Blue Gold

Chapter 37

The night shift guard was having a cigarette at the end of the Valhalla pier when his relief man arrived and asked for a report. The swarthy ex-Marine squinted out at the sun-sparkled lake and flicked the butt into the water. "It's been busier'n a one-legged man at a kick-ass contest," he replied in an Alabama drawl. "Choppers coming and going all night."

The relief guard, a former Green Beret, looked up at the whup-whup sound of an approaching helicopter. "Looks like more guests are arriving."

"What's going on?" the Alabaman said. "I don't hear much working nights and sleeping days."

"Bunch of big shots are coming in for a meeting. We got the full crew on, and security around the compound's tight as a tick's ass." He glanced toward the lake. "There's the ol' Tahoe Queen, right on time."

He brought his binoculars up and focused on the stern wheeler as it crawled toward the north end of the lake. The Tahoe Queen looked like something out of Showboat. The boat was painted white, like vanilla frosting, with light blue trim that marked the divide between the enclosed first and second decks. Two tall black smoke stacks were located at the front. The paddle wheels that churned up the placid lake water and gave the boat its forward motion were painted fire-engine red. The top deck rail was overhung with red, white, and blue bunting. Flags fluttered in the breeze.

"Hmm," the guard said, surveying the deck. "Not many tourists aboard today."

The guard would have been less sanguine if he knew the same coral-green eyes that had scrutinized him the day before from the parasail were watching him again. Austin stood inside the pilothouse that was perched like a cigar box on the top for ward deck. He was studying the guards and assessing their state of alertness. Austin could see that the men were armed, but their lackadaisical posture suggested a bored attitude.

The boat's captain, a weathered lake veteran from Emerald Bay, was at the helm. "Want me to drop the Queen's speed down a couple of knots?" the captain asked.

The paddle wheeler was a charming anachronism built more for comfort than for speed. Any slower and it would stop, Austin thought. "I'd keep it steady, captain. Launch shouldn't be a problem." He checked out the pier again and saw that one of the guards was leaving and the other ducked into the shade of a shelter. Austin hoped the man would take a nap.

He extended his hand. "Thanks for your cooperation, captain. Hope we didn't disappoint your regular customers by chartering your boat at the last minute."

"I just drive this old girl back and forth no matter who's on it. Besides, this is a lot more exciting than a boatload of day trippers."

The captain's excitement had come at a price. The boat line was reluctant to lose a day's revenue, and it took deep pockets and high-level calls from Washington to persuade it to charter the paddle wheeler for official business.

"Glad to help make your day," Austin said. "Got to go. Just keep steaming after you drop us off."

"How will you get back?"

"We're working on that," Austin said with a grin.

Austin left the pilothouse and descended to the spacious salon on the lowest deck. On a normal day the salon would be crowded with tourists eating and drinking as they took in the magnificent scenery. Only two people were in the salon, Joe and

Paul. Zavala was already in his black-hooded Viking Pro military dry suit, and Trout was going over a checklist. Austin lost no time suiting up. Then he and Zavala went through an opening in the side of the boat that was used to let passengers on and off.

They would have stepped directly into the lake if not for a wooden platform slung alongside the stern wheeler. The raft floated on ocean salvage tubes, elongated pontoons made of tough nylon fabric and capable of lifting several tons of weight. The assembly had been cobbled together in the late hours of the morning. Contos was on the raft making sure they hadn't made any major mistakes in hastily putting the thing together.

"How's she look?" Austin said.

"Not quite as good as the one Huckleberry Finn used on the Mississippi," Contos said with a shake of his head. "But she'll do in a pinch, I think."

"Thanks for your unqualified endorsement of our building skills," Zavala said.

As he stepped off the raft, Contos rolled his eyes. "Look guys, please try not to lose the SeaBus. It's tough as hell to run a test program without something to test."

Without its protective covering, the SeaBus looked like a fat plastic sausage. It was a small workhorse version of a tourist sub working in Florida, designed to take crews to and from underwater jobs of moderate depth. It carried up to six passengers and their gear in a transparent pressure hull of acrylic plastic. The hull rested on fat, round skids that carried the hard ballast, trim, drop weights, and thrusters. Higher on the sides were additional ballast tanks and compressed air containers. The external structures were attached to the pressure hull by a tough ring frame. The two-seat cockpit was at the front. In the aft section was the electrical, hydraulic, and mechanical heart of the sub and an air lock that allowed divers to go in and out while the SeaBus was submerged.

