Temple of the Gods (42 page)

One of the monitors, he noticed, showed what looked like a navigation chart. At its centre was what he took to be the Mako’s current position, a red line weaving away from it. A record of its course?

‘Is it safe?’ Nina called, head poking over the top of the hatchway like Kilroy.

‘Yeah,’ Eddie answered. He jabbed the pilot with the rifle. The man moaned faintly. Nina ascended, followed by Matt. ‘Matt, what do you make of this?’ He pointed at the map screen.

‘It’s an inertial navigation system.’

‘Is that line its route?’

The Australian took a closer look at the display. ‘Yeah, it came from . . .’ He looked back at Eddie. ‘The start point’s less than four kilometres from here! And it’s not on the surface – there’s a depth tracker as well. The mother ship’s another submarine.’

‘A sub that keeps smaller subs inside it?’ Nina asked, sceptical. ‘Does anyone even
make
submarines like that? We’re not in a Bond movie!’

‘Yeah, they exist. If a megayacht’s not showy enough for you, there are companies that build them – if you’ve got the money. There’s the Phoenix 1000, and I know that a Russian firm had a couple on the stocks a few years ago.’

‘Glas would have the money,’ said Eddie.

‘Maybe,’ said Nina. ‘But what do we do now?’

‘We should get you back to the surface,’ said Matt. He headed down the cabin.

‘Where are you going?’ Eddie asked.

‘Got to detach the
Sharkdozer
, mate! It’s way too big and heavy for this thing to drag along.’ He dropped into the other submersible.

Again, Nina picked up on something in his voice – a forced lightness, cheer covering concern – and this time Eddie noticed it too. ‘Matt, what’re you doing?’ he called as metallic clunks came from below. He and his wife exchanged worried looks, then rushed for the docking port. ‘Matt!’

They reached it just in time to see the
Sharkdozer
’s hatch slam shut. The latches closed. ‘Christ, what’s he up to?’ Eddie said, jumping down. He tried to reopen the hatch; the handle moved fractionally before sticking. The Australian had wedged it with something. He thumped a fist on the steel. ‘Matt!’

Matt’s voice crackled from the
Sharkdozer
’s underwater PA system. ‘Sorry, mate, but I’ve got to do this. The only way I can release the docking clamps is from in here – and the moment I do, the collar will flood. So you need to shut that hatch so you can get out of here.’

‘No!’ said Nina in horror. ‘We can’t leave you! There – there’s got to be another way!’

‘There isn’t. Like I said, the Mako can’t haul this thing with it.’

‘But you’ll . . .’ Her breath caught. ‘Matt, you’ll
die
.’

‘Not necessarily. I got a load of fresh air in here when we docked, and since there’s only one person aboard now, it might last long enough for me to reach the surface.’

‘Bullshit!’ said Eddie. ‘You said it was about to run out of power!’ He yanked at the handle again, but it still refused to move.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Matt said, ‘will you two listen to me and do what I tell you for once?
Someone
has to release the clamps from in here. The
Sharkdozer
’s my sub, I designed it – and now I’ve found out that not having a remote release is kind of a serious design flaw! So, ah . . . it’s my responsibility.’

‘No way.’ Eddie started to climb back into the Mako. ‘I’ll wake up that twat in the driver’s seat and make him do it.’

‘Yeah? How’s that going to work? You going to threaten to shoot him through a thick steel hatch?’ A resigned sigh came through the speaker. ‘Eddie, you’re a great mate, but you’re really not as smart as you think you are.’

Eddie stopped. ‘Would you have ever said that to my face?’

‘Why do you think I waited until there was a thick steel hatch between us?’ Both men were trying to sound jocular, but their attempts fell very flat.

‘Matt, please,’ begged Nina. ‘You can’t do this.’

‘If I don’t,
none
of us’ll get out of this. So please, just . . . just shut the hatch.’ A tremble entered his voice. ‘I’m going to release the clamps in twenty seconds, so if you don’t want to get very wet, that’s how long you’ve got.’

