The Edge of Armageddon

CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

Alicia saw Drake make the connection in his head about three seconds after her. Dahl too. The boys were slow, but she’d never tell. It was far better to hold some things in reserve. As the rest caught on and Hayden sought advice from Moore and his government cronies, Alicia took on board the fateful knowledge that the law of safe distances was going to make them all suffer badly sometime in the next half hour. As Drake worked toward appropriating a chopper, Alicia turned her eyes and her attention to something else.

A chopper would crash, she knew that, so the obvious choice of tailing him in another bird didn’t made a jot of sense. But if his helicopter flew at two hundred miles an hour…

Alicia pulled Beau aside, explained her plan and then found a soldier who introduced them to a representative of the US Coastguard.

“What’s the fastest ship you’ve got?”

By the time Drake lifted off, Alicia was heading below decks and jumping aboard a hastily scrambled Defender Class boat, good for over eighty miles per hour. As one of the sheepish crew attested, they had made some modifications, which may or may not have increased the boat’s speed to over one hundred. When Alicia told them in just a few terse words what she wanted to do every man there insisted on staying to help.

The Defender roared away minutes later, pounding at the seas with a rigid hull, trying to narrow that gap between the inevitable detonation and their time of arrival.

As Alicia told them: “We’re racing toward the nuclear explosion, boys. Hold on to yer plums.”

And whether they understood or not, the crew coaxed every ounce of speed from the boat. Riding the waves, challenging them, the Defender class boat gave everything it had. Alicia clung with white knuckles and white face to railings inside the cabin, watching through the windows. A GPS charted the course of the chopper, having plotted its transponder signal. The ship’s crew constantly worked out the time differences, saying they had narrowed the gap to twenty minutes then eighteen.

Seventeen.

Still too long. Alicia gripped the rail and then started when Beau seized her shoulder.

“It will work,” he said. “We will save this day.”

The boat raced hard, pursuing the speeding chopper, both of them bizarrely chasing an oncoming explosion that hadn’t happened yet. The horizon was an ever-changing line, never straight. The crew sweated and struggled and plumbed the depths of their knowledge. The boat edged into unknown territory, engines so virile they felt alive.

When the captain turned to Alicia, she had already seen the spiraling cloud on the horizon, not too far distant, but much further away than Drake and Dahl’s helicopter. The speeding Defender zipped off the top of one large surge of water, saw and struck the approaching blast wave, and broke through, shuddering every bolt that held fast its structure. The great ring of white water was visible in the distance, the spectacle stopping even Alicia’s runaway mouth for a second.

But only for a second.

“Move,” she breathed, conscious of Drake and Dahl now almost certainly crashing into hostile waters. “Move, move, move!”

It took another thirteen minutes to reach the crash site. Alicia was ready, life vest strapped around her body and another held in her hand. Beau was at her side with more than half a dozen crewmen, eyes searching the waters. The first debris they found was a floating piece of rotor blade, the second a full length skid. After that those parts that hadn’t sunk came more frequently, passing by in a clump.

But no Drake, and no Dahl.

Alicia scanned the waves, standing in the bright sunshine but living in the darkest hell. If the fates determined that these two heroes could save New York and survive the explosion, only to be lost in the Atlantic, she was not sure she’d be able to handle that. Minutes passed. Wreckage floated by. Nobody spoke, nor moved an inch. They would remain until nightfall if need be.

The radio crackled constantly. Hayden’s voice, enquiring. Then Moore’s and Smyth’s on a different line. Even Kenzie spoke up. The moments passed in slow-motion turmoil, burgeoning dread. The longer it took…

Beau rose onto his tiptoes, catching sight of something just rising up the side of a swell. He pointed it out and voiced a question. Alicia then saw it too, an odd black mass, moving sluggishly.

“If that’s a Kraken,” she mostly whispered without realizing she’d even spoken. “I’m outta here.”

The captain leaned the boat in that direction, helping the form gain focus. It took a few minutes and a little drifting, but as Alicia squinted she saw that it was two bodies, lashed together so that they wouldn’t float apart, and tied to the still-floating pilot’s seat. The battle between treading water and sinking seemed to be tilting toward the latter, so Alicia urged the Defender to hurry.

And jumped overboard.

Swimming hard, she grasped hold of the bobbing mass and heaved it around, trying to make sense of it. A face swiveled around.

“Dahl. Are you all right? Where’s Drake?”

“Hanging on to my coat tails. As always.”

As the current shifted Dahl around in the water a second face became visible, resting against the back of the other’s jacket.

“Well, you two look bloody comfy together,” Alicia mock-protested. “No wonder you didn’t shout out for rescue. Shall we give you another ten minutes or so?”

Drake’s shaking hand rose from the waters. “Not even one. I think I swallowed half the bloody ocean.”

“And I think we’re about to go under,” Dahl gasped a moment before the pilot’s seat drifted away and his head disappeared below the waters.

The Coastguard boat came as close as it dared. “Are they okay?” voices hollered.

Alicia waved. “They’re fine. Bastards are just messing about.”

Then Drake slipped under too.

“Umm,” Alicia stared. “Actually…”