For a moment Djemma was angry. He’d placed Mathias with Andras to watch him, perhaps to keep him under control. No doubt that was half the reason Andras had killed him.
Still, Djemma could not show his anger. Instead he began to laugh. “What leader could afford such insolence?”
He pushed off the rail and stepped away from Andras, walking out into the hot sun to address the assembled group.
By the time he’d reached a spot in front of them a trickle of sweat was running down the side of his face. The scientists looked as if they might soon pass out. Most were from cooler climates, America, Europe, Japan. Seeing their weakness, he took his sunglasses off. He wanted them to see his strength and the fire in his eyes.
“Welcome to Africa,” he said. “You are all intelligent people, so I will dispense with the games and secrecy. I am Djemma Garand, the president of Sierra Leone. You will be working for me.”
“Working on what?” one of the scientists asked. Apparently, they hadn’t steamed the starch out of everyone yet.
“You will be provided with the specifications and requirements of a particle accelerator I have built,” Djemma said. “You will have a single job: to make it more powerful. You will of course be paid for your work, much as I was once paid for working in the mines. For your efforts you will each receive three dollars a day.”
To his right one of the scientists, a man with short gray hair and uneven teeth, scoffed.
“I’m not working for you,” he said. “Not for three dollars a day or three million.”
Djemma paused. An American of course. No people of the world were less used to being powerless than Americans.
“That of course is your option,” he said, nodding to Andras.
Andras stepped forward and slammed a rifle butt into the man’s gut. The scientist crumpled to the deck, was dragged away toward the edge of the platform, and summarily thrown off.
His scream echoed as he fell and then stopped suddenly. The water was a hundred twenty feet below.
“Check on him,” Djemma said. “If he lived, renew our offer of employment.”
Andras motioned to a pair of his men and they double-timed it over to the stairwell. Meanwhile, the rest of the scientists stared at the edge over which their associate had just been thrown. A few covered their mouths; one of them went to her knees.
“In the meantime,” Djemma said, quite pleased that someone had been stupid enough to resist right off the bat, “I will explain our incentive program. One I know you will find most generous. You will be divided into four groups and given the same information to work with. The group that comes up with the best answer, the best way to boost the power of my system, that group will get to live.”
Their eyes snapped his way.
“One member from each of the remaining groups will die,” he finished.
With that, Djemma’s men moved in and began to separate them.
“One more thing,” Djemma said loudly enough to stop the proceedings. “You have seventy-two hours for your initial proposal. In the event I have no satisfactory answer by then, one member of each group will die, and we shall start again.”
As the now thirty-two members of the world’s scientific community were separated and hustled toward the waiting elevators in the center of the rig, Djemma Garand smiled. He could see the shock and fear in their faces. He knew that most, if not all, would comply.
He turned to Andras and another African man in uniform, a general in his armed forces.
“Get back to the Onyx,” he said. “Get her into position.”
Andras nodded and moved off. The general stepped up.
“It is time, old friend,” Djemma said. “You may begin to take back what is rightfully ours.”
The general saluted and then turned and was gone.
39
Washington, D.C., June 27
KURT AUSTIN STEPPED OFF the elevator on the eleventh floor of the NUMA headquarters building on the shore of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. He moved slowly, his body battered, his ego suffering from the badly missed call that had taken them out to the tower of rock in the dark of night.
He was walking with noticeable pain. His face and arms were peeling from saltwater sores and eight hours waiting for rescue in the burning sun. His ribs were sore from the pipe attack, and his cheekbone, the bridge of his nose, and his lips were creased with healing scabs where Andras and his thugs had pounded him and split the skin.
Adding insult to injury were the hours sitting in the Argo’s tiny conference room, answering questions from the Spanish and Portuguese authorities with Joe and Captain Haynes, and then a fourteen-hour trip by plane from Santa Maria to Lisbon and over to D.C.
The least someone could have done was spring for business class.
Now fighting jet lag, exhaustion, and his wounded pride, Kurt pressed forward toward another conference room, where he and Joe would discuss with Dirk Pitt and members of the U.S. Navy and the National Security Agency everything they’d already explained a half a dozen times. All the while, whatever trail Andras had left grew colder and faded away.
He neared the end of the hall and despite the pain and fatigue spotted a reason to smile and keep going. At the door to the conference room he saw Gamay Trout. It troubled him that she was alone.
They hugged, and he could feel that much of her usual self-assurance was missing.
“You don’t look so good, Kurt. How do you feel?”
“Never better,” he said.
She smiled.
“Paul?” he asked.
“He’s still unconscious,” she managed.
“I’m sorry.”
“His EEG is improving, and a CAT scan showed no damage, but I’m scared, Kurt.”
“He’ll come back,” Kurt said hopefully. “After all, look what he’s got waiting for him.”
She tried to smile, and then grabbed the door handle and pushed through.
Kurt followed her in and sat protectively beside her. Joe arrived a moment later and sat on her other side. Dirk Pitt, Hiram Yaeger, and some brass from the Navy held positions down the table from them. At the head of the table, a suit from the NSA took center stage.
Dirk Pitt stood and explained. “I know you’ve all been through a lot, but we’re here because the situation has gone from bad to worse.”
He waved toward the man in the suit. “This is Cameron Brinks from the NSA. He and Rear Admiral Farnsworth are spearheading the response to what we believe is a very present threat to international peace.”
Cameron Brinks stood up. “We have to thank you men for discovering and bringing this threat to our attention. Like you, we believe a well-financed or even nationally backed group has developed a directed-energy weapon of incredible power. If the extrapolations from the data are correct, this weapon could undermine the current world socio-military balance.”
Kurt wasn’t sure what exactly the term socio-military balance meant, but it sounded like a politician’s made-up parlance, and he guessed Brinks was more a politician than a man of action. That meant they were in for a long speech. Great.
Brinks continued. “After consulting with Mr. Yaeger, and also running our own studies, we’ve concluded that this weapon uses a system of particle acceleration similar to one suggested years back for the Strategic Defense Initiative’s anti-missile shield.”
Kurt considered what Brinks was saying, and he allowed some of his aggravation to dissipate. At least these men seemed to grasp the danger.
“To make matters worse,” Brinks said, “the kidnapped scientists are precisely the kind of people one would need to improve on whatever these terrorists are already in possession of.”