34
AS THE BARRACUDA raced for the surface, Kurt could hardly contain the anger he felt at being so foolish. He’d jumped to conclusions early on, assuming he and the Argo were the targets of these madmen even though in hindsight it was obvious that they held little real value.
He and Joe had to get a call off. They had to reach the surface so the shortwave radio could be used to contact the Argo thirty miles away in the harbor at Santa Maria.
He thought of the dead French scientists, wondered why they hadn’t been taken, and then remembered that it seemed as if they’d put up a hell of a struggle. He guessed all of the scientists would face the same choice, fight or surrender. Most would give in; some would die.
He wondered what would happen to Katarina. He hoped she and her “chaperone” from the State were already at the airport and boarding a plane.
“Forty feet,” Joe called out.
Kurt eased back on the throttle just a tad. Crashing the surface at full speed was a good way to catch air, and possibly even flip the sub.
He leveled out and they broke the surface.
“Make the call,” he said.
He didn’t have to give the order. He could hear Joe flipping the switches and the sound of the surface antenna extending.
“Argo, this is Barracuda,” Joe said. “Please come in. We have an urgent transmission to complete.”
While both of them waited, Kurt held the Barracuda steady. She was designed to fly underwater, but she rode less well on the surface.
“Argo, this is Barracuda.”
The next voice they heard was Captain Haynes’s, which was a surprise in and of itself, although Kurt could understand him waiting up all night worrying about the dangerous operation Kurt and Joe believed they were attempting.
“Joe, this is the captain,” Haynes said. “Listen, there’s a problem here. We’ve tried to—”
A sharp crack rang out, and the cockpit canopy was suddenly covered with dimples and pits. A shadow crossed toward them from the left. Another crack sounded, and Kurt realized it was a shotgun blast. This time, he saw a gaping hole appear in the left wing.
He gunned the engine and turned hard to the right.
Looking over, he saw a powerboat bearing down on them.
It looked like it was about to cut them in half. He had no choice. He pushed the nose down, and they went under. Water poured in through tiny holes in the canopy. The boat crossed over them, passing with a roar and a loud bang that jerked the Barracuda sideways.
Kurt looked to the right, seeing that the winglet that acted as a rudder had been torn off the right side. He felt water pooling at his feet, and noticed how sluggish the sleek little sub had already become.
He pulled back on the stick, and the Barracuda turned upward, breaking the surface and skipping across a wave before coming back down.
“Be quick,” he said to Joe.
“Captain, are you there?” Joe said.
He could see the speedboat turning back toward them on a wide curve to the right. Out beyond it he saw another powerboat racing in to join the fight. He didn’t know what they were going to do to escape, but he knew they had to finish the call. He heard Joe keying the mike, but there was no feedback, no static.
“Argo, this is Barracuda,” Joe said. “The scientists are the target. Repeat, the scientists are the target.”
Kurt heard a click as Joe let go of the transmit switch. They waited.
“No answer,” Joe said.
Kurt turned his head, ready to order Joe to try again, when he saw the tail end of the Barracuda. The high-frequency antenna was gone. The sheet metal looked as if it had been chewed up by the prop of the passing boat.
“I got nothing,” Joe said.
The powerboats were racing toward them again, in a staggered formation. The Barracuda had no hope of outrunning them. And the only other radio on board was the underwater transceiver, which had a max range of about a mile.
“Use the speed tape,” Kurt said. “Plug over these holes.”
As Kurt angled away from the approaching boats and slammed the throttle to the firewall, Joe thrashed around in his seat.
In a moment he’d retrieved the tape from a small compartment and was ripping short lengths from the roll and trying to seal up the holes in the canopy caused by the pellets from the shotgun blast.
“Here they come,” Kurt said.
“You know this won’t hold at depth,” Joe said.
“I’ll try to stay near the surface,” Kurt said.
