The Storm (15 page)

“Maybe it’s a knockoff,” Kurt said.

“Yeah,” Joe replied, “a Volks Vagon.”

“Not much style to it,” Kurt said, and then, thinking of the Vespa, he added, “but at least it has four wheels.”

“You must be moving up in the world,” Joe said.

Kurt chuckled as he slid the door open. Whatever it lost on style points, the van had other attributes, including ample room for supplies, an air-cooled engine that would be more reliable crossing the desert than a water-cooled power plant, and authentic Yemen plates that Kurt hoped were current.

It was also unoccupied. Whoever Dirk Pitt had found to drop the van off had vanished. A second set of tire tracks on the soft shoulder by the road suggested the driver had been ferried off in another vehicle.

They piled into the van. Kurt made his way to the driver’s seat as Joe checked the supplies in the back.

“We’ve got boots and caftans back here,” Joe said. “Food, water and some equipment. The guy set us up well.”

Kurt looked for the key. He flipped the visor down and it dropped into his hand, along with a note.

He stuck the key in the ignition and unfolded the note as Joe made his way up front and took the passenger seat.

“It says take the coast road northeast for seven miles. Turn northwest on the paved road that marks the Eastern Highway. It will be paved for thirty miles and then become a dirt track. Continue on for exactly forty-five miles. Hide the van and hike northwest on a course of 290 for 5.2 miles. You’ll cut the corner and come upon the compound you seek. Good luck.”

“Any signature?”

“Anonymous,” Kurt said. He folded the note and tucked it away. “Whoever he is, let’s not disappoint him.”

After a quick look around, Kurt turned the key, and the engine came to life with that sound that only old VWs ever seemed to make. The gears made a grinding noise as Kurt put the van in first and released the clutch, but at least they were off and running.

He hoped to make the compound before daybreak. They had four hours.

CHAPTER 17

GAMAY TROUT WAS FILLED WITH GLEE AS SHE RODE ALONG at twenty knots, a mere thirty feet above the waves, in a small airship of Elwood Marchetti’s design.

To call it a blimp would have been a disservice to the sleek craft. The crew compartment sat between and slightly below what Marchetti called air pods. Filled with helium, the pods resembled pontoons, although much larger and longer. They were flat on the bottom and curved on the top to provide lift as the craft moved forward. They were attached to the passenger compartment by a series of struts that ran up and out at a forty-five-degree angle. A second raft of struts ran between them, bracing them and keeping them apart. The design allowed a view upward to the sky, something no other airship had.

The passenger compartment was shaped like that of an upscale cabin cruiser, raked backward as it dropped away from the inflated sections. A platform to the rear allowed open-air cruising, sunbathing and a way to enter and exit the airship. Twin ducted fans, placed well forward of the cabin, pulled the craft along like a pair of sled dogs. A stubby set of wings acted as a canard while a pair of vertical tails, one on each pod, acted as the airship’s rudders.

“This is amazing,” Gamay said, leaning over the side and staring at a trio of dolphins they’d found and begun following.

With Marchetti at the controls, Paul, Gamay and Leilani were free to enjoy the moment. They soaked it in, feeling the breeze, gazing at the dolphins flying through the clear waters below.

The bottle-nosed mammals easily kept pace with the airship, accelerating with powerful strokes of their flat tails. Occasionally, one would break the surface and propel itself through the air, leaping toward them and then arcing back down to the water.

“It’s like they’re trying to reach us,” Leilani said.

“Maybe they think we’re the mother ship,” Paul replied.

Gamay laughed. She could only imagine what the dolphins would think of such a vessel. Clearly they weren’t afraid of it, though. “Marchetti, I think this will work.”

Leilani nodded, seeming to be in better spirits. Paul smiled.

“You look like the cat who ate the canary,” Gamay said.

“I was just thinking how lucky I am to be up here with two beautiful women,” Paul said, grinning, “instead of hiking through the desert with Kurt and Joe.”

Gamay laughed.

“And it’s not just the company,” he added. “For once we’ve got the multimillion-dollar toys to work with. Kurt and Joe are probably wrestling with a few smelly camels right about now.”

