Phelps stood at the entrance to the passageway with his lips contorted into a strained grin. He was stripped to the waist, and a makeshift bandage soaked with blood covered the upper left part of his chest. His face was pale, but his dark eyes were defiant.
“You look like crap,” Austin said.
“Feel like it too,” Phelps said.
“What happened to you?”
“I figured Chang was going to be on hair trigger, thanks to you NUMA boys, so on my trip back to Kane’s office I grabbed a soft body-armor vest. It only covered my vitals, and I didn’t account for Chang’s bad aim. Bastard nicked me in the shoulder.”
“Why did he shoot you?”
“He got testy when I told him I wouldn’t rig the C-4 he and his boys brought down in the shuttle.”
“He planned to destroy the lab with people in it?”
“Oh, hell, they put down enough explosives to wreck the Great Wall of China. Sloppy work, though. Lucky they didn’t blow themselves up.”
Phelps tossed a bundle of colored wires on the floor in an expert’s gesture of disdain for amateurish work.
“What’s Chang going to do when he discovers that his explosives didn’t go off?” Austin asked.
“My guess is, he’ll send somebody down to check it out.” Phelps cocked his head. “On second thought, he’ll probably come back to shoot your friends so he can tell you about it.” He gingerly touched the bandage. “Chang’s kinda bad-tempered that way.”
“I’ve noticed,” Austin said. “We’ve got to get everyone off the lab in the minisubs.”
Phelps pointed at the black discs that had been pulverized under Chang’s heel.
“These are circuits for the subs’ controls,” he said. “Chang stomped them.”
“Damn!” Austin said. “The subs were our only hope.”
“Still are,” Phelps said. “I gave Chang some other discs for his temper tantrum. The originals are still in the subs.”
Austin gazed at Phelps, thinking that he still had a lot to learn about human nature.
“What say you get the subs ready while I round up the scientists,” Austin said.
Phelps gave a quick salute and headed for the transit hub while Austin hurried back to the mess hall. Zavala had already rounded up the entire staff. The expressions on their faces ran the gamut from joy that they’d been freed to fear about what would happen next.
Austin introduced himself, asked everyone to be quiet for a minute, then announced: “We’re abandoning the Locker.” He shushed the group again and warned them to move as quickly as possible. Questions would be allowed later.
The weary and frightened scientists climbed down to the minisub hatches. A few hesitated, and there were angry shouts when they saw Phelps, but Austin told them to pipe down and get into the subs. With some grumbling, they did as they were told.
“Are the subs likely to encounter Chang on their way out of the crater?” he asked Phelps.
“Not if they move fast. Chang would have gone back to his freighter to wait for the big boom. If the subs stay submerged as long as they can, they’ll be well past Chang’s ship, and can put out a Mayday.”
Austin passed Phelps’s advice along to the pilot of each sub. He delegated the shuttle pilot to take the lead vehicle. Mitchell got in one of them and held the cooler with the real vaccine cultures in it tightly on her lap. Then, one by one, the subs detached from the underside of the hemispheric hub and followed the leader across the bottom of the crater and through the tunnel.
With the staff on its way, Austin turned to the next order of business: the Typhoon. As they got back in their wet suits, Zavala filled Austin in on the situation aboard the Russian submarine. Austin’s view of the situation was less optimistic than Zavala’s. Feeling was returning to Austin’s right arm, but he still wouldn’t be able to raise and fire the heavy Bowen revolver with any degree of accuracy. Phelps would be of limited help.
When Phelps tried to get into his wet suit, the snug neoprene top pressed painfully against his wound. Zavala used Austin’s knife to cut the arm of the suit off and part of the chest area to relieve the pre
ssure.
Phelps noticed that two sets of scuba gear were missing and surmised that the pair of guards who had escorted Zavala from the sub had gone back to join their comrades. More bad news: the guards were now back to their full complement.
Zavala helped Austin lower Phelps into the pool and guide him down the shaft to open water. With Austin on one side of Phelps and Zavala on the other, all three slowly rose from the bottom up toward the Typhoon, whose gigantic shadow loomed near the surface.