Текст книги "The Storm"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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CHAPTER 53

JOE ZAVALA WAS RUNNING FOR HIS LIFE. BAD ANKLE AND all, he was charging diagonally across the wet slope of the Aswan Dam in search of higher and safer ground. The major lagged behind, seemingly still awed by what was going on.

“I wouldn’t keep looking back if I were you.”

The major got the message and pressed forward, catching up with Joe.

Joe’s plan was to get to the top, away from the widening breach, and survey the damage.

Upon reaching the crest, Joe stood on the road that crossed the dam. A thirty-foot-deep V had already been gouged out. Water from Lake Nasser was pouring through it and down over the side.

In the garish illumination of the floodlights, Joe could see water scouring away the rocks and sand like a flash flood shooting through a narrow mountain canyon.

As this effect took hold, the damage spread sideways in both directions, and the V widened toward each side of the dam.

As the flood removed the aggregate underneath it, the asphalt of the road held out for a moment, forming a jetty of sorts over the rushing water. But the supporting ground washed away quickly and large chunks of the blacktop collapsed and went tumbling over the side.

Looking back to the lake, Joe noticed something. “The water’s so high.”

“The highest it’s ever been,” the major admitted. “Two years of record storms.”

Joe knew nothing about General Aziz and his dealings with Jinn, but it was these record rains that made Aziz bold enough to break his contract. These same rains would now devastate his country.

“Where’s the control room?” Joe shouted.

The major pointed to the east side of the dam and a new building that sat near the dead center, about even with the peninsula. “The new control room is by the power plant.”

“Let’s go.”

Joe took off running once again and this time the major kept up with him. Behind them, the breach in the top of the dam continued widening by a foot or more every fifteen seconds.

Reaching the control room, the major threw open the door and he and Joe rushed inside. They found the command center in utter chaos. Half the posts were empty. The brave men and women who remained were trying to get a handle on what was happening.

A supervisor spotted the major. “Have we been attacked?” he asked. “We saw no explosions.”

“You have to open all the floodgates,” Joe shouted, not waiting for the major to reply. “Even the emergency spillways.”

“Who are you?” the man asked. There was no real malice in the man’s words, just shock that the scruffy-looking man with the major was giving orders.

“I’m an American engineer. I’ve worked on levees and river projects once or twice in my life and I’m telling you open all your spillways if you want one chance in ten of surviving this.”

“But—”

“There’s a thirty-foot break in the top of the dam,” Joe said, cutting the supervisor off. “It’s just below water level, halfway between here and the west bank. If you get the level down below this break, you might survive. If you don’t, the whole dam will wash away.”

The supervisor stared at Joe for a moment and then at the major, who nodded and shouted, “Trust him!”

Done wondering, the supervisor turned and shouted across the room. “Open all the spillways! Open all gates to full!”

The workers began throwing switches and levers.

“Floodgates opening!” one of them replied. “Blocks One and Two filling. Blocks Three and Four also responding.”

On a wall-sized display known as a mimic board, the indicators turned from red to green. Twelve blue channels in the display represented the twelve generator channels beneath the dam.

“What about the emergency spillways?” Joe asked.

All major dams have emergency spillways around them just in case of such an event. These high-volume bypass channels were rarely used.

“Coming open now,” the supervisor said. He watched and counted: “… twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. All gates are open. Also the Toshka Canal. Within ten seconds, we will be discharging maximum water volume. Four hundred thousand cubic feet per second.”

Joe heard and felt a great reverberation shaking the building from within. He looked out over the Nile down below. The water in the tailrace was churning like world-class rapids.

Thrown wide open, the spillways were dumping enough water to fill a supertanker every fifteen seconds. Maybe twice that amount was already flowing over the breach. Joe had a bad feeling it wouldn’t be enough. If Lake Nasser was full to the rim, it would take hours or even days to lower the water below the level of the breach. In that time, the gap would deepen and the process would continue. Joe feared they would never catch up.

As the flood raged, the multimillion-ton structure shook like a city in the grips of an earthquake. But instead of passing, the tremors held steady and grew worse.

Another huge section of the dam broke off and rumbled down the slope like an avalanche. In minutes the rushing water had swept it away, and now the breach stood two hundred feet wide. The outflow from it had to be ten times greater than all the other spillways combined. It looked like Niagara Falls.

