Hurricane Fever

by Tobias S. Buckell

  Someone leaned over the balcony and cut the rope.

  The ground was fifteen feet below.

  Roo managed to twist, like a cat, and land on his one good foot with a roll so bad he almost wanted to apologize. The stabbing pain up his femur hinted at another fracture, maybe even a break. Glass and debris punctured his hands and dug into his sides. Roo lay on the sidewalk, unable to think or move.

  Pain hit him like waves furiously slamming into a reef. They covered him with a frothy stabbing as breakers of dizziness foamed and climbed over him to dash themselves against some inner point that struggled to remain firm.

  There was a lot of blood on the ground around him, Roo thought.

  And then that inner rock gave up and let itself get washed away.

  19

  Roo opened his eyes a few minutes later and fuzzily regarded the tilted lobby of Beauchamp Labs. He’d crawled away from the building at some point, he realized, looking back at the trail he’d made through the debris.

  Through the floor-to-ceiling glass Roo could see two men in shredded black suits get out of the elevators. They motioned at the security guards near the metal detectors and pointed outside.

  Roo pulled his pistol free of his inner jacket pocket and struggled to sit up, but it felt like all of Aves Island had suddenly been cut free of the coral it sat on. Everything rocked and moved around him.

  He took a deep breath and aimed at the lobby doors.

  This was it. His last stand. Sitting on the grass near the road in front of the lobby of the building.

  When the men pushed the doors open Roo emptied the clip at them. The windows shattered. The guards scattered, seeking cover.

  The high-pitched whine of an electric bike filled the air. Tires scrubbed on the street and Roo looked behind him just as Kit pulled to a stop, the back of the bike kicked slightly up into the air as she slammed the front brakes too hard.

  “Where did you get that?” he asked, stupidly, loading another clip into his pistol and shooting back at the lobby to keep them covered.

  “Stole it. Get on,” she shouted. Bullets slapped the asphalt nearby. Too close. But Kit didn’t flinch. “Let’s go!”

  Roo tried to stand. His ankle collapsed, bone puncturing through the skin. He wobbled, fell forward, and Kit caught him. He wrapped his arms around her waist as she gunned the motor, leaving a long track of rubber down the road. The popping sound of gunfire faded behind them.

  “Left here,” Roo murmured. The world tracked past him in jerky fits of images. His brain was struggling to handle the inputs as they moved out of the island’s central core. He directed her toward the edge of Aves, closer to the water. Where canals ran between the skyscrapers on stilts in addition to the roads and bridges. “Right. Right again. The dinghy dock, right there.”

  “They’re following us. I need to lose them.” A pair of lights stabbed the turns behind them.

  “No. Just get us to that dock.” Roo could feel himself fading again, and jerked himself back awake.

  “Roo, that’s not where the Spitfire is.”

  “I know. We’re not going back to the docks.” He didn’t want to lead them back to the boat, but to something else he had waiting.

  They’d stopped.

  “We’re here. Come on,” Kit said. She grabbed his shoulder.

  “No,” Roo protested. “I’m too heavy.”

  He tried to stand but she shoved him back. “Merde. You’re not that heavy. And you can’t stand.” She slipped under his arm, ducked, and flipped him onto her back. A classic fireman’s carry.

  It wasn’t as noble as having a comrade supporting you under an arm, but it allowed anyone to carry someone heavier than themselves. Kit easily walked down the slope to the dinghy dock, grunting under his weight but moving at a half jog. Every bounce against her shoulders sent pain shooting up through his core.

  “That one,” Roo gasped, pointing at Spitfire’s dinghy, tied up among a row of other small craft.

  Kit tumbled them both ungainly into the inflatable, Roo biting his hand to stop from screaming as bones grated and shot pain up his leg.

  “What now?” Kit asked.

  Roo pulled the duffel bag out of the front storage locker and dumped the first-aid kit out in front of him. He stared at all the blood slicking the fiberglass bottom. That was his blood.

