NanoStrike (32 page)

Chapter 40

Two of the levers were longer than the others. Quinn pulled back on the one to his right. The right-hand tracks reversed, and the dozer rotated clockwise. A screeching sound came from the stationary track. When he pushed forward on the left lever, the noise stopped as the track rolled forward, and the machine swiveled in a zero turn. Once he faced the admin building, half a mile away, Quinn pushed both levers forward.

By experiment, he identified the correct lever to raise the front blade off the ground.

Quinn checked the cab and found what he had hoped for—a radio handset hooked in a pouch on the dash. He depressed the “talk” button.

“This is Steven Quinnborne. I’m a police officer. I need to speak to the person in charge of the facility.”

“Quinn. It’s Abdul.”

“Have you killed the power to the lines?”

“I’m here with the plant manager. He’d isolated the line before we arrived. They’d sent a team out to check what was going on at the western location. Joseph got the crew recalled, they’re safe. Where are you?”

“I’m in a bulldozer, heading straight for you.”

The dozer covered another forty feet before Abdul said, “Okay, we see you. Damn, that thing’s huge.”

“I hope so. I plan to use it to take out a pole. If I can break the power line, that’ll stop the nanobots from reaching the refinery. Ask the plant manager whether it will work.”

Quinn was met with silence. A plant manager probably didn’t want to hear from someone planning to tear up his facility with a bulldozer.

“Quinn, he doesn’t think you can do it. He says . . . wait a minute, here he is.”

“Mr. Quinn, this is Greg Matteson. The pole might come crashin’ down on your head, mate.”

“Any suggestions? We only have thirty minutes or so before the nanobots reach your building.”

Quinn heard Abdul shouting in the background. “Quinn, they’ve accelerated. We’re looking at the last twelve poles from the viewing gallery and . . . wait, eleven left. You’ve got less than ten minutes.”

“Mr. Quinn,” Greg said. “Try for the first pole. Lift your blade to maximum and connect as high up as you can. Don’t slam into it. Make contact first, then increase power. Make sure you’re aligned with the cable, or the tension might tip you sideways. You need to tear the cable from the building. If the line gives before the pole breaks, you should be okay.”

Quinn had the levers pushed as far forward as he could. As he rolled through the parking lot beside the admin building, he was relieved that most vehicles had left. On the third floor, five people stood at a large viewing window. He couldn’t make out faces, but he assumed they were Abdul, Sam, Adiba, Joseph, and the plant manager.

“You guys need to be ready to get out if this doesn’t work,” he said.

“I’m gonna watch you from here, mate. Keep your channel open. I built this place, so I should be able to help take it apart,” Greg said.

The pole stood dead ahead, less than one hundred feet away. He pulled back on the lever for the blade, which lifted and blocked his view. Suddenly he was driving blind. He eased back on both drive levers, slowing almost to a stop while the blade rose past his line of sight. He moved forward again, slower this time. The bulldozer handled differently with the heavy blade high in the air, less stable, as if he might tip forward.

Quinn maneuvered below the cable, lining up the dozer as Greg had instructed. With twenty feet to go, he slowed to a crawl until the blade contacted the pole. The pole swayed. The cable in front of him, which connected his pole with the next, yawed up and down. His cab rocked in time.

“Okay, you’ve got her. Make sure you push on both levers equally or you might start her turning.”

Quinn eased the levers forward. The engine roared as the machine strained against the resistance of the thick pole and the cable bolted to the wall of the admin building a hundred feet behind him. The tracks dug into the ground, and he heard a high-pitched whine.

“There’s a weird noise, sounds like a cat’s choir,” he said.

“That’s the cable straining, mate. Give her more power.”

Quinn pushed both levers forward all the way. The whine changed to a scream, then something exploded.

“Get down!” Greg screamed over the radio. Quinn threw himself forward onto the floor. The cab shattered, and dazzling desert sun streamed in and blinded him. Cubes of safety glass peppered the back of his head and neck like buckshot.

Then the world went black.

Chapter 41

Greg and Joe tore down three flights of stairs and launched themselves into the ATV Greg had parked, ready and waiting, at the entrance to the admin building. Joe stamped the gas pedal, and they sped toward Quinn’s bulldozer, careening across the desert at full speed.

Joe caught the monster vehicle and matched speed.

“Closer!” Greg shouted. “Hold her steady.” Greg climbed onto the hood of the ATV and leaped over the top of the dozer’s tracks, grabbing onto the remnants of the cab’s metal frame.

He hoisted himself through the shattered windshield, reached in and pushed back on the drive levers, stopping the big machine. Quinn, crunched fetus-like in the well of the cab where the driver’s feet would normally be, didn’t move.

Greg heaved Quinn’s limp body toward the seat, giving him access to the brake pedal. Calves resting on Quinn’s belly, he turned the dozer and headed for admin building. He slowed as he approached the first pole, lying smashed on the ground, surrounded by the cable Quinn had wrenched from the building.

He lowered the blade, picked up the broken pole and pushed it into the desert, dragging the trailing power line behind. Full speed, straight ahead, Greg passed the still-standing number two pylon and deposited the broken pole as far from the plant as the cable allowed.

As he reversed, pole three tumbled. The nanobots would soon reach the pile he had created, but that was as far as they would get. Once they gobbled poles one and two, they’d be out of food.

He drove the bulldozer back to the parking lot. Quinn, a crumpled, bloody heap beneath Greg’s legs, still hadn’t moved.

Abdul, Adiba, and Sam waited in the doorway of the building. Joe sat atop the ATV. Sam had the medical kit from the helicopter in his hand. No one spoke as the big machine halted.

