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That was true, but Janko was not alone in wondering if the structure was safe. One didn’t need to be a scientist to imagine acids slowly etching their way through the metal walls.
“Who knows what the chemicals in this lake have been doing to our hull all these years,” he said. “Finish setting the explosives. I want to get out of here and blow this thing before it dissolves around us.”
The men seemed to agree. They doubled their labors, and moments later the demolitions expert slid out from under the computer bank. “All set.”
“Good,” Janko said. The explosives would tear apart the circuit boards and memory banks. The fire that followed would melt the remnants to sludge before the water poured in. Even assuming they had the ability and fortitude to recover the remnants from beneath nearly a thousand feet of poisoned water, the high-tech labs of the world’s intelligence agencies would get nothing from what they found.
That meant only one job remained.
He turned around and pointed his rifle at a pair of gagged figures sitting on the floor. One man, one woman. Both with their hands tied behind their backs.
The man was either law enforcement or military. Strong willed, he stared at Janko, almost daring him to shoot them. The woman was softer, pretty, with strawberry blond hair, and fear in her eyes. Janko figured he would shoot her first. Put her out of her misery. He raised the weapon.
“Are you insane?!” the tech shouted.
Janko glared at him.
“We’ve turned the oxygen to full,” the tech explained. “We also opened the acetylene tanks. This whole station is filling with flammable gas. If you pull that trigger, the whole place might go up in flames. You want to kill them, use a knife.”
Janko lowered the rifle and looked back at the captives. Had they realized this? Had they been goading him into destroying himself? It didn’t matter. They would face the painful fate of an explosion and fire on their own in a few minutes.
“Set the timer,” he said. “We’re getting out of here.”
Janko watched as the demolitions man set the timer to 10:00 and pressed INITIATE. The clock ticked over to 09:59 and began winding down. Without glancing back, Janko turned and made his way toward the main ladder. Their submarine awaited.
* * *
Joe stood on the beach, considering his options. As much as he believed Kurt would make it back one way or another, waiting around for him to return wasn’t going to work for Bradshaw. Nor was Joe interested in a half-mile swim through a toxic lake to retrieve the amphibious truck.
His mind turned to the dead vehicles. They had chargers in them. Assuming he could get one of them started, he could power up the radios and call for help. It would come in the form of a helicopter or three — one to whisk the gravely injured chief of the ASIO to a hospital and two or three more filled with military commandos or SWAT teams to surround and secure the lake.
It was a two-hour drive to Alice Springs but only thirty minutes by air. For Bradshaw, that might be the difference between life and death.
“If only these things came with hand cranks,” Joe muttered, thinking of vintage cars.
He considered push-starting one of them. The two Jeeps had manual transmissions, and the beach sloped down to the water. That would help, but he wasn’t sure he could get up enough speed.
He reached into one of the Jeeps, put the transmission in neutral, and put his shoulder into the doorframe. Pushing with all his might, Joe got the rig moving. But the sand was soft, and he couldn’t get the speed up beyond the pace of a slow walk. He stepped aside as the vehicle reached the water’s edge.
He expected to see the front wheels roll into the water and stop, but the nose of the vehicle went over, and the cabin filled with water from the open door. Seconds later, it plunged downward and disappeared beneath the surface. The last thing he saw was the trailer hitch that stuck out from the rear bumper like the battle flag on the aft end of a sinking ship.
He glanced over at Bradshaw, who appeared to be out cold. “You didn’t need to see that anyway.”
Joe stood perplexed for a second, wondering about what had just happened. Then it made sense. Like most open-pit mines, the entire excavation was done in terraces. A steep slope, then a flat section, and then another steep cut. The beach was nothing more than a wide terrace. A sixty-foot wall lay behind them at an almost vertical angle. A similar drop must lie just beyond the water’s edge.
Joe looked around at the remaining vehicles, and a new plan formed in his mind. It would cost the ASIO at least one more vehicle, but if Joe was right, it would get the other Jeep started.
* * *
Kurt looked upward into a pool of cherry-colored light. He’d brought the speeder in beneath the station and found the airlock.
Carefully, he maneuvered into the bay and surfaced. The pool and the surrounding deck space appeared empty.
Kurt nudged the throttle and bumped it up onto a shelf of some type. He popped the canopy back and stepped out onto the deck. A moment later, he was through the primary airlock and into an equipment room.
A pair of tanks and two full-face helmets sat nearby. The same type of equipment the ASIO had in one of their trucks.
The dive team had made it this far, he thought. But where were they now?
