Prince Edward Island, South Africa
November 12, 10:16 A.M.
When she heard the blast, Grace Lee flattened herself against the wall, arms stiff at her side. She had felt the rock tremble, assumed it had been struck with artillery from the corvette, and waited for the rain of stone to batter her. Hopefully, the concussion would have sent it flying outward and more of it would land in the sea than on the foot of the causeway.
But there was no rockfall and the sound did not echo and vanish. It continued.
She looked up.
The sound was not an explosion but the roar of a helicopter. The black Denel AH-2 roared across the ledge and out to sea, more missile than aircraft. It did not appear to be aerodynamic; it wobbled from side to side as it plummeted toward Ship Rock. It was a short ride but Grace was not sure the aircraft would even make it, nosing forward well short of its goal. But in the last moment, just twenty or so feet from the water, the AH-2 suddenly steadied, charged forward, and attacked Ship Rock with self-destructive vengeance. It hit the jagged rock hollow with a crush of glass and metal and dislodged rotors that spun briefly at an angle before sparking to a stop against the stone and then flying apart.
The tail assembly cracked and fell on the patrol boat just as the surviving structure above exploded in a vertical column of fire. Grace wondered if the flames were riding the same gasses as Williams had mentioned. She felt the heat where she stood and almost at once the ice turned to slush beneath her feet.
There was pandemonium at the stern of the patrol boat, whose prow was ablaze. Apparently fearing an explosion, the crew vaulted into the sea—even as life preservers were thrown into the water from the approaching corvette. Moments after the last man had gone over the rail, the boat erupted from somewhere in the middle, the prow and stern going down in snapped pieces, tumbling onto their sides as they went down in the shallow sea. They stuck there, the broken ends burning like torches, black smoke chugging east with the prevailing wind.
Grace hoped that whoever had sacrificed himself to seal the cave had succeeded in immolating the bacteria. Otherwise, there was a good chance that everyone on the ship would perish.
The lieutenant heