And he hoped that he had already done enough to doom Joaquin.

61.

June 28, 20:06 Ethan stared up at the aircraft nearest him, the fuselage caked with the rust of ages. The undercarriage had collapsed long ago and the markings had faded, but not enough to conceal the navy-blue paint on the remaining panels or the prominent white stars painted on the tip of each wing.

'I'll be damned,' he uttered, 'a TBM Avenger torpedo bomber.'

Katherine Abell glanced at the stocky-looking Second World War airplane, the serial number FT-36 emblazoned down the fuselage beside the starred banner of the United States Navy.

'How'd you know that?' she asked.

'The Bermuda Triangle,' Ethan replied. 'Flight 19, five aircraft, all Avengers, were lost on a training mission off the coast of Florida, December 5, 1945. No trace of the aircraft was ever found. The same day, a PBM-5 Mariner seaplane sent to search for them also vanished, reportedly having exploded in midair. The last radio transmissions from the Avengers said that they were unable to find their way home. Doug's research said that Isaac Abell had been experimenting with powerful electromagnets in the Florida Straits as early as 1941 maybe his work inadvertently caused the loss of Flight 19.'

Ethan looked past the crippled Avenger to where a more modern-looking airplane rested on its belly near a small fishing vessel.

'Recognize that?' he asked her.

Lopez nodded as she peered at the twin engine aircraft.

'November 2-7-6-4-charlie,' she read the numbers off the tail. 'Joaquin's men must have brought it here.'

'No evidence, no National Transport and Safety Board investigation and no danger of prosecution for Joaquin,' Ethan said. 'All he had to do was locate the wreck and hide it here.'

Katherine's hand flew to her mouth.

'That's the airplane that had all of Joaquin's scientists aboard,' she gasped.

'The same,' Lopez replied. 'Joaquin ensured that, after they had completed building his machine for seeing into the future, they would never be able to pass on what they had learned.'

Ethan scanned the rest of the underwater hangar. Various small fishing vessels leaned at awkward angles, their crippled hulls stained red with rust and the passing of the years, whilst a number of other civilian aircraft lay on their bellies like steel whales stranded on a foreign shore. Like a museum of past tragedies, thought Ethan, as he realized just how these long-lost vessels and aircraft must have come to be here.

'This part of the facility has been here for a long time,' he said finally. 'Joaquin built on the work that his father began, back in the fifties. His attempts to create a machine that would power the world caused accidents to ships and aircraft on the surface above, and in doing so created the legend of the Bermuda Triangle. These wrecks must have been covered up by the military at the time: they wouldn't have wanted to draw attention to their work here. This facility was shut down in 1964, and Joaquin bought it from the military when it was no longer used. Doug reckons that all of the paperwork relating to the site was handed over during the sale.'

Lopez gestured up to the domed ceiling above them.

'Those beams, they're heavyweight steel,' she observed, 'but the ones in the docking bay were newer and slimmer.'

'More modern,' Ethan agreed. 'That's how Joaquin was able to do this without attracting too much attention. Easy to say you're working on coral-reef conservation projects to cover what you're really up to, and with this dome already in place you'd be able to extend outward without the hassle of starting from scratch. Hell, I'd bet that the newer domes are some kind of prefabricated constructions, easy to transport down here from his yacht.'

Lopez was about to answer, but the voice that they heard came from speakers set into the walls of the hangar.

'Congratulations, Mr. Warner, you're absolutely right.'

Ethan glimpsed movement from behind the hull of a fishing vessel twenty yards away, and in the same moment saw half a dozen armed men break from cover, running toward them with assault rifles cradled in their grasp. Ethan hurled himself down with Lopez and Katherine behind the fuselage of one of the Avenger bombers, as a broadside of machine-gun fire raked their position. Bullets clattered through the rusting metal hulks with a spray of bright-orange sparks and burst out above them, showering them with red dust.

'We're outnumbered!' he yelled to Lopez. 'I saw at least six.'

Katherine ducked down and shielded her head with her hands as she shouted.

'Tell him to stop firing! They'll puncture the dome and kill us all!'

Ethan, sheltering behind the Avenger's brittle fuselage, looked across to the fishing vessel to their right, its hull equally aged but constructed of thicker steel. He motioned to Lopez, who was also looking at the ship.

'On three, I'll cover you.'

Lopez nodded, grabbing hold of Katherine's arm as she braced her for their planned dash across the hangar. Ethan peeked over the top of the Avenger's fuselage and saw Joaquin's men gathered in two groups of five at each end of the largest ship in the hangar.

'Three, two, one, go!'

Ethan leapt up and rested his arms across the top of the fuselage as he fired a rapid series of shots at the enemy's positions. Lopez and Katherine dashed out from behind the Avenger and across open space toward the fishing vessel.

