by Jon Land
Quail stripped the cord from his throat and grasped the detonator from the pocket of his elf’s suit as, far below, his unsuspecting victims applauded the parade passing by them.
It was 10:55 and Ollie’s engine still hadn’t caught. With only eight minutes left to go before detonation, Kimberlain knew the point was rapidly approaching where even if he managed to get the barge started, there wouldn’t be enough time to drive it into the tunnel and get out safely. Barely a half mile remained to be covered but—
Ollie belched a huge plume of black smoke from his exhaust pipes and sputtered.
“Come on,” Kimberlain urged. “Come on!”
And Ollie roared to life with all the enthusiasm of the first burst the Ferryman had gotten from him back at the start. He began to edge forward against the huge line of stalled train cars before him. His pace picked up slowly, and Kimberlain shifted gears to provide added thrust.
There were six minutes left to go by the time he cleared the last of the Fulton Street turn, and less than four when he passed into the Wall Street station gathering speed. The speedometer needle locked at twelve miles per hour, and all the coaxing and shifting in the world wasn’t going to get Ollie to move any faster, given his huge load and the time remaining. In seconds, the stalled train at the head of the convoy would emerge into the East River tunnel, with the explosive-laden cars still a lifetime behind.
The Ferryman figured he could still just barely get the job done but no time would remain for him to escape. If that was the only solution, then so be it. He tapped Ollie’s dashboard almost tenderly. It was throbbing from the incredible weight it was pushing, and even at this low speed the tach needle flirted increasingly with the red.
Kimberlain blocked it out and surged closer to the promised death of the tunnel.
Quail stood there frozen, for how long he couldn’t tell. The sight had to be relished, frozen in memory. He would never get another chance to capture a moment like this, and he had to prolong it. These were going to be his victims. Their screams would make him more alive than he had ever been before. Quail drank in the scene one last time, with the semblance of a smile rising to his mangled lips.
He brought the detonator up lovingly before him, started for the button …
And the huge shadow hurled itself over the retaining wall, the Dutchman’s breath leaving him when it impacted upon him.
In the end the scaffolding had saved Peet’s life. Plunging down he managed to reach out for a grip on anything. The saw cord had tangled on a beam, which slowed his descent long enough for him to latch on to the scaffolding. Even then he still had the task of shimmying up steel from more than a story down to reach Quail once again. Just beneath the retaining wall, he found the strength to push off with his arms and fly skyward over the edge legs first.
At impact, the black box of promised death flew from Quail’s hand over the retaining wall and onto the top layer of scaffolding. The collision carried Peet past Quail initially, and the Dutchman recovered his senses enough to lunge over the wall with the detonator in sight.
The Dutchman’s dive onto the scaffolding splintered a portion of the planking which Peet’s leap shattered. Dazed, both men struggled against the powerful winds to reach their feet. Quail made it up first, but Peet’s sudden kick sent the detonator sliding toward the edge, where it teetered briefly and then settled.
Quail bellowed in rage and rushed Peet, who met him head-on, faking a throat strike and going for the Dutchman’s eyes instead. His massive fingers dug deep into one of Quail’s sockets and twisted.
Quail shrieked and Peet’s ears curdled. The Dutchman spun away, and his mask came off in Peet’s hands.
What he saw froze him stiff.
The Flying Dutchman’s face was a mass of purplish veins and ever-drying pus from scalp to chin. Most of his lips were gone, and only a portion of his nose remained. The eye Peet had gorged was swollen and shut, rendered useless or even torn out. The veins lining Quail’s burned face seemed to throb as he rushed forward, wailing even louder.
Peet ducked low at the last moment, and the Dutchman flew over him toward the edge of the scaffolding. Somehow he caught his balance, though, legs dangling in midair, and reached out in front of him for the black box.
Peet wedged one of his arms in a crack when he ducked. Instead of pulling it out, he jammed his free arm down through the crack too. Watching Quail’s hand reeling the detonator toward him as he remained suspended over the edge, Peet then hoisted his arms up simultaneously, with as much of a purchase gained on the splintered edge of the plank as he could muster.
Instantly the board separated from its place on the scaffolding and toppled upward and out. But not before Quail managed to pound a massive hand onto the detonator, depressing the button. His last thought was that it was 11:03, just the time it should have been.
Peet saw the hate, violence, and fury on the face that wasn’t a face at all one final time before the abyss swallowed the Flying Dutchman and he plunged into oblivion.
It had been another glance at the speedometer that gave Kimberlain an idea of how both he and New York City could survive. With Ollie traveling at such a slow speed, he could maybe, just maybe …
The front cars were well into the East River tunnel when the Ferryman thrust open the cab door, to the deafening roar of Ollie’s diesel engine, with exactly two minutes to go before detonation at 11:03. His only hope was to try for a jump that would carry him onto the next set of tracks. A quick sprint along them and up into the Wall Street station would enable him to survive the gush of water charging in through the ruptured underwater tunnel leading to Brooklyn.
Kimberlain let the clutch out all the way and upshifted to ensure Ollie would keep rolling along, shoving the cars packed with C-12 with him to the center of the tunnel beneath the East River. Then he swung both legs toward the cab door, ready to jump.
