26

The Bahamas

Matt Trulli leaned back on his bar stool and regarded Chase and Nina uncertainly. “So … you’re telling me that my billionaire boss was actually some kind of crackpot megalomaniac?”

Chase nodded. “Afraid so,” said Nina. “Aw, what?” Trulli said in dismay, taking a gulp from his drink. “Two for two?”

“Maybe you should come and work for the IHA,” Nina suggested. “The pay might not be as good, but I don’t think any world domination plots have ever come up in meetings.”

“And he’s dead now?” Trulli asked.

“Yeah,” said Chase. “My ex-wife shot him in the back.”

“Wow. Good job you never pissed her off that much, mate.”

“Oh she’ll be plenty pissed when she realizes we’re not dead,” said Nina. “And even more so when we find her nuke.”

Trulli almost choked on his lager. “Nuke?” he gasped.

“Keep it down,” Chase said in a warning tone, glancing around the bar. Fortunately, none of the evening patrons were taking any interest in them. “Yeah, she’s got a nuke. So now we need to find her, so we can find it. Any idea where she might be?”

“We think she might be at Corvus’s house,” Nina added.

Trulli smiled. “Well, I know where that is!”

“You’ve been there?”

“I built it! It’s the test bed for an underwater habitat—it was what René hired me for. He wanted a scalable, modular underwater habitat that could work at least thirty meters deep. Well, that kind of thing’s been at the back of every marine engineer’s mind ever since he drew his first submarine in crayon as a kid, you know? And it was a no-expense-spared deal that he wanted done as soon as possible, so I got right down to it, no worries. We had the prototype built and working within a year.” His pride became more tempered. “Mind you, if I’d realized what he wanted it for, I might not have been in such a rush.”

“I need to get inside it,” Chase said. “Soon. As in tonight. Can you help us?”

Trulli made a pained face. “Your ex-missus doesn’t sound like the kind of girl who cares about experimental submarines, so whatever happens I’m probably out of a job. And I don’t really like the idea of nukes going off, so …” He took a quick gulp from his drink. “Sure. What do you need?”

“A boat, and scuba gear. And a way inside that thing.” Trulli smiled. “Got all three, mate.”

Trulli’s boat was a far cry from Corvus’s cruiser when it came to size and luxury, but the Australian’s fifteen-foot motor launch took them from one of the quays of Marsh Harbour up the coast of the island of Grand Abaco efficiently enough.

The habitat was two miles offshore, a man-made island among the myriad natural ones of the Bahamas. Like an iceberg, most of it was underwater, the section rising above the surface resembling a high-tech mushroom. Its brightly spotlit top was flattened to serve as a landing pad for helicopters—or, as Chase saw through a pair of binoculars, more exotic aircraft. “Well, bugger me.”

Nina tapped his arm, wanting to see for herself. He gave her the binoculars. “What is that thing?” she asked.

“Tilt-rotor,” said Chase. Hunched over the pad was a Bell 609 in Corvus’s blue and red corporate livery. Although its fuselage looked like a regular plane’s, the resemblance ended at the wings. On each wing tip was a bulbous pivoting engine nacelle, at the moment in the vertical position, above which rose an almost comically oversized propeller. “Civie version of the Osprey, like a cross between a plane and a chopper. The props point up so it can do vertical takeoffs and landings, then when it’s in the air they tip forward so it can fly like a regular plane.”

Nina handed the binoculars back to him. “Well, if it’s there, presumably Sophia is too. Question is, for how long?”

“Weeks, if she wanted,” Trulli told her. “It’s got its own generators—wind and wave power that we were testing, plus diesels—and water purifiers. She could stay there for as long as she’s got food.”

“I don’t think she’s planning on staying long,” said Chase, tightening the harness of the Aqua-Lung. “Whatever she’s doing, she wants to do it soon.”

“You sure?” Nina asked.

“I was married to her. I know when she wants to get something over with.” Nina and Trulli shared a suggestive look, then laughed. “No, not like that, you cheeky bastards!” But Chase was smiling himself, at least until he looked ahead. His expression became entirely serious as he watched the distant habitat.

