Piranha (Oregon Files 10)

His men carried scuba gear onto the sub’s pontoons. They would be staying on the deck during the underwater cruise to tip the barrels over the side when it was hovering over the wreckage of the Roraima. All of them had the latest bone conduction headphones that could receive their vocalizations even with masks and regulators on. The transmissions were sent ultrasonically through the water to headsets attached to the straps of their masks.

“Bring me Batiste,” Pasquet said to one of the men.

Pasquet showed him the barrel and the contents inside.

“This dynamite will be inside the sub with you and your son.” Pasquet held up a device that he clamped to the submarine’s hull with a magnet. “This is an acoustic transceiver that uses the metal as a speaker. I will remain outside on the sub’s pontoon broadcasting my instructions to you as you pilot the sub. If you deviate from my directions in any way, we will simply swim away and set off the explosives. Do you understand?”

Batiste nodded numbly, and was taken back to the cockpit. Pasquet closed the barrel.

In reality, Pasquet had no way to remotely detonate the explosives once they were submerged. Radio waves couldn’t travel underwater and he had no other way of broadcasting to the detonators, making the risk of a synchronized timer necessary. The barrels would be dumped all over the shipwreck, with the resulting simultaneous explosions reducing it to a jumble of steel that would take weeks to dig through and destroying any evidence of the Sentinel project that might lay within.

After all the barrels had been scattered on the Roraima, Pasquet would have Batiste settle the sub on the bottom. Pasquet had a small explosive charge that he’d stick to a window, blowing it out. The crew of the Oregon would attempt to rescue the drowning hostages while he and his men swam away. The barrel inside the sub would then explode a few minutes later along with the others, ripping the sub apart. It would be a perfect distraction for their getaway.

A tour bus stopped next to the truck. Pasquet smiled. Just who he was waiting for. Two hostages certainly wouldn’t be enough if the crew of the Oregon decided to turn their weaponry on him and his men. Although the people of the Corporation called themselves mercenaries, Pasquet knew they wouldn’t harm civilians, which made his job that much easier.

He went outside to watch twenty tourists pile off the bus. The tour guide got out of the driver’s seat and Pasquet waved him over.

“Where’s Captain Batiste?” the guide asked.

“He’s inside the sub getting everything ready,” Pasquet replied with a grin. “We have a very special trip in store for you and your guests today.”

Pasquet mentally calculated how long it would take to tie up and blindfold the tourists and then motor out to the wreck. He didn’t want to leave much slack time after they dumped the barrels. He thought now should be about right to start the timer sequence.

He clicked the button in his pocket. Simultaneously, the bombs in all twenty barrels began their countdown. Sixty minutes to detonation.

Berlin

It was only a few weeks to the official start of spring, but Germany’s winter wasn’t giving up easily. Three inches of fluffy snow coated the Berlin streets, and thick flakes continued to fall. The flight into Tegel Airport on the northwest side of the city had been bumpy, but Tiny Gunderson had put the Corporation’s Gulfstream on the runway without a hitch. He planned to get some sleep in the cabin while Juan and Eric made their excursion to the Humboldt University of Berlin.

Juan got the last four-wheel drive on the rental lot, an Audi station wagon that had so far acquitted itself admirably. Only the highways had been scoured by snowplows’ blades, leaving the thoroughfares and side streets caked and rutted. Buses and two-wheel-drive sedans were slowed to a crawl, but the trams that plied the city streets on rails moved easily, unhindered by the snowfall.

Now that they had arrived at their destination, Eric had to risk doing an online search of the library’s catalog to find out if Lutzen’s doctoral thesis was still at the university’s main campus or in one of its multiple libraries located around the city. It would have been a long flight for nothing if the dissertation had been trashed, or destroyed during World War II bombing campaigns, or never filed with the library in the first place.

While Eric checked the library’s database, Juan performed a series of quick turns through Berlin’s streets to make sure they weren’t being followed. Although they’d taken every precaution to prevent Lawrence Kensit from knowing where they were going, Juan couldn’t help feeling that they were missing something, a piece of the puzzle that made it possible for Kensit to track their movements.

Max’s information about Hector Bazin only confirmed that Kensit was willing to go to any lengths to keep his plans secret. To have a mercenary as skilled and brutal as Bazin at his beck and call wouldn’t have come cheap, and bombing an office in Midtown Manhattan was a big risk.

“I got a hit,” Eric said. “Gunther Lutzen. Real person. Physics doctoral student. Filed his thesis in 1901.”

“Tell me it’s still in the library,” Juan said. “Tiny’s going to be unhappy if we come back empty-handed.”

“The dissertation is on file, but it’s so old that it hasn’t been digitized so we’ll have to see it in person.”

Juan nodded, happy that they’d flown to Berlin. If they’d done their search online, hoping to read the thesis back in New York, they might have tipped Kensit off about their intentions. “Where do we find it?”

“It’s in the special collections at the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Center.”

“A library named after the Brothers Grimm? How appropriate. Let’s hope this fairy tale has a happier ending.”

“It’s a new building in central Berlin. They moved all of their natural sciences books to a different library, but most of the old theses and rare documents are at the Grimm Center. Lucky for us, it’s only about ten minutes from here. I’ve got the route mapped out.”

“Can we check the thesis out?”

“No. Because it’s so old, it can be examined only at the library. Besides, we don’t have a library card.”

Satisfied that they didn’t have a tail, Juan followed Eric’s directions.

“What is Lutzen’s thesis called?” Juan asked.