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 Barracudaslowed 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 Barracudarocked 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 Barracudawas 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.
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.