It was. He slammed onto a steel platform with a solid thud.
"That you?" Tai asked.
"No," Vaughn grunted as he inwardly reviewed his body for injuries.
A red light came on, and he could see Tai now, about four feet away. He slowly got to his feet. They were in an open space, and as Tai slowly shifted her light, he saw that it was about ten meters square with a steel floor. He looked up and saw the opening he had fallen out of about eight feet above his head. Not good, he thought, as he considered how the hell they were going to get out of there.
Tai directed her light toward a couple of openings in the floor. She walked over to the closest one, and Vaughn joined her. There was a two-foot depression, then a metal grate in the three-foot-wide hole. Air was being drawn up through the opening. They both knelt next to the opening and she shined her flashlight down. The red light penetrated the darkness for a few feet but they couldn't see anything.
"I assume no one's in there since it's dark," Tai said.
"Unless it's a barracks room," Vaughn said, "and there's a bunch of guys with guns sleeping."
"Always the optimist."
Tai turned off her flashlight, leaving them in darkness. Vaughn could hear her unscrewing the cover. She turned the light back on, flooding the room with white light. She pointed it down at the grate.
Both of them gasped as a golden glow was reflected back at them. Directly below the grate was a five-foot-high stack of gold bullion.
CHAPTER 16
"Space Command did track the plane," Foster said.
It didn't surprise Royce, because Space Command had tracked everything flying since 9/11. He waited out Foster. There was little activity in the operations center. Everyone was still waiting for the report from the surviving recon team member on the ground – if he lived long enough to make a report.
Foster slid a piece of paper across his desk, and Royce recognized the location it displayed: the middle of the Pacific Ocean, west of Midway Island. A thin red line went from Oahu to a point about four hundred miles away from Midway, where it ended.
"That's where it disappeared," Foster said. He cleared his throat nervously.
"There was no report of a plane missing in that area or anywhere close to it. But there was also no flight plan for a plane flying in that area at the time. No one has reported a plane missing either."
"Of course not," Royce said as he stared at the end of the red line. A watery grave. At least David's brother had gotten the honor of being buried in the Punchbowl here on the island. There would be no markers to commemorate David's service. It was as if he'd never existed.
Royce folded the piece of paper and slid it into his pocket.
"Also – " Foster hesitated.
"Yes?"
"We just got a report that one of the team members, Hayes, is very ill."
Royce stood up.
"Inform me as soon as the recon element reports in."
He went out to David's Defender and drove into the hills. Once in the clearing, he opened his laptop and typed out two messages. The first one was to the isolation area on Okinawa. The second went to the backup team that should now have been departing Hong Kong to converge on the primary mission.
The Humvee ambulance slowed to a halt outside the door to the isolation area. The medic/driver hopped out and went to the rear, pulling out a folding stretcher. Orson was waiting for him, arms folded.
"This way."
He led the medic to where Sinclair had Hayes lying on a couch, a cold compress on his forehead. The medic checked Hayes's pulse while he looked at the other members of the team.
"Any idea what's wrong with him?"
"Pancreatic cancer," Orson said succinctly, which earned a surprised look from Sinclair and a not so surprised look from Kasen.
"Jesus," the medic muttered.
"What the hell is he doing here?"
"His job," Orson said.
The medic shook his head.
"He needs to be in a hospital ASAP."
Orson frowned and glanced at the other members of the team.
"I'll go with him. You two continue mission preparation. Contact me ASAP if you hear from the recon element."
Orson and the medic put Hayes on the stretcher and carried him to the Humvee. They slid the stretcher in and Orson climbed up next to Hayes. The black man was sweating profusely, his gaze vacant. The medic slammed the back door shut and got in the driver's seat. The Humvee ambulance slowly wound its way through the tunnel toward the outside world.
Orson glanced at the front – the medic was focused on the road. Orson leaned over and placed his forearm across Hayes's throat, applying pressure. Hayes's eyes went wide and he reached up and weakly grabbed Orson's arm, trying to push it away, but he was too sick. Orson kept the pressure up as he watched the front of the Humvee.
The panic in Hayes's eyes disappeared as the life drained from them.
When the Humvee cleared the tunnel, Orson rapped on the back of the driver's seat.
"Let me out."
The medic stopped the Humvee and turned, confused.
"What?"
Orson indicated Hayes's body.
"He's gone. I've got to get back to isolation."
"'He's gone'?" The medic hopped out and came into the back. He checked Hayes's vitals, confirming that the man was indeed dead.
"I don't get it," he muttered as he pulled a blanket over Hayes's face.
"He was sick, but – "
Orson stepped out of the Humvee.
"We really needed him to last a while longer."
He shrugged.
"Some things you just can't control."
With that he disappeared into the black gaping mouth of the tunnel entrance.
The Navy F-14 Tomcat came in low and fast. It had made the flight from Hawaii in less than two hours, dispatched after the tower on Johnston Atoll failed to respond to repeated radio queries. That, combined with a complete electronic blackout from the atoll – no e-mails, faxes, phone calls – absolutely nothing, had caused the jet to be scrambled.
It roared across the island one hundred feet up, the pilot peering out of the cockpit. He saw nothing out of the ordinary except that he saw nothing happening on the island. No movement. No people. He did a wide loop then came back, flying slower, just above stall speed, while transmitting, trying to contact the tower. There was only the sound of low static in reply.
The pilot knew that the sound of his engines could clearly be heard, even by people inside the buildings. Yet no one came running out to look up. Absolute stillness.
Then he noticed something else. There were no birds.
"Target bearing zero-six-seven degrees, range four hundred meters."
Moreno nodded at the sonar man's report. Exactly where it should be.
"Periscope depth," he ordered. It wasn't necessary to make a visual confirmation, but Moreno believed in double-checking.
He grabbed the handles for the periscope as it ascended, flipping them down, and pressed his head against the eyepiece, turning in the direction the sonar had indicated the target. Moreno blinked as he saw the massive ship. He'd seen pictures, but that had not prepared him for the real thing.
It was one of the largest oil tankers in the world – the Jahre Viking. It wasn't moving through the ocean so much as plowing through the water, ignoring the four-foot swell that pounded against its steel hull, heading almost due east, toward San Francisco. The tanker was over a quarter mile long and seventy meters wide.