by Joe Buff
"No."
"No parents, fiancée, anything?"
"Nope."
"Commander," Clayton said, "every one of us was picked because we don't have attachments. No kids, no spouses, or ex-spouses even, and we're all estranged from our families one way or another."
"You didn't tell me that," Jeffrey said.
"The powers-that-be put our chance of making it back at one in four."
"I'm frankly glad you didn't tell me that part," Jeffrey said. "Let's prove them wrong … Speaking of which, I want to crank open the bunker's armored door, the launch port."
"How come?" Clayton whispered. He'd started gazing down at One and was almost too choked up to talk.
"I want the gamma rays unhindered heading out to sea. That'll give a good strong EMP in this whole sector, give the ships and aircraft other things to worry about than us." Clayton helped Jeffrey work the mechanism, and the heavy door came up. Jeffrey saw the grooves on which the launcher would roll out, after which the jet blast shield deployed. This one was a so-called zero-length rail launcher system. In an emergency it could be fired from right in the bunker, but tonight this missile wasn't going anywhere.
"Come on, LT," SEAL One said as Clayton bent to kiss his forehead. "I hate good-byes, get outta here already."
Jeffrey looked at the timer. "Thirty-eight minutes to go. Shaj, you take the point with the land mine sensor — they might have planted new ones. I'll bring up the rear, Ilse goes in front of me. Eight, Two, you guys grab the stretcher and we'll pick up Seven on the way. Same route we came in — not recommended practice, but for just that reason it might work. Now, at the gallop, move it!"
* * *
Gunther Van Gelder walked south along Prince Road, a block in from the beach, heading for the end of Addington Point. He heard the constant pounding of the surf, smelled it in the air, even felt it through the ground. He could see his way in the dark by the flashes of lightning and by the subdued blue glow from the covered headlights of occasional cars and trucks — the military blackout was very thorough. The curbs at each corner were painted Day-Glo white, to help prevent skinned knees and broken ankles. He glanced over his right shoulder, just as a distant lightning bolt backlit the clouds from over the horizon. Now that the weather was clearing, he could see well up the coast, even make out the silhouette of the darkened lighthouse at Umhlanga Rocks. He smiled to himself about his thrusting, panting labors of the past hour, then resumed course. Another sentry stopped him to check his papers. The soldier told him gruffly to put on his flash protectors. Van Gelder had a pair, a parting gift from the woman he'd just been with. She'd explained she could get a new pair in the morning — they were sold on the street by unemployed coloreds who made them by hand. The irony struck Van Gelder: if anthropologists were right about mankind evolving in Africa, then the native blacks, so-called Bantus, apartheid's lowest untouchables, had the only true pure blood in the world and everyone else was colored. The elation of his rutting, the savored sights and smells, the teasing and the giggles, the warm wet furry gripping, and his explosive flooding gift and release, all popped like a bubble.
Van Gelder sighed. He donned the protectors, a crude cardboard frame with Mylar lenses, like the things school kids used to watch a solar eclipse. The sentry said they weren't a joke; there was a stiff fine for civilians caught not wearing them. They were assembled with cheap glue, but the rain at last had stopped. Now with the damn things on his face, with their scratchy pinching earpieces, Van Gelder was almost blind. He had to brace them by hand — the wind was still doing a brisk Beaufort 6, some twenty-five knots, backing slightly now from out of the west to out of the west-southwest. Van Gelder made slow progress by looking down past the lenses at the sidewalk near his feet, and once in a while he'd cheat to see where he was.
He passed a small tank farm and then a heavily guarded prison. Rumor had it the jail was filled with interned American businessmen, with a separate cellblock facing downtown for senior VPs and up. Van Gelder finally reached the tip of the point. At the tug jetty he picked up the ferry across the harbor mouth.
The ride was short but rough — the incoming swell beyond the breakwater was nasty. The cross chop of the outgoing tide tossed the little launch, as big Natal Bay drained through the narrow entrance channel. By the time he stepped onto Bluff Quay, on the north side of the jutting Cape Natal peninsula, Van Gelder's uniform was damp from windblown spray.
