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42·NEXUS Juua Long and two Marine Special Operations technicians stood in the centre of room 352 at the Ooeroi Grand Hotel in Calcutta, while obsequious hotel.~xecfitive I Ribnu Chattergee waited anxiously for approval. The room had been redesigned exactly to the new ,specification and Chattergee was eager to leave. The Yanks paid well but they were an odd bunch. The woman in particular made Chattergee's skin crawl. As if reading his thoughts, Julia turned on her heel and faced him: "You may go. :reU reception that rooms 350 and' 354 are also reserved ,for our use. No one is to enter them without my personal approval." As Chattergee scuttled gratefully through the door, Ifulia Long turned to the senior Marine technician: "Okay, Hank, unpack the gear and let's get started. The fIrst ELF gen erator goes in the air conditioning duct to the le(t of roe bed, and the sec.ond inside the wooden cabinet to the right. Then parasite-wire both ItO the hotel mains power and we'll calibrate to make sure we can entrain Otto's brain while he's lying in bed or sitting watch ing TV. We already have dir.ect control of his television video input connector from room 350. Come on, hurry it up." Hank looked up from the padded aluminium case he was carefully Wlpacking on the floor: "Yes Ma'am. How much time do we have before Otto gets back from the drilling rig siteT" "Don't worry about him, Hank. That man has so much work to do I doubt we'i! see him back here for two days at least. Gerald Smith from New Orlean.:; has s1lbotaged the fluid system but Ouo won't know what the hell is happc.ning WltiJ it's too late to do anything about it. The drifling rig will disintegrate when thc WldcrgroUIld pressures get out of con trol. Langley wants that to happen real fast. God knows how much oil and! gas is down there, but Langley doesn't wartt the Russians or Indian Commies to reach 20,000 feet at all. If they can't reach the oil and gas, the Russians and Indians won't challenge US supremacy in the Bay of Bengal. Remember Libya gentlemen, remember Libya! Look what happened there when Qadhafi found al~ that oil after he took control in 1969. Now the Arab sonofabitch thinks he can ignore US Qrders... We won't make the same mistake twice." Julia leaned down and picked up the first of the two small but powerful extra-low-fre quency generators. Both !had been disguised as normal electrical junction boxes that would attract no special attention if they were discovered by mistake. Holding one in her left hand, Julia Long walked towards the bed... Thousands of stars twinkled brightly in the jet-black night ~ky as Otto's ancient Austin limousine bounced along a rutted dirt track thirty miles to the south-east of Calcutta. The rusty springs groaned with agony as the Austin negotiated a sharp corner, before turning onto a raised gravel causeway that ran as straight as an arrow across the shadowed rice paddies. Far away in the distance Otto could see a tiny tree of light.:; that grew larger as his geri atric limousine bOWl.Ced in .and out of the potholes. Slowly bllt S!ll'ely the tree took shape until the stark outline of a huge drilling derrick was painted against the backdrop of the night sky. Reaching up ~o a height of more than one hun<\.red and fifty feet, it looked exactly what it was: the most powerful land drilling rig on the subcontinent, capabre of soaking up' the thousands of hors-epower needed to drill more than fOl)!" miles straight down into tb.e bowels of the Earth. Owned by the Indian Oil and Natural Gas Commission, the rig had already drilled to 12,400 feet, and it was Otto's job to switch over from the simple Indian drilling fluid to the imported high-performance American system designed to handle the tough drilling and exu:eme ll!ldergroWld pressures expected between 13,000 and 20,000 feet: a [task the JUNE -JULY 1994