Cairns arrested his wild flight by grabbing Coleman’s bent elbow where it looped around the bench leg.
The combined drag of the two bodies began pulling Coleman’s arm from his anchor point. He lowered his head and bit Cairns’s hand savagely. He felt his teeth sink straight through to the bone.
Cairns dropped his grip, sliding five feet down Coleman’s body and wrapping his arm around Coleman’s boots.
Looking down his body, all Coleman could see was Cairns’s profile silhouetted against the column of twisting fire. Cairns was looking back into the fire-helix. Then Cairns started doing something completely unexpected. He dragged the templates up his body. His arm shook at the massive effort it took to pull the templates through the wind.
Coleman had no idea what was going on, but Cairns’s immediate intention seemed plain enough.
He was passing Coleman the templates.
Coleman reached down towards the templates, curling his fingers around the handle as Cairns tore away from his legs.
Cairns slid straight back into the twisting fire helix. Fire outlined his body for a spit second before the twister engulfed him.
As the last of the gas combusted, the firestorm suddenly disappeared. The flaming tornado existed for a moment longer, and then Coleman heard the massive turbines winding down. Either some safety mechanism had kicked in, or the turbines had burned themselves out.
Cairns was a blackened shape, kneeling over the floor vent, his head back and his mouth open like he had inhaled the helix. His skull was a burnt match head. He knelt immobile like a fired clay statue. Coleman couldn’t tell what had been fatigues and what had been skin.
He imagined that if he pushed him over, Cairns would smash.
The internal lab intercom suddenly blared out behind Coleman. It was Vanessa’s voice. ‘Alex! I’m in the administration hub. I’ve reinstated the internal comms and dropped the C-Guards. Is there any message we need to send out? Alex, are you there?’
Coleman remembered the weapon under the Complex, but David was more important. He dashed to the intercom.
‘What about David?’ he demanded. ‘Are the evacuees safe?’
‘They’re safe,’ she said. ‘My plan worked. The creatures are inanimate. I’m going there right now to get him.’
Coleman set aside his relief to focus on his important message. He thought for a bare second and then related his message to Vanessa, hearing her typing out the message in the background. He provided the exact frequency to broadcast the message.
‘Okay,’ confirmed Vanessa. ‘The message is away. Is there anything else?’
‘Yes. How did you disperse the pheromone?’
‘You’ll see.’
And minutes later, when Coleman reached the Quarantine Center, he did.
Vice Admiral Tucker watched the digital countdown on the right hand corner of the Knowledge Wall. It was synchronized to every clock on the ship, and in turn linked to the ship’s weapon systems.
When the neutron weapon detonated under the Biological Solutions Research Complex, Tucker would know the exact moment.
That moment was twenty seconds away.
Captain Boundary paced the room.
Apart from his footsteps, the room was filled with stony silence. Both men found themselves glancing towards the mainland as though they could see through the walls of the Disney Room.
Tucker heard steps, the sound of someone running. His head snapped up as Chief Warrant Officer Daniels burst into the chamber.
Daniels was short of breath, like he’d sprinted all the way. He jerked his hand over the table to Tucker.
‘Sir, a message, sir. From inside the Complex. From Captain Coleman, sir.’
Tucker jumped up and snatched the message.
It was brief.
Templates Secured. Hostile Forces Neutralized. Urgent medical assistance required for civilian and military casualties.
Daniels spoke up urgently, ‘It came in on the right frequency. It’s genuine, sir.’
‘Go!’ yelled Tucker at the Chief Warrant Officer. ‘Shut it down now!’
Tucker checked the countdown as Chief Warrant Officer Daniels sprinted from the room.
The radio signal left the USS Coronado with six seconds left on the synchronized countdown. It was picked up by the concealed antennae in the grassy tussock less than a second later. It sped down the underground line and was manipulated and verified by three repeater stations. It reached its destination with four seconds to spare.
In the cement bunker buried below the Complex, a small red light stopped flashing as the neutron weapon went back to sleep.
Four hours and twenty-three minutes later, two emergency divers broke the surface in an underground pool.
They finned into the cave until their feet touched the sandy bottom.
The lead diver flipped down a small map from her wetsuit and checked their bearings. This is it. This is definitely the right cave.
No lights showed in the cave. It looked pitch black. The lead diver lifted her dive flashlight and panned it over the beach at the back of the cave. She spotted one figure stretched out on the sand.
Just one? We were told there were two in here.
She signaled for the second diver to approach. ‘Fire up the chem-lamp.’
The second diver lifted a large-lensed lamp from under the water. The chemical lamp ignited with a crackling hiss. With the entire cave fully illuminated in every detail, she scanned the beach where it joined the water.
There were foot prints and drag marks. Two sets of foot prints led up the beach, and the same two came down again. There were two parallel drag marks. Partway up, trodden into the sand were the black straps, like two dead snakes, which they had used to drag the injured underwater to this location.
That all made sense.
What didn’t make sense was the extra drag mark that looked like it had come down the beach again.
‘Am I missing something here?’ she asked, turning to the diver with the chem-lamp. ‘I thought —’
The rest of the remark died on her lips.
A huge man held a combat dagger to her diving partner’s throat. The man must have circled around and emerged in the water behind them.
It was pitch black in here! He has no idea who we are. I thought they were supposed to be incapacitated.
The man looked half-dead, but obviously strong enough to use the knife.
‘Sergeant King, right? William King? We’re on your side. We’ve come to get you out of here.’
With that, the big man dropped the knife and passed out.
Forest used the ergonomic bar to pull himself into a sitting position in the hospital bed.
Nice and steady.
He kept his movements slow and controlled. No sudden jerking or he’d be punished with more internal spasms of pain up and down his torso. The doctor said he should upgrade to crutches in three weeks, but Forest aimed for ten days.
The scuba tank had done an efficient job at messing up his insides.
The military hospital was the last place he would choose to spend the previous two weeks, but at least he was getting paid. He knew he shouldn’t be moving at all, but lying back in bed made him crazier than a bucket of bat crap.
There aren’t even any pretty nurses.
He could deal with the pain, but not with the boredom. Flirting with a couple of hot nurses would really take the edge off.
As he bent his body, the new pressure made him need to pee. He glanced at the wheelchair beside the bed. He could put it off a bit longer, maybe half an hour. It hurt like wildfire to pee.