Piranha

46

The two techs had played dumb, responding to Juan’s questions in Russian, but he shocked them when he asked them fluently in their native tongue where Kensit was. He was also very eloquent about what would happen to them if they didn’t cooperate. Their bravery exhausted, the techs switched to English and told him that Kensit was on a yacht where he was monitoring the feed from the neutrino telescope that he had named Sentinel.

One of the screens on the control panel was slaved to the view that Kensit had from his remote location. Juan had been amazed to see it switch from a close-up of Linda to a shot of the PIG as it raced toward a Ratel armored vehicle.

Juan’s first instructed them to deactivate the view altogether. Without it, his crew had a fighting chance at whatever they were attempting. The screen abruptly went dark, surely causing Kensit to go apoplectic. A phone on the console rang insistently, but he told the Russians to ignore it.

Then Juan had a better idea.

“Do you know how this thing works?” he asked them. When they hesitated, he and Trono pointed the barrel of their MP-5s in the techs’ faces.

“We can operate it,” one of the techs said, “but that’s all.”

“Do you know Kensit’s location?”

He quickly nodded and pointed at a monitor showing the latitude and longitude. “That’s where the signal is being beamed to,” the tech said.

“Time for a demo,” Juan said. “Show me Kensit’s cozy little hideaway.”

The tech nodded and eased over to the console, where he nervously manipulated the controls until a new image came up on the screen. It was an overhead view of a white hundred-foot yacht lazily cruising an azure sea. The image zoomed down as if it were a kamikaze dive bomber. The virtual camera plunged through the deck until it stopped in a room with a console that looked identical to the one in the cave.

“Pan around,” Juan said. “Get a shot of this, Mike.”

Trono held up his phone to video what they were watching.

The place was a sty, with empty cans and plates of food littering the floor. On the wall there was a map of Mexico with a pin stuck into a spot on the Yucatán Peninsula marked “Phase 2” in a sloppy scrawl. Papers with jotted equations and notes were strewn across the desk. A journal lay on the end of it. Gunther Lutzen’s name was penned in neat letters on the cover.

The camera kept moving until it settled on Kensit himself. He stared wide-eyed directly at the screen as if he could see them.

But he couldn’t see them. Kensit was monitoring the view from Sentinel, so he was actually seeing himself on his own screen. His mouth began to move.

“Turn up the volume,” Juan said.

The tech adjusted the sound and they heard Kensit’s reedy voice: “… couldn’t have gotten in there. If it’s you, Cabrillo, I want you to know you’re too late. If you survive the rest of the day, which I doubt, you’ll see what little impact all of your efforts have made. Now it’s time to say good-bye.”

The screen went blank.

“What happened? Get it back!” Juan demanded.

“We can’t,” the tech said, backing away. “Kensit can control the software remotely from his location. He’s probably locked out our ability to operate Sentinel and switched off the real-time feed to this console. But from his remote site he can still watch and control what Sentinel sees.”

“What’s he planning today?”

They hesitated again, but Juan could see that they knew. They backed up some more as if trying to edge their way toward the exit to make a run for it.

“Tell me,” he growled. “Now!”

“Okay, okay,” one of the techs said, his hands raised in supplication. “He’s going to shoot down—”

A torrent of bullets tore into the chests of both techs. They came from the direction of the man-made tunnel leading to the cement plant. The only reason Juan and Trono were spared the same fate was because of the hulking mass of Sentinel machinery between them and the tunnel.

Juan and Trono scrambled behind one of the selenium pillars. Juan barely brushed against it and the razor edge ripped his fatigues. Diving for cover was not going to be an attractive option in this cave.

In the reflection of a huge crystal, Juan could see that it was Bazin who had killed the two techs. He was hunched over the console, typing with one hand while training his Uzi in their direction with the other. An RPG was propped against the console next to him.

Juan motioned for Trono to try to flank him at the tunnel’s entrance by circling around the immense telescope.

