The answer came with a blinding glare of white light. With the flick of a switch, a dozen floodlights mounted in the portico's rafters popped on in a bright burst. The light from the halogen bulbs spilled over onto the surrounding grounds. Clearly illuminated under the glare were the bodies of Pitt and the others, stretched out beneath the rosebushes.
Pitt tightened the grip on his .45 and casually took aim at the nearest horseman. The guards on foot were positioned farther away and did not appear to be armed. It was a different story with the horsemen. In addition to their lethal bows and arrows, Pitt was chagrined to see they all carried rifles, now shouldered and aimed in their direction. Though he noticed Giordino now had the Makarov aimed at a horseman as well, their odds were not at all attractive.
The gunfight became moot when a flurry of footsteps echoed from the marble foyer and four bodies burst onto the porch. The three guards who had rushed across the compound took a few steps out, then stopped and stared at Pitt and the others. Smoke and ashes blackened their bright orange tunics, but there was no panic in the men's eyes. Of more concern to Pitt were the AK-74 assault rifles they now cradled in their arms.
Busting past the gunman was the fourth man, who charged to the center of the driveway as if he owned it, which he well did. Borjin was dressed in a blue silk robe, which contrasted with his beet red face flush with anger. He glared to the side bushes, where the stripped and unconscious bodies of the door guards lie visible under the bright lights. Borjin turned to Pitt and the others with an apoplectic gaze. Then in a measured voice, he growled, "I will have retribution for this."
-55-
A WAVE OF CURIOSITY replaced the fear surging through Gunn's body when he entered the anechoic chamber. He had seen soundproof test chambers before, but none filled with the array of high-powered electronic gear packed into this high-ceilinged compartment. Row after row of computers and power racks lined the outer platform, reminding him of the computer-processing equipment jammed into a Trident submarine. Of greater interest was the odd appendage in the middle of the room, the three conjoined tubes that towered ten feet high. Gunn stared at the acoustic transducers, a chill running through him at the thought of Yaeger's assertion that it could create an earthquake. The chill quickly turned to sweat as he realized the temperature in the chamber was about 100 degrees. He was surprised to find that the equipment in the chamber was on and running, engaged in a preprogrammed test of some sort. The heat generated from the assembly of power supplies running the electronics had turned the chamber into a dry sauna. Stripping off his borrowed lab coat and black foul-weather jacket beneath, he pulled out the digital camera and climbed up onto the center platform. Starting at the far end, he hurriedly began photographing each piece of equipment. Sweating profusely, he stepped to the entrance and opened the door, allowing a blast of cool air to gush through. Knowing he could better hear approaching footsteps, and also receive calls on his radio, he left the door open and resumed his photography.
Gunn stopped when he reached a large console fronted by a plush leather chair. It was the system operator's control station for activating the seismic array. Gunn slipped into the chair and studied the brightly colored flat-screen monitor that faced him. A pop-up message was centered on the screen with the words test running flashing in German. Gunn had a rudimentary knowledge of German, having spent several months with a German research team studying the sunken World War II liner Wilhelm Gustloff, and deciphered the ongoing software test. He clicked on a box marked ABORT and a vivid abstract image suddenly popped onto the screen.
The monitor showed a three-dimensional image of sediment layers, each colored in a different shade of yellow-gold. A scale to one side indicated five hundred meters, and Gunn correctly guessed that it was a stratigraphic image of the sediment directly beneath the lab. Gunn reached for a trackball mouse on the table and slid it toward him. As the cursor moved on the screen, a loud ticking noise emitted from the towering transducers a few feet away. The ticking quickly stopped as the monitor readjusted to a new subterranean image. Gunn noticed that the side scale now read five hundred fifty meters.
