The Storm - Cussler Clive. Страница 37

He searched the thug he’d shoved over the edge, pulling a knife, a Luger-style pistol and a set of compact binoculars from the man’s kit.

He found a canteen on his belt. It was three-quarters empty. He took a swig, no more than a mouthful really, and handed it to Joe.

“To your health.”

Joe drank the other mouthful as Kurt pushed the junk aside and dug the old tire out of the sand.

“Tidying up?” Joe asked.

“Very funny.”

He dropped down beside the other dead men, holding his breath and sending the flies swarming. He untied the rope that bound them together. “We’re gonna need this.”

“Don’t suppose they have a grappling hook on them?”

“No,” Kurt said. “But we don’t need one.”

He piled the bodies up in the center of the well, stacking them one on top of the other.

“Sit down,” Kurt said.

“On the dead guys?”

“I put the fresh guy on top,” Kurt said.

Joe hesitated.

“They’re dead,” Kurt said. “What do they care?”

Finally Joe sat down. Kurt lifted the narrow tire and set it vertically against Joe’s back like he was hanging a wreath. Next he sat down with his back to the tire and to Joe.

“Put your feet on the wall and push.”

As Joe complied, Kurt felt the rubber tire pressing into his back. He put his own feet against the wall on his side and pushed. He felt the tire between them compress slightly. He felt plenty of pressure on his back and feet, pressure that would allow them to wedge themselves up the shaft of the well, and he still had six to eight inches of flex in his knees.

“Flex those abs, and let’s see if we can do this,” he said.

As Joe flexed and pressed harder, Kurt did the same. He felt the pressure in his back, both upper and lower, where the tire was being pressed into him. With a minimum of effort, they rose up off the pile of dead men.

“This might actually work,” Joe said.

“You, then me,” Kurt told him. “One foot at a time.”

The first time Joe moved his foot they almost fell, tipping to one side. They steadied themselves, and Kurt pressed hard with his left foot and forced them upward about nine inches. He quickly moved his right foot to a new position.

Joe’s next move was steadier, and soon they were inching their way up, making steady if unspectacular progress.

“I forgot to tell you,” Joe said, grunting with the effort but apparently unable to keep himself from talking, “before we got bounced in that drafting room I saw a chart with currents and such. It covered the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and half of the Indian Ocean.”

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.

He could feel the buildup of lactic acid growing in his calves and thighs, and though he was in little danger of having them cramp or give out, he felt they needed to hurry. His abs burned from keeping his back pressed hard into the tire. It felt like he’d done a hundred crunches with a fifteen-pound medicine ball clutched to his chest.

He pulled the 9mm pistol from his pocket and switched off the safety.

“Easy, now,” he whispered.

Joe adjusted his feet. Kurt went next, and they slowly moved up through the last six inches. Kurt raised the gun and stretched his neck so he could just peer over the edge. He saw no one guarding the well.

“Clear,” he said.

“Clear on this side,” Joe said. “Now what?”

Kurt tossed the gun over the edge and drew the rope out from beneath his shirt. He passed it through his hands until he had the length he needed.

With one hand on each end of the rope he let out a half loop approximately four feet in length. With a flip of the wrist and an extension of his arms he sent a wave of energy through the rope. The middle sailed out away from him in a big U shape and dropped over the top of one A-frame neat as could be.

Kurt slid it taut and pulled it downward so it wouldn’t ride up the metal bars.

Making sure not to twist, he passed one end of the rope back to Joe. “Hold on to that with both hands and hold on tight.”

Kurt pulled his section taut and wrapped a loop under his arm, around his triceps and then around his hand twice. Joe followed suit.

“You holding that rope tight?”

“Like it’s a winning lottery ticket,” Joe said.

“Good,” Kurt replied, “because you know what’s going to happen once we give our poor legs a rest, right?”

“Yeah,” Joe said. “Like everything else connected with you, it’s going to be painful.”

“No pain, no gain,” Kurt said. “This time the gain is our freedom. Ready?”

“Ready.”

Kurt tensed his arms, locking them in place.

“Three … two … one … go!”

At almost the same instant both men pulled on the rope and relaxed their legs and abs. The rope snapped taut around the A-frame. The tire fell from between them and they swung forward, slamming into the wall and dangling there a few feet below the top.