Page 83 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier

Max snatched up a churro and took a bite, spilling sugar and cinnamon onto his T-shirt. He washed it down with a slurp of black joe.

As Linda poured herself a cup of hot water for tea, she said to Max, “You’re asking yourself, do we press on with the wrecked fin so we can get to Juan and Linc? Or do we wait and affect repairs?”

Max took another bite. “If we press on, we can’t make good speed without that stabilizer fin repaired. But it’s going to cost us at least three hours to fix it.”

“We can always do that later,” Linda offered. “But no telling when we might need to put the pedal to the metal. We can’t achieve maximum speed without that stabilizer fin in place.”

“Truth is, we don’t even know where they are. Their trackers are still offline and they haven’t contacted us. We’re in a big hurry, but we don’t know where we’re going exactly. I think we need to fix it.”

“Agreed.”

Callie stepped over. “Sorry to butt in. I’d like to help with the repairs. Underwater salvage is how I got my feet wet in this business—eh, sorry about the pun.”

“It would be another good test for theSpook Fish,” Linda said. “I saw what it could do on that Airbus.”

“You should join me,” Callie said to Max. “Get a firsthand view of what she’s capable of.”

“I’ll take you up on that offer. But I still want a couple of diver-welders on hand in case we run into any problems.”

“I’ll make the arrangements,” Linda said.

Callie flashed her surfer-girl smile. “And I’ll prep theSpook Fish.”

The two women headed for the door.

Max shoved the rest of the churro into his piehole and munched away, staring at the giant port wall screens and the purpling light promising another sunrise.

His friends were out there, somewhere.

He hoped they could see the sunrise, too.

42

Pau Rangi Island

The Bismarck Sea

The barren, rocky island was littered with a couple of abandoned fishing villages and a crumbling pier that had once serviced the now rusted wreck of an ancient cannery. Pau Rangi, despite its dystopian appearance, bore the Maori name for “paradise.” But it was hell that the Vendor was planning to unleash.

The private island had been purchased in the 1970s by a fictitious real estate corporation his family had controlled for decades—the same one that had acquired the Island of Sorrows.

The Vendor was deep in the bowels of the volcanic island in a lab inside one of several caves beneath the surface. He stood on the other side of thick glass protecting him from the invisible cloud of death swirling inside the warehouse-sized and climate-controlled test chamber. Neurotoxins were a relatively old technology and nearly all of them would kill in an enclosed space. The Vendor had bigger plans.

A system of computer-controlled fans, heaters, and overhead misters were deployed in the test chamber, set to duplicate the conditions at a very specific geographic location: Guam. The Pacific island’s climate patterns had been perfectly mimicked on a day-to-day basis for the last month. Today’s test had been the best so far.

The Vendor counted seven corpses. Four of those men had died nearly instantly; the other three took several minutes longer. Fifteenminutes after the release of the neurotoxin, three survivors were still breathing, but they were on the ground, convulsing. They would expire soon.

When the Indonesian pirates landed on Pau Rangi last week, the Vendor had no doubt they were a gift from his ancestors. After all, his grandfather had conceived of the original plan. The fact he was dead was no impediment to his interest in its success. Today’s test in realistic conditions confirmed it.

It was one thing to kill rodents, small animals, or even captured pirates in a controlled environment. But the Vendor had a much larger target in mind, in the form of the island of Guam. It was America’s most important naval base in the South Pacific and home to thousands of civilian and military personnel. His plan had been years in the making and he was leaving nothing to chance. He knew an attack wouldn’t take place in ideal experimental conditions. He needed to be certain it would succeed in the real world. Today’s test was his final proof of concept.

“How soon before sufficient quantities will be produced?”

“Two weeks, at most,” the scientist said. He was a German national heading up a small international team of researchers, each with a criminal history and hunted by their respective governments.

“You have exactly one hundred sixty-eight hours until launch.”

“What happened to our original timeline?”