“Tesla was older by then,” Yaeger said. “And broke. Maybe he needed money.”
“From what I’ve read, he always needed money. Why should 1937 be any different?”
“What are you suggesting?”
Pitt shrugged as if it were obvious. “He buried this Wardenclyffe project when he could have saved it or at least kept it afloat. Then, thirty years later, he insists he’s ready to spring the theory on the world. What are the chances he would do that unless he thought he’d found a solution?”
Again it was the computer that answered.
2,400 miles southwest of Perth
Patrick “Padi” Devlin stood on the black-painted deck of the sailing abomination that had once been the
Devlin pulled his coat tight, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and wished mightily for a scarf. Still, he didn’t want to go back inside.
“Thank you for letting me out on deck,” he said to a figure, hovering behind him: Janko Minkosovic, his old crewmate and current jailer.
“I can’t see any harm in it. Not like you’re going to swim back to Jakarta.”
“I noticed you didn’t extend the same courtesy to the others in the hold.”
“There are twenty-six of them,” Janko said. “They come from a pair of vessels we hit. Together, they could be a danger.”
Devlin considered that.
“Remind you of anything?” Janko asked.
“The day this hulk went down,” Devlin replied.
“The day you cut us loose.”
“You know that was the captain’s choice,” Devlin shot back. “I begged him to hold on.”
“Stop blaming him,” Janko said. “For that matter, stop blaming yourself, Padi. Look at you. You’re a worse wreck than this ship. And you thought you’d make captain someday.”
Devlin cut his eyes at Janko.
“There was nothing any of you could have done,” Janko said. “We set it up that way. If you hadn’t released the cable, we’d have cut through it ourselves.”
“Who?” Devlin asked sharply. “Who’s we? And why? To fake the ship’s destruction? She was already a derelict. She wasn’t even insured.”
“The man I work for bought her,” Janko explained, “years before. All that time in dry dock at Tarakan, he had people working on her. Making changes. When the moment came, he needed her to disappear. So he ordered us to tow her into the storm.”
Devlin stared at Janko. “But you were part of the crew. Our crew!”
“For six months, along with the other two. He arranged that with your employer.”
“Fine,” Devlin said. “So he got you on with us and had you put aboard the
this ship—
“How the hell did you do it, then?”
“Follow me,” Janko said. “You’re about to find out.”
Janko led Devlin in through the main hatch and then through a second, inner hatch. For the first time, Devlin noticed that the outer section of the ship was left pretty much as it had been when he’d seen it years back. It looked neglected, disused. But once they passed the inner hatch, things were different.
Soon, Devlin found himself in a modern control room. Chart tables, propulsion gauges, radarscopes, and graphic displays surrounded him. Large screens on the front wall were set up like the forward view from the bridge; in fact, they showed the gray sky and the cold sea ahead of the ship, piped in from the highest vantage point of a group of video cameras.
“When did all this get done?”
“I told you,” Janko insisted, “the changes were made before the ship was towed off the beach.”
“But we inspected it for leaks.”
“The outer hull only,” Janko reminded him. “Besides, I was with you to make sure you didn’t stray into any sensitive areas.”
Devlin remembered now. They’d checked the repair job and the lower decks, the engine room and the bilge. No one had bothered with the inner spaces of the ship.
Janko turned his attention to one of the crewmen. “Switch to infrared.”
The crewman flicked a switch, and the right-hand screen cycled. The color changed from gray to an orange hue. Suddenly, the clouds, mist, and spitting rain were gone. The visibility that had been less than a mile was no longer a problem. Like magic, the shape of a large, cone-shaped island suddenly took up the center of the monitor. The central peak soared thousands of feet into the sky. It seemed impossible to have been a mile or so out and yet have the mist hiding the island so thoroughly.
Even as his eyes were growing wide, Devlin’s ears began to pop. “What’s happening?”
“Inner hull pressurized,” one of the crewmen said, “outer hull flooding.”
On the left screen, Devlin saw the bow of the ship settling toward the sea. A few moments later, the water rushed in from all sides as air surged out of hidden vents in the decking. In seconds, the foredeck was submerged. The water level moved rapidly higher, traveling up the superstructure and engulfing the camera.
