The Storm

by Clive Cussler

  “Then do as I command,” Jinn ordered.

  Otero nodded and brought up the control screen and typed in Jinn’s nine-digit code. The line-of-sight transmission would be broadcast all the way to the horizon. From there the bots would signal one another like dominoes.

  He hit the enter key. “Signal processing now.”

  Jinn stared out across the water, waiting to catch sight of the display. It took a minute before the first sign appeared, but then the ocean’s surface began to change quickly.

  There had been no wind to speak of throughout the day, and the sea was glassy around them. But as the bots surfaced, the smooth appearance took on a grainy look, like a secluded bay choked with algae.

  Jinn watched as the effect spread in all directions, running into the distance. It soon reached the limits of his vision, but he knew it went far beyond, at least fifty miles in every direction. Thinner wisps of his creation stretching for a hundred miles beyond that, spreading forth like the arms of a galaxy.

  “Direct them to spread their wings.”

  Otero began tapping away once again. “Order encoded,” he said. “Transmitting … now.”

  Jinn slipped a pair of expensive sunglasses from his pocket. He expected the dark lenses would be necessary in a moment or two. He slid them over his eyes as the surface of the sea began to evolve once again.

  A wave seemed to travel through it, almost like a tremor. The color went from a leaden gray to a dull gloss and then began to brighten until the sea around them shimmered with a mirrorlike finish. With the afternoon sun still high overhead, the effect was blinding even through the shield of polarized glass.

  Jinn saw the prisoners staring in wonder and then turning away as the glare became painful to look at.

  Jinn squinted and stared for just a moment, his chest swelling with pride.

  Out on the surface of the sea, trillions upon trillions of his tiny machines had unfolded mirrored wings, hidden until then under shells like those on the back of a beetle. The act tripled the surface area of each microbot. The reflective surface of the wings quadrupled the amount of sunlight bounced back into the upper atmosphere and away from the ocean.

  It was as if a reflective blanket had been pulled across five thousand square miles of the Indian Ocean.

  Gamay made the connection first.

  “The temperature change,” she said. “This is how it’s being done.”

  “Yes,” Jinn said. “And the cooling trend will now accelerate. These waters are already four degrees colder than the coldest temperature ever measured here at this time of year. Based on my calculations, the surface temperature will drop another full degree by nightfall. Each day, the effect will deepen. Soon, a giant well of chilled water will occupy the center of this tropical ocean while in another section of the ocean the microbots are doing the exact opposite, absorbing heat, keeping the ocean warm. The temperature differential will create winds, for some it will bring storms, for others it will smash all hope of avoiding a monstrous famine.”

  “You’re insane. You’ll kill millions of people.”

  “The famine will kill them,” he corrected.

  She fell silent. Neither of the other two spoke. All three of them kept their eyes turned away from the blazing reflection.

  Jinn bathed in the crystalline light as if it were glory itself. Certainly it was vindication, and proof of the godlike powers he now held in the palm of his hand.

  “You’ll never get away with this,” Paul said.

  “And just who is going to stop me?”

  “My government, for one,” Paul added. “The Indian government, NATO, the UN. No one is going to let you starve half a continent. Your little force here won’t last long against a squadron of F-18s.”

  Jinn stared at Paul. “You operate from a fundamental misunderstanding of power,” he said. “True, I and my people are inconsequential in the global scheme. But power does not exist only in your nations. It exists in balance all around the world. Once the rainfall begins to feed Chinese mouths, the Chinese will not allow the UN or your government or the men in New Delhi to redirect their newfound bounty so quickly. They will veto any resolution to act, frustrating your desires to proceed. They will be joined by the countries of the Middle East and Pakistan and the Russians, all of whom will benefit from what I’ve wrought and who will pay me and protect me for what they receive. It will be an easy thing to play them against your nation. If you believe otherwise, you are hopelessly naive.”

  “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.

  He and Leilani worked rapidly. The boat was equipped with a half dozen separate handholds and a pair of cleat handles up front. In a minute, the lines of both parachutes were tied off to these eight points and were snapping taut as the chutes billowed out in front of the boat.

  They filled like sails, and the boat began to move, pulled along by the two parachutes as if they were a pair of magical horses. As the chutes caught more and more wind, the boat picked up some speed. The deflated parts of the boat kept it from moving as fast as it had with the outboard running, but at least it was going.

