Shadow Zone (39 page)

“Good. Let’s destroy it and go after that sub.”

“Those aren’t our orders.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Hannah saw Kirov nodding. This was what Kirov had feared, she realized.

“You want the weapon,” Hannah said. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? That’s why you didn’t want to fire into the alga field, even though Matthew’s life was on the line. You just want the damned weapon.”

“I have my orders, Bryson. And now you have yours.”

“It won’t do you any good. Melis Nemid’s scientists are already developing a chemical to counteract it.”

“Good,” Sandford said. “We don’t want a superweapon that we can’t control. Control is everything.”

Hannah turned to Kirov. “It’s exactly what you thought.”

“I would have been happy to be wrong.” He met her gaze meaningfully. “But Sandford is right. Being in control is very important.”

She slowly nodded as she understood what he was trying to tell her. She spoke into the microphone. “Do what you want, Sandford. I’m going after that sub.”

“If you do, I’ll have your security clearance revoked. You’ll never work on another military project as long as you live.”

“Really?” Hannah checked her sonar screen and eased the minisub backwards. “I guess it will come down to who has more powerful friends, Sandford.”

“Don’t do this . . .”

Matthew entered the conversation. “I’m coming with you, Hannah.”

“Sorry, Matthew. I think your weapons system may have a little glitch. I want you to get to the surface.”

He hesitated. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, it’s for the best. Good luck.”

Hannah accelerated upward and turned off her radio so that she wouldn’t have to hear Sandford shouting at her. In another two minutes, the group’s running lights were tiny dots in her rearview monitor. She turned toward Kirov. “We should be able to catch up with that sub, especially if it’s damaged.”

He nodded. “I’m surprised Matthew gave up so easily. He wanted to come with us.”

“He’d never argue with me when the safety of his vessel is at stake. And besides, I talked to him before we left the
Copernicus.
He knows he’s needed back there.”

Matthew spun his sub around and rose above Sandford and Helms, gazing down at the sea sled they had hooked between them. They were towing it in tandem, slowly bringing it to the surface.

“Just be glad you didn’t take off with her,” Sandford said. “It was a career-wrecking move. You’re too smart for that.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. Have you considered a career in the Navy? We could use you on our team.”

“I’ve already been in the Navy. I liked it. I just like my life better now.” Because I don’t have to deal with pricks like you, Matthew thought.

He felt a low rumble in the water. What the hell . . .

It was as if an oil tanker was approaching.

Matthew stared at his instruments, not quite believing what they told him. “Guys, look at your sonar. The entire right side of the monitor is covered by . . . something. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Matthew leaned forward and looked out his viewport. He gasped. There, hard starboard, was a massive shadow that might have been left by a dozen oil tankers.

“What the hell is that?” Helms whispered.

“We need to get out of here,” Matthew said. “Drop that damn sled.”

“No way,” Sandford said. “Don’t even think about letting go, Helms.”

As the shadow drew closer, Matthew realized that he had seen it before, on that terrifying last afternoon in Marinth. “My God, dolphins. Thousands and thousands of dolphins. And I think they’re pissed.”

The first wave hit Sandford, Helms, and the sled like a wall of stone. Matthew, now over a hundred feet above them, was spared the brunt of the attack, but he was still capsized by their brute force. He watched as the other two vessels tumbled through the water, struck repeatedly, and swept away from the sheer force of the onslaught.

Helms released his vessel’s claw-grip on the sled, leaving Sandford alone to wrestle it with the mechanical arms. “I’ve got to use the missiles!”

“They’re too close and almost a solid mass,” Sandford said. “We’ll blow ourselves up unless we can get some distance from them.”

Before Helms could regain control, another wave of dolphins struck them, flipped the sled upward, and slammed it against Sandford’s viewport.

“It’s the sled, dammit,” Matthew yelled. “Let go of it!”

The dolphins’ crushing force was now directed almost entirely at Sandford. They spun around him, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Their speed and sheer mass made navigation impossible, and his sub spun with their current until the accumulated force flung him from the whirlpool and wrenched the sled from his grip.

The dolphins, moving as one, swam toward the lights of Marinth and circled back in a long arc.

The water still churned as Matthew raced toward the sled.

“Good man,” Sandford said. “Grab it.”

Instead, Matthew moved his sub fifty feet over the sled, then froze in place. “Keep away, guys. Dammit, I’ve just had a weapons malfunction. Hannah warned me . . .”

Sandford managed to right his vessel, though he still apparently had difficulty with the propulsion system. “What kind of malfunction?”

“Two mines discharged. Get back!”

The softball-sized explosive charges dropped through the water and fell directly onto the sled’s top surface.

They exploded, incinerating the sled and its contents.

After the last of the shock waves had subsided, Matthew called out on the radio. “Oops. Are you guys all right?”

“This is treason,” Sandford hissed.

The dolphins had completed their long arc around the city and had almost finished their return trip. “Hold tight,” Matthew said. “Our friends are back.”

Matthew braced himself for another pounding, but this time the dolphins passed overhead and circled for a full two minutes. Then they rushed toward the surface in a corkscrew pattern.

“What the hell was that about?” Helms said.

Matthew took a moment to catch his breath. “They obviously weren’t happy with you. We went through the same thing when we brought up the trellis. Maybe they somehow knew we shouldn’t have those things.”

“Don’t give me that new-age crap. I’m bringing you up on charges,” Sandford said. “Hannah Bryson may never work again, but you’re going to jail for that stunt you pulled with the mines.”

“Weapons malfunction,” Matthew repeated. “They released on their own.”

“Bullshit.”

“Must be something your military people did to the control system. You really shouldn’t have monkeyed around with Hannah’s design without consulting her . . .”

