Checkmate

17

An hour after the sun dropped below the horizon, Fisher left his hotel and took a taxi to Dubai’s nightclub district, where he got out and strolled around until certain he hadn’t been followed. Then, following his mental map, he walked two blocks west to the shore. A quick check with his mini-NV monocular showed no one on the beach. He walked to the tide line.

To his left, a mile away, the Burj al Arab was ablaze, lit from within by amber light and from without by strategically placed green floodlights shining up against the snow-white exterior. As designed, it looked like the massive, glowing sail of a clipper ship resting on the ocean’s surface. On the rooftop, Fisher could see ant-sized tennis players scurring back and forth under the glare of stadium lights. The sky was clear, but the stars were dulled by the pollution of nearby refineries and wells.

He checked his watch’s built-in GPS readout: He was where he needed to be.

He took a final look around, then sprinted ahead, and dove into an oncoming wave.

Following the GPS, he reached the correct spot after only a few minutes’ swimming. He took a breath, flipped himself into a pike dive, and kicked to the bottom. The coordinates were dead on. As he neared the bottom, a pulsing red strobe emerged from the gloom. He reached out. His hand touched rubber.

He stipped off his civilian clothes, under which he was wearing his tac-suit, then, working from feel alone, he unzipped the duffel and found the rebreather’s face mask. He placed it over his face and tightened the straps until he felt it seal on his skin, then pressed the bleed valve and blew out a lungful of air, clearing the mask. He sucked in a breath. He heard a hiss, which was quickly followed by a bitter taste on his tongue as the rebreather’s chemical scrubber started working. He felt the flow of cool oxygen entering his mouth.

Next came the rebreather’s harness, his fins, and weight belt. Finally, he strapped the OPSAT to his wrist, the pistol to his leg, and slid the SC-20 into its back-holster.

He clicked on his face mask’s task light, and was surrounded by a bubble of soft red light. He clicked it off, then keyed his subdermal. “Comm check.”

“Read you loud and clear, Sam,” said Grimsdottir.

“Heading to insertion point.”

After twenty minutes, Fisher’s first indication he was nearing his target was the sound — a distant roar and a low-frequency rumble in his belly. He checked the OPSAT’s readout: four hundred yards to go.

Having ruled out an airdrop, Fisher had chosen what he felt was the Burj al Arab’s most vulnerable point: its water supply. Rather than rely on the mainland for fresh water, the Burj al Arab’s architects had equipped the hotel with its own desalinization and pump stations, which were supplied by massive, propeller-driven intake ducts, two of them embedded in the island’s concrete foundation. According the schematics, each duct was as big around as a bus and driven by propellers worthy of a battleship. Working together, the intakes fed enough salt water into the desalinization/pump stations to supply the guests and staff with fresh drinking and bathing water while maintaining the fire-suppression systems at the same time.

There was a hitch to his plan, however: getting through one of the intake ducts without being chopped into chum. His first hurdle wouldn’t be the propeller blades themselves, but rather the protective mesh screen on their outside. Still, that was little comfort. If he lost control and found himself trapped against the mesh, the force would pull him through like tomato sauce through a sieve.

“I’m a quarter mile out,” he reported.

“Watch yourself,” Lambert said. “Keep an eye on your current gauge. By the time you feel those pumps drawing you in, it’ll be too late.”

“Got it.”

He swam on.

He kept a steady pace and a steady watch on his OPSAT, checking his Distance-To-Target against Speed-Through-Water.

“My speed just increased,” Fisher reported. Still six hundred feet away and the intakes were already creating their own riptide. Fisher felt the prickle of fear on his neck. With each foot he drew closer, the more he would pick up speed.

“Stop kicking,” Grimsdottir ordered.

“Already have.” In the few seconds they’d been talking, his speed had increased to 4.5 mph — on land, a slow jog; in water, a fast clip.

He clicked on his light and looked down. A few feet below his belly, the seabed was rushing by, a dizzying blur of white sand and rocks. At this rate, he’d hit the intake screen at twenty mph. He clicked off his light. Don’t think; just do.

“Grim, anytime you want to shut them down is fine with me.”

“Relax, I’ve run the simulations backwards and fore-wards.”

Fisher checked his OPSAT:

“Hold it… hold it…” Grimsdottir said. “Remember, Sam, I can loop a system casualty for at most seventy-five seconds before the backups kick in. Twenty seconds after that the intakes will be back up to full power.”

“Got it.”

“Hold it… Now! Shutting down!”

Immediately, Fisher heard the roar of the intakes change pitch and begin to wind down. He felt the riptide loosen its grip on his body. The OPSAT readout scrolled down from fifty meters, to thirty, then twenty. His speed dropped past eight mph.

He reached up and switched on his task light.

Suddenly, the mesh screen was there, a massive gridlike wall emerging out of the darkness. Fisher kicked his legs out just in time for his fins to take the brunt of the impact. Still, the draw of the current was strong enough to plaster him face-first against the mesh. Through it, cast in the red glow of his light, the propeller was slowly winding down, each blade a massive scmimitar-shaped shadow.

Fisher let out the breath he’d been holding.

Grimsdottir’s voice: “Sam, you there?”

“I’m here.”

“The clock is ticking. Backups will start coming back on-line in fifty seconds.”

From his waist pouch Fisher withdrew an eight-foot long cord. Nearly identical to the burn-ties he’d used during his penetration of the Newport News shipyard, this cord was coated with a water-resistant adhesive.

He mashed the cord against the mesh in a rough circle, then jammed his thumb into the chemical detonator and backed away. Two seconds passed. The oval-shaped flash of white light lasted eight seconds. When the bubbles cleared, Fisher finned ahead, hand outstretched, and grabbed the severed section of mesh. He gave it a quick jerk and it came free. He tossed it away.

“Time check,” he said.

“Forty seconds.”

He swam through.