The explosion made a funny muffled popping sound, Gooding thought. It sounded as if someone had had a giant plastic bag and gone pop! smashing their fist into it. But then the popping noise was followed by a long gust of smoke, and screaming—
And Gooding's nose twitched from the smell of burning plastic, melting cable. A nasty smell...
The alarm began ringing almost immediately, a high-pitched thweep that was accompanied by a pulsing red light to alert anyone unaware that something very bad had just happened.
The explosion must have been down near Communications, Harry Gooding thought. God, it may have even taken Communications out. But there were backup systems, redundancies. All you needed was a minicomputer with a cellular linkup.
Still, Gooding thought he'd best move in some other direction.
Which is when Sachio Kodei grabbed his shoulder.
Gooding stopped—he had no choice, the way Kodei held him fast. Then he turned to face Kodei, who was wearing a headset.
"What—?" Gooding said.
"They want you to go outside. To take another look at your 'fish.' "
Gooding started shaking his head. There were limits to what one could do for the company. Besides, hadn't their TV host said that no one was to leave the resort? No minisubs sneaking away?
"I don't think I'd better," Gooding said. "I really don't think that's such a good idea. They may decide to blow the whole place up."
Kodei locked his other hand on Gooding's arm. "And so—if there's an explosive out there, we should leave it? Is that the idea?"
Then Kodei was distracted, nodding as someone chatted in his ear. "Yes," he said, speaking into the microphone, still not releasing Gooding. "He's going—"
And Kodei looked up at Gooding.
"Now."
Terry McShane looked at the desk with three VR monitors and keyboards. One SousMer employee sat at a keyboard, hitting the keys furiously.
Terry hurried to a chair next to him and pulled a free wireless keyboard close.
"Hey," the computer operator said. "What do you think you're doing?"
Terry looked at him. "Trying to save our butts," she said without missing a beat as her fingers hit the keyboard.
There would be no VR display, McShane knew. What appeared on the terminal would be gibberish, coded material that would mean nothing to the computer tech peering over her shoulder.
"What the heck are you doing?" he said. "I'll have to call Security."
Terry McShane paused in mid-stroke. "And my—aren't they doing a fine job." She gave the bewildered man a smile. "Better let me get this message off... to the UEO."
And that gave the man pause.
Mary stood by her cabin door and listened.
The screaming outside stayed at a constant pitch—as the fat cats scrambled around, realizing that they were, in fact, trapped in a tin can at the bottom of the sea—a can that someone had just punched a hole in.
Well, not yet.
The exterior walls of SousMer weren't violated and would remain that way. The demonstration had merely brought down some of the engineering station and blown some smoke down the halls.
It was—all in all—a nice touch.
But the clock was running, and it was time to go.
Mary turned to Cutter, looking like a giant olive in his kelvar suit. The SousMer logo was prominently displayed, to silence any questions...
Cutter nodded glumly. The boy wanted out of here something fierce.
"Okay," Mary said, and she popped open the door and entered the mad party outside.
"Mr. Ford," Bridger said, watching the seaQuest's progress on the center VR screen. The ship was running full-out now, near its top speed of 160 knots. "Do you have the course plotted... How long it will take?"
"Yes, Captain. We should be in the vicinity of SousMer by twenty-three hundred hours."
A little over three hours, Bridger thought. seaQuest's speed was a wonder...
"Sir, should I sound battle stations before that—in case we meet some opposition?"
Bridger shook his head. "No. Get me Lucas. I want to talk with him... and start thinking about putting together an EVA team."
"Sir?" Ford said.
Bridger had hoped that his shakedown might have restored some of Ford's confidence. Judging by Ford's reaction, it didn't appear that it had.
"Mr. Ford—Admiral Noyce thinks that there's someone still there. If we're lucky, he thinks we might catch them."
"And then. Captain—?"
Bridger grinned. "After that, I'm not too sure. But—"
"Captain." The voice was in Bridger's earpiece. He recognized Mundo Ortiz, his sensor chief. Bridger swiveled in the command chair and looked over at Ortiz at Communications.
"Sir, we have the tropical storm fully plotted. Would you like it displayed. Captain?"
"Yes," Bridger said. "On screen two — No, make that screen one." There was something reassuring about watching seaQuest's steady progress through the water monitored by Junior swimming outside. The ship ran so smoothly, so silently, it was hard to believe that it was hustling at such phenomenal speed.
"Aye, aye, Captain," Ortiz said.
Despite everything, despite the danger to the people of SousMer, the potential danger to seaQuest herself, Bridger had to admit that, damn, he was enjoying this...
Geoffrey Harpe sat in his expansive office, dark, completely shaded against the afternoon sun. The blinds were drawn so he couldn't see his guests.
A party, he reminded himself... I'm having a party, while halfway across the world seaQuest DSV is hurrying to protect my interests.
I wonder how Nathan Hale Bridger feels about that.
I do hope, Harpe thought, that Captain Bridger puts his heart and soul into the operation. There's more than bullion involved, there's people's lives and—God—the reputation of Harpe WorldWide.
Let's not forget that.
And there was something else at risk...
There was a knock at the door. Michael Barrow, first in the Class of 2011 at Harvard Business, was at the door. His tanned face looked concerned.
"Yes, Michael?" Harpe said.
"Mr. Harpe—we have all the details of the pickup and delivery of the bullion."
Harpe nodded. There was no point in going back to the party. Not until this was over.
Harpe smiled. "Okay, Michael. I'll be right there. And would you make my apologies to my guests? Watch over everything... if you would."
"Of course, sir."
Harpe followed his assistant out, hating this as he did all situations that he couldn't totally control.