CHAPTER
19

“What the hell happened down there?” Gadaire shouted into the radio of his Colombian-made submarine. “Five of my minisubs went down, and only one is coming up?”

That one survivor, Lane Garvin, had managed to raise him on the underwater wireless system. His voice was thin and laced with static. “They were ready for us. Some kind of attack minisub I hadn’t seen before. Sort of . . . winged.”

It had to be Bryson’s minisubs. None other came close to that description. Gadaire cursed. He had already sold those minisubs she had destroyed, and this was going to cost him dearly. “How much of the TK44 did you get?”

Garvin hesitated. “None of it.”

“Tell me I didn’t hear that correctly.” His voice was low and vibrating with anger. “Tell me I didn’t contract a bunch of fools to carry out the most important project of my career. Can you tell me that?”

“All hell broke loose. I was lucky to get away with my life. My ship is damaged. I have to get out of this thing before it takes me down to the bottom.”

“Where are you now?”

“Maybe a couple miles out. I’m heading straight for you. Prepare to take me aboard.”

“Has it occurred to you that you may be leading them to me?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so? Break off, Garvin. Do you think you’re the only one in trouble? I’m having to go on the run myself. I don’t dare go to Fuertenventura as I planned. They could be waiting for me. I’ll have to change course for Las Palmas. I’ll radio you with new rendezvous coordinates later.”

“I have you on my sonar. I need to keep pace with you. I’m not sure how much longer my vessel can last.”

“I said break off.”

“And I said I can’t.”

Gadaire nodded to Asad, a bald Somali with light brown skin. Since the submarine was not equipped with an integrated weapons system, the Colombians had devised an effective solution to combat the military and police patrols that might discover and pursue them. Asad, in his capacity as weapons officer, had adopted the technique for use in Somali waters. He climbed the steel ladder that would take him to the outside top deck.

“Okay. I can see you’re in a bad situation.” Try to sound sympathetic toward Garvin. As sympathetic as a cat toward a mouse. He turned back to the control board and changed course to intercept the Atlantic-Tenerife sea-lane that would lead him to Las Palmas. Then he upped the speed.

Damn Bryson and Kirov. All his escape plans were centered on that airport at Fuertenventura. He’d be lucky to get to a safe haven before anyone caught up with him. He turned back and spoke again on the radio to Garvin. “All right. We’ll wait ten minutes.”

“That’s all I need.”

That’s all
I’ll
need, Gadaire thought. He climbed the ladder and joined Asad on the top deck.

Boom
.

“What the hell was that?” Hannah asked. The explosion came from up ahead, in the direction of the minisub they had been pursuing. “Are they firing at us?”

“Too far away,” Kirov said. “But it’s possible that with the damage sustained, they—” He looked at his instruments. “Wait. It’s gone.”

“Did we lose track of it again?”

“I don’t think so. I’m picking up some diffuse matter in the water ahead . . . Debris.”

“The minisub?”

Kirov nodded. “Either its damage was worse than we thought, or—”

“Gadaire,” Hannah said. “That fits with his M.O., doesn’t it? Eliminate anyone who might incriminate him?”

“We need to be careful,” Kirov said. “Remember Captain Danbury’s report on Gadaire came back that he was probably in a submarine himself.”

Hannah slowed her rate of speed. “But we aren’t sure.”

“I’ll broaden the sweep, but it doesn’t look like he has a ship in the area. It would be much easier for him to travel undetected in a sub.”

Hannah studied the sonar. “So far I’m not detecting anything. There’s only one ship in the area, and it—” Hannah felt a chill run through her. She had been so intent on tracking the minisub that she hadn’t made the connection, hadn’t realized how far and in what direction they’d been traveling.

They had just reached the Atlantic-Tenerife sea-lane.

“Oh, my God.”

Could he be so lucky?

Gadaire stared at the schooner in the distance.

He was in the control room reworking his route to Las Palmas when he’d spotted the distinctive masts of
Fair Winds.
He hadn’t even been aware that the schooner was still in these waters after the most recent Marinth expedition concluded.

True, it was Melis Nemid’s ship, but could Hannah Bryson actually be on board?

Doubtful.

But Melis Nemid would almost certainly be there. He felt a surge of excitement mixed with the sheer rage he was feeling. Hannah Bryson and Kirov had orchestrated this nightmare. They had put him on the run as he hadn’t been since he had first started in the arms business. He felt . . . diminished.

He couldn’t let them get away with it. He would search them out and butcher them if it took the rest of his life.

But he would take what satisfaction he could until he could find them. Although this mission had been a miserable failure, he could still take away some victory if he could hurt Bryson in some way.

And what better way to hurt her than to blast her friend Melis Nemid to kingdom come?

“Melis, you need to get everyone on board into flotation vests,” Hannah said tersely into the radio. “Give the order to uncover and prepare the lifeboats. Immediately.”

Before even questioning Hannah, Melis ordered her captain to prepare
Fair Winds
for an emergency evacuation. She came back on the radio. “Okay, Hannah. Why did I just do that?”

“Gadaire’s in the area. We believe he might be in a sub. We just ruined his plan, and he might decide to take a parting shot at you before he goes on the run.”

“What kind of weapons?”

“We don’t know. He may have just destroyed one of his own minisubs, so there could be a heat-seeking component.”

“Dammit.” Melis’s voice dropped to a tense whisper. “We’re defenseless against something like that.”

“I know. We’re going to find him, Melis. But get your crew ready in case the worst happens.”

“I will. And I’ll take care of Ronnie. Don’t worry.”

Don’t worry? She was scared to death. “Thanks, Melis.”

“Good luck.”

Hannah turned toward Kirov. “Anything yet?”

“No. Next time you’re looking for a way to make another breakthrough on these tiny subs, come up with a sonar system with a broader sweep.”