Zero Hour nf-11 Read online

  Joe chuckled. They kept going and quickly reached the aft of the two diesel engines.

  “Afraid we’ve run into a roadblock,” Joe said.

  Kurt looked past them. There was much less clearance under the engine than under the passenger cars.

  “These modern engines have the electric motors down on the wheels,” Joe explained, pointing. “The gearing too. Not to mention the fuel tank in the middle, and probably a cowcatcher up front.”

  “You sure we can’t squeeze by?”

  “Not a chance.”

  Kurt frowned. If they couldn’t go under, they would have to go over or around. “If you were a hijacker in a locomotive, what would you be watching?”

  “The engineer,” Joe said.

  Kurt’s eyebrows went up. “My thoughts exactly.”

  “What are you going to do?” Hayley asked.

  Kurt glanced out behind them. The guards on foot still had their attention on the passenger car, but not for long. Due to the way the train had stopped on the curve, there was more space on one side than the other.

  “We’re going to break in and surprise whosever in the lead engine. Hopefully, without having to do any shooting.”

  Kurt eyed the foot patrol once more. As they turned toward the tail end of the train, he climbed out from under the passenger car and sprinted forward in the dark. He reached the lead engine and went up the ladder onto the catwalk, or sill, that ran the length of the engine like a running board on an old car.

  Joe came up behind him, and Hayley followed quickly as well.

  They eased their way toward the cab of the diesel. The throbbing of twin sixteen-cylinder diesels masked their approach.

  Kurt reached the door, managed a quick peek inside, and saw exactly what he’d hoped to see: a single gunman with his back to the door and his pistol leveled at a burly man in the driver’s seat.

  He put his hand on the door, testing the resistance in the handle. He felt pretty certain it wasn’t locked. He opened it with a start and stepped inside.

  The hijacker didn’t react quickly. He turned as if expecting to see one of his kind. His eyes widened only when he saw the gun pointed at his head.

  “G’day, mate,” Kurt said.

  The hijacker hesitated and then handed the pistol over.

  TWENTY

  Victor Kirov woke to darkness and a pounding, migrainelike pain in his head. It took a moment, but he soon remembered where he was and what his mission required. The lights came on in the passenger car, and, seconds later, a group of his men dashed into the compartment.

  “Where are they?” one asked.

  “How should I know?” Kirov replied. “I was unconscious when they left.”

  One of the locals who’d taken a beating pointed forward. “They went to the front.”

  “We just came from there,” another guy said. “We never saw them.”

  Kirov stood, angry and wobbly. He steadied himself. “They’re hiding. Check everywhere. Check the roof. Check the baggage compartments. Double-check every space.”

  The men fanned out, looking nervous.

  Kirov’s partner sidled up to him. “We’ve been on this train too long as it is.”

  Kirov looked at his watch, having trouble focusing. He wasn’t sure how long it had been, but it didn’t matter. “I’m not going back without the woman.”

  “This isn’t some third world country,” his partner reminded him. “The authorities will be coming here soon.”

  Kirov considered this. It wouldn’t do to get caught out in the open with the lights on. It might require cyanide, a thought he wanted nothing to do with.

  Suddenly, the train lurched forward. The sound and vibration of the diesels straining to pull the load could be felt.

  “They’re in the engine,” Kirov said, heading forward.

  “We’ll never get to them in time,” his partner pointed out.

  “You forget: the truck is still across the road. This train isn’t going very far.”

  * * *

  In the cab of the forward diesel, Kurt was watching the door with one eye and the hijacker they’d surprised and subdued with the other. He could sense Hayley and Joe staring at the big truck in their path about five hundred feet away.

  At first, the train was only inching toward it, but it slowly began to pick up speed. The thundering roar of eight thousand horsepower in the two locomotives beginning to win the battle over inertia. When they were four hundred feet out, the truck driver began flicking his lights on and off and blowing his horn. As if everyone didn’t know he was there.

  “He’ll move,” Kurt said confidently.

