He stared upward along the sloping face as the major tilted one of the lights. An elongated snaking path led up and away from them.
“Can this be true?” Major Edo mumbled to himself. “Can this be happening?”
“I swear to you,” Joe said, “we’re in danger. The whole valley is in danger.”
The major continued to stare as if in shock. “But this is not that much,” he said.
“It’ll get worse,” Joe insisted, still looking up. “Can you see where it’s coming from?”
The major manipulated the spotlights to follow the path of the trickling water, but the trail disappeared where the lights faded.
“No,” the major said, all airs of superiority gone.
“You need to get a warning out,” Joe urged. “Get everyone away from the river.”
“It will cause a panic,” the major said. “What if you’re wrong?”
“I’m not.”
The major was paralyzed. He didn’t seem able to act.
“Unchain me,” Joe shouted. “I’ll help you look. Once we find the source, maybe we can do something about it, but at least you’ll know for sure.”
All the time they waited, the flow increased steadily. Two spigots’ worth now, turned wide open.
“Please, Major.”
The major snapped out of it. He grabbed the keys from one of the guards, unlocked Joe’s cuffs first and then the shackles around his feet.
“Come with me,” the major said, grabbing a walkie-talkie.
Joe climbed off the boat and onto the angled surface of the dam. He ran alongside the major, clambering upward and following the trail of water.
The slope of Aswan is only thirteen degrees, relatively mild unless one is running up it at full speed. After covering seven hundred feet horizontally and ninety-one feet vertically, the major was winded, and they still hadn’t found the breach.
“The flow is getting worse,” he said, pausing near the stream.
Joe saw fine sand and other sediments in the flow. The scouring had begun already.
“We have to go higher,” Joe said.
The major nodded, and they resumed their climb. By the time they were within fifty feet of the top, the flow of water was a six-foot-wide stream, surging with foam and small rocks. Suddenly, a section of the wall gave way and the flow doubled instantly, rushing toward them.
“Look out,” Joe shouted, pulling the major aside.
He and Joe backed away from the flow. There could be no denying it now.
The major brought the radio to his mouth and keyed the talk switch.
“This is Major Edo,” he said. “I report a level 1 emergency. Sound all alarms and begin a full evacuation. The dam has been compromised.”
Something unintelligible came back through the radio, and the major responded instantly. “No, this isn’t a drill or a false alarm! The dam is in danger! I repeat: The dam is in danger of imminent collapse!”
Another small section of the upper rim gave way, and the foaming water poured down the slope in turbulent fashion. If anyone doubted the major’s warning, all they had to do was look out the window and see for themselves.
In the distance the sound of alarms rose forth in the dark. They sounded like air-raid sirens wailing.
Down below, the patrol boat raced off to the south.
“Cowards!” the major yelled.
Joe couldn’t honestly blame them, but it left him and the major in a bad predicament. The dam began to tremble underfoot. The structure might have been massive and the breach only fifteen feet wide at the moment, but Joe and the major were far too close for it to be safe.
“Come on,” Joe said, grabbing the major by the shoulder and racing toward the crest of the dam. “We have to get to the top, it’s our only chance.”
CHAPTER 51
THE SAME DARKNESS THAT RULED OVER EGYPT HAD ALREADY settled across the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, with one minor difference. The skies had cleared over Egypt but were clouding up over the ocean. Enough so, that two hours before dawn Kurt Austin could no longer see the stars.
That concerned him more than usual as he was standing on a fifteen-foot raft in the middle of the sea, navigating with a seventy-year-old sextant and a set of yellowed, moth-eaten charts left over from World War Two.
The boat was an outrigger-style craft. It resembled a cross between the famous Kon-Tiki raft and a Hawaiian five-man canoe. It had a raised bow, a wider central section and a squared-off stern. Its propulsion came from oars or, more preferably, a strange-looking triangular sail known as a crab claw that stuck out to one side.
The crab claw was an ancient sail, used for over a thousand years and very effective at propelling small boats without being ungainly. Ahead of it Kurt’s addition to the raft billowed in a ten-foot arc. The more modern-looking sail was a makeshift version of a spinnaker. It acted something like a wing and allowed the raft to sail closer to the wind.
Behind him, four similar rafts followed them. A flotilla from Pickett’s Island.
The plan was to sneak aboard and take over the floating island. With eighteen men plus Leilani and himself, five of the Pain Makers and forty rifles—the extras being brought along to arm the prisoners Kurt hoped to set free—it would almost be a fair fight, providing Kurt could lead them to the battleground.
He lowered the sextant.
“Any luck?” Leilani asked.
“No,” he said. “We’re sailing blind.”
Kurt stepped back from the bow and put the sextant away. He turned to Tautog. “Let’s stay on this heading for now.”
Tautog nodded. He and his nephew Varu were guiding the boat.
The fleet had been sailing for five hours. They’d been making good time because the winds had reversed direction, the way sea and land breezes alternated as day turned to night on the coast. The pattern was helpful, though it shouldn’t have been occurring in the open ocean. Kurt put it down to Jinn’s weather manipulation.
“You’re worried,” Leilani said, moving closer to him.
“I may have just sailed us all into oblivion.”
Kurt turned his gaze back to the John Bury’s old charts. Pickett had determined the island’s exact position and marked it on the map where there had been nothing but blue ocean. He’d also marked the other two islands and drawn a circle around them. The Bury Archipelagowas scribbled in faded pen along with the letters U.S.It seemed Pickett had claimed them for America.
Leilani looked over his shoulder. “Where are we?”
“Roughly here,” Kurt said, pointing to a spot on the map.
“And where’s Aqua-Terra?”
“That’s a very good question,” he said.
After discovering the Pain Maker, Kurt had immediately gone to the charts. After a series of estimations and calculations, he’d guessed at Aqua-Terra’s location, assuming, perhaps foolishly, that it would remain in the same general area. Judging from the wind and the distance from Pickett’s Island, he calculated that they could just about reach Aqua-Terra before dawn if they left right away.
Any real delay would have made it impossible and meant waiting until the next night, since approaching the island in daylight would have been suicide. And that twenty-four-hour hold meant leaving Paul, Gamay and the others in Jinn’s clutches. It meant another day for Jinn’s scheme to play out or for him to leave the island behind and disappear. Kurt considered those possibilities unacceptable, and the fleet had moved out with great haste.
As it turned out, the small boats had sailed better than Kurt thought they would, enjoying more favorable winds along the way. They were well ahead of his schedule, but also it seemed on the verge of being lost.
“When we last saw Aqua-Terra, it was sitting idle right here,” he said. “If it stayed that way, we should be right on top of it.”
“I see light,” Varu said. “Light off the port bow.”
All eyes swung to port. There, perhaps three miles away, was a dimly glowing apparition. It almost looked like a ghost ship floating in the fog, but it was Marchetti’s island. It was running dark, with only a few lights turned on here and there.