Black Sun: A Thriller Read online

  The barges ahead of them were heavy with coal, destined for an outlying power plant. With this legitimate cargo in play, the tug would make a slow pass right in front of the Tower Pinnacle. As it did Hawker would go over the side and swim underwater to the base of the tower and the remnants of the old British fort.

  He and Ivan had discussed several options for rescuing their respective citizens. Ivan’s preference was to get them while being moved. He believed with certainty that Kang would not keep them in the old brig forever. There would be a chance to take them when they were in transit somewhere, a weak link in the chain.

  That plan presented several problems. To begin with, it required intelligence as to when and where the prisoners were being transported, but more important, it was standard attack doctrine; prisoners were always considered more likely to escape during a transit and were often guarded more heavily as a result. Beyond that, the plan required waiting, something Hawker was not well adapted to, and something that would only increase whatever suffering was going on behind the heavy stone walls.

  After looking at the schematics of the two structures, they’d determined that the old fort used an ingenious sanitation system built by its original inhabitants. Latrines led to a waste holding area, which had separate tunnels connected to the river. When the tide rose, the British soldiers would open wooden doors and the river’s current would divert water through the tunnels, flushing out the system and washing the waste downstream.

  “Enter through the sewers?” Ivan had asked. “Like some kind of rat?”

  It seemed like a perfect solution, until a surveillance run had shown that the old wooden doors had been replaced by plugs of concrete. That left only one real option and now was the time to make it happen.

  Hawker looked up into the sky. Evening was coming and the rain and the darkness would help hide him. He walked back into the pilothouse of the tug, shook Ivan’s hand, and grabbed his gear.

  “Have the helicopter ready,” he said. “We’ll only get one chance at this.”

  In a minute, Hawker was slipping into the water on the far side of the tug, wearing a black wet suit and carrying a rebreather. It was almost dark.

  Descending under the surface, Hawker waited for the tug to pass and began swimming toward the rocks. He moved slowly, kicking in a rhythmic motion fifteen feet beneath the surface.

  His air came from a device known as a CCR, a closed-circuit rebreather. This type of diving gear had several advantages over scuba tanks. First, it was lighter and easier to maneuver than standard scuba gear, and second, it reprocessed the exhaled gases, filtering them out and reclaiming the oxygen, which could be recirculated back to the diver.

  “Rebreathing” the air meant there would be no trail of bubbles to appear on the surface and mark the diver’s location.

  Hawker honestly doubted that anyone would be looking for such a threat, but Kang was known to be a paranoid man. If he did have people watching, Hawker wasn’t giving them anything to see.

  After several minutes of swimming, Hawker had made his way across the channel and bumped into the rising ground near the edge of the harbor. The murky water was so dark that he didn’t see anything until it was inches from his face. He followed the sloped embankment up. After several feet, the muddy silt gave way to rugged black rock.

  Two feet from the surface, he stopped his ascent and rolled over onto his back, gazing upward. There was still some illumination coming in through the water, but it wasn’t from the fading December sun. It came from the city lights now, especially the white floodlights of the Tower Pinnacle.

  Hawker guessed it wouldn’t get any darker, but as he checked his watch he found himself ahead of schedule, so he waited, resting on the rocks and watching the water’s surface above him.

  The ripples from the rain formed a hypnotic pattern. A cascade of minor rings hit and spread into one another in unpredictable order. He watched the pattern grow stronger, the light drizzle giving way to a steady rain. Hawker smiled at his luck.

  He had many reasons to love the rain. In this case, the precipitation would degrade the visibility, making surveillance feeds blurry while keeping foot patrols short and sweet.

  It probably didn’t matter much anyway. If Hawker was right, he’d be in before anyone knew what had happened. And on his way out he’d go in the one direction they’d never expect.

  Cautiously, he surfaced.

  The rocks ahead of him rose up in a jagged, sloped pattern. Higher up, set back an additional eighty feet from the water’s edge, was the base of the monstrous tower. A hundred and eleven stories clad in Italian granite. Garish white lights shone upward onto the sides of the tower to blinding effect, making it almost impossible for anyone to see a man in black crawling across the dark rocks beneath it.

  Hawker sank back down, pulled off his flippers, and released the CCR. He reemerged, pulled off his mask, and climbed onto the dark stone, moving up and across it like a crab.

  He found the gap in the rocks that he was looking for and ducked into it. Ten feet in, he scaled a minor chasm and pressed himself against what had once been the wall of the fort. Foot-thick stone had been cut and laid precisely, but over the years the mortar had eroded and the structure was now held together as much by its sheer weight as by anything else. Three stories above, what had once been the roof of the fort now held a manicured yard, a flower bed, and a walkway that led back to the doors of Kang’s tower.

  Hawker hugged the wall until he came to an indentation through which a thin vertical slit had been cut. A foot high and no more than six inches wide, this slit had been a gunport for the old fortress, not for cannon but for musket shot. The indentation design was necessary to allow the British soldiers to aim their muskets across a wide field of fire, but it created a thin spot in the wall, a weakness that Hawker would use the explosives to breach. Designed to repel invaders, the gunport would be Hawker’s way in. But first he had to make sure he was in the right place.

