“Quinn. It’s Abdul.”
“Have you killed the power to the lines?”
“I’m here with the plant manager. He’d isolated the line before we arrived. They’d sent a team out to check what was going on at the western location. Joseph got the crew recalled, they’re safe. Where are you?”
“I’m in a bulldozer, heading straight for you.”
The dozer covered another forty feet before Abdul said, “Okay, we see you. Damn, that thing’s huge.”
“I hope so. I plan to use it to take out a pole. If I can break the power line, that’ll stop the nanobots from reaching the refinery. Ask the plant manager whether it will work.”
Quinn was met with silence. A plant manager probably didn’t want to hear from someone planning to tear up his facility with a bulldozer.
“Quinn, he doesn’t think you can do it. He says… wait a minute, here he is.”
“Mr. Quinn, this is Greg Matteson. The pole might come crashin’ down on your head, mate.”
“Any suggestions? We only have thirty minutes or so before the nanobots reach your building.”
Quinn heard Abdul shouting in the background. “Quinn, they’ve accelerated. We’re looking at the last twelve poles from the viewing gallery and… wait, eleven left. You’ve got less than ten minutes.”
“Mr. Quinn,” Greg said. “Try for the first pole. Lift your blade to maximum and connect as high up as you can. Don’t slam into it. Make contact first, then increase power. Make sure you’re aligned with the cable, or the tension might tip you sideways. You need to tear the cable from the building. If the line gives before the pole breaks, you should be okay.”
Quinn had the levers pushed as far forward as he could. As he rolled through the parking lot beside the admin building, he was relieved that most vehicles had left. On the third floor, five people stood at a large viewing window. He couldn’t make out faces, but he assumed they were Abdul, Sam, Adiba, Joseph, and the plant manager.
“You guys need to be ready to get out if this doesn’t work,” he said.
“I’m gonna watch you from here, mate. Keep your channel open. I built this place, so I should be able to help take it apart,” Greg said.
The pole stood dead ahead, less than one hundred feet away. He pulled back on the lever for the blade, which lifted and blocked his view. Suddenly he was driving blind. He eased back on both drive levers, slowing almost to a stop while the blade rose past his line of sight. He moved forward again, slower this time. The bulldozer handled differently with the heavy blade high in the air, less stable, as if he might tip forward.
Quinn maneuvered below the cable, lining up the dozer as Greg had instructed. With twenty feet to go, he slowed to a crawl until the blade contacted the pole. The pole swayed. The cable in front of him, which connected his pole with the next, yawed up and down. His cab rocked in time.
“Okay, you’ve got her. Make sure you push on both levers equally or you might start her turning.”
Quinn eased the levers forward. The engine roared as the machine strained against the resistance of the thick pole and the cable bolted to the wall of the admin building a hundred feet behind him. The tracks dug into the ground, and he heard a high-pitched whine.
“There’s a weird noise, sounds like a cat’s choir,” he said.
“That’s the cable straining, mate. Give her more power.”
Quinn pushed both levers forward all the way. The whine changed to a scream, then something exploded.
“Get down!” Greg screamed over the radio. Quinn threw himself forward onto the floor. The cab shattered, and dazzling desert sun streamed in and blinded him. Cubes of safety glass peppered the back of his head and neck like buckshot.
Then the world went black.
Chapter 41
Greg and Joe tore down three flights of stairs and launched themselves into the ATV Greg had parked, ready and waiting, at the entrance to the admin building. Joe stamped the gas pedal, and they sped toward Quinn’s bulldozer, careening across the desert at full speed.
Joe caught the monster vehicle and matched speed.
“Closer!” Greg shouted. “Hold her steady.” Greg climbed onto the hood of the ATV and leaped over the top of the dozer’s tracks, grabbing onto the remnants of the cab’s metal frame.
He hoisted himself through the shattered windshield, reached in and pushed back on the drive levers, stopping the big machine. Quinn, crunched fetus-like in the well of the cab where the driver’s feet would normally be, didn’t move.
Greg heaved Quinn’s limp body toward the seat, giving him access to the brake pedal. Calves resting on Quinn’s belly, he turned the dozer and headed for admin building. He slowed as he approached the first pole, lying smashed on the ground, surrounded by the cable Quinn had wrenched from the building.
He lowered the blade, picked up the broken pole and pushed it into the desert, dragging the trailing power line behind. Full speed, straight ahead, Greg passed the still-standing number two pylon and deposited the broken pole as far from the plant as the cable allowed.
As he reversed, pole three tumbled. The nanobots would soon reach the pile he had created, but that was as far as they would get. Once they gobbled poles one and two, they’d be out of food.
He drove the bulldozer back to the parking lot. Quinn, a crumpled, bloody heap beneath Greg’s legs, still hadn’t moved.
Abdul, Adiba, and Sam waited in the doorway of the building. Joe sat atop the ATV. Sam had the medical kit from the helicopter in his hand. No one spoke as the big machine halted.
The top half of the bulldozer’s cab was missing, sliced off by the two-inch-thick power cable when it broke loose from the admin building and whiplashed like a guided missile toward the source of the force that had ripped away its anchor. It had cut through the plate steel of the machine’s cab like a blade through paper.
Greg stood on the dozer’s tracks, leaned in, and heaved Quinn’s body out of the machine. He slid Quinn over his shoulder with a grunt, bore him down, fireman-style, and then ran into the air-conditioned lobby of the admin building. He laid Quinn on the tiles and felt for a pulse.
Sam slammed an EpiPen into Quinn’s thigh.
The big man’s chest filled with air, and he coughed.
Chapter 42
“Oh… Mr. Quinn!” Adiba sat in the rear seat of the helicopter, back against the side of the chopper, Quinn’s head cradled on her lap. His right eye opened, and he caught his reflection in the side window. His left cheek had puffed out like a Swiss Roll, closing that eye. His hands throbbed and when he lifted them he understood why — his fingernails were shattered, caked in filth and blood. His swollen, lacerated feet, were numb. Seeing himself through Adiba’s shocked face, he began to hurt more.
“It looks worse than it is,” he said, without believing one syllable. His voice sounded odd. He ran his tongue around his mouth: one front tooth was chipped to a stub. “Did I reach the pole in time?”
Abdul knelt in the front seat, peering over the seatback. “Yup, once they’d eaten the last poles, they had nowhere else to go. I guess they don’t like sand.”
Quinn nodded. “Did you give Scott the message?”
“Yeah. He wasn’t very pleased about the limited information, though. I might get a lecture in journalistic integrity when I return to London.”
“Good job, Abdul. Do you have my phone?”
Abdul passed it over. Quinn hit a speed dial. Scott answered after two rings. “Quinn, is that you?”
“Yes, I’m with Abdul and Adiba, and I’m praying my old friend has sorted out the complications in my life. Because, frankly, Scott, I’m flat out of fixes.”
“Your voice sounds strange, are you eating.”