  “What if he doesn’t?” Joe asked.

  “Would you stay there?”

  “But trains derail,” Hayley cried. “Two hundred and fifty-three worldwide in the last six months alone. And not all of them hit trucks!”

  Kurt looked at her sideways. “How would you even know such a thing?”

  “I keep abreast of all travel-related accidents,” she said, “to remind myself why I stay at home.”

  At three hundred feet, the train’s blazing headlights began to light up the broadside of the big truck. The driver could be seen blocking the light from his eyes.

  Kurt flipped the radio back on, switching channels until he heard someone speaking.

  “… do not allow the train to pass,” another Russian-sounding voice was saying.

  Kurt broke in as soon as the frequency cleared. “Whoever you are in the truck, I’d move if I were you.”

  Kirov’s voice came next. “Driver, if you move that truck, I will personally cut your heart out.”

  Two hundred feet from impact, with the train beginning to gain momentum, the truck driver made a decision that split the difference. He threw open the door, jumped from the rig, and ran for the hills.

  “Didn’t see that coming,” Joe muttered.

  “Oh no,” Hayley gasped.

  “You have to stop now,” Kirov threatened.

  “Don’t stop,” Kurt told the burly Australian engineer.

  “No worries,” the big man said.

  “I really don’t want to be in a train wreck,” Hayley cried.

  The engineer looked at Hayley. “Don’t worry, love,” he said. “At this speed, we’re not really a train anyway.”

  The truck was only a hundred feet ahead.

  “What are we, then?” Hayley asked.

  The engineer grinned manically and held the shuddering engine’s throttle wide open. “The world’s largest, most powerful bulldozer!”

  There was something both inspiring and borderline crazy about the engineer. Either way, he wasn’t slowing down. And Kurt was glad for that.

  “Brace yourselves!” the engineer shouted.

  The last hundred feet vanished in ten seconds. The rumbling train thundered into the broadside of the truck, shoving it forward. The diesels alone weighed six hundred thousand pounds. The sheer power they were generating, and the weight of the entire train, made quick work of the truck, lifting it and then discarding it to the right as if it were made of tin.

  The impact was incredibly loud, a thundering boom followed by the wrenching sound of shredding aluminum. The feeling was like that of a ship breaking a large wave. The train shouldered through the blow with great power. The headlights blew out, and the windshield cracked, but the safety glass stayed in place. And when the last bits of the truck were finally tossed aside and sent tumbling down the embankment, the train itself was still on the tracks.

  * * *

  Four cars back, the impact had felt like a sudden application of the brakes. Kirov and his partner had to grab the handholds to keep from being thrown to the ground. They saw the remnants of the truck thrown off to the side and felt the train continuing on, accelerating smoothly once again.

  “How are we going to get into that locomotive now?” his partner asked. “They’ll be waiting to pick us off the second we open the door. If we can even get there, that is.
There’s no door between the two engines. They’re separate units.”

  “Maybe we could go on the roof,” Kirov said.

  Even as he suggested it, Kirov considered the insanity of the attempt. He’d seen it many times in the movies, but he doubted it was really possible. To walk on a swaying train roof in a fifty-mile-per-hour slipstream was not really feasible. Crawling might work, especially if they got up there before the train picked up too much speed.

  Before he came to any conclusions, the sound of an announcement came over the public-address speakers.

  “This is Kurt Austin,” the voice said. “We’ve taken the train back from the hijackers and are resuming our regularly scheduled journey. To the passengers of the Ghan: we apologize for any inconvenience tonight’s festivities may have caused. A satellite link has been established with dispatch. They’ve been apprised of our situation and assure us that help is on the way.

  “To the hijackers who came on board during our unscheduled stop: if you want to end up surrounded by Australian SWAT teams and military units, then, please, sit back, relax, and make yourself comfortable. Otherwise… get off this train!”

  To Kirov’s surprise, a cheer went up from the passengers. It rang out through the compartment and echoed around him on all sides.