Downriver, the flood swept onward, dragging boats and docks and anything in its path along for the ride. Barges and riverboats that took tourists on Nile cruises were torn from their moorings and flung downstream like children’s toys in the bath.

The water raced along the banks of the Nile, scouring out the walls in places, undercutting the rock and sandstone and causing landslides and collapses reminiscent of glaciers calving in the arctic.

It surged up over the banks and swept around the hotels and other buildings. Smaller buildings were obliterated as if they were made of toothpicks. One moment they were there, the next they were gone, replaced by rushing water. And this was only the beginning.

The supervisor stood silent. The major stood silent. Even Joe Zavala stood silent. They were powerless to do anything but watch.

Ninety percent of Egypt’s population lived within twelve miles of the Nile. If the whole dam gave way, Joe could see a disaster counting its victims in the millions. Even as the water spread out over the valley, sparing victims downstream from the destructive force, the aftermath might be worse than the flood.

Millions would be homeless. Half of Egypt’s farmable land would be flooded and at least temporarily destroyed. Dysentery, cholera and all the diseases that come with unsanitary conditions, and those spread by mosquitoes and other insects, would become epidemic.

It would only add insult to injury that the dam provided fifteen percent of Egypt’s electricity. But when piled on top of the nation’s other problems and its precarious political state, Joe feared a governmental implosion. He could see a nation of eighty million people falling into anarchy in one fell swoop.

“How long before total collapse?” he asked.

“Difficult to say,” the supervisor replied. “It depends on whether the core can hold.”

Joe noticed how the topside breach had widened substantially but hardly deepened at all. It was no longer a V shape, more like an extremely elongated U.

“What’s the core made of?” he asked, remembering how it had appeared to be a different material in the cross section of the model.

“Semiplastic, impermeable clay,” the supervisor said. “Concrete down below.”

If Joe was right the rushing water had scoured down through the aggregate and reached the core. The erosion rate had almost stopped. “Does it run the whole width of the dam?”

The supervisor nodded. “It’s dug into the rock on either side.”

“Can it hold the lake back?”

The supervisor thought about that for a moment. “The core won’t erode like the aggregate does, but as the back side of the slope is scoured away the amount of rock and stone keeping the core in place will be reduced steadily. At some point the weight of Lake Nasser will simply shove the core aside like a bus might push a small car.”

Joe looked out past the breach. The water was cascading over the top, plummeting and spreading. But the gentle thirteen-degree slope and the stone covering seemed to be helping, the covering was holding its own at least for now.

“I think the surface lining is holding up,” he said. “If the water level drops far enough, the core might save the day. And with the breach as wide as it is, that shouldn’t take more than a few hours.”

The supervisor nodded. “It’s possible,” he said, sounding like he didn’t want to get ahead of himself.

Major Edo pointed to something else, something Joe hadn’t seen before. A small geyser farther down below. All but lost in the greater flood, it was blasting outward like a water feature in some ornate garden. The spray soared and fanned into a fine mist that caught the illumination from the floodlights.

“What about that?” Major Edo asked.

Joe’s heart dropped. He remembered the mock-up in Yemen. The higher flood had come first, but the lower tunnel had caused the core to fail and the entire dam along with it.

“That’s a bigger problem,” Joe said.

“How did this happen?” the supervisor asked.

Joe tried to explain about the microbots and how they burrowed through things, including concrete and clay. No one questioned him this time.

“Could they still be down there?”

“Possibly,” Joe said. “Maybe burrowing into the clay to widen the tunnel in ways the water can’t.”

“If it widens too much …” the supervisor began. He didn’t need to finish.

“Do you have any way to seal something like this?” Joe asked.

The supervisor rubbed his chin. “There may be one way,” he said. “We have a compound known as Ultra-Set. It’s a polymer that bonds with clay, expands many times over to fill small gaps. It becomes impervious in a matter of seconds. If we could pump it into the tunnel that those things you’re talking about have drilled, it might block it up. If the topside holds and the water level drops fast enough, we might avert a total failure.”

A new wave of tremors shook the building.

“What’s the drawback?” Joe asked.

“There’s only one way to get the Ultra-Set into the tunnel,” the supervisor said. “We have to pump it in under high pressure. To do that, someone has to find the entry point on the lake side of the dam.”

Joe looked at the supervisor and the few others who remained at their posts in the shuddering control room. “You need a diver,” he guessed, finding it hard to believe his fate. He smiled anyway. “How lucky for me.”

