The Storm - Cussler Clive (книги без сокращений .TXT) 📗

“You risk war,” Gamay said. “Enough to engulf the whole world, you included.”

“More likely, just a bidding war.”

He relished the moment. In little over twenty-four hours he’d crushed his enemies, both internal and external. He’d proven his brilliance and now he would reap the rewards. Money would pour in from China and new partners he’d take on in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Counteroffers from India and other lands would follow and the bidding would rise.

“They’ll still come after you and your vile creation,” Paul said.

“Of course they will,” Jinn replied. “But they will never find me, and they will prove to be no more capable of destroying what I have built than they are of eradicating the world’s insects or bacteria. So they kill millions of the horde. The trillions that remain will continue to reproduce. It will be a simple matter for the microbots to take the remnants of their dead and use the same materials to build new ones. That’s what they do. That’s what Marchetti designed them to do.”

Marchetti looked away, shaking his head in anguished regret.

“And there will be consequences if anyone challenges me,” Jinn added. “The horde will spread to the far corners of the world. The seven seas will soon be under my control. If any nation is foolish enough to defy me or simply refuses to pay the tribute I will demand, they will suffer. Their fishing grounds will be destroyed, their food sources consumed before their very eyes, their ports will be overrun and blockaded, their ships attacked in transit.”

“They’ll come after you in person,” snapped Paul. “You’re the snake, all they have to do is cut off your head.”

“They will be well advised to leave the snake alone,” Jinn insisted. “For I have already programmed a doomsday code into the horde. Should I die or be forced to activate it for other reasons, the horde will go from a weapon wielded with precision to a scourge of unimaginable proportions, consuming and growing and attacking everything in its path. Like the locusts of the desert, it will leave nothing but death behind it.”

The two Americans looked at each other. If Jinn measured the look right, it was one of defeat. The silence that followed confirmed this for him.

He wiped his brow. He was beginning to sweat as the air temperature around the island began to rise with all the reflected energy. A breeze began to blow across the deck, the first one in days, but it wasn’t cool and refreshing. It was a hot wind caused by the differential heating. It marked the beginning of the storm.

CHAPTER 41

AFTER SEVERAL HOURS OF FLOATING, LUCK HAD SHOWN Kurt nothing but contempt.

The sun beat down on them, blocked only by the makeshift tarp of the parachutes. The rear air chamber was so far down now that it made little sense trying to keep it from deflating further. The boat was tilted over, awash in that right rear corner like a car with a flat tire. And despite Ishmael’s valiant effort, the right front cylinder was looking weaker all the time.

Kurt gazed out through a small gash in the parachute the way a child might look through holes cut in the bedsheet of a ghost’s costume.

“Anything?” Leilani asked.

“No,” he said. The word came out hoarsely. Despite the water he’d guzzled on the airplane, his throat was getting dry once again.

“Maybe we should start the engine,” Leilani said. “We must not be in the shipping lanes.”

Kurt knew for certain that they weren’t. Few ships passed across the dead center of the Indian Ocean. His hope had been to get close enough to Africa to reach a north-south route from the Red Sea or a tanker route from the Gulf, plowed by ships too big to pass through the Suez and making their way for the Horn of Africa.

They’d fallen well short of those goals. By at least a hundred miles.

“We can’t get there on the gas we have left.”

“But we can’t just stay here,” she said.

“We have one gallon of fuel,” he said. “We’re not wasting it and then wishing we had it.”

Leilani stared at him, her eyes filled with fear. She was trembling. “I don’t want to die.”

“Neither do I,” Kurt said. “Neither does Ishmael. Right, Ishmael?”

“Right,” Ishmael said. “Not ready for that. Not ready to die, big-time.”

“And we’re not going to die,” Kurt said. “Just stay calm.”

She nodded, still near the aft section, trying to keep the cylinder from completely deflating.

“Might as well move up front,” he said. “That one’s had it.”

Leilani let go of the rubber fabric and moved to the front of the boat on the port side. With her weight up front, the rear corner rose a fraction and the boat wallowed a bit less.

Kurt looked out from under the makeshift tent again. From the position of the sun he guessed it was three o’clock or so. He was waiting for nightfall. Once the stars came out, he could determine more exactly where they were and they could make their plans accordingly.

Kurt let his gaze fall to the horizon and watched as a strange effect took hold. It was something like the shimmer of a mirage on an open road in the desert. He blinked twice as if his eyes were deceiving him, but the effect only intensified.

Without a sound the sea began to shimmer. It wasn’t the dappled sun on the water that every mariner and amateur painter knows so well but an almost effervescent appearance.

It was brightest to the west, in line with the afternoon sun, but he could see the same thing looking to the east, north and south as well.

“Kurt!” Leilani shouted.

He looked back under the tarp.

“You’re sparkling.”

Kurt would have looked at himself, but he was too entranced by what he saw on her. She looked as if she’d been spritzed with stardust.

Ishmael wore a similar coating, but Leilani was covered the worst. It was as if they’d been coated with a fine spray of reflective highway paint.

“What is it?” she asked.

Kurt looked at his palms, rubbing his fingers across it. The reflective dust spread like wet powder, some of it coming off. The glittering effect was plainly visible, but no matter how hard he squinted the cause was impossible to see. Nor could he feel it, even when trying to rub it between his fingers. All of which meant one thing.

“Jinn’s microbots,” he said.

He explained what they were and pointed out how the sea was filled with them. Looking straight down, he saw that the concentration was like a spoonful of sugar thrown onto a black dinner plate. He felt the heat reflecting off it. He explained that some of the little machines had been found on the catamaran.

“Are they harmful to us?” Leilani asked.

“I don’t think so,” Kurt said. He left out the part about them consuming organic matter. Fortunately, the ones on their skin didn’t appear to be in eating mode like the ones in Marchetti’s lab. “All the same, I wouldn’t mind stumbling across a boat with a good shower right about now.”

Leilani tried to smile.

Kurt had no way of knowing that they were near the edge of Jinn’s horde and that the concentration he was seeing and the reflective effect they were witnessing was nothing compared to what Paul, Gamay and Marchetti had seen from the balcony of Aqua-Terra’s control room. Still, he found it hard to take his eyes off the sparkling sea.

As he stared, a breeze tugged at his sleeve and ruffled the parachute tarp. Without moving, Kurt looked toward the bow and watched as the tarp rose up, settled softly and then rose again.

The breeze grew stronger, and Kurt had to grab the lines to keep the big chute from billowing out. He turned to Leilani. “Tie this chute to those handles on the right and get the other one out.”

Leilani was already moving, not even questioning him. The breeze was blowing in from behind them and slightly north. It was a hot wind like the Santa Anas of California or the siroccos of the Sahara. It felt like a hair dryer on his back, but Kurt didn’t care.