confirm that,” Linda said.

The final picture showed a flourishing jungle landscape of ridges, hills, and valleys. The same man from the first photo stood in the foreground, this time beaming with a smile, his foot jauntily propped on a rock. He pointed into the shallow gorge behind him where a cave opening yawned. A river wound through the bottom of the gorge.

“I don’t mean to be a party pooper,” Juan said, “but how does this photo help us? It shows us the cave entrance, but I don’t see anything identifying where this is.”

“The ridge in the background,” Murph said. “See the distinctive outline? Given Lutzen’s height—if that is him—based on him standing against the Roraima, whose size we know, I estimated how far away the ridge is. The river gives us another reference point. The measurements aren’t exact, but they’re close enough to run a comparison using our worldwide topographical map—you know, the National Reconnaissance Office one that has about ten times greater resolution than NOAA’s.”

“I’m sorry I doubted you,” Juan said. “How long will it take?”

“It’s been running for a few hours now and should come back with a list of possible hits any minute. Oh, and I decided to start with Haiti. If we don’t find any leads there, it will take a lot longer if we have to look in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Mexico. At least Florida is out because it’s as flat as a day-old beer.”

“All right. Once we know where to look, we’ll have to come up with a game plan. Remember, we only have a day left before Kensit puts into play whatever is going to change the world. However, our approach will be tricky because of the neutrino telescope that Eric thinks Lawrence Kensit has developed.”

“Who came up with that name?” Murph asked.

“I did,” Eric replied. “Although the existence of neutrinos was first proposed by Wolfgang Pauli in 1930, the particle Lutzen describes in his thesis much earlier is clearly a neutrino. He just didn’t have a name for it.”

“Yeah, yeah, great name,” Linc said. “How does it work?”

“As far as I can tell, Lutzen theorized that intercepted neutrinos could be reconstructed to create the state of the place they passed through.”

“Like an X-ray?”

“Yes, but far more advanced. It could show you literally any spot on earth. Not only that but you could also hear what was going on in that space because it would also intercept the air particles that are conveying the sound.”

Murph said, “Think of what the NSA could do with technology like that. Say bye-bye to any secrets.”

Linc scoffed. “You think Kensit actually made this thing? A telescope that can see through walls? And around the world? Has he also cracked the code to warp drive?”

“I know it sounds bizarre,” Juan said, “but imagine explaining the idea of X-rays before they were discovered. We have to go under the assumption that this neutrino telescope exists. Kensit and Bazin have anticipated our every move. They beat us to Jamaica, New York, and Berlin, and they knew exactly where we’d be each time. Kensit could have been watching us type in log-ins and passwords, giving him full access to our communications and computer networks.”

“That’s why you had me shut down any external access to our main computer,” Murph said, nodding.

“Right,” Juan said. “In the case of Berlin, Bazin knew where we’d be even though I never breathed a word of it over any line of communication. It’s very possible that he’s watching and listening to this meeting right now.”

Everyone paused to soak in the likelihood that their privacy was completely gone.

Finally Hali spoke. “Then how can we possibly defeat this guy? He’ll know whatever plan we come up with.”

“He’s obviously not infallible,” Juan said. “You proved that by foiling his sub plan in Martinique. Eric has a theory why.”

Eric cleared his throat. “I think he only can see one place at a time. It lets him spy on our plans, but if there are multiple situations happening simultaneously, he has to choose what to observe.”

“We have another advantage.” Juan looked each of his officers in the eye. “Our shared history. If we talk in code, relating key information about our upcoming plans using past experiences that only we know between us, he’ll never be able to decipher it even if he’s listening in. That coupled with Max’s idea to wait until the last moment to reveal our tactics gives us a fighting chance against Kensit.”

Murph’s tablet computer dinged. “The results are back. We got a couple of hits at more than fifty percent probability but only one that is better than a ninety-five percent match.” Murph tapped on the screen, then groaned when he saw the results.

“What’s the matter?” Max asked. “Is it a false lead?”

“No, it’s a match. But you’re not gonna believe where the cave is.” He took over the main view screen from Linda and put up the map from his tablet.

A yellow dot was superimposed on a satellite image of the area, with the ridge outline in red. Instead of the dot appearing in a green valley, it was planted inside the blue water of a lake.

“Your comparison model must be wrong,” Eddie said. “How could the cave be at the bottom of a lake?”

“Because that is Lake Péligre on the Artibonite River in central Haiti,” Murph said with a dejected sigh as he read from his screen. “It was formed by the construction of the Péligre Hydroelectric Dam in 1956, more than fifty years after Gunther Lutzen visited it. The cave entrance is now under forty feet of water.”