Medusa

“Phelps is no longer in our employ,” Chang said.

Her face went ashen at the ominous tone of the a

“What do you mean?” she asked.

He ignored the question, and ordered his men to tie her up again.

“Your friend Austin escaped me again,” Chang said to Zavala,

“but it will only be a matter of time before we meet. And when we do, I will take great pleasure in describing your last moments to him.”

Chang took the cooler from Wu’s hand and ordered the doctor and his guards to return with him to the shuttle. Austin stepped out of the walk-in refrigerator seconds later after they left, holding the Bowen in his left hand.

“Good thing old bullethead left when he did,” Austin said. “I was starting to feel like a side of beef in there.”

He tucked the revolver under his right arm. Using a kitchen knife, he sliced the bindings holding Zavala, who reached for a napkin to staunch his bleeding lips. Despite the cuts and bruises, he was in good humor.

“Chang isn’t going to be happy when he finds out that the vaccine cultures you gave him are bogus,” he said to Lois Mitchell.

She gave Zavala a knowing smile, and went back into the freezer. She came out with another cooler, almost identical to the first.

“Wait until he learns that we’ve got the real thing,” she said.

CHANG WAS ALREADY far from happy. He uttered an angry curse as he entered the airlock chamber and saw that Phelps’s body was gone. A trail of blood led off toward a corridor. Phelps must have survived the gunshot and dragged himself down one of the passageways.

No matter. Phelps would die when the lab blew into a million pieces. Chang inspected his sapper’s handiwork and ordered him to set the timer. Then he herded his men into the shuttle, and the pilot used a remote control to activate the pumps. The airlock quickly filled with water. As the shuttle rose through the opening halves of the clamshell roof, Austin stood in the airlock control room watching the ascent on the instrument console’s television monitor. He spun around at the sound of a footfall, only to lower the Bowen a second later.

Phelps stood at the entrance to the passageway with his lips contorted into a strained grin. He was stripped to the waist, and a makeshift bandage soaked with blood covered the upper left part of his chest. His face was pale, but his dark eyes were defiant.

“You look like crap,” Austin said.

“Feel like it too,” Phelps said.

“What happened to you?”

“I figured Chang was going to be on hair trigger, thanks to you NUMA boys, so on my trip back to Kane’s office I grabbed a soft body-armor vest. It only covered my vitals, and I didn’t account for Chang’s bad aim. Bastard nicked me in the shoulder.”

“Why did he shoot you?”

“He got testy when I told him I wouldn’t rig the C-4 he and his boys brought down in the shuttle.”

“He pla

“Oh, hell, they put down enough explosives to wreck the Great Wall of China. Sloppy work, though. Lucky they didn’t blow themselves up.”

Phelps tossed a bundle of colored wires on the floor in an expert’s gesture of disdain for amateurish work.

“What’s Chang going to do when he discovers that his explosives didn’t go off?” Austin asked.

“My guess is, he’ll send somebody down to check it out.” Phelps cocked his head. “On second thought, he’ll probably come back to shoot your friends so he can tell you about it.” He gingerly touched the bandage. “Chang’s kinda bad-tempered that way.”

“I’ve noticed,” Austin said. “We’ve got to get everyone off the lab in the minisubs.”

Phelps pointed at the black discs that had been pulverized under Chang’s heel.

“These are circuits for the subs’ controls,” he said. “Chang stomped them.”

“Damn!” Austin said. “The subs were our only hope.”

“Still are,” Phelps said. “I gave Chang some other discs for his temper tantrum. The originals are still in the subs.”

Austin gazed at Phelps, thinking that he still had a lot to learn about human nature.

“What say you get the subs ready while I round up the scientists,” Austin said.

Phelps gave a quick salute and headed for the transit hub while Austin hurried back to the mess hall. Zavala had already rounded up the entire staff. The expressions on their faces ran the gamut from joy that they’d been freed to fear about what would happen next.

Austin introduced himself, asked everyone to be quiet for a minute, then a

The weary and frightened scientists climbed down to the minisub hatches. A few hesitated, and there were angry shouts when they saw Phelps, but Austin told them to pipe down and get into the subs. With some grumbling, they did as they were told.

“Are the subs likely to encounter Chang on their way out of the crater?” he asked Phelps.

“Not if they move fast. Chang would have gone back to his freighter to wait for the big boom. If the subs stay submerged as long as they can, they’ll be well past Chang’s ship, and can put out a Mayday.”

Austin passed Phelps’s advice along to the pilot of each sub. He delegated the shuttle pilot to take the lead vehicle. Mitchell got in one of them and held the cooler with the real vaccine cultures in it tightly on her lap. Then, one by one, the subs detached from the underside of the hemispheric hub and followed the leader across the bottom of the crater and through the tu

With the staff on its way, Austin turned to the next order of business: the Typhoon. As they got back in their wet suits, Zavala filled Austin in on the situation aboard the Russian submarine. Austin’s view of the situation was less optimistic than Zavala’s. Feeling was returning to Austin’s right arm, but he still wouldn’t be able to raise and fire the heavy Bowen revolver with any degree of accuracy. Phelps would be of limited help.

When Phelps tried to get into his wet suit, the snug neoprene top pressed painfully against his wound. Zavala used Austin’s knife to cut the arm of the suit off and part of the chest area to relieve the pressure.

Phelps noticed that two sets of scuba gear were missing and surmised that the pair of guards who had escorted Zavala from the sub had gone back to join their comrades. More bad news: the guards were now back to their full complement.

Zavala helped Austin lower Phelps into the pool and guide him down the shaft to open water. With Austin on one side of Phelps and Zavala on the other, all three slowly rose from the bottom up toward the Typhoon, whose gigantic shadow loomed near the surface.

By prearrangement, Austin and Phelps entered the hatch on the starboard deck of the giant sail and Zavala used the port hatch. Once inside the escape chambers they closed the hatch, pumped out the water, then opened the lower watertight door and descended the ladder. They whipped their masks off to see Captain Mehdev standing there with a curious look on his face.

The captain had been in the control room when an alarm went off signifying the airlocks were in use. The two guards had returned earlier from the lab, so he went to see who had entered his submarine. He wasn’t surprised to see Phelps and Zavala, but he raised a bushy eyebrow when he saw the broad-shouldered stranger.

Zavala said, “Kurt, this is Captain Mehdev, the commander of this incredible boat and keeper of the vodka cabinet.”

Austin extended his uninjured left arm for a handshake.

“Kurt Austin. I’m Joe’s friend and colleague at NUMA.” Noticing the hostile glance Mehdev shot in Phelps’s direction, he added, “Mr. Phelps is no longer working for the people who hijacked your sub. He is helping us now.”

“Yes, but for how long?” Mehdev asked, making no secret of his skepticism.