CHAPTER 54

THE ELEVATOR DOORS OPENED TO REVEAL THE TOP FLOOR of Marchetti’s pyramid and a luxurious foyer. Three of Jinn’s men were stationed there and they turned at the sound of the elevator’s ping.

It was a natural reaction. They had no reason to suspect any trouble. In fact, it looked to Kurt as if they were snapping to attention as the sound wave from the Pain Maker hit them and dropped them to their knees.

One let out a grunt, another stumbled backward and knocked over a table with a vase on it that smashed to the ground, the third man just fell straight down.

Kurt let go of the handle that powered the system as Paul, Gamay, Tautog and Varu bound the men in cuffs from the brig. The men looked dazed and confused.

“I feel your pain,” Kurt said. “Or at least I did about ten hours ago.”

The men were gagged with duct tape and stuffed in a janitor’s closet.

“This way,” Marchetti said, heading to the right. They made it to the corner, where the foyer intersected the hall. Poking his head around it, Kurt saw it was empty.

“Let’s go.”

Halfway down the hall they came to a large set of double doors. Marchetti went to a keypad. As he pressed in his code, the sound of shooting broke out far below them. Little pops that sounded like cap guns going off.

“Some of Jinn’s men must be resisting,” Gamay said.

Kurt nodded. “Hurry.”

Marchetti punched in the code as Paul and Tautog charged up the Pain Maker.

Kurt kicked the doors open and flipped the switch. There was no one there.

“Wrong room?” Gamay asked.

Kurt shut the machine off and stepped inside, looking around. The bed had been slept in. He smelled the scent of jasmine. The same perfume Zarrina had worn. Apparently she was closer to Jinn than they thought.

“Right room,” he said. “We just missed them.”

As he stormed back past Marchetti, he mumbled, “Might want to change your sheets.”

“Or burn the whole bed,” Marchetti said.

Kurt was moving down the hall as more gunfire rang out. The others were rushing to catch up with him.

“That explains why his men were snapping to attention,” Paul suggested. “They thought someone was coming back.”

“So where did they go?” Leilani asked.

“I can only think of one place,” Kurt said.

JINN STOOD IN AQUA-TERRA’S control room shocked by what had occurred. Zarrina, Otero and Matson surrounded him, along with the radar operator and another one of his men. The rest were scattered, perhaps ten or less now, fighting Marchetti’s crew and what looked like U.S. Marines.

“How? How is this possible?” he asked. “There are no patrol boats or helicopters here. Where did they come from?”

“We have video from the detention level,” Otero said, studying a laptop. “I hate to say this, but it’s Austin.”

“It can’t be,” Jinn said. “He’s dead. I’ve killed him twice.”

“Then he’s come back from the dead,” Otero said, turning the laptop toward Jinn. “Look.”

It was Austin. Jinn could not imagine how. It was as if Austin had appeared in his midst like a ghost. An appropriate thought as Jinn had been certain he’d been sent to perdition.

The shooting was growing closer. From the observation deck a few of Jinn’s men could be seen running toward Marchetti’s central park. They didn’t make it.

“We have to get out of here,” Zarrina said. “This battle is lost.”

Jinn studied the layout. They would never make it to the dry dock, where the flying boat was moored. Even if they did, a few well-placed bullets or the missiles he’d brought in would take them down.

“We can’t run,” he said.

“And we can’t win this fight,” Zarrina replied sharply. “There are only five of us.”

“Silence,” Jinn snapped.

He was trying to think, trying desperately to come up with a way to turn the tables. He looked to Otero. “Access the horde and energize the transmitter.”

Otero began tapping away on his laptop and then pushed it across the table to Jinn.

“You have access.”

“What are you going to do?” Matson asked.

Jinn ignored him. He began typing. Slowly at first, making sure he was in the right area of the system, and then faster.

Gunfire in the hall spurred him on.

He selected a command from the menu and hit enter.

The door to the room flew open and shots were exchanged, with shells ricocheting around the room.

Jinn took cover as Matson and the radar operator were cut down. A few seconds later Jinn’s other guard was killed as he tried to get off a shot.

“Give it up, Jinn!” Austin’s voice called out.

Jinn found himself behind an island in the center of the control room with many of the vital controls on its surface. Otero and Zarrina crowded in behind with him. “And if we do?”