  Shot in the shoulder. That was small caliber, in the flesh. Bleeding, but not as painful as his legs. Or the multiple shards of glass sticking through his jacket. Most of the blood came from his ankle, though.

  He hit himself with several painkillers. Small aerosol one-shots that hissed and nipped his skin, but delivered a blanket of warmth. The pain ebbed.

  The whine of an approaching engine grew. Roo handed her one of the submachine guns and pulled out the grenade launcher. He checked it over. He’d put everything he could think of in the dinghy ahead of time, loaded it ready for a hot retreat. Though this was hotter than he’d imagined.

  One last piece of first aid: Roo slapped four patches on his arms. The rush of stimulants shoved the growing darkness back.

  “I thought,” he said, after gasping for air as his heart stammered into overdrive, “that you were leaving.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “I’m damn glad you stayed,” Roo said. He raised the grenade launcher and sighted. The moment the car following them turned the corner he squinted.

  Four guards.

  Roo fired twice. With each thunk the grenades arced out over the other tethered dinghies and boats, over the dock, and into the street.

  The explosions rocked the air seconds later, lighting up the night sky. The car swerved, then smashed through the protective railing down the ramp and onto the dinghy dock.

  Roo took a steadying breath, then calmly fired another grenade into the car.

  They cast off to the glare of the entire dock catching fire. The platform under the car sagged, then broke. The vehicle sank into the water in a mess of bubbles.

  Kit accelerated them away into the wide canal between the skyscrapers as Roo slumped into the bottom of the dinghy. He pulled out his phone, smearing the screen with blood. No signal. Interesting. He slumped back, staring up at the stars and the undersides of bridges, hugging the rocket launcher to his chest.

  * * *

  Kit found a quiet place in the pylons under an apartment complex that looked out over the main, crescent-shaped concrete harbor. With more sedatives, Roo found he barely had the coordination to set his ankle, so she helped, with a grimace. Then they bound it to half of one of the telescoping metal oars to make a crude splint. The bandages seeped blood, and the pain in his shoulder from the gunshot grew, but it was manageable with the field kit he had. The designer drugs were field-ready, combat-oriented military spec.

  “We can’t go back to the boat or the docks near it,” Roo said, checking his phone. “I’ve fucked everything up. This is open warfare.”

  Kit didn’t say anything.

  “You can hide,” he said to her. “I can drop you off.”

  “They’ll have spotted me with public cameras,” she said. “There’s no hiding. I already debated that when I sped over to help you. I told you it was a bad idea.”

  “I know what Beauchamp plans,” Roo said.

  She looked at him sharply. “What?”

  “To unleash the tailored plague on the world. Zee, that family: that was just the beginning. It gets bigger. The man’s unhinged. He wouldn’t stop talking about his dead wife.”

  Kit’s face quirked. “We need to inform someone…”

  Roo held up his phone. “Aves is locked down. The cell towers just shut off. It’s a variation of an antiterrorist move after an explosion: kill the cell signals, only let official encryption through, and start jamming satellite signals. Trap everyone in place so you can sort through them all. I’m going to have to get out from under the jamming or I can’t call out to give anyone the information. Neither can you.”

  “We’re trapped
,” Kit said solemnly.

  “I’m sorry,” Roo said. “I’m very sorry. I didn’t realize what I was really up against.”

  This was what happened when you didn’t study what you were getting into. This was what happened when you ran in like a damn cowboy. He ran his hands through his dreadlocks and took a deep breath and looked out at the harbor. “Here they come.”

  Three Harbor Patrol boats idled through the water between gleaming white mega-yachts at anchor, their spotlights snapping around. Waiting.

  “What are our options?” Kit asked.

  “Been thinking we head for open ocean in the dinghy until we get a signal, then I call in help.” Once he got out of the range of the jamming, he’d be able to call in favors. Risky, but doable.

  “But not with those patrol boats?”