Suddenly, all Devlin saw was darkness and the swirl of water in front of the lens. It took a minute for the view to clear, but even then there was nothing in the frame but the ship’s bow.
“A submarine?” Devlin said. “You turned this ship into a bloody submarine?”
“The central section of this ship is a pressure hull,” Janko explained. “The rest is just camouflage.”
Despite his anger, Devlin found himself impressed. “How deep can it go?”
“No more than eighty feet.”
“You’ll be spotted from the air.”
“The black paint reflects almost no light, and it also absorbs radar.”
That explained why the paint was so thick and rubbery, Devlin thought.
“And all the radar masts and antennas?”
“We had to do away with them,” Janko said. “They tend to cause problems when we submerge.”
“You’ll still be picked up on sonar.”
Janko seemed exasperated. “We don’t travel around like this, Padi. We travel on the surface, like we have been. We merely do this to hide. And… to park.”
“Park?”
“Activate the approach lights,” Janko said to a crewman.
In the far distance, a line of yellow-green lights came on. They ran along the seafloor. To some extent, they resembled the dashed centerline on a dark highway.
“Five degrees to port,” Janko said. “Reduce speed to three knots.”
As Devlin watched, the crewman to his left tapped away on a keyboard. “Auto guidance locked. Auto-docking sequence initiated.”
The ship continued toward the dim lights.
“In position,” the crewman said.
“Open outer doors.”
A few more taps on the keyboard, and a thin crack of light appeared in what looked like a wall of rock. Before Devlin’s eyes, the crack widened as huge doors slid open, revealing a narrow portal in the sloped side of the island’s submerged foundation.
Using bow and stern thrusters, the
NUMA vessel
1,700 miles southwest of Perth
After thwarting the hijacking of the
Orion
As Hayley began the long task of calibrating the sensors, Kurt made his way up to the bridge. He arrived just as the third watch began.
Through the large plate-glass windows, he could see that the sky had darkened and lowered, and the sea had turned a dark iron gray. The western swell continued at four to five feet, surprisingly calm for this section of the world. Still, Kurt didn’t like the look of things.
He grabbed two mugs with the name ORION on them and a small representation of the constellation’s stars embossed on the side. He filled them with coffee and wandered over to Joe, who was standing with the
“Captain?” Kurt said, offering one of the mugs.
“No thanks,” Captain Winslow replied.
“I’ll take one,” Joe said.
Kurt handed one mug to Joe and kept the other for himself. He took a sip and then nodded toward the weather report. “What’s the word?”
“No storm yet,” Joe said, “but the pressure’s dropping. We’re looking at a disturbance coming in from the west.”
It was March, which meant it was early fall in the southern hemisphere. The worst of the weather would not hit for another month or so, but south of 40 degrees latitude they’d entered an area known as the Roaring Forties. At this latitude, the Great Southern Ocean encircled the Earth uninterrupted by land. It could brew up a monster storm whenever it chose.
“So far, we’ve been lucky,” Winslow said. “But my old bones tell me this weather isn’t going to hold.”
“Quiet before the storm?” Joe asked.
“Something like that,” the captain said.
“We have to keep going,” Kurt said, “even if the weather hits hard.”
Winslow seemed determined as well, but only to a degree.
“We won’t let you down,” he assured Kurt. “But if there’s a point at which the danger to the ship and crew becomes too great, I’ll have to make that call. The
Kurt nodded. The captain was master of the ship, and though Kurt was in charge of the mission, the captain’s word would hold sway. “What about the others?”
Joe pointed to the chart. “Paul and Gamay are aboard the
“Why is she so far behind us?”
“She had to come all the way from Singapore.”
“Frustrating,” Kurt said. “But it’s worth the wait to get Paul and Gamay on the team. What about the others?”
“
“And the
Kurt studied the chart. Four tiny ships, just dots on the map in the vast sea. They were the only real hope of finding Thero before he acted.
“You think this is going to work?” Joe asked.
“It all depends on Hayley’s sensors.”
“You don’t seem as certain as before,” Joe noted.
“She’s hiding something,” Kurt said.
“And yet, you like her,” Joe noted.
“All the more reason to be careful,” Kurt said.
At this, Joe nodded. “It’s always the punch you’re not looking for that hits the hardest.”