She squirmed around, trying to reach one of the pieces. She felt a few shards digging into her arm. She didn’t care. All that mattered was getting a larger curved one and using it on the rope.
Finally, she touched one. Grabbing it awkwardly, she felt it cut her palm, but she managed to hold it in a position where she could work it against the rope. She began to move it back and forth, pressing it against the rope as best she could.
She hoped it was cutting into the rope that bound her because with each movement she felt it slicing into her hand, and her palm and fingers were growing slick with blood.
It hurt like crazy, but she wouldn’t give up until every drop of blood had drained from her body.
Still working on the rope, she heard a soft thump on the door. Almost like someone had bumped against it.
The sound of the door opening came next. She couldn’t see it; she had her back to it. She feared what Andras would do if he discovered her. Maybe he’d just let her lie there and bleed to death.
The door shut, and something heavy thumped onto the ground beside her. She felt hands on her, not cold and threatening but caring.
She turned.
Instead of Andras’s face, she saw kind blue eyes and silvery hair.
“Kurt,” she gasped.
He held a finger to his lips. “Don’t move,” he said, “you’re bleeding badly.”
He untied her, grabbed a rag, and wrapped her palm tightly.
Behind Kurt a crewman lay dead on the floor, blood trickling from a bullet hole in his chest. She guessed he’d been the guard at her door.
“I thought you were dead,” she whispered.
“Seeing you on the floor with blood all over your wrists, I thought the same thing about you,” he said.
He helped her to sit up.
“They’re going to use this ship to harm your country,” she said. “They’re going to attack Washington, D.C., in less than fifteen minutes.”
“How?” he asked.
“They’ve built a colossal particle accelerator off the coast of Sierra Leone. They intend to send a massive beam of charged particles at Washington. It will sweep back and forth like the scanning beam on a computer screen. It will destroy every electrical device in the city limits and set fire to anything that burns. Gas mains will explode. Cars. Trucks. Aircraft. People will spontaneously combust as they walk down the street. It will kill and maim hundreds of thousands.”
“I’ve seen some of that already,” he said. “But how can they do it from so far off?”
“This ship is fitted with a powerful electromagnetic array,” she said.
“The Fulcrum,” he said. “I saw it. What does it do? Does the beam come from there?”
“No,” she said. “The beam comes from Sierra Leone. But it passes over us, and with all the power they’re generating and running through the Fulcrum, they’ll be able to bend the course of the particle beam. Instead of continuing off into space in a straight line, it will reach an apogee of sorts, miles above this ship, and then it’ll be bowed by the magnetic forces and directed back down onto your capital.”
“Like a bank shot in pool,” Kurt said. “So that’s why they call it the Fulcrum.”
She nodded in agreement.
“They must be insane,” he said. “They’re inviting all-out war.”
That they had to be stopped went without saying. Kurt stood, popped the clip out of his gun, and switched it for a full one. “I have to get to that array,” he said.
She stood up beside him. “They’re waiting for you there. They know you’ll go for it. They have the reactors covered too. “
He looked aggravated. “Tell me you have a suggestion?”
She racked her brain. It was fuzzy from the lack of sleep and the half bottle of wine, but finally something came to mind.
“The coolant,” she said.
“Liquid nitrogen,” he said.
She nodded. “If we shut off the nitrogen, the magnets will rapidly warm above their operating temperature. Their superconducting properties will fail, and the array will lose power. Hopefully, enough to keep it from doing the job.”
Katarina noticed Kurt’s face tighten with determination. Then he turned slightly at a sound she also heard.
The door to the cabin opened with a rush. A crewman stood there. “I told you to stand guard out—”
They were the last words he ever said as Kurt drilled him with two shots from the Beretta. Kurt ran for the door, but it was too late, the man had fallen back out into the hall.
He crumpled in the passageway. By the time Kurt reached him, shouts were raining out from down the hall.
Kurt fired, first in one direction and then the other.
“Come on,” he shouted to Katarina.
She ran out and cut to the right as he fired down the hall to the left.
Kurt ran after her, and in a moment they were scampering down a ladder.
“I know where to go,” Kurt said, grabbing her hand and pulling her along. “Let’s just hope we can get there in time.”
57
PAUL TROUT SAT in the command seat of the new submersible, cramped like a basketball player in a compact car. Even though this sub was smaller than the Grouper, it was designed with a taller profile, one that at least allowed him to sit up. There was also enough space for Gamay to do her virtual reality thing without having to lie down.
Currently she sat in her getup, unmoving and staring out the small portholes in front of them. The view was surreal. They were speeding along at 140 knots a mere ten feet above the surface, suspended beneath the SH-60 Seahawk on a swaying group of cables.
Though it was night, the whitecaps were visible as they raced by.
The plan was for them to be air-dropped to the south, as close to the Event Horizon line as possible. From there they would dive into the canyon and work their way up, carrying their little robotic bomber with them.
In twenty minutes the first wave of air attacks would commence. While no one expected it to go well, the hope was that waves of missiles and feints by the Lincoln’s fighter squadrons would distract Djemma Garand’s forces and allow Paul and Gamay’s insertions to go unnoticed.
“One minute to drop point,” the helicopter’s pilot told them.
“Roger,” Paul said. There was nothing for him to do. The sub was all buttoned up and ready to go. When the pilot decided to drop them, they’d drop. He hoped it wouldn’t be at a hundred miles an hour.
“I brought along some supplies,” he said to Gamay.
“Like what?” she asked. “This isn’t a picnic.” He pointed behind them. Diving gear secured with bungee cords. “In case we have to repeat our miraculous escape. This time, we can do it a little more leisurely.” She smiled, just enough to let him know he’d reached her. Then her eyes grew suspicious. “Do you remember?” “Climbing into this thing brought it all back,” he said.
She looked sad. “Too bad.” “Why?” he replied.
“It was horrible,” she said.
“It was scary, but we survived. I like to think it was one of our shining moments.” He hoped they wouldn’t have to do anything like it again, but the tanks, masks, and fins would help if they did.
“Thirty seconds to drop,” the pilot’s voice said.
“Let’s do this,” she said bravely. “Many will die if we fail.” “Ten seconds,” the pilot said.
He saw Gamay take a deep breath.
The sub swayed back and forth as they slowed almost to a complete stop. And then a sudden feeling of weightlessness hit, followed a second later by a sharp deceleration and the sloshing feeling of the sub in water. They were already configured for a dive, and in seconds the waves had closed over them.