The scraping sound continued. Kurt pulled Jinn back, but the circle of safe ground had shrunk to the size of a kitchen table and then to a manhole cover.
“Marchetti?!”
Suddenly, the horde went still. The sound of their chewing and crawling and scratching dissipated in a wave, flowing outward in all directions like a giant wave of dominoes falling.
They dropped from the sides of the buildings in huge sheets, flowing down and piling up dunes of gray and black with their bodies. A cloud of them drifted like dust across the zero deck below.
In the wake of all that terrible noise came normal sounds, the creaking of the huge metal island and the soft fans of the airships circling it.
“Good work, Marchetti,” he said. “Now, come back down here and help me clean up this mess.”
CHAPTER 60
KURT AUSTIN WAITED IN THE DARK AS THE AIRSHIPS CIRcled and finally began to approach. Standing at the edge of the helipad, he watched as the lead ship floated in, slowly sinking toward the pad. With the fans tilted down in a vertical position to slow the descent like retro-rockets on a moon lander, the microbots were blasted around like ash from a volcano.
They swirled into the air, a cloud of metallic dust, drifting and falling toward the zero deck below.
A few feet away, down on his knees, Jinn watched the cloud fall but otherwise made no movement. He was a beaten man, a broken man. He looked different, Kurt thought.
“You’ll send me to prison,” he mumbled.
“For ten times your natural life span,” Kurt replied.
“Can you see a man like me surviving in prison?” Jinn asked, looking up.
“Only long enough to go insane,” Kurt replied.
Jinn looked toward the edge. The darkness beckoned. “Let me go.”
Kurt could see what he had in mind. “Why should I?”
“As a kindness to a vanquished enemy,” Jinn mumbled.
Kurt stared at Jinn for a long moment. Without a word, he stepped back.
Jinn came up off his knees and glanced at Kurt. “Thank you,” he said and then turned away.
He took three steps and was gone.
CHAPTER 61
BY HIGH NOON IN EGYPT THE DANGER AT ASWAN HAD nearly passed. The water level in Lake Nasser had dropped twenty feet. A six-foot wave continued to pour across the crest and through the four-hundred-foot-wide gap, but it was a smoother, more controlled flow now. With the spillways, turbine gates and the diversion canal remaining wide open, it was hoped that a point of equilibrium would be reached by the middle of the next day.
Still, tragedy had not been completely averted.
As Joe stared downstream, it looked entirely different than what he’d seen the night before. The buildings were gone—not damaged, not flooded out, just gone. So were the docks and the boats and even some of the sandstone cliffs. The banks of the river remained flooded and instead of looking like a narrow river, it looked like a lake.
Above that lake, helicopters circled by the dozens like dragonflies over a pond. Small boats had been brought in and were zipping here and there. Power remained on at the dam, though there was nowhere to send it as all the transmission lines had been swept away.
Joe turned and slumped down by an Army trailer. At Major Edo’s insistence, a nurse checked on him. He could have used an IV, but he refused it. Medical supplies would run short rather quickly, he guessed, and others would need them more than him.
She handed him a bottle of water, threw a blanket over his shoulders and moved away.
Major Edo sat down and offered him a cigarette. Joe refused it, and the major stuffed them back in his pocket. “Dirty habit,” he said, trying to smile.
“How many?” Joe asked.
“At least ten thousand,” the major said sadly. “Probably twice that when we’re done looking.”
Joe felt like he’d gone twelve rounds with a heavyweight, survived, thinking he’d won, only to find out the judges had scored it the other way.
“It could have been millions,” the major said firmly. He put a hand on Joe’s shoulder. “Do you understand?”
Joe looked up at him and nodded.
A helicopter landed nearby. A private ran up to the major. “We’re loaded with wounded.”
“Where are you taking them?” the major asked.
“Luxor. It’s the nearest hospital that has power.”
“Take him with you,” the major said.
“Who is he?” the private asked.
“His name is Joseph Zavala. He is a hero of the Egyptian people.”
CHAPTER 62
ONE WEEK LATER PAUL AND GAMAY TROUT WERE SITTING around a large circular table in the luxurious Citronelle restaurant in Washington, D.C. They were joined by Rudi Gunn and Elwood Marchetti. They ordered cocktails and traded stories while waiting for the other guests to arrive.
“What’s going to become of your island?” Paul asked Marchetti.
The inventive genius shrugged. “It’s ruined beyond repair. And no one can step aboard until we’re sure all the bots are cleaned out. It may take years. By then the Indian Ocean will have battered Aqua-Terra until it sinks down to the seabed.”
“That’s dreadful,” Gamay said. “All those years of effort gone forever.”
Marchetti smiled slyly. “That’s what the insurance company is going to say when I put in a claim for irreversible infestation.”
Paul glanced over at two empty chairs. “Where are our honored friends?”
“Not to mention our dinner benefactors,” added Rudi Gunn.
Kurt and Joe’s bet had been ruled a tie. They were glad to agree to split the tab and just thankful they were alive to host the party. Though no one had heard from them yet this evening.
“What’s the latest on the Pickett’s Islander’s Pain Machine?” Gamay asked.
“Our computer division scoured it out of long-missing files,” Gunn answered. “It was described as a secret World War Two project created to stop Japanese banzai missions. In those days, the Japanese believed it was a glorious thing to die for the Emperor. When they couldn’t attack using normal flanking maneuvers, they would make suicidal charges in human waves, shouting, ‘Banzai!’ or ‘Tenno Heika Banzai!’ which meant ‘Ten thousand years of rule to the Emperor!’
“The Pain Maker was designed to incapacitate the attacking force and allow the Americans to capture and interrogate valuable prisoners while stopping wholesale slaughter the Japanese were intent on causing themselves.”
“Why wasn’t the machine used during the war?” asked Paul.
“Soon after the John Bury went missing, the War Department determined that the machine was too easy to replicate if captured and could be used against our island assault forces.”
“And now the machines from Pickett’s Island sit in some obscure military warehouse, gathering dust,” added Gamay.
“That’s the size of it,” replied Gunn.
At that moment their attention became focused on a tall, craggy figure with dark hair and sharp green eyes who entered the private dining room.
“Please don’t get up,” Dirk Pitt said with a broad smile. He held up a small card in his hand. “One of the Agency’s credit cards. This one is on Uncle Sam.”
Gamay laughed. “Kurt and Joe will be happy.”
“Where are they?” asked Paul.
“Right behind me,” Dirk said, motioning toward the arched doorway.
They all turned toward the doorway as Kurt walked in with Joe, and Leilani a step behind. The women embraced. The men shook hands, hugged one another and kissed the ladies on the cheek.
“We have a head start on you,” Paul said, motioning a waiter to the table. “What will be your pleasure?”
Dirk ordered a Don Julio Blanco Tequila on the rocks with lime and salt. Joe took a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. Leilani preferred a Kettle One Cosmopolitan while Kurt asked for a Bombay Sapphire Gin Gibson straight up—a martini with onions instead of olives.
