The Storm (40 page)

Joe figured differently. Within twenty minutes, the breach would be too close for either he or the boat to fight the effects of the current.

“I never wanted to go over the falls in a barrel,” he said, “and I still don’t. Let’s get this done. Start pumping the dye.”

A pump above on the dive boat began to rumble, and a secondary line attached to the Ultra-Set hose pressurized.

Down below, a high-pressure spray of fluorescent orange particles began to jet out of the hose. Joe switched on a black light attached to his helmet. The particles lit up like fireflies as they swirled in the murky water washing slowly to Joe’s left.

At the limit of his vision, Joe saw them quicken and speed toward the surface headed for the breach in the dam. That was the death zone. When that high-speed current reached him, there would be no escape.

Joe moved across the wall, hopping side to side like a spaceman on the moon. He washed the dye up and back across the area where the tunnel’s entry point was suspected to be. It flowed oddly over the uneven surface of the boulders and stones.

Ten minutes and twenty swaths later, they were still without luck.

“We need to go deeper,” Joe said. “Pull us back away from the dam.”

“The farther out we go, the stronger the drag from the break in the dam,”
the supervisor said.

“It’s either that or call it a day,” Joe said.

“Hang on.”

A second later Joe felt the steel cable lift him off the slope. From there he was dragged backward perhaps another thirty or forty feet and dropped down again.

As he landed, he could feel the sideways pull of the current tugging at his feet. He pulled the trigger on the fluorescent spray and saw it catch in the crosscurrent to the left. At first it looked no different than the other marking attempts, but this time Joe noticed an eddy swirling in the pattern.

“Ten feet left,” he said.

“Closer to the breach?”

“Yes.”

Joe began to walk. High above, the dive boat moved with him. He pulled the trigger again, aiming the reflective stream of particles right at the center of the eddy.

The glowing particles swirled and the majority of the spray was sucked into a gap between two railroad tie–sized beams of concrete, vanishing in a blink like fish disappearing into coral at the sight of a predator. It happened so quick, Joe had to trigger a second burst of the spray just to be sure.

“I’ve found it,” he said. “The gap is between two concrete pylons in the riprap. I can feel the suction from it.”

As Joe got closer, he felt himself being pulled into the gap. He could see sand and gravel disappearing from around the edges of the beams. A crater was widening beneath them, he could see what looked like a twenty-inch-diameter hole.

He wedged a foot against one of the concrete beams to keep from getting sucked in. As much as he wanted to block the hole, he personally didn’t want to be the plug.

“I’m ready for the mud.”

“Mud?”

“The Ultra-Set,” Joe clarified, awkwardly holding himself back.

“Starting the pumps now,”
the supervisor said.

Careful to maintain his balance, Joe managed to jam the front end of the hose into the opening. As the pressure came up, he pulled the trigger.

The Ultra-Set began flowing out at high pressure, some of it escaped into the water, looking like magenta-colored whipped cream as it expanded and hardened. Most of it funneled into the breach drawn down by the suction of the unwanted tunnel.

“How much does this stuff expand?” Joe asked.

“Twenty times its original volume,”
the supervisor said.
“And then it hardens.”

Joe hoped it would. And if there were any microbots left in the core, trying to widen and expand the breach, he hoped they would be caught in it and frozen in place like insects in amber.

The current tugged him to the left and he heard the rumble of the falls over the motor of the boat and the pump above him.

“Anything?” Joe asked after about thirty seconds.

“Control reports orange dye from the lower geyser,”
the supervisor said.
“The water flow is unchanged.”

“How much of this stuff do we have?”

“The tank holds five hundred gallons,”
the supervisor told him.
“It pumps two hundred gallons per minute.”

Joe hoped it would be enough. He held the nozzle and reset his feet to fight the crosscurrent.

The major came on the radio next.

“Mr. Zavala, we’re awfully close to the breach. We’re running full power just to keep ourselves out of the fray. If you could hurry …
”

Joe looked up through the window in the top of the huge helmet. He could see the lights on the underside of the boat and the swirling turbulence where the propeller was churning full speed.

