Chapter 40

?le de l’Est

Joe gazed through a set of night vision goggles as he piloted the helicopter across the water just ten feet above the tips of the passing waves. He was locked in and focused. He made sure to keep his eyes moving and not get hypnotized by the continuous rush of wave tops rushing by.

Out in the distance he could see the outline of East Island jutting up from the sea. It was a black curtain against a backdrop of a sky filled with stars.

Kurt was in the back of the helicopter, riding with the door open while looking through a similar set of goggles. He leaned down and checked a pair of heavy-duty straps that ran across the inside of the helicopter and out through both side doors. The belts were straining under the load they carried, a ribbed inflatable raft strapped to the bottom of the helicopter that was being pulled and buffeted by the wind.

With no way to land on the island and escape detection, the plan was to get within two miles of the shore, drop the boat in the water, and then ditch the helicopter beside it. Once they were in the boat, they could paddle their way in.

As he moved about the cabin, Kurt was careful not to trip over the quick-release buckles that would jettison the sturdy little craft. Two miles of rowing wouldn’t be that bad. Ten would be a marathon.

Kurt stepped to the open door, leaned his head out, and looked toward the island just as Joe was doing up front. The two men, who usually joked and laughed as they approached danger, were quiet and serious tonight. The disappearance of the Isabella weighed on both of their minds. Kurt figured they needed to break that up.

“How’re you feeling up there?” Kurt asked over the intercom.

“Like ‘Flight of the Valkyries’ is blasting over the headset,” Joe replied. “How about you?”

“Ready to find this guy Vaughn and sort him out,” Kurt said. “What’s our ETA?”

“We’re ten miles out,” Joe called over the intercom. “Might want to start stretching your legs.”

“Did I miss the in-flight meal?”

“It was that granola bar I gave you before we took off,” Joe said.

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“You think Five is going to be all right back on the ship?” Joe asked.

“Are you kidding me?” Kurt replied. “He has two mother bear/she-wolves protecting him. By the time we get back, he’ll be spoiled rotten.”

They couldn’t have gotten luckier than to have Captain Livorno and Dr. Pascal close by. Both women had taken a protective interest in their new charge, with Captain Livorno extending an official ruling of sanctuary over him in the logbook and Dr. Pascal searching for any and all laws she could find that might protect the rights of clones. They promised Kurt they would not leave international waters until they’d figured out how best to safeguard his rights.

“I hope you’re right,” Joe said.

“And I hope we’re in that coverage gap,” Kurt said. “I’d hate to find out this was the one time Max was wrong.”

“Since when do you doubt Max’s judgment?”

“Let me put it to you this way,” Kurt said. “Vaughn has a supercomputer just like Max. Assuming his computer isn’t directionally challenged, it should be able to tell in one millisecond whether the radar sweeps overlap correctly.”

“Yeah,” Joe said, not liking where this was heading. “And…”

“And the idea that Vaughn would leave them arranged in a way that creates a blind spot makes little sense.”

Joe hesitated. “What are you saying?”

“Maybe Vaughn did make a mistake,” Kurt suggested. “Or maybe it’s a trap. This course we’re holding has us running in a dead-straight line that allows almost no maneuvering to either side. It’s got us pinned against the deck.”

Joe shook his head at the idea, and then quickly remembered that wasn’t a good thing to do with night vision gear on. “These are the kind of things I need you to tell me before we take off. Do you think they could be tracking us?”

“Not tracking us,” Kurt said. “Otherwise you’d be getting pings on that radar detector of yours.”

Before they left, Joe had built a makeshift radar detector out of spare parts from the ship’s stores. It would light up if any of the known bands of radar used to target missiles swept across the helicopter. So far it had remained dark. Joe hoped it was working.

“So if they’re not tracking us, what are you worried about?”

“Good old human eyeballs,” Kurt said. “By making it seem like this is a free path to the island, they create a likely approach point, and one that can easily be watched over by men or women with those knockoff Stinger missiles.”

“Tell me you have a countermeasure for this possibility in your stash of backpacks?”

Kurt had spent the last two hours aboard the Akeso gathering items from all over the ship. He’d been to the radio room, the mess hall, and one of the lifeboat muster stations. Joe had watched him squirreling things away in a number of backpacks, which he labeled and loaded one by one. The assortment was odd, and Joe had given up guessing what Kurt was up to, instead focusing on his own duties. Now he hoped Kurt had somehow been one step ahead of the two computers.

