Zero Hour nf-11 Page 2

  All that time Panos lived like a sailor press-ganged onto a ship. He had no choice but to do the master’s bidding or forfeit his life, though he felt certain that his end would come that way eventually. The project was so secret and dark that his logical mind told him there would be no witnesses left when it was done.

  No one gets out alive, a fellow worker had joked. One day later, the man disappeared, so perhaps it was true.

  Panos remembered an offer to bring his family along. He wasn’t a religious man, but he thanked whatever god or fate or random instinct had caused him to decline. Others had brought their families in. He’d seen them on the island, wretched and miserable, prisoners to an even greater degree than he. He knew not to trust them. They were the easiest to control, they had more to lose than their own lives. Some had even borne children in the depths of that putrid, sulfur-tinged world. They lived like indentured servants, like slaves building a modern-day pyramid.

  Panos was at least free to think about escape, though he’d never had any real expectation of pulling it off. At least, not until the note appeared in his locker.

  It was the first in a set of mysterious contacts from an unseen angel of mercy.

  Initially, he assumed it was a trap, a little test to see if he would lunge at the bait. But he’d reached a point where it no longer mattered. Freedom beckoned. Whether it came through escape or the cold sting of death, he welcomed it either way.

  He tested the offer and received more notes. They arrived at odd times. Help to escape would be made available, the notes promised, but it would come with strings attached. He was to bring the plans of this terrible weapon to those who might stop the madman constructing it. A drop had been arranged. All Panos had to do was make it to the location alive.

  With that goal in mind, he continued down the wet gangway and into the dive room. It was late, well past the hour for anyone to be there. Using a key left in his locker by his unknown contact, Panos opened the door and slipped inside. He shut the door and switched on a desk lamp.

  The dive room was a twenty-by-forty rectangle with a sealed airlock protruding at its center. Visible through the airlock’s thick observation glass was a circular pool of dark water.

  Panos switched on the pool lights. The water lit up perfectly clear, for the poisons filling it made it absolutely sterile. But instead of blue or turquoise or green, the water shimmered in a reddish tint, a color like translucent blood.

  He took a deep breath. He would be all right. The dry suit would keep the toxins out. At least he hoped it would.

  He glanced over at a whiteboard. Three numbers had been scrawled on it: 3, 10, and 075. His unseen helper had been there before him, just as he’d promised.

  Panos memorized the figures and then quickly erased them. He went to the third locker and opened it. A dry suit and an oxygen tank had been prepared for him. A dive watch, hanging with the suit, had its bezel twisted to the ten-minute mark. This was the time it would take him to ascend, moving at thirty feet per minute, a pace calculated to help him avoid the bends. A handheld compass had also been left for him. When he surfaced, he would look to a heading: 075 degrees. In that direction, he would find help.

  A dive knife would be his only weapon, if he needed it.

  He strapped the watch around his wrist and carried the tanks to the airlock. He slipped the compass into his pocket and then double-checked that the cargo he’d promised to carry — the schematics of the station and a portable hard drive filled with data — were secured in a watertight container.

  He shoved them back inside his shirt and grabbed the bulky suit, sitting down to pull it on. Before he could get a leg in, a clicking noise sounded from across the room.

  A key in the lock.

  The handle turned and the door swung open. Two figures stepped in, chatting between themselves.

  For a second, they didn’t notice Panos. When they did, they looked more confused and surprised than angry. But Panos knew the suit and tanks would give him away.

  He charged the men before they could react, swinging the knife downward at the closest figure, stabbing the man in the shoulder. The man fell back, grabbing at Panos and dragging him to the desk. The second man jumped on him, putting an arm around his neck.

  Panos reared up and forced himself backward until the two of them collided with the desk, fell to the ground, and separated.

  Spurred on by adrenaline, Panos was up first. He kneed the man in the face, then grabbed the desk lamp and slammed it into the man’s forehead. The man hit the ground and didn’t move again, but the one who’d been stabbed was running out the door.