He never contemplated the motion itself. He simply lunged, feeling the incredible heat generated by Ollie as he pitched onto the adjacent track. He rolled upon landing and rose immediately into a spring, ignoring the bursts of agony to his ravaged knees.
The Ferryman ran down the center of the track that carried the number three train. His headlong rush was slowed just outside the station by a row of stalled cars he had to snake around. He had slithered by them, almost to the platform, when the blast came.
It reached Kimberlain the way a hot gust of air might when a baking oven is opened. The entire tunnel shook as parts of the ceiling splintered and collapsed. He climbed atop the platform to find it trembling as well and numerous cracks starting to appear through the concrete. His rush for the stairs that would ultimately take him back to ground level was quickened by the roaring sound of millions of gallons of water pouring in through the now ruptured tunnel. He glimpsed only a wall of white foam as high as the tunnel ceiling before the first set of stairs took him beyond the sight and he swung onto the second, toward the safety of ground level.
The Snowcat pushed its way through the storm, treads forming an uneasy alliance with the piles of white chewed up in their path. Mac shivered, though not from the cold.
It was almost time.
The men had bound his arms behind him before setting out and then squeezed him between two of them in the Snowcat’s rear seat. Another two in the front, including the driver. Four to overcome in all, while contained in the Snowcat’s storage bay were the neatly cushioned and stacked warheads, each about the size of a filing cabinet drawer. Mac needed only gaze behind him to reinforce his resolve for the task he was already committed to in his mind.
He had to stop this Snowcat before it caught up with Jones.
They had been driving for over two hours now. The men’s attention had waned. They were taking his status for granted, barely even regarding him any longer, especially now that the end of their journey seemed near. Mac did nothing to draw attention to himself, just kept working at the rope binding his arms behind him. As a SEAL in Vietnam, he had b
een captured once by the Cong and bound in much the same way for transport by jeep. But he had learned his lessons of escape well—how to first weaken the knots and then slowly ease the wrists from the bonds by working them up and down, up and down, up and down … The flesh paid with rawness and pain, yet after a while he could make himself used to it. Just as he had done in Vietnam.
He’d had no weapon then either, but the Charlie by his side did, and Mac grabbed for it as soon as he was free and blew that man’s brains out and the two in the jeep’s front as well before they knew what was happening. The jeep had spun off the road and rolled over. Mac had been thrown to safety.
There were more men to contend with today, four instead of three, and two were virtually on top of him. Mac felt his hands about to come free and saw in his mind the assault strategy he would have to pursue: distract one while disabling the other. The man in the front seat was his biggest worry, though; there was too much space for him to maneuver. Mac would take him second and leave the driver for last. The two men he was squeezed between both wore sidearms on their right hips. Have to go across the whole body to grab one, lots of time taken, and maybe a bullet in his head before he could use it. But pull the assault off right and he might only have to kill one of them.
He was a SEAL again, behind enemy lines, just the way he liked it. Mac felt his raw wrists a pull away from being free. None of the men in the Snowcat were paying him any regard, not until he whipped his arms up and to the sides, twisting to the right and going for that man’s pistol, going for it even as it seemed hopelessly out of reach.
“I think you’re crazy,” Farraday told Danielle, with the door to the pump room closed and barricaded behind them.
“But in theory it should work,” she persisted.
“It’s twenty below out there. Even if their suits do have thermal warmers, it should work, but so should a rifle.”
“I’d never be able to hit all of them with this poor visibility. One burst would be all I could reasonably expect before they got me, and that might not even hit more than a couple of them. It’s got to be this way!”
Two Outpost 10 engineers were helping Farraday walk along Danielle’s side around the pump room. It was huge and cavernous, the very heart of Spiderweb. It looked to be a cross between the futuristic gadgets and technology of a nuclear power plant and the old-fashioned school boiler room with pipes running in every direction, crisscrossing in a labyrinth of layers. She supposed each of the hundred or so pipes represented a piece of the Antarctic pipeline, the pressure required to pump the crude in and out originating with the monstrous generators this cavern contained. Actually located under the ice, it was larger than the whole of the aboveground outpost itself. Machines whirled and spun. Unless he was in the quiet of the glassed-in control room elevated against the far wall, anyone who wanted to be heard virtually had to shout.
Farraday had directed a pair of men to grasp one of the water hoses used to cool off the pumps from its perch and bring it over. Connecting it with a pair of others would supply the additional length required in the next few minutes. Meanwhile, Danielle dressed quickly in white battle fatigues for camouflage, wincing from the pain of the knife slash across her abdomen, which there had been no time to bandage. She covered herself with white everywhere except her face, which a ski mask would take care of.
Farraday was sitting on the floor beneath a ventilator shaft and was working the screen free with a chisel.
“We use these, believe it or not, to pump cold air in here,” he explained as loud as he could when Danielle had reached his side. “Otherwise temperatures would exceed a hundred and ten degrees. The equipment would seize, melt even. It’s going to be freezing the whole way through, and it’ll get worse the closer you get to the other side at the front of the main building.” The screen popped off, and he handed the chisel to her. “Use this on the other side to pry the screen free.” An uneasy pause. “I don’t know how much longer the Marines can keep them at bay outside. Five minutes, maybe less.”
