Cutting the cable and the hose wouldn’t help. He couldn’t swim to the surface. Even if he dumped the weight belt, he had fifty pounds of gear on his shoulders and feet.
His feet touched down, he tried to set them but was picked up and pulled sideways once again.
“Give me more line!” he shouted. “Quick!”
He saw the boat high above, saw the phosphorescent wake behind the boat as it fought the current, angling this way and that as the pilot tried to keep its nose aimed upstream. Any side turn would be the end of them as they’d be swept away in a matter of seconds.
Finally Joe felt some slack in the line. He dropped onto the slope and began to scramble over it. He found a large boulder, half the size of a VW or even a VV.
Marching around it, he wrapped the steel cable against its bulk.
“Tighten the cable!” he said.
The cable pulled taut, constricted around the boulder and all but sung in the depths as the slack was used up. The boat up above locked into place.
“We’re holding,”the major called down. “What happened?”
“I made you an anchor,” Joe said. “Now, tell me someone up there knows what centripetal force is?”
Joe was holding tight. The cable was looped around the boulder but threatening to break.
“Yes,”the major said, “the supervisor knows.”
“Point the boat toward the rocks, take a forty-five-degree angle if the cable holds, then you should slingshot to safety. Beach the boat, and don’t forget to reel me in.”
“Okay,”the major said, “we’ll try.”
Joe held the cable tight, putting his steel boots up against the boulder.
The boat above changed course and began to move sideways. Like the Earth’s gravity directing the moon, the steel cable caused the boat’s path to curve and accelerate. The boat cut through the current and was flung forward.
A twang sounded through the water. Joe felt himself tumbling backward.
The cable had snapped in two.
At first he was dragged by the current toward the topside breach, but then the lines and hoses connecting him to the dive boat pulled him the other way.
As the boat raced into the shallows and beached on the rocks, Joe was dragged into the boulder field down below. Each blow felt like being in a car crash and Joe was suddenly thankful for the hard stainless steel helmet.
When the ride stopped, Joe was thirty feet under, the suit was filling with water and the air hose was either severed or kinked because no air was coming through. Joe knew he couldn’t swim, but he could climb. Up he went, crawling across the concrete pylons and boulders like a raccoon in a garbage dump.
He shed the weight belt and the task got easier. As he went higher, the light from the bottom of the boat grew brighter. With his air running out, Joe pulled himself to the surface, emerging like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
He collapsed between two of the boulders, unable to hold up the helmet and shoulder harness without the buoyancy of the water. He struggled to lift it off, but it wouldn’t budge until two sets of helping hands pulled it off for him.
“Did we do it?” Joe asked.
“You did it,” the major said, hugging Joe and lifting him up. “You did it.”
CHAPTER 59
HIGH UP ON THE HELIPAD, THE EERIE, OMNIPRESENT SOUND of the microbots continued to grow louder. It came everywhere at the same time like demented electromagnetic cicadas, chirping by the billions and moving closer with every passing moment.
The noise was grating to Kurt Austin, but it seemed to be affecting Zarrina and Jinn more than him.
Zarrina looked over the edge and ran her gaze upward along the sides of the buildings between which the helipad rested. The stain of the approaching horde was now three-quarters of the way up the pyramids, the white structures becoming covered in dark gray and black.
“Give him the code,” she said.
“Never,” Jinn replied.
“You should listen to her, Jinn,” Kurt said. “She’s not a good woman, but she’s not an idiot either.”
“We have people, money, lawyers,” she reminded him. “We don’t have to die.”
“Do not speak!” Jinn demanded.
She grabbed him. “Please, Jinn,” she begged.
Jinn slapped her hand away and grabbed her by the collar of her shirt. He glared at her in fury. “You weaken me, woman!”
Before she could reply he shoved her backward, sending her over the edge.
Zarrina fell, screaming as she dropped. She hit what was now a six-inch layer of microbots ten stories below, blasting them in all directions like a cloud of dust. She lay there uncovered for all of a few seconds and then the swarm converged on her, covered her up and began to feed.
Jinn stared for a moment, anger, not pity, etched on his face. But Kurt thought he detected a little bit of fear. The speed with which the microbots devoured things was unsettling. Jinn knew that better than anyone else.
“Take a good hard look, Jinn. That’s how you’re going to die,” Kurt said. “Ready to go out like that?”
It continued to grow darker around them. The bots were only one story below, cutting off all light that shone upward. Only the few halogen lamps on the side of the hangar and the red post lights at the edges of the helipad illuminated them now.
Jinn looked slightly less sure of himself. “You’re going to die with me,” he reminded Kurt.
“For my friends. For my country. For people around the world who would suffer if you win. I don’t have a problem with that. What are you dying for?”
Jinn stared, his face flush with anger, his lip curling into a snarl as his eyes narrowed. He knew his bluff had been called. Dying got him nothing. No wealth, no power, no legacy. His whole world was his own being, his own arrogance, his own greatness. When his existence ended, even the doomsday actions of the microbots would bring him no satisfaction.
At that moment he hated Kurt with every fiber of his being. Hated him enough to lose all sense of balance.
He charged toward Kurt like a wrestler going in for the kill.
Instead of shooting Jinn, Kurt turned the rifle sideways, using it as a bar. He took Jinn’s momentum and used it against him. Falling backward, Kurt kicked a boot into Jinn’s solar plexus and flipped him. The move sent Jinn flying through the air and tumbling hard.
Kurt popped back up to his feet in time to see Jinn crash squarely on his back. Jinn got up a little slowly, more stunned than injured.
“Not used to fighting much, are you?” Kurt baited Jinn.
Jinn grabbed some type of pipe that had been tossed out of one of the airships. He came at Kurt, swinging it like a sword.
Still holding the rifle in both hands, Kurt blocked the pipe and jabbed the butt of the rifle into Jinn’s face. The blow opened a gash that bled profusely.
Jinn stumbled back, dropping the pole, putting his hands to his bloody face. Kurt stepped forward and kicked the pole off the platform.
It fell into the dark, trailing a strange whistling sound from its hollow ends.
By now the rising stain of the horde had reached the edge of the helipad, its first probing fingers curling up and onto the flat surface, converging toward the middle from all sides.
Kurt was running out of time.
Through a mask of blood Jinn shouted, “If you didn’t have that rifle, I would kill you with my bare hands!”
Kurt pointed the rifle at him and then flung it off the deck. “You can’t beat me, Jinn!” he yelled. “I’m better than you. I’m fighting for something that matters, all you’re doing is playing out the string. You don’t want to die. You’re afraid to die. I can see it in your eyes.”