  “No!” Panos exclaimed.

  With no way to barricade the door and precious little time before an alarm sounded, he made a fateful decision. He left the dry suit on the floor and stepped into the airlock. Pressing a switch, he closed the inner door and began to pull on the harness and an oxygen tank.

  Panos felt his ears popping as a hissing noise told him the airlock was sealed and being pressurized. Even though the station’s pressure was twice the normal atmosphere, it wasn’t enough to keep the water from flooding in through the open pool. Thus, the airlock was needed.

  He pulled on the dive helmet. The seal wasn’t too bad. He made sure the air was flowing, pulled his fins on, and dropped into the glowing red water.

  Stillness surrounded him. He swam downward, away from the light, and out into the dark. When he’d passed the edge of the submerged structure, he began to kick his way upward. Or what he thought was up.

  Three hundred feet down, there was no light. He quickly became disoriented. Vertigo set in, and it seemed like his body was doing summersaults even though he was completely still.

  Flicking on a light did little good. The red water gave nothing away. He began to panic, knowing men from the station would be following him soon.

  What had he done?

  He exhaled a cloud of bubbles. Quite by accident, he noticed the direction they raced off in. It seemed to Panos that the bubbles were traveling sideways, but his rational mind knew this was not the case. The bubbles could only be moving upward. The laws of nature could not be altered or tricked like his sense of balance.

  Forcing his mind to override what his inner ear was telling him, he began to follow the bubbles. It felt like he was swimming into the pit, to the bottom of this great red pool of death, instead of upward.

  He kept going until his mind began to accept it. His equilibrium began returning to normal. He exhaled more bubbles and kicked harder, swimming for the surface as fast as he could.

  In his haste, Panos forgot about the ten-minute warning. By the time he neared the surface, he was in the grips of pain. His knees, elbows, and back all felt as if they were cramping up.

  Despite the pain, Panos broke the surface and stared at the evening sky for the first time in months. It was periwinkle blue. He guessed it was almost dusk.

  He looked around. High sandy walls rose up on every side. He’d never seen them before. He didn’t even know where he was. Arrivals and departures always took place under sedation. They would fall asleep here and wake up on the island, or vice versa.

  Despite the pain in his joints, Panos managed to pull the compass from his pocket. He began to swim, heading 075 degrees. The wretched throbbing in his joints got worse and was soon accompanied by blinding flashes of light that seemed to shoot through his brain.

  Still, he fought on, eventually crawling out of the water and onto the sandy beach. He made it several yards before coming to a terraced wall of rock. It rose no more than ten feet, but it might as well have been a mountain.

  How could he scale it? He couldn’t. Not in this condition. He tried to stand and then collapsed in agony.

  The sound of feet rushing toward him signaled his end. But when a pair of hands lifted him up, they did so caringly.

  He saw a face hidden by a bandanna.

  “You surfaced too quickly,” the man behind the bandanna said.

 
“I… had to…” Panos managed. “They… found me.”

  “Found you?!”

  “In the airlock…” Panos said.

  “That means they’ll be coming.”

  The unknown helper grabbed Panos and dragged him over the ridge with no concessions to the pain. He carried him to a waiting SUV, tossed him in the back and slammed the tailgate down.

  Panos curled up in the fetal position as his savior climbed into the front and turned the key.

  The engine roared, and they were soon bouncing over the rough terrain, each jolt spurring new waves of pain. To Panos, it felt as if his body were being crushed and exploding from within all at the same time.

  “I’m dying,” he cried out.

  “No,” the driver insisted. “But it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Use your regulator. It will help.”

  Panos managed to get the regulator back in his mouth. He bit down on it and breathed as deeply as he could. Even with that, a new series of spasms gripped him as the SUV careened across uneven ground.

  Panos bent his head closer to his chest. It seemed to ease the agony a bit. He noticed his fingers and arms curling inward.

