by Victor Koman
“Wait.” Cap held his grip on Dandridge. “I want him to see something.” He turned his captive’s head toward the crumbling remnants of the cylinder. Liberated from inside by the hungry black dust, a silvery lump seemed to dissolve into a puddle amidst the ebony attackers.
“Scavengers!” the balding man cried, struggling to get away.
“Reprogrammed scavengers,” Cap said. “Watch.”
The silver-grey microbots quickly spread out, overcoming and redesigning the metal-eaters. Within moments, the black and silver dust spread thin and vanished from view. Tex and Sun Ra dropped to the floor.
“I’ve developed an antidote for your machines, Dandridge. And your attack just unleashed them upon your island.”
Dandridge’s eyes widened. He looked up at the grinning man who held him, fearful respect and overwhelming terror in his eyes. “How could you do that? How could you know to do that?”
Cap simply kept smiling, then said, “Tex-check out the Secretary General. Dr. Dandridge and I are going to discuss electronics. And his murder of scores of people, including Dr.
Madsen.”
Dandridge gripped Cap’s copper-hued wrists. His feet dangled almost a foot above the floor. “Madsen?” he said. “That’s a laugh. He-”
A voice blared from an overhead loudspeaker. “Drop him!”
“My lab assistant,” Dandridge said with a tone of proud triumph.
“Why should I?” Cap shouted.
“Two reasons,” the voice said. “A woman and a boy.”
Chapter Seventeen
Live Capture
“Flying microbots!” Leila cried, swinging the rail gun toward the amorphous swarm.
“You can’t shoot them down!” Johnny yelled as he watched her power up the weapon. “That’s like trying to machinegun killer bees!”
“Yeah.” Leila didn’t even bother to use the laser sight, but aimed in the general direction of the black cloud. “But if I can set up a shock wave, it’ll tear them apart without having to score direct hits.”
She punched a button. “Cover your ears!”
She switched the rail gun to full auto firing. Every second, eight steel pellets accelerated to nearly ten times the speed of sound. The sonic clap of each shot blurred together into one deafening roar. The blazing trails of ionized, superheated air merged into a single, painfully bright white glare. The cumulative recoil caused the seaplane to pivot about slowly in the water. After two minutes of steady fire, Leila released the trigger.
The air stank of ozone and vaporized salt. Their ears rang with pain. Leila rubbed her aching eyes and stared blinking out the cargo hatch. The cloud of mechanical locusts was gone. A diffuse blanket of particles coated the surface of the water where some of the shattered creatures had fallen, coloring the blue-green water an oily black. Leila turned her gaze toward the rear of the Seamaster.
And stared right into the muzzle brake of a 9mm submachine gun.
The man holding the submachine gun stood in an inflatable boat similar to Cap’s. Mexican, mid-thirties, hr dressed not in islander’s clothes but in brown and beige battle fatigues. A scar on the left side of his head ran raggedly from ear to chin. No mind-numbed zombie, he gazed at the pair steadily, carefully, saying nothing. The weapon in his grip said it all.
Leila deliberated for a swift instant. If she had not had the boy on onboard the plane, she might have taken a calculated dive for cover and gone for the pistol at her thigh. As it was, though, Jonathan stood directly in harm’s way. She raised her hands, an angry smile crossing her lips.
“Flash,” she subvocalized to her earcomm while maintaining her tight-lipped smile. “Lei’s in trouble.”
“What’s wrong?” buzzed the tiny satellite-relayed voice.
She again spoke without moving her lips. “Big man with small gun beat me to the draw.”
“Keep us informed,” Flash said. “Let me know when I can lock the plane.”
“Thanks loads.” Subvocalization carried inflections quite well-hers dripped with sarcasm.
Johnny-unaware of the radio exchange-watched her surrender, then lifted his own arms in defeat. The gunman picked up a walkie-talkie and muttered something into it in Spanish.
“What do we do now?” Johnny asked.
“As little as possible,” Leila replied.