  “No.” They wouldn’t be able to run that gauntlet. The Harbor Patrol in Aves had heavy caliber guns mounted on their bows. A holdover from the fear of Venezuelan retaliation. And there were other island defenses that could be used against them, if Beauchamp was particularly good at convincing people Roo was a threat. And that kind of money was a very good convincer.

  “If you want to duck out now, I will understand,” Roo said.

  “You won’t get far in your shape. And we need to get word out. Before anything irreversible happens.”

  Roo pulled the familiar tube of a rocket launcher out from the duffel bag of weaponry. “When I was looking at Beauchamp’s parties, I saw a picture of his mega-yacht,” he said. “I noticed it has a helicopter on the top deck.”

  “Is it still there?”

  Roo pointed to the far corner of the harbor: the mega-yacht just visible, a helicopter perched like a dragonfly on a wooden top deck above the cabins. “Do you know how to fly one?”

  “No,” Kit said.

  “Then you’ll be the one shooting at anyone who tries to come at us,” Roo said.

  “What’s the rocket launcher for?” Kit asked.

  “To convince everyone aboard the ship to get the hell off before we board it,” Roo said. “Right before we swarm over the side with knives in our mouths.”

  It was time to take the war directly to Beauchamp. No botched sneaking around, no bullshit.

  He wasn’t much of a field man. Roo preferred the dark. But when it was time for fireworks, he preferred to bring as much firepower as he could. And even more than firepower, explosions let you miss your mark and still bring the pain.

  They bobbed in the dark under the apartment complex’s pylons, safe and invisible to the patrol meandering around the middle of the harbor. The two boats were easing their way toward the mouth of the harbor to block any escape.

  “You think we have a chance at this?” Kit asked.

  “Full speed for the main docks the moment those patrol boats get out toward the mouth of the harbor,” Roo said. “They’ll be expecting us to try and leave. Not to try and board Beauchamp’s ship.”

  “And then?”

  “At the very least, I plan on sinking Beauchamp’s very expensive yacht and his pet helicopter,” Roo said. “It’s the least I can do.”

  * * *

  Harbor Patrol still blocked the harbor. They could hear a few smaller semirigid boats headed up and down the canals leading away from parts of the harbor as security forces tried to hunt for them in the watery fingers reaching deep into Aves. So far the dark-colored dinghy and their lack of running lights had kept them from being seen.

  “The spotlights will get us soon enough,” Roo said. “Don’t worry about sticking close to the docks and going slow. Hit it.”

  He braced himself where he sat on the front of the dinghy as she gunned the engine. The water was smooth in here; he didn’t get bounced too much as they skipped over the surface. He balanced the rocket launcher on his shoulder and looked into the small LCD panel flipped out of the side.

  The screen included thermal imaging. Roo scanned the two-hundred-foot-long gleaming white mega-yacht in front of them. It looked like something dropped out of a science-fiction movie into the water: all gleaming polished curves, chrome, and tinted black oval windows.

  It had its stern up against the dock with a gangway leading down from the concrete edge into its wood and brass-trimmed transom. Roo and Kit approached from the port side with the harbor entrance behind them.

  In the thermal imaging display small human figures moved around or lounged. The rooms inside all seemed to line up with the portholes.

  Roo aimed at the empty bows for the first shot.

  “You ready? It’s going to get crazy the moment I fire.”

  “Do it. I’m ready, Roo.”

  The shimmering reflection of the laser sight bounced off the bow’s waterline, and Roo pulled the trigger.

  Everything lit up with the blinding glare of the rocket’s flash. It streaked out over the water, then dipped and struck the waterline with an explosive gush of fire and water spray. The hull of the mega-yacht rippled.

  Roo reloaded. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the lights of the Harbor Patrol ships changing course as they turned for them.

  “Get to the other side of the ship.”

  Roo fired a rocket into the waterline of the transom. Then another at the centerline of the ship, where the engine room sat idle, as the ship was no doubt connected to dock power.

  Water poured into the gaping holes.

  A spotlight blinded Roo, tens of thousands of candlepower creating a pool of artificial day around the dinghy. People shouted at them via crackling bullhorns.