He heard the ripping and slapping of the speed tape, the roar of the approaching boats, and the muted boom of another shotgun blast. This time, the spray of pellets missed, splashing a foamy hole in the wave beside them.
“Dive,” Joe said.
Kurt pushed the nose down. The water swirled over the canopy, and the Barracuda tucked in underneath the waves, leveling off at ten feet. Plenty of water was still seeping in, but it wasn’t spraying like before, and Joe continued to peel and slap on the tape.
As soon as he was finished, he grabbed what looked like a tube of toothpaste but was actually an epoxy resin hardener. Ammonia-like fumes filled the cockpit as Joe smeared the resin all over the tape. The hardener would react with other resins in the speed tape and harden the patches in under a minute.
Eight feet under, Kurt watched as one wake and then another flashed across the top of them. He immediately turned left, a direction the Barracuda seemed to favor after the damage they’d suffered.
“You see any other holes?” Joe asked.
Kurt looked around. The patches and smeared resin made it look like someone had sprayed graffiti over half the cockpit. The fumes had his head pounding and eyes burning already. But the water was no longer pouring in. And as the patches hardened it would almost cease.
“Good work, Joe,” he said.
“Not my most aesthetically pleasing job,” Joe said, “but it’s not meant to be patched while submerging under fire.”
“Looks like art to me,” Kurt said, straining to see past the mess and locate the powerboats he knew had to be approaching.
“In a future life I’m going to work on a NASCAR pit crew,” Joe said.
“Let’s just work on extending our current lives a little bit,” Kurt said. “Can you think of any way to contact the Argo?”
Silence reigned as both of them racked their brains. Kurt certainly couldn’t.
“The data link,” Joe said. “We can e-mail them.”
“E-mail?”
“Not exactly, but we can send them a data message. It goes up to a satellite and then comes down. As long as someone sees the telemetry equipment go on, they’ll get it.”
Kurt wondered how likely that was, picturing the screens on the telemetry unit coming on and no one there to see them. Certainly there was no reason for anyone to be monitoring them right now.
“Anything else?”
“Either that or we paddle all the way back to Santa Maria and use semaphores,” Joe said.
“That’s what I thought,” Kurt said. “Key up the telemetry system, let me know when you’re ready.”
“We’ll need thirty seconds on the surface for the satellite to lock.”
“I don’t think we’ll have that long,” Kurt said. As if to prove the point, he saw one of the wakes coming back toward them, not racing this time but rather matching their speed and then paralleling their course. The second wake did the same on the other side and to the rear.
Kurt turned hard to the left, back toward the undersea graveyard. The boats followed.
“They can see us, Kemo Sabe,” Joe said.
“We’re like a dying fish leaving a trail of blood,” Kurt said, thinking of the bubbles the sub was probably venting.
A strange concussive sound reached them, and Kurt saw spray patterns in the water above and ahead. He guessed their pursuers were shooting into the water with the shotguns. Not a real danger, but one more sign of an impossible situation.
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Maybe if they went deeper.
He put the nose down a few degrees.
The depth meter read 15 and then 20 and then—
Crack!
One of the taped sections broke away, and a new spray of water came in.
As Joe slammed the section back into place and began taping it over, Kurt brought the sub back up, leveling off at ten feet. He changed course again but to no avail.
“They’re probably wearing those Maui Jim sunglasses,” Joe said. “You know, the ones that let you see fish in the water.”
Kurt felt like a fish in a barrel. Or a whale being hunted from above by a couple of harpoon boats. Sooner or later they had to surface, if not to send the message, just to survive.
Despite Joe’s efforts, the Barracuda was slowly taking on water, not just from the buckshot holes in the windshield but from the damage in other places. Compartments normally sealed against water were now filling with it.
And, like whales, Kurt and Joe were faced with pursuers above that were faster, bigger, and well armed. At this point they had to do little more than follow Kurt and Joe in the Barracuda and wait for them to come up for air.
