had a low opinion of Congress.
Austin said, 'Oceanus has cleared away a major obstacle. I think they're about to make their move.'
Sandecker rose from his seat and glanced around the table with his cold blue eyes. 'Then it's high time we made ours/9 he said.
When Austin returned to his office, a message was waiting for him from the captain of the NUMA research vessel William Beebe, work- ing with the Danes in the Faroe Islands. Call immediately, the mes- sage said, and left a phone number.
'I thought you'd want to know,' the captain said, when Austin reached him. 'There's been an accident out here. A research vessel working with a Danish scientist named Jorgensen blew up some- how. They lost eight people, including the professor.'
Austin had forgotten about Jorgensen's plans to continue his re- search near the Oceanus plant. Now he recalled warning the profes- sor to be careful.
'Thank you, Captain,' he said. 'Any idea what caused the expio- sion :-
'The lone survivor said something about a helicopter in the area before the explosion, but she didn't make sense. She was the one who suggested that we call you, in fact. Seems she was on the boat as a guest of the professor. Name was Pia something.'
'She's a friend of mine. How is she?'
'Few broken bones, some burns. But the doctors expect that she'll pull through. Sounds like a tough lady.'
'She is. Could you give her a message?'
Of course.
'Tell her I'll be over to see her as soon as she's feeling better.' 'Will do.'
Austin thanked the captain and hung up. He stared into space, his jaw muscle working, his blue-green eyes at the topaz level on Moh's scale of hardness. He was thinking of Jorgensen's horsy smile and pia's kindness. Barker, or Toonook, or whatever his name was, had made the mistake of his life. By killing the professor and injuring Pia, he had made it personal.
30
THE SINGLE-ENGINE floatplane flew low, looking like a toy against the vastness of the Canadian wilderness. Therri Weld sat next to the pilot in the front passenger seat, where she had a good view of the ranks of sharp, pointed treetops, any one of which could have ripped the belly out of the fuselage.
The first part of the flight had been spent in white-knuckled ter- ror. Therri had not been reassured when she saw the pair of fuzzy dice hanging in the cockpit. But as the flight proceeded without a hitch, she had concluded that the pilot, an enormous, grizzled man whose name was Bear, actually seemed to know what he was doing.
'Don't get up here very often,' Bear shouted over the roar of the engine. 'Too remote for most of the 'sportsmen' who come up to go hunting and fishing. Their idea of roughing it is staying at a lodge with inside plumbing.' Bear pointed through the windshield at the featureless terrain. 'Coming up on Looking Glass Lake. It's really two lakes joined by a short connector. Locals call it the Twins, al- though one's bigger than the other. We'll drop down on the little guy
in a few minutes.'
'All I see is trees and more trees,' said Marcus Ryan, who sat be- hind the pilot.
'Yeah, bound to find trees in these parts,' Bear said, with a cheer- ful grin. He glanced over to see if Therri appreciated the joke on Ryan. She smiled gamely, but her heart wasn't in it. She would have felt far more confident if Ben Nighthawk were with them. Her calls to his apartment had gone unanswered. She'd wanted to keep trying, but Marcus had been in a hurry to get rolling.
'You can pull out if you want to,' Ryan had said. 'Chuck and I can go it alone, but we've got to move fast because the plane's wait- ing for us.' Therri barely had time to pack before Ryan picked her up. Before long, they were piling into the SOS executive jet with Chuck Mercer, the former first mate of the Sea Sentinel. With his ship on the bottom, Mercer was eager to see action.
Therri would have been more enthusiastic if she didn't think Ryan was making up his strategy as he went along. Thanks to the infor- mation from Ben, Ryan knew where to go. Ben had told him the name and location of the lake. It was Ben, too, who had given him Bear's name.
The bush pilot used to be a drug smuggler and was known to work with no questions asked, if the money was right. He hadn't even blinked when Marcus had spun a cock-and-bull tale about doing a documentary film on native culture and wanting to observe Ben's village without being seen.
Bear was usually discreet, but he had become careless living in a community where everyone was aware of his past. He'd let a few Words slip about his job for SOS while he was fueling up the plane. He could not have known that sharp ears were listening, or that un- friendly eyes were watching as his plane took off and headed into the interior.
The lake loomed up suddenly. Therri glimpsed water shimmer- ing in the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun. Seconds later, the plane dropped as if it had hit a downdraft. She felt her heart in her mouth, then the plane bottomed out and slid into a gradually angled trajectory. The floats skimmed the lake's surface a short distance be- fore the plane settled into the water and slowed.
Bear taxied close to shore. When the plane neared a sharply banked beach a few yards wide, he climbed out of the cockpit onto a float and jumped feetfirst into water up to his waist. He tied an an- chor line onto a strut, pulled the other end over his shoulder and towed the plane closer to shore. He tied up to a stump, then helped the others unload a large package and several smaller ones. They untied the largest bundle, and with the help of a CO capsule, quickly pumped up an inflatable boat about eight feet long. Bear watched with interest, hands on hips, as Ryan tested a quiet, battery-operated outboard motor.
'I'll be back tomorrow/' he said. 'You've got the radio if you need me. Watch your ass.'
The plane taxied to one end of the lake, took off and headed back the way it had come. Therri went over to where Ryan and Mercer were checking through the pack. Mercer unwrapped a block ofC-4 explosives and examined the detonators.
He smiled and said, 'Just like the old days.'
'Sure you're up for this, Chuck?'
'You're talking to the guy who sank an Icelandic whaling ship practically single-handed.'
'That was a few years ago. We're a lot older now.'
Mercer fingered a detonator. 'Doesn't take much energy to push a button,' he said. 'I owe these bastards for our ship.' Mercer had been steaming since he'd learned that Oceanus's ships were serviced at the same Shetlands boatyard where the Sea Sentinel could have been sabotaged.
'We can't forget Josh, either,' Ryan said. 'I haven't forgotten Josh. But are you sure there's no other way?' Therri said.
'I wish there were,' Ryan said. 'We've got to play hardball.'
'I'm not arguing with the need to do something, but the means. What about Ben's people? You're risking their lives.'
'We can't be diverted from our prime goal. We know from our contacts on Senator Graham's staff that Oceanus continued the trans- gendered fish experiments that were halted in New Zealand. We've got to stop this abomination before it is unleashed.'
Abomination? You're scaring me, Marcus. You're talking like a Biblical prophet.'
Ryan's face flushed, but he held his temper. 'I have no intention of making Ben's people collateral damage. Oceanus will be too busy dealing with our little gifts to do anything. In any case, we'll call the authorities as soon as we're finished here.'
'It would only take a few bursts from an automatic weapon to kill
Ben's people. Why not call in outside help now?'
'Because it would take time we don't have. We're talking search warrants and legal process. The villagers could be dead by the time the Mounties decide to investigate.' He paused. 'Remember, I tried to bring NUMA in on
