The Reply

CHAPTER 34

“No survivors,” Zandra said, throwing down the faxed computer imagery in front of Duncan. “Nothing but wreckage at all the crash sites. The Chinese are already all over the area where one of the Stealth fighters went down.”

Duncan picked up the photos taken by the KH-14 spy satellite and looked through them.

She paused at one of the photos and looked more closely. Her hand began to shake as she realized what she was seeing. “Somebody’s still alive. Either Turcotte or Nabinger.”

Zandra’s head snapped up from her computer. “How do you know that?” Duncan tossed the imagery onto the keyboard. “Look.”

“What exactly am I looking for?”

Duncan pointed. “Someone’s traced out the same Airlia high rune symbol for HELP that’s written into the Great Wall, using pieces of the wreckage. We have to get them out of there. And we have to do it without the Chinese or the foo fighters stopping us.”

Zandra nodded. “It is time to confront our enemies.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Duncan demanded.

“It means we no longer stand and watch.”

“We being STAAR?” Duncan asked.

“Correct. Things have progressed past the point of no return.”

“And?” Duncan was out of her patience with her enigmatic comrade. “Do you have a way of getting those people out of China?”

“Actually, I have just the thing,” Zandra said.

Larry Kincaid was all alone in the control center. JPL was a ghost town, everyone anticipating the arrival of the Airlia in New York the following morning. It was as if decades of work at JPL had faded away in just a couple of days.

He heard the door behind him open and slowly swing shut. Kincaid was not surprised when Coridan, still wearing sunglasses and black clothes, took the seat next to him.

“Surveyor in a stable orbit?” Coridan asked.

“Yes.” Kincaid didn’t ask how the man had come up with calculations that would have taken his own scientists and computers days to figure out.

“Is it still powered down?” Coridan asked.

Kincaid nodded.

“There’s something you need to do,” Coridan said.

Kincaid waited.

“Bring up the data link for Surveyor, please.” Kincaid finally broke his silence. “Why?” “Because we’re going to take care of some unfinished business.”

In the South Atlantic a U.S. Navy carrier task force headed by the supercarrier USS John C. Stennis was steaming due south toward Antarctica at flank speed. They had the location of Scorpion Base plotted, and the operations officer was busy figuring when would be the earliest the ship would be in range to launch aircraft to make it to that location and back.

In the other major ocean, the U.S. Navy was deploying its Pacific Fleet in two areas: half heading toward Easter Island, the other half heading for the spot in the ocean under which lay the foo fighter base.

Just above the foo fighter base the crew of the Greywolf huddled together, trying to draw warmth from each other’s bodies. They were still slowly descending, but after knowing what had happened to the Pasadena there were no more complaints from Emory.

Three thousand meters above the submersible, the two surviving Los Angeles-class submarines also waited, running silent and powered down, biding their time, the crews full of thoughts of revenge but without a clue as to how to wreak that revenge without suffering the same fate as their sister ship.