After several minutes with no sound but the slap of the water against the side of the raft, Joe spoke. “Where’s the driest place on earth?”
“I don’t know,” Kurt said, thinking. “The Atacama Desert maybe.”
“Next adventure we’re going there,” Joe said. “Or somewhere hot and dry.”
“I’m not sure the National Underwater and Marine Agency has a lot going on where it’s hot and dry,” Kurt said.
Joe shook his head. “Dirk and Al spent some time in the Sahara once.”
“True,” Kurt said. “I’m not sure they would recommend it though.”
“Hot and dry,” Joe said firmly. “I won’t take no for an answer.”
Kurt laughed. It really didn’t sound too bad right now.
He was painfully aware how close they’d come to dying. It wouldn’t have taken much to tilt the scales from life to death for either of them. Kurt knew his overconfidence about what their foes were doing was half the reason for that.
He looked over at Joe, who was finally beginning to show some color in his face.
“I was wrong,” he said to Joe.
Joe turned his head awkwardly. “What?”
“I was wrong about St. Julien,?
?? Kurt added. “He’s a gourmet. He would never chow down at some all-you-can-eat buffet.”
Joe stared at him for a moment and then started laughing and coughing all at the same time. Kurt laughed too. He knew Joe understood what he was trying to say.
“We all screw up, Kurt,” he said. “You just do it bigger than the rest of us.”
Kurt nodded. It sure seemed that way.
He looked out over the surface of the water. Thirty yards away he saw the emergency locator beacon, riding the swells and flashing. He hoped rescue would come soon because there was still work to be done.
The way he saw it, Andras had screwed up even bigger than he had. He’d left Kurt alive and stirred the bitter embers of vengeance in his heart.
38
Off the coast of Sierra Leone, June 26
DJEMMA GARAND STOOD near the edge of the helipad on the false oil platform given the number 4. This platform contained the control center of his weapon and would be his command post if he ever needed to use it.
The control center sat three stories above the helipad, the glass enclosure of its main room jutting out like the bridge on a ship. At the moment Djemma’s attention lay elsewhere.
He stood, leaning up against a rail, in the shadows, his eyes hidden behind the ever-present green shield of the Ray-Bans he wore. Out in the center of the helipad, wilting under the blazing equatorial sun, stood the captured scientists from the various teams who had flocked to the lure he’d offered. The Azorean magnetic anomaly.
Djemma smiled at his own cunning. So far, all things were falling in line with his plan.
With the scientists forced to line up as if for inspection, he waited. Each time one of them tried to sit or get out of line, Andras or one of his men would march out and threaten them with reprisals far worse than standing in the sun. At all times a few men roamed the perimeter with machine guns in their hands.
Finally, when the moaning and complaining began to lessen, Andras came over to where Djemma rested in the shade.
“Leave them out there any longer and you’re going to fry their brains,” Andras said. “Which, if I’m not mistaken, isn’t what you brought them here for.”
Djemma turned to Andras. He would not respond to the man’s questions.
“There were thirty-eight experts in superconduction, particle physics, and electromagnetic energy on Santa Maria,” he said. “I count only thirty-three prisoners. Explain the discrepancy.”