Both groups of Joaquin's men ducked down as Ethan's salvo battered their positions, bullets ricocheting off the ship's small bridge with loud cracks and twangs that echoed around the dome. Ethan fired a final two shots at each group and then rushed out toward the fishing vessel where Lopez and Katherine now crouched.

A vicious shower of bullets thundered across Ethan's field of vision, cracking the metal tiles that lined the hangar floor with bright snaking lines of sparks that leapt like electrical fields around Ethan's legs. He realized with a sudden plunging terror that the aim of their opponents was arrow straight, each bullet snapping at his heels and cracking through the air past his head, the shockwaves assaulting his eardrums. He sprinted across the hangar and hurled himself down into cover behind the reassuringly solid hull of the ship. His heart was trying to hammer its way out of his chest as he slid along the floor, and he saw stars flashing before his eyes as he gasped for air.

'Too close,' Lopez said, seeing Ethan's expression. 'These guys know what they're doing.'

Ethan nodded and blinked sweat from his eyes as he realized just how close he had come to being shot. The IRIS soldiers had stopped firing the moment he had gotten into cover: conserving their ammunition, keeping their cool. In fact, he decided as he regained his breath, they could not have failed to hit him at such close range.

'They aren't shooting to kill,' he said.

Katherine Abell looked at him, a feeble star of hope twinkling in her eyes. 'You think that this is all for show?'

Ethan peered carefully around the edge of the hull and shook his head.

'No, they're holding us back for some reason. Joaquin's a narcissistic megalomaniac and wants us dead, I'm sure of that. He just wants it done his way.'

As if in reply, Joaquin's voice echoed through the hangar from the speakers.

'Mr. Warner, Miss Lopez, you are outnumbered, outgunned and swiftly being flanked. I would ask that you surrender your weapons so that we can prevent any unnecessary bloodshed.'

Ethan smirked bitterly as he shouted out his reply.

'It's a bit late for that, Joaquin! You've already got the blood of several thousand people on your hands, not least the men that built this place for you.' He looked across at the wreckage of N-2764C, and wondered just how much Joaquin's men knew about their boss. 'I suspect that the NTSB would like to take a look at that aircraft, the one that you downed, killing the twenty-or-so scientists on board.'

Joaquin replied quietly, letting the speakers amplify his voice.

'All men must choose their allegiance, Mr. Warner,' he said.

'They had no choice!' Lopez shouted back. 'You're a murderer with a juvenile ego, Joaquin. You send others to kill for you because you don't have the guts to do it for yourself, you limp-dicked motherf-'

A rattle of gunfire drowned her out, bullets raking over their heads as Ethan wrapped an arm protectively around Katherine's shoulders and ducked down. He could tell from the blasts that the two groups were moving around the opposite edges of the hangar to flank them. Another few moments and the soldiers would be able to fire with impunity, and their cover behind the fishing vessel would be rendered useless.

Joaquin's voice echoed down to them from the speakers as the gunfire stopped abruptly.

'Surrender your weapons, or I'll order my men to finish this once and for all!'

'He'll kill us as soon as he's disarmed us,' Lopez said.

It was Katherine who replied. 'You don't know that.'

Before Ethan could stop her, Katherine stood up and walked out into the open with her hands outstretched at her sides. Ethan watched as she looked up at one of the speakers above them.

'Is this what you want, Joaquin?' she shouted out. 'A few more people to kill?'

The hangar remained silent but for the fast, light footfalls of the IRIS soldiers as they regrouped and moved into position, their weapons trained on Katherine. Ethan saw the big blond assassin at their head on his right, as the men moved from cover, no longer even trying to avoid being shot. They had the advantage of both numbers and position, and they knew it.

'That went well,' Lopez muttered as she laid her weapon down.

Ethan sighed and tossed his pistol down onto the tiles before kicking it away toward the nearest soldiers.

He stood up and placed his hands behind his head as the big man approached, flanked by his soldiers. Quickly, both Ethan and Lopez were patted down and their spare ammunition clips taken from them. Olaf walked up behind Ethan and gave him a shove in Katherine's direction.

As he joined her with Lopez in the center of the hangar, Joaquin's voice chortled down at them.

'Excellent! There, now, that wasn't so hard, was it? Olaf, please escort our guests into the control room.'

Ethan, Lopez and Katherine were shoved and prodded forward by rifle barrels that guided them past the largest fishing vessel toward a bulkhead at the far end of the hangar that was flanked by a pair of bright red fire axes mounted on the walls. Ethan briefly considered trying to make a move for one of them, but the soldiers were far too close. As they approached the bulkhead one of the soldiers, a man who looked to be in his early thirties, jogged ahead and shouldered his weapon before yanking the hatch open.