The top half of the bulldozer’s cab was missing, sliced off by the two-inch-thick power cable when it broke loose from the admin building and whiplashed like a guided missile toward the source of the force that had ripped away its anchor. It had cut through the plate steel of the machine’s cab like a blade through paper.

Greg stood on the dozer’s tracks, leaned in, and heaved Quinn’s body out of the machine. He slid Quinn over his shoulder with a grunt, bore him down, fireman-style, and then ran into the air-conditioned lobby of the admin building. He laid Quinn on the tiles and felt for a pulse.

Sam slammed an EpiPen into Quinn’s thigh.

The big man’s chest filled with air, and he coughed.

Chapter 42

“Oh . . . Mr. Quinn!” Adiba sat in the rear seat of the helicopter, back against the side of the chopper, Quinn’s head cradled on her lap. His right eye opened, and he caught his reflection in the side window. His left cheek had puffed out like a Swiss Roll, closing that eye. His hands throbbed and when he lifted them he understood why—his fingernails were shattered, caked in filth and blood. His swollen, lacerated feet, were numb. Seeing himself through Adiba’s shocked face, he began to hurt more.

“It looks worse than it is,” he said, without believing one syllable. His voice sounded odd. He ran his tongue around his mouth: one front tooth was chipped to a stub. “Did I reach the pole in time?”

Abdul knelt in the front seat, peering over the seatback. “Yup, once they’d eaten the last poles, they had nowhere else to go. I guess they don’t like sand.”

Quinn nodded. “Did you give Scott the message?”

“Yeah. He wasn’t very pleased about the limited information, though. I might get a lecture in journalistic integrity when I return to London.”

“Good job, Abdul. Do you have my phone?”

Abdul passed it over. Quinn hit a speed dial. Scott answered after two rings. “Quinn, is that you?”

“Yes, I’m with Abdul and Adiba, and I’m praying my old friend has sorted out the complications in my life. Because, frankly, Scott, I’m flat out of fixes.”

“Your voice sounds strange, are you eating.”

“Long story, Scott, and no, but I could.”

“Where are you?”

“In a helicopter twenty minutes out from Phoenix airport.”

“There’ll be a welcoming committee when you land. Quinn, they want to know whether you have the weapon.”

“No. But I know where it is, and I can instruct them on safe handling. Look, Scott. I’m all in. Just tell me. When we land, handcuffs or highballs?”

“Well, no handcuffs, but I don’t think the FBI is much into liquor,” Scott said.

“Thank you . . . thank you, Scott.”

And, in front of a disbelieving Abdul and Adiba, hot tears rolled down Detective Chief Inspector Steven Quinnborne’s cheeks.

A cordon of white-helmeted military police surrounded the landing pad. Two men in full biological protection gear, looking like astronauts, greeted them at the helicopter. One, with a bullhorn in his white-gloved hand, addressed them over the sound of dying rotors.

“Please follow me.”

Adiba’s head was on a swivel. “What are they doing? Who are those people? Why are they dressed like that?”

“They’re making sure we don’t have any nanobots with us,” Abdul said.

A violent shiver went through her, and Abdul cupped her cheek in his hand. “It’s nearly over. I promise.”

The suited men loaded Sam and his passengers into the rear of a plain white van. They sat on uncomfortable metal bench seats. Abdul and Adiba positioned themselves either side of Quinn and supported him as they swayed and tore across the tarmac, past the runways, to two gray temporary buildings set up in a remote corner of the airport.

The white-suits led them into the first building. The men were ushered into one room. Adiba was pointed to a separate door. She panicked and grabbed Abdul’s arm. “No. What are you doing? Stop them, Mr. Quinn!”

One of the white-suits spoke. “We need you to remove your clothing and undergo a sterilization process. You can go together if you wish, we just thought . . .” He nodded toward Adiba.

“How long will it take?” Abdul asked.

“Ten minutes.”

He looked at Quinn, who nodded.

Abdul smoothed back her hair. “Adiba, do what they say. We’ll get clean, and I’ll meet you on the other side.”

“Okay.” She sounded so meek, so frightened. He’d worry the whole time they were apart.

Quinn handed over his gun, passport, spare magazine, the remainder of Nazar’s money, and the phone. They removed their clothes and dropped them in a chute before stepping into a large shower room. Powerful rotating jets blasted them with scalding, disinfectant-laden water from the walls, ceiling and floor. Abdul got a look at Quinn’s injuries. It was easier to spot the parts of him that
weren’t
bruised and cut. How was the big man not screaming in pain?

They changed into clean, cotton briefs, and one-sized, gray jumpsuits. A decent fit on Quinn and Sam, but Abdul’s hung like an empty sack. A uniformed MP led them through an airlock and along a connecting walkway into the next trailer. Adiba waited for them in a large conference room, sipping a soda. She jumped into Abdul’s arms, and they kissed as if they had been parted for a month.

“We’ll need to get those two a room,” Sam said.

Quinn smiled. Then winced because he opened a cut on his lip, but the smile still felt good.

A man wearing a dark suit, straight-backed, clean-shaven, neat hair, in his fifties, came through the door at the opposite end of the room.

“Here we go,” Quinn said softly.

The man introduced himself as Patton Armstrong. He didn’t say, but Quinn guessed FBI. He confirmed their names and explained that each of them would be separately debriefed. Then they were free to go. Quinn suspected freedom might depend on the results of the debriefing. But, all in all, he felt much better after the shower, and this reception certainly beat the hell out of getting eaten by nanobots, or slapped in prison for illegally entering the US with an unlicensed firearm, or the dozen other offenses they surely were guilty of.