Trout stuck his head out of the stern wheeler. "We're coming up on target," he said, checking his watch. "Three minutes to launch."

"We're as ready as we'll ever be," Austin said. "How about you, Paul?"

"Finest kind, cap," he said with a lopsided grin.

Trout was far from fine. Despite his stolid Yankee facade, he was worried about Gamay and desperately wanted to go on the mission. He knew that with his bad arm he would just get in the way. Austin convinced Trout that they needed someone with a level head above water to call in the troops in case the situation got dicey.

A crane had been brought in to lift the submersible from the truck onto the raft. The stern wheeler left early in the morning before the waterfront got busy. The boat hunkered offshore until it was time to make its usual crossing. Even with its heavy load the raft pitched and yawed as it was towed along. Austin and Zavala had to brace themselves as they knelt at the rear, each man above one of the lift bags. On signal they simultaneously stabbed the rubber pontoons with their dive knives. The air shot out in a loud hiss that rapidly turned to a flatulent bubbling. Squeezed between the water and the raft, the pontoons rapidly deflated. As the back of the raft settled into the water, they un hooked the tie lines securing the SeaBus. Then they scrambled through the aft hatch, made sure all was tight, and settled into the cockpit.

The front of the raft tilted upward at an angle. Then, as the lift bags deflated, it leveled out and began to sink. It was a primitive launching system for such a sophisticated craft, but it worked. The SeaBus maintained its buoyancy as the raft sank and was pulled out by the forward motion of the paddle wheeler. The submersible danced in the larger boat's wake and sank into the foam kicked up by the stern paddles. As they gained depth the water changed from blue-green to blue-black.

Austin adjusted the ballast, and the sub attained neutral buoyancy at fifty feet. The battery-driven motors whined as Zavala goosed the throttle and pointed the submersible toward shore. They were lucky to have no current pushing against the round, almost blunt bow of the submersible and could keep it at a steady ten knots. Within half an hour they had covered the five miles to land.

As Zavala steered, Austin consulted the sonar screen. The rocky shore continued its vertical drop into the water for more than a hundred feet before jutting out in a wide ledge. The sonar picked up an extremely large object resting on the ledge directly under the floating pier. Moments later they looked up and saw the long shape of the pier and its floats silhouetted against the shimmer of surface light. Austin hoped his earlier assessment was correct, that the guard was too numb from boredom to notice any disturbance the submersible might cause. Zavala took the SeaBus down in a shallow spiral while Austin alternated between radar and visual checks.

"Level out. Fast," Austin said.

Zavala responded instantly, and the submersible circled like a hungry shark.

"Were we getting too close to the ledge?"

"Not exactly. Take her out and go down another fifty feet."

The SeaBus moved away from the shore and spun around so they were facing a ledge.

"Madre de Dios," Zavala said. "Last time I knew, the Astrodome was still in Texas."

"I doubt you'll find any Dallas Cowgirls inside that thing," Austin said.

"It's similar to the one that went ka-pop in the Baja. Hate to admit it, but you were right as usual."

"Just lucky."

"I don't know how lucky you are. We've got to get inside that thing."

"There's no time like the present. I suggest we take a look at the underside."

With a nod of his head, Zavala cranked up the throttle and put the SeaBus into a glide that took them directly under the massive structure. The surface was made of a translucent green material that emitted a dull glow. Zavala's hyperbole not with standing, the facility would have been an impressive engineering

feat even on dry land. Like the Baja operation, this structure also rested on four cylindrical legs around the perimeter.

"There are openings in the outside legs," Austin said. "Probably like the ones in Mexico, used for intake and exhaust."

Zavala brought the submersible in close to a fifth support at the very center of the structure. He switched on the sub's twin spotlights. "No duct openings. Hello. What have we here?" He nudged the SeaBus closer to an oval depression in the otherwise smooth surface of the support. "Looks like a door. Still no welcome mat, though."

"Maybe they forgot it," Austin said. "What say we park the bus and pay a neighborly social call?"

Zavala dropped the SeaBus lightly onto the ledge next to the support leg. They pulled on their air tanks and the headsets for their Divelink communicators. Austin tucked his big Bowen and some spare ammunition into a waterproof fanny pack. The pack held a 9mm Glock to replace the machine pistol Zavala lost in Alaska.