Dr. Richard Ernst stood up in the Seven Seas Lounge, looking around. We're trapped, he thought. How come there were no provisions for this kind of thing? Trapped by maniacs with explosives, and where the hell was the security?
Ernst reached out and poured himself another few fingers of Glenfiddich. Wonderfully, his fear was melting now under the warmth of the alcohol, transforming into anger. How the hell could the security here have been so damn lax?
They'd pay the money, Ernst knew that. He knew who the other guests were, the members of the British Parliament, the senators, the big shots from international business concerns, people who appeared every week in the news vids.
Of course, Ernst thought of his own work, where he was supposed to be going, the exciting breakthroughs that were happening. All of it very secret, revolutionary, and—perhaps—even frightening.
He was on the verge of being the most famous scientist of his time.
At thirty-two years old... it was incredible.
He took a big gulp of the scotch—
That is, if he didn't die here.
"Just move normally, steadily..." Mary looked over her shoulder at Cutter, the human olive, waddling behind her. So far, no staff members had questioned their moving from the first-floor suites down to the stairs leading to the sub pools.
Too much chaos to raise questions.
But then, looking ahead to the silvery doors to the pool, Mary saw trouble.
Two guards stood by the twin doors emblazoned with the rolling, wavy letters that spelled SousMer.
Mary stopped in front of them.
"Is everything okay here?" Mary said with what she knew sounded like authority.
One of the guards, a young kid, looked at the other. The other guard also looked confused. "Er, who sent you down here? What department are you—"
Mary shrugged, and then nodded. "Oh, right—" She reached into her case and pulled out, quickly, smoothly, the electron-mag stun gun.
She shot the older guard first, then the younger one, who was struggling to get out his gun. Each man was dead the instant the electrically charged dart hit him in the chest. Fast, painless... about as merciful a killing as you could want.
"Jeez," Cutter said.
"C'mon," Mary said. "Give me a hand dragging them inside."
Together, Mary and Cutter dragged the guards into the sub area, where—Mary feared—there might be more guards to be killed.
Though she guessed that most of Security was busy dealing with the pandemonium going on in the upper level of the resort—
Just as we planned it, she thought.
Gooding muttered to himself as he walked down the back staircase to the minisub pool.
This is a punishment, he thought. Plain and simple. I screwed up—so my reward is getting sent out there. Hadn't that guy said that they'd kill anyone who tried to leave? Well, they'd sure as hell kill anyone who tried to remove any of their explosives.
At least Gooding couldn't smell the smoke down here. The air smelled wet, salty—the smell of the pool filling the staircase. The metal stairs rattled as Gooding hurried.
Maybe if I do it fast, he thought. Get out there, look at the explosive, and get back in.
Do it fast, and maybe nothing would happen.
Gooding reached the back door to the sub area.
They wouldn't want him to remove the explosive. That would be suicide. It would go off, right? Taking Gooding and SousMer with it.
They couldn't want that.
Gooding hit a button and code on the keypad lock, and the metal door slid open.
And Gooding saw that he wasn't alone.
"That's amazing," Bridger said.
"Sir?" Ortiz said in his ear.
The storm had been named Mike, and Mike looked as if it was making a beeline for the party at SousMer.
"Chief," Bridger said to Ortiz, "what do I look at to get an idea of how big the storm is?"
"It's still growing, sir, but—"
Bridger watched the screen change, and now there was a series of graphs, each with three jagged lines filling it — red, yellow, blue.
"Red is the worst case, Captain. Blue is the best case. The range for error is actually pretty narrow. Satellite storm tracking doesn't make many mistakes."
One graph showed wind, another tidal factors accompanied by numbers. The meaning of any of it was not immediately apparent to Bridger.
"And it shows?"
"A very big tropical storm. Captain. A monster, if I might say."
There'd been some playing around with weather systems, Bridger knew—storm generation to bring water to the Sahara, trying to prevent mud slides in California, saving Russian crops.
But it only made things worse.
Bridger nodded. "But we're so far down it doesn't matter to us, right?"
"Yes, sir... and no."
Bridger saw Lucas standing next to him. "Commander Ford said you wanted me, Captain?" Bridger raised a hand to him, asking him to wait.
"Yes, Lucas—in a minute. Chief, you said 'yes and no'... I don't get it."
"Captain, SousMer is built on a volcanic shelf. It's perched on the same volcanic deposit that made the nearby island of St. Catherine. If the storm is big enough, there may be some very bad, very strange currents, tidal movement that, well, could reach down that deep."
"Nothing for us to worry about though, right—?"
Ortiz hesitated.
"Well, right, sir. I mean, pretty much. Can't bother the seaQuest. But—if you have to do any fast maneuvering down there, anything in the submersibles, any EVA activity, well, there are caves, caverns, all sorts of formations down there. It could get dicey."
Bridger nodded. In other words, he thought, I do have to worry about this storm.
"Thanks, Lieutenant." Bridger skipped off his headset and got out of his command chair.
"Lucas, I'd like a private chat with you—and Darwin."
Bridger led the seaQuest's young computer whiz back to the dolphin tank, where, Bridger thought, Darwin seemed to be waiting for them...
Gooding stood at the other end of the sub pool. He saw two people dressed in odd suits dragging something—no, someone to the side.
Now, what is this? Gooding thought.
And when he imagined that he should take that question to his boss prontissimo, one of the figures, slender, almost... feminine...
She looked over and—dropping the body she was dragging—said:
"Don't even think of moving."
Gooding saw that the woman was holding something in her hand. He wondered how much worse this day could get, while he did exactly what the woman ordered.