Zero Hour Read online

  Hayley felt an all-encompassing sadness at this realization, but some part of her mind realized she needed to act. If she could use this break from reality to save her country, she must try, however distasteful it might be.

  She reached out a hand and touched Thero’s scarred face, looking into his eyes as if she were gazing at her old friend.

  “It’s good to see you, George,” she said. “It’s so good to see you again.”

  The tears in her eyes were genuine. They seemed to touch this aspect of Thero’s personality. “It’s good to see you too,” he replied softly. “Father and I have missed you for so long.”

  Hours of hiking through the blizzard and the frigid darkness brought Kurt to what geologists call a lateral moraine, a ridge of material deposited along the side of a glacier. Just beyond it, he could see the imposing wall of ice that made up the Winston Glacier.

  Having made his first landmark, he turned south and began hiking down the slope toward the lagoon and the series of hot spots photographed by the Russian drones.

  As he traveled, he received a low-battery warning on the night vision goggles.

  He’d known the cold would drain the batteries and had been using them sparingly, turning them on, studying the terrain, and then switching them off as he hiked. Now as he forced his way down the rugged slope, he needed them almost constantly. When they finally shut down, Kurt was left in utter darkness.

  Removing the goggles, Kurt trudged onward, holding the hood of his parka across everything but his eyes. He stumbled on a pile of unseen rocks, cursing under his breath as he smashed his shin. He fought his way over uneven terrain, and then he took a bad step in the dark.

  He dropped and slid down a steep incline, causing a minor avalanche that took him for a ride and spat him out on flattish ground moments later.

  Kurt allowed himself to rest for just a moment, but he knew better than to linger. The cold and fatigue would try to drag him into a sleep from which he would never awake. He found a spot to push off and forced himself to stand.

  Breathing deeply, he noticed something. Not a sight or sound, but an odd scent. He couldn’t quite place it, but it smelled like food cooking. Bad, greasy food, mixed with smoke. He couldn’t exactly call it a pleasant smell, but it wasn’t his imagination.

  His fatigue was instantly forgotten as he thought about the reconnaissance photos and the hot spots near the front edge of the glacier.

  “Even people who live underground need to eat,” he whispered.

  Kurt sniffed the air in an attempt to locate the source of the smell, but he was no bloodhound. The best he could do was get a general sense that it was traveling upslope toward him. He eased forward until he found a treelike column of snow and ice.

  He pulled the flashlight from a pocket, covered it, and then switched it on, allowing a tiny portion of light to escape from beneath his glove.

  The column rose about ten feet. A few yards away, a second column stood only four feet high. And thirty or forty feet from that, he saw a third and a fourth and a fifth.

  Kurt shut off the light and made his way to the shorter column. He found it was open at the top and roughly circular. As the wind gusted, it made a hollow sound, like someone blowing across the top of an open wine bottle.

  He leaned over and peered down into the mouth of the icy tube. It was about the size of a manhole on a city street. Looking down into it, he saw nothing but darkness, nor did he detect a strong scent of food or grease. Still, he could feel warmth rising up and bathing his face. It felt almost surreal after so many hours in the cold. It also felt humid.

  Kurt put a hand on the edge of the column and broke a piece off. It was just ice, and not very thick at that. It was also blackened with soot. He began to understand what he was looking at.

  He’d been in Iceland a few years before and found similar structures near the geothermal vents up on the slopes of the active volcanic mountains. As the heated air from inside made its way to the surface, it brought humidity with it, some of which cooled and froze almost instantly as it mixed with the frigid outside air. Slowly, like coral building up a reef or the black smokers in the depths of the ocean, the freezing water vapor created chimneylike tubes. Since they were merely thin sheets of ice, they tended to topple in high winds. But as long as the vent was active, they would regrow.

  Kurt risked another quick flash from his flashlight, aiming it down into the opening.