The long quay paralleling the foot of the bluff was busy and loud, the air filled with machinery growling and clanking. Dock workers wearing night-vision goggles used forklifts to unload railroad cars, and there was steady traffic through the blast doors into the bluff. As lightning flashed yet again, Van Gelder spotted the prefabs of hostage camps along the seventy-five-meter-high summit of the bluff, alternating with big radomes, tall antenna masts, and hardened bunkers for missiles. Somewhere up there he thought he heard a baby cry.
He lifted his glasses a moment. At ground level a kilometer away, toward the foot of the peninsula, loomed more tank farms and storage silos, huge grain bins and coaling slips. Van Gelder could see the superstructures of bulk cargo vessels and tankers. In the foreground was Salisbury Island, part of the naval installation, really a Y-shaped appendage jutting from the cape. Tied up in berths 10 and 12 were two of the new Spanish-built Sitron-class strike corvettes, strengthening local antiaircraft defenses while they refueled. The wind carried a ceaseless cacophony from that part of the harbor, a throbbing of engines and pumps, a moaning and screeching of gears and hydraulics.
Van Gelder stepped aside as an Eland armored car rolled past, its 90mm high-velocity gun aimed straight ahead, its big tires splashing the puddles. He smelled its diesel exhaust, mixed with the odors of fuel oil and dead fish, pumped bilges and raw sewage and rotting trash. To him these were reassuring, his home port's waterfront at work, and the extra hubbub of the war effort lifted his mood.
Van Gelder had a few minutes before reporting. He decided to prolong his stroll, just to the beginning of Island-View Channel and back.
CHAPTER 15
UIVIHLANGA ROCKS
The egress march was a mad dash of panting and peering, a downhill slalom speed record past a dozen-plus enemy mines, desperately scanning for Boer patrols the whole time. Twice Jeffrey and the others had to hit the deck and roll into the bushes, letting more soldiers go by, then it was back on their feet on the double. Loading the SDVs became a frenzy of silent activity, but finally everything was set. Otto was safely taped up in the KIA'ed chief's dolphin, the eyeholes shuttered, his Draeger set on heliox and his arms strapped to his sides, a mask on with no readouts and no sound. SEAL One's empty dolphin was slaved to Two's. Clayton controlled Otto's, Seven the cargo SDV, and SEAL Eight guided the other empty, Nine's. They went with the river this time, not against it, and in a wild charge of flailing mechanical flukes they were past the bridge, the pillboxes on the beach, even the barbed-wire entanglement. They rode the rip through the surf, using the outgoing tide, and after thunderous pounding and buffeting all ten SDVs were clear. Jeffrey had to keep swallowing; his punished eardrums hurt bad.
Jeffrey read his chronometer. Any second now.
"All numbers go deep," Clayton ordered. "The sea-water's good shielding."
"Don't get too close to the bottom," Jeffrey warned. He twisted his handgrips and dived. On his head-up display he saw the blips of the other dolphins.
There was a brilliant blue-green flash through Jeffrey's eyeholes, enough to light up the reef. There was a quick sharp bruising thump-thump, the ground-and airborne shock waves hitting the water. As the sparkling blue-green glow persisted, Jeffrey saw the bottom muck stir up, threatening to engulf him. There was another flash, more local, diffuse and flickering. Then things began to come down. His SDV was pelted. Jeffrey swore he saw a tail rotor go by. Five blades — an SA.330 Puma?
Jeffrey felt his dolphin back and surge.
"The seiche!" he heard Ilse shout, the terrible seismic slosh
ing. There must have been an underwater landslide. The outbound tsunami hit, tumbling him over and over and over.