A flash lit the sea ahead and to the right. A concussion wave shook the sub even as Kurt turned hard left. A few moments later a second flash went off directly in front of them. Kurt actually saw the water expand, contract, and then crash into the nose of the Barracuda.
“Grenades,” he said.
Cracks were beginning to appear in the canopy. Tiny almost invisible lines were spidering out from behind Joe’s tape job as the Plexiglas weakened and began to fail.
When another explosion shook them, Kurt knew they didn’t have much time. “Get your message ready,” he said.
“We won’t last ten seconds up there.”
“We will if we surrender,” Kurt replied, realizing that once Joe hit “Enter,” there would be no visible sign of the data message being sent, and they could stand there with their hands up, hoping not to be shot as a distraction.
Joe said nothing, but Kurt heard him tapping away at the keyboard. “Ready,” Joe said.
Kurt pointed the nose toward the surface, hoping they wouldn’t get machine-gunned on sight. Just as they breached the surface, he cut the throttles.
The Barracuda slowed instantly, and the pursuing boats passed them.
“Now,” he said.
Joe hit the “Enter” key as Kurt pressed the canopy switch and the cockpit rose.
“Come on,” Joe was muttering. “Rápido, por favor.”
Kurt stood, hands raised high in surrender, as the boats circled back toward him.
The Barracuda rocked back and forth on the waves, and the powerboats pulled up next to them. A half mile off Kurt saw a larger boat headed their way too.
“We surrender,” Kurt said.
Two men with shotguns pointed their weapons at him.
An almost inaudible beep chirped from the rear of the cockpit, and Joe stood up as well.
“Message sent,” he whispered.
Kurt nodded almost imperceptibly. Whatever happened now, whatever fate held for them, at least they’d sent their warning. He only hoped it was in time.
Across from him, one of the men put his weapon down and threw them a line. In a moment the Barracuda was tied up to the larger of the two powerboats, and Kurt and Joe were standing on board it with their wrists chained in proper cuffs.
Apparently, their foes had come prepared.
The larger boat approached, a 60-foot motor yacht of a design Kurt had never seen, it appeared far more utilitarian than anything he could remember in that class. It almost looked like a military vessel done up to pass as a pleasure craft.
It sidled up next to them, and Kurt saw a man in jungle fatigues standing at the bow, gazing down at him. It was the same man he’d seen the night before and also on the Kinjara Maru. The grin of a conqueror beamed from his face, and he jumped down onto the deck of the powerboat before the yacht had even bumped up against it.
He strode toward Kurt and Joe in their defenseless positions, looking ready to inflict pain. Kurt stared him down the whole way, never blinking or looking away. “Andras,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Friend of yours?” Joe asked.
Before Kurt could answer, the man hauled off and slugged him in the jaw, sending Kurt crashing to the deck.
Kurt looked up, blood dripping from his mouth, his lip split open.
“Sorry,” Joe said. “Forget I asked.”
35
TWO MEN GRABBED THE CHAIN on Kurt’s cuffs and yanked him back up to his feet. “I want you to see something,” Andras said. He motioned for the motor yacht to pull forward. A brief spurt of power did the trick, and as its motor died once again the two boats knocked together. On the aft deck of the larger vessel, a mixed group of thirty or more men and women sat in cuffs and shackles with their backs to the far rail.
As painful as the split lip and wounded pride were, this sight caused a far deeper agony. Kurt recognized them as members of the various science teams sent to study the magnetism. Katarina sat among them, a dark bruise covering the right side of her face.
Her eyes rose up to meet his gaze and then looked back down at the deck, sad and forlorn, as if she’d failed somehow.
Kurt spat a mix of blood and saliva onto the deck. “What are you up to, Andras?” he said. “What is this all about?”
“I’m flattered that you recognize me at last,” Andras said. “Of course a little insulted that it took so long. I thought I would have made a bigger impression all those years ago. Then again,” he said, “I didn’t recognize you either. But you didn’t have silver hair when I knew you. I’d like to think I caused some of that.”