  He pulled off his backpack and set it down. From inside the pack he pulled what appeared to be a small box made of clear plastic. Visible through the plastic, like the innards of some transparent fish, were a small battery pack, a transformer, a microphone, a camera, and an antenna.

  The NRI-built device was called a spider. Moore had sent it to Hawker along with several other pieces of high-tech equipment. At the press of a button, eight mechanical legs with articulated joints extended from the machine. The thin legs gave the spider the ability to move over incredibly varied terrain. It could even hop up a full flight of stairs, though if the plans Saravich had shown him were accurate, this particular spider would only have to go down.

  Hawker retracted the legs, took a quick look in through the gunport, and dropped the device inside. He heard it bounce once and then stop.

  Crouching down, he pressed his back into the recessed section of the wall. Sheltered for the most part from the falling rain, he pulled the control unit from his pack and slipped a headset over his ear. It included a speaker, so he could hear what the microphone picked up. A tiny LCD screen covered his right eye, to let him see what the camera saw.

  He powered the device up and focused on the eyepiece. Ahead he saw the interior of a sixteenth-century brig, filthy and cramped, with a low ceiling and rusting metal here and there.

  It looked medieval except for the support pylon in the far corner, a ten-foot-thick column of steel-reinforced concrete that plunged through the brig itself and into the bedrock below. It was a foundation piece of Kang’s tower; next to it was an elevator shaft.

  Hawker pressed the button that extended the spider’s legs again and the camera view shook from side to side. A moment later the spider was off and hunting.

  CHAPTER 17

  The occupants of Kang’s prison lay sprawled out on the raised sections in the various stone recesses of the prison—anything to keep them off the cold, wet floor. The men Danielle had fought had taken shelter in another cell, but Petrov, Yuri, the old Chin
ese man, and the Indian woman remained in the cell with Danielle.

  Of that group, only Danielle and Yuri were awake. It was still early in the evening but the others had been in the prison a long time and were not well in any case. Sleep was a necessity for them, and perhaps a respite from their predicament.

  Danielle hadn’t reached that point yet and promised herself she never would. She would keep her mind sharp, her spirit strong, and her body as healthy as possible. And when the chance came, she would act, decisively.

  She glanced over at Yuri.

  Without moving his head, Yuri turned his eyes to her, as if he knew she was watching. If Petrov was right the boy never really slept.

  She smiled.

  He smiled back.

  She blinked and he did the same. She wondered if he was unconsciously mimicking her or perhaps even playing.

  Suddenly his head jerked a bit, like he’d heard something. His eyes turned and focused on the corridor.

  She listened for any sound, but could hear nothing but the patter of rain. Not even the whining of the elevator that Yuri had detected before.

  Yuri sat up, looking down the corridor. He pushed aside his thin blanket and stood cautiously.

  Danielle waved him over. “Come here,” she said.

  He hesitated and then moved her way and climbed up to sit beside her.

  She thought of the few Russian words she knew, but could come up with nothing that might form a coherent question to the child. She brushed the hair out of his eyes and he relaxed for a moment before stiffening again.

  He pointed to the ground. “Down,” he said, speaking Russian and pointing at the floor. “Down.”

  The word he used meant “down” or “floor,” but she didn’t know what that meant in the bigger picture.

  She thought of waking Petrov, but before she could move, she heard a noise, a rapid little ticking almost like a drumming of fingernails on a hard surface.

  It started and then stopped and then started again. And then through the darkness she saw something scamper around the edge of the cell door.

  For a second she thought it was a rat. It would certainly not be the first they’d seen down here, but even in the gloom of the dank prison she could see that its movements were too precise and its stillness too complete once it stopped.

  Yuri pointed at it insistently. Despite the fact that it was ten feet away from them on the floor, he repeatedly pushed an outstretched palm toward the object, as if he was trying to shun it or force it back.

  “Machine,” he said. “Machine.”

  “It’s okay,” Danielle told him.

  Gently she eased his hand back to his side and then stepped off the shelf and moved toward the object.

  It was indeed a machine, one that she recognized.

  Her heart began to pound. The spider was NRI equipment. It meant help had arrived from somewhere.

  Knowing it carried a microphone, she began relaying details of the situation to whoever was controlling it.

  “There are seven prisoners down here,” she whispered. “No guards on this level, no cameras, either, but I’ve gone through every inch of this place and there are no exits except the elevator. Do you copy?”

  The little spider pivoted up and down on its front legs, in a sort of nodding gesture.

  Danielle looked around and then back at the device. “Are you on a surveillance run?”

  The spider moved side to side.

  “So this is a rescue attempt?”

  The spider nodded yes. And then, after a pause, it continued nodding yes, bowing and rising repeatedly.

  After three or four identical moves it stopped and Danielle looked at the thing dumbfounded. What the hell was the operator trying to tell her?

  “I don’t know what you want from me,” she said, almost laughing at the absurdity of the situation.

