He stared at her for a long moment, as if pondering what she’d said.
“This is why you reached out to me,” she said, “isn’t it?”
Finally, he nodded. “Come with me.”
He led her down the bank of control panels, stopping in his tracks as he passed the final console.
Hayley saw why. Lying on the floor were several men and a few women. They wore bloodstained lab coats. They’d been shot.
“Father, what have you done?”
Hayley tried to breathe. “We have to hurry, George.”
Thero hesitated. He cocked his head to the side. “What do you mean they were traitors?” he asked the air.
She could see what was happening. “No, George,” she urged. “Don’t talk to him.”
“They worked for you,” he said sharply, as if arguing with his father. “They built this for you.”
A strange trancelike silence gripped Thero, and Hayley sensed him wavering.
“Stay with me!”
Thero hesitated. He stood with clumsy effort and let go of her hand.
“George?” she asked.
“No,” he said softly.
“George?”
“No!”
This time, the words were bellowed at her. The harshness returned to Thero’s eyes with a rush, and he grabbed her by the throat with his right hand and slammed her into the wall. The impact stunned her, and Thero’s hand crushing her windpipe seemed to cut off the blood from her brain.
“Please…” she gasped, crying out to the other side of Thero’s mind. “Please!”
Thero released her, and she dropped to the floor beside the heap of bodies.
“How dare you turn my son against me!”
“I didn’t,” she managed. “We were only… trying to help.”
“I don’t need your help!” he shouted. “Or my son’s, for that matter. I will bring the world to its knees. Once they see what I do to Australia, there will be no need for negotiations. They will beg me for mercy.”
He stepped back over to the control panel and shoved the master switch into the on position. She heard the heavy circuit closing and the big generators in the other room switching on. The lights around them dimmed appreciably and then began to brighten.
Soon, the generators were humming, spinning up to a feverous pitch.
“No,” she begged. “Please, don’t do this.”
“I’m so glad you could be here,” Thero shouted. “I will not even wait for zero hour. I will punish them immediately. And you will watch from my side as I wreak destruction on those who persecuted me.”
Out in the spherical cavern, the gears began to churn, and the giant collection of pipes and electrical conduits began to tilt. The weapon turned slowly, clinking like a roller coaster being dragged up the steep track to its release point.
Hayley found herself dizzy as the weapon slowly ratcheted itself toward a new position, an alignment that would aim the wave of distortion through the Earth’s crust at the dormant rift in the Australian outback.
FORTY-FIVE
Kurt and his three newfound cohorts crept through several lengths of tunnel connecting various areas that the miners had quarried until eventually they arrived in a hub containing living quarters for the prisoners.
Every twenty feet or so, there was an alcove with a steel door. At the far end of the hall, a single guard sat at a desk, ostensibly watching the hub.
“How’d you get past him the first time?” Kurt asked.
“We waited for him to take a bathroom break,” Masinga replied.
“Unless he’s been drinking coffee all night, I don’t think we have time for that plan to work again. Get ready to use that skeleton key.”
He took a breath and let the tension fall away from his body. Then, calmly, he stepped out into the hall, leveled the Makarov, and advanced at a brisk pace.
When the guard looked up, Kurt had no choice. With two quick pulls, Kurt triggered the gun. The booming report surged through the narrow tunnel like thunder. The two shots hit the guard in the chest, knocking him off his chair and onto the floor.
He didn’t move, but, to Kurt’s surprise, a second guard appeared at the side of the first.
Kurt fired again. The guard crumpled to the ground, but his hand slammed down on an emergency alarm button as he fell.
The shriek of an electronic alarm rang out, and a thick steel-plated door began to close between Kurt and the guard post and whatever was beyond it. Kurt ran forward, but it shut just before he arrived.
Behind him, Masinga was already rushing to the dormlike cells, letting the other prisoners free. They were shouting and thanking him in several different languages. Soon, they were filling the hall and surging toward Kurt, for whatever good it would do them.
Devlin arrived at Kurt’s side before the rest of the mob. “Now what?”
Kurt slid the backpack off his shoulders and dropped it to the floor. Opening it revealed the explosives he carried. “Get everyone back into their cells.”
“You’re gonna blow this thing?”
“No other choice,” Kurt said. “Let’s just hope I don’t bring the roof down in the process.”
Kurt’s instincts tended toward overkill. If a small hammer would do the job, a sledgehammer would leave no room for doubt. In this case, he tempered his basic inclinations, placing two bricks of the C-4 beside the door and jabbing a pair of blasting caps into each of them.
“Are you sure that’s enough?” Devlin asked.
Kurt didn’t reply.
“Could it be too much?” Devlin asked.
The wailing alarm was bad enough, Devlin’s questions only made it worse. “I guess we’re going to find out one way or another,” Kurt said. “Now, get these people back.”
As Kurt attached a wire to each of the caps, Devlin backed down the tunnel, ushering the others to keep away.
Kurt was soon backing away with them, spooling out the wire as he went. He reached the first of the alcoves and ducked into it. The newly freed prisoners crowded around him as he attached the wires from the detonator to a small handheld device that resembled one of those grip strengtheners tennis players are always squeezing.
“What’s that?” Devlin asked.
“Some people call it a clacker,” Kurt said. “It sets off the explosives.”
Around them, the prisoners ducked and covered their ears. Fortunately for Kurt, the clacker was a tiny generator, not a battery-powered object or it would have been drained by the flash-draw that took out the snowmobile.
“Ready?”
Devlin and Masinga nodded in unison. With a quick compression, Kurt squeezed the clacker. The action sent a tiny electrical pulse racing down the wire. The pulse set off the blasting caps, which in turn detonated the C-4.
A thunderous explosion racked the subterranean halls, and a concussion wave surged down the tunnel and into the alcove. Kurt felt the air knocked out of him and was thrown to the ground along with everyone else in the cavern.
Getting up quickly, he fought his way through clouds of dust and down the tunnel. As he neared the far end, the dust began to clear. He saw light and an open room ahead. The door lay on its side.
Stepping into the hall, Kurt found no resistance. “It’s clear,” he shouted. “Let’s go.”
Devlin and Masinga came running up first. Kurt handed them weapons taken from the dead guards, and the three of them moved out with the crowd of prisoners close behind.
The shrill call of the alarm caught Thero’s attention as he began to run through the start-up checklist. He paused, wondering what could be happening.
As he waited, Hayley called out, “George, it doesn’t have to be like this. Tell your father there’s another way.”
Thero looked to his left. His son was there, staring at Hayley like a lovesick schoolboy.
“Don’t listen to her,” Thero shouted. “She never cared for us. She would have come to Japan if she had. She betrayed us and brought these men to our door.”