CHAPTER 16
DURBAN
A demonic purple-white flash lit the sky, 10,000 times brighter than lightning. Van Gelder hit the deck as he felt an unnatural warmth. The eerie sensation continued and he knew he was too exposed. Holding his cheap goggles flat to his face, he rolled behind a cargo crate. He heard auto brakes squealing and then a very hard crash. He saw dock workers scramble for cover, pulling others too blinded or stunned. Sirens began to go off amid shouting and screaming. He looked up at the bluff. Its whole face stood out starkly in the unforgiving light. He saw people dash through the blast doors as the outer barriers closed. By a reflection in the side window of a staff car he saw something else in the distance, something that took his breath away, the most beautiful golden-yellow incandescence blooming into the air. He screwed his eyes shut and waited for the overpressure to kill him, but it didn't come. He heard a whimpering yell and a splash as a forklift ran off the quay. As ship horns hooted alarms, Van Gelder glanced again at the car window. A mushroom cloud rose over Umhlanga Rocks. By its harsh illumination he noticed the lighthouse there was gone. On the slimy ground by his feet he saw two rats running in circles. One of them, sightless and panicked, hit a gantry crane head-on. He felt a tremor through the ground, but still the airborne shock wave hadn't come. He remembered to cover his ears. Van Gelder watched the swirling, pulsing mushroom cloud shoot higher, frighteningly silent, red now near its base and capped by a giant smoke ring. The underside of the overcast glowed pink, and tendrils of ethereal blue now interlaced the fireball. Then a deafening crack sounded and the staff car windows were smashed. A sledgehammer punched Van Gelder's gut as the thundering roar went on. The negative pressure pulse hit, trying to tear out his lungs. The blast wind struck, moaning and screaming inhumanly, toppling unsecured cargo, enshrouding Van Gelder in sea spray and dust.
* * *
Ilse floated helplessly. She had no diver data, no gertrude or sonar, and no propulsion or depth control. She knew that sensing up and down underwater in the dark was always hard. It wouldn't work to blow bubbles and follow them to the surface, the standard trick, wrapped up as she was within the dolphin. Besides, right now the surface was the last place she would ever want to be.
The pressure in Ilse's ears told her she was slowly rising, confirmed by her backup wrist-mounted mechanical pressure gauge. She thought she saw a slight glow through her eyeholes. If so, the SDV was upside down. She tried her hand controls again, but nothing happened. She tried to move her legs, to propel the vehicle the hard way, but it was useless.
"Any unit, Four, come in," she called into her mouthpiece mike. There was no answer. She double-checked that the fiber-optic link between her mask and the dolphin's electronics was firmly in the jack. The mask remained completely dark.
"Any unit, Four … Any unit, Four." Nothing. "Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is Four." Still nothing.
* * *
Jeffrey's tumbling dolphin went into a corkscrewing gyration, then he felt a bump. His sonar told him he was on the bottom, depth ninety-seven feet. He brought his SDV back up to ninety and strobed his secure acoustic IFF, Identification-Friend-or-Foe. Only eight other units responded — Ilse had dropped off the screen.
Jeffrey pulsed on active sonar. Now there were ten contacts. One of the two new ones was moving and one was not. The one that moved was big, too big, much bigger than the SDVs. It also moved too fast.
"All units," Jeffrey heard Clayton call, "sound off for a status check."
"Two," the SEAL team corpsman said.
Then there was a pause.
"Five, this is Four," Jeffrey called. No response. "Ilse, come in, please." Eventually Clayton said, "Six."
"Six, Four," Jeffrey said, "I think Ilse's damaged."
"Acknowledged," Clayton said. "All numbers keep sounding off."
There was another lengthy silence.
"Seven, this is Six," Clayton called. "Eight, this is Six, come in." Neither answered.
"Six, Four," Jeffrey said, "I have them both on IFF, immobile on the bottom."
"I see them," Clayton said. "Their slaved units are in shutdown mode. They must have all had system failures."
Jeffrey pulsed on active again. Ilse's SDV was barely moving, and the tenth contact was converging on her. The bogey weaved erratically beneath the surface.
"Six, Four, Ilse's in trouble. I think it's a shark. My sonar's holding her at shallow depth. I'm moving in."
Jeffrey's acoustic intercept showed Clayton pulse on active too. "I'll be your wingman," Clayton said.
"Negative," Jeffrey ordered. "Otto's priceless. You and Two guard him and the cripples. Form a defensive mulberry on the bottom, a spinning circle, with the units you control."
"Acknowledged," Clayton said.
"Activate your SharkPODs," Jeffrey said. He powered up his own, then saw the irony — the protective oceanic devices were invented by the Natal Sharks Board.
"I do not concur," Clayton said. "SharkPODs put electric fields into the seawater. Moving through a conductive medium creates a magnetic anomaly."
"Shaj," Jeffrey said, "we just set off an A-bomb up there. The last thing we need to worry about is our MAD signature."
After hesitating Clayton said, "Concur." Then he added, "Good luck, sir." Jeffrey aimed toward Ilse and the shark.
