The Storm nf-10

by Clive Cussler

  “No,” Kurt said. “But we don’t need one.”

  He piled the bodies up in the center of the well, stacking them one on top of the other.

  “Sit down,” Kurt said.

  “On the dead guys?”

  “I put the fresh guy on top,” Kurt said.

  Joe hesitated.

  “They’re dead,” Kurt said. “What do they care?”

  Finally Joe sat down. Kurt lifted the narrow tire and set it vertically against Joe’s back like he was hanging a wreath. Next he sat down with his back to the tire and to Joe.

  “Put your feet on the wall and push.”

  As Joe complied, Kurt felt the rubber tire pressing into his back. He put his own feet against the wall on his side and pushed. He felt the tire between them compress slightly. He felt plenty of pressure on his back and feet, pressure that would allow them to wedge themselves up the shaft of the well, and he still had six to eight inches of flex in his knees.

  “Flex those abs, and let’s see if we can do this,” he said.

  As Joe flexed and pressed harder, Kurt did the same. He felt the pressure in his back, both upper and lower, where the tire was being pressed into him. With a minimum of effort, they rose up off the pile of dead men.

  “This might actually work,” Joe said.

  “You, then me,” Kurt told him. “One foot at a time.”

  The first time Joe moved his foot they almost fell, tipping to one side. They steadied themselves, and Kurt pressed hard with his left foot and forced them upward about nine inches. He quickly moved his right foot to a new position.

  Joe’s next move was steadier, and soon they were inching their way up, making steady if unspectacular progress.

  “I forgot to tell you,” Joe said, grunting with the effort but apparently unable to keep himself from talking, “before we got bounced in that drafting room I saw a chart with currents and such. It covered the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and half of the Indian Ocean.”

  He and Kurt pushed off in unison, raised themselves six inches and repositioned their feet one at a time.

  “Anything unusual on it?” Kurt asked, his own words sounding strained as they came out through a clenched diaphragm.

  “Didn’t … exactly … have time to study it,” Joe said. “But it makes me … wonder about something.”

  They moved again.

  “What?” Kurt asked, keeping his responses short.

  “If Jinn’s using his little beasties … to erode some dam … why did we … find them in the Indian Ocean … a thousand miles from land?”

  Kurt allowed a portion of his mind to consider the question, keeping most of his concentration on the task at hand. “Good question,” he said. “Dams block rivers … Rivers run to the sea … Maybe the little bots were swept down to the ocean accidentally, after all.”

  He tried to think of dams that emptied into the Indian Ocean or the Persian Gulf, but nothing major came to mind.

  They paused with their legs in a semilocked position.

  “Either way,” Kurt added, “we’ve got to get out of here. Whatever this lunatic’s goals are, they’re not good for anyone but him.”

  By this point they’d reached the second section. The joking and laughing stopped because the climb was getting harder.

  Kurt felt his back and abs and legs beginning to burn. He gritted his teeth and kept moving.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Joe grunted. “Wouldn’t want to start over, though.”

  Kurt looked down. His foot slipped a fraction, but he caught it by locking his knee and wedging his heal. He could see his leg quivering and feel his calf cramping up.

  “Five more feet,” he said, breathing hard. “Then part two of the plan … can be activated.”

  “What if the bad guys are still up there?” Joe asked.

  “I haven’t heard a sound since the cars drove off.”

  “And if they left a guard?”

  “That’s what the gun is for.”

  They pushed up another foot, and Kurt’s face was bathed in the late-afternoon sunlight.

  A foot from the top the well’s mouth caught a strange sound: a high-pitched whistling that echoed off the adobe walls.

  “Do you hear that?” Joe asked.

  “Trying to place it,” Kurt said.

  The whistling grew louder with each passing second, and then, directly above them, a giant shadow passed. Kurt saw the belly of a large gray-and-white aircraft race overhead, flaps and slats fanned out like feathers, its six-wheeled main undercarriage stretched forth like an eagle’s claws grasping for a branch to land on.

