“Take these guards and go to your task. I will meet you on the island. I expect to see the bodies of the traitors when I get there.”
Janko stood taller and glanced at the men behind him. They snapped to attention. “The traitors will talk and then die,” he said, doubting the other men were traitors at all but far happier to put them to death than to die himself.
Janko turned and strode out the door with the two guards following close behind.
Thero remained where he was, watching as the rusted steel door slammed shut behind them. In the muted silence, he considered the situation. Janko could be trusted, he thought. He’d been with them for so long.
The sound of footsteps emerged from the darkened room behind him. Thero turned in time to see a young man coming forth from the shadows. He had cropped blond hair, a slight build, and a sad and weary look about his eyes. He wore a lab coat.
“It won’t take long for the Australians to find us here,” the young man said. “Not now. Not after this.”
“True,” Thero said.
The young man was Thero’s son, George. He was also the chief designer of the latest version of Thero’s system, a weapon that would literally shake the Earth to its core.
“You’re quite right, my son,” Thero said. “What would you have me do?”
“There’s no reason to keep this station around,” George said. “We should leave. Have Janko stay behind and scuttle the station. Then he can join us and complete his other task.”
“But this station will help us inflict the pain we seek,” Thero countered.
“The main system on the island will soon be operational,” George said. “Once it is, we will be invulnerable. We should move everything of value there.”
“When will it be up and running?”
“Within days.”
“Excellent,” Thero said, beaming with pride. “You’ve succeeded where so many others have failed. Soon, we’ll show the world how they’ve lived in ignorance. We’ll make the nations that shunned us pay.”
The young man looked downcast.
“You disagree?”
“Proving the system works, proving that we can draw unlimited energy from the void around us, surely that’s vindication enough? That and the wealth that will follow.”
“No,” Thero said sharply. “It’s not even close. Look what they’ve done to us. To me. To you. They’ve stolen everything. Mocked us and murdered your sister. They sent us away like we carried the plague, abandoned us to certain death. All the nations of the world are complicit in this. All the nations we could have helped.”
Thero’s tone softened. George had always been the merciful one. George’s sister had been more like her father. “You’re too forgiving,” Thero said. “I can’t afford to be that way. I won’t hand them the gift we’ve created. Not without extracting my pound of flesh first.”
Thero’s son looked up at him. He nodded grudgingly.
“The system must be tested,” he reminded his father. “If we can’t fine-tune it, then neither dream will come to fruition.”
“Only the most minor tests,” Thero said. “The world must remain in the dark until the zero hour arrives.”
SEVEN
Joe Zavala stood on the ramp at the Cairns airport as the speeders he’d brought with him were secured on a pallet and towed toward a waiting aircraft.
Five foot ten, with the dark smoldering eyes of his mother and the solid build of a middleweight boxer like his father, Joe was an engineer and a connoisseur of living to the fullest.
Life was good, Joe felt, especially his. He traveled the world having adventures, met interesting people, and worked on the most fantastic machines imaginable: high-speed boats, experimental submarines, and the occasional aircraft or car. It was like getting paid to play with one’s favorite toys in fantastic, exotic locations.
Unlike most who had their dream jobs, Joe knew it. It kept a smile on his face and a spring in his step that usually rubbed off on those around him. So far, it was doing nothing for the burly loadmaster of the small aircraft Kurt had chartered.
“This just can’t be correct,” the man said, repeating himself for the third time and flipping through a detailed bill of lading.
Joe was wearing a dark suit with a white shirt and a pink tie, a disguise of sorts he’d decided to don after Kurt told him this mission was not to have any official NUMA involvement.
“What can I tell you?” Joe said, taking on the air of a harried middle manager. “It’s got to go on board. Those are my instructions.
The loadmaster’s face scrunched up, and he squinted in the sunlight. “But you’re shipping diving gear and a pair of one-man submarines?”
“Apparently.”
“To the middle of the desert?”
“Really?” Joe said, feigning ignorance.
The big Aussie nodded. “Alice Springs is out in the red center, mate. You might as well fly these things to the Sahara.”
Joe hemmed and hawed. “Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if we did that next. This company of mine. We get a little crazy.”
The guy sighed and handed the paperwork back to Joe. “Well, they’re too heavy with the rest of the cargo anyway,” he said. “And I’m not off-loading half my shipment to put a mistake on board.”
He turned away to halt the offending pallet’s approach, but before he could say a word Joe put his arm around the big man’s shoulders, leaning in close, all friendly-like.
“Now, listen,” Joe said. “I know this is a mistake. And
Joe stuffed a wad of Australian cash into the man’s hand, five hundred dollars in total. “For the inconvenience,” he said, patting his newfound friend on the shoulder.
The loadmaster thumbed through the money, keeping it low and out of sight like a man hiding his cards at the poker table. A smile crept over his face. It was a big payday.
“This is really a waste of time,” he muttered, far more subdued than he’d been before. “But, then again, who are we to question why?”
“My thoughts exactly,” Joe said.
The loadmaster turned and whistled to his crew. “Pull the other pallets off and load her up with this one. And make it quick,” he grumbled. “We’re not getting paid by the hour.”
As the ground crew went to work, a young woman from inside the charter company’s office brought Joe an ice-cold bottle of water. She smiled at him, all dimples and sparkling eyes.
“Thank you,” he said.
“My pleasure, sir.”
She winked and turned with a swish, and Joe had to fight hard to keep himself from following.
He stood and considered the situation. He was accustomed to being covered in grease and neck-deep in the hands-on work. He’d certainly never considered himself the supervisor type. But as he sipped the cool drink and watched from the shade while the heavy cargo pallets were pulled off and rearranged in the strong morning sun, he began to consider it an option.
He straightened his tie and glanced once more at the smiling customer service rep.
“A guy could get used to this.”
A few hours later and a thousand miles away, Kurt Austin waited in the cab of a boxy-looking flatbed. He watched as the CASA-212 landed on the centerline of the tiny Alice Springs Regional Airport and taxied toward
