Zero Hour

“Can you try that in English,” Kurt said.

“The Earth isn’t going to be vaporized or anything,” she said. “We’re not going to start floating out of our chairs like astronauts in zero g.”

“What will we see?”

“The first and most dramatic manifestations will be noticed in the seas,” she said.

“The tides,” Kurt said.

“Exactly,” she replied. “The oceans of the Earth are drawn by the gravitational pull of the moon. The land is pulled on as well, but, unlike the liquid of the ocean it’s locked in place except at the fault lines.”

“How much power are we talking about here?”

“If the papers sent to us are valid,” she began, “potentially more energy than all of humankind has produced and expended since the begi

Kurt paused before responding. For the second time in as many days, he found it hard to believe what he was being told.

“How is such a thing possible?”

“The same way it’s possible to run a nuclear submarine on a small chunk of uranium for years. Or to obliterate a large city with only twenty pounds of plutonium. There are vast amounts of energy hidden in places the normal human eye can’t see.”

“But splitting a continent in half?” Kurt asked. “I’ve seen big earthquakes in California. They knock down highways and buildings, but, contrary to popular belief, half the state doesn’t float off into the Pacific.”

“No,” she agreed. “No one is suggesting you’re going to see a divided continent with the ocean in the middle. But Thero is no fool. His first earthquake was a test, probably triggered from the station in the Tasman Mine. We have every reason to believe that that was just a small prototype. He’ll hit us harder next time, much harder, and he’ll hit us where Mother Nature has already done half the work.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Australia has the begi

“If Thero can direct his weapon toward this point and create a gravitational distortion that wedges the plate apart even fractions of an inch, the pressure that’s been built up over the mille

Kurt considered her point quietly. It was a grim scenario.

“I know,” she said, taking his silence for disbelief. “I’m a silly academic pointing out the worst-case scenario. The sky is falling — once again. The thing is, when these scenarios actually happen, there’s always someone ru

Kurt’s face was dark. A new thought occurred to him. “I have to ask why you?”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” she said.

“The informant sent the papers to you,” Kurt clarified. “Why not send them straight to the authorities?”

Hayley shrugged. “I can only guess it’s because of my background. The claims and calculations would seem like gibberish to someone else. Had the package been sent directly to the ASIO, I can only assume it would have ended up in the wastebin.”

“Okay,” Kurt said, “but why not some other scientist?”

“It’s a very obscure field,” she explained. “We’re a tiny group.”

“Tiny but not infinitesimal,” Kurt said.

“No,” she agreed, “not infinitesimal.”

“So I have to ask you one more time: if there were other options, why do you think they picked you?”

She paused for a long moment. “I don’t know,” she said finally. The sadness had returned to her voice. There was a tinge of weariness to it, and a stronger hint of guilt. “I don’t know.”

She looked away, averting her eyes and staring out into the night. And, in that instant, Kurt knew that she was lying.

He considered pressing her for the truth but held back as he felt a subtle change in the train’s motion, like the engineer had taken his hand off the throttle.

Hayley looked up. “Something wrong?”

“Not sure,” Kurt said. He stood just as the brakes went on at full pressure.

The car lurched. Kurt braced himself and caught Hayley’s arm, keeping her from falling as the di

Still holding Hayley, Kurt glanced out the window. The train itself was in a turn, on a slight uphill grade. Looking forward, Kurt saw two other passenger cars and the twin diesel engines. Sparks were flying from the wheels as they dug into the track. But something else caught his eye: tiny points of crimson burning in the night, flares along the track bed and, a little farther on, the outline of a tractor trailer stalled across the rail line at a crossing. Two men stood in front of it, waving their arms frantically.

The breaking continued until the Ghan lurched awkwardly to a stop a few hundred feet from the crossing.

At this point, Hayley could see the truck as well. “Lucky we were able to stop,” she said.

Kurt glanced around. “Somehow, I don’t think luck’s got anything to do with it.”

Before Hayley could reply, he spotted just what he expected to see: men in ski masks, coming out of the night and headed straight for the motionless train.

NINETEEN

The masked men came aboard the train at several different points, climbing onto the couplers between cars and forcing the doors.

“What’s happening?” Hayley asked in a panicked voice.

“I’ll give you one guess.”

Hayley’s mind quickly grasped the truth. “They’re after us.”

“Either that or this is a Butch Cassidy reenactment no one told me about.”

Hayley grabbed her cell phone and dialed out in an attempt to call for help. “I have a signal, but I can’t seem to get through.”

“Waste of time,” Kurt said. “They’re probably jamming the tower.”

He glanced outside. Two car lengths down, another man stood out away from the train, sca

“They’ve got a guy outside,” Kurt said. “Probably watching for anyone who might make a break for open ground.”

A voice came over the public-address system. It had a bit of an accent, one that Kurt couldn’t place immediately. It certainly wasn’t the conductor.

“Please remain calm,” it said. “We have hijacked the train, but we’re not interested in harming anyone. We’re looking for two people. A man with silver-gray hair, about six feet tall, and a woman about six inches shorter than him, with blond hair. Her name is Anderson. Cooperate with us, and no one will get hurt. Interfere or argue, and you will be beaten or killed.”

As the a

He saw two men down the hall, pushing their way into one of the compartments. They were wide-bodied brutes, with thick arms and legs and faces hidden by ski masks. They moved without a hint of elegance or remorse. Kurt pegged them as street thugs hired for money.

A third man trailed behind them. He was thi