“I know what you’re doing, Cabrillo,” Bazin called out. “I’d try to flank me, too. It won’t work.”

“Why?” Juan replied. “Because Kensit is telling you where we are?”

“It’s an incredible advantage, isn’t it?”

“I know my people are outside. You can’t escape.”

“I’d be more worried about this bomb if I were you.”

Juan watched him typing and realized what he was enabling. “Have you got yourselves an old-fashioned self-destruct mechanism there?”

“It’s state-of-the-art,” Bazin said. “I suggest you go back the same way you came in here if you don’t want to self-destruct as well.” He made one last press with a flourish and said, “There. Au revoir, mon capitaine.”

Bazin picked up the RPG and backed away slowly, but Juan had no intention of letting him get away. He didn’t have a direct shot at Bazin, but he wouldn’t have taken it anyway. He needed Bazin alive to tell him what Kensit’s target was.

He waited until Bazin was under a crystal stalactite dangling above like a chandelier. He unloaded his entire thirty-round magazine into it, showering Bazin with shards that cut him in a hundred places.

Bazin dropped the RPG to shield himself from further mutilation, but he kept hold of the submachine gun, shooting wildly in Juan’s direction. Blood gushed over his eyes. When the hammer clicked on an empty chamber, Juan rushed him.

He expected Trono to do the same, but more gunshots came from the tunnel. Some of Bazin’s soldiers must have come to his rescue and Trono returned fire to keep them at bay, causing Juan to be one-on-one with Bazin.

Juan slammed into Bazin, throwing him to the metal flooring. Bazin leaned over and Juan gave him a solid punch to the kidneys.

What he forgot was that Bazin knew more about Juan than most any other opponent ever had.

While Bazin was absorbing Juan’s punches, he grabbed for Juan’s prosthetic leg. Bazin knew exactly how the combat version was strapped on and yanked at the buckles holding it to Juan’s calf. It came free, sending Juan tumbling over. He was able to grab it away from Bazin, but giving chase would be impossible now.

Bazin wiped his eyes clear, scrabbled over to the Uzi, and popped the magazine out. Before Juan could snap the combat leg open to retrieve his Colt Defender, Bazin sprinted across the cave to find cover where he could reload and then finish Juan off.

Juan fired as Bazin retreated to keep him from ducking behind the closest crystal column. He thought he nicked Bazin in the leg just as he ran into the passageway where Juan and Trono had entered from the underwater cavern.

Juan heard the distinctive click of a magazine being rammed home and noticed that now he was the one under the chandelier of doom. If Bazin tried the same trick of firing into the cave ceiling, Juan would be a sitting duck.

Even though he wanted Bazin alive, Juan didn’t have a choice. He rolled over and snatched up the RPG. Balancing himself on his stump, he aimed at the passageway and pulled the trigger.

The RPG lanced out on a tongue of fire and struck the ceiling, sending a rain of limestone down and collapsing the entire opening. When the haze cleared, there was no doubt that the passageway to the underwater entrance had been completely sealed. Bazin was gone.

Even as he was pulling the trigger, Juan thought that firing the RPG might set off a chain reaction of ceiling collapses. He held his breath as many of the huge crystals trembled and cracked. A few fragments fell harmlessly, then all was quiet.

Juan rushed to reattach his leg and help Trono fend off the remaining mercenaries, but as soon as he had it back on and was standing, he realized that the gunfire had ceased.

Trono cautiously emerged from behind the pillar.

“Special delivery for Juan Cabrillo!” yelled Linc’s baritone from inside the tunnel to the cement plant. “We’ve got a box of chocolates for you if you don’t shoot us.”

“Come on in!” Juan yelled back. “We’re starving.”

Linc strode forward into the light and his jaw dropped to his chest as his gaze quickly took in the spectacle of Sentinel and the giant crystals of the Oz cave.

“That must have been what we looked like when we got here,” Juan said to Trono.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him speechless before,” Trono replied.

“Is everything buttoned-up out there?” Juan asked Linc.