  The little spider nodded three more times and then stopped. She shrugged, and almost simultaneously, a thunderous explosion rang out.

  The shock wave knocked her off her feet. A cloud of dust surged throughout the old brig.

  Coughing, she looked up. Yuri had grabbed her arm and was pulling her. The others in the cell were awake and stunned and hacking on the dust just as she was.

  “What happened?” the old man asked.

  She heard the muted wail of some alarm high above. An earthquake or fire alarm, she guessed.

  She got back to her feet just as a figure came in through the swirling dust.

  “Are you all right?” the new arrival said.

  The voice was strangely familiar, but in a distant way. And then as the person crouched beside her she recognized him.

  “Hawker? My God, what are you doing here?”

  “Getting you out of trouble,” he said. “It’s what I do best.”

  It was the dry sense of humor she remembered. After the way things had ended in Brazil, and especially after her own departure from the institute, she’d sadly guessed that she would never see him again. Certainly not in a situation like this.

  He dropped down and began digging into his backpack.

  “I was telling you to get down, before the explosion,” he said.

  “Suddenly it makes sense.”

  A new set of alarms began ringing and she guessed that the incursion had been detected.

  “We need to get moving,” she said.

  The old man and the woman were standing around her; Yuri was tugging on her sleeve.

  “Where do we get out?” the old man said.

  “At the front of the room,” Hawker said. “By the gunports. Go across the rocks and swim to the south; you’ll have the current and the tide with you. But go now if you want to make it.”

  The two prisoners moved quickly and disappeared.

  Hawker looked around. “I thought you said there were seven.”

  She pointed to the cell across the corridor. Zhou and the other man she’d beaten cowered there.

  “What happened to them?”

  “We had a little disagreement,” she said. “They’re kind of my bitches now.”

  “Someone’s got to be king of the yard,” he said. “I should have figured it would be you.”

  “Yeah,” she said, glad to be talking with him, but thinking they could catch up later. “Can we get the hell out of here?”

  “Not just yet.” He looked at Yuri. “Grab the kid.”

  “You know about him?”

  “He’s part of the deal,” Hawker said. “Sort of.”

  There was something in his voice that concerned her, but before she could say anything, Hawker moved to the gate that separated them from the elevator. He stuck a shaped charge of C-4 to the lock and stepped back.

  Yuri began to yell. It was unintelligible wailing, but he covered one ear with a hand and pointed toward the elevator.

  “Look out!” she shouted.

  The elevator doors flew open and a wave of darts came streaking through the air, trailing wires back to some riflelike Taser device. Danielle ducked behind the wall but saw one hit Hawker and his body stiffen, and her immediate thought was, This can’t be happening again.

  CHAPTER 18

  Hawker felt the sting of the dart hitting his body but he was already moving for cover and even as his muscles wrenched tight he fell behind the stone wall, his chest scraping against it and thus ripping the prong of the Taser out.

  Spared the full burst of electricity, he still writhed in pain from the half second of shock.

  He rolled over, angry at himself. He’d been waiting for security to come down in the elevator; in fact, he’d been counting on it. But the occupants of the car had doused any light inside it and the screaming Russian kid had distracted him.

  He shook his head to clear it and looked around. Danielle was pulling the child into safety behind her with one hand and grabbing the carbine rifle he’d dropped. As she fired down the hall, a man screamed in agony at the far end.

  “One down,” Danielle shouted.

/>   A second wave of darts came flying in, which Hawker deflected with his backpack.

  He pressed the detonator switch and the C-4 on the gate exploded, flinging it open and taking out the second guard.

  Before they could rejoice, a third guard opened fire.

  Bullets ricocheted around the brig and Hawker pulled a grenade from inside his pack. While Danielle fired back, he tossed the grenade.

  The concussion knocked the remaining attacker down and Hawker ran to the man’s position, ripping the Taser-like weapon from his belt and using it on him. The five-second ride left the man writhing on the floor and Hawker guessed he would no longer be a problem.

  He looked toward the elevator. A racket of the competing alarms poured down through the elevator shaft and in through the hole he’d blown in the wall. Out on the rocks, beams of light were playing through the smoke. Shouting could be heard.

  It would take a minute or so for any guards to scale down from above, but exiting that way now would be suicide.

  He shouted to Danielle. “Come on!”

  Through the smoke he saw Danielle and the child trying to help another prisoner stand.

  “Leave him,” Hawker shouted.

  “I can’t,” Danielle said.

  “We don’t have room. If this guy wants out he has to run for it …”

  Hawker’s voice trailed off as realized the man had only bloodstained rags where his feet should have been.

  “I’m not leaving him,” Danielle said. But the man pushed her away and then fell back onto his stone ledge of a bunk.

  “Go,” he said in Russian. “Take him with you.” He pointed to Yuri.

  Hawker looked at Danielle. “We only have room for three.”

  Angry, she grabbed Yuri and tore him away from Petrov. The child began to scream.

  “Give me a weapon,” the man said.

  Hawker handed him a fragmentation grenade, in case he didn’t want to be a prisoner any longer. And then he turned and led Danielle and the child toward the open elevator doors.