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“No!”
This time, the words were bellowed at her. The harshness returned to Thero’s eyes with a rush, and he grabbed her by the throat with his right hand and slammed her into the wall. The impact stunned her, and Thero’s hand crushing her windpipe seemed to cut off the blood from her brain.
“Please…” she gasped, crying out to the other side of Thero’s mind. “Please!”
Thero released her, and she dropped to the floor beside the heap of bodies.
“How dare you turn my son against me!”
“I didn’t,” she managed. “We were only… trying to help.”
“I don’t need your help!” he shouted. “Or my son’s, for that matter. I will bring the world to its knees. Once they see what I do to Australia, there will be no need for negotiations. They will beg me for mercy.”
He stepped back over to the control panel and shoved the master switch into the on position. She heard the heavy circuit closing and the big generators in the other room switching on. The lights around them dimmed appreciably and then began to brighten.
Soon, the generators were humming, spinning up to a feverous pitch.
“No,” she begged. “Please, don’t do this.”
“I’m so glad you could be here,” Thero shouted. “I will not even wait for zero hour. I will punish them immediately. And you will watch from my side as I wreak destruction on those who persecuted me.”
Out in the spherical cavern, the gears began to churn, and the giant collection of pipes and electrical conduits began to tilt. The weapon turned slowly, clinking like a roller coaster being dragged up the steep track to its release point.
Hayley found herself dizzy as the weapon slowly ratcheted itself toward a new position, an alignment that would aim the wave of distortion through the Earth’s crust at the dormant rift in the Australian outback.
FORTY-FIVE
Kurt and his three newfound cohorts crept through several lengths of tunnel connecting various areas that the miners had quarried until eventually they arrived in a hub containing living quarters for the prisoners.
Every twenty feet or so, there was an alcove with a steel door. At the far end of the hall, a single guard sat at a desk, ostensibly watching the hub.
“How’d you get past him the first time?” Kurt asked.
“We waited for him to take a bathroom break,” Masinga replied.
“Unless he’s been drinking coffee all night, I don’t think we have time for that plan to work again. Get ready to use that skeleton key.”
He took a breath and let the tension fall away from his body. Then, calmly, he stepped out into the hall, leveled the Makarov, and advanced at a brisk pace.
When the guard looked up, Kurt had no choice. With two quick pulls, Kurt triggered the gun. The booming report surged through the narrow tunnel like thunder. The two shots hit the guard in the chest, knocking him off his chair and onto the floor.
He didn’t move, but, to Kurt’s surprise, a second guard appeared at the side of the first.
Kurt fired again. The guard crumpled to the ground, but his hand slammed down on an emergency alarm button as he fell.
The shriek of an electronic alarm rang out, and a thick steel-plated door began to close between Kurt and the guard post and whatever was beyond it. Kurt ran forward, but it shut just before he arrived.
Behind him, Masinga was already rushing to the dormlike cells, letting the other prisoners free. They were shouting and thanking him in several different languages. Soon, they were filling the hall and surging toward Kurt, for whatever good it would do them.
Devlin arrived at Kurt’s side before the rest of the mob. “Now what?”
Kurt slid the backpack off his shoulders and dropped it to the floor. Opening it revealed the explosives he carried. “Get everyone back into their cells.”
“You’re gonna blow this thing?”
“No other choice,” Kurt said. “Let’s just hope I don’t bring the roof down in the process.”
Kurt’s instincts tended toward overkill. If a small hammer would do the job, a sledgehammer would leave no room for doubt. In this case, he tempered his basic inclinations, placing two bricks of the C-4 beside the door and jabbing a pair of blasting caps into each of them.
