Devil's Gate (NUMA Files 9)

“Come on,” he said. “You’re a champion. Prove it to me.” She looked into his eyes and clenched her jaw. He helped her up, and they began to move.

“Do you still want to get to the coolant room?” she asked.

He nodded. “They’ll get this power back on soon enough. We have to permanently disable this thing.” “I know another way to get there,” she said. “They’ll never expect us to use it.” She led him forward until they came to another hatch. This one was sealed tight.

Kurt dropped beside it and grabbed the wheel.

After two full rotations it spun easily. He opened it to see a ladder dropping down through a shaft. Dim red lights lit the rungs, and glacial air wafted up toward him. Kurt suddenly thought of Dante’s Inferno, which depicted some of Hell’s outer layers as frigid, Arctic-like zones.

“What’s down there?” he asked.

“The accelerator tunnels,” she said.

That didn’t sound like a safe place to be, but the sound of feet pounding on the metal deck above changed his mind.

He helped her onto the ladder, climbed down behind her, and shut the hatch. At the bottom they dropped into a tunnel.

It reminded Kurt of standing on a subway platform, like the Washington Metro, only narrower. The familiar high-voltage lines and liquid nitrogen conduits raced down each wall and also along the ceiling and floor. Rows of the shiny gray rectangles that Kurt knew to be the superconducting magnets traveled off into the distance, curving slightly at the limit of his vision.

Kurt exhaled a cloud of ice crystals. He was already chilled to the bone. It reminded him of the Fulcrum’s compartment only colder.

“If we go this way,” she said, “we can pop up through the rear access hatch. One level down from the coolant room.” Kurt began walking, with Katarina leaning heavily on his shoulder. It was a great plan. The crew would never search for them down there, he was sure of it.

“What if they turn this thing on?” he asked.

“Then we’ll be dead before we even know what’s happened.” “All the more reason to hurry,” he said.

61

BY NOW DJEMMA GARAND could feel the danger clawing at his own throat. Washington, D.C., stood untouched by his weapon. Andras would not answer and the crew of the Onyx reported commandos aboard.

Swirling around him, the American military showed no signs of backing off, no matter how hard he pounded them.

“Where’s Andras?” he demanded into the radio.

“He is looking for the American,” came the reply.

“What about the array?”

“It’s still down. We have no power.” The crewman from the Onyx sounded panicked, though he could not be facing what Djemma was facing.

He put the headset down. It would end in failure. He could see that now.

He looked out over the waves. One of their submarines had been destroyed and forced to surface. The other continued to fight, firing from deeper waters.

Through a pair of huge binoculars, he saw the crew of the American submarine bobbing in their orange life rafts.

“Target their position,” he said calmly.

Cochrane hesitated.

“We are going to die, Mr. Cochrane,” he said. “All we can do now is take as many of them with us as possible.” Cochrane stood back from the controls. “Forget it,” he said. “You want to go down in flames, that’s your business. I’m not dying here.” Djemma had been waiting for this moment. He pulled out his old sidearm and blasted three holes in Cochrane.

Cochrane fell back in an unmoving heap. Djemma fired a few more shots into his worthless hide just for the sheer pleasure of it.

“And you are proved wrong yet again, Mr. Cochrane,” he said.

He stepped to the controls, glaring at the engineers. “Target the life rafts and fire!”