  He could see nothing. He felt heat but didn’t smell sulfur, like he’d have expected if they were volcanic.

  He pulled out his Zippo lighter and one of the oily rags. He held the lighter against it and lit it, sheltering the rag from the wind until a third of it was burning. Next, he dropped it into the tube.

  It fell through the darkness like a small meteorite, illuminating the smooth sides of the tunnel as it went, until suddenly it hit something and stopped.

  As the rag burned, Kurt saw the outline of a grate. The chimney was not volcanic, it was man-made, designed to evacuate heat or smoke or something else undesirable from down below. It had to lead to Thero’s lair. It had to.

  Quickly, Kurt set up his rope. He found a section of the ice and rubble in the lateral moraine and hammered in three anchors to secure the rope. He didn’t have a harness, or time to improvise one, but it didn’t matter, he would rappel down, using his hands to control the descent.

  He dropped the rope in and eased over the edge. The fit was tight. He could barely see past his boots. Twenty feet down, the tunnel was free of ice and consequently slightly wider. Kurt continued to descend. By the time his feet hit the grate, he figured he’d dropped about a hundred feet.

  Pressing himself against one edge of the chimney, he studied the metal grate. He could see a dusty floor ten feet below it. He heard no sound of movement.

  Bouncing up and down a bit, he tested the strength of the grate. On his third little hop, he felt it give.

  “Time to drop in,” he muttered to himself.

  He looped the rope through one of the bars and tied it. Then he jumped hard, and the grate broke free.

  The sound of rock splinters hitting the floor was no louder than a whisper, and both Kurt and the heavy grate remained suspended by the rope.

  Kurt lowered them both down gently and touched down without a sound.

  He was in.

  Exactly what he’d made his way into was another question entirely.

  Paul Trout stood on the bridge of the Gemini as the ship surged through the waves toward the MV Rama. The merchant vessel had been traveling northeast since finishing its Orion-like pattern, and the Gemini had been racing to intercept it for the last eight hours. They were finally closing to within shouting distance.

  “Think we’re going to be able to do this alone?” Gamay asked from a spot beside him.

  “We’ve got a fighting chance,” Paul said. He would have preferred some backup, but they were so far off the beaten track, there wasn’t a military or coast guard vessel for a thousand miles.

  “If it wasn’t for the weather, we could at least get some air support,” she said. “A few threatening passes by a formation of military jets or an Australian antisubmarine aircraft circling the ship relentlessly might have helped.”

  Paul agreed completely, but the leading edge of a gale had reached the area. It was whipping up the seas and slinging freezing rain across the Gemini’s deck. Not the kind of conditions aircraft made low, showy passes in. Especially fifteen hundred miles from the nearest land.

  All of which meant the unarmed Gemini was the only hope of stopping the MV Rama and finding out if any of the Orion’s crew were aboard.

  “What’s the range?” Paul asked.

  They had the Rama painted on the radarscope, but with visibility at a quarter mile, they hadn’t seen her in the dark yet.

  “A thousand yards,” the radar officer
said.

  “That’s it?” Paul replied. “She must be running without lights.”

  “In this soup, we might collide with her before we spot her,” the captain added.

  “No, we won’t,” Gamay said, looking through a pair of binoculars. “I’ve got her. Just off the port bow.”

  Paul followed her directions, spotting the shadow of a vessel plowing through the dark.

  “Light her up,” the captain ordered.

  The executive officer flicked a series of switches, and a trio of powerful spotlights came on, piercing the dark and the rain and converging on the lumbering vessel. At three times the Gemini’s size, the Rama pitched and rolled less noticeably in the swells, but there was a wallowing quality to her progress.

  “Time to put on the show,” Paul said, handing his binoculars to the captain.

  “I’ll bring us up alongside of her,” the captain said. “You get ready to play commando.”

  “I don’t have to tell you to be careful,” Gamay said.

  “No,” Paul replied grinning. “No, you don’t.”

