Clive Cussler: Devil's Gate

He’d never seen that on a ship before, even from a distance. All he could ever recall was the standard yellowish or plain white light that incandescent and fluorescent bulbs gave off. Then again, years back, no one thought they’d see a ship that was guided by a computer.

He stepped into the stairwell and shut the hatch. Clambering down the stairs toward his quarters, Nordegrun felt a spring in his step. Unlike earlier generations, he and his officers were allowed to bring family aboard. Nordegrun’s wife of two years waited below, joining him for the first time at sea. She would go with him as far as Cairo, disembarking and flying home as the Kinjara Maru moved through the Suez Canal.

It would be a good week, he thought, a vacation without taking one. If he hurried, he had time to join her at the ship’s mess.

As he reached the lower deck, the lights in the stairwell dimmed. He glanced up. The filaments in the incandescent bulb above the door looked like embers on the verge of going out. Higher up, the fluorescent tubes began flickering at an odd rate.

They returned to normal for a second, but there was no doubt in Nordegrun’s mind that they had some type of generator issue. Aggravated, he turned to climb back up the stairs.

The lights dimmed again, then brightened until they were blazing white. The fluorescent tubes made a strange noise and then shattered simultaneously, raining glass down on him. On the wall, the incandescent bulb blew out in a loud pop, flashing the stairwell in electric blue and then plunging it into darkness.

Nordegrun held the rail, shocked and surprised. He’d never seen anything like it. He felt the ship begin to heel over as if she were turning hard. With no idea what was going on, he raced up the darkened stairway and ran forward. Lights were blowing all over the ship.

Nordegrun felt a spike of pain in his neck and jaw. Stress, he thought, the fight-or-flight reaction, as something went wrong with his vessel.

He burst into the bridge. “What the devil is happening?” he shouted.

Neither Talan nor the officer of the deck responded. Talan was busy shouting into the ship’s intercom. The OOD was wrestling with the computer, desperately tapping the override keys as the ship continued to turn.

Nordegrun caught a glimpse of the rudder indicator full over to port. An instant later the screen flared and went blank. Sparks shot from another machine, and the pain in Nordegrun’s head got suddenly worse.

At almost the same time, the officer of the deck fell to the ground, holding his head and grunting in pain.

“Talan,” Nordegrun shouted. “Go below. Get to my wife.”

The helmsman hesitated.

“Now!”

Talan left his post, Nordegrun grabbed the ship’s radio and tried to transmit. He pressed the talk switch, but the radio let out a high-pitched squeal. He reached for another device but suddenly felt his chest burning.

Looking down, he saw the buttons on his coat glowing red. He grabbed one and pulled at it but it burned his hand. The noise in his head reached a crescendo, and Nordegrun fell to the ground. Even with his eyelids shut, he saw stars and flashes of light as if someone were pressing his eyes in with their thumbs.

A pop in his head sent blood running out his nose. Something in his sinuses had ruptured.

Nordegrun opened his eyes to see smoke filling the bridge. He crawled for the doorway. With blood streaming down his face, he pushed the hatch open and got partway outside. As he did, the noise in his head became a scream.

He fell to the deck, his face angled aft. Behind him what looked like electricity was arcing between the rail and superstructure. Farther off he saw the ship with the strange lights still trailing them. It remained ten miles off but now glowed a dozen times brighter as if it were covered in Saint Elmo’s fire.

Nordegrun’s mind was so far gone, he could do nothing but stare at it. And then his body stiffened in some type of convulsion, the pain spiked beyond anything he could have imagined, and Nordegrun screamed as his skin burst into flame.

Eastern Atlantic, June 15

AS DAWN BROKE OVER THE ATLANTIC, Kurt Austin stood near the bow of the NUMA vessel Argo , wiping sweat off his face with a towel. He’d just finished fifty laps around the main deck. Only, because the deck did not encircle the ship, he’d been forced to enter the superstructure at the end of every lap, race up two flights of stairs and across the main transom, then down two flights and back out to begin the next lap.

It would have been far easier to hit the exercise room, pound the treadmill for five miles and then climb on the StairMaster, but they were at sea, and to Austin the sea had always meant freedom; freedom to roam and explore the world, freedom from traffic and smog and the sometimes claustrophobic existence of modern urban life. Out here — with the promise of dawn on the horizon — he wasn’t about to lock himself in a cramped windowless room for his morning workout even if it had air-conditioning.

Wearing black sweatpants and a faded gray T-shirt with the NUMA logo on it, Kurt felt as good as he could remember. He stood just over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and curly silver-gray hair that looked almost platinum at times. He considered his eyes a shade of blue, but apparently they were an unusual shade, as many people — especially the women in his life — had tried to explain.

As he closed in on his fortieth birthday, Kurt had rededicated himself to working out. He’d always been in shape. A career in the Navy and several years as part of a clandestine CIA salvage team required it. But with the decade number on his age going to four, Kurt was determined to get in the best shape of his life, better than he’d been at thirty, better than he’d been at twenty.

It was a tall order. It took more work, left more aches and pains, and was slower in coming than when he’d been younger, but he was almost there.

Ten pounds lighter than he’d been a year before, benching, curling, and lifting more weight in the gym, he could feel the strength surging through his body like it had in his youth when he believed he could do anything.

It was needed too. A career at NUMA came with lots of physical punishment. Beyond the regular labor-intensive work of any salvage operation, he’d also been beat up, shot at, and half drowned on a regular basis. After a while the dings started to add up. A year ago he’d considered taking up a standing offer to go back to work for his father, who owned a prominent salvage company of his own. But that felt like leaving on someone else’s terms, and if there was one thing Kurt Austin didn’t do, it was follow any lead but his own.

He stared out at the horizon as it changed from a deep indigo to a pale grayish blue. The light was rising even though the sun had yet to show its face. He stretched and turned, trying to crack his back. Off the starboard beam, something caught his eye; a thin trail of smoke, drifting skyward.

He hadn’t seen it during his run, the darkness had obscured it, but it was no illusion.

He squinted and stared, but in the predawn gloom he couldn’t make out the source of the smoke. He took one last glance and then headed for the stairs.

Austin stepped onto the bridge to find Captain Robert Haynes, the Argo ’s commanding officer, standing with the officer of the watch, plotting out their course to the Azores, where the NUMA team would participate in an X Prize — like race to crown the world’s fastest two-man submarine.

The operation was a milk run. A pure research assignment given to Kurt and his partner, Joe Zavala, as a reward for all the heavy lifting they’d done on recent missions. Joe was already on Santa Maria Island making preparations and, as Kurt guessed, making friends, especially among the women. Kurt was looking forward to joining him, but before the minivacation could begin they would have to make a slight detour.