  “Do you have the papers?” the driver asked. “And the computer?”

  Panos nodded. “Yes… Can you tell me where we’re going?”

  The driver hesitated, perhaps afraid to say too much in case they were captured. Finally, he spoke. “To someone who can help,” he said. “To someone who can put a stop to this madness once and for all.”

  THREE

  Sydney, Australia, 1900 hours

  Kurt Austin sat in a comfortable seat eight rows from the main stage in the Opera Theatre, the smaller of the two sail-and-seashell-inspired buildings of the famous Sydney Opera House. The larger Concert Hall lay next door, vacant at the moment.

  For years, Kurt had planned to visit Sydney and attend a performance there. Beethoven or Wagner would have been nice, and he’d almost made the trip when U2 played the venue, but the timing hadn’t worked out. Unfortunately, now that he’d finally made it, the only sound coming from the stage was a dry, academic speech that was quickly putting him to sleep.

  He was there for the Muldoon Conference on Underwater Mining, put on by Archibald and Liselette Muldoon, a wealthy Australian couple who’d made their fortune together through four decades of risky mining ventures.

  Kurt had been officially invited because of his expertise in underwater salvage and his position as Director of Special Projects for the National Underwater and Marine Agency. But it seemed the Muldoons also wanted him there because of the modicum of fame he’d earned within the salvage industry — if there even was such a thing.

  Over the past decade, he’d been involved in a series of high-profile events. Some of those exploits were classified, with nothing more than rumors to suggest anything had ever occurred. Other events were public and well known, including a recent battle to clear a swarm of self-replicating micromachines from the Indian Ocean before they changed the weather patterns over India and Asia, potentially starving billions.

  In addition to whatever notoriety he’d earned, Kurt was easily recognizable. He had a rugged look about him, tan-faced, with prematurely silver-gray hair and sharp eyes that were an intense shade of blue. All of which meant his absence from any particular event was easily noticed, something the constant attention of one or both Muldoons had so far prevented.

  They’d certainly been gracious, but after three days of seminars and presentations, Kurt was plotting his escape.

  As the lights dimmed and the speaker began a photo presentation, Kurt sensed the chance he’d been waiting for. He pulled out his phone and thumbed the switch that made it buzz audibly as if it were ringing.

  A few glances came his way.

  He shrugged a sheepish apology and put the phone to his ear.

  “This is Austin,” he whispered to no one. “Right,” he added in his most serious tone. “Right. Okay. That does sound bad. Of course. I’ll look into it right away.”

  He pretended to hang up and slipped the phone back into his pocket.

  “Is something wrong?” Mrs. Muldoon asked from one seat over.

  “Call from the head office,” he said. “Have to check something out.”

  “You have to go now?”

  Kurt nodded. “A situation that’s been building for several days has reached the breaking point. If I don’t go now, it could be disastrous.”

  She reached out and grabbed his hand. She looked crestfallen. “But you’re missing the best part of the presentation.”

  Kurt made a grim face. “It’s the price I have to pay.”

  Bidding the Muldoons good-bye, Kurt stood and strolled down the aisle to the waiting doors. He pushed through them and jogged up the steps into the foyer. Fearing he might get trapped in a conversation if he ran into other attendees, he took a left, sneaking down a curving hallway toward an unmarked side door.

  He pushed it open and stepped out into the humid air of the Australian evening. To his surprise, he wasn’t alone.

  A young woman sat on the step in front of him, fiddling with the heel of a strappy shoe. She wore a white cocktail dress with a matching white flower in her strawberry blond hair. Kurt thought it might be an orchid.

  She looked up, startled by his sudden appearance.

  “Didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.

  For a second, she looked apoplectic, like he’d caught her stealing the Crown Jewels or something. Then she glanced around and went back to work on her shoe, wiggling the offending heel back and forth until the delicate little spike snapped off in her hand.

  “That’s probably not going to help,” Kurt guessed.