•
Their captor waited until reinforcements arrived on a second boat before he got close enough to the woman and the boy. Three other armed men covered him while he disarmed Leila and forced them into the boat. On her way out of the cargo hatch, Leila stumbled and grasped the side of the hatchway. Her fingers contracted three times, then she stood and lowered herself into the boat, putting her hand out to help Johnny in. The gunman stood over them grinning for a moment, the scar on his jawline puckering with the action. Then he manacled the pair together with rusty handcuffs.
“¿Dónde duermas, chiquita?” he asked, clamping the cuffs on her wrist.
Leila smiled sweetly, tossed her length of ebony hair behind her, and said: “Canaya.”
Her captor stiffened, the smile fading from his face. The crew of the other boat laughed.
“¡Silencio!” he shouted. He gazed up and down at the woman, then smiled again. With mock courtliness, he swept an arm gallantly toward the boat, his other arm still gripping the submachine gun.
“Por favor, señorita,” he said with a curt bow.
“Gracias, Don Pistolero,” she said with equally polite irony.
Jonathan watched the exchange wondering how she could be so cool-almost flippant-in such a dangerous situation. He had never in his life had a gun pointed at him until this week. He tried to be reassured by her calm, but inside he quaked with fear and outrage.
“Are you clear of the plane?” Hoile asked.
“Drop the hatch,” she whispered.
Leila turned to look back at the Seamaster. The crew of the other boat prepared to climb inside when the hatch suddenly whined into life, sliding shut just as one of the men reached to tie a line from the boat to the aircraft. It dropped swiftly down, pinning his arms. The other two struggled to pull him out and eventually succeeded, with no small amount of blood and outcry on the hapless victim’s part. The hatch door sealed and locked.
“Seamaster’s secure, Flash.”
The man piloting the boat saw nothing of the injury. He stared toward the northern island, a brown and green mound thrusting out of the blue Pacific. He guided the boat toward the western end where a sea cave admitted them into the depths of the island.
The hot, dank air inside the cave smelled of iodine and dead fish. The cavern curved sharply, cutting off outside sunlight. Motoring into darkness, the Mexican pulled a remote control unit from his fatigues and pressed one of the rubber buttons.
Lights flicked on along the twisting cavern. He piloted toward a makeshift dock at the far end.
Leila spoke up in a friendly tone, her voice reverberated oddly off the rocky walls.
“Mi nombre es Leila, Señor. ¿Cómo se llama usted?”
The Mexican snorted. “Perez.”
Leila smiled. “¿Habla usted inglés, Perez?”
Perez gave her a quirky sort of smile. It made his scar wrinkle. “Doctor Dandridge no habla español, so he picks people who are at least familiar with English. I speak the best.” He added, “You speak Spanish better than a tourist.”
“Thank you. But this is not my idea of a summer cruise.”
Perez laughed heartily as he brought the boat to a thumping halt by the wooden dock. This far up the inlet, the unbearable stench assaulted their nostrils like a punch to the face. Johnny tried to breath without using his nose. Leila acted as if she were a guest at the Ritz. He could tell that she was trying to butter up their captor.
On the dock stood a small console with a telephone built into it. Perez lifted the receiver and waited a moment. Then he said, “Doctor Dandridge, we have the boy and the woman.” He listened to his instructions, then said, “Yes
, yes.” He placed the receiver back into its cradle.
Stepping back into the boat to undo their shackles, he said, “I will not handcuff you for our walk, but I will stay behind you with a gun to the boy’s spine. Please do only what I ask.”
“Certainly,” Leila said as neutrally as possible, communicating neither defiance nor submission, merely agreement.
Johnny, rage building up inside him at the powerless nature of their situation, felt less threatened by the weapon at his back than he felt insulted at being used to keep the woman under control. His ears burned red at the humiliation, as if Perez expected some sort of maternal instinct of Weir’s to prevent her from striking back.
Worse, that was exactly the case.
The trio marched through a dripping wet and twisting cavern aided only by the flashlight in Perez’s left hand.
“You know Dandridge is turning your people into electronic zombies,” she said conversationally.
