Jack was silent for a moment. Katya had not revealed this detail of her parley in the submarine’s control room.
“My men will keep you out,” he replied quietly. “Your fundamentalist friends are not the only ones willing to die for a cause.”
“They may decide otherwise once they hear the fate that awaits you and that Greek if they do not capitulate.” Aslan smiled humourlessly, his serenity briefly returned. “I think you will find our next stop most interesting.”
They left the hangar by a different passageway, this time in an open-topped car on a conveyor belt. They were heading towards the central hub about a kilometre closer to the sea. After a five-minute journey they stepped onto an escalator that took them to a lift door. An attendant punched a key that took them to the highest level.
The scene was straight from a NASA space launch. The room was identical in dimensions to the Pantheon but filled with a mass of computer and surveillance equipment. As they stepped out Jack saw they had ascended inside a drum that rose in the centre like a truncated column. It was like the arena of a latter-day amphitheatre, surrounded by concentric tiers of workstations that faced them in continuous ripples of colour. On the wall behind, giant screens displayed maps and televisual images. The whole complex seemed like Seaquest’s control module but on a massive scale, with enough monitoring and communications equipment to run a small war.
Aslan was helped into an electronic wheelchair by two assistants. The rows of shadowy figures hunched behind the monitors seemed scarcely to have noticed their arrival.
“I prefer the excitement of Vultura. More hands-on, you might say.” Aslan settled back in his chair. “But here I can control all my operations simultaneously. From the command chair I can view any screen in the room without moving.”
An attendant who had been waiting nervously on the sidelines leaned over and whispered urgently in his ear. Aslan’s face remained impassive but his fingers began drumming the arms of his wheelchair. Without saying a word he pressed a button on his wheelchair and shot off towards a console where a group of figures were congregating. Jack followed with Dalmotov close behind. As they neared the console Jack noted that the screens immediately to the right were security monitors, similar to the type used in the Carthage Museum showing interior views within the complex.
The figures silently parted to allow Aslan access to the screen. Jack moved up until he stood directly behind the wheelchair and the operator who was working the console keyboard. Dalmotov stood at his elbow.
“We’ve finally made the link,” the operator said in English. “SATSURV should be coming online now.”
The man was of Asian appearance but wore jeans and a white shirt rather than the black overalls that were standard issue in the place. From his accent Jack guessed that he had been educated in Britain.
The operator looked first at Jack and then questioningly at Aslan. The big man nodded languidly, a gesture not of indifference but of supreme confidence that his guest would never be in a position to divulge anything he saw or heard.
A mosaic of pixels resolved into a view of the Black Sea, the south-eastern corner still partly obscured by cloud from the storm. The thermal imaging transformed the scene into a spectrum of colours, the coastline emerging clearly as the satellite picked up infrared radiation from below the cloud base. The operator traced out a small square and magnified it to fill the screen. He repeated the process until the screen was dominated by the island, the centre a shifting halo of pinks and yellows where the core was emitting strong heat radiation.
On the sea nearby was a sliver of colour that signified a surface vessel. The operator increased magnification until it filled the entire screen, the imagery now at sub-metric resolution. The vessel was dead in the water, the hull careened to port with the bow submerged and its starboard screw dangling above the smashed remains of the rudder.
To his horror Jack recognized Seaquest, her lines still clear despite the appalling damage. The heat radiation showed where armour-piercing shells had slammed into the hull and left gaping exit wounds like high-velocity rounds through a human body. Jack felt gripped by anger as he surveyed the destruction. He swung the wheelchair round and confronted Aslan.
“Where are my people?” he demanded.
“There do not appear to be any human heat signatures,” Aslan replied calmly. “Two of your crew were foolish enough to engage Vultura in a firefight yesterday morning. A somewhat one-sided battle as you might imagine. We will shortly be sending the Hind to dispose of the wreckage.”
On Seaquest’s shattered foredeck Jack could see the gun turret deployed and elevated. The barrels were at a crazy angle, evidently the result of a direct hit. Jack knew that York and Howe would not have abandoned her without a fight. He silently prayed they had managed to escape afterwards with the rest of the crew in the submersible.
“They were scientists and sailors, not fanatics and thugs,” Jack said coldly.
Aslan shrugged and turned back to the screen.
It transformed to show another ship, this one hove close in to the island. As the image magnified, all eyes were glued on the stern. A group of figures could be seen dismantling two large tubes which showed irregular patterns of thermal radiation as if they had been on fire. Just as Jack realized he was looking at battle damage to Vultura, Aslan snapped his fingers and a hand gripped Jack’s shoulder like a vice.
“Why was I not told?” Aslan screamed in rage. “Why was this kept concealed from me?”
The room went silent and he pointed at Jack. “He is not worthy of ransom. He will be liquidated like his crew. Get him out of my sight!”
Before being hustled away Jack made a quick mental note of the GPS co-ordinates on the SATSURV screen. As Dalmotov pushed him he pretended to trip up against the security monitors. Earlier he had recognized the approach passageway and the hangar entrance on the two nearest screens. As he stumbled against the control panel he pressed the pause key. Other CCTV cameras would chart their progress, but with all eyes diverted to the image of Vultura there was a chance they might go unnoticed.
Ever since he had woken that morning Jack had been determined to act. He knew Aslan’s moods were fickle, that the rage of his last outburst would again revert to apparent conviviality, but Jack had decided to gamble no more on the whims of a megalomaniac. The shocking image of Seaquest and the uncertain fate of her crew had hardened his resolve. He owed it to those who may have paid the ultimate price. And he knew the fate of both Costas and Katya lay in his hands.
His opportunity came as the shuttle was speeding them from the control hub back to the hangar. Just beyond the halfway point Dalmotov stepped forward to peer at the docking bay as it came into view. It was a momentary lapse in vigilance, a mistake he would never have made had his instincts not been blunted by being too long in Aslan’s lair. With lightning speed Jack drew back his left fist and slammed it into Dalmotov’s back, a crushing impact that threw Jack off balance and left him clutching his hand in pain.
It was a blow that would have killed any ordinary man. Jack had brought his full force to bear at a point just below the ribcage where the shock of an impact can stop the heart and diaphragm simultaneously. He watched in disbelief as Dalmotov remained immobile, his huge physique seemingly impervious. Then he muttered something unintelligible and sank to his knees. He remained upright for a few seconds, his legs shuffling feebly, then toppled forward and lay still.
Jack heaved the recumbent form out of sight of any surveillance camera. The docking bay was empty and the only figures he could see were on the helipad outside the hangar entrance. As the shuttle drew to a halt he stepped out and pressed the return button, sending the carriage and its unconscious occupant back in the direction of the control hub. He was buying precious time and knew every second must count.