  Kurt had no idea where a wind in these doldrums had appeared from, but he didn’t care. They were moving again and moving was better than sitting any day.

  Gusts blew in, the lines snapped and strained, yanking the boat forward.

  “Hang on!” Kurt shouted for at least the third or fourth time that day. “I have a feeling this is going to be a wild ride.”

  CHAPTER 42

  AQUA-TERRA’S BRIG SAT ON THE LOWEST LEVEL OF THE island that was above the waterline. Now back in their luxury cell, Paul, Gamay and Marchetti were similarly at their absolute lowest. For exactly fifty-three minutes Jinn had kept them cuffed to the rail out in the blazing solar reflection, the swirling gusts and the heat.

  Paul Trout had never seen the inside of a tanning booth in his life, but it felt like the observation deck had been turned into just that, with heat and blinding light added for good measure.

  It had been a surreal experience as reflections danced across Aqua-Terra in a dizzying, almost hypnotic display. Because the tiny mirrors moved independently on the water, the light they reflected also moved independently, making it impossible to really study the effect. Paul could only get a sense of it, like being in a swirling fog and yet knowing that it was made up of billions of independent molecules of water vapor as opposed to being a single thing.

  And as hard as it was to look at the decks and structures around them, it was impossible to look at the ocean for any length of time. To protect his eyes, Paul had kept them shut tight for most of the fifty-three minutes. As a result, his main impression of the ocean’s surface was a glittering mass like an endless sea of diamonds. Low ripples ran through it, brought on by minor swells that hadn’t been present an hour before. Wind currents stirred up by the reflected heat swept across the shimmering surface, making it appear almost like a living thing. It was breathing, moving, waiting. In a way, it was as beautiful as it was terrifying.

  Eventually the time expired and Jinn had given the order, turning the sea of diamonds gray once again. The bots quickly submerged and the ocean looked like any other throughout the world.

  “I feel like I fell asleep on the beach,” Paul said, amazed at how taut and red his skin was.

  Across from him, Marchetti paced and occasionally checked the view through the large windows while Gamay sat beside him and attempted to apply some sort of first-aid balm to his split lip and bloody tongue.

  “At least we know how they’ve been able to tamper with the water temperature,” Marchetti said.

  “Please hold still,” Gamay asked.

  She held a swab and some antibacterial ointment from a first-aid kit at the ready, but each time she’d moved in Paul started to speak again.

  “Fat lot of good it’ll do us,” he said.

  “Paul.”

  “I am holding still.”

  “Not the part I’m trying to fix.”

  Paul nodded and held his mouth open like a patient at the dentist.

  Marchetti stopped his
pacing. “The question is, what will happen now that they’ve put their plan into overdrive?”

  Paul hesitated, waiting as long as he could. “I can tell you exactly what’s going to happen,” he said finally.

  Gamay exhaled sharply and pulled back.

  “They’re creating a massive column of cold water, with temperatures more at home in the North Atlantic than here in the middle of a tropical sea. Temperature gradients like that are known to intensify or even create storms and cyclones. Not just in the air but under the surface.”

  “And once they stop radiating the heat back into the air, the cold water will start absorbing heat from the air above it again,” Marchetti said, “reversing the equation.”

  “If this plan continues,” Paul added, “the ambient air temperature will drop rapidly, but only above the one area they’ve affected. The rest of the ocean will still be hot and humid. Have you ever seen what happens when hot and humid air combines with cold?”

  “Storms,” Marchetti said.

  Paul nodded. “I was in Oklahoma several years back when a cold front blew through after three days of humidity. They had a hundred tornadoes touch down over a three-day period. I’m guessing out here we’ll see one big storm: a tropical depression or a cyclone. We might see a hurricane form all around us.”

  Gamay had given up trying to dab Paul’s lip. “But this is the dead zone,” she said. “The storms don’t usually form here. They form to the north and east, and they track toward India. That’s where the monsoons come from.”

  Paul considering the implications. “We’re almost on the equator. A storm forming here will track west and get swept up toward Somalia, Ethiopia and Egypt,” he guessed.

  “That’s already happening,” Marchetti said. “I read something about record rains in the Sudanese highlands and southern Egypt. The article said Lake Nasser had risen to a level not seen in thirty years.”

  Paul remembered hearing something similar. “And that’s probably just the beginning.”

  Marchetti was pacing, rubbing his chin with one hand and looking very shaky. “What happens once the air is destabilized into a storm?”