“I’m not exactly taking a lunch break down here,” he said.

Joe shut the nozzle off for a moment, climbed up on the boulder field and, using the leverage of his feet, pushed a boulder down the slope and into the gap. It plugged somewhat, leaving a much smaller fissure.

Joe jammed the hose back into place and pulled the trigger again. “Go to full pressure on the hose,” he said. “We either fill it or we don’t.”

Joe held the trigger down and the Ultra-Set surged forward. As it did, he felt the current changing around him. The pull from the opening in front of him was lessening, but the side load dragging him toward the breach was picking up steam.

“Control reports the flow lessening. Ultra-Set spewing from the geyser!”

Joe’s left foot slipped out from under him as the side current intensified and suddenly he was surrounded by red foam. The tunnel was packed and the Ultra-Set was spewing out of the now blocked hole like a bottle of carbonated soda that had been shaken and then opened.

Joe caught himself and then stumbled again. He shut off the valve.

“Bring me up!” he shouted.

The steel cord yanked him off the slope and then dropped him back down again, but it wasn’t a vertical tug, it was a sideways one that almost tipped him off his feet. For a second Joe was confused. Why was he being pulled sideways?

A call from above straightened it out. “
We’re caught in the current!
” the major shouted.
“We’re
getting pulled into the breach!”

CHAPTER 57

GAMAY TROUT STARED AT KURT AUSTIN ON THE DARK, COLD bridge of the helipad. Nothing in the air could have chilled her like the words he’d just spoken.

“You’re not staying here,” Gamay said.

“Those things are overloaded with twelve of you,” he said. “Another one hundred and ninety pounds will put one of them in the drink.”

Down below, the lights had begun to blow as the horde of metal sand crawled over them and covered them up. All of zero deck had gone dark, central park no doubt being stripped bare.

A strange sound, like concrete blocks being dragged over metal, seemed to resonate from all directions as trillions of the microbots slid across one another, filling the nooks and crannies of the island and beginning to climb vertically.

“But you’ll die here!” Leilani cried out.

“I’m not going to die,” Kurt insisted.

Gamay noticed he never took his eyes off Jinn. “He’s going to give us the code and shut these things down before they eat us alive.”

“I would not count on that,” Jinn said.

To their left, the first airship accelerated forward, picking up speed and rolling off the edge of the platform before dropping … dropping … dropping toward the zero deck. As its speed came up, the descent slowed and then finally at thirty feet or so it began to climb.

“You two get on the airships and get out of here,” Kurt said.

Leilani stared at Kurt with her mouth agape. Gamay understood him better. Kurt was locked in a test of wills with Jinn.

“Come with me,” she said to Leilani. They walked along the edge of the platform as the second airship launched. Marchetti and the last ride out waited.

“What is he doing?” Leilani asked.

“He thinks he can break Jinn and force him to countermand the doomsday order.”

“But that’s insane,” Leilani said.

“Maybe,” Gamay said. “But if what Jinn told us yesterday is true, his doomsday command will take a lot of lives and cause years of worldwide misery. If he dies, it’ll never be countermanded, but to take him with us means two or three of our people have to stay behind and die. Kurt would never give in to that and I can’t blame him. The only way we can help him is to get off the island. Give him one less thing to worry about.”

Marchetti hustled them aboard the airship as the fans cranked up to full speed.

“Ready,” she said.

A few pairs of boots were thrown out and the rifles the men carried, even some of the heavy jackets, anything to lighten the load a few more pounds.

Paul grasped her hand tight as they picked up speed.

Gamay held her breath as they went over the edge. It felt like they were cresting a ridge on a roller coaster. Her knees went weak and her stomach seemed to float for several seconds as the nose pitched down and the airship dropped and accelerated.

Rising up toward them, she saw the flat area of the central park teaming with masses of the microbots. The descent didn’t seem to be slowing fast enough.