“We’ll see in a moment,” Kurt said. “Our Stingers have a range of five miles. If the Chinese version is similar, I would expect the fireworks to begin any moment.”

“Great,” Joe said. “Maybe we should ditch now.”

“If they’re watching, they’ve seen us already,” Kurt said. “In that case, we might as well let them shoot us down.”

“That’s the worst pep talk ever,” Joe said. “But I get what you’re saying.”

Kurt laughed and moved to the edge of the cabin, dragging one of the backpacks with him and setting it down in front of him. He opened the top, revealing a pair of flare guns taken from the lifeboat station.

He dropped to one knee, pulled the flare guns from the pack, and made sure they were set to use. With one in his hand and one beside him, he grabbed a handhold and looked out the door.

The island remained dark and quiet. Somewhere up there was a cave through which Five and his brothers had escaped with the help of someone who’d placed a boat there for them.

Not someone , he reminded himself. The Gray Witch. He wondered who she was and what she had to do with Vaughn. And for that matter, how she knew so much about NUMA.

More important, he wondered how, on an island covered with surveillance cameras, swarmed over by drones, and patrolled by men with dogs, she’d managed to remain hidden.

A pinpoint of light flared in one corner of the island, breaking Kurt’s train of thought. The streak brightened and elongated, its effect magnified by the night vision goggles.

“Missile launch,” Joe called out.

Kurt locked in on what looked like a streaking ball of fire coming their way. They were five miles out. Considering the acceleration phase of the rocket, they might have ten seconds before it hit.

“I hate being right,” Kurt said.

“No you don’t,” Joe shot back. Kurt grabbed the second flare gun, aimed both of them out the door, and pulled the triggers simultaneously. “Hard over,” he called out.

Joe was already turning and adding power.

Kurt held tight, watching as the approaching missile veered off to the left, chasing the flares. A flash lit the night as its proximity fuse went off. Two seconds later Kurt heard and felt the concussion wave.

The flash of light lit up the sky. Darkness swept back in a moment later.

“How many more of those do you have?” Joe asked.

“Not enough.”

Joe was flying at an angle to the coastline, taking them away from where the missile had been launched and hopefully pulling them out of range. The problem with that was it took them out of the radar-free corridor.

The makeshift radar detector Joe had rigged up began flashing in multiple colors. “I knew it would work,” Joe cried out proudly. “We’ve been painted.”

“Perfect,” Kurt said. “Turn us around and make it look like we’re trying to double back and get away.”

Joe brought the helicopter around, unbuckling his safety harness and flying an S-shaped path as if trying to avoid being targeted. Kurt reloaded the flare guns, slid backpack number two toward the door, and pulled a backpack with a number 3 on it over his shoulders. With the island now behind them, he looked aft. “Any second now.”

Joe was watching the radar detector flash. A dark red color told him it was a tracking radar from a missile. “Missile incoming. Radar-guided.”

Time for them to play their hand, Kurt thought. He heaved backpack number two up and tossed it forward, pulling it open as it went out the door. Thousands of little strips of aluminum foil that he had painstakingly cut by hand in the Akeso ’s commissary swirled out in all directions. The downwash from the helicopter blades buffeted them about, turning them into a storm of metal confetti. If they were working as he hoped, they’d now put a large and growing cloud on the screen where the helicopter had been.

That would hide them from anyone back on the island, but the tracking radar from the Turkish missile was another problem. “Still coming,” Joe said. “Time to jump.”

Kurt kicked the buckles open and watched the straps snake through the cabin and out the open doors. With the boat dropping and the chaff swirling behind them, he fired off another flare and stepped out through the side door, dropping into the darkness.

Up in the cockpit, Joe had already pushed the cockpit door open and forced his way through. He dove headfirst away from the helicopter and down.

Joe hit the water with his fists balled in front of his head like Superman in full flight. They broke the surface tension and limited the impact to his head, though it was still strong enough to rip the night vision goggles off.

He plunged into the darkness and silence, feeling the water slow his descent and arching his body upward to use some of the momentum to take him back toward the surface.