Nina sat beside him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Shoulder still hurts, but it won’t be a problem.”

“No, I meant …” She took his hand. “About Sophia. You might meet her in there.”

Chase smiled coldly. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“No.” Nina shook her head. “You’re not. I know you’re not. Eddie, you might…you might have to kill her to stop her.”

“She’s tried to kill me. She tried to kill you.” Chase slipped a diving knife out of its sheath, examining the blade in the moonlight. “That makes her a hostile.” The knife made a nasty slicing sound as he thrust it back into the sheath. “Either she surrenders, or…”

“She’s not just some goon with a gun,” Nina reminded him softly. “Are you sure you’d be able to do it?”

Chase looked away from her, not answering. Nina was about to speak again when the burble of the outboard died down. They both looked around at Trulli.

“What’s up?” Chase asked.

“Safer not to get any closer,” Trulli replied. “We’re half a kilometer away—any nearer, they might get nosy.”

Chase nodded and donned his diving mask, then took a breath of air from the scuba tank’s mouthpiece to test that it was working. Satisfied, he moved to the side of the boat.

“It looks like a long way,” said Nina, handing him an underwater digital camera. “Will you be okay?”

“Half a click? No problem.”

“Eddie, I …” She trailed off.

“Hey.” He touched her cheek. “I’ll be right back.”

“You’d better be. Or I’m coming after you.” She pulled him to her, kissing him deeply before eventually releasing him, screwing up her mouth.

“What’s up?” Chase asked.

“You taste of rubber.”

He grinned, then popped in the mouthpiece and waved as he rolled backwards over the side of the boat and splashed into the sea. After taking a moment to orient himself, he swam away, quickly disappearing beneath the shallow waves.

“See you soon,” said Nina quietly after him.

Even in his battered state, it didn’t take Chase long to cover the five hundred yards, swimming only a few feet deep. He surfaced briefly when he was about a hundred yards short to check his bearing, then descended.

The seabed on which the habitat had been built, according to Trulli, was about twenty-five yards down. The Australian had sketched the experimental outpost for him: a hefty anchoring base of steel and concrete made up the lowest five yards, a central shaft housing an elevator, a stairwell and trunks for all the electrical and life-support systems rising vertically from it to the landing platform.

There were three more levels below the surface. On Trulli’s sketch they resembled doughnuts, a trio of tori making the habitat look to Chase more like some kind of space station than an underwater base. The upper and lower levels were the same size, the central one somewhat larger in circumference, but the basic designs were identical. Each was made up from four habitation sections shaped like swollen crescents, linked into a circle by another four connecting modules running outwards from the central core like spokes.

These levels weren’t Chase’s immediate concern, however. It was the concrete base that was his first destination. While some of the modules on the second circular deck had air locks, they were controlled by computers; being intended for use by tourists, the system had been designed to be as near foolproof as humanly possible so that, as Trulli had put it, “Some drongo can’t go ‘What does this button do?’ and flood the place.” Trying to open one of the locks would raise an alarm.

But there was another air lock, a maintenance hatch leading into the habitat’s base. And according to Trulli, it was manually operated—an unmonitored entrance.

Chase continued his descent among swirling shoals of fish as he neared the structure. Glowing ovals like blank eyes grew in brightness as he approached. He couldn’t help but be impressed as he got close enough to make out details. Trulli’s tourist-friendly design included lots of large acrylic resin windows set into the modules and smaller domes on their ceilings, through which he could make out the rooms inside.

He saw a figure moving in one of them. Caution and curiosity blending, he swam closer and peered down through one of the ceiling domes.

It was a control room. A man sat at a computer terminal; another walked back to his station with a cup in his hand. Chase carefully moved around the dome for a better look. As far as he could tell, there didn’t appear to be security monitors. All the displays were concerned only with the facility’s vital systems: tracking power consumption, checking the air. No CCTV cameras. One less thing to worry about once he got inside.

It occurred to him that he had the perfect opportunity to recce the habitat. He turned and swam around the inner circumference of the upper level, looking through each of the domes in turn.

