Devil's Gate

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 Onyx reported 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 Onyx sounded 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 Rapunzel and 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 Rapunzel onto 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.