The Storm (29 page)

He activated the sight. The system locked onto the heat coming from Austin’s fleeing aircraft. A green light and a high-pitched tone confirmed that the target had been acquired.

“No!” the pilot warned.

Jinn pulled the trigger. The missile leapt from its case and shot out over the water. The propellant ignited and a streak of orange fire raced away from them. Jinn watched as the brilliant flare from the tail of the missile closed in on Austin’s fleeing aircraft. He counted the seconds.

KURT’S PLANE WAS BURNING and coming apart around them. The renegade strap held them in place. A two-thousand-foot drop awaited, but the parachutes that might lower them down safely would be shredded in seconds if he didn’t act.

He rose up, pulled the pistol from his belt and wedged his foot under the thug who was tied down. Holding tight to one of the boat’s grab handles with his left hand, he fired the gun with his right.

The bullet pierced the nylon. The belt snapped in two and the boat was yanked backward again as if pulled from the plane by a giant hand.

For an instant they were in daylight, but the smoke that trailed the plane engulfed them, and then the flash and concussion wave of an explosion shook the sky. A billowing cloud of burning kerosene mushroomed in all directions ahead of them, filling the air with thick black smoke.

The boat—fortunately, still attached to the chutes—plunged into the smoke, traveling forward and down like an arrow.

JINN SAW THE MISSILE hit Austin’s aircraft. The initial flare of impact was followed by two other explosions, each bigger than the last. Black clouds of smoke expanded in all directions. Flaming debris arced through it, curving downward like a series of falling comets, drawing smoke trails across the dark morning of the western sky.

The explosion was at least five miles off. Jinn’s only regret was that he hadn’t been able to see Austin burn up close where he could have watched his skin peel and blacken as the fire engulfed him. Still, it was a satisfying display, and one he was quite certain even Kurt Austin could not live through.

DESPITE JINN’S BELIEF, Kurt was alive. He’d felt the heat of the detonation and knew instantly that the plane had exploded, though he knew nothing about Jinn’s missile. Nor did he care. His only concern was holding on as he, Leilani and their prisoner dropped through the air in the inflatable boat.

When first yanked out of the cargo hold, the small boat flew almost flat on its keel like a dart flung at its board. But the parachutes were attached at the back of the boat, designed to slow it as it launched from a few feet off the deck, not to drop it safely from a great height. As the speed and momentum of the boat slowed, the nose began to pitch down.

By the time they entered the cloud of smoke, they were pointed downward about fifteen degrees, with the chutes trailing out behind them like feathers on a dart. It felt nothing like the smooth drop of a normal skydive. It was more like riding a toboggan down a black-diamond ski slope.

The boat shook and shuddered and the angle grew steeper. Out behind them, one of the chutes seemed to have been hit with debris and was fraying in the middle. Up ahead Kurt saw only smoke and darkness.

Suddenly, the surface of the ocean appeared. The nose of the boat hit the water, submarined for a second and then burst free. Kurt was actually flung up into the air, but he gripped the handle like a bull rider in the rodeo and managed to land in the boat.

They skidded forward forty yards or more before slowing to a stop and the chutes settled on the water behind them.

They’d landed amid the debris field from the shattered aircraft. Smoke surrounded them. Flames flitted across the water, making pools of burning kerosene, while tiny flakes of debris and insulation from the plane fluttered down like confetti.

For several seconds neither he nor Leilani spoke. They just sat in the boat, still gripping the handholds. The prisoner, who could not possibly know what had just happened, was staring at them with eyes like saucers.

Finally Kurt let go and began to look around.

“I can’t believe we’re still alive,” Leilani managed.

Kurt could hardly believe it either. He had the distinct sense of their luck changing for the better.

“Not only are we alive,” he said, “but we’re in a boat with an outboard motor on the back.”

He moved toward it, checking for fuel. He thought of releasing the chutes but realized that once something was gone they couldn’t retrieve it, and he considered the fact that the open boat offered no shade. He grabbed the lines and reeled them in hand over hand.

“Let’s store these,” he said to Leilani, “we might need them later. And see if you can find something to bail some of this water.”

A good twenty gallons were sloshing around in the boat’s interior.

As Leilani wrapped the nylon chutes in their cords and tucked them into a space near the front of the boat, Kurt primed the outboard. It started on the third try and was soon running smoothly.

He twisted the throttle and pointed the boat west, guiding it between the fires and through the smoke.

They came out on the other side of the smoke field, and the clear air felt glorious.

“Where are we going?” Leilani asked.

“Away from
them
,” Kurt said. With the smoke and the burning wreckage between them and Aqua-Terra, he hoped they’d be invisible for a while.

“But we can’t make it to Seychelles in this.”

“No. But we might reach the shipping lanes and be able to flag down some help.”

Kurt’s check of the fuel level showed half a tank. By the smell of things, the rest had poured out on the way down. How far they could go was anybody’s guess. Once they’d made some distance, he would ease back on the throttle to conserve fuel, but for now he held it wide open and the little boat ran like the wind on the flat gray sea.

All seemed well for about forty minutes until Kurt noticed Leilani squeezing the inflated sidewall like one might squeeze a melon at the supermarket.

“What’s wrong?”

Her eyes remained on the inflated chamber. “We seem to have sprung a leak,” she said.

“A leak?”

She nodded. “Not water coming in. Air … going out.”

CHAPTER 38

KURT HELD THE BOAT ON A WESTERLY HEADING WHILE Leilani looked for the source of the leak and any way to fix it.

“What do you see?”

“Half a dozen little pinpricks,” she said. “I can feel the air leaking through them.”

He waved her to the back. “Drive the boat for a second.”

She came back to the transom, and Kurt took a look at what she’d found. Eight little holes, some of which were so small he could press the rubber together and the air stopped escaping.

