Zero Hour

He could see nothing. He felt heat but didn’t smell sulfur, like he’d have expected if they were volcanic.

He pulled out his Zippo lighter and one of the oily rags. He held the lighter against it and lit it, sheltering the rag from the wind until a third of it was burning. Next, he dropped it into the tube.

It fell through the darkness like a small meteorite, illuminating the smooth sides of the tu

As the rag burned, Kurt saw the outline of a grate. The chimney was not volcanic, it was man-made, designed to evacuate heat or smoke or something else undesirable from down below. It had to lead to Thero’s lair. It had to.

Quickly, Kurt set up his rope. He found a section of the ice and rubble in the lateral moraine and hammered in three anchors to secure the rope. He didn’t have a harness, or time to improvise one, but it didn’t matter, he would rappel down, using his hands to control the descent.

He dropped the rope in and eased over the edge. The fit was tight. He could barely see past his boots. Twenty feet down, the tu

Pressing himself against one edge of the chimney, he studied the metal grate. He could see a dusty floor ten feet below it. He heard no sound of movement.

Bouncing up and down a bit, he tested the strength of the grate. On his third little hop, he felt it give.

“Time to drop in,” he muttered to himself.

He looped the rope through one of the bars and tied it. Then he jumped hard, and the grate broke free.

The sound of rock splinters hitting the floor was no louder than a whisper, and both Kurt and the heavy grate remained suspended by the rope.

Kurt lowered them both down gently and touched down without a sound.

He was in.

Exactly what he’d made his way into was another question entirely.

FORTY-TWO

Paul Trout stood on the bridge of the Gemini as the ship surged through the waves toward the MV Rama. The merchant vessel had been traveling northeast since finishing its Orion-like pattern, and the Gemini had been racing to intercept it for the last eight hours. They were finally closing to within shouting distance.

“Think we’re going to be able to do this alone?” Gamay asked from a spot beside him.

“We’ve got a fighting chance,” Paul said. He would have preferred some backup, but they were so far off the beaten track, there wasn’t a military or coast guard vessel for a thousand miles.

“If it wasn’t for the weather, we could at least get some air support,” she said. “A few threatening passes by a formation of military jets or an Australian antisubmarine aircraft circling the ship relentlessly might have helped.”

Paul agreed completely, but the leading edge of a gale had reached the area. It was whipping up the seas and slinging freezing rain across the Gemini’s deck. Not the kind of conditions aircraft made low, showy passes in. Especially fifteen hundred miles from the nearest land.

All of which meant the unarmed Gemini was the only hope of stopping the MV Rama and finding out if any of the Orion’s crew were aboard.

“What’s the range?” Paul asked.

They had the Rama painted on the radarscope, but with visibility at a quarter mile, they hadn’t seen her in the dark yet.

“A thousand yards,” the radar officer said.

“That’s it?” Paul replied. “She must be ru

“In this soup, we might collide with her before we spot her,” the captain added.

“No, we won’t,” Gamay said, looking through a pair of binoculars. “I’ve got her. Just off the port bow.”

Paul followed her directions, spotting the shadow of a vessel plowing through the dark.

“Light her up,” the captain ordered.

The executive officer flicked a series of switches, and a trio of powerful spotlights came on, piercing the dark and the rain and converging on the lumbering vessel. At three times the Gemini’s size, the Rama pitched and rolled less noticeably in the swells, but there was a wallowing quality to her progress.

“Time to put on the show,” Paul said, handing his binoculars to the captain.

“I’ll bring us up alongside of her,” the captain said. “You get ready to play commando.”

“I don’t have to tell you to be careful,” Gamay said.

“No,” Paul replied gri

With that, Paul left the bridge and raced down the stairwell. Minutes later, he was standing just inside the forward hatch with a dozen other volunteers. They all wore black, with hastily made arm patches that displayed an approximation of the Australian flag’s blue field, with its stars of the Southern Cross and the Union Jack in the corner.

“Weapons, everyone,” Paul said. The Gemini’s weapons locker held six rifles and two pistols. The rest received wooden approximations of the M16 rifle that had been painted black. The volunteers from the crew laughed and pointed the guns at one another.

“What do we do if they don’t surrender?” one man asked.

“Either dive overboard or swing these things like Reggie Jackson,” another one replied.

Paul hoped neither act would be necessary.

He cracked the hatch a few inches and peered through the rain and fog. The MV Rama was just across from them, bathed in the spotlights, as the whoop-whoop of Gemini’s alarm blared like a coast guard siren.

They chased and harried the Rama like this for several minutes to no effect. Finally, the intercom buzzed.

“They’re not responding to our radio calls,” Gamay’s voice a

“Understood,” Paul said. “I’ll man the rocket launchers. Tell the captain to get us in close. Real close. And be ready to give them your spiel over the loudspeaker.”

“Will do,” Gamay said. “Good luck.”

Paul looked at the chief. “I’m heading forward. Get ready to take your positions on the deck.”

“We’ll be ready,” the chief said.

Paul made his way to another door and pushed out through the hatch and onto the pitching deck. He crossed the foredeck to a squared-off structure that looked convincingly like a warship’s turret, with multiple rocket-launching tubes on either side.

A hydraulic crane used to lift ROVs in and out of the water had occupied the spot hours before. The boom had been dismantled and the sheet metal façade of a turret welded onto the crane’s turntable-like base. Metal air-duct tubing had been removed from parts of the ship, cut to the right length, and affixed to the sides. Painted battleship gray, with a fake ante

Paul slipped inside, ducking through a gap in the metal. He found the Gemini’s crane operator at the controls.

Paul spoke into his radio. “Light up the foredeck,” he said. “Let them see what they’re up against.”

Seconds later, additional lighting shone down on the turret as Gamay’s voice sounded over the loudspeaker, roaring at the highest volume.

“This is Commander Matilda Wallaby of the Royal Australian Navy,” she called out. She was using a fake accent that was pretty close to the real thing. “Your vessel has been spotted poaching fish in Australian territorial waters. You will reduce speed and prepare to be boarded or we will disable your ship.”

Paul stared through an aiming slit in the sheet metal. He detected no response from the Rama, but he saw lighting changes in the bridge area.

“Hopefully, they’re looking this way,” he said.

By now, the Gemini had pulled directly alongside the blocky superstructure near the aft end of the containership. The captain had eased the ship in closer. No more than fifty feet separated the sides of the two ships. As one swell rolled through, the Gemini rode up and almost sideswiped the larger vessel.