Medusa

CHAPTER 5

THE B3’S PASSENGERS WERE SEALED OFF IN A STEEL PRISON that would have defied Harry Houdini, but their images freely roamed the globe. A pair of miniature cameras mounted on the interior wall transmitted pictures of the bathysphere cabin up a fiber-optic cable to the Beebe’s mast antenna, where the signals were bounced off a roving communications satellite and instantaneously beamed to laboratories and classrooms around the world.

Thousands of miles from Bermuda, a red-and-white communications buoy bobbing in a remote section of the Pacific Ocean relayed the pictures to a dimly lit room three hundred feet below the surface. A row of glowing television screens set into the wall of the semicircular chamber displayed green-hued pictures showing schools of fish darting past the cameras like windblown confetti.

A dozen or so men and women were gathered around the only screen that did not display the sea bottom. All had their eyes glued to a blue-and-black depiction of the globe and the letters NUMA. While they watched, the logo vanished to be replaced by a shot of the B3’s cramped interior and its two passengers.

“Ya-hoo!” Lois Mitchell yelled, pumping her arm in the air. “Doc’s on his way. And he’s wearing his lucky hat.”

The others joined in her applause, then the room went silent as Max Kane began to talk, his words and mouth slightly out of synchronization. He leaned toward the camera, his eyes and cheeks bulging from lens distortion.

“Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Max Kane, director of the Bonefish Key Marine Center, broadcasting from a replica of the Beebe-Barton bathysphere.”

“Leave it to Doc to get in a plug for the lab,” said a gray-haired man seated to Lois’s right.

Kane continued. “We are in Bermudan waters, where we’re about to re-create the historical half-mile Beebe-Barton bathysphere dive made in 1934. This is the third bathysphere, so we’ve shortened its name to B3. The bathysphere’s pilot is Joe Zavala, a submersible pilot and marine engineer with the National Underwater and Marine Agency. Joe is responsible for designing the bathysphere replica.”

Zavala had rigged voice-activated controls that allowed the divers to switch camera views. His face replaced Kane’s on the screen, and he began to describe the B3’s technical innovations. Lois was only half listening, more interested in the NUMA engineer’s dark good looks than his shoptalk.

“I envy Doc,” she said without removing her gaze from Zavala’s face.

“Me too,” said the gray-haired man, a marine biologist named Frank Logan. “What a great scientific opportunity!”

Lois smiled slightly as if enjoying a private joke. Her desire to spend time in the close confines of the bathysphere with the handsome Zavala had nothing to do with science. Well, maybe biology.

The camera went back to Kane.

“Great job, Joe,” Kane said. “At this time, I’d like to say a hello and offer personal thanks to everyone who has helped make this project possible. National Geographic, the New York Zoological Society, the government of Bermuda . . . and NUMA, of course.” He put his face closer to the camera, a move that made him look like a grinning grouper. “I’d also like to give my best to all the denizens at Davy Jones’s Locker.”

The room echoed with loud whoops and applause.

Logan was a soft-spoken Midwesterner and was normally reserved, but he slapped his thigh in his excitement. “Wow!” he exclaimed. “Nice of Doc to recognize us denizens still slaving away down here in the Locker. Too bad we can’t return the favor.”

Lois said, “Technically, it’s possible but not advisable. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, this undersea lab doesn’t even exist! We’re probably just a line item in a congressional budget cleverly disguised as an order of five-hundred-dollar toilet seats for the Navy.”

A smile came to Logan’s face. “Yes, I know, but it’s still too bad we can’t offer Doc our congratulations. I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more, after all he’s done.” He sensed from the blank expression on Lois’s face that he had made a verbal gaffe, and said, “You deserve a great deal of credit, Lois. After all, your work bringing the medusa project to its near conclusion allowed Max to get away for the bathysphere dive.”

“Thanks, Frank. We all gave up our normal lives to be here.”

A soft gong echoed throughout the room, and a green light blinked over a television monitor that showed what looked like a diamond diadem against dark velvet.