“What do you think happened?” Leilani asked.

The holes were spread out in a weird pattern, almost a spray pattern, running from front to back. “Shrapnel from the plane,” he guessed, “or even tiny drops of burning kerosene. The rubber looks singed in a spot or two.”

Kurt ran his hands along the other air chambers, which were basically inflated rubber tubes, eight feet long and seventeen inches in diameter. The boat had four total, two in the front that ran straight and then angled together to create the blunt nose of the boat, and two in the rear, one on each side. The back of the boat was a metal transom on which the outboard was mounted.

He found two more pinpricks, both in the front right chamber. Worse yet, he could see little dots here and there that looked like they might have been additional impact zones for shrapnel or fuel. He wondered how long until those opened up.

“How does it look?” Leilani asked.

The prisoner seemed anxious to know as well. He might have been gagged, but his ears weren’t blocked.

“The port side seems okay,” Kurt said. “But that’s not going to help us if the whole starboard side goes flat.”

Two small lockers rested in the deck near the front. He opened both, only to find a single life jacket, a couple of flares, a small anchor and some rope.

“Rubber boat without a pump or a repair kit,” he mumbled. “Somebody’s going to hear from my lawyer.”

“Maybe we should turn around,” Leilani said, “go back to that floating island and surrender.”

“Not unless you want to be a prisoner again,” he said.

“No,” she said, “I don’t want to drown either.”

“We won’t drown even if both of them go flat.”

“But we’ll be stuck clinging to the other side like shipwreck survivors,” she said.

“Better than waiting for Jinn to shoot us,” he said. “Besides, I have a bet to win. All we have to do is push on until we find some help.”

“And if we don’t find help?”

“We will,” Kurt insisted, feeling confident.

He reached into the locker and pulled out the flares, which he stuffed into his breast pocket next to the binoculars. He grabbed the life jacket and handed it to Leilani.

“Put this on,” he said. “Don’t worry, it’s just a precaution.”

Next he pulled out the anchor—a fifteen-pound fluke anchor hooked to an anchor rope by a large carabiner. He detached the anchor from the rope and hooked it onto the cord that bound the prisoner’s feet. The man looked up at Kurt in terror.

“Also just a precaution,” Kurt told him.

The man’s face showed little faith in that statement.

Kurt pulled the gag off the man’s face. “I know you understand when we talk,” he said. “Do you speak English as well?”

The man nodded. “I speak … some.”

“I don’t suppose you know the story of the little Dutch boy?”

The man stared at him blankly.

“This boat is sinking,” Kurt explained, “losing air. I can either throw you overboard to lighten our load or you can help us.”

“I’ll help,” the man said. “Yes, yes, I definite want to help.”

“The anchor is on your feet to keep you from trying anything stupid,” Kurt explained, and then he pointed to the forward section. “I need you to cover up these two holes and keep the air in.”

The man nodded. “I can do that. Definite, big-time.”

“Good,” Kurt said. “’Cause if you don’t, you’re going to hit the bottom of the sea faster than the rest of us.”

Kurt loosened the ropes around the man’s wrists and pulled them free. “What’s your name?”

“I am called Ishmael,” the man said.

“Great,” Kurt mumbled. “As if we didn’t have enough to worry about. Let’s hope we don’t encounter an angry white whale.”

With his legs still tied together and hooked to the anchor, Ishmael twisted and slithered a foot or so until he reached the prow of the boat. He placed his hands on the two leaks Kurt had pointed out.

“Press and hold,” Kurt said.

Ishmael pressed his fingers on the two spots and held them down. After a few seconds, he looked back, smiling.

“Perfect.”

“What about the other leaks?” Leilani asked.

“I’ll take first shift,” Kurt said, trying to spread his fingers like a piano player, “you keep us pointed west.”

Kurt and Leilani switched positions twice in the next three hours, but the rear chamber continued to deflate and the boat began to list to starboard and the aft corner settled. From time to time seawater washed over the top, soaking whoever was trying to stem the leak and weighing them down even further.

Fortunately, the Indian Ocean was the calmest of the world’s major seas and the swell was very small, only a foot at most. Kurt found that lower speeds kept the breaches to a minimum and he backed off the throttle just a bit.

As noon approached, they still hadn’t encountered anything resembling help, not even a trail of smoke on the horizon. With the sun high overhead, the outboard began to sputter and Kurt had no choice but to shut it off.

“Out of gas,” Leilani guessed.

“We have a gallon or so in the reserve tank,” he said, pointing to a stopcock on the fuel line that could be turned to access the reserve. “But we need to save that.”

“Save it for what?”

“Suppose we see a ship on the horizon,” he said. “We’ll need to intercept it, to get in front of it or at least alongside.”

She nodded. “Sorry.”

He smiled. “It’s okay.”

In the absence of the droning outboard, the silence felt oppressive and ominous, like a sign of their eventual doom. There was no wind. The only sound that could be heard was the light chop slapping against the sides of the boat.

Bathed in this silence, they bobbed up and down, wallowing in the low swells, three people aboard a sixteen-foot inflatable boat in a million square miles of ocean.

“Now what?” Leilani asked.

“Now we wait,” Kurt said patiently. “And see what fortune holds for us.”

CHAPTER 39

JOE ZAVALA HAD SPENT FIFTEEN HOURS IN THE CARGO HOLD of an unknown ship with only a group of trucks and untold billions of microbots for company. Another man might have gone stir-crazy and given himself up, banging on the doors just to get out. Joe had put the time to good use.

He’d searched each truck thoroughly. He’d found three bottles of water, drinking two of them and saving the third. He’d also discovered a plastic Ziploc-style bag filled with some type of jerky. Beef it wasn’t, but goat or camel or lamb it might have been. He ate as much as he could and put the rest back.