As Ethan ducked his head to move through, he glanced at the soldier.

'You know Joaquin's going to kill you, too, eventually?'

The soldier grinned without sympathy.

'The secret to staying alive,' he hissed, 'is to not ask fucking questions.'

With that, Ethan was propelled through the hatch and into the control room.

62.

Joaquin Abell stood behind a raised control panel that was located on one side of the dome. Ethan saw immediately the large plasma screens arranged around the walls, and the huge metallic sphere in the center.

'Welcome,' Joaquin said, spreading his arms wide to encompass the dome around them, 'to the beating heart of IRIS.'

Ethan saw another man sitting near Joaquin. He was small and bespectacled, and Ethan guessed that he must be Dennis Aubrey, the scientist that Joaquin had effectively abducted.

Ethan, with Lopez and Katherine either side of him, was prodded to stand before the control panel as Joaquin stepped jauntily down to meet them, his face plastered with a bright smile.

'I must say,' he began, 'that I wish this meeting could have occurred under more cordial circumstances, but alas, such is life.'

'You saw us coming,' Lopez muttered.

'Of course I saw you coming,' Joaquin replied and gestured to the giant sphere nearby. 'I have foreseen everything that is about to happen here. I should thank you, both of you, for locating Charles Purcell on my behalf and providing me with the camera he stole. It has proven remarkably entertaining, I must say, to watch the pair of you die, and yet it simply cannot be as satisfying as watching it happen for real.'

Ethan shook his head.

'I think your ego is so inflated that you can no longer see where you're going.'

'Is that such a bad thing?' Joaquin wondered out loud. 'So many people are so meek, so mild. Our society has taught us to be conservative, to be magnanimous in defeat, to bow to the wishes of others. Crap, I say. Grab everything that's yours, do anything you can to achieve your goals, even if it means pushing others out of the way, because when it comes down to it they'd do the same to you in the blink of an eye. This is a dog-eat-dog kind of world, Mr. Warner, and I am a wolf.'

Lopez's face twisted into a grim smile.

'You're only a wolf in that you're a cunning animal who is brave in a pack but a coward alone.'

Joaquin smiled pityingly.

'And yet such a wise and rapid wit as yourself was not able to enter this facility and achieve her objectives without being caught by this sly, cowardly animal' he said. 'You may enjoy your insults, but they will be the last you'll ever cast in this life, you little-'

'What's the point of all this, Joaquin?' Ethan cut across him. 'Your device lets you see into the future. It could have won you a Nobel Prize, changed the future of humanity for the better by foreseeing and then preventing natural disasters. You'd have been adored by millions, gotten everything you wanted. Instead, you're stuck down here on the seabed with your machine, like an overgrown teenage computer geek, planning apocalyptic disasters. Why?'

Joaquin appeared confused.

'Why?' he uttered. 'Why? You've come all of this way to stop me and you don't even know why I'm here?'

'You're here because you're a fucking lunatic,' Lopez shot at him. 'A sane man would be using this contraption of yours for good.'

'For good,' Joaquin echoed. 'That word, it's so subjective. What's good for one person may be lethal for another. I'm doing this because our world is in a mess, crippled by economic fallout from unregulated capitalism, dogged by climate change, scoured by over-population. It needs strong leadership, and within a few years I, and IRIS, will be able to provide absolute control over not just government, but over our own futures. We will be able to shape this world precisely as we wish.'

Ethan chuckled bitterly.

'I doubt that very much. Life just doesn't fit into boxes, Joaquin, no matter how much control you think you might have.'

'Control,' Joaquin growled and clenched a fist between them, 'is everything.'

'You're not controlling anything,' Ethan pointed out. 'That thing you've got in that chamber, it's not a weapon: it's a force of nature, more powerful than any bomb mankind could build and capable of bringing about the end of the world. If it gets out, there won't be a world left for you to manipulate. Everything will be gone. Your control is a fantasy and you're as much at the mercy of fate as the rest of us.'

'And what would you know of it?' Joaquin snapped. 'I did a little digging of my own, after you visited my yacht. Look at you. You're a washed-out soldier and journalist, a lowly gumshoe from a two-bit detective agency buried in Illinois. What possible difference can you make to this world compared to IRIS?'

'Just preventing you from gaining a position of power would be a great service to humanity,' Ethan replied. 'That'll be more than enough.'

Joaquin's face twisted upon itself in apparent frustration.

'You don't understand. You're just tiny little people, insignificant parts of a giant machine that cares nothing for your opinion or actions. I am in a position to change this world for the better, for all humanity, and it requires such a small sacrifice.'

'Sure,' Lopez smirked, 'what's a few thousand lives here and there for your greater good?'