Perez sneered out a smile. “You think because we are the same race I should feel kinship with them? People are bound together by interest, not race. My interest is in being on the winning side.”
“What does Dandridge want you to do with us?” Johnny asked.
“Oh, just hold on to you. Hostages. He needs that to control your friends.”
Leila shook her head, undulating her jet-black hair. “It won’t work. Captain Anger doesn’t pay blackmail.”
Perez shrugged. “Then Dr. Dandridge makes his zombie operation on you. Believe me, he still needs plenty of practice.”
Chapter Eighteen
Consciousness Razing
“You heard him,” Dandridge said. “Put me down. Or the boy and girl are dead.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Captain Anger said, refusing to release his captive. “You see, I don’t accept moral responsibility for your actions. And my aides know it. If your henchmen harm Leila or Johnny”-he tightened his grip-“well, I’ve got my own methods.”
“Then let’s talk.” Dandridge’s voice barely squeaked out of his constricting throat.
Cap’s grip increased. “No-let’s act.”
“My assistant can blow up this entire island at my command. Campbell!”
Campbell’s voice bellowed over the loudspeaker. “My finger’s on the switch! Better let him go!”
Cap’s teeth glinted beneath his grin. His eyes-nearly all pupil in the low light of the operating room-looked like dark, unfathomable pools from which could issue unexpected fury. He held his grip around Dandridge’s throat.
“Then I guess we’ll have to see whose fear of death is greater- and who can deal better with the prospect of eternity.”
Dandridge took a deep, rasping breath and cried, “Do it, Campbell! Code Eighty-Six!”
Something made a chunking sound in the walls. The ventilators hissed.
“Gas!” Cap shouted, releasing Dandridge to reach into his cargo pocket. The other three men did likewise, though Rock withdrew a nothing more than a silicone rubber mouthpiece and some fiber fluff-the microbots had devoured all the metal parts of his pocket-sized gas mask.
“Aw, nuts,” he muttered in perfect American.
Dandridge stayed on the floor where he had fallen, smiling a wild, furious smile of triumph.
“Idiots!” he cried. “Masks won’t do any good against nerve gas!”
Cap slipped his mask on anyway and reached down for the doctor. “Then it can’t be fatal or you wouldn’t be…”
Before his fingers could close around the grinning scientist’s neck, Cap’s vision blurred. Those dark, penetrating eyes grew unfocused, glassy. Dandridge closed his eyes, head lolling to the side on the floor. Cap took a step forward, steadied himself, then turned to gaze at his partners. In the scintillating, kaleidoscopic numbness that enveloped him, he saw them collapse to the floor. Then his own vision blackened under the power of the void, and he felt himself fall into night.
•
He awakened to the sound of drilling.
The room was brightly lit, immaculately clean, and filled with surgical and electronic equipment.
Cap fought the pounding in his head, suppressed the pain using yogic techniques he had learned as a child and practiced all through life, and tried to rise from his supine position.
He lay strapped to an operating table. Testing the restraints, he found them resistant to what strength he had so far regained. He turned his head toward the source of the squealing sound.
Campbell-Dandridge’s weasely assistant, whose thin and frizzy light-brown hair exploded wildly from his head like mold on old bread-worked feverishly with a drill, installing extra shackles for the captives. Sun Ra and Tex already lay bolted to the metal floor with straps; Campbell knelt over Rock, drilling a hole in the thick plating for the manacle on the captive’s left wrist. His other arm and his legs lay pinned to the ground. Campbell had stripped the shirts off all of them. The bulletproof, gadget-laden clothes lay piled in a heap in the corner of the operating room. Their pistols were nowhere in sight.
All three of his crew still dozed in a chemical-induced slumber. Rock snored with loud, snarfling gulps of air and louder whistle-grunt exhalations. Cap craned his head to scan the room. On the far side lay Dandridge on a large cot, head on a soft pillow, sleeping off the nerve gas in relative comfort.
Quietly, Cap flexed his wrists, pulling at the straps’ weak point: the grommetted holes through which half-inch steel bolts passed, fastening the restraints to the table.