“I’ll put you in chains, deliver you to the proper authorities.”

“You expect me to believe you won’t kill us?”

“Much as I’d like to,” Austin replied, “that’s not my choice to make. Don’t count on going back to Yemen, though. I’m thinking the World Court or some American military base.”

“I will not be put in such hands!” Jinn shouted.

“Then show yourself and let’s finish this man-to-man.”

Jinn could see Austin in a reflection. He was hidden around the corner of the steel bulkhead. Jinn had no shot. If he stood, Austin would cut him down. If he hid, Austin or some member of Austin’s team would soon flank his position.

“I have a better idea,” Jinn said. “I will now teach you a lesson about power and its proper use.”

He glanced at the laptop. A blinking green box on the screen told him his instructions had been sent and received. He could now take action.

He slipped the pistol from his holster, pressed the safety with his thumb until it clicked and held it tight to his chest.

“Time’s about up,” Austin informed him.

Jinn knew it was.

He placed the barrel of the pistol against the back of Otero’s skull and pulled the trigger. The muffled explosion blasted the computer programmer and what was left of his head out into the open space of the floor. Jinn’s second shot shattered the laptop, sending bits of plastic and microchips in all directions. He fired again just for good measure, destroying the laptop’s screen.

He tossed the weapon away. “I surrender,” he said, putting his hands up.

SHIELDED BY THE BULKHEAD, Kurt watched Jinn in the same reflection that Jinn had caught sight of him. Something didn’t add up. He’d seen Jinn pull the weapon and expected the man to go down swinging, but the bullet to Otero’s head and tossing the gun aside were suspicious actions to say the least.

Zarrina tossed out her weapon and put her hands up. She and Jinn stood slowly and Kurt leveled the M1 carbine at Jinn’s chest.

“You flinch, you die.”

Kurt stepped in the room. Paul and Tautog came in next. They fanned out.

Kurt sensed a trap. With his rifle still leveled at Jinn, he checked the dead men: Jinn’s guard, Matson, what was left of Otero and the radar operator.

He found nothing out of the ordinary, but the smug look remained on Jinn’s face. Like he’d just palmed a card or gotten away with something.

“What did you do?” Kurt whispered, waiting for a booby trap to spring or an explosion to go off. “What did you do?”

Jinn said nothing. Kurt noticed the shattered laptop. He realized that Jinn had just executed Otero, the programmer. The two things had to be connected.

Shouts drifted in through the open door from down below. They came from Tautog’s men on the zero deck.

“Something’s happening,” one of them called out. “The sea has come to life!”

Kurt stepped outside. Through the fog of the night he could see the water churning.

“Marchetti, get the lights on!”

Marchetti ran to the control panel and started throwing a bank of switches. All around the island, sections of the ocean lit up as Marchetti switched on floodlights both above and below water. Instantly, Kurt saw what was happening.

The water was stirring almost as if it was boiling over. The horde surrounding them had come to the surface and was surging toward the island.

“He’s called them in,” Marchetti whispered fearfully. “He’s called them home.”

Jinn began to laugh, a deep laugh that was sinister, sadistic and utterly filled with an egomaniac’s pride.

“You will now understand what I mean by power,” he said. “Unless you release me, the horde will consume you all.”

CHAPTER 55

KURT AUSTIN HAD KNOWN THEY WERE IN DOUBLE TROUBLE as soon as he heard the madman laugh. He stormed back into the control room and jammed the barrel of the carbine against Jinn’s face right between the eyes.

“Call them off!”

“Let us go,” Jinn said, “and I’ll do as you wish.”

“Call them off or I’ll splatter your brains all over the wall.”

“And what will that get you, Mr. Austin?”

Kurt pulled back. “Marchetti, find a computer, you’re going to have to do your code-breaking thing again.”

Marchetti raced over to another laptop, docked on the main console.

“He’ll never break it,” Jinn insisted. “He’ll never even get in.”

Marchetti looked up. “He’s right. I was able to reverse Otero’s last trick because I could access the files, but we’re locked out of everything.”

“Can’t you hack it?”

“It’s a nine-digit code protected with top-level encryption. A supercomputer couldn’t break it without a month or so to work on it.”

“You’ve got to be able to do something.”

“I can’t even log on.”

Now Kurt understood why Jinn had blasted Otero and the laptop. It was Otero’s code. No chance he would give it up lying dead on the floor and no chance Marchetti could check the laptop for any type of keystroke memory or temp file.