‘You can’t—’

‘Nina, I have to. You never know, maybe the batteries will last, maybe the dome’ll hold up. There’s always a chance. Hey, I’ve survived everything else I’ve been through with you, right?’ The last few words were almost choked by barely contained emotion.

Nina’s feelings were more open, tears running down her face. ‘Oh, God, Matt . . .’ With deep reluctance, she put her hands against the hatch and began to push it shut.

Eddie joined her. ‘This is wrong,’ he muttered, face tight. ‘It’s fucking wrong.’

‘Twenty,’ came the Australian’s voice over the intercom. ‘Nineteen. Eighteen . . .’

The hatch closed with a hollow bang, muffling Matt’s countdown. Eddie stonily closed the latch mechanism and turned the wheel to seal it. A red light on the cabin wall turned green.

Both hatches were secured.

They faintly heard Matt say ‘Ten’, followed after a pause by, ‘Well. No point dragging it out, eh? Good luck to you both.’

Nina gripped Eddie’s wrist with one hand, the other clenched into a fist over her mouth. ‘Good luck, Matt,’ she whispered.

Eddie’s voice was barely louder. ‘Fight to the end, mate.’

Metal scraped below – then the Mako shook as water slammed against the bottom of the hatch. The
Sharkdozer
had separated, the ocean surging back into the docking collar.

Trailing bubbles, the stricken submersible drifted away into the darkness.

T
he Mako’s pilot slowly woke to a throbbing pain across his face.

A mushy splat of blood on the control panel revealed the cause. What had happened? Memories groggily returned. He had been chasing the IHA sub, about to unleash the last torpedo – then it had unexpectedly angled upwards, and . . .

The rest was a blur. Something had hit the Mako, throwing him forward in his seat . . . then nothing. He had been knocked out. But he thought he had heard voices. How was that possible?

He squinted through the windows. No sign of the other sub – or the diver who had been with him. But something wasn’t right.

It took him a few seconds to work out what. There were reflections in the Plexiglas . . . of people behind him.

He spun his chair round in alarm – to find the menacing barrel of an ASM-DT pointing at him. It fired, the single shot earsplitting in the confined space. A nail round stabbed into the seat between his legs, the metal spike less than an inch from his groin.

The man holding the gun gave him a nasty look. ‘If you don’t do exactly what I tell you, the next one turns your bollocks into a shish kebab.’

The Mako powered through the blackness.

Eddie and Nina had debated – more accurately, argued – over their next action while waiting for the pilot to wake. Eddie’s first thought had been to try to help Matt. But the pleasure submarine lacked manipulator arms, so had no way to release the
Sharkdozer
’s ballast. And by the time the pilot recovered and was coerced at gunpoint into getting under way, the other submersible had disappeared. Whether Matt was making a genuine attempt to return to the surface or had merely moved off to deter them from going after him they had no way of knowing: the Mako had no sonar beyond a very basic depthfinder.

So, extremely reluctantly, they had turned to other options. The most obvious was returning to the surface. But the track on the inertial navigation system ultimately swayed the argument in Nina’s favour. Their attackers had come from a mother vessel, a submarine . . . and it seemed likely that Glas was aboard it. Wanted internationally for multiple crimes, and with the Group’s agents hunting for him, where better for the errant billionaire to hide? It explained the intermittency of his communications with his ‘partner’, Dalton: something as simple as making a phone call was impossible hundreds of feet beneath the sea.

The architect of everything that had happened – the man responsible for all the lives that had been lost – was just over two miles away. As Nina pointed out, it seemed a waste not to pay him a visit while they had a chance . . . and a torpedo.

‘So, is your boss on this sub?’ Eddie demanded, poking the rifle against the pilot’s side to encourage a truthful answer.

‘Yes, yes,’ he replied, dry-mouthed. ‘Herr Glas is there.’

‘How many others?’

‘About ten.’

‘
About
ten, or
exactly
ten?’ The gun pushed harder against his ribs.

‘Okay, okay! More than ten. Ah . . . twelve.’

‘Sure?’

‘Yes, yes, twelve! You killed two others.’