“Yes!” she realized. “It’s got to be less! Once they stop shooting, the rest of the invaders will start forward toward the complex. I’ll be able to take them from behind!”
Farraday nodded, still grudgingly, and watched Danielle plunge herself into the shaft after clipping a walkie-talkie to her lapel.
The first stretch was virtually straight up, and she pulled herself along using her hands, with the hose end tied to the back of her belt. After the climb, things leveled off except for the temperature, which slid quickly toward zero and then below. Suddenly her breath was misting before her and she had to stop to pull on her ski mask. By the time she reached the midpoint the shaft was in total darkness, but it didn’t matter. The going was straight, with no intersections to confuse her. Even in the blackness, all she had to do was keep going as fast as she could.
The shaft’s layout, however, became purposely uneven, resembling a miniature roller-coaster, in order to better control the cold air flow. The down slides came easy, but the up climbs swiftly became maddening, each seeming harder than the one before it, and made harder by her awareness that too many seconds were ticking by.
The sound of gunfire reached her just before the light at the other end of the shaft. The light came first as a flicker and then a splotch that grew into a blinding white square shattering all hint of darkness.
Danielle grasped the walkie-talkie from her jacket. “I’m almost at the end,” she reported. “Have the Marines cease fire.”
She reached the ventilator screen and unwrapped the hose from the rear of her belt, tucking it beneath her foot so it would be within easy reach. The Marines’ gunfire had cut off as she went to work with the chisel. She saved the edges for the end, but her gloves made her clumsy and she yanked them off, exposing her fingers to the numbing cold to finish the job more quickly. Her fingers stiffened, giving her only seconds to work the screen free—but seconds were all she needed.
The screen came free in her hands and she peered out into the storm as best she could. As expected, there were shapes moving, rising in a spread that narrowed as they closed on the blasted-out front of the complex, with the containing fire from the Marines having ceased.
“Turn on the water!” she ordered into the walkie-talkie, gloves back on and grasping the insulated hose.
She waited until the remaining Hashi were all within ten yards of the complex, gathered closer together, before she plunged out into the soft snow and raging storm beyond. Pressure from the powerful water rushing through the hard rubber turned it into a snake, wild and strong, demanding to be set free. Danielle grasped it firmly, hand on the nozzle, and circled around for a charge that would take the attackers from their rear flank as they prepared to rush the front of the complex. They remained orderly and precise in spite of everything—the trademark of the Hashi.
She had hoped to circle all the way around behind them and center herself to assure optimum effectiveness for her deadly spray, but there was no chance for that now. Time only to take the angle she was already approaching and hope for the best. She rushed at them hunched low, one with the storm. She turned the nozzle on to free the pent-up water within when she felt the hose lose its slack ten yards from the first of the Hashi.
It was then that the ones on the other side noticed her and dropped to the snow, leveling their weapons as the first stream of jet-fast water rushed out in a spray frosted white by the sub-freezing temperatures. The fierce pressure of the water carried it as far as the first wave of Hashi, encasing them in instantly frozen ice which brought on rapid unconsciousness and then death by freezing.
These first ones dropped their weapons and clawed frantically as if being attacked by millions of flying insects. In the next instant, they had fallen and were kicking and writhing in the snow. But those Hashi farther from her spray who’d dropped to the snow were now able to steady themselves and open fire as Danielle tried to shift the hose toward them, struggling with all her strength to contain t
he powerful snake trying to pull free of her grip.
A bullet pounded her thigh and blood gushed over the white of her uniform, congealing quickly in the cold into a thick ooze. Staggering, she started to go down but bit her lip against the pain and righted herself long enough to fire her water spray straight toward the exposed Hashi supplying the fire. Three of them managed to get off further shots, and at least two more bullets found her, one in the shoulder and another grazing her ribs. But Danielle swayed only slightly and brought her jet of icing water on the last of them she could see. Pressure built up behind her lips, and she coughed frothy blood which froze as soon as it hit the snow.
The red splotches dotted the white beneath her now, but the shooting had stopped, because the last surviving Hashi was fleeing toward one of the outpost’s Snowcats to escape. She would cut off his angle. She would …
More blood dropped to the snow around her, Danielle finally sank to her knees, the powerful hose sliding from her grasp to dig deep chasms from the fresh powder before her. She slid into the soft cushion as the Snowcat tore away into the white of the storm.
Jones drove the Snowcat furiously, relying on instinct for direction. In his wildest nightmares he had never conceived of anything as terrible as this happening. Imagine, to be beaten back by the meager defenses of Outpost 10! But somehow they had known he was coming. Somehow they had known!
Jones could let himself dwell on that no longer. He had agreed to be part of the operation and to help the dark man because the end result suited him. To be able to accomplish that end using the same sort of naval vessel that had torn his life away made the operation even more satisfying and provided him with a sense of purpose. Now losing that purpose was worse than losing his life.