  Kit skidded them across the water and around Beauchamp’s mega-yacht. “Duck!” Roo screamed.

  He shot a final rocket into the waterline ahead of them and flopped himself down as the fireball shot overhead. He crawled back and grabbed the arm of the outboard motor that Kit had left as she’d scrabbled down to avoid the blowback. Roo gunned them right into the burning, five-foot-wide hole in the side of the mega-yacht with a lurching crunch that threw them both forward into the front of the dinghy together. Roo’s ankle throbbed. He’d drugged the pain down to dangerous levels. That he could feel anything meant he was going to be in trouble later.

  Burning curtains of fiberglass slumped into the back of the dinghy, hissing and crackling.

  Roo picked up the duffel bag and clambered out into the warm water. The metal tube of the paddle he’d splinted his foot to worked like a peg leg, letting Roo grimace and hobble his way along awkwardly. But not quickly enough. Water from the massive hole swept him into a wood-panel wall and pinned his lower body in place.

  “Where are we?” Kit asked, stumbling through the water to reach him.

  Roo lit the room up with his phone’s light and looked around. There was a massive bed up against the wall. “Master suite of some sort,” he said.

  Kit struggled to move along the wall to find the door until they bumped into a gold-plated handle. She pulled the submachine gun he’d given her up to shoulder height as he opened the door with an explosive gush of seawater. “Clear,” she reported from the corridor, legs braced against the water rushing past.

  Roo limped out after her, his pistol covering the high ground near stairs leading out into a large saloon.

  “Let’s head up,” Roo said.

  Outside people shouted into the boat from bullhorns. The crackle of fire from the RPGs filled the air. Smoke started to haze the rooms of the ship.

  A well-dressed man in a suit coughed and hacked as he stumbled out of the corridor in front of them. He raised his hands, eyes watering as he stared at them in shock.

  “Get off the damn ship! It’s sinking.” Roo shouted. “Move!”

  The authority in his voice startled the man into action. He spun and fled up the stairs. Kit and Roo followed him, Roo struggling to get up the stairs with his splinted leg. He had to lean against the wall and pull himself along the handrail while Kit crouched, at the top.

  They burst out onto the deck with grateful gasps of clear air.

 
“Low, low, low,” Kit whispered. The ship was surrounded by Harbor Patrol. Roo pulled himself along the deck, keeping his head below the rail.

  They took the stairs up to the flat deck and helicopter pad. Roo slid inside and looked at the pedals as Kit cut the ties on the skids. He experimentally pushed at a pedal with his ruined ankle and splint. The splint kept jamming against the cockpit floor. Roo used a knife to cut the metal tube free. He cautiously tried the pedal again.

  The world faded in a haze of pain and he gasped. Even with all the drugs, the abuse of the last few hours and the direct pressure was overwhelming.

  “You okay?” Kit asked.

  “Fine,” Roo lied, blinking. He fumbled for another dose of painkillers and slapped them on.

  He powered the displays up. The rotors kicked on instantly thanks to high-torque, high density battery packs. Expensive. And the range would be limited, a reason electric aircraft were still not as common as fuel-powered ones.

  “Hey!” someone yelled, popping up on the deck. “Hey!”

  Kit leaned out and waved the machine gun. The person ducked back down the steps.

  Roo waited for thrust to build, watching the rotor RPMs climb.

  “Are those boats going to be able to shoot us out of the air?” Kit asked.

  Roo glanced over at the Harbor Patrol boats. The entire deck they sat on was beginning to pitch over and lean as the port side of the ship with its three holes took on water faster than the starboard. “The high-caliber guns are mounted for other boats. Probably not.”

  “Probably?”

  “Pay attention to the smaller guns,” he said. He focused on the controls. He’d never flown this model. There were commonalities between helicopters, but it was going to be shaky. Most of his training had been on simulators. Part of the cross-training he’d gotten as a freelance troublemaker for the CIG.