Deception Point (59 page)

“Ms. Sexton, stand up,” Delta-One said.

She did.

With the gun firmly on her back, Delta-One marched her
over to an aluminum set of portable stairs that led up to the top of the Triton sub from behind. “Climb up and stand on top of the sub.”

Rachel looked frightened and confused.

“Just do it,” Delta-One said.

•   •   •

Rachel felt like she was moving through a nightmare as she climbed up the aluminum gangway behind the Triton. She stopped at the top, having no desire to step out over the chasm onto the suspended Triton.

“Get on top of the sub,” the soldier said, returning to Tolland and pushing the gun against his head.

In front of Rachel the soldier who was in the clamps watched her, shifting in pain, obviously eager to get out. Rachel looked at Tolland, who now had a gun barrel to his head.
Get on top of the sub.
She had no choice.

Feeling like she was edging out onto a precipice overhanging a canyon, Rachel stepped onto the Triton’s engine casing, a small flat section behind the rounded dome window. The entire sub hung like a massive plumb bob over the open trapdoor. Even suspended on its winch cable, the nine-ton sub barely registered her arrival, swinging only a few millimeters as she steadied herself.

“Okay, let’s move,” the soldier said to Tolland. “Go to the controls and close the trapdoor.”

At gunpoint, Tolland began moving toward the control panel with the soldier behind him. As Tolland came toward her, he was moving slowly, and Rachel could feel his eyes fixing hard on her as if trying to send her a message. He looked directly at her and then down at the open hatch on top of the Triton.

Rachel glanced down. The hatch at her feet was open, the heavy circular covering propped open. She could see down into the one-seater cockpit.
He wants me to get in?
Sensing she must be mistaken, Rachel looked at Tolland again. He was almost to the control panel. Tolland’s eyes locked on her. This time he was less subtle.

His lips mouthed, “Jump in! Now!”

•   •   •

Delta-One saw Rachel’s motion out of the corner of his eye and wheeled on instinct, opening fire as Rachel fell through the sub’s hatch just below the barrage of bullets. The open hatch covering rang out as the bullets ricocheted off the circular portal, sending up a shower of sparks, and slamming the lid closed on top of her.

Tolland, the instant he’d felt the gun leave his back, made his move. He dove to his left, away from the trapdoor, hitting the deck and rolling just as the soldier spun back toward him, gun blazing. Bullets exploded behind Tolland as he scrambled for cover behind the ship’s stern anchor spool—an enormous motorized cylinder around which was wound several thousand feet of steel cable connected to the ship’s anchor.

Tolland had a plan and would have to act fast. As the soldier dashed toward him, Tolland reached up and grabbed the anchor lock with both hands, yanking down. Instantly the anchor spool began feeding out lengths of cable, and the
Goya
lurched in the strong current. The sudden movement sent everything and everyone on the deck staggering sidelong. As the boat accelerated in reverse on the current, the anchor spool doled out cable faster and faster.

Come on, baby,
Tolland urged.

The soldier regained his balance and came for Tolland. Waiting until the last possible moment, Tolland braced himself and rammed the lever back up, locking the anchor spool. The chain snapped taut, stopping the ship short and sending a tremulous shudder throughout the
Goya.
Everything on deck went flying. The soldier staggered to his knees near Tolland. Pickering fell back from the railing onto the deck. The Triton swung wildly on its cable.

A grating howl of failing metal tore up from beneath the ship like an earthquake as the damaged strut finally gave way. The right stern corner of the
Goya
began collapsing under its own weight. The ship faltered, tilting on a diagonal like a massive table losing one of its four legs. The noise from beneath was deafening—a wail of twisting, grating metal and pounding surf.

White-knuckled inside the Triton cockpit, Rachel held on as the nine-ton machine swayed over the trapdoor in the now steeply inclined deck. Through the base of the glass dome she
could see the ocean raging below. As she looked up, her eyes scanning the deck for Tolland, she watched a bizarre drama on the deck unfold in a matter of seconds.

Only a yard away, trapped in the Triton’s claws, the clamped Delta soldier was howling in pain as he bobbed like a puppet on a stick. William Pickering scrambled across Rachel’s field of vision and grabbed on to a cleat on the deck. Near the anchor lever, Tolland was also hanging on, trying not to slide over the edge into the water. When Rachel saw the soldier with the machine gun stabilizing himself nearby, she called out inside the sub. “Mike, look out!”