Campbell used an electric impact driver to torque down the self-tapping bolt. Rock groggily awoke just as Campbell tightened the last turn.
“Hey!” Rock bellowed. “Shto takoi?”
Campbell dropped the bolt driver with a start and jumped away. When he overcame his surprise, he watched Rock struggle futilely and laughed. It was a nervous, vicious laugh that rattled sharply around the room.
“Go on, tough guy,” Campbell said gleefully. “Be a big brainless tough guy. Tough guys don’t fare well against the guys with the brains.”
“Look at Captain Anger,” Rock growled. “He is tough guy with brains and you won’t fare well against him!”
Campbell smiled. “Have so far.” He padded over to Dandridge to inject an antidote for the nerve gas. Within seconds, the evil genius’s eyes opened and he sat upright, staring at his captives.
“So,” he said woozily, “your little task force is neutralized and my plans can proceed. I believe I have a UN Secretary to reprogram. Campbell?”
His crony glanced smirkingly at the four bound men, then helped Dandridge to his feet. He walked unsteadily toward the exit.
“By the way,” Dandridge said casually, a wicked smile crossing his thin face, “you may be distressed to learn that I’ll be reprogramming the four of you next-starting with you, Captain-then the boy and the woman. You men will make fine worker-drones. The woman…” He let his voice trail off portentously.
•
Leila tugged at the leather straps around her wrists. The umber, two-inch-wide strips bound her tightly to the wall against which she stood upright, arms straight out at the shoulder, forearms bent up to form the universal sign of surrender. Johnny Madsen, fettered in the same way, gazed at her with grave concern.
They stood in a smelly little portion of the cavern that looked like a pirate’s torture chamber. The rock wall behind them dripped a dark ooze that soaked their shirts and pants. The air stank of rotting seaweed and worse. Only the flickering light from a portable fluorescent lamp allowed them to see anything at all.
Their captor had not noticed her earcomm. “Flash,” she muttered sub-audibly. “Can you hear me?”
No answer. She suspected that the mass of the mountain above them blocked her uplink to the satellites the Anger Institute used for global communication.
Leila tilted her head as close to Johnny as she could and whispered. “Keep an eye on the entrance. Let me know if you see anyone coming in.”
“Okay,” he whisper
ed back. “Why?”
“You’ll see.”
Grasping the thick leather thongs that held her wrists to rings embedded in the rock, Leila Weir braced her lower back against the cold, dank cavern wall and slowly-silently-slid off her left boot. Tipping it over, she hit the side of the heel twice with her other boot. Something clicked out of a hidden compartment inside the heel. This she grasped with her left toes (through her sheer nylon stockings) and withdrew from its hiding place.
With a look of strong determination on her face, she raised her long legs up to waist level so that they extended straight out from the wall. She continued raising them with a contortionist’s limber skill until they were above her head.
Johnny saw that she grasped a small, extremely sharp, serrated-edge knife between her big and second toes. Two depressions in its handle allowed for a firm grip that way.
Flexing at the ankle, she sawed at the strap holding her left wrist until the thick leather surrendered. Transferring the knife from toes to hand, she lowered her legs and slashed at the right-hand restraint. Her raven-black hair swayed side-to-side with each of her movements.
Free, she released Johnny and slipped her boot on again. The knife she kept in her left hand.
“Let’s go,” she said a little louder than before.
They crept to the juncture of their small chamber and of the next. Leila moved like a panther, sleek and graceful with lithe power and supple strength. Motioning for Johnny to come to her side, she pointed toward their guard’s positions.
The two guards sat in the boat that had brought them to the island. The shallow inlet to the cave barely provided enough clearance at low tide, which Leila estimated it to be. One guard snoozed while the other read a tattered, dog-eared men’s magazine in the dim light.
She judged the distances, then whispered, “How well can you throw, Johnny?”
Her companion shrugged. “Well enough for left field,” he said.
“Do you think you could take this rock”-she reached into the water and handed him a stone worn round from wave action- “and hit the guy on the right in the head?”