  “What was that?” Joe said.

  “Jet of some kind,” Kurt said.

  It couldn’t have been at more than a hundred feet as it flashed above the mouth of the well. The view lasted only a second or two, but in that brief instant Kurt realized there was something odd about its shape.

  “Didn’t realize we were at the end of the runway,” Joe said. “I’d hate to pop out at the wrong moment and get run over by a 747.”

  Stifling the laughter that tried to bubble up, Kurt pushed harder until they were just below the lip of the well.

  He could feel the buildup of lactic acid growing in his calves and thighs, and though he was in little danger of having them cramp or give out, he felt they needed to hurry. His abs burned from keeping his back pressed hard into the tire. It felt like he’d done a hundred crunches with a fifteen-pound medicine ball clutched to his chest.

  He pulled the 9mm pistol from his pocket and switched off the safety.

  “Easy, now,” he whispered.

  Joe adjusted his feet. Kurt went next, and they slowly moved up through the last six inches. Kurt raised the gun and stretched his neck so he could just peer over the edge. He saw no one guarding the well.

  “Clear,” he said.

  “Clear on this side,” Joe said. “Now what?”

  Kurt tossed the gun over the edge and drew the rope out from beneath his shirt. He passed it through his hands until he had the length he needed.

  With one hand on each end of the rope he let out a half loop approximately four feet in length. With a flip of the wrist and an extension of his arms he sent a wave of energy through the rope. The middle sailed out away from him in a big U shape and dropped over the top of one A-frame neat as could be.

  Kurt slid it taut and pulled it downward so it wouldn’t ride up the metal bars.

  Making sure not to twist, he passed one end of the rope back to Joe. “Hold on to that with both hands and hold on tight.”

  Kurt pulled his section taut and wrapped a loop under his arm, around his triceps and then around his hand twice. Joe followed suit.

  “You holding that rope tight?”

  “Like it’s a winning lottery ticket,” Joe said.

  “Good,” Kurt replied, “because you know what’s going to happen once we give our poor legs a rest, right?”

  “Yeah,” Joe said. “Like everything else connected with you, it’s going to be painful.”

  “No pain, no gain,” Kurt said. “This time the gain is our freedom. Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  Kurt tensed his arms, locking them in place.

  “Three … two … one … go!”

  At almost the same instant both men pulled on the rope and relaxed their legs and abs. The rope snapped taut around the A-frame. The tire fell from between them and they swung forward, slamming into the wall and dangling there a few feet below the top.

  The tire hit bottom with a noisy clunk, but Kurt and Joe held on tight high above it.

  “We have to do this part at the same time,” Kurt said, “otherwise someone’s going back down.”

  They pulled themselves up side by side, arm over arm, until they were able to grasp the metal of the A-frame. It burned their hands as it had Kurt’s earlier, but they held on, pulled themselves up and clambered over the low wall.

  Kurt hit the sand face-fi
rst and was damn glad of it. Joe crashed down beside him.

  Breathing hard and resting for a moment, Kurt could feel his legs shaking. It seemed like they’d been in that well for days. He looked to his wrist. His watch was still with the guard in Malé.

  He held a hand toward the setting sun.

  “What are you doing?” Joe asked.

  “Trying to make a sundial.” He gave up. “What time do you have?”

  “Six forty-five,” Joe announced. “It must be a new record. Left for dead and back to the action in less than an hour.”

  Another jet approaching began to whistle across the desert as they sat there, catching their breath. It came in on the same path, dropping closer and growing louder as it neared.

  Out of natural fugitive instinct, both men hunkered down and pressed themselves against the low wall of the well.

  They needn’t have bothered. A jet aircraft on final approach at one hundred and fifty knots required the pilot’s eyes to be well ahead of the plane and focused on the landing zone. The chances of a pilot allowing his attention to be drawn to irrelevant objects on the ground was slim to none.

  Then again, there was no accounting for passengers.