Von Wachter had indeed perfected his seismic-imaging system to a remarkable degree. Gunn wheeled the mouse back and forth, admiring a crystal clear image of the sedimentary layers hundreds of feet below him. Alongside him, the acoustic array ticked away as an electric motor rotated the mechanism and its changing angle of penetration. Like a kid with a computer game, Gunn became temporarily engrossed in the images produced by the device, studying the aberrations in the ground layers. He barely noticed when Pitt called him on the radio, jolting him to rush toward the open chamber door so as not to lose the signal inside the protected chamber.
Signing off the radio, he took a quick peek down the hallway. Seeing no signs of life, he scurried back to the platform and finished taking pictures of the seismic array and ancillary equipment. He slipped on his jacket and started to leave, then rummaged through some documents and papers he saw on the console. He found what appeared to be the operator's manual, a thick booklet clamped to a miniature stainless steel clipboard. The front pages were missing, presumably torn off by Pitt on his last visit. Gunn stuffed the manual and clipboard into a zippered chest pocket on his jacket, then made for the door. He was just about to exit when a voice erupted from his radio.
His heart dropped when he realized the voice was not Pitt's. And what it had to say meant that all was lost.
-56-
PITT ROSE SLOWLY to his feet, the Colt held down at his side so as not to incite any trigger-happy fingers from Borjin's machine-gun-toting guards. He waited until Giordino jerked Tatiana to her feet and turned her toward her brother, the Makarov held clearly visible against her ear. Tatiana tried futilely to break away from his grip but to no avail. "Let me go, you pig. You are all dead men," she hissed.
Giordino simply smiled as he grabbed a fistful of her hair and forced the muzzle of the Makarov deeper into her ear. Tatiana winced with pain, then gave up the struggle.
With all eyes on Tatiana, Pitt slowly raised the Colt until it was pointed at Borjin's midsection. With his left hand, he unobtrusively brushed the TRANSMIT button on his radio, hoping to clue Gunn in to their predicament.
Borjin gazed at his sister's peril with a look of mild disinterest. When he studied Pitt and Giordino with a closer scrutiny, his eyes suddenly flared in recognition.
"You," he cried, then regained his composure. "You survived your ride in the desert to trespass on my property again? Why do you risk such foolishness? Simply for the lives of your friends?" He nodded toward Theresa and Wofford, who had wisely moved behind Tatiana.
"We came to put an end to your earthquakes and your murdering rampage for oil," Pitt replied. "We came for our friends. And we came for Genghis."
Pitt's reference to the earthquakes barely registered a reaction. But his mention of the Mongol warlord's name nearly sent a tremor through Borjin. His eyes creased together as his face turned red, and Pitt half expected flames to spring from his lips.
"Death will greet you first," he spat, nodding at the guards surrounding him.
"Perhaps. But you and your sister will accompany me on the journey."
Borjin took a hard look at the rugged man who threatened him so boldly. He could tell by the steely resolve in Pitt's eyes that he had stared down death many times before. Like his own idol, Genghis, he showed no apparent fear in battle. But he suspected Pitt had a weakness, one that he could play to his advantage to be rid of him once and for all.
"My men will cut you down in an instant," he threatened back. "But I do not wish to see my sister die. Release Tatiana, and your friends are free to go."
"No," Theresa protested, stepping in front of Giordino. "You must let us all go free." Then in a whisper to Giordino, she said, "We will not allow you to stay behind and be murdered."
"You are in no position to make demands," Borjin replied. He pretended to pace back and forth, but Pitt could tell he was trying to
remove himself from the field of fire. Pitt tightened the grip on his .45 as Borjin stepped behind one of the guards, then halted.
The boom erupted like a sledgehammer to an iron kettle only with an explosive echo. But the blast didn't originate from any of the weapons pointed around the entryway. Instead, the sound rumbled from across the compound, in the direction of the laboratory. Twenty seconds crept by with everyone frozen in confusion when a second boom erupted, identical to the first. Tatiana was the first to recognize the sound. With a foreboding sense of dread in her voice, she shouted to her brother.
"It is von Wachter's device. Someone has activated it."
Like the thundering crash of a temple gong, a third boom erupted, drowning her words as the echo shook from the laboratory.