  He looked at his partner. “The tables have turned.”

  Both of them started for the door together. Ten seconds later, they were standing in the open space between the two cars, staring at the ground as it began to roll by at an ever-faster clip.

  One car behind, a man jumped and tumbled across the gravel. It looked to Kirov like an agonizing landing. Two more followed, doing little better with their dismounts.

  “We have to jump,” Kirov’s partner said.

  Kirov didn’t want to jump, but the alternative was worse. Capture followed by embarrassment, suicide, or imprisonment as a spy and a terrorist. He looked ahead for an open spot. “You first!”

  Without delay, Kirov’s partner launched himself. He seemed to land and tumble more than slide.

  The train’s horn howled through the night, and Kirov knew time was running out. Any faster and he’d be facing certain death. He took a deep breath and stepped into the breach.

  For a long second, he flew, waving his arms for balance. Then he landed sideways and tried to tuck and roll. His face slammed into the gravel. His neck and shoulders were wrenched in the process. He flipped several times, covered at least fifty feet, and ended up facedown in an unconscious heap the second time in less than an hour.

  * * *

  In the forward engine, Kurt, Joe, and the engineer were celebrating as the Ghan continued to pick up speed and leave the original hijackers behind. Hayley was in a seat, shaking and looking like she might be sick.

  “Are you going to be okay?” Kurt asked, moving a wastepaper basket into range just in case she wasn’t.

  “I think so,” she said. “At least that’s over.”

  “Good,” he replied. “Because as soon as we make the next stop, we’re hopping on a helicopter and flying the rest of the way.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes bulging out. “Helicopter accident rates are five times higher than that of passenger trains…”

  The words trailed off. It was too much, too fast. She turned toward the bucket and promptly threw up.

  TWENTY-ONE

  NUMA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

  Dirk Pitt stepped from the elevator and onto the tenth floor as soon as the doors opened. Unlike the other floors of the NUMA building, the tenth had no receptionist to check people in or workers busy with different tasks. In fact, the only real noise in the open space came from the hum of exhaust fans and the climate-control unit that kept the computer servers and other processers cooled to the correct temperature.

  Walking at a brisk pace, Dirk passed through the symmetrical stacks of computing power. Somewhere in the center, he found the goal of his search: a man with a long ponytail, wearing blue jeans and a corduroy shirt.

  The lanky figure stood in the middle of three rectangular glass screens that were the size and shape of full-length mirrors. In fact, the arrangement was somewhat like that of a department store fitting room, which allows the customer to view his or her potential clothing purchase from all angles.

  In this case, the angled glass screens did not reflect much, except perhaps the obsessive nature of their designer and chief user: one Hiram Yaeger.

  Yaeger was a certified genius. He’d been designing and building computers since he was twelve years old. At NUMA, he’d been given almost unlimited resources to build his own systems, collect his own data, and apply it how he saw fit. The tenth floor of the NUMA building had long been given over to Yaeger’s machines. In recent years, he’d expanded, taking over portions of the eleventh, much to the chagrin of the meteorology group, who were moved to the basement.

  In a constant search for the most efficient human/machine interface, Yaeger had redesigned his system countless times over the years. He used multiple keyboards, voice activation, even virtual reality and talking holograms. This setup was his latest.

  Oddly enough, even as the systems continued to evolve, Yaeger remained the same, as if he were the only constant in an ever-changing equation.

  As Pitt approached, Yaeger’s eyes darted around the glass screens upon which data was flashing here and there. He gestured and touched and moved things from one screen to another. A strange headset covered one ear and placed an additional tiny screen a finger’s length in front of his right eye, which seemed to flicker. Even from ten feet away, Pitt could see information flashing up on it.

  “One day, I’m going to come in here and find you hardwired to the system,” Pitt said.

  In his zeal, Yaeger hadn’t sensed Pitt coming. He turned abruptly, startled by Pitt’s voice. “You might have knocked.”

