“Wait until he learns that we’ve got the real thing,” she said.

CHANG WAS ALREADY far from happy. He uttered an angry curse as he entered the airlock chamber and saw that Phelps’s body was gone. A trail of blood led off toward a corridor. Phelps must have survived the gunshot and dragged himself down one of the passageways.

No matter. Phelps would die when the lab blew into a million pieces. Chang inspected his sapper’s handiwork and ordered him to set the timer. Then he herded his men into the shuttle, and the pilot used a remote control to activate the pumps. The airlock quickly filled with water. As the shuttle rose through the opening halves of the clamshell roof, Austin stood in the airlock control room watching the ascent on the instrument console’s television monitor. He spun around at the sound of a footfall, only to lower the Bowen a second later.

Phelps stood at the entrance to the passageway with his lips contorted into a strained grin. He was stripped to the waist, and a makeshift bandage soaked with blood covered the upper left part of his chest. His face was pale, but his dark eyes were defiant.

“You look like crap,” Austin said.

“Feel like it too,” Phelps said.

“What happened to you?”

“I figured Chang was going to be on hair trigger, thanks to you NUMA boys, so on my trip back to Kane’s office I grabbed a soft body-armor vest. It only covered my vitals, and I didn’t account for Chang’s bad aim. Bastard nicked me in the shoulder.”

“Why did he shoot you?”

“He got testy when I told him I wouldn’t rig the C-4 he and his boys brought down in the shuttle.”

“He planned to destroy the lab with people in it?”

“Oh, hell, they put down enough explosives to wreck the Great Wall of China. Sloppy work, though. Lucky they didn’t blow themselves up.”

Phelps tossed a bundle of colored wires on the floor in an expert’s gesture of disdain for amateurish work.

“What’s Chang going to do when he discovers that his explosives didn’t go off?” Austin asked.

“My guess is, he’ll send somebody down to check it out.” Phelps cocked his head. “On second thought, he’ll probably come back to shoot your friends so he can tell you about it.” He gingerly touched the bandage. “Chang’s kinda bad-tempered that way.”

“I’ve noticed,” Austin said. “We’ve got to get everyone off the lab in the minisubs.”

Phelps pointed at the black discs that had been pulverized under Chang’s heel.

“These are circuits for the subs’ controls,” he said. “Chang stomped them.”

“Damn!” Austin said. “The subs were our only hope.”

“Still are,” Phelps said. “I gave Chang some other discs for his temper tantrum. The originals are still in the subs.”