Kurt felt his body tense, his instincts urging him to thrash and fight. The despair of the scientists, the purple bruise on Katarina’s face, the arrogance that oozed from Andras’s mouth like sewer water: all of it tested his control.
If he could have busted his chains, he would have lunged for Andras and fought him to the death right there and then, but cuffed and disadvantaged he could do little by antagonizing the man except act as a punching bag.
Andras walked around him in a wide circle, pontificating. Kurt had forgotten how much the man loved to talk.
“Once I heard of this NUMA,” Andras said, “I should have guessed you were involved. It just sounds so Kurt Austin to me. All upstanding and forthright. I’ll bet you say the Pledge of Allegiance to your flag every morning, and you probably all have patches and jackets and matching key chains.”
“Yeah,” Kurt said through his teeth. “Maybe I’ll bring you some of our swag when this is over and you’re serving a hundred years in solitary.”
“Solitary?” Andras said. “How cruel. At least when I commit you to the sea, I won’t be sending you down alone.” He leaned closer. “And just to be clear, when this is over, you will be fish food and I will be a king.”
Andras smiled, and Kurt found something odd in the words and the way Andras had whispered them to him alone.
As a chill of fear crept over him, Kurt wondered what malice Andras would visit upon them now. He prayed it wouldn’t include Katarina. Despite those prayers, Andras hopped back onto the motor yacht and walked right toward her. He crouched down, put a hand on her bruised face, and then stood.
“Put Mr. Austin back in his little submarine,” he ordered.
Three men came over to Kurt, two white, one black. They heaved him off his feet and literally threw him into the Barracuda.
“Mathias,” Andras ordered, speaking to the African man, “chain him to the lift bar.”
Kurt stared at the bar. It resembled a towel rack, mounted on the Barracuda’s hull just outside the cockpit. It was a hard point on the hull, the strongest spot on the entire submersible. Welded directly to the frame and made of carbon steel, the lift bar was designed to hold the entire submarine’s weight when she was pulled from the water by the Argo’s crane.
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It was not a spot Kurt wanted to be handcuffed to.
Mathias took a key from around his neck and undid Kurt’s handcuffs. Immediately, Kurt swung an elbow, catching one of the white men in the mouth. Almost instantly the other white man slammed Kurt in the back of the head, crashing his skull against the frame of the cockpit.
Kurt felt a moment of dizziness. When his head cleared, he felt his arms draped over the outside of the Barracuda’s hull, even though his body was mostly in the cockpit. His cuffs had been undone and recuffed around the lift bar.
“And the other one,” Andras said.
Joe was thrown in next to Kurt and given the same treatment. And while they sat there helpless, Andras grabbed a shotgun.
“Slugs,” he demanded.
A box was handed to him, and he began filling the weapon with the solid projectiles. When it was fully loaded, he pumped it and walked around to the rear of the submarine. He fired two quick blasts into the impeller and then a third into the starboard wing.
The Barracuda’s hollow wing began to take on water. Andras raised the weapon and blew a hole in the port wing.
Kurt could not remember feeling so desperate. He knew they were about to go under, a horrible death awaiting them, and his mind grasped for a way to cheat it.
“You think drowning us ends this?” he shouted. “We know about you. Our whole organization knows.”
Joe said nothing. Kurt could hear him breathing fast and deep, trying to pump his lungs full of air. Kurt knew he should be doing the same, but he couldn’t help himself. He wasn’t going out quietly.
As the water filled the Barracuda’s wings, Kurt frantically tried to shout something that might make Andras call a halt to the proceedings. If he could just convince him they were valuable enough to spare, even if it was just for a while, it would give them a chance.
“We know about your submarine,” he shouted.
Andras raised an eyebrow. “Do you, now?” he said. “That’s more than I thought you knew. But, at any rate, it’s not mine.”
Feeling the slightest bit of traction, Kurt pressed. “We know what you’re up to. We know about the energy weapon.”