But Delta-One ignored Tolland entirely. The soldier was looking back toward the idling helicopter with his mouth open in horror. Rachel turned, following his gaze. The Kiowa gunship, with its huge rotors still turning, had started to slowly slide forward down the tipping deck. Its long metal skids were acting like skis on a slope. It was then that Rachel realized the huge machine was skidding directly toward the Triton.

•   •   •

Scrambling up the inclined deck toward the sliding aircraft, Delta-One clambered into the cockpit. He had no intention of letting their only means of escape slide off the deck. Delta-One seized the Kiowa’s controls and heaved back on the stick.
Lift off!
With a deafening roar, the blades accelerated overhead, straining to lift the heavily armed gunship off the deck.
Up, goddamn it!
The chopper was sliding directly toward the Triton and Delta-Two suspended in its grasp.

With its nose tipped forward, the Kiowa’s blades were also tipped, and when the chopper lurched off the deck, it sailed more forward than up, accelerating toward the Triton like a giant buzz saw.
Up!
Delta-One pulled the stick, wishing he could drop the half ton of Hellfire warheads weighing him down. The blades just missed the top of Delta-Two’s head and the top of the Triton sub, but the chopper was moving too fast. It would never clear the Triton’s winch cable.

As the Kiowa’s 300-rpm steel blades collided with the sub’s fifteen-ton capacity braided steel winch cable, the night erupted with the shriek of metal on metal. The sounds conjured images of epic battle. From the chopper’s armored cockpit,
Delta-One watched his rotors tear into the sub’s cable like a giant lawn mower running over a steel chain. A blinding spray of sparks erupted overhead, and the Kiowa’s blades exploded. Delta-One felt the chopper bottom out, its struts hitting the deck hard. He tried to control the aircraft, but he had no lift. The chopper bounded twice down the inclined deck, then slid, crashing into the ship’s guardrail.

For a moment, he thought the rail would hold.

Then Delta-One heard the crack. The heavily laden chopper listed over the brink, plummeting into the sea.

•   •   •

Inside the Triton, Rachel Sexton sat paralyzed, her body pressed back into the sub’s seat. The minisub had been tossed violently as the chopper’s rotor wrapped around the cable, but she had managed to hang on. Somehow the blades had missed the main body of the sub, but she knew there had to be major damage to the cable. All Rachel could think of at that point was escaping from the sub as fast as she could. The soldier trapped in the clamps stared in at her, delirious, bleeding, and burned from the shrapnel. Beyond him, Rachel saw William Pickering still holding on to a cleat on the slanting deck.

Where’s Michael?
She didn’t see him. Her panic lasted only an instant as a new fear descended. Overhead, the Triton’s shredded winch cable let out an ominous whipping noise as the braids unraveled. Then, there was a loud snap, and Rachel felt the cable give way.

Momentarily weightless, Rachel hovered above her seat inside the cockpit as the sub hurtled downward. The deck disappeared overhead, and the catwalks under the
Goya
raced by. The soldier trapped in the claws went white with fear, staring at Rachel as the sub accelerated downward.

The fall seemed endless.

When the sub crashed into the sea beneath the
Goya,
it plunged hard under the surf, ramming Rachel down hard into her seat. Her spine compressed as the illuminated ocean raced up over the dome. She felt a suffocating drag as the sub slowed to a stop underwater and then raced back toward the surface, bobbing up like a cork.

The sharks hit instantly. From her front-row seat, Rachel sat frozen in place as the spectacle unfolded only a few feet away.

•   •   •

Delta-Two felt the shark’s oblong head crash into him with unimaginable force. A razor sharp clamp tightened on his upper arm, slicing to the bone and locking on. A flash of white-hot pain exploded as the shark torqued its powerful body and shook its head violently, tearing Delta-Two’s arm off his body. Others sharks moved in. Knives stabbing at his legs. Torso. Neck. Delta-Two had no breath to scream in agony as the sharks ripped huge chunks of his body away. The last thing he saw was a crescent-shaped mouth, tilting sideways, a gorge of teeth clamping down across his face.

The world went black.