“Speaking of administrative duties,” Logan said with a wry grin, “your company is about to arrive.”

Lois wrinkled her nose. “Damn. I wanted to watch the rest of Doc’s dive.”

“Bring your guest back here to watch the show,” Logan suggested.

“Oh, no! I’m getting rid of him as quickly as I can,” Lois said, rising from her chair.

Lois Mitchell was nearly six feet tall, and in her late forties she had packed a few more pounds on her frame than she would have preferred. The voluptuous figure under the baggy sweat suit didn’t live up to contemporary ideals of beauty, but artists of a bygone day would have drooled over her curves and creamy skin, and the way her thick raven hair fell to her shoulders.

She bustled from the room and descended a spiral staircase to a brightly lit passageway. The tubelike corridor connected to a small chamber occupied by two men who stood at an instrument panel facing a heavy-duty double door.

One man said, “Hi, Lois. Touchdown is in forty-five seconds.” He pointed to a television screen set into the instrument panel.

The cluster of sparkling lights displayed on the control-room monitor had materialized into a submersible vehicle slowly descending through the murk. It resembled a large utility helicopter that had been stripped of its main rotor and was powered by variable-thrust turbines on the fuselage. Two figures were silhouetted in the bubble cockpit.

The room reverberated with the hum of motors. A diagram of the lab on the control panel began to blink, indicating that the airlock doors were open. After a few moments, the display stopped blinking, signifying that the doors had closed. The floor vibrated with the thrash of powerful pumps. When the water had been expelled from the airlock, the pumps went silent, and a green light flashed over the doors. At the push of a button on the control panel, the doors opened, and a briny smell rushed out. The submersible rested in a circular domed chamber. Curtains of seawater rolled off the fuselage and swirled down gurgling drains.

A hatch slid open in the side of the submersible, and the pilot got out. The men at the control panel went to help unload cartons of supplies from a cargo space behind the cockpit.

Lois strode over and greeted the man emerging from the passenger’s side. He was a couple of inches taller than she was and wore blue jeans, sneakers, and a windbreaker and baseball cap both emblazoned with the logo of the company that provided security for the lab.

She extended her hand. “Welcome to Davy Jones’s Locker. I’m Dr. Lois Mitchell, assistant director of the lab while Dr. Kane is away.”

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” the man said in a deep-voiced Southern drawl. “My name is Phelps.”

Lois had expected to see a quasi-military type like the tough-looking guards she had glimpsed on trips to the surface ship, where lab staff could take a break from the seafloor, but Phelps looked as if he had been assembled from spare parts. His arms were too long for his body, his hands too big for his arms, his head too big for his shoulders. With his sad-looking dark eyes and large mouth accented by drooping mustache, he had a hound-dog quality about him. He wore his dark brown hair in unfashionably long sideburns.

“Did you have a pleasant shuttle ride, Mr. Phelps?”

“Couldn’t have been better, ma’am. The best part was seeing the lights on the ocean bottom. Kept thinking this must be Atlantis.”

Lois cringed inwardly at the overblown comparison to the lost city.

“Glad to hear that,” she said. “Come to my office and we’ll chat about how we can help you.”

She led the way from the airlock along another tubular passageway, then up a spiral staircase to a low-lit, circular room. Fish nosed against the room’s transparent domed ceiling, creating the illusion that the sea was pressing in.

Phelps swiveled his head in wonder. “Talk about a water view! This is unbelievable, ma’am.”

“People find it hypnotic at first, but you get used to it. This is actually Dr. Kane’s office. I’m using it while he’s away. Have a seat. And please stop calling me ma’am. It makes me feel a hundred years old. I prefer Dr. Mitchell.”

“You sure look pretty good for a hundred years old, ma’am . . . I mean, Dr. Mitchell.”

Lois cringed again, and turned up the lights in the room so that the marine life was less visible and distracting. She opened a small office refrigerator, extracted two cold bottles of spring-water, and gave one to Phelps. She settled herself behind a plastic-and-chrome desk of starkly simple design.