‘I’ll make it three if you piss me about again.’ Eddie gave him one final jab with the barrel, then moved back to join Nina. ‘You sure about this?’ he asked her quietly.

She shook her head, but said, ‘It’s the only chance we’ve got to end this. Otherwise Glas’ll just keep sending people after us. After
me
. Even if I manage to stay alive, other people will still get killed in the crossfire. People like Matt, and Lewis, and the other people on that sub.’

‘So what are we going to do? Cruise up to his window, wave, then blow the fucker up?’

‘I was thinking more of giving him the finger first,’ she said, with a faint attempt at a smile. ‘But we should talk to him before that. I didn’t believe that Warden was telling us the whole story any more than you did, so we ought to find out Glas’s side of it.’

‘
Then
blow the fucker up.’

‘If we have to.’ She looked back at the pilot. The dot representing the sub on the inertial navigator was approaching its origin point. ‘How much further?’ she asked him.

‘About half a kilometre,’ the pilot replied nervously.

The couple moved forward for a better view as the Mako continued towards its destination. Nothing was visible yet, but a readout on the navigation screen ticked down the distance in metres. Four hundred and fifty, four hundred . . . ‘What if it’s moved?’ Nina wondered, still not seeing anything. ‘Maybe they figured out that something went wrong and took off.’

‘Then we go back to the surface, and Chuckles here takes a swim with the sharks,’ said Eddie.

The pilot gulped. ‘It will be there, it will be!’

Three hundred metres. Their prisoner looked from side to side for any sign of the mother ship. Two hundred, and the pilot’s hands visibly trembled as he reduced speed. ‘I think they’ve buggered off,’ Eddie growled, hefting the ASM-DT.

‘No, no, they will be here!’ the pilot squealed. ‘They will be, they will –
there
!’

He pointed off to the left. A faint line of lights appeared through the murk.

As they closed, the line grew longer. And longer.

‘Wow,’ said Nina, unable to conceal her amazement. ‘That’s a
big
-ass submarine.’

The craft bearing the lights gradually took on form. The mother ship was well over two hundred feet long, a sleek white shape resembling an ultra-modern megayacht – but one with the ability to plunge beneath the waves on a whim. Large circular portholes ran along the length of its hull, a long wraparound window marking the bridge atop the elevated, streamlined superstructure. ‘Must have cost a few bob,’ said Eddie.

‘Ninety million dollars,’ the pilot volunteered.

‘Did I ask for a fucking brochure?’ The man fell silent, cowed.

Nina spotted movement through a porthole. ‘Shit, they’ll see us!’ She hunched down, tugging at Eddie’s sleeve for him to do the same. ‘Where do we dock?’

‘Behind the bridge,’ the pilot hesitantly answered, ‘or on the keel.’

‘Go to the top one,’ Eddie told him, pushing the gun behind his ear. The man obediently guided the Mako upwards.

‘You sure?’ Nina asked.

‘Be a lot easier for us to get out by jumping down than climbing up. We’ll need to move fast.’

The larger submarine slid past the windows as its offspring moved into docking position. The area aft of the superstructure was revealed as a flat deck; on the surface, it could be used by passengers to enjoy the sunlight, but underwater it acted as a landing platform. Bright lights revealed a port set into it.

‘Can you dock on your own?’ Eddie asked the pilot.

‘Yes, it’s – it’s automatic.’

‘Good. Where does the hatch open, and how many people will be there?’

‘The docking port goes into the engine room. I don’t know how many people will be inside – three or four, usually.’

‘But there might be more,’ Nina said. ‘Coming to congratulate you for killing us.’

‘They won’t be celebrating for long,’ said Eddie grimly. ‘All right, dock this thing.’

Sweating, the pilot manoeuvred the Mako into position. A graphic of the docking port appeared on a monitor, crosshairs guiding him into the perfect position. A series of bleeps, and the crosshairs turned green; he pushed a button, and the computers took over to lower the sub into position. A couple of bumps and clanks from below, then the engines shut down as flashing text on the screen announced that the minisub had docked safely.