Austin crawled into the snug airlock first, flooded the chamber, then opened the outer hatch. Minutes later, Zavala joined him outside the SeaBus. They swam to the support leg and rose up the thick cylinder, where they hung on to hand bars on either side of the door. To the right of the tight seam was a panel. En cased in clear plastic were two large buttons, one red and the other green. The green one was glowing.

They hesitated.

"She might be connected to an alarm," Zavala said, echoing Austin's own thoughts.

"I was wondering the same thing. But why would they bother? The neighborhood around here isn't exactly swarming with burglars."

"We don't have a lot of choice," Zavala said. "Go for it."

Austin pushed against the glowing button. If an alarm went off, they didn't hear it. A section in the support leg slid silently aside to reveal an opening shaped like a mouth wide open in a yawn. Zavala gave Austin the okay sign and swam in first.

Austin was right on his fins. They were in a chamber shaped like the inside of a hat box. A metal ladder hung down from the ceiling. On the wall was a duplicate of the switch that opened the door. Austin pushed the glowing green button. He accidentally nudged the pack with their weapons, and it fell through the opening in the air lock.

"Forget it," he said, anticipating Zavala's question. "We don't have time."

The outer door closed, and a ring of lights flicked on inside. The chamber was quickly pumped dry, and a circular hatch popped open in the ceiling. Still no sign that their presence had been noted. All was quiet except for the hum of distant machinery.

Austin pulled himself up the ladder and poked his head through the hatch. Then he motioned for Zavala to follow and climbed the rest of the way. They were in another, larger circular room. Several dark green dry suits hung from the wall. Air tanks were stacked on shelves. A large cabinet held various specialized tools.

Austin removed his headset, mask, and tank and picked up a long-handled brush with stiff steel bristles. "They must use this stuff to clean the intake ports out there. The openings would get clogged up with algae otherwise."

Zavala went over to a door in the curving wall and pointed to another red-green switch. "I'm beginning to feel like a monkey in one of those intelligence tests where the chimp presses a button for food."

"Not me," Austin said. "A chimp would be too smart to be in a place like this."

On Austin's signal, he hit the green button. The door opened, and they stepped into a room with four walls. The room contained shower stalls and shelves. Austin removed a plastic wrapped packet from a shelf and opened it. Inside was a white two-piece suit made of a light synthetic material. Without further conversation they got out of their dry suits and quickly pulled the white uniforms over their thermal underwear. Austin's distinctive silver-platinum hair made him stand out from the crowd, so he was glad to see that each packet held a tight-fitting plastic cap.

"How do I look?" he said, aware that the suit wasn't made to accommodate his wide shoulders.

"Like a large and unsavory white mushroom."

"Exactly the image I was trying for. Let's go."

They were in a cavernous chamber with a high, curving roof. Pipes and conduits of varying widths crossed the space. The hum they heard earlier was so loud it almost hurt their ears. The sound seemed to be coming from everywhere.

"Bingo," Austin murmured softly.

Zavala said, "Reminds me of a scene from that movie, Alien. "

"I wish these were aliens," Austin said.

A white-clad figure unexpectedly emerged from behind a fat vertical duct. They tensed and groped for their missing weapons, but the technician, who was carrying a portable gauge, hardly gave them a glance before disappearing into the maze. The huge room had two levels divided from each other by metal scaffolding and catwalks. They decided to climb above the main floor, where they would have a better view of the entire facility and have less chance of running into other technicians. They ascended the nearest stairs and made their way toward the center. The technicians below were intent on their work, and no one looked up. From their elevation the facility was even more impressive. It looked like a futuristic hive filled with drones.

"We could spend all day searching this place," Austin said. "Let's see if we can find a guide."

They descended stairs that took them back onto the main floor and hid behind a large pipe. Standing before a large console were three technicians. The figures had their backs turned, obviously engrossed in their task.

Two technicians moved off, leaving the third alone. With a quick glance to make sure he was unobserved, Austin swiftly closed on the unsuspecting figure and hooked his thick arm around the person's throat.

"Don't make a sound, or I'll snap your neck," he growled, then dragged his catch back behind the pipe. "Meet our new guide," he said.

Zavala stared at the technician. "We've already met."

Austin spun the technician around. Francesca. The terror in her face turned to relief. "What are you doing here?"

The pleasure at seeing Francesca overcame Austin's surprise. "We had a date, remember?" he said with a grin. "Time and place to be announced."

Francesca smiled through her nervousness. Calmer now, she glanced around and said, "We can't stay here. Follow me."