  The jet roared over the top of them just as the first one had, a little higher this time. Kurt noticed the same odd features: a weirdly shaped underbelly, two big engines set high above the fuselage near the tail, a thick boxy wing section. It looked something like a DC-9 or a Super 80 or a Gulfstream G5 on steroids and put together with the wrong instruction booklet and a bunch of extra parts.

  “Same type,” Kurt said. “Looks Russian to me.”

  “It does,” Joe agreed. “Might even be the same plane making another pass.”

  The gray-and-white jet dropped lower and lower, sinking toward the ground as if it were headed in for a landing. They lost it behind a sand dune before they heard it touch down.

  The sound of its engines faded for a moment and then a deep howl rose up, booming across the desert for fifteen seconds or so before dissipating.

  “Sound like thrust reversers to you?”

  “Yep,” Joe said. “I guess the eagle has landed.”

  “I think we just found our escape route,” Kurt said.

  Joe looked at him sideways.

  “None of the satellite photos showed any aircraft parked out here,” Kurt explained, “which means that plane isn’t going to sit around baking in the desert sun all day. It’s going to drop off whatever cargo it’s bringing in and then turn and burn at some point before sunup.”

  “Sure,” Joe said. “But that’s not Terminal One at Dulles over there. We can’t just walk up to the counter and buy a ticket.”

  “No,” Kurt said, “but we can sneak in under cover of darkness. They can’t possibly be expecting us.”

  “That’s because we’d be crazy to attempt what you’re suggesting.”

  “We have no water,” Kurt said. “No GPS. And no idea how to find the VV without it. So unless you want to go wandering through the desert trusting in dumb luck, we have to go back into the lion’s den.”

  Joe appeared conflicted, though he seemed to be coming around. “You’re confusing me with these animal metaphors,” he said. “I thought it was a rabbit hole?”

  “It changed when we got caught,” Kurt said. “These guys are a lot tougher than any rabbit.”

  “Except for the one in that Monty Python movie,” Joe said.

  “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Right,” Kurt said, remembering the movie and trying not to laugh since it hurt his ribs and parched throat.

  “The way I see it, we have a choice,” he said. “We can either run away like Sir Robin. Or we can sneak back into their base and tuck ourselves into a hidden corner on one of those jets and depart this land before we dehydrate to nothing more than dust and bone.”

  Joe cleared his throat. “I am kind of thirsty.”

  “So am I,” Kurt said.

  Joe took a deep breath. He reached over, plucked the gun out of the sand and handed it to Kurt. “Lead on, Sir Knight,” he said. “Doubt we’re going to find the Holy Grail down there, but I’ll settle for a way out of here, or at least a well-stocked beverage stand.”

  CHAPTER 30

  PAUL SAT BESIDE MARCHETTI, GATHERING HIS STRENGTH for the moment. The mental and physical toll of fighting the fire had drained him. The stinging smoke, the sickly odor of fuel and the broiling heat left over from the blaze assaulted his senses. But even with all that, his only real concern centered on the flashing lights and chirping alarms connected to their breathing gear.

  “How much time do we have?”

  “Ten minutes,” Marchetti said. “Give or take.”

  A sweeter voice came over the speakers in his headgear. “Paul, can you hear me?”

  “I hear you Gamay,” he said.

  “What’s going on?”

  “The fire’s out,” he said. “The Halon did its job. But we’re low on air. How soon can you open the doors?”

  “Hold on,” she said.

  A few seconds of silence lingered and then she came back. “Chief says you guys dumped enough water down there to keep the temps reasonable. We’ll be safely below reignition temp in about seven minutes.”

  “That’s good news,” Paul said. He helped Marchetti up. “Let’s go find your crewman.”

  “This way,” Marchetti said, moving stiffly toward the rear of the huge room.

  They began to make their way back through the debris field. The series of explosions had destroyed half the engine room. They picked their way past ruined machinery and across the metal deck. Steam rose from it in ghostly boiling sheets as the water they’d used to fight the fire evaporated. The smell of fuel was everywhere.