As he came up, a spectral flare of orange light flickered through the water from the sky above. The Sky Shriek missile had found the helicopter through the cloud of chaff and turned it into a fireball.

A sudden wave of bubbles racing through the water accompanied the concussion wave that followed.

Joe broke the surface in time to see the flaming helicopter crash into the sea like a meteor from the depths of space. A secondary explosion flashed and boomed as the fuel tanks ruptured and spread kerosene across half an acre of the sea.

The wreckage remained afloat for the moment, burning brightly and releasing billowing clouds of oily, black smoke. Then it rolled over, as helicopters ditched in the sea often did, pulled down by the weight of the engines and other equipment concentrated at the top of the craft.

Joe turned away from it, using the remaining firelight to spot the inflatable raft Kurt had dropped moments before the impact. He swam toward it, reaching it at nearly the same moment Kurt did.

They climbed in without a word, pulled a pair of long-handled paddles from their straps, and dug in. They moved west with the current for a long five minutes, remaining out beyond the wreckage and the slowly dampening flames.

“You think they can see us out here?” Joe asked.

Kurt thought they would be safe for the moment. “As long as the fire burns, we should be hard to spot, either in visible light or infrared. But after that, it’s a legitimate concern. So let’s put as much water between us and the wreck as possible before turning inbound. If anyone does look for survivors, they’ll concentrate their search where the copter hit water.”

Joe thought that sounded immensely reasonable and dug in harder with each stroke. With the current helping them, they were soon nearly a mile west of the wreck site. Here they turned toward the beach.

Neither man said a word as they expended every ounce of energy on the task at hand. But even as they remained quiet, the rumbling sound of a diesel-powered boat chugging its way from around the bend of the island arose.

“How close is it?” Joe asked.

Kurt couldn’t tell, but he knew they were getting close to the shore, because the sound of the breakers rolling onto the sand was growing with every stroke. “No idea, but we’re not far from the beach. Put your back into it.”

Joe dug in ever harder, leaning forward, thrusting the paddle deep and pulling it back along the side of the boat with everything he had. Behind him, Kurt was doing the same. The small boat cruised toward the surf, white foam now visibly shimmering in the starlight. The sound of the throbbing diesel grew louder until it was echoing off the rocks above the beach.

With their muscles burning and hands blistering, they pressed on. A small wave kicked them forward as it raced underneath. The backwash tried to steal that progress by dragging them out. Kurt jammed his oar into a wedge of volcanic rock to keep them from being pulled back to sea.

Another wave came through and Kurt shoved off, pushing them forward. Beside him, Joe dug in deep and hard. The small boat surged ahead, sweeping past the rocks and riding the crest of the wave all the way up onto the beach of black sand.

Jumping over the side Kurt pulled the inflatable across the sand as the water receded.

Joe tossed his paddle into the center of the boat and joined Kurt. Working together they dragged the boat up toward an outcropping of lava in the shape of a giant anvil. Ducking in behind it they dropped to the sand just as the patrol boat appeared around the point.

“Patrol boat is thirty minutes early,” Joe said. “I thought they were on a strict schedule?”

“Our arrival must have shaken things up,” Kurt replied.

A spotlight on the foredeck swung out across the water. A second light was already aimed out to sea. It passed by and made its way toward deeper water. It was heading for the wreck site.

“Well, you were right,” Joe said through deep breaths. “The radar blind spot was a trap. Fortunately, you were also right when you guessed that the people who shot us down would search the wreckage instead of guessing that we’d crashed the helicopter on purpose as a diversion.”

Kurt’s face sported a wry smile that Joe couldn’t see in the dark. “Me being right twice in one day shouldn’t astound you so much. My real concern is why Max got it wrong. She should have at least assigned a probability to the idea of a trap. But she didn’t.”

“What are you saying?”

“We have to at least consider the possibility that Max has been hacked, too.”

Joe shook his head. “Yaeger insists she’s unhackable.”

“And the Titanic was unsinkable,” Kurt replied. “Things happen.”

Joe sighed. “Either way, not much we can do about it now.”

Kurt nodded, his eyes tracking the patrol boat as it continued to move off. A small feeling of relief crept into his shoulders. Tired and tense muscles relaxing after so much labor. Then a new sound reached his ears, the yelping and barking of dogs coming from farther down the beach.