•   •   •

Inside the Triton, the thudding of heavy cartilaginous heads ramming into the dome finally subsided. Rachel opened her eyes. The man was gone. The water washing against the window was crimson.

Badly battered, Rachel huddled in her chair, knees pulled to her chest. She could feel the sub moving. It was drifting on the current, scraping along the length of the
Goya
’s lower dive deck. She could feel it moving in another direction as well. Down.

Outside, the distinctive gurgling of water into the ballast tanks grew louder. The ocean inched higher on the glass in front of her.

I’m sinking!

A jolt of terror shot through Rachel, and she was suddenly scrambling to her feet. Reaching overhead, she grabbed the hatch mechanism. If she could climb up on top of the sub, she still had time to jump onto the
Goya
’s dive deck. It was only a few feet away.

I’ve got to get out!

The hatch mechanism was clearly marked which way to turn it to open. She heaved. The hatch did not budge. She tried again. Nothing. The portal was jammed shut. Bent. As the fear rose in her blood like the sea around her, Rachel heaved one last time.

The hatch did not move.

The Triton sank a few inches deeper, bumping the
Goya
one last time before drifting out from underneath the mangled hull . . . and into the open sea.

“D
on’t do this,” Gabrielle begged the senator as he finished at the copy machine. “You’re risking your daughter’s life!”

Sexton blocked out her voice, moving back to his desk now with ten identical stacks of photocopies. Each stack contained copies of the pages Rachel had faxed him, including her handwritten note claiming the meteorite was a fake and accusing NASA and the White House of trying to kill her.

The most shocking media kits ever assembled,
Sexton thought, as he began carefully inserting each stack into its own large, white linen envelope. Each envelope bore his name, office address, and senatorial seal. There would be no doubt where this incredible information had originated.
The political scandal of the century,
Sexton thought,
and I will be the one to reveal it!

Gabrielle was still pleading for Rachel’s safety, but Sexton heard only silence. As he assembled the envelopes, he was in his own private world.
Every political career has a defining moment. This is mine.

William Pickering’s phone message had warned that if Sexton went public, Rachel’s life would be in danger. Unfortunately for Rachel, Sexton also knew if he went public with proof of NASA’s fraud, that single act of boldness would land him in the White House with more decisiveness and political drama than ever before witnessed in American politics.

Life is filled with difficult decisions,
he thought.
And winners are those who make them.

Gabrielle Ashe had seen this look in Sexton’s eyes before.
Blind ambition.
She feared it. And with good reason, she now realized. Sexton was obviously prepared to risk his daughter in order to be the first to announce the NASA fraud.

“Don’t you see you’ve already won?” Gabrielle demanded. “There’s no way Zach Herney and NASA will survive this scandal. No matter
who
makes it public! No matter when it comes out! Wait until you know Rachel is safe. Wait until you talk to Pickering!”

Sexton was clearly no longer listening to her. Opening his desk drawer, he pulled out a foil sheet on which were affixed dozens of nickel-sized, self-adhesive wax seals with his initials on them. Gabrielle knew he usually used these for formal invitations, but he apparently thought a crimson wax seal would give each envelope an extra touch of drama. Peeling the circular seals off the foil, Sexton pressed one onto the pleat of each envelope, sealing it like a monogrammed epistle.

Gabrielle’s heart pulsed now with a new anger. She thought of the digitized images of illegal checks in his computer. If she said anything, she knew he would just delete the evidence. “Don’t do this,” she said, “or I’ll go public about our affair.”

Sexton laughed out loud as he affixed the wax seals. “Really? And you think they’ll believe you—a power-hungry aide denied a post in my administration and looking for revenge at any cost? I denied our involvement once, and the world believed me. I’ll simply deny it again.”

“The White House has photos,” Gabrielle declared.

Sexton did not even look up. “They don’t have photos. And even if they did, they’re meaningless.” He affixed the final wax seal. “I have immunity. These envelopes out-trump anything anyone could possibly throw at me.”

Gabrielle knew he was right. She felt utterly helpless as Sexton admired his handiwork. On his desk sat ten elegant, white linen envelopes, each embossed with his name and address and secured with a crimson wax seal bearing his scripted initials. They looked like royal letters. Certainly kings had been crowned on account of less potent information.