Medusa

with his heel. He barked an order to his men, who had emerged from the shuttle carrying wooden boxes in their arms. They stacked the boxes near the console and then returned to the cargo hold for more.

Printed on the boxes in big bold red letters was

HANDLE WITH CARE EXPLOSIVES

Phelps rapped the top of a box with his knuckles.

“What’s going on with the firecrackers, Chang?” he asked.

“It’s fairly obvious,” Chang said. “You’re going to use your expertise with explosives to blow up the lab. It has fulfilled its function.”

Phelps poked at the smashed electrical circuits with the toe of his boot.

“One problem,” he said. “How are the scientists going to get off the lab with the minisubs disabled?”

“The scientists have fulfilled their function. They’ll stay with the lab.”

Phelps stepped in front of Chang and faced off.

“You hired me to hijack the lab,” Phelps said. “Killing a bunch of innocent people wasn’t in my job description.”

“Then you won’t prepare the explosives?” Chang asked.

Phelps wagged his head.

“That’s right,” he said. “You can count me out of this deal.”

Chang stretched his liverish lips in a death’s-head grin.

“Very well then, Mr. Phelps. You’re fired.”

Chang’s hand reached down to his holster and, in a lightning move, drew his pistol and shot Phelps point-blank in the chest. The impact at such close range threw Phelps backward, and he crashed to the floor. Chang gazed at Phelps’s twitching body with the expression of a craftsman who considered his job well done. He ordered one of his men to prepare the explosives, and then he charged off. Dr. Wu followed a few paces behind.

Chang burst into the mess hall, and his jade-green gaze fell on Joe Zavala and Lois Mitchell, who were tied to their chairs and sat back-to-back under the watchful eye of the same hard-faced guards who had come down with Phelps. Chang leaned close to Zavala.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“You’ve got a short memory,” Zavala said. “We met on the Beebe. You left with your tail between your legs while Kurt Austin and I entertained your friends.”

“Of course,” Chang said. “You’re the NUMA engineer. My men deserved their fate. We won’t be so careless next time. How did you find us?”

“One of our planes flew over the atoll and saw something suspicious.”

“You’re lying!” Chang grabbed the front of Zavala’s shirt. “I don’t like being taken for a fool. If that were the case, planes and ships would be swarming around the atoll. My observers report that all is peaceful.”

“Maybe it’s what you don’t see that you should worry about,” Zavala said.

“Tell me how you found us.”

“Okay, I confess. A little bird told me.”

Chang backhanded Zavala across the jaw.

“What else did your little bird tell you?” Chang asked.

“He told me that you are going to die,” Zavala burbled through bloody lips.

“No, my friend, it is you who are going to die.”

Chang let go of Zavala’s shirt and turned to Lois Mitchell, who was staring in horror at Joe’s bloodied face.

“Where is my vaccine?” Chang demanded.

She glared at Chang, and said, “In a safe place. Untie me and I’ll get it for you.”

At a nod from Chang, his men untied her. She stood and rubbed her wrists, then went over and opened the door to the walk-in refrigerator used to store food for the mess. Stepping inside, she came out carrying a large plastic cooler, which she placed on the floor. Dr. Wu unlatched the lid of the cooler.

“The cooler holds the microbial cultures that will allow you to synthesize the vaccine in quantity,” she said.

Packed in foam were a number of the shallow, wide petri dishes. Wu smiled.

“This is a miracle,” he said.

“Actually,” she said, “it’s nothing more than very innovative genetic engineering.”

She bent down and removed the top rack of petri dishes. Underneath were three stainless-steel containers, also packed in foam.

“These are the three vials of the vaccine that you requested,” she said. “You will be able to make more with the cultures.” She replaced the rack, closed the lid, and stood up. “Our job here is done. Mr. Phelps said that we would be free to go once we completed the project.”

“Phelps is no longer in our employ,” Chang said.

Her face went ashen at the ominous tone of the announcement.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

He ignored the question, and ordered his men to tie her up again.

“Your friend Austin escaped me again,” Chang said to Zavala,

“but it will only be a matter of time before we meet. And when we do, I will take great pleasure in describing your last moments to him.”

Chang took the cooler from Wu’s hand and ordered the doctor and his guards to return with him to the shuttle. Austin stepped out of the walk-in refrigerator seconds later after they left, holding the Bowen in his left hand.

“Good thing old bullethead left when he did,” Austin said. “I was starting to feel like a side of beef in there.”

He tucked the revolver under his right arm. Using a kitchen knife, he sliced the bindings holding Zavala, who reached for a napkin to staunch his bleeding lips. Despite the cuts and bruises, he was in good humor.

“Chang isn’t going to be happy when he finds out that the vaccine cultures you gave him are bogus,” he said to Lois Mitchell.

She gave Zavala a knowing smile, and went back into the freezer. She came out with another cooler, almost identical to the first.

“Wait until he learns that we’ve got the real thing,” she said.

CHANG WAS ALREADY far from happy. He uttered an angry curse as he entered the airlock chamber and saw that Phelps’s body was gone. A trail of blood led off toward a corridor. Phelps must have survived the gunshot and dragged himself down one of the passageways.

No matter. Phelps would die when the lab blew into a million pieces. Chang inspected his sapper’s handiwork and ordered him to set the timer. Then he herded his men into the shuttle, and the pilot used a remote control to activate the pumps. The airlock quickly filled with water. As the shuttle rose through the opening halves of the clamshell roof, Austin stood in the airlock control room watching the ascent on the instrument console’s television monitor. He spun around at the sound of a footfall, only to lower the Bowen a second later.

Phelps stood at the entrance to the passageway with his lips contorted into a strained grin. He was stripped to the waist, and a makeshift bandage soaked with blood covered the upper left part of his chest. His face was pale, but his dark eyes were defiant.

“You look like crap,” Austin said.

“Feel like it too,” Phelps said.

“What happened to you?”

“I figured Chang was going to be on hair trigger, thanks to you NUMA boys, so on my trip back to Kane’s office I grabbed a soft body-armor vest. It only covered my vitals, and I didn’t account for Chang’s bad aim. Bastard nicked me in the shoulder.”

“Why did he shoot you?”

“He got testy when I told him I wouldn’t rig the C-4 he and his boys brought down in the shuttle.”

“He planned to destroy the lab with people in it?”

“Oh, hell, they put down enough explosives to wreck the Great Wall of China. Sloppy work, though. Lucky they