Leilani eased up beside Kurt. “What’s happening?”

“Those things that made us sparkle, they’re all around the island, a lot thicker than they were when we saw them. Jinn’s sent them into a frenzy. They’ll come on board like a horde of locusts and eat everything in sight, including us.”

“What are we going to do?” Leilani asked.

“Is there any way to stop them?” Kurt asked Marchetti.

Marchetti shook his head. “There are too many, fifty miles’ worth in every direction.”

“Then we have to get off the island. Where are those airships of yours?”

“In the hangar bay by the helipad.”

“Take that laptop and get everyone to meet us there,” Kurt said. He looked at Tautog. “Get your men up here. We’re leaving by air.”

“Not to the boats?” Tautog asked.

“The boats won’t help us now.”

Tautog went to the balcony and began yelling to his men, waving for them to come up. Marchetti grabbed a microphone and began an island-wide broadcast through a series of loudspeakers.

Kurt noticed two small radios on the flat part of the control console. He grabbed them and then shoved Jinn toward the elevator doors. “Let’s go.”

Moments later Kurt and his growing entourage stood on the lighted helipad suspended between the two pyramid buildings. From this vantage point the sea around Aqua-Terra looked more like solid ground covered with millions of beetles. They reflected the glare of Aqua-Terra’s floodlights in a smoky charcoal color. Streams of them could be seen coming inland like long, probing fingers.

“They look thick enough to walk on,” Paul mentioned.

“I wouldn’t try it,” Kurt said.

A hangar door opened in the side of the starboard pyramid, and Marchetti’s men began rolling one of the airships out. Two others waited behind it.

“How many people can each one hold?” Kurt asked.

“Eight. Nine at most,” Marchetti said.

“Dump out everything you don’t need,” Kurt said. “See if you can lighten the loads.”

Marchetti went to supervise. Paul and Gamay went with him. Leilani stepped over to Zarrina, who was standing against the edge of the helipad with Jinn.

“So you pretended to be me,” she said.

“I wouldn’t get too close,” Kurt warned.

“You’re a weak little woman,” Zarrina said. “That was the hardest part to play.”

Kurt grabbed Leilani as she went to slap Zarrina, pulling her away a safe distance.

“She’s baiting you,” Kurt said. “Go help the others.”

Leilani pouted but did as he asked.

“It’s too bad you didn’t try more to comfort me,” Zarrina said. “You might have enjoyed it.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Kurt said.

Beside her, Jinn fumed.

Tautog greeted the last of his men and shepherded them toward the hangar. “What about the prisoners?” one of them asked.

Kurt looked at the sadistic leader. “What’s it going to be, Jinn? Are you going to leave your men to be eaten alive?”

“Whether they live or die means nothing to me,” he said. “But perhaps you’d like to go get them since you care for them so much.”

“No,” Kurt said, “I’m not sending anyone down for them.”

“Then you are as ruthless as me.”

Kurt glared at Jinn. The man disgusted him. But Kurt wouldn’t risk one good person for the lives of those down below.

“This is what’s going to happen,” Kurt said. “We’re going to get on those airships and fly away and you’re going to be left behind to die in a manner you justly deserve. Your power play does nothing but murder your own men and take the two of you with them in a slow-motion suicide.”

He took the laptop, placed it on the rough surface of the helipad and shoved it toward Jinn.

Jinn stared at it but did nothing more.

Zarrina seemed nervous. She bit her lip, hesitated and then spoke. “Type in the code,” she said to Jinn.

Behind them the first two airships were ready, their pods inflated to full volume, their fans powering up. The third was right behind them.

“What’s the word?” Kurt asked Marchetti without turning.

“If we deploy the air anchors and get up to speed before we go off the edge, I think we can carry eleven,” Marchetti said. “I think.”

“Put twelve on each.”

“But I’m not sure—”

Kurt silenced him with a glance and looked Marchetti in the eye. “I’m going to need your help,” he said, handing him one of the small radios. “Now, what’s the word?”

“Twelve,” Marchetti said. “We can do twelve … I hope.”

“That’s only thirty-six,” Gamay said, calculating quickly. “There are thirty-seven of us.”

Jinn smiled at the numbers. “I suppose someone is staying behind to die.”

Kurt replied without blinking. “I am.”