Клайв Касслер - Typhoon Fury

Eddie engaged the powerful diesel and drove away from the Oregon . The ride was limousine smooth.

Juan turned in his seat. “The PIG’s got a few more hidden features that might come in handy, since we don’t know what we’ll find up in the mountains. GPS says it’s a four-hour drive. There are drinks and sandwiches in the cooler between you, if you want some.”

Beth shook her head and laughed. “What hidden features? Am I sitting in an ejector seat? Does it have machine guns in the headlights?”

Juan gave her a mysterious smile. “No, not in the headlights.”

He didn’t say anything about the ejector seat.

• • •

MEL OCAMPO nervously watched Salvador Locsin’s helicopter land inside the compound in remote central Luzon. He’d been stalling as long as he could to avoid this visit, but he could no longer disguise his lack of progress in replicating the Typhoon drug.

He pined for his days as a research scientist at a pharmaceutical conglomerate in Manila. It had been solid if unexciting work that paid well, but when this new job offer had come along—with three times the pay—he’d jumped at the chance. At the time, it seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime. With the money he’d been advanced, he sent his wife and two children to the United States to live with a cousin until he could join them. Now he wished he’d never answered that phone call.

For four months, he’d been trapped in this remote compound in charge of five other chemists who were given the impossible task of divining the formula for a pill none of them had seen before. Now he wasn’t sure any of them would ever leave this place alive.

Locsin and his right-hand man, Tagaan, got out of the helicopter and marched toward him.

“Dr. Ocampo,” Locsin said, his annoyance obvious, “why am I here?”

Ocampo stammered, “To . . . to see the headway we’ve made on your project—”

“Wrong. I’m here because you aren’t doing the work you said you could do.”

Locsin brushed by him and walked toward the main lab facility with Tagaan. They pushed open the doors and walked in without caring about sterilization procedures. Ocampo scurried after them.

Five scientists were hard at work, hunched over high-powered microscopes, operating gas chromatographs, and poring over computer data. Although Locsin kept them captive, at least he provided them with the latest equipment. All of the chemists looked up for a moment but turned back to their jobs when they saw who had entered not because they were ignoring him but because they wanted to appear busy.

Ocampo knew it was a sham. Their work was futile without more information about what they were attempting to produce.

“Why aren’t you able to create more of the pills?” Locsin demanded.

“Mr. Locsin, you’ve given us only ten of the pills to work with,” Ocampo said. “We need at least fifty more to effectively analyze its chemical makeup.”

“I thought you only needed a small sample to identify a chemical.”

“If we were comparing it to something else that already exists, then yes. For example, if we were trying to match a chemical residue from an arson investigation, there’s a known database to compare with the sample. But what we’re trying to do is much more difficult. You want us to figure out the exact chemical formula for this drug from scratch.”

Without warning, Locsin picked up a heavy metal desk with one hand and flung it at the wall as if it were as light as balsa wood. The loud crash stopped all work, and the scientists looked at him in fear.

Locsin, his face scarlet with rage, got nose to nose with Ocampo and screamed, “I don’t care about the details! What I want to know is if you can do it!”

Ocampo’s mouth was suddenly bone dry from terror. Finding a way to replicate the drug was a long shot at best, but there was no way he was going to say that. “With time and resources, yes. But I must have more of the drug.”

“And if there is no more to give you?”

“Then it will take even longer.”

“How long?”

“It’s hard to estimate.”

“And if you have more pills?”

Ocampo swallowed reflexively. “Three months. I feel like we are close to a breakthrough.” He caught one of his chemists, a woman named Maria Santos, eyeing him when he made that proclamation.

Locsin’s face instantly transformed. The furious expression was gone and a beatific smile took its place. He put his arm around Ocampo’s shoulder like he was an old friend.

“A breakthrough,” he said. “That’s what I like to hear. I knew I could count on you, Dr. Ocampo. However, I need the formula in two months, not three. I’m sure you can do it. We have a limited supply of pills, so I can’t give you any more, but I can bring in more people if you need them. Just say the word.”

The thought of dragging more innocent souls into this nightmare nearly made Ocampo shudder. He couldn’t bear the responsibility for that.

“Perhaps if you told us more about the drug’s effects, we could narrow our focus.”

“Your expertise is in the development of steroids,” Locsin said. “That’s why you’re here. You don’t need to know what Typhoon is for, you only need to make more of it.” He turned Ocampo toward him and looked him in the eye. “Now, if you can’t do it, tell me and we’ll shut down the project right now.”

Shut down the project. What a nice way of saying that he’d have them all killed and buried in a shallow grave.

“We can do it, Mr. Locsin,” Ocampo said reassuringly. “As I said, the breakthrough could come at any time.”

Locsin patted him on the back. “I hope my presence here has provided the needed motivation.”

“Of course it has.”

“Good. Now I’m going to get my breakfast. When I come back, I want a detailed report on how you plan to accomplish your task.”

Ocampo felt the blood drain from his face. “Yes, sir.”

Locsin and Tagaan left. Maria Santos jumped up from her desk and raced over to Ocampo.

“Are you crazy?” she said. “We’re nowhere close to a breakthrough.”

“But he doesn’t know that.”

“We might be able to come up with some kind of bogus plan today, but he’s going to find out sooner or later that we have no idea how to do what he wants. My guess is sooner.”

“I agree. That’s why we’re all going to escape from this place.”

“Escape? You really are crazy.”

Ocampo put his hands on her shoulders. “I already have an idea for how to do it. The only thing left is to come up with the proper distraction.”

18

The Halsema Highway, a mountainous route north of Manila, was considered one of the ten most dangerous roads in the world. Juan didn’t have to share that ranking with Beth and Raven. They could see for themselves how hazardous it was.

The winding route through the mountains of central Luzon often narrowed to one lane, which meant they’d had to back up hundreds of yards several times during the five-hour trip to let a bus pass in the other direction. The poorly maintained road was little more than a dirt path in some places, but the asphalt wasn’t much better because it could become as slick as ice in the frequent tropical downpours. Sheer, unprotected drops, landslides, and accidents in fog-shrouded conditions claimed dozens of lives every year. The PIG’s wide, self-sealing tires sometimes skirted the edge of five-hundred-foot drops, but Juan trusted Eddie’s assured driving skills, which were apparent when he had steered them around a pile of rocks from a previous slide and then accelerated to avoid a bus barreling toward them out of the mist.

Juan had just as much confidence in the PIG. Based on a Mercedes Unimog chassis, Max’s from the ground up modifications included an armored cab that could withstand rifle fire and an eight-hundred-horsepower turbodiesel that could push past one thousand with a nitro boost. Although the PIG didn’t have ejector seats, Beth’s guess that there were guns in the headlights was wrong only in location. A .30 caliber machine gun was tucked behind the front bumper, mortars could be fired from a retractable hatch in the roof, and guided rocket launchers were hidden in drop-away side panels. A smoke generator was capable of pumping out a thick cloud behind it. The fifty-five-gallon drums in the back did contain extra fuel, but they also served as a concealment for a cargo area that could be configured as a mobile surgical suite, radio listening post, or personnel carrier for up to ten fully outfitted commandos.