Phelps pulled up a chair. “I’d like to thank you for your valuable time, Dr. Mitchell. You must have lots better things to do besides talking to a boring old security guy.”

If you only knew, Lois thought. She gave her visitor a polite smile. “How can I help you, Mr. Phelps?”

“My company sent me to probe for weaknesses in the sea-lab security.”

Lois wondered what kind of an idiot had sent Phelps to waste her time. She leaned back in her chair and pointed toward the transparent ceiling.

“We’ve got three hundred feet of ocean separating us from the surface, and it’s better than any castle moat. There’s a patrol ship up there with heavily armed guards from your company, backed up, if necessary, by the on-call resources of the U.S. Navy. How could we be any more secure than that?”

Phelps furrowed his brow. “With all due respect, Dr. Mitchell, the first thing you learn in this business is that there is no security system in the world that can’t be breached.”

Lois ignored the condescending tone. “Very well, then, let’s start with a virtual tour of the facility,” she said.

She swiveled her chair and tapped a computer keyboard. A three-dimensional diagram that looked like a series of globes and connecting tubes appeared on the monitor.

“The lab consists of four large spheres, arranged in a diamond shape and connected by tubular corridors,” Lois began. “We’re at the top of the administrative pod . . . here. Below us is the crew’s quarters and mess hall.” She manipulated the cursor to highlight another globe. “There’s a control room and some labs and storage in this pod. This pod contains the small nuclear plant. Air is supplied through a water-to-oxygen setup, with backup tanks for emergencies. We’re a few hundred yards from the edge of a deepwater canyon.”

Phelps pointed to a hemispheric shape in the center of the rectangle. “Is this where the surface shuttle came in?”

“That’s right,” Lois said. “The minisubs attached to the underside of the transit module are used for specimen collection in the canyon, but they can be used to evacuate the lab, and there are escape pods available as a last resort. The shuttle airlock is connected by reinforced passageways that give the staff access from any module and contribute to the structural strength of the complex.”

“What about the fourth module?” Phelps said.

“Top secret.”

“How many folks work in the complex?”

“Sorry, top secret again. I don’t make the rules.”

“That’s okay,” Phelps said with a nod. “This is one hell of a job of engineering.”

“We’re fortunate that the Navy had the facility readily available. The lab was originally planned as an undersea observatory. The components were built on land, fully equipped, and towed out here in special barges. The barges were then rafted together, and the setup was fitted together like an old-fashioned Tinkertoy and lowered into the sea in one piece. Luckily, we’re not at great depth, and the sea bottom is fairly level. It’s what they call a turn-key operation. The complex was not meant to be permanent, so it has compressed-air capabilities that allow it to attain negative buoyancy. It could be retrieved and moved to another location.”

Phelps said, “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to see the nonrestricted areas.”

Lois Mitchell frowned, signaling that she was doing this under protest. She picked up the intercom phone and called the control room. “Hello, Frank,” she said. “This is going to take a little longer than I expected. Anything new with Doc? No? Okay, I’ll keep in touch.”

She replaced the phone with more force than was necessary, and stood to her full height. “C’mon, Mr. Phelps. This is going to be fast and furious.”

FIFTY MILES FROM Davy Jones’s Locker, the rolling surface of the dark sea erupted in an explosion of foam and spray. A twenty-foot-long aluminum tube burst from the center of the churning geyser, sped skyward at a sharp angle, leaving a white fan-shaped trail behind it, and quickly dove back toward the waves in a curving trajectory.

Within seconds, the cruise missile had leveled out, until it was traveling twenty-five feet above the wave tops, so low that its passing left a wake in the water. Powered by its solid-fuel rocket booster, the missile quickly accelerated, and by the time it had shed its rocket and the fan-jet engines had kicked in it had achieved its cruising speed of five hundred miles per hour.

A series of sophisticated guidance systems kept the cruise missile on track as unerringly as if it were being steered by a skilled pilot.