  With that, Paul left the bridge and raced down the stairwell. Minutes later, he was standing just inside the forward hatch with a dozen other volunteers. They all wore black, with hastily made arm patches that displayed an approximation of the Australian flag’s blue field, with its stars of the Southern Cross and the Union Jack in the corner.

  “Weapons, everyone,” Paul said. The Gemini’s weapons locker held six rifles and two pistols. The rest received wooden approximations of the M16 rifle that had been painted black. The volunteers from the crew laughed and pointed the guns at one another.

  “What do we do if they don’t surrender?” one man asked.

  “Either dive overboard or swing these things like Reggie Jackson,” another one replied.

  Paul hoped neither act would be necessary.

  He cracked the hatch a few inches and peered through the rain and fog. The MV Rama was just across from them, bathed in the spotlights, as the whoop-whoop of Gemini’s alarm blared like a coast guard siren.

  They chased and harried the Rama like this for several minutes to no effect. Finally, the intercom buzzed.

  “They’re not responding to our radio calls,” Gamay’s voice announced.

  “Understood,” Paul said. “I’ll man the rocket launchers. Tell the captain to get us in close. Real close. And be ready to give them your spiel over the loudspeaker.”

  “Will do,” Gamay said. “Good luck.”

  Paul looked at the chief. “I’m heading forward. Get ready to take your positions on the deck.”

  “We’ll be ready,” the chief said.

  Paul made his way to another door and pushed out through the hatch and onto the pitching deck. He crossed the foredeck to a squared-off structure that looked convincingly like a warship’s turret, with multiple rocket-launching tubes on either side.

  A hydraulic crane used to lift ROVs in and out of the water had occupied the spot hours before. The boom had been dismantled and the sheet metal façade of a turret welded onto the crane’s turntable-like base. Metal air-duct tubing had been removed from parts of the ship, cut to the right length, and affixed to the sides. Painted battleship gray, with a fake antenna dish mounted on the top, the “turret” gave off a reasonable impression of a lethal-weapons system.

  Paul slipped inside, ducking through a gap in the metal. He found the Gemini’s crane operator at the controls.

  Paul spoke into his radio. “Light up the foredeck,” he said. “Let them see what they’re up against.”

  Seconds later, additional lighting shone down on the turret as Gamay’s voice sounded over the loudspeaker, roaring at the highest volume.

  “This is Commander Matilda Wallaby of the Royal Australian Navy,” she called out. She was using a fake accent that was pretty close to the real thing. “Your vessel has been spotted poaching fish in Australian territorial waters. You will reduce speed and prepare to be boarded or we will disable your ship.”

  Paul stared through an aiming slit in the sheet metal. He detected no response from the Rama, but he saw lighting changes in the bridge area.

  “Hopefully, they’re looking this way,” he said.

  By now, the Gemini had pulled directly alongside the blocky superstructure near the aft end of the containership. The captain had eased the ship in closer. No more than fifty feet separated the sides of the two ships. As one swell rolled through, the Gemini rode up and almost sideswiped the larger vessel.

  “Anything?” Paul asked into the radio.

  “Not yet,” Gamay replied.

  “Give them another warning, and have the chief fire off a clip of tracer shells.”

  Gamay’s voice echoed over the loudspeaker again. “Merchant vessel Rama, this is your last warning. Reduce speed and prepare to be boarded or we will open fire.”

  “Let’s show them what we’ve got,” Paul said.

  The crane operator powered up the base unit and pressed a small joystick to the side. The turret and its attached missile tubes began to pivot on the crane’s turntable. It turned counterclockwise until the missile tubes were pointed at the Rama’s bridge.

  Using a secondary actuator, Paul pitched the missile tubes up and down in an exaggerated motion designed to be obvious to the Rama’s crew. When he’d done as much as he thought he could get away with, he locked them in place again, pointed roughly at the Rama’s bridge.