• • • •
Gunn had shown remarkable cool under pressure. He knew Pitt would have wanted him to take the photographic evidence and escape the compound, contact the authorities, and expose Borjin to the court of world opinion. But he just couldn't walk away and leave his friends to die. Armed with nothing more than a crowbar, he also knew that rushing to their side would result in little more than his own death. But perhaps he thought, just perhaps, he could turn Borjin's demon against its master. Gunn stepped back into the anechoic chamber and pulled the door shut behind him, then raced to the console. He was at once thankful that the system had been left on and that he had taken a few minutes earlier to joyride with the controls. Jumping into the operator's seat, he grabbed the trackball mouse and quickly scrolled down, searching for an image he had seen earlier. As the tripod device ticked and hummed to follow the commands, Gunn frantically bounced the cursor about. Finally, he eyed the stratum that he was looking for. It was an odd jump in the sedimentary line, dividing two layers of sediment with a distinct cut. Around the cut were a dozen or so round blemishes, which were actually cracks in the rock. He had no idea if it was actually a fault, or even if there was any pressure built up at the point. Perhaps with the acoustic seismic array, it didn't really matter anyway. Gunn didn't have the answers but rationalized it was the best prospect he had, under the circumstances.
He guided the cursor to the crown of the sedimentary cut and clicked the button. An illuminated crosshair began flashing over the indicated point as the tripod ticked again. Gunn rolled the cursor to the top of the screen and quickly scrolled through a series of dropdown menus. Sweat began dripping off his forehead as he worked frantically in the hot chamber. Each new command was in German, the software having been created by von Wachter and his team. Gunn desperately tapped the recesses of his brain, trying to resurrect forgotten words and phrases. He recalled Yaeger's report that von Wachter was using concentrated packets of high-frequency waves in his imaging, so he selected the highest-frequency setting. He guessed WEITE meant amplitude, and chose the highest power level, then selected a repetitive cycle interval of twenty seconds. A flashing red box appeared with AKTIVIEREN in bold letters. Gunn mentally crossed his fingers and clicked the button.
At first, nothing happened. Then a long sequence of software script rolled across the monitor at rapid speed. It might have been Gunn's heightened senses, but the power amplifiers and computers physically seemed to come alive in the chamber, bursting with a low hum. Wiping his brow, he was certain the room temperature had increased by at least ten degrees. He noticed the tripod was ticking again, but at a higher crescendo. Then with a flicker of the lights, an explosive boom erupted from the inverted tip of the tripod. It felt like a bolt of lightning had struck just inches away. The acoustic blast shook the building, nearly tossing Gunn from his chair. He staggered toward the door with his ears ringing, then stopped and gazed at the room in dismay.
The anechoic chamber. It was designed to absorb sound waves. Even the concentrated blasts erupting from the acoustic array would be seriously diluted by the sound-deadening floor panels. His effort at activating the system was for naught.
Gunn jumped off the catwalk onto the foam floor and vaulted over to the base of the tripod. He anticipated the next blast and covered his ears as a second acoustic burst was fired from the transducer tubes, expounding with a deafening bang.
The thunderclap knocked Gunn to his knees, but he quickly recovered and crawled to the base of the tripod. Frantically tearing at the foam floorboards beneath the device, he counted out loud to twenty in anticipation of the next blast. Luck was on his side, as the foam panels were not attached to the floor and lifted off easily in large sections. Beneath the foam, the floor appeared tiled, but Gunn saw from the dull silver finish that the tiles were made of lead as an extra sound deadener. Gunn was at the count of eleven when he lunged at the console and grabbed the crowbar he had left on the table. Jamming its blade into a floor seam, he quickly pried up one of the heavy tiles and muscled it aside. Ignoring his count of eighteen, he dove down and quickly ripped away three other lead plates, which together with the first had formed a square beneath the business end of the acoustic array.