“Marchetti?”

“Hang on,” he said.

They were still descending way too fast. Marchetti was pulling back on the controls, and the horrible sound of untold numbers of metal machines eating rang in her ears. The descent began to slow, the craft leveled and skimmed across the park, narrowly missing a tree covered top to bottom with the invading horde.

Finally they began to rise, climbing slowly as they crossed the island’s threshold and moved out over the ocean.

“Fly the airship,” Marchetti said to his chief. “Keep our speed up. Keep us close enough for a signal lock on Wi-Fi.”

“What are you going to do?” Gamay asked.

“I have to set up the computer,” he said.

“The computer?”

He nodded. “Just in case your friend actually knows what he’s doing.”

CHAPTER 58

THE HORRIBLE FEELING OF EVENTS SPIRALING BEYOND HIS control filled Joe Zavala with dread. The dive boat above was being pulled toward the breach where it would go over the falls in a fatal manner. And since he was attached to that boat by a steel cable and an air hose, Joe would soon follow.

Cutting the cable and the hose wouldn’t help. He couldn’t swim to the surface. Even if he dumped the weight belt, he had fifty pounds of gear on his shoulders and feet.

His feet touched down, he tried to set them but was picked up and pulled sideways once again.

“Give me more line!” he shouted. “Quick!”

He saw the boat high above, saw the phosphorescent wake behind the boat as it fought the current, angling this way and that as the pilot tried to keep its nose aimed upstream. Any side turn would be the end of them as they’d be swept away in a matter of seconds.

Finally Joe felt some slack in the line. He dropped onto the slope and began to scramble over it. He found a large boulder, half the size of a VW or even a VV.

Marching around it, he wrapped the steel cable against its bulk.

“Tighten the cable!” he said.

The cable pulled taut, constricted around the boulder and all but sung in the depths as the slack was used up. The boat up above locked into place.

“We’re holding,”
the major called down.
“What happened?”

“I made you an anchor,” Joe said. “Now, tell me someone up there knows what centripetal force is?”

Joe was holding tight. The cable was looped around the boulder but threatening to break.

“Yes,”
the major said,
“the supervisor knows.”

“Point the boat toward the rocks, take a forty-five-degree angle if the cable holds, then you should slingshot to safety. Beach the boat, and don’t forget to reel me in.”

“Okay,”
the major said,
“we’ll try.”

Joe held the cable tight, putting his steel boots up against the boulder.

The boat above changed course and began to move sideways. Like the Earth’s gravity directing the moon, the steel cable caused the boat’s path to curve and accelerate. The boat cut through the current and was flung forward.

A twang sounded through the water. Joe felt himself tumbling backward.

The cable had snapped in two.

At first he was dragged by the current toward the topside breach, but then the lines and hoses connecting him to the dive boat pulled him the other way.

As the boat raced into the shallows and beached on the rocks, Joe was dragged into the boulder field down below. Each blow felt like being in a car crash and Joe was suddenly thankful for the hard stainless steel helmet.

When the ride stopped, Joe was thirty feet under, the suit was filling with water and the air hose was either severed or kinked because no air was coming through. Joe knew he couldn’t swim, but he could climb. Up he went, crawling across the concrete pylons and boulders like a raccoon in a garbage dump.

He shed the weight belt and the task got easier. As he went higher, the light from the bottom of the boat grew brighter. With his air running out, Joe pulled himself to the surface, emerging like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

He collapsed between two of the boulders, unable to hold up the helmet and shoulder harness without the buoyancy of the water. He struggled to lift it off, but it wouldn’t budge until two sets of helping hands pulled it off for him.

“Did we do it?” Joe asked.

“You did it,” the major said, hugging Joe and lifting him up. “You did it.”

CHAPTER 59

HIGH UP ON THE HELIPAD, THE EERIE, OMNIPRESENT SOUND of the microbots continued to grow louder. It came everywhere at the same time like demented electromagnetic cicadas, chirping by the billions and moving closer with every passing moment.