Kurt dropped beside it and grabbed the wheel.
After two full rotations it spun easily. He opened it to see a ladder dropping down through a shaft. Dim red lights lit the rungs, and glacial air wafted up toward him. Kurt suddenly thought of Dante’s Inferno, which depicted some of Hell’s outer layers as frigid, Arctic-like zones.
“What’s down there?” he asked.
“The accelerator tunnels,” she said.
That didn’t sound like a safe place to be, but the sound of feet pounding on the metal deck above changed his mind.
He helped her onto the ladder, climbed down behind her, and shut the hatch. At the bottom they dropped into a tunnel.
It reminded Kurt of standing on a subway platform, like the Washington Metro, only narrower. The familiar high-voltage lines and liquid nitrogen conduits raced down each wall and also along the ceiling and floor. Rows of the shiny gray rectangles that Kurt knew to be the superconducting magnets traveled off into the distance, curving slightly at the limit of his vision.
Kurt exhaled a cloud of ice crystals. He was already chilled to the bone. It reminded him of the Fulcrum’s compartment only colder.
“If we go this way,” she said, “we can pop up through the rear access hatch. One level down from the coolant room.” Kurt began walking, with Katarina leaning heavily on his shoulder. It was a great plan. The crew would never search for them down there, he was sure of it.
“What if they turn this thing on?” he asked.
“Then we’ll be dead before we even know what’s happened.” “All the more reason to hurry,” he said.
61
BY NOW DJEMMA GARAND could feel the danger clawing at his own throat. Washington, D.C., stood untouched by his weapon. Andras would not answer and the crew of the Onyxreported commandos aboard.
Swirling around him, the American military showed no signs of backing off, no matter how hard he pounded them.
“Where’s Andras?” he demanded into the radio.
“He is looking for the American,” came the reply.
“What about the array?”
“It’s still down. We have no power.” The crewman from the Onyxsounded panicked, though he could not be facing what Djemma was facing.
He put the headset down. It would end in failure. He could see that now.
He looked out over the waves. One of their submarines had been destroyed and forced to surface. The other continued to fight, firing from deeper waters.
Through a pair of huge binoculars, he saw the crew of the American submarine bobbing in their orange life rafts.
“Target their position,” he said calmly.
Cochrane hesitated.
“We are going to die, Mr. Cochrane,” he said. “All we can do now is take as many of them with us as possible.” Cochrane stood back from the controls. “Forget it,” he said. “You want to go down in flames, that’s your business. I’m not dying here.” Djemma had been waiting for this moment. He pulled out his old sidearm and blasted three holes in Cochrane.
Cochrane fell back in an unmoving heap. Djemma fired a few more shots into his worthless hide just for the sheer pleasure of it.
“And you are proved wrong yet again, Mr. Cochrane,” he said.
He stepped to the controls, glaring at the engineers. “Target the life rafts and fire!”
GAMAY TROUT had finished cutting through the net and had eased Rapunzeland her harness of explosives through. Since then, she’d been looking for what the Truxton’s captain had described.
“Head two-nine-zero,” Paul said.
She turned Rapunzelonto the course and got her moving again. She considered shutting off the floodlight, but she didn’t want to run into any more obstacles. Besides, they were almost there — up ahead she could see the base of some large structure.
A large tube ran up to it, like a city’s oversized sewer pipe. She guessed this was part of the accelerator.
“That’s it,” she said. “It’s got to be.” “I think you’re right,” Paul said, excitedly. “Find the base where it connects to the seafloor.
Gamay looked around, shining Rapunzel’s light in the darkness. Then she directed her to the base of the huge pipe.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“Wedge her in there between the bottom and the pipe where it starts to angle out of the water,” Paul said. “It’ll give the explosion more force.” Gamay did as he suggested. “That’s as far as she’ll go.” Paul grabbed the detonator, flipped the safety cap up.
“Do it,” Gamay said.
He pressed the switch.
“Good-bye, Rapunzel,” she said, thankful for the little machine and sorry to see her go.
The feed to Gamay’s visor cut out, and she lifted it up. Two seconds later the concussion wave reached them. It hit with a shuddering rumble, shaking the sub for a moment and then fading away.
UP ON THE PLATFORM Djemma saw all the indicators on his weapon turn red. He saw a great eruption of water and silt just behind the emitter. A moment later the raised portion of the accelerator tunnel collapsed into the sea.
How? he wondered. How had they done it?
At almost the same moment, one of his men called from the radar console. “More missiles inbound. One minute to impact.” Djemma ignored him. He walked out of the control room, moving forward onto the platform. The wind buffeted him. The darkness of the night swirled, and the water churned where his weapon had been breached.
He looked up to the horizon. He could see the tiny dots of fire approaching: the tail end of the Harpoon missiles that were zeroing in on him. There was no escape.
“And so I shall fall,” he whispered to himself. “Like Hannibal before me.” The missiles hit to his left and right almost simultaneously. The explosions merged together, vaporizing him into a fireball that could be seen for miles.
62
KURT AND KATARINA continued toward the aft end of the Onyx. Kurt kept one arm around her waist and held her close beside him because she was weakening and barely able to keep up with his pace.
The tunnel itself was filling up with a dense white fog and a cold that chilled them to the bone. With the high voltage off-line, the liquid nitrogen was beginning to warm and expand. It would boil off as soon as it got above negative 321 degrees. Kurt guessed a system like that would have relief valves that might vent the gas into the tunnel.
They pushed forward, feeling their way through the frigid cloud. At times, visibility in the tunnel was no more than three feet. They moved slowly, looking for the aft-most hatch.
Finally, Kurt’s hand fell on a curved seam. He recognized the recessed handle and the shape of an access hatch.
“Our way out of here,” he said, reaching up and turning the wheel that sealed the hatch shut.
After pulling it open, he helped Katarina onto the ladder. She began to crawl up the rungs. Kurt was ready to join her when a familiar voice cut through the dense mist like a knife.
“Kurt Austin.”
Katarina stopped on the ladder.
“Go,” Kurt whispered. “And don’t wait for me.”
She pushed off, moving upward, and Kurt held still.
“Do you realize you’re quite possibly the most aggravating man alive,” Andras said, still hidden in the vapors.
Certain the killer was setting up to spray the tunnel with automatic weapons fire, Kurt dropped flat to the deck and pointed the barrel of his nine millimeter into the white blanket of mist.
Andras wasted no time sending a volley of gunfire into the passageway. The shots rang like thunder on a warm drizzly night. The shells thudded against the steel bulkheads and ricocheted like a flight of deadly wasps.