* * *
Ilse felt a sudden turbulence, as if something had rushed right past her through the water. Then it returned and there was a sharp thwack against her legs. She was nearer to the surface now. Above her was burning fuel. She caught a glimpse of her assailant in silhouette. Ilse's blood ran cold. It was the largest great white she had ever seen, almost eight meters long. It had to weigh two metric tons, ten times her weight and her SDV combined.
She caught another glimpse. It was coming back.
* * *
Jeffrey drove his SDV between Ilse and the shark, hoping to repel it with his electric field. It had no visible effect. He switched the SharkPOD off and on again, then checked the status readout. It was functional, but the shark was too maddened by the A-bomb blast to notice or to care.
Through an eyehole Jeffrey saw the shark bite off one of Ilse's bowplane flippers, then spit it out.
* * *
Ilse felt a tug and heard a snap. It thinks I'm a dead dolphin, she realized. It's begun to feed. It won't be satisfied with just a fin or fluke. Its teeth are sharp enough to get through Kevlar.
* * *
Jeffrey told himself to think like Ilse would, think like a dolphin and a shark. From some long-forgotten nature show his brain screamed that bottlenoses sometimes fought great whites and drove them off, to protect their young, for example. How, dammit? They rammed them with their snouts.
Jeffrey turned as tightly as he could, built up momentum, and aimed for the shark. It easily avoided him, then returned to its main meal.
Jeffrey tried again while the shark was distracted, and butted it violently in the side. The shark turned and lashed at him. Through the murky light provided by the flaming avgas Jeffrey saw its mouth gape open. He twisted sideways just in time. He went for separation and altitude, going dangerously near the radioactive surface. He vented ballast and dived at the great white at top speed. He crashed into its midriff and then he fell away, badly stunned. The shark batted him with its tail and once again went for its prey, Ilse.
This isn't working, Jeffrey told himself. One good chomp and he'll crush her bones, rupture her internal organs, and wreck her Draeger. Then he'll taste her blood. There's only one thing left to do.
Jeffrey glanced at his depth gauge. Thirty or forty feet, fluctuating wildly with the surf. Too deep. He set his SDV to hover. He reached for his equipment bag. He unclipped the belly of the dolphin and bailed out.
He set the SDV to bottom and watched it sink. God knows what's drifting down around me, he told himself. Good thing I'm in a scuba, with m
ask and wet suit. At least the radioactive iodine and cesium will tend to float.
Jeffrey swam toward the surface with the equipment bag, close enough for the shark to notice. He flailed intentionally. Come on, you hungry bastard, come for me. The war's conditioned you that big explosions mean raw meat? That battles mean good eating, tasty human flesh? Then come and get it.
The shark seemed to read Jeffrey's mind. It went right for him, swimming closer toward the surface. Jeffrey pulled the pistol from his bag.
I can't fire submerged. Water in the barrel will make it blow up in my hand. But the barrel plug is in. Jeffrey glanced at his dive data. Twenty feet, more or less. His pulse had topped 160. He switched his pistol off of safe to fire. The red diode glowed. The round-count readout said he had an armor-piercing bullet in the chamber. He prayed he wouldn't have a misfire — the only way to clear it was to first eject the clip. The shark started its attack, turning sideways to lunge for Jeffrey with its jaws wide open. At the last possible moment Jeffrey pushed the pistol into the shark's left eye, barrel plug and all, levered his torso away from its mouth, and squeezed the trigger.
* * *
Ilse was desperate to know what was happening. She twisted her body to try to turn the dolphin but that didn't help. Then she watched something approach her from above — the shark, going wild. It disappeared from view and she saw something else through her eyehole. A human hand. The fuel above her was still flickering, and it looked like there were clouds of blood in the water.
Something knocked on the SDV. Ilse screeched inside her mouthpiece. Then she realized it was Jeffrey. They worked the clips to release her from the dolphin. They were close enough to speak directly through the water, shouting inside their mouthpieces. Jeffrey told her he was okay, then made sure she was all right too. He reached inside her SDV with his titanium dive knife. He pierced the ballast bladders and the vehicle started to sink. Jeffrey and Ilse held onto it together, riding toward the bottom, their cyalume hoops glowing side by side.