  “My favorite shoes,” she said in a melodic Australian accent. “Always seem to be the ones you break.”

  Dejected but exhibiting admirable common sense, she slipped off the other shoe and broke off its heel, then compared the two.

  “At least they match,” he said, offering a hand. “Kurt Austin.”

  “Hayley Anderson,” she replied. “Proud owner of the most expensive flats in all of Oz.”

  Kurt had to laugh.

  “I suppose you’re escaping the keynote,” she said.

  “Guilty as charged,” he admitted. “Can you really blame me?”

  “Not in the least,” she replied. “If I didn’t need to be here, I’d be off to the beach myself.”

  She stood up and stepped toward the door from which Kurt had emerged. It seemed a shame to have the encounter end so soon.

  “Flat shoes work well on the sand,” Kurt offered. “Almost as well as bare feet.”

  “Sorry,” she said, “can’t miss this or someone will have my guts for garters. You could come back in with me, I promise to keep you entertained.”

  “Tempting,” Kurt said. “But my hard-won freedom is worth too much at this point. If you get bored in there, you’ll find me on Bondi Beach. I’ll be the one who’s slightly overdressed.”

  She laughed lightly and grabbed quickly for the door. She seemed to be rushing. She pulled the door open and then stopped. Her gaze drifted past Kurt. She was looking across Sydney Harbour.

  Kurt turned. In the fading light, he spotted the curving wake of a powerboat. It cut across the harbor, coming dangerously close to the front of a ferry. A scolding blast from the ship’s horn followed, but the boat never slowed.

  An instant later, Kurt saw why. A dark-colored helicopter raced over the top of the ferry, flashing across the crowded vessel in the blink of an eye and dropping back toward the water in hot pursuit.

  The speeding boat turned left and then right, carving an S in the water and intentionally skirting the edges of a slow-moving sailboat. It was a madman’s path across the harbor.

  “He must be insane,” Hayley said, gawking at the boat.

  Kurt took a good look at the helicopter, a dark blue Eurocopter EC145. A stubby, bulbous cabin that jutted forward gave its nose an odd compact look, somet
hing like the snout of a great white shark. A four-bladed rotor whirled overhead, leaving a white blur, while its short, boomlike tail ended in three small vertical stabilizers something like a trident.

  Kurt saw no markings or navigation lights, but he noticed flashes coming from the open cargo door: muzzle flashes.

  He grabbed his phone and dialed 911. Nothing happened.

  Hayley took a step forward. “They’re shooting. They’re trying to kill those people.”

  “What’s the emergency number here?”

  “Zero zero zero,” she said.

  Kurt typed it in and hit CALL. By the time he was connected, the speedboat had turned head-on toward the Opera House. It raced at them at full throttle, aiming for the rounded promenade that stuck out into Sydney Harbour like a great pier.

  Most of the promenade was a wall of solid concrete, but a single flight of stairs on the left-hand side led down to the water. The speeding boat was drawing a line right to them. The helicopter was following, trying to set up a kill shot for the sniper.

  More flashes lit out from the door.

  The boat jerked to the left as the popping sound of gunfire reached the shore. It swerved a bit, then came back on course and hit the stairwell at high speed. It flew up into the air at an angle like a stunt car launching off a jump ramp in catty-corner fashion. It traveled fifty feet and rolled halfway over before it slammed down on its side.

  From there, the boat skidded across the concrete deck, hit a lightpost, and came apart. Shattered fiberglass fluttered in all directions as the post bent over and its bulbs exploded with a flash.

  “Emergency Service,” a voice said over the phone.

  Kurt was too mesmerized by the accident to respond.

  “Hello? This is Emergency Service.”

  As the shattered boat settled, the Eurocopter thundered overhead, barely missing the pointed top of the Opera House.

  Kurt handed the phone to Hayley. “Get help,” he shouted, taking off down the stairs. “Police, ambulance, national guard. Anything they’ve got.”