They wound their way through the labyrinth into a small room furnished with a plain plastic desk and chair. "I asked for this space so I could work quietly. We'll be safe for a few minutes. If anyone comes, pretend you know what you're doing." She shook her head in wonder. "How in God's name did you get in here?"

"We took the bus," Austin said. "Where's Gamay?"

"This is the desalting facility. She's in the main compound. They have her in a heavily guarded cell on the first level."

"How do we get there?"

"I'll show you. There's an elevator that takes you from the lab. It goes to a tram. The car goes through a tunnel to the main compound. Then an elevator will take you up to her level. Do you think you can rescue her?"

"We won't know until we try," Zavala said with a slight smile.

"It will be very dangerous. You may have a chance, though. The guards are preoccupied. There's some kind of meeting planned. You must move quickly before people start coming here."

"What kind of meeting?" Zavala asked.

"I don't know, only that it's extremely important. I have to have this facility up and working by then, or they'll kill Gamay."

She glanced out of the office to see if the coast was clear. Then she led them to the elevator. Austin thought that she looked exhausted. There were black circles under her red-rimmed eyes. She wished them well and disappeared into the network of pipes.

Wasting no time, they stepped into a strange egg-shaped elevator. The elevator rose through the water to the tram room Francesca had described. They got aboard the tram car and sped along the tunnel to its terminus. From the tram room they stepped into a passageway. The elevator door was a few paces away. The light over the door indicated that the elevator was moving down.

"Do we go naughty or nice?" Zavala asked.

"See if nice works."

The door opened, and a guard stepped out. A machine pistol was slung from his shoulder. He looked at Zavala suspiciously, then at Austin.

"Pardon me," Zavala said politely. "Could you tell us where to find the woman from NUMA? Can't miss her. Tall with red hair."

The guard began to raise his machine pistol. The move brought Austin's ham-sized right fist crashing into the man's midsection. He made a sound like a deflating balloon, and his legs went limp.

"I thought we were going to try nice," Zavala said.

"That was nice," Austin replied. He grabbed the man's arms, and with Zavala holding the feet, they dragged the guard into the elevator. Zavala brought the elevator halfway to the next floor and locked it in place. Austin kneeled and lightly patted the guard's cheek. The man's eyes rolled, then popped wide open when he saw Austin's face.

"We're feeling generous today. You get a second chance. Where's the woman?"

The guard shook his head. Austin wasn't in the mood for stalling. He brought the gun muzzle to the bridge of the guard's nose, so close that the man looked cross-eyed at it.

"I'm not going to waste any time," Austin said quietly. "We know she's on the first level. If you don't tell us where she is, we'll find someone who can. Understand?"

The guard nodded.

"Good," Austin said. He pulled the man to a standing position by the scruff of his neck, and Zavala hit the button for the next floor. Nobody was waiting for the elevator. They pushed the guard out into the deserted hall.

"What's the security like ahead?"

The guard shrugged. "Most of the guards are upstairs taking care of the big shots coming in for the meeting."

Austin was curious about the purpose of the meeting and who the VIPs were, but he was more concerned about Gamay. He stuck the gun in the guard's ribs. "Fetch," he said.

The guard reluctantly led the way down a corridor and stopped in front of a door with a keypad lock. He hesitated, wondering if he could stall by saying he didn't know the combination, but one look at the thunder and lightning on Austin's brow told him he'd better not try. He punched out the code, and the door opened. The room was empty.

"This is her room," the guard said. He looked worried.

They pushed him inside and looked around. The small room was evidently used as a cell because it could only be opened from the outside. Zavala went over to the bed, plucked some thing off the pillow, and grinned.

"She was here." The dark red strand he held in his fingers was unmistakably Gamay's.

Austin turned back to the guard. "Where did they take her?"

"I don't know," the guard answered sullenly.

"Make believe that the next thing you say may be your last words, and think very carefully about it."

The guard knew that Austin would shoot him without hesitation.

"I'm not protecting those creeps," he said.

"What are you talking about?"

"The Kradzik brothers. They had her taken to the Great Hall."

"Who are these guys?"

"Couple of killers who do the boss's dirty work," he said with obvious disgust.

"Tell us how to get there."

The guard gave them the directions. Austin told him to expect a return visit if he sent them on a wild goose chase. They left him in the room and locked the door, then bolted down the hall to the elevator. They didn't know who the Kradzik brothers were, and they didn't care. One thing they could be certain of. Whatever was planned for Gamay couldn't be good.