  “Here,” Marchetti said, moving to a sealed door.

  It wasn’t a watertight bulkhead, but the scorched steel door was formidable looking, and the edges appeared to be tight. Hope rose in Paul’s heart.

  “It’s designed as a shelter,” Marchetti said, “though I wasn’t sure it would survive something like this.” He grabbed the locking bar and then pulled back.

  “A little hot?” Paul asked.

  Marchetti nodded, got himself ready and grabbed it again. He grunted, trying to force the bar down. It wouldn’t budge and he let go again.

  “The heat might have expanded the door,” Marchetti said.

  “Let me help,” Paul said. He moved into position, and together the two of them grabbed the bar and put all their weight on it. It snapped downward. Paul shouldered the door and it swung open. He let go of the bar instantly, though his hands felt as if they’d been burned through the Nomex gloves.

  Air from the compartment streamed out, mixing with the steam and smoke in the engine room. It was pitch-black in the control room. The only illumination came from the lights on their masks and the flashing strobes on their gear.

  They split up. Near the back wall, Paul spotted a man in mechanic’s coveralls lying on the ground. “Over here.”

  UP IN THE COMMAND CENTER, all eyes were on the central monitor and the flashing red number indicating the temperature in the engine room. It was slowly dropping, winding down until eventually it changed from red to yellow.

  “Almost there,” the chief said. “I’m going to arm the doors.”

  Gamay liked the sound of that. She checked the clock. Six minutes had elapsed since Paul’s and Marchetti’s oxygen supply warnings had gone off. For once it felt like they had a margin of error, but she wouldn’t feel safe until her husband was out of that room and back in her arms.

  The chief pressed a couple of switches and then checked his board. Whatever he saw aggravated him. He cycled the switches and began flipping a toggle back and forth.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The doors aren’t responding,” he said. “I just armed them to open, but they’re remaining in lock-down mode.”

  “Could the fire hav
e damaged them?”

  “Doubt it,” he said. “They’re designed for this.”

  He fiddled with the switches a few more times and then checked something else. “It’s the computer. It’s blocking the directive.”

  “Why?”

  To her right, Gamay saw Leilani stand. “I know why,” she said. “Otero messed with it.”

  “Otero is in the brig,” the chief said.

  “Marchetti told me he was a genius with computers,” she said. “He could have planted something ahead of time in case he was caught, in case he needed to cause some trouble and keep Marchetti off balance. Just like he did with the robots.”

  The chief continued to try to bypass whatever was blocking him. “It’s definitely the computer,” he said. “Everything else is operating correctly.”

  Gamay felt as if she was spinning. How this guy could reach out from the brig and torment them, she didn’t know.

  “We need to go down there and force him to deactivate whatever he’s done,” Leilani said. “Put a gun to his head if we have to.”

  Gamay’s mind raced. Her balance and convictions against coercion were suddenly fading when she thought of her husband trapped in an engine room filled with toxic fumes and running out of air.

  “Gamay,” Leilani pleaded. “I’ve already lost someone to these people. You don’t have to.”

  On the monitor, the temperature gauge dropped into the green and the clock ticked into the seventh minute. Paul had three minutes of air.

  “Fine,” Gamay said. “But no guns.”

  The chief turned to one of his men. “Rocco, take over, I’m going with them.”

  Leilani grabbed the door and opened it. Gamay went through, headed for the elevator and the brig with no idea what she was going to do when she got there.

  DOWN IN THE ENGINE ROOM, Paul had reached the missing crewman. He crouched beside the man and rolled him over. The man didn’t respond. Paul removed his gloves and checked for a pulse as Marchetti arrived at his side.

  “Anything?”

  Paul held his hand in place, hoping to sense something he’d missed. “I’m sorry.”

  “Damn,” Marchetti said. “All this for nothing.”

  Paul felt the same. And then in the flashing of his strobe he noticed something on the side of the man’s neck. He rolled the crewman a half turn and brushed his dark brown hair out of the way.