Medusa

“Good question,” Phelps said. “Sorry, can’t answer that. But I’m going to help you guys take your sub back.”

Mehdev shrugged.

“What can my men and I do?” the captain said. “We are sailors, not Marines.”

“Start by telling us where the guards are and what they are doing,” Austin said.

“Three are asleep in the officers’ quarters in the starboard hull,” Mehdev said, “and the others are gambling in the wardroom or they’re in the mess hall. They like to be close to the gym and the sauna, which were made off-limits to my men.”

“I think it’s time we end their little sojourn at Club Med,” Austin said. “Let’s take care of the snoozers first.”

Phelps pretended to be guarding Zavala and Austin in case the four encountered a wandering guard. They filed through the control room, where Mehdev, who had been in the lead, whispered in Russian to the crewmen, who passed the word on to others, that it would be a good idea to stay out of sight. The captain then picked up some rolls of duct tape from the machine shop and continued through the labyrinth of pressurized compartments until they came to the first of the officers’ state-rooms.

Three off-duty guards awoke in the first room to find themselves looking down the barrel of Austin’s revolver. They were trussed up by Zavala, had their mouths taped, and were tucked back in their bunks.

The raiding party headed toward the smell of cooking food. Mehdev entered the mess hall alone and smiled at two guards who sat at a table drinking tea while watching Jackie Chan on DVD. They glanced at the captain only briefly, then went back to their DVD.

Mehdev spoke in Russian to the quartermaster, who was tending the steam table. He nodded in understanding and slipped out of the mess hall. Then Austin and Zavala stepped into the room, brandishing their weapons. The stu

With Mehdev again in the lead, Austin and Zavala kept moving through the sub until they came to the wardroom. The captain poked his face through the doorway and asked with a smile if anyone needed anything. One guard looked up from his cards and answered with a growl that needed no translation. Still smiling, the captain withdrew.

“Four places but only three players,” Mehdev whispered to Austin and Zavala. “Half a bottle of vodka gone.”

Austin didn’t like having a stray guard wandering around the submarine, but he wanted to press his advantage. He nodded to Zavala, and they stepped into the wardroom with guns leveled. The slightly drunk guards were slow to react. Minutes later, they were facedown on the floor bound with duct tape. Then the hunt was on for the missing guard.

They found him a few minutes after that. Or, rather, he found them. As the men entered the compartment that housed the sauna, the door opened and the guard stepped out wearing only a bathing suit. This time, it was Austin and Zavala who were slow to react. The guard was young and fast, and he reached into a nearby locker, grabbed a holster with a handgun in it, and bolted through the hatch into the next compartment. Austin gave chase, but he tripped on some pipes and went down on one knee. He was up in an instant, but by then the guard had disappeared into the i

Austin would have lost his prey if not for the crewmen who pointed him in the direction of the fleeing guard. With Zavala right behind him, he kept moving until he came to a closed door. He and Zavala were pondering their next move when Mehdev caught up to them.

“What’s on the other side of that door?” Austin asked.

Huffing and puffing, the portly captain said, “The missile battery was replaced with a cargo hold. A freight elevator goes up to a loading hatch on the deck. A catwalk from the elevator crosses over the bays to another elevator on the forward side of the hold, which is filled with empty containers that were supposed to be used for cargo. You’ll never find him in there. Just secure the door.”

“Could he still cause trouble if we let him alone?”Austin asked.

“Well, yes,” the captain answered. “There are electrical and other conduits that run through the hull. He could disable the sub.”

“Then I think we should disable him,” Austin said.

He asked the captain to have his men keep watch over the guards who had been neutralized, then plucked a flashlight off the bulkhead wall, turned the compartment lights off, and slowly opened the door. He stepped into the next compartment, flicked the flashlight on, and played the beam over the open elevator shaft. The elevator cables were thrumming inside the shaft. The elevator car then clanged softly to a halt at the top.

Austin went over and pressed the elevator’s DOWN button. He and Zavala stood to either side of the doors with their weapons ready, but when the elevator car returned it was empty. Zavala took a fire extinguisher from the wall and stuck it between the doors to keep the car in place.

After a quick conference, Zavala climbed the stairs to the catwalk to drive the guard toward Austin, who then would cut him off at the other end of the hold. Austin had spent a lot of time at the shooting range using both hands and was confident that he could get off a reasonably accurate left-handed shot if he had to.

The vast interior hold, which had once housed missile silos and twenty city busters, took up almost a third of the sub’s length. When the silos were removed, large loading-dock doors had been installed in the deck overhead and partitions installed to separate one cargo from another in their own bays.

Austin stepped into the first bay and found a light switch. Floodlights hanging from the catwalk turned night into day. He made his way along a corridor between the metal containers until he came to a partition. He stepped through an opening into the next bay and repeated his search.

As Austin made his way through the hold bay by bay, Zavala kept pace along the catwalk. Austin had crossed the hold without incident until he came to the last bay. Haste made him careless.

Austin assumed that the guard was still ahead of him, caught in the pincers of their maneuver. But the prey had figured out the intention of the maneuver and had hidden in a narrow space between container stacks. He waited for Austin to pass and then silently emerged behind him. Moving quietly on bare feet, the guard lifted his gun with both hands and carefully took aim between Austin’s shoulder blades.

“Kurt!”

The shout came from Zavala, who was peering over the rail of the catwalk. Austin glanced up and saw his friend’s pointing finger. Without a backward glance, he ducked around a big metal container as a bullet twanged off its corner. Then another gunshot rang out, this one from above. A moment later, Zavala called down.

“You can come out, Kurt, I think I got him.”

Austin peered around the corner of the container, then he waved up at Zavala. The guard lay dead in his bathing suit on the floor. Even shooting down at such a difficult angle, Zavala had drilled him through his chest.

Austin remembered then what Phelps had said about the Chinese fetish for numbers. He shook his head. When your number was up, your number was up.

CHAPTER 45

CHANG WAS A CLASSIC PSYCHOPATH. HE DIDN’T HAVE A drop of human empathy or remorse in his squat, ugly body, and for him killing was as easy as crossing the street. The other Triad triplets had cha