Go! Wyungare thought at the gator. Food, you’ll get food at the other end of that passage. He hated to lie, but this was a time of extreme measures. The reptile grumbled. Go! he thought again. Good food! He realized he didn’t need to sell the concept of food — merely establish the possibility to the alligator’s satisfaction.
The alligator abruptly turned and struck for the passageway. He moved faster than Wyungare had believed possible. The reptilian hiss dwindled and died in the passage.
Wyungare trotted to where the other prisoners waited. He realized that Mistral’s appearance hadn’t accurately reflected the woman’s degree of injury. As Mistral drew in her breath and winced, Wyungare discovered that he could feel at least two major breaks in her lower arm. Maybe more, he thought. This is just the top of the iceberg. He said nothing aloud.
Nothing.
“I think she’s hurt pretty bad,” Detroit Steel volunteered.
Wyungare nodded.
“We can carry her,” said Reflector, “if you can guide us out of here.”
Wyungare weighed the possibilities. He stared at the passage into which Jack had waddled in alligator form. It looked to be the only way out.
The towers of the Verrazano Bridge were vague shapes in the mist as the Turtle moved through the Narrows. This far south, the fog was starting to thin out. He didn’t like that one bit. Down by Sandy Hook, he’d have no concealment.
“Hurry!” Danny urged from atop the shell.
“LISTEN,” Tom said, “I’M GOING TO DROP YOU OFF ON THE BRIDGE. ONE OF YOUR SISTERS CAN SEND A CHOPPER TO PICK YOU UP.”
“There’s no time,” she told him.
“YES THERE IS. THAT’S A BATTLESHIP. EIGHTEEN-INCH GUNS. SAME KIND OF ARMOR PLATE I’VE GOT. THOUSANDS OF ARMED MEN, CRUISE MISSILES, MACHINE GUNS, RADAR. IT SURVIVED WORLD WAR II, IT CAN SURVIVE MODMAN AND MISTRAL.”
“You need me,” Danny said. “I know where I am. I can take you to me. You’ll never find me without me.”
“I’M DROPPING YOU OFF. YOU’RE TOO EXPOSED UP THERE.”
“Then let me inside.”
The shell moved over the suspension cables, settled toward the wide span of the roadway. There was no traffic visible anywhere. “I DON’T LET PEOPLE INSIDE.” He looked up at her on close-up. Her face had gone white. “WHAT’S WRONG? WHAT’S HAPPENED?”
She could barely speak. “The ship… my God… they blew up the ship!” She bit back a scream.
The Turtle hovered ten feet over the bridge, unmoving, as Tom hesitated. A battleship, he thought. They blew up a fucking battleship! All around him, the fog was being torn into ribbons by rising winds. A storm to the south… Mistral…
Tom took a deep breath and punched a combination into his control panel. There was a hiss of escaping air as the hatch unsealed. “INSIDE,” he said “AND CLOSE THE DOOR BEHIND YOU.”
Bloat’s underground playground was quiet as Ray and the others made their way back through it. The traps had already been sprung, the guards disposed of, and Bloat now had other things to occupy his mind. Still, every now and then everyone had to grab the nearest wall while the ground jumped and they shook like pork chops in the bottom of a Shake ’n Bake bag.
Maybe the big guns on the New Jersey had slowed down while the army was trying a second assault. Good thing too, because soon they’d reach the stone arch over the lava river and that sucker didn’t have a guardrail. Ray wasn’t afraid of heights but he had no desire to be halfway across that narrow ribbon of rock when another one of those bombs hit and started everything bouncing and shaking —
There was a scream from the group behind him. It was Danny voicing a wail of fear and denial that echoed weirdly in the confined corridor.
“What is it?” Ray asked.
Danny was staring inward, a look of disbelief on her face. “The New Jersey,” she said in a choked whisper. “They blew it up.”
“Shit,” Ray said, and even Battle looked perturbed.
“Is your sister all right?” Ray asked.
“She’s on part of the ship still above water,” Danny said. “The Turtle is on his way —”
Ray wondered what would happen to Danny if one of her so-called sisters died. But for once he had the sense to keep his mouth shut.
Every screen was full of death.
“God,” Danny whispered from the floor beside him.
The whole stern section of the New Jersey was gone. What was left of her had started to settle. Smoke and steam rose hissing from the twisted steel amidships as the seawater poured in.
Tom kept his eyes on the screens, but it was hard to focus. He could feel Danny pressed up against his leg. There wasn’t much room inside the shell. He was acutely, awkwardly aware of her, the warmth of her skin against him, the smell of her shampoo. Only last month, he had let Dr. Tachyon inside the shell. Tachyon had been stuck in a pregnant female body at the time, courtesy of the jumpers and his grandson Blaise, and he spent most of his time alternately shouting orders and recoiling hysterically every time Tom brushed against him. Her. That had been pretty weird, but she had still been Tach, and Tom had known Tach for a long, long time. It was different with Danny. She was almost a stranger. Not to mention being a woman. A real woman. All the way through.
A dozen small tornadoes danced around the New Jersey, howling, smashing into her armored sides like slam-dancers. Tom scanned his screens, searching for Mistral. She was easy to spot. She floated a hundred feet above the wreck, her huge white cape filled with wind, all her attention on the New Jersey as she choreographed her slam-dance for cyclones and waterspouts. “There’s the wind bitch,” Tom said. “So where’s the fucking android?”
Charred bodies floated on the whitecaps, bobbing up and down. A few sailors were still struggling in the water, trying to swim, vanishing as huge waves broke over their heads and pulled them down. The rest of the Task Force was fighting its way toward the sinking battleship. The steady chatter of machine guns and the pounding of antiaircraft fire mingled with the banshee roar of Mistral’s winds.
“Do something,” Danny urged. “You have to help them.”
Tom felt sick and helpless. His insides had gone weak with fear. There was nothing he could do for the men who were dead or dying. Once, several lifetimes ago, the Turtle had actually lifted the New Jersey with his teke. He’d got it clear out of the water, and held it up for almost thirty seconds with the power of his mind. Maybe he could keep her afloat for a little while. But not while she was under attack. That was suicide.
“We got to know what the fuck we’re up against,” he said. “Where’s Modular Man? Who blew up the fucking ship?”
His shell was hovering hundreds of feet above the battle. The New Jersey had looked like a toy in a bathtub before he’d zoomed in on it. There was no fog here, almost twenty miles from the Rox. Tom had put the afternoon sun behind him, a trick he remembered from the comics he’d read as a kid. Jetboy always came at them from out of the sun.
“There,” Danny said, pointing. “That light.”
Tom saw it too. A glowing red streak darting back and forth across the deck of the sinking ship, too fast to follow. "Pulse,” he said grimly. “Shit.” There was nothing he could do against Pulse, and Mistral had already kicked his ass once today. “I don’t like these odds,” he told Danny.
“The ship can’t take much more of this battering,” Danny said. “They can’t even use the lifeboats. The storm will smash them. Do something!”