The Storm (NUMA Files 10)

“What about the LAPES thing?” she said. “Couldn’t we drop out the back?”

“We might just try that when we get where we’re going,” he said.

He studied the instrument panel, spotting the controls for the rear door and tail ramp. He marked their location in his mind.

By now they’d climbed back up to five thousand feet and were back on the original course. Several miles ahead of them he saw the other two jets silhouetted against the brightening sky. They were still descending, but the nosedive and spin had brought Kurt and Leilani well below their altitude.

“They don’t know what happened,” Leilani said.

“No,” Kurt replied. “Traveling on radio silence with no rearview mirrors or aft radar coverage means they can’t have seen a thing. More important, they won’t see us turn away and head for the Seychelles.”

“Is that where we’re going?”

Kurt had found a navigation readout on a small computer screen. They were almost dead center of the Indian Ocean. The Seychelles were four hundred miles to the southwest, about an hour’s flight away.

Kurt smiled. “Closest bit of civilization around,” he said. “And by civilization, I mean somewhere that has a phone and a Coke machine and where people aren’t trying to kill us.”

Leilani smiled. “That sounds good to me.”

Kurt found the smile endearing. It was kind and simple and uncomplicated. Somehow, uncomplicated seemed utterly perfect at the moment.

He began to turn the Russian jet to the west, figuring he’d be a hundred miles away by the time anyone even bothered to look around. But before he got too far off course, something caught his eye. A black dot on the silver sea.

Apparently Leilani saw it as well. “You think they’re headed for that island?”

“We’re a long way from the closest island,” he said.

“Well, that’s too big to be a ship,” Leilani replied.

Kurt stared. The truth hit him as the light from the rising sun glinted off a series of tall triangular structures dotted around the perimeter of the floating monstrosity.

“That’s because it’s not a ship,” he said. “It’s a floating hulk of metal called Aqua-Terra.”

A spike of adrenaline shot through Kurt’s weary body. Three amphibious aircraft, filled with weapons, inflatable speedboats and Jinn’s goons, did not qualify for the benefit of the doubt. They weren’t coming for a tour of the facilities. They were an attack force, operating under radio silence, planning to hit and take over the island at the break of dawn.

“Strap yourself in,” he said.

“Why?” Leilani asked. “What are we doing?”

Kurt reached over and shoved the throttles to the stops. “We’re about to make our presence known.”

CHAPTER 36

KURT SCANNED THE CONSOLE, LOOKING FOR THE RADIO. HIS eyes settled on a transceiver currently set to an odd frequency.

COM-1, he thought. “That’s got to be Jinn’s frequency,” he said. “Can you find me one of those headsets?”

Leilani began to scrounge around on the floor for one of the dead pilots’ headsets. She picked it up and handed it to him.

He plugged it in. He found a second transceiver and set the switches so he would still be able to hear anything coming over COM-1 but be broadcasting only over COM-2. He began to adjust the frequency to the one Nigel, the helicopter pilot, had used when they first approached Aqua-Terra.

“Can you please tell me what we’re doing,” Leilani asked. “I thought we were flying away from them, not getting closer.”

“Several friends of mine from NUMA are down there. They’ve been trying to figure out what happened to your brother. They must be getting close to an answer because they’re about to be attacked for it.”

“Attacked?”

“I saw Jinn’s men boarding the other aircraft,” he said. “They’re commandos. I’m pretty sure they’re about to storm the island.”