“Have to agree,” Gamay said, then turned to Marchetti. “How much farther can we go?”

“We can stay aloft for days if we need to,” he said. “But my suggestion is to put another hour on this leg and then head home to the island. My crew will have the other two airships put together and ready for action tomorrow, and we can take all three up and cover more ground—er, water.”

“Do you have pilots?” Paul asked.

“Pilots?” Marchetti replied. “
We don’t need no stinking pilots
.”

“Who’s going to fly them?”

“Any of you can,” Marchetti said. “You drive this thing like you drive a car or boat.”

Gamay found Marchetti a welcome addition to the team. Certainly he’d been true to his word so far, putting his full backing behind the expedition. He’d already turned the floating island of Aqua-Terra toward the northwest and brought it up to the blazing speed of four and a half knots and turned over all specs of the microbots to NUMA. He’d even brought back another dozen members of his crew to keep the island running sans robots.

“Give us a few lessons before you send us out,” Paul asked.

“Sounds fair.”

Gamay turned her attention back to the sea. The dolphins continued to race along with them, staying just ahead of the airship’s floating shadow. Another one looked as if it were about to jump, when suddenly they scattered, darting in opposite directions and vanishing in the blink of an eye.

“You see that?” she asked.

“They’re quick,” Paul said.

“Must have gotten tired of us,” Leilani said.

Still gazing at the water, Gamay sensed something different. The sea was growing darker. A murky gray hue had begun to replace the clear deep blue they’d seen only moments before.

She guessed the dolphins had sensed the change, processed it as danger and fled in the other direction.

The happiness left her. “Slow us down,” she said to Marchetti. “I think we’ve found them.”

CHAPTER 18

“RIDING IN THIS THING MAKES ME FEEL LIKE I’M HEADED to Woodstock in the desert,” Joe said, talking over the VW’s engine noise and peering into the dark.

“Let’s hope it’s not quite as crowded,” Kurt replied.

He and Joe drove through the night. When they reached the waypoint, they pulled off the desert track and parked the VW behind the curved slope of a sand dune.

While Joe brushed away the tire tracks, Kurt pulled out a tarp. He peeled a thin film off the topside of the tarp, exposing an adhesive layer. Laying the tarp facedown and dragging it across the ground caused the adhesive to pick up a fine layer of sand as grains stuck to its surface.

Satisfied, Kurt flung the tarp over the top of the VW, staked it in the ground and dumped several small bucket loads of sand on the top.

Joe returned just as Kurt finished. Joe blinked as if his eyes were deceiving him.

“What happened to the VV?”

“I made it invisible,” Kurt said, heaving a small backpack over his shoulders. “No one’s going to spot it.”

“Yeah,” Joe said, “probably not even us. I lose my car in the parking lot, this I might never find.”

Kurt hadn’t really considered that. He looked around for landmarks, but the desert offered only endless dunes in every direction. He pulled out a GPS receiver and dropped a pin, marking the location of the hiding spot. He hoped that would help.

As Joe pulled on his own backpack, Kurt slid a pair of snowshoes on his feet. They were modern carbon fiber design, not the tennis rackets of old, but they would do the same thing: spread his weight out over a wider area and allow him to walk on top of the sand instead of sinking in and trudging through it with every step.

Joe donned a similar pair, and the two men began hiking.

Ninety minutes later they crested the latest in a series of endless dunes. As they reached the top, they caught wind of a helicopter approaching from the south.

Scanning around for the source of the noise, Kurt spotted a flashing red beacon in the sky. It looked to be no more than two or three miles away, cruising at five hundred feet and headed straight for them.

“Get down,” Kurt said, dropping flat to the ground and trying to burrow in the sand like a sidewinder.

Joe did the same, and in a moment they were just about covered up to their necks. Despite this camouflage, the helicopter continued toward them, never deviating or changing course.

“This looks bad,” Joe whispered.

Kurt’s hand found the holster on his hip and the .50 caliber Bowen revolver inside it. The gun was a cannon, though it wouldn’t do much good against a helicopter unless he made a couple of perfectly lucky shots.

He locked onto the red light. A dimmer green light glowed on the other side. If it came to it, Kurt would aim right between the two and empty the cylinder in hopes of hitting something vital.