  “All this technology, and you don’t have a doorbell?” Pitt said. “Or one of those things in the mall that ping when someone enters the store. Maybe I should get you a dog.”

  Yaeger’s face scrunched up at that thought. “I already have a dog. I leave him at home because he pees on things and chews up the wires.”

  “Sensible choice.”

  “What brings you down here?” Yaeger asked.

  Pitt placed a thick manila packet down on the table. “From the Aussies. Their file and technical data. I figured you and the computers could analyze it.”

  “They sent it on paper?”

  “Some people still use the mail, Hiram.”

  “Might as well write with a quill pen,” Yaeger grunted.

  Pitt climbed up onto the platform. “So what is all this?”

  “New interface.”

  “What’s that thing over your eye?” Pitt asked. “You look like a cross between Colonel Klink from Hogan’s Heroes and one of the Borg from Star Trek.”

  “Unfortunately, I feel more like Sergeant Shultz,” Yaeger said. “Because I know nothing at this point.”

  “That doesn’t sound right.”

  “The NSA doesn’t want to share,” Yaeger explained. “Despite their promises. I’ve got nothing from them.”

  “Didn’t they send a batch of data over this morning?”

  “It’s all seismic data,” Yaeger said, “which we do need, I admit. But you asked me to look into this Dynamic Theory of Gravity that Tesla supposedly came up with. I’ve requested a boatload of documents on that end and received nothing. They’re stonewalling me.”

  Pitt figured they would have to do something about that.

  “Let me show you something,” Yaeger said, waving Dirk to the platform area between the three screens.

  Pitt stepped forward. “I feel like you’re going to measure me for a suit.”

  “The system could do that if you wanted it to,” Yaeger insisted. “But it’s a waste of processing power.”

  “Depends on how the suit fits,” Pitt replied.

  Hiram ignored him and pointed to the left-hand screen
, where the photo of a one-story brick building appeared. It had ten evenly spaced windows, five on each side of a central door. It looked like a schoolhouse.

  A half-finished structure stood behind the building. It was made of latticework, somewhat like the Eiffel Tower but with little of the French construction’s graceful lines. In fact, it looked very utilitarian. At the top of the tower was a dome. Altogether, the setup resembled a giant metal mushroom.

  “Wardenclyffe,” Yaeger said. “Tesla’s million-dollar folly, they called it. Construction began in 1901. Tesla insisted it was the first of many to be placed around the world. Towers that would allow instant transmission of data and, more important perhaps, the wireless diffusion of electrical energy.”

  “Amazing,” Pitt said.

  “It really is,” Yaeger said. “Tesla worked on this tower in conjunction with his Dynamic Theory of Gravity. He exhausted himself on it, financially, physically, and mentally. He just about broke himself trying to see it through. In 1905, he ran out of money. The building remained in his possession for years but was eventually foreclosed upon. Finally, in 1917, a demolitions crew blew up the rusting tower. In many ways, it was the biggest setback of Tesla’s life. And yet, we have this letter.”

  As Yaeger spoke, the photocopy of a handwritten letter flashed up on the central screen. It was signed by Tesla and addressed to a man named Watterson. It was dated March 1905.

  “Who’s Watterson?” Pitt asked.

  “Daniel Watterson,” Yaeger replied, “Tesla’s prodigy at the time. Computer, please read the letter.”

  The computer began speaking aloud, using a convincing foreign accent. “Is that Tesla’s voice?”

  “No,” Yaeger said. “But it’s an authentic re-creation of Tesla’s English. The way he probably sounded.”

  “You taught it to do that?”

  “No, it made the choice itself based on a thousand different dialects.”

  Pitt shook his head, feeling a sense of disbelief and wonder as he listened to the voice over the speakers.

  “Young Daniel, we have both been afraid this day would come. Ever since the patents on my motors of alternating current expired, the incoming funds have been drastically reduced. Neither Mr. Astor nor Mr. Morgan seem willing to put up more funding…”