No sign of Sophia, or the bomb. The other modules on this level were prototypes for different configurations of hotel suites. The first level checked, he descended and repeated the process on the second, largest deck. The habitation modules on this level seemed more technical in purpose, air locks and tubular docks for future tourist submarines jutting out from them. He saw a couple of more men repairing some piece of equipment in the first one he checked, nobody in the second—

Chase froze as he looked over the edge of the third section’s dome.

Sophia.

Not just Sophia. Komosa was there too… and so was the nuke.

What had originally been Corvus’s luxurious private suite was now being used as a glorified storeroom. The gold ingots recovered from the Tomb of Hercules were stacked in low piles along one curving wall, but the room’s three occupants—as well as Sophia and Komosa, there was the man with the goatee whom Chase had seen with Yuen at the factory in Switzerland—were not looking at them. All their attention was on the bomb.

The bearded man knelt before it as if praying, carefully inserting an electronic device into the rectangular slot in the bomb’s broad base. The device bore a small display screen and a keypad.

An arming system.

Chase’s heart raced, bubbles frothing from his mouthpiece with each breath. He’d been right. Whatever Sophia was planning to use the bomb for, she was going to do it soon.

His options were now down to just one. Even if he used the underwater camera, by the time he had returned to the boat, reached land and sent Alderley enough evidence to convince him to talk to MI6, Sophia could have left. With the tilt-rotor, she could take the bomb anywhere within a thousand miles in three hours.

So he would have to stop her. Alone.

The curve of the dome distorted his view of the room below, but he could see the bearded man entering a code on the keypad, a long string of numbers appearing on the display. An arming code: a security precaution. Even terrorists and rogue states wouldn’t want any low-ranking thug to be able to set off their expensive new toy.

The code entered, the man turned to Sophia and asked her something. He nodded at her reply and turned back to the keypad to enter another number.

Chase could see this more clearly. It was a time: 0845. Quarter to nine in the morning.

If Sophia planned to set it off in a city, that would be when the largest number of people were on the streets … and assuming the timer had been set for the current time zone, the bomb would go off in less than eleven hours.

The man turned a key in the arming device, and the screen went blank. He then stood and handed the key to Sophia. She regarded it for a moment, then said something that prompted a grin from Komosa. With that, she closed her fist around the key and walked away, passing out of Chase’s sight as she headed for the connecting module. The two men followed her.

He had to enter the base and sabotage the bomb.

He used the camera to take a picture of the room below anyway—if he couldn’t get to it, at least he would have proof to send to Alderley. Then he swam downwards, heading for the concrete base.

He passed the third level and took a glow stick from his belt, bending it to mix the fluorescent chemicals within. Something loomed out of the blackness below in the murky orange light.

The base.

Chase quickly located the air lock hatch, right where Trulli had said it was. He brushed away a thin layer of silt and turned the protruding wheel to unseal it. The chamber below, barely large enough for a single person with a scuba tank, had flooded automatically when he started opening the hatch. He dropped into it.

Once the hatch was closed, he checked the air lock controls. A heavy lever was in the up position. He shoved it down, and air bubbles immediately surged up around him. The water drained away as air was pumped in. The hissing noise echoing around the small chamber was almost earsplitting.

Chase endured the din with a grimace, waiting until the water was down to his ankles before facing the inner hatch. Another locking wheel awaited him. As soon as the hiss of compressed air stopped, he turned it until the seals were released and the hatch opened.

Beyond lay a dimly lit concrete corridor, dripping with water—not from leaks, but from condensation. The passage was cold, this part of the habitat being unheated. He quickly stripped off his scuba gear and laid it out ready for when he left, keeping only the knife and the camera. He wished he had a gun, but that was something Trulli hadn’t been able to provide.

Metal hatches led to side rooms, but Chase ignored them, heading along the corridor to a circular chamber. A ladder led up to a hatch in the ceiling: access to the central core. He shook off as much of the water from his body and wet suit as he could, then climbed the ladder and cautiously raised the hatch.