He heard Joe unlatch his own pistol, likely planning to do the same, when a thought occurred to him: if they’d been spotted and the copter sent out to hunt them down, why wasn’t it blacked out?

“Nice of them to leave their nav lights on for us to aim at,” he said.

“You think they made a mistake?”

The helicopter continued toward them, now only a quarter mile away and still descending but also changing course.

“I guess we’re about to find out.”

The helicopter thundered past, two hundred feet above them and a couple hundred yards to the west.

Kurt watched it pass and tracked its course. Seeing no other aircraft trailing it, he pulled out of the sand and raced after it. He made it to the bottom of the dune and clambered up the top of the next one, throwing himself flat against the sand as he reached the peak.

Joe hit the ground next to him. Ahead of them the helicopter slowed to a hover, descending toward a dark shape that rose from the desert floor like a ship on the sea.

A band of low-intensity lights came on, marking a circle on the top of the “ship.” The helicopter adjusted, pivoting slowly and then settling onto the rocky bluff.

“Looks like we’ve found the compound,” Kurt said.

“We’re not the only ones,” Joe replied.

Lights could be seen approaching from the southwest. It looked like a small convoy, maybe eight or nine vehicles. It was hard to count the headlights with all the dust they were kicking up.

“I thought Dirk said this place didn’t get much traffic?”

“Apparently it’s rush hour,” Kurt replied. “Let’s hope they’re not here on our account.”

As the vehicles pulled up in front of the bluff, the quiet desert filled with commotion. The headlights blazed and the dust swirled and voices rose through it, not arguing but discussing something tersely in Arabic. Armed men appeared from the mouth of a cave and walked out to greet the newcomers.

On the bluff above, the helicopter was shutting down. Two men climbed out and made their way toward the side of the cliff, disappearing into what looked like a hole cut out of the rock. Kurt guessed it was some kind of tunnel or hidden entrance.

“Come on,” he said, “while the valet’s busy with all those cars.”

Kurt backed down the sand dune for a few paces and began to scamper along it. Joe followed, trying to catch up.

“What are we going to do?” Joe asked. “Walk right in and pretend we’re with the band?”

“No,” Kurt said. “We make our way around the back by that landing pad. I saw the passengers from that chopper disappear without climbing down. Somewhere on top there must be a way in. All we have to do is find it.”

CHAPTER 19

OUT OVER THE INDIAN OCEAN, MARCHETTI HAD PUT THE airship into a slight climb, brought it up to an altitude of a hundred feet and slowed it considerably. To make the design as sleek as it was required some compromises, one of which meant the craft didn’t have quite enough buoyancy to float without some forward motion providing lift.

As the engine cut out and they started drifting, the passengers grew nervous.

“We’re still sinking,” Gamay said. Seventy feet below the sea was calm and dark. If she was right and that darkness was related to the microbots swarming beneath the surface, she had no desire to land on it.

“Just a second,” Marchetti said.

He threw a lever, and compartments at either end of the airship sprang open like he’d popped the trunk and hood of his car at the same moment. The hissing of high-pressure gas followed, and two additional balloons sprang forth from the hatches. They floated upward, quickly filling to capacity with helium and snapping their tether lines taut. As they inflated, the sinking slowed and then stopped.

“I call them air anchors,” Marchetti said proudly. “We’ll deflate them once we get moving again. But in the meantime, they keep us from ending up in the drink.”

Gamay was relieved to hear that. Around her, Leilani and Paul both exhaled.

“I guess we should break out the sampling kit,” Paul said.

The airship stabilized at forty feet. By releasing small amounts of helium, Marchetti coaxed it down to five feet and then set its buoyancy at neutral.

“Close enough?” he asked.

Paul nodded as he climbed toward the aft platform with the telescoping sample collector.

“Be careful,” Leilani said, looking as if she didn’t want to go anywhere near the edge.

“I second that,” Gamay added. “It’s taken me years to train you. I’d hate to start over with a new husband.”

Paul chuckled. “And chances are, you’d never find one as handsome and debonair as me.”

Gamay smiled. She’d never find one she loved as much as him, that was for sure.