“Five remaining men gave up after seeing the rest of their buddies go down. It’s a mess. Bazin had sixty men digging tunnels down here. They were nearly starved to death. Linda is scrounging up what food she can find for them.” He waved behind him. “I’ve got someone you should meet.”

A disheveled but proud Haitian was escorted in by Eddie. After gawking at the cave, he shook hands with a firm grip when he was introduced to Juan.

“Jacques Duval, deputy commander of the Haitian National Police,” he said. “I understand you are the one I can thank for this rescue.”

“You’ve got a whole team to thank,” Juan said. “I’m not the Lone Ranger. Come to think of it, even the Lone Ranger wasn’t the Lone Ranger. Not with Tonto around to save his skin all the time.”

Duval cocked his head in confusion, not understanding the American allusion. “Where is Hector Bazin?”

Juan pointed to the tons of fallen rock on the other side of the cave. “Buried in there.”

Duval nodded, both rueful and satisfied. “It had to be done. Thank you again. Now I must go and take command of the police that think they are coming to save Hector.”

“Will they listen to you?”

“What choice will they have? There’s no one else left here to command them.”

He turned on his heel and strode away.

“Tough guy,” Juan said.

“Other than some water,” Eddie said, “he didn’t ask for anything for himself, just for his men.”

Juan nodded in understanding. He would have done the same. Those kinds of leaders usually win out over men like Bazin in the end.

“Get Eric in here,” he said. “We’ve got another problem.”

Two minutes later, Linc and Eddie were back outside, and Eric was sitting at the Sentinel console trying to ascertain how to deactivate the self-destruct, whose timer was already down to fifty-three minutes.

“Can you disable it?” Juan asked.

Eric shook his head. “I’d be afraid to try. Kensit could have it booby-trapped to explode if the wrong code is entered.”

“What about pulling the plug?”

“No good. The outside power is already gone, and it looks like the battery backup is integral to the machine. Any attempt to disengage electrical power might also set it off. I’m afraid there’s no way to prevent the explosion.”

Juan ran his fingers through his hair, frustrated that they were out of options.

“The techs said Kensit was going to shoot something down. We have to figure out what and how he’s going to do it.”

“Well, it looks like the self-destruct is an independent system,” Eric said. “Maybe we can see what Kensit is doing?” He moved over to where Juan had told him he’d seen Kensit’s remote workstation.

Juan shook his head. “We already tried that. Kensit locked us out.”

“Can you describe what the techs did?”

“I don’t have to,” Juan said, and waved Trono over. “Show him your recording.”

Trono played back the video. Within a minute, Eric stopped him and tapped on the keyboard. The blank screen suddenly came to life, rewinding to show Kensit speaking again, but this time in reverse.

Juan gripped Eric’s shoulder. “Nice work.”

“I noticed in Trono’s recording that the tech seemed to press a PLAY button on the keyboard,” Eric said. “It only stands to reason that there would be other recording commands. Given our assumption that Kensit could watch just one location at a time, it’s logical that he would have built in a feature to record everything he was watching so that he could go back and see it again in case he missed something in real time. We may not be able to see what Sentinel is watching now, but we can see what it has watched in the past.”

“It’s better than nothing. Keep going back until we see something besides us.”

Eric sped up the reverse. It ran through shots of the PIG fighting with the Ratel, Linda and the team up on the hill overlooking the cement plant, the helicopter landing, and so on. Then he slowed when it switched to a shot of a plane framed against a brilliant blue sky.

Juan’s blood went cold. The white and blue 747 was instantly recognizable as soon as he saw UNITED STATES OF AMERICA emblazoned on its fuselage.

He grabbed Trono’s phone and sprinted for the exit tunnel, yelling over his shoulder as he ran. “Stay here as long as possible and find out everything you can about what Kensit was watching.”

He didn’t wait for a response. He was nearly to the other end of the tunnel before he could get a signal to radio Gomez for immediate pickup and a dash back to the Oregon.

He had a yacht to sink.