The speeding missile’s unsuspecting target was a large, gray-hulled ship anchored near the red-and-white buoy that marked the location of the undersea lab. The name on the hull was PROUD MARY, and it was registered in the Marshall Islands as a survey ship. The Proud Mary was anchored near the buoy waiting for the shuttle sub to return with Phelps.

The ship’s owner was a shadowy corporation that provided vessels to international security companies in need of naval services. They supplied everything from small, fast, and heavily armed speedboats to ships large enough to land an army of mercenaries anywhere in the world.

Assigned to protect the undersea laboratory, the Proud Mary carried two dozen guards proficient in the use of every type of small arms as well as an array of electronic sensing gear that could pick up vessels or planes approaching the lab. The ship also served as a parking garage for the shuttle that ferried supplies and people to and from the lab.

In its leap from the ocean, the cruise missile had blipped on the ship’s radar screen for only a few seconds. Inactivity had dulled the operator’s edge, and he was engrossed in a motorcycle magazine when the missile made its brief appearance, before dropping from surveillance’s view. The ship also had infrared sensors, but even if the missile had been flying at altitude they would have failed to pick up the low-temperature heat from its engines.

Undetected, the missile streaked toward the Proud Mary carrying a half ton of high explosives in its warhead.

LOIS MITCHELL AND GORDON PHELPS were making their way along the connecting tube to the control room when they heard a loud whump that seemed to come from far over their heads. She stopped in her tracks and pivoted slowly, ears cocked, concerned that it indicated a systems failure.

“I’ve never heard anything like that before,” she said. “It sounded like a truck slamming into a wall. I’d better check to make sure all the lab systems are operating as they should be.”

Phelps glanced at his watch. “From the sound of it, things seem to be moving a little ahead of schedule.”

“I’d better check the situation in the control room.”

“Good idea,” Phelps said amiably.

They started walking toward the door at the end of the passageway. A few steps from the control-room module, the door hissed open, and Frank Logan burst through. His pale face was flushed with excitement, and he was grinning.

“Lois! I was coming to get you. Did you hear that weird noise-”

Logan stopped short, his grin vanishing. Lois turned to see what he was staring at.

Phelps was holding a pistol in his hand, dangling it loosely next to his thigh.

“What’s going on?” she said. “We don’t allow weapons in the lab.”

Phelps gave her a hangdog look. “Like I said, no security system is totally foolproof. Lab’s under new management, Dr. Mitchell.”

He was still soft-spoken, but his voice had lost the obsequious quality that Lois had found so irritating and now had an edge that hadn’t been there before. Phelps told Logan to stand next to Lois so he could keep an eye on him. As Logan complied, the control-room door hissed open again, and a lab technician stepped through. Phelps instinctively brought his gun around to deal with the interruption. The lab tech froze, but Logan, seeing Phelps’s momentary distraction, tried to grab his gun.

They struggled, but Phelps was younger and stronger and would have gotten the upper hand even if the gun had not gone off. The noise was muffled to a soft putt by a silencer on the pistol barrel, but a red stain blossomed on the front of Logan’s white lab coat. His legs gave out, and he crumpled to the floor.

The lab tech bolted back into the control room. Lois ran over and knelt by Logan’s motionless body. She opened her mouth in a scream but nothing came out. “You killed him!” she finally said.

“Aw, hell,” Phelps said. “Didn’t mean to do that.”

“What did you mean to do?” Lois said.

“No time to talk about that now, ma’am.”

Lois stood up and confronted Phelps. “Are you going to shoot me too?”

“Not unless I have to, Dr. Mitchell. Don’t do anything crazy like your friend. We’d hate to lose you.”

Lois Mitchell stared defiantly at Phelps for a few seconds before she wilted under his unrelenting gaze. “What do you want?”

“For now, I want you to round up all the lab folks.”

“Then what?” she said.

Phelps shrugged. “Then we’re going for a little ride.”