  “They have to see us,” he said.

  The crane operator just shrugged.

  Meanwhile, the chief and his commandos were deploying onto the deck with their rifles raised.

  “What do you think, Paul?” the radio squawked.

  “Go ahead and shoot, chief.”

  The racket of gunfire rang out, sounding like a series of sharp pops over the wind. Paul watched as a series of glowing tracer shells raced past the bridge of the Rama and out into the night. Through his binoculars, Paul could see figures on the Rama’s bridge, staring out the windows. He hoped they were getting nervous.

  “Our turn,” Paul said, lowering the binoculars.

  Two makeshift rockets had been prepared using gunpowder, propellant from a box of flares, and the artistic skills of the men in the machine shop. They wouldn’t cause any damage, but they might make an impression.

  Paul loaded one of the rockets into the launch tube and shut the breach.

  “Turn us five degrees to the right,” he said. It would do no good to have the rocket hit and prove itself to be a dud. The missile had to cross in front of the Rama, close enough to scare the crew, far enough away to be convincing.

  The turret turned and stopped.

  “Wait,” Paul said as the Gemini rode down a swell and began to come back up. “Wait . . .” He was gazing through the aiming slit like a World War One gunnery officer, guessing at the rate each ship would rise and fall on the waves.

  “Wait . . .” he said again.

  The Gemini reached the top of the swell and paused. “Now!”

  The crane operator pressed a switch, and the makeshift rocket ignited. It burst from the tube, showering the interior of the turret with sparks and smoke. It crossed the gap, spewing a tail of fire, and passing no more than twenty feet in front of the Rama’s bridge.

  “Great shot!” Paul shouted, coughing because of the smoke. “That was perfect.”

  Seconds later, Gamay’s voice sounded over the loudspeaker once again. “The next missile will hit your bridge,” she insisted. “Reduce your speed or we will stop you by force.”

  • • •

  ABOARD THE MV RAMA, the ranking Russian commando had been arguing with the Vietnamese captain since the appearance of the Gemini. He’d ordered them to leave station off Heard Island to avoid any trouble or repercussions should Gregorovich succeed in detonating his bomb. Running i
nto an Australian frigate was not the outcome he’d hoped for.

  “I will not surrender!” he said.

  “You can’t fight them,” the captain said.

  The tracer rounds flashed by in the dark. That concerned him but did not change his mind. Then the “missile” was launched.

  “Incoming!”

  The commandos and the bridge crew hit the deck just as the missle lit up the world in front of them, rocketing past the main windows.

  “That was too close,” the captain said.

  “They wouldn’t fire a missile at poachers,” another commando insisted. “They must know we’re here and what we’ve done. If we don’t stop, we’ll all be killed.”

  “We cannot fight them,” the Vietnamese captain repeated. “But you can negotiate once they’re aboard. Diplomatic immunity. That’s what you’ll claim. But only if you’re alive.”

  The commando doubted the captain’s take on International Maritime Law, but he believed he would be better served, and more likely to live, if he surrendered rather than fighting.

  “Do as they say,” he agreed reluctantly.

  • • •

  ON THE GEMINI’S BRIDGE, Gamay waited tensely. If their bluff didn’t work, they would have to try to risk a dangerous boarding maneuver in the storm.

  She was about to make one more threat over the loudspeaker when the marine radio squawked.

  “This is the MV Rama,” a voice said in accented English. “We will reduce speed to seven knots and allow your men to come aboard.”

  A cheer went up on the bridge, and Gamay relayed the message to the others.

  “Great work Commander Wallaby,” the captain said.

  She smiled. Now the boarding would only be risky, not foolhardy beyond belief.

  “This is a mine,” Kurt whispered to himself.

  He’d found quarried-out sections, discovered a conveyor belt loaded with gravel and a series of pipes along the wall that probably ran electrical wire. He’d found picks and a jackhammer and wheelbarrows.