Cyborg 01 - Cyborg

by Martin Caidin

  It was storming out there now, the thunder crashing in the sky, roaring in his ears, and he could hear the rain beating down, hissing against the sky, hissing against the ground, and his right leg dropped into a deep hole and twisted savagely and he felt or heard something rip, tear itself loose from something else. It didn’t matter, the rain, he was falling face first into that wet ground, and the dry sand came up and smashed into his face.

  He lay there, stunned, unbelieving. Dry . . . the sand is dry . . . then what . . . what’s that rain . . . that noise?

  There was no liquid for tears or spit or anything, and he choked on sand and tried to spit, but he sounded like a frog, coughing, and he tasted something, a blood taste. He managed to get his arms free of the webbing straps and crawled out from beneath the weight of Tamara’s still form. He lifted himself up on his elbow and stared with his one eye into the dark night above, where strange ghost shapes danced. Now he heard again that roaring-hissing-thunder sound. He knew what it was. Turbines. Turbines and helicopter blades. Jet choppers. Had to be Israeli, this close to Israel. He yelled. No sound came from his mouth, only a spray of sand. There was still a spark left in his mind.

  He reached into his left wrist, where his fingers fumbled with the spheres. He was on his knees, twisting with club-thick fingers at the small sphere. There, he’d done it, and with his left arm, that once-hated bionics limb, he threw it as high as it would go.

  The flare burst like a star through the dark desert night.

  Again. Another sphere, twist, throw!

  The dazzling light exploded silently.

  He reached for the third, but he was blinded from the light stabbing down from above into his eye. There was nothing left to do. He was inert, frozen, a statue of what had been a man, a blinded statue on his knees. Which was how the helicopter crews found him, frozen on his knees, conscious but his mind blanked out, his left arm extended, and the girl unconscious in the webbing, sprawled on the sand behind him.

  “How are they, Doctor?”

  Dr. Rudy Wells looked up from his seat between the hospital beds at Major Mietek Chuen. “They’re going to make it,” Wells said. “The human body is a marvelous organism. They were literally more dead than alive, but they’re both,” he smiled, “rather splendid human beings.”

  “Incredible,” said the major.

  “Yes,” the doctor agreed, there being nothing more to say. One does not enlarge on a miracle.

  Chuen shifted his feet uncomfortably, not wanting to intrude further. But Wells deserved to know. He could tell Steve and Tamara later. “The films are excellent.” Chuen told him. “Proof that the Russians have brought nuclear weapons into what is, in effect, Egyptian territory. By flying out that airplane, Steve also made it clear they were on alert status. Israel, backed by your government, has already warned Moscow to remove immediately every nuclear device. There’s no question they’ll comply. We still don’t know about the special qualities of their MiG-27. Next time . . .”

  Wells didn’t give a damn.

  He turned from the major to study first Steve’s face, then Tamara’s. He wanted to know what had happened out there in the desert. He suspected, though, that he already knew what was really important.

  These two had found one another.

  And Steve Austin had found himself.