The chopper caught him near the old Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Tom had turned off his radio and his external mikes; he didn’t want to hear it, whatever it was. The chopper cut across his flight path, missing him by no more than ten feet.
Idiots, Tom thought furiously. It was one of those little two-man bubble-canopy jobs. At first he thought it was some asshole news crew after an interview. Then he saw Danny, waving at him frantically.
It was a different Danny: the young sex star. Even in fatigues, she managed to look hot. She’d tucked her pants into thigh-high lace-up boots that made her legs look even longer. His Danny had seen where he was going, so they’d scrambled a chopper from Governor’s Island to intercept.
He turned on the speakers. “I DON’T WANT TO TALK TO YOU. TO ANY OF YOU. STOP FOLLOWING ME.” There was no way he could go home with the goddamn chopper on his tail.
The copter came around again. Danny was waving. She looked… frantic. She was screaming something at him. Reluctantly, he reached out, flicked his microphones back on.
Even then it was hard to make out what she was saying over the roar of the rotors. Something about New Jersey…
“WHAT?” he boomed. “I CAN’T HEAR YOU.”
The copter veered closer. Danny cupped one hand around her mouth and screamed at him “… Jersey … under … attack…”
“NEW JERSEY IS UNDER ATTACK?”
Danny shouted something else, but the wind whipped her words away. For a moment Tom didn’t get it. Then it all fell into place. “THE BATTLESHIP,” he blurted.
Danny’s nod was frantic.
The battleship New Jersey was off Sandy Hook, miles and miles beyond Bloat’s farthest reach. If it was under attack…
“…only one left…” Danny shouted.
The only one left. The last ace in the government’s deck. The rest were dead, wounded captured, trashed.
“I QUIT, REMEMBER?”
He couldn’t hear her reply.
Frustrated, Danny turned away for a second, said something to her pilot. The chopper lifted suddenly. Tom had to resist the urge to duck as it came in low over the shell, hovered.
He heard a soft thump as Danny vaulted down onto the top of his shell. Before he could protest, the chopper had peeled away. Danny clung to the torn netting.
“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” he roared.
By then the chopper was well on its way back to Governor’s Island, the sound of its rotors receding. “Turtle, please,” Danny pleaded. “Mistral … Modular Man they’re tearing the ship apart. You have to stop them.”
“WITH YOU ON MY BACK? YOU WANT TO GET KILLED?”
“No,” Danny said, and for the first time Tom heard real fear in her voice. “Turtle, please … I’m on that ship.”
The New Jersey loomed ahead, a steel wall rising from the gray sea. It was three football fields long and its awesome, purposeful architecture made Bloat’s sprawling castle look like something from a child’s playset.
Gusts tugged at Modular Man as Mistral built a whirlwind overhead. Thus far they’d avoided being seen by the dozen or so ships visible in the task force, but that luck couldn’t last.
The windstorm took on shape, purpose. Modular Man sped on ahead, glancing over the superstructure with its array of antennae. There was scarcely a sailor to be seen: nearly everyone had taken shelter beneath the ship’s armor. The android fired a burst of microwave energy at one of the satellite antennae, hoping to overload it. The whirlwind touched the surface of the water and a buzz-saw snarl filled the air.
The three triple turrets fired. A blast of hot gases slammed against the android’s body. One-ton shells howled as they shattered the air.
Modular Man fired at another microwave antenna. The shot seemed pointless and ineffectual.
The funnel cloud, mounting, screamed in off the sea. A burst of lightning filled the air with ozone.
The whirlwind engulfed the ship’s bridge and the towering array of antennae above it. Glass imploded; pieces of metal blew high as if from an explosion. One of the ship’s radars spun away. A panicked sailor ran for the nearest hatch. Antennae were wrenched into pretzel shapes.
The New Jersey continued on course, its way unimpeded. The funnel cloud walked up and down the superstructure, concentrating on the radio and radar towers, then began to disperse.
Modular Man counted radio antennae. He could find none in working order.
He turned, sped away toward Mistral. Sirens wailed from the surrounding ships.
“It’s over,” the android said. “We’ve done our job.”
Fire winked from the battleship’s side. Antiaircraft rounds cracked overhead. Modular Man put on speed, jinked left and right. Mistral danced near the wave-tops as her winds whipped up a screen of concealing spray.
Modular Man put on a burst of speed and left the battleship far behind. He turned and hovered, watched as Mistral jittered away from the bullets and shells that were reaching for her.
The New Jersey blew up.
What surprised Modular Man was that it happened in complete silence. There was a blast of flame that threw the stem turret far into the sky, tumbling, gun barrels waving, and then the irruption of boiling smoke and debris that shot into the air, high above the battleship’s highest towers…
All in silence.
The stern section tilted up and sank in a gush of watery foam, all in less than four seconds. The forward part continued on its course, its momentum too massive to be stopped simply by the event of its own destruction. As it glided forward the bow gradually canted upward until the knifelike cutwater rose into the air. The wake slowly diminished.
The forward part of the ship slowed and just hung there, not quite sinking. Hatches opened and crewmen boiled out.
Mistral/Molly turned, headed for the battleship again. Another whirlwind appeared in the air above the stricken vessel.
Apparently she was going to try to finish it off.
Modular Man remembered sub-munitions falling on Sandy Hook, the screams of the missile battery troops as they died.
It was all so useless. He had no wish to support Mistral in this ridiculous act of slaughter.
Dual-purpose shells began reaching for him. He put on speed for the Rox.
As he looked back he saw something flash brightly among the running crew of the New Jersey. People screamed and fell and died.
Pulse.
Wyungare heard the roar of an angry — or hungry — alligator. He ran down the stone passage, depending on vague shadows in the darkness to warn him against smashing his head against some low overhang.
He rounded a tight elbow in the corridor and stopped behind cover. In the large, flare-lit chamber beyond, he took in the whole picture of it.
In his alligator incarnation, Jack Robicheaux had cornered Wyungare’s prisoner comrades. The two men and the woman were backed into a jagged elbow of tumbled stone. Detroit Steel was in front of the other two, his hands outstretched, palm first, toward the reptile. “Get outta here,” said the big man. “I’ve trolled for bigger than you in Lake Michigan.”
The alligator took another step forward, jaws opening and closing like enormous steel scissors. "Beat it,” said Detroit Steel.
The sensation Wyungare could pick up from Jack’s mind was one of primal hunger. The alligator hadn’t eaten in quite some time. The gator version of Jack possessed no patience. Wyungare glanced on beyond the reptile. They saw the dark shape that suggested a tunnel entrance. It was worth a shot.