The cross-shaped compartment above reminded him of the interior of the control room, sleek and curvaceous despite its functionality, the futuristic space station vibe back in full effect. Hatches at the end of each arm opened into the connecting spokes leading to the bottom deck’s habitation modules. Two of the bulkheads, Chase knew, housed power lines and life support systems. A third contained an elevator.

He went to the fourth—the emergency ladder—and carefully opened the hatch, listening intently for any sounds of activity above. All he could hear was the rumble of machinery.

There were at least eight people inside the habitat—Sophia, Komosa, the nuclear technician, the four men he’d seen, and presumably the tilt-rotor’s pilot. Possibly more. And all he had to face them with were a knife and his fists.

“Doddle,” he told himself, starting his ascent.

The central chamber of the next deck was a carbon copy of the one below. He cautiously stepped through the hatch and padded to the door leading to the spoke adjoining Corvus’s quarters. Drawing his knife, he opened the door a crack and looked through.

The tubular passage was empty. So far, so good.

Chase hurried down the corridor. A small porthole at the end looked out into the sea, with more doors to the left and right. He went right, the knife poised ready to strike…

Nobody was there. The gold ingots gleamed under the bright light clusters set into the ceiling.

So did the steel casing of the nuke. Apart from the addition of the arming device, the bomb was just as he remembered it from Switzerland.

He looked down into the base, between the three steel rails supporting the cap. A faint silver-gray sheen of uranium showed at the bottom. That was the slug, which would be fired up into the larger mass of uranium in the cap—but its path was currently blocked by two thick steel bolts. A safety measure, to prevent the slug from moving during transit and getting too close to the other uranium—which, while not triggering a nuclear explosion, would still release a lethal burst of radiation. Presumably the bolts would retract before detonation.

The whole thing was designed to be foolproof in function. What would be the best way to sabotage it?

The answer came to him in an instant, as brutally simple as the bomb itself. “Just smash the fucker!”

Placing the tip of the knife against the timer’s screen, he prepared to pry it off and rip out whatever wires he found beneath—

The door through which he had entered flew open.

Chase jumped up as two men rushed in. One with black-framed glasses carried a crowbar; the other was unarmed.

Chase ran at them, the knife raised.

“Get him, Gordon!” yelled the unarmed man. The man with the crowbar drew back his arm to swing it—leaving himself open to a strike at his lower body.

Chase delivered one, smashing the ball of his heel against the man’s kneecap. Cartilage crunched. The man shrieked, the crowbar’s swing suddenly abandoned.

Chase ignored him, already turning on the second attacker without skipping a beat. This man had received better combat training than his companion, balanced more lightly on his feet to dodge any kicks, arms raised to deflect a knife strike.

Chase stabbed the knife straight at his face, a crude and direct attack. The man almost mockingly swept up one forearm to knock the blow aside—only for Chase’s other hand to snap forward like a cobra and clamp around his wrist, pulling it towards him.

Before the man had a chance to realize what had happened, the blade plunged down into his forearm, passing between the bones to burst through the bottom of his sleeve with a spurt of blood. Chase twisted the knife as he yanked it back out, ripping apart the muscles and tearing through tendons and arteries. More blood poured from the wounds.

Even before the second man started screaming, Chase swung around and slammed his elbow into the first man’s face, breaking his glasses in two and flattening his nose into mush. His head snapped back and banged against the compartment’s outer wall. He slumped nervelessly to the floor, leaving a bloody trail down the bulkhead.

The other man was now desperately squeezing his arm to stem the bleeding, howling in pain. Chase didn’t care, completing his turn by driving the knife deep into his throat. The howling stopped abruptly. With no emotion beyond contempt, Chase twisted the knife again to sever the carotid artery. The man was involved in a plot to set off a nuke; he deserved whatever he got.

He pulled out the bloodied knife, and the man collapsed, twitching and gurgling.

The whole fight had lasted mere seconds. Maybe he still had time to destroy the arming device before the rest of the habitat’s occupants arrived—

Clap. Clap. Clap.

“Oh, Eddie,” said Sophia in mock sorrow from the compartment’s other entrance, “he was only two days from retirement!”

Chase whirled to see her giving him a slow hand clap. Komosa stood beside her, his Browning aimed at Chase. The nuclear technician was behind them both.

