Treasure of Khan (43 page)

P
ITT 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.

 

G
UNN 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 drop-down 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.

W
HEN 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.

For Pitt and the others, the motion was preceded by the low rumble, which grew in intensity until it sounded as if a freight train was rumbling by underground. Then the shock waves reached the surface and the ground beneath their feet began to gyrate. At first, the ground shook back and forth. Then it seemed to break loose in all directions, steadily increasing in force.

Pitt and the guards eyed each other warily as the quake started, but the violent shaking soon tossed everyone off their feet. Pitt watched as one of the guards fell backward onto the porch steps, his machine gun sprawling at arm's length. Pitt didn't fight to stay standing but instead dove to the ground, throwing his arms and the .45 out in front of him. The smaller, lighter weapon gave him a sudden advantage over the guards, and he zeroed in on the closest man still standing and squeezed the trigger. Despite the vibration, Pitt hit his target, and the man sprawled backward to the ground. Pitt quickly swept his gun toward the second guard, who was crouching on his knees to stabilize himself. Pitt fired three times in succession as the guard let loose a return burst from his AK-74. Two of Pitt's three shots struck home, killing the guard instantly while the guard's errant burst peppered the ground to Pitt's left side.

Pitt immediately swung his muzzle toward the first guard, who had fallen down just in front of Borjin. The Mongolian tycoon had scrambled up the steps at the first gunshot and ducked behind the door as Pitt turned in that direction. The guard was scrambling after Borjin and just reached the doorstep when Pitt fired once. Another shot rang out behind him, fired by Giordino after he body-slammed Tatiana to the ground. The shaking was at its zenith and proved too great for either man to aim accurately. With a staggering lunge, the guard dove through the residence door unscathed.

At the other end of the driveway, the mounted guards had been of little concern. A chorus of snorts and whinnies still blared from the horses, who had no conception of why the ground was shaking beneath their hooves. Three of the terrified horses reared repeatedly, their riders clutching the reins for dear life. A fourth horse up and bolted, galloping full tilt across the drive, stomping the bodies of the dead guards as it streaked petrified toward the horse corral.

The violent bucking lasted for nearly a minute, making the prone observers feel as if their bodies were being tossed into the air. Inside Borjin's residence, there was a chaotic crashing of glass and fixtures as the lights began flickering out. Across the compound, a lone alarm wailed feebly from inside the lab building.

And then it ended. The rumbling ceased, the shaking gradually fell away, and an eerie calm fell over the compound. The lights around the portico had fallen dead, casting Pitt and the others in a thankful darkness. But he knew the gun battle was far from over.

Gazing at the others, he saw Theresa and Wofford were unhurt, but that a streak of red flowed down Giordino's left leg. Giordino perused the wound with a look of minor inconvenience.

“Sorry, boss. Caught a ricochet from Machine Gun Kelly. No bones, though.”

Pitt nodded, then turned toward the horsemen, whose mounts were now quieting.

“Take cover behind the support columns. Quick,” Pitt directed. He barely spoke the words when a rifleshot rang out from one of the horsemen.

With a slight limp, Giordino dragged Tatiana to the base of one of the columns while Theresa and Wofford hunkered down behind an adjacent column. Pitt fired a covering round in the general direction of the shooter before scrambling behind a third column. Tucked behind the marble columns, they were at least temporarily clear of the line of fire from both the residence and the horsemen.

With their horses settled, the five remaining mounted guards could freely open fire and randomly peppered the three columns. But while their quarry was now hidden from view, they stood exposed on open ground. In a quick lunge, Giordino leaned around his column and let loose two quick shots at the nearest horseman, then ducked back behind cover. The targeted guard took a hit to the leg and shoulder as his comrades returned fire, chipping the stone column concealing Giordino. The wounded rider dropped his rifle and made a hasty retreat toward some bushes behind the drive. With Giordino drawing fire, Pitt took a turn, leaning out and firing two shots, nicking one of the other guards in the arm. The patrol leader barked a command and the remaining horsemen bolted toward the rear bushes.

Giordino turned toward Pitt's position. “They'll be back. A dollar says they're dismounting and will counterattack on foot.”

“Probably trying to flank us as we speak,” Pitt replied. He thought of Gunn and reached down for his radio, but it wasn't there. It had been knocked off during the earthquake and lay somewhere in the dark.

“Lost the radio,” he said, cursing.

“I doubt Rudi can do anything more to help us. I've only got five shots left,” he added.

Pitt had only a few rounds left in his Colt as well. With Wofford and Giordino both hobbled, they couldn't move far in a hurry. The guards were no doubt forming a noose around the compound and would close in from three sides. Pitt looked to the open front door and decided the residence might be the best option for a defensive stand. It had been strangely silent. Perhaps he and Giordino had hit the guard after all and only Borjin was hiding inside.

Pitt rose to a knee and prepared to lead the others toward the entry when a shadow flashed by the doorway. In the faint light, Pitt detected what appeared to be the muzzle of a gun poking out. A sudden rustle in the rosebushes to his back told him it was too late. The trap had been set with no means of escape. Outgunned, outmanned, and with nowhere to hide, they would have to make a final stand alone where they stood.

Then a deep rumble echoed off the hillsides. It was similar, but strangely different, to the roar that had preceded the earthquake. And with it came a new and unexpected cataclysm of death.