appeared to be a couple of dozen soldiers on duty around the airport, although what role they were playing he couldn’t tell. Mostly they seemed to be doing traffic control, barring any civilians from leaving the facility.
That’s gonna end in tears,
he thought. Seattle wasn’t the sort of town where folks took well to being dicked around by crew cuts and camouflage. It was a righteous certainty that if he stuck his head outside right now he’d hear some would-be grunge god caterwauling about “fascists” and “Nazis.”
“I’m sorry,” said Kipper. “I didn’t think, Barney. You got family, back East.”
Barney breathed deeply and nodded.
“Everyone has somebody. So do you.”
Kipper said nothing.
His immediate family was here, thank Christ. But his dad was in Kansas City. And he had a sister in New York. Their mother had died three years back. New York and KC, of course, were both behind the Wave.
He knew now why Barney had sounded so bad on the phone. There were some good folks on the city council, as well as a fair leavening of pinheads. But if Seattle was on the front line of a fight against something with the power to zap a whole continent, they were all in deep, deep shit.
Pacific Ocean, 570 nm west of Acapulco
“Man, I vote we stay the hell away from that,” said Fifi.
It looked like Hollywood’s idea of a mid-ocean tsunami, a mind-fucking wall of water that stretched across the horizon and reached miles into the sky—which was utter bullshit, of course. The
Diamantina
had struck two tsunamis in the time that Pete had been her skipper, both of them over a thousand nautical miles away from any coast, neither of them even noticeable as they passed under the hull. The thing to the north was nothing like a tsunami. And they were sailing closer to it with every minute.
“No arguments from me, sweetheart,” he agreed. “We’ll keep a safe distance.”
“That’s
not
what I said,” she insisted.
“And how close is that?” asked Jules with a much cooler demeanor. “That bloody thing starts
below
the horizon, Pete. God knows how high it is. If it wanted to reach out and grab us it probably could.”
Pete Holder swung under the boom of the mainmast to get a better view. He frowned.
“I don’t think it’s going to grab anyone, Jules. It’s not alive. It’s not even moving.”
“Whatever,” she said with real exasperation. Whenever she was pissed off with him her voice became even more clipped and correct than normal. “If we have to do this, let’s get it done, and then get the hell out of here, shall we?”
By “this” she meant boarding the luxury cruiser they’d intercepted on their run toward the Mexican coast. The vessel, an enormous aluminum and composite superyacht, was obviously unmanned. It wasn’t drifting, but the engines were pushing it along on a southerly heading at just a nudge over six knots. It had emerged from behind the screen of the energy wave two hours earlier, easily visible on the
Diamantina
‘s radar. Pete had thought nothing of it until Mr. Lee had come to drag him away from the news feed on the computer. Lee’s incomparable pirate’s eye had spotted something very special on the horizon.
The empty yacht—the crew had to be dead or “gone”—presented as a brilliant white blade on the deep blue of the Pacific. It almost hurt to look at the thing, so brightly did it gleam in the tropical sun. From the bridge it dropped through four decks before kissing the waterline, where he would have guessed it was maybe 230 or even 240 feet in length. A big twin-engine game fisher hanging from two cranes in a dedicated docking bay at the stern would have easily outsized the
Diamantina
all on its own. Instead it looked like a toy, which in a way it was. A rich man’s plaything. Pete could see other, slightly smaller vessels stowed away in the rear dock.
“It’s like a fucking amphibious assault ship for the go-go party crowd.” He whistled.
Not a soul
That’s gonna end in tears,
he thought. Seattle wasn’t the sort of town where folks took well to being dicked around by crew cuts and camouflage. It was a righteous certainty that if he stuck his head outside right now he’d hear some would-be grunge god caterwauling about “fascists” and “Nazis.”
“I’m sorry,” said Kipper. “I didn’t think, Barney. You got family, back East.”
Barney breathed deeply and nodded.
“Everyone has somebody. So do you.”
Kipper said nothing.
His immediate family was here, thank Christ. But his dad was in Kansas City. And he had a sister in New York. Their mother had died three years back. New York and KC, of course, were both behind the Wave.
He knew now why Barney had sounded so bad on the phone. There were some good folks on the city council, as well as a fair leavening of pinheads. But if Seattle was on the front line of a fight against something with the power to zap a whole continent, they were all in deep, deep shit.
Pacific Ocean, 570 nm west of Acapulco
“Man, I vote we stay the hell away from that,” said Fifi.
It looked like Hollywood’s idea of a mid-ocean tsunami, a mind-fucking wall of water that stretched across the horizon and reached miles into the sky—which was utter bullshit, of course. The
Diamantina
had struck two tsunamis in the time that Pete had been her skipper, both of them over a thousand nautical miles away from any coast, neither of them even noticeable as they passed under the hull. The thing to the north was nothing like a tsunami. And they were sailing closer to it with every minute.
“No arguments from me, sweetheart,” he agreed. “We’ll keep a safe distance.”
“That’s
not
what I said,” she insisted.
“And how close is that?” asked Jules with a much cooler demeanor. “That bloody thing starts
below
the horizon, Pete. God knows how high it is. If it wanted to reach out and grab us it probably could.”
Pete Holder swung under the boom of the mainmast to get a better view. He frowned.
“I don’t think it’s going to grab anyone, Jules. It’s not alive. It’s not even moving.”
“Whatever,” she said with real exasperation. Whenever she was pissed off with him her voice became even more clipped and correct than normal. “If we have to do this, let’s get it done, and then get the hell out of here, shall we?”
By “this” she meant boarding the luxury cruiser they’d intercepted on their run toward the Mexican coast. The vessel, an enormous aluminum and composite superyacht, was obviously unmanned. It wasn’t drifting, but the engines were pushing it along on a southerly heading at just a nudge over six knots. It had emerged from behind the screen of the energy wave two hours earlier, easily visible on the
Diamantina
‘s radar. Pete had thought nothing of it until Mr. Lee had come to drag him away from the news feed on the computer. Lee’s incomparable pirate’s eye had spotted something very special on the horizon.
The empty yacht—the crew had to be dead or “gone”—presented as a brilliant white blade on the deep blue of the Pacific. It almost hurt to look at the thing, so brightly did it gleam in the tropical sun. From the bridge it dropped through four decks before kissing the waterline, where he would have guessed it was maybe 230 or even 240 feet in length. A big twin-engine game fisher hanging from two cranes in a dedicated docking bay at the stern would have easily outsized the
Diamantina
all on its own. Instead it looked like a toy, which in a way it was. A rich man’s plaything. Pete could see other, slightly smaller vessels stowed away in the rear dock.
“It’s like a fucking amphibious assault ship for the go-go party crowd.” He whistled.
Not a soul
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