The knife was still in Chase’s hand. He could throw it—

“Don’t,” Komosa warned, quashing the thought before it could be completed. The gun’s laser sight flicked on and danced across Chase’s face, dazzling him. Reluctantly, he dropped the knife to the deck.

“Check the bomb,” Sophia ordered the technician before stepping farther into the room. “I have to admit, Eddie, I’m genuinely surprised and impressed to see you again. Did Nina survive as well?”

“She’s fine,” Chase said coldly.

“What a shame. Still, lesson learned—next time, I won’t assume that you’re dead until I’ve actually seen your body.”

“There won’t be a next time, Sophia. This is over.”

“So are you,” said Komosa. The laser spot slid down onto Chase’s chest, then back to his face. “I’ve been looking forward to this, Chase. Where do you want it?”

“Is little toe an option?”

Komosa snorted and fixed the laser between Chase’s eyes—

“Not yet,” said Sophia.

Komosa gave her a look of disbelief. “Sophia!”

“Just can’t bear to live without me?” Chase asked sarcastically.

Sophia shook her head. “Hardly. There’s nothing I’d like more, but the fact remains that when I saw you last, you had no transport, no passport, no money and no idea where I was going. Yet twenty-four hours later, here you are.” She regarded him icily. “You had help. Government help. Who else knows you’re here, Eddie?”

“Oh, just MI6, the CIA, NSA, KLF and the RSPCA. They should all be dropping by in about five minutes from now.”

“I don’t think so,” said Sophia, folding her arms. “If they knew that”—she nodded at the bomb—“was here, we would have been blown out of the water by the Americans already. But you’ve told somebody. Who was it, Eddie?”

Chase merely shrugged. Komosa lowered his gun, bringing the laser down onto Chase’s crotch. “I’ll make him talk.”

“We don’t have time,” said Sophia. She looked over at the technician. “Heinrich! Is it all right?”

“As far as I can tell, Lady Sophia,” he replied.

“Just out of interest,” said Chase, stalling for time, “how did you know I was in here?”

Sophia smiled. “This habitat has a very sophisticated life-support system that warns the control room of any unexpected buildup of carbon dioxide. The first time you exhaled, we knew we had an extra person aboard.”

“I’ll hold my breath next time.”

“As you said, there won’t be a next time. But I still need to know who you’ve told about the bomb.” Chase said nothing. Sophia sighed and reached behind her back, taking something from the waistband of her trousers. “You always were irritatingly stubborn, Eddie. Well, since you’ve forced me to advance my schedule, we’ll have to continue this discussion later.” She brought her hand out from behind her back, holding an oddly designed gun.

“Hey, wait a—” Chase began, before a dart thumped painfully into his stomach. “Oh, bollocks …”

Darkness consumed him.

“Something’s happening!” Nina said, sitting bolt upright as she saw movement through the binoculars. People had appeared on the landing platform, standing out clearly in the glare of the spotlights. “Oh, crap, it’s Sophia! She’s getting into the plane!”

She watched intently as more figures emerged from the habitat, two of them carrying something small but heavy between them. “Shit! I think that’s the bomb!”

The boat rocked as Trulli clambered forward. “Are you sure?”

“Eddie told me what it looks like. That must be it.”

Trulli looked nervously at the water around them. “Christ, I hope he got out okay …”

The blood froze in Nina’s heart. “He didn’t,” she gasped. Through the binoculars, Komosa’s giant form stood out clearly from the others—and she was intimately familiar with the man he was effortlessly carrying over one shoulder. “Oh my God, they’ve got him!”

She watched, helpless, as Komosa brought Chase to the tilt-rotor and dumped him inside its cabin before entering himself. Sophia, the bomb and the two men carrying it were already aboard. Less than a minute later, the hatch was closed, the landing platform was cleared and the oversized propellers were turning.

There was absolutely nothing Nina could do except watch as the tilt-rotor lifted off and rose into the night sky. Its engines pitched forward and it sped off to the north, rapidly becoming nothing more than one more star among thousands.

“Oh, Jesus …” Nina whispered. “I’ve lost him.”