something else to worry about beyond getting rid of me.”
“How Machiavellian of you,” Kurt said.
“It’s worked so far,” Gregorovich boasted. “But for how long, I don’t know. Kirov prods them and plots against me. They may find the heart to challenge me yet. If they do, you and your men will certainly die.”
“Or fight for you,” Kurt guessed.
“Odd as that sounds, yes.”
“I guess we’d have no choice,” he said. “The question is: how much time do you think we have until that occurs?”
Gregorovich shook his head. “No,” he said, “that’s not the question. The question is: how far will you go to stop Thero?”
So that was it. Gregorovich was looking for a partner, a blood brother, in his quest for the prey that escaped him. Kurt was up for that, as long as they got there in time.
“To stop Thero from killing millions,” Kurt said. “To the ends of the Earth, if necessary.”
Gregorovich nodded. It was the answer he wanted to hear. It also happened to be true.
“This far south,” the Russian said, “it would seem we’re almost there.”
“Not quite,” Kurt replied. He stood and checked his watch. It was time for a new heading. “Tell your helmsman to change course. Our new heading should be 245 degrees.”
“So we don’t journey to Antarctica after all?”
“Not yet anyway,” Kurt said, keeping the truth to himself. “I’m going to my quarters so I can sleep this off. Assuming Kirov doesn’t kill me during the night, I’ll have more course changes for you in the morning.”
Gregorovich nodded, and Kurt stepped out into the hall. One of the commandos waited there.
“You must be the bellhop,” Kurt muttered. “Take me to my cabin.”
He was escorted aft until he reached a pair of the Russian commandos standing outside the cabin in which the NUMA crew had been placed. He stepped past them and went inside, only to find an argument in full bloom.
Captain Winslow and his XO were on one side, Joe and Hayley on the other.
“… he’s got us this far,” Hayley insisted.
“He’s playing a game with our lives,” the XO replied.
“We’d be dead if he told them what they wanted to hear,” Joe added.
Apparently, more than one mutiny was brewing on the ship.
“Told who what they wanted to hear?” Kurt asked.
The group turned in unison.
“The Russians,” Captain Winslow said. “While you were out drinking with their leader, they came and took our injured crewmen to the sick bay. Only now they tell us no one will be receiving medical treatment until we give them more information.”
Kurt didn’t like the sound of that. But there was no turning back.
“I don’t know if this is the right course of action,” Winslow added.
“It’s the only course left,” Kurt said.
“We have to give them something,” Winslow said. “At least a hint.”
“No. If they guess right, we’re all dead,” Kurt explained. “They’ll tie weights to our feet and drop us over the side to save the cost of a bullet.”
“My crewmen are in shock,” Winslow said. “They’re dying. For God sakes, Kurt, be reasonable.”
“There’s no room for reason,” Kurt snapped. “Can’t you see that?!”
The others stared back at him, taken off guard at an uncommon burst of fury.
“We’re caught in between a madman and a lunatic,” he explained. “Gregorovich is insane. This isn’t a
They gazed at Kurt oddly. No doubt he looked half deranged himself at this point.
“It can’t be that bad,” the XO said.
“It can be and it is,” Kurt said. “If anyone’s making plans to survive this, I suggest you stop wasting your time because most likely we won’t. The only thing we can hope for is to prevent Thero from acting. And to do that, we need the Russians as much as they need us.”
Joe stood with Kurt, the loyal friend that he was. Hayley seemed to understand the truth and had resigned herself to it. Even the XO seemed to soften his posture. But Winslow shook his head.
“They’re my crew,” he said. “My responsibility.”
Kurt understood that. He figured lack of sleep and guilt were weighing on the captain’s mind too.
“Most of your crewmen already gave their lives to fight this,” Kurt said. “So did nine members of the ASIO, and at least four civilians who’ve tried to escape Thero’s grasp. The only way to give those deaths meaning is to stop Thero from winning. We have a chance to do that if we side with Gregorovich. It’s a long shot. But it’s the only shot we have.”
Winslow seemed unsure.
Kurt put his hand on the captain’s shoulder and looked him in the eye. “I know what you’re going through. None of us would even be in this situation if I’d kept my nose out of it. Those crewmen’s lives are on me, not you. But we can’t bring them back. We can only do our best to make sure their deaths are not in vain.”
Winslow looked back at Kurt. He seemed to understand. “So what do we do now?”
“We have to reduce the number of commandos at their disposal,” Kurt said. “Even the odds a little.”
“How? They have us under guard.”
Kurt had been thinking about this while losing in chess to Gregorovich. “They eat buffet style around here,” he said, having noted the setup on his single pass through the mess hall. “This ship is filthy. It has to be crawling with bacteria. Scrape up any kind of grunge you can find. I don’t care where you get it from, and, frankly, I don’t want to know. Collect it up and find a way to drop it in the food right around chow time — after we’ve gotten our fill of course.”
“Germ warfare,” Joe noted.
“If the commandos are too sick to fight, Gregorovich will have no choice but to take us along.”
“I like it,” Joe said. “What if he leaves us behind anyway?”
“Then we take over the ship and radio NUMA if we can.”
Joe nodded, and Hayley offered a sad smile. Even the XO cracked a grin at the thought of going on the offensive for a change. Winslow agreed. “Okay,” he said. “I’m with you.”
THIRTY
Deep beneath the surface of the ice-covered island, Patrick Devlin found his ears ringing. The bone-shaking sound of a huge rock drill grinding away had all but deafened him over the past hour. When it suddenly stopped, the silence was almost painful.
“That’s deep enough,” a burly foreman shouted.
Devlin backed away from the wall. The heavy drill was mounted on an ore cart of sorts. Padi’s job was to keep pressure on it and drill a series of boreholes in the wall. Covered in dust and grime, he stepped back as another man placed a series of charges in the holes and began attaching wires to the caps.
A sharp whistle sounded. “Everyone to the tunnel,” a foreman demanded.
Spread about the large cavern, a dozen other workers busy crushing rocks and scooping the rubble onto a conveyor belt stopped what they were doing and began trudging toward a small tunnel entrance on one side of the room.
They fit themselves inside, taking shelter under the steel-reinforced arch, weary souls glad to put down their