Gunn had counted too fast during his adrenaline rush to clear the floor and stepped back just as the third acoustic blast fired. Jamming his palms to his ears, he looked down as saw that the device was now firing through a thin layer of concrete that had formed the foundation for the building.
"Nothing I can do about that," he muttered after the blast passed, and he made his way to the door.
Tugging open the heavy door, he half expected to face a legion of armed guards waiting for him to exit. But the guards had all rushed to the residence, at least temporarily. Instead, he saw a small group of scientists, some in pajamas, swarming at the opposite end of the hallway. Stepping through the chamber door, Gunn was met by a yell from one of the scientists, spurring the angry mob to charge toward him. With just a few yards of leeway, Gunn rushed to the nearest office on his right and stepped in.
Like most of the offices in the lab building, it was sparsely decorated, with a gray metal desk centered on one wall and a lab table covered with electronics to the side. None of the furnishings mattered to Gunn. The only thing of importance was the small picture window that faced the compound grounds. Stepping to the window, he silently thanked Giordino for loaning him the crowbar now gripped tightly in his hands. With a powerful thrust, he jabbed the blunt end of the bar into a corner of the window, shattering the glass. Scraping the broken shards off the sill, he dove out the window. His body barely hit the ground when the fourth and final blast emitted from the acoustic array, the impact much less violent to Gunn now that he was outside the building.
A chorus of frantic yells could be heard through the broken window as the scientists ignored Gunn and rushed into the chamber. He knew they would deactivate the system before another blast would strike. His rash gamble at inducing an earthquake was finished. So too, he thought with dread, was his chance at saving the lives of Pitt and Giordino.
-57-
WHEN THE SOUND of the second blast echoed across the compound, Borjin ordered two of the mounted guards to go investigate. They quickly galloped across the darkened compound as a slight rumble echoed in the distance. The deep boom of a third seismic blast quickly drowned out their pounding hoofbeats and the faraway rumble as well. "You have brought friends as well?" Borjin sneered at Pitt.
"Enough to close you down for good," Pitt replied.
"Then they shall die with you."
A crash of shattering glass sounded from the laboratory, followed by the fourth detonation of the acoustic seismic array. Then all fell silent.
"It would appear that your friends have been introduced to my guards," Borjin smiled.
The sneer was still on his face when another distant rumble reverberated off the hills like the sound of approaching thunder. Only this time, the rumble continued to resonate, growing with the intensity of an approaching avalanche. Outside the compound walls, a pack of wolves nearby began howling in mournful unison. The horses inside the compound picked up the cue and began neighing loudly, in nervous anticipation of the pending cataclysm
that their human counterparts could not foresee.
A thousand meters below the surface, a trio of condensed sound waves, fired from the three transducers, converged at the angled fracture targeted by Gunn. The sedimentary cut was indeed an ancient oblique fault. The first two blasts of the seismic array, dissipated by the chamber's shielding, had struck the fault with only a minor pulse. The third blast, however, hit with the full power of the convergent shock waves. Though the sediment held firm, the seismic waves rocked with a vibrating force that rattled the fault line. When the fourth blast arrived, it would prove enough to break the camel's back.
A fault line, by nature, is a rock fracture prone to movement. Most earthquakes are the result of energy released from a slippage in a fault zone. Pressure builds up at a point along the fault due to underlying tectonic movement until a sudden slippage relieves the strain. The slippage reverberates to the surface, sending out a variety of shock waves that create a surface-rattling earthquake.
For the fault beneath the Mongolian mountainside, the fourth and final barrage of acoustic waves struck like a torpedo. The seismic vibrations jolted the fracture, causing it to slip in both vertical and horizontal directions. The buckle was small, just a few inches spread across a quarter-mile rift, but because it was close to the surface the wave impact was dramatic.
The shock waves burst through the ground in a sinister turmoil of vertical and horizontal shaking. By the Richter scale, the resulting quake would measure a 7.5 magnitude. But the scale didn't reflect the true intensity on the surface, where the shaking felt ten times more powerful to those standing on the ground.