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“Answer me,” Kirov demanded, grabbing Kurt.
“Wait,” Gregorovich shouted. “We are on our way. I’m assuming if we get off course somehow, our polestar, Mr. Austin, will reroute us.”
Clearly, he saw what Kurt was doing. For some reason, he seemed okay with it. That thought gained strength when Gregorovich handed another weapon to Captain Winslow.
“Détente,” he said, explaining. Then he snapped his fingers at one of the Vietnamese crewmen. “Show them to their quarters. Mr. Austin and I are going to share a drink.”
The situation had worked out better than Kurt might have hoped. They’d bought some time, and they now had two rifles plus his pistol. They just might survive until morning.
* * *
Dirk Pitt found himself standing in the mist on a low rise surrounded by tall pines and cedars. He and Vice President Sandecker had hitched a ride on a B-1 bomber making a transcontinental trip. Traveling at Mach 2, they’d arrived at Travis Air Force Base in Northern California nearly a full hour before they’d taken off, at least according to the local clock anyway.
It had been a great ride, and one that Pitt enjoyed as a pilot. He might have enjoyed it more had he known the purpose of the trip.
From Travis, a CH-53 Sea Stallion had brought them northwest. It thundered across the landscape, finally setting them down on a rocky outcropping high atop an inaccessible ridge overlooking Sonoma Lake.
There Pitt and Sandecker met with Jim Culver, head of the NSA. He was fuming mad, and he and Pitt might have come to blows had Sandecker not been there to intervene.
“Who do you people think you are? Hacking an NSA secure database?”
“I’d say it wasn’t all that secure if we could do it in a day,” Pitt replied, though he realized there were few people out there with skills like Yaeger’s.
“Beyond that,” Pitt added, “I wouldn’t have needed to if you’d have been forthcoming with some answers about Tesla and a theory he either burned or hid seventy years ago.”
“So you admit it?”
“Sure do,” Pitt said. “There’s a terrorist out there threatening to turn an entire country into a parking lot. And I’m not going to leave a single stone unturned in my effort to stop him. If that ruffles your feathers, then I don’t happen to care. One of my ships is already missing. It may have gone down with all hands. Compared to those lives, whatever secret you’re trying to protect doesn’t mean a thing to me.”
Culver shrank back. Years on Wall Street and in the boardroom, followed by a successful political career, had not prepared him for the kind of life-and-death intensity that Pitt unleashed. The anger in Pitt’s opaline green eyes caused Culver to forget that he was an inch taller than Pitt and thirty pounds heavier.
He turned to Sandecker. “I know he’s a friend of yours, Mr. Vice President. And I’m sure you’re going to defend him. But this is inexcusable.”
“Not only is he a friend of mine,” Sandecker said proudly, “but he’s a patriot who’s done more for this country than you and your whole army of schemers and bureaucrats ever will. So whatever your problem is, you need to get over it. The President has ordered that there be cooperation on this matter. That’s why we’re here.”
“Do you two have any idea what’s at stake?” Culver said.
“Do you?” Pitt replied.
Culver fumed. Whatever stand he thought he was going to make had crumbled. “Fine. But understand this. What I’m about to show you has been known only to the presidents of the United States and a select few others. Not even ranking members of Congress. It’s considered a national secret of the highest order. To speak of it, or otherwise disclose what you see here, is punishable. And I’m quite sure this even applies to you, Mr. Pitt.”
Pitt looked around. “Not sure how this qualifies as some big secret. As far as I can tell, we’re standing in a national park or something.”
“No,” Culver said, “you’re standing on top of a catastrophe. This is the true epicenter of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, a natural disaster in the eyes of the world. But, in actuality, the largest self-inflicted wound in U.S. history.”
“April 18, 1906,” Pitt said. “The day Daniel Watterson and General Hal Cortland died.”
“That’s right,” Culver said. “Only they didn’t die in Topeka, Kansas, and San Diego, California, like it says on their papers. They died right here, twenty stories beneath our feet, along with eighty-one others. Casualties not counted in the official death toll of the earthquake.”
“The obituaries,” Pitt said, understanding what happened. “They were all the same, just a few words changed: name, cause of death, and location. They were all written by one person as part of the cover-up. No one bothered to distinguish them. Whoever it was, they didn’t count on modern computer analysis to pick up the similar patterns.”
“It was 1906,” Culver said sarcastically. “I’m guessing they didn’t think that far ahead. Come with me.”
Together, the three of them walked back into the forest. They passed through a length of electrified fence and came to a sealed hatch that was as sturdy as any Pitt had ever seen on a ship. In fact, it reminded him of the doors to NORAD’s mountain bunker, only a lot smaller.
Culver entered a code on the outside and then used a key card. A seal cracked and the hatch opened like an oyster, revealing steps.
The three of them went inside, and Culver flipped a bank of switches. Old 1940s-style fixtures came to life, illuminated by modern halogen bulbs. A short walk brought them to another sealed door. Once through this door, they entered an elevator. It took them down into a lighted cave.
