The Storm (NUMA Files 10)

He and Kurt pushed off in unison, raised themselves six inches and repositioned their feet one at a time.

“Anything unusual on it?” Kurt asked, his own words sounding strained as they came out through a clenched diaphragm.

“Didn’t … exactly … have time to study it,” Joe said. “But it makes me … wonder about something.”

They moved again.

“What?” Kurt asked, keeping his responses short.

“If Jinn’s using his little beasties … to erode some dam … why did we … find them in the Indian Ocean … a thousand miles from land?”

Kurt allowed a portion of his mind to consider the question, keeping most of his concentration on the task at hand. “Good question,” he said. “Dams block rivers … Rivers run to the sea … Maybe the little bots were swept down to the ocean accidentally, after all.”

He tried to think of dams that emptied into the Indian Ocean or the Persian Gulf, but nothing major came to mind.

They paused with their legs in a semilocked position.

“Either way,” Kurt added, “we’ve got to get out of here. Whatever this lunatic’s goals are, they’re not good for anyone but him.”

By this point they’d reached the second section. The joking and laughing stopped because the climb was getting harder.

Kurt felt his back and abs and legs beginning to burn. He gritted his teeth and kept moving.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Joe grunted. “Wouldn’t want to start over, though.”

Kurt looked down. His foot slipped a fraction, but he caught it by locking his knee and wedging his heal. He could see his leg quivering and feel his calf cramping up.

“Five more feet,” he said, breathing hard. “Then part two of the plan … can be activated.”

“What if the bad guys are still up there?” Joe asked.

“I haven’t heard a sound since the cars drove off.”

“And if they left a guard?”

“That’s what the gun is for.”

They pushed up another foot, and Kurt’s face was bathed in the late-afternoon sunlight.

A foot from the top the well’s mouth caught a strange sound: a high-pitched whistling that echoed off the adobe walls.

“Do you hear that?” Joe asked.

“Trying to place it,” Kurt said.

The whistling grew louder with each passing second, and then, directly above them, a giant shadow passed. Kurt saw the belly of a large gray-and-white aircraft race overhead, flaps and slats fanned out like feathers, its six-wheeled main undercarriage stretched forth like an eagle’s claws grasping for a branch to land on.

“What was that?” Joe said.

“Jet of some kind,” Kurt said.

It couldn’t have been at more than a hundred feet as it flashed above the mouth of the well. The view lasted only a second or two, but in that brief instant Kurt realized there was something odd about its shape.

“Didn’t realize we were at the end of the runway,” Joe said. “I’d hate to pop out at the wrong moment and get run over by a 747.”

Stifling the laughter that tried to bubble up, Kurt pushed harder until they were just below the lip of the well.