Piranha

33

At the turn of the twentieth century, a dozen or more cargo ships would have been anchored where the Oregon now sat motionless, the only large vessel in sight. Although Saint-Pierre’s harbor teemed with pleasure craft and sailboats, her days as a commercial and cultural jewel of the Caribbean ended the day Mt. Pelée erupted. The bustling city of thirty thousand had been rebuilt over the following decades with charming red-roofed cottages and stone churches, but its population had never topped five thousand since that fateful day.

Max Hanley couldn’t blame residents for being reluctant to return. Not only did the now dormant volcano still loom over the town but Saint-Pierre had suffered catastrophe before the eruption. During the high-speed cruise from the Dominican Republic, Max found out that Saint-Pierre had been destroyed more than a century earlier by the twenty-five-foot storm surge of the Great Hurricane of 1780, the deadliest in Atlantic history. Over nine thousand citizens died in that disaster.

Nothing seemed to threaten the town today except the squall that was churning up waves in the harbor and pelting the town with rain. Mt. Pelée’s silent peak, its slopes lush with the vegetation that had rushed back from its fertile soil, was veiled in gray clouds, but blue skies were forecast for the afternoon.

As dawn lightened the leaden sky, Max watched the local harbormaster return to shore in his tiny launch. Normally, Juan handled the local constabulary, but this time it had been up to Max and he thought he’d done a pretty decent job convincing the harbormaster that the Oregon’s crew was going to enjoy the scenery while they waited for their cargo to arrive at their berth in Fort-de-France.

In actuality, the Oregon’s crew had already been hard at work for two hours exploring the wreckage of the Roraima, acting as fast as they could while they had the dive site to themselves. Once the squall ceased, they’d have to suspend operations so they wouldn’t arouse suspicion from the recreational scuba tours that would begin diving on the wreck in the afternoon.

Max took the stairs down to the moon pool, which was buzzing with activity. The latest group of divers was just surfacing through the keel doors. Mike Trono removed his mask and climbed out.

“Any luck?” Max said.

Mike shook his head and began to peel off his wetsuit. “The decks on the Roraima were all wooden. They rotted away years ago and collapsed. A lot of it was either destroyed by the volcano blast or crushed when the superstructure caved in. All that’s left now is the steel frame and that’s full of holes. Portions of the hull could collapse on us, if we’re not careful. We’re still looking through the section of the ship where Perlmutter told us the cabins would have been, but there’s been a ton of coral growth over the last century so it’s a slow search. The box could be buried in ten feet of debris.”

Max smiled. “On the bright side, that means it might be intact. No hits on the Geiger counter?”

When Juan had mentioned that Lutzen’s work had been about radioactivity, Max checked his history books and found out that radiation had been discovered only seven years before the eruption on Martinique, so it would have been a relatively new science at the time. If Lutzen had brought something radioactive with him and it was still with his belongings, detecting it might lead them to the photos. The Oregon was equipped with two Geiger counters, so Max sent one of them down with the divers, who were scouring the sturdier parts of the ship.

“Not a blip,” Mike said. “If anything radioactive is buried down there, the radiation might not be able to penetrate the debris.”

“Normally, that would be a good thing, but not in our case. Get something to eat before your next dive.” Mike looked like he could use some shut-eye, too, since they’d been planning the op on the sprint here so they’d be ready to dive as soon as they arrived. “And maybe a nap.”

“In that order,” Mike agreed, and lurched toward the mess hall.

Max went to the op center, where Hali flagged him down.

“We got a hit on the Chairman’s assassin,” he said. “The CIA was very helpful.”

“Finally some good news,” Max replied.

Before the explosion went off in New York, Juan’s glasses had been recording while he was looking down at the bomber. He sent the video to Max, who recognized the man immediately as the same person who’d attacked Reed’s fishing charter. The guy definitely got around. Identifying him had been Hali’s top priority ever since.

“Who is that unmasked man?” Max asked.

Hali handed him a printout with the key info. “He’s a mercenary named Hector Bazin, a Haitian like all the others who tried to kill us in Jamaica. Former French Foreign Legion commando. Trains his own private security force now from a base somewhere outside Port-au-Prince. That’s why they had both the skills and resources for an assassination attempt.”

“Would he be the one tapping our communications?”

Hali pursed his lips in frustration. “I still don’t even know how they’re doing it, let alone who is doing it. We’ve got the most secure comm system possible. The NSA would have trouble breaking our encryption.”

“Bazin is just the muscle” came a comment from across the room. Murph didn’t even look up from his screen or take his hands off the joysticks he was manipulating. “Kensit has got to be the brains behind this.”

“Email the info about Hector Bazin to Juan.”

“Even if it could be intercepted?”

“If you got the info from the CIA, then Bazin might already know he’s been compromised. I don’t want Juan doing whatever he’s doing completely blind. At least he’ll know what he’s up against.” Max walked over to Murph. “Did you ever meet Kensit while you were working for the DoD?”

“No, but I heard about him. Everybody in weapons research did. Off-the-charts smart, but a real oddball.” Murph looked away for the first time. “I wonder if they say the same about me now.”

“Would it make you feel better if they did?”

“Probably.”

“Then I’m sure they do. Now, do you have any theories about what this Moriarty’s secret surveillance weapon is, Sherlock? Bazin’s appearance in Manhattan just when Juan was paying that translator a visit couldn’t be a coincidence.”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“No.”

“He knows everything we’re doing.”

Max rolled his eyes. “Well, that part’s obvious.”

“Which means he is able to hear what we’re saying.”

“You mean when we’re on the phone?”

“Possibly. But that doesn’t explain how he knew where we’d be in Jamaica. The only time we discussed that was on board the Oregon.”

“Oh, come on! You mean Kensit has the Oregon bugged?”

“When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

“We’ve swept the ship three times. No listening devices.”

“Talk to Arthur Conan Doyle, not me,” Murph said.

“In any case, I’m glad Juan didn’t tell us where he’s going. It’s time for us to get a leg up on Lawrence Kensit.”

“We’re still not done searching here.”

“Have you seen anything?”

Murph rubbed his eyes. He’d been going for three hours straight without a break. “Except for a few broken teacups and a pair of eyeglasses, nothing.”

He was piloting the smallest remotely operated vehicle they had on the Oregon, the ROV called Little Geek. Murph was using it to explore the parts of the ship that were too dangerous for the divers to search.

An umbilical fed the video signal back to the Oregon. Even at a depth of one hundred and fifty feet, the vibrant colors illuminated by the ROV’s lights were astonishing. Sea whips, urchins, sponges, butterfly fish, triggerfish, and a host of other sea creatures had taken up residence on the artificial reef. More than a hundred years of exposure to the warm seawater had rusted holes in the steel where it hadn’t been covered by coral. The only traces of humanity that remained untarnished were the occasional ceramic or glass object, both materials that were impervious to the corrosive effects of saline.

Max thought Perlmutter’s assertion that a photo container could still be intact was dubious at best. Their only hope was that the glass photo plates had been stored in tins with a zinc layer sufficiently oxidized to prevent the underlying metal from disintegrating.

Max watched as Murph steered the ROV through a tight cavity with little expectation of finding anything useful. He hoped Juan’s end of the search would yield actionable data. He just wished he had a clue what Juan was looking for.

“Huh,” Murph said, which got Max’s attention.

“Did you see something?”

“A dull reflection. Let me back up.”

He edged the ROV backward and turned it to the left. The camera panned across a zigzag crisscross of thin metal that was covered with green algae. Below it was the glint of glass in the shine of the LEDs.

“Something about that looks familiar,” Murph said.

“I know what you mean. See if you can clear away some of the debris.”

Murph used the ROV’s small manipulator arm to pull away an encrusted piece of steel.

The needle on the Geiger counter jumped.

“Winner, winner, chicken dinner,” Max said, and laughed. “Perlmutter came through for us.”

They waited for the swirling debris to settle and saw that more of the glass had been uncovered, enough to identify it.

“That’s a lens,” Murph said.

“Perfectly circular and convex. Like one you might find in, say, a turn-of-the-century camera?”

Murph traced the zigzag outline of the metal next to it with his finger on the screen. “That’s the collapsible articulation frame for a high-end camera of the time. You know, the thing they would use to move the lens in and out of the box? The canvas accordion material must have rotted away decades ago.”

“There couldn’t have been too many passengers with a camera like that one in 1902.”

Murph rotated the ROV around the cavity. Three shattered glass jars lay in one corner. The needle on the Geiger counter moved again. Not enough radioactivity to be harmful but more than would be expected from natural background radiation.

“You said Gunther Lutzen developed his own photos in his cabin. Those look like chemical jars that would hold developing fluids.”

The rest of the room was buried under debris. If they were going to see what else was there, they’d have to go through it by hand.

“I think we’ve found our spot,” Max said. “Now we have to dig it out.”

As soon as David Pasquet stopped the truck next to the isolated dock on the south end of Saint-Pierre, men poured from the back and began unloading the plastic shipping barrels stacked inside. The scuba equipment would come last.

Pasquet might have missed his targets when he was sniping the Oregon in Montego Bay, but he vowed to make up for the embarrassment with this mission. Bazin had put faith in him to carry it out and Pasquet had no intention of letting his mentor down.

Like most of Bazin’s officers, Pasquet had received some of his training overseas before returning to Haiti. In his case, it was with the French Navy. The grunts were all locally recruited and trained in Haiti, with the understanding that they were to be completely loyal to Bazin. If there was any hint of betrayal, their entire families would be wiped out. Although most of the men didn’t need such incentives because the money was so good, examples had to be made from time to time.

This mission had been hastily planned the minute the Doctor had learned about the possibility that evidence of the Oz facility might still be inside the sunken Roraima. Pasquet could see the Oregon already anchored in the distance not far from where his map showed the Roraima to be.

On the ocean, they were no match for the weaponry aboard such a ship, which was why an improvised solution had to be conceived. With the Doctor’s unmatched surveillance skills, the plan had come together quite nicely.

After arriving in Martinique on the second private jet at the disposal of Bazin’s company, they proceeded to a warehouse in Fort-de-France, where they stole twenty empty shipping barrels, plastic ones used to transport coffee and sugar. Then they raided a warehouse used by a company that was about to start drilling a new road tunnel through the southern part of the island.

Their last stop was at the dock of Vue Sous Tours. Tied up alongside the dock was the company’s pride and joy, a white SC-30 diesel-electric passenger submarine. The unique design was perfect for Pasquet’s purposes.

On most days, the sub was used to carry thirty tourists around Saint-Pierre Harbor so they could look at the dozen or so wrecks without so much as getting their feet wet. The main, tube-shaped cabin where the sub’s passengers sat was perched atop twin flat-topped pontoons like a catamaran, with a large platform at the back that could host parties when the sub was on the surface. The pontoons were flared at the front and back, reminiscent of a Formula 1 race car down to the blue racing stripes that flowed along the fins.

Passengers sat facing the large windows on either side while the sub was piloted from the large glass bubble at the front. Unlike most pleasure subs that needed to be towed to their observation spots before being powered by batteries for the limited underwater portion, the SC-30’s diesel engines let it motor out to the wrecks under its own power before diving.

As he dismounted the truck and put up his slicker’s hood, Pasquet got a text that the jet had landed on the island of Dominica twenty miles to the north in preparation for their operation. Given how messy the operation was going to be, taking off from Martinique would be a problem once the mission was over. The safer solution was to steal a speedboat and take it to Dominica, where leaving the island by air would be considerably easier.

Two men were inside the submarine swabbing the deck in preparation for the day’s tourists, the earliest arriving in fifteen minutes. Both of them wore white uniforms with epaulettes, the better to impress upon visitors that this was a professional operation.

The older of the two, who Pasquet recognized from the website as the owner and captain of the sub, set aside his mop when he saw half a dozen men unloading a truck by his dock. He put on a rain jacket and ducked through the hatch. His crewman followed suit. Pasquet smiled as they approached.

“Bonjour, Capitaine Batiste,” he said, and continued in French. “We are interested in using your vessel.”

“I’m sorry,” Batiste replied, “but we are fully booked today. And with the seas this choppy, we will have to postpone our first trip.”

“What a shame. No matter. We will take it anyway.”

Pasquet drew a pistol and pointed it at the captain, who automatically raised his arms. He was alarmed, but the old seadog wasn’t terrified. His crewman, however, was shaking so badly that Pasquet thought he might throw up.

“What do you want?” Batiste said.

“I told you, we want your sub. And you’re going to pilot it for us.”

Batiste eyed the heavy plastic barrels that Pasquet’s men were rolling onto the rear deck and pontoons of the sub. “What if I don’t?”

“I will kill this quivering excuse of a man.”

Batiste’s implacable façade crumbled. “Please, don’t! He is my son.”

“Then do as I say and no one will be harmed.” He turned to one of his men. “Take them inside. Make Batiste tie up and blindfold his son.”

Pasquet supervised the placement of the barrels, distributing them evenly, before lashing them down. He had the last one taken inside the sub. He opened it and inspected some of the dynamite that had been destined for the tunnel project. The detonator on top was preset for sixty minutes, as were all the detonators in the other barrels. At the press of a button in his pocket, all would begin counting down.

His men carried scuba gear onto the sub’s pontoons. They would be staying on the deck during the underwater cruise to tip the barrels over the side when it was hovering over the wreckage of the Roraima. All of them had the latest bone conduction headphones that could receive their vocalizations even with masks and regulators on. The transmissions were sent ultrasonically through the water to headsets attached to the straps of their masks.

“Bring me Batiste,” Pasquet said to one of the men.

Pasquet showed him the barrel and the contents inside.

“This dynamite will be inside the sub with you and your son.” Pasquet held up a device that he clamped to the submarine’s hull with a magnet. “This is an acoustic transceiver that uses the metal as a speaker. I will remain outside on the sub’s pontoon broadcasting my instructions to you as you pilot the sub. If you deviate from my directions in any way, we will simply swim away and set off the explosives. Do you understand?”

Batiste nodded numbly, and was taken back to the cockpit. Pasquet closed the barrel.

In reality, Pasquet had no way to remotely detonate the explosives once they were submerged. Radio waves couldn’t travel underwater and he had no other way of broadcasting to the detonators, making the risk of a synchronized timer necessary. The barrels would be dumped all over the shipwreck, with the resulting simultaneous explosions reducing it to a jumble of steel that would take weeks to dig through and destroying any evidence of the Sentinel project that might lay within.

After all the barrels had been scattered on the Roraima, Pasquet would have Batiste settle the sub on the bottom. Pasquet had a small explosive charge that he’d stick to a window, blowing it out. The crew of the Oregon would attempt to rescue the drowning hostages while he and his men swam away. The barrel inside the sub would then explode a few minutes later along with the others, ripping the sub apart. It would be a perfect distraction for their getaway.

A tour bus stopped next to the truck. Pasquet smiled. Just who he was waiting for. Two hostages certainly wouldn’t be enough if the crew of the Oregon decided to turn their weaponry on him and his men. Although the people of the Corporation called themselves mercenaries, Pasquet knew they wouldn’t harm civilians, which made his job that much easier.

He went outside to watch twenty tourists pile off the bus. The tour guide got out of the driver’s seat and Pasquet waved him over.

“Where’s Captain Batiste?” the guide asked.

“He’s inside the sub getting everything ready,” Pasquet replied with a grin. “We have a very special trip in store for you and your guests today.”

Pasquet mentally calculated how long it would take to tie up and blindfold the tourists and then motor out to the wreck. He didn’t want to leave much slack time after they dumped the barrels. He thought now should be about right to start the timer sequence.

He clicked the button in his pocket. Simultaneously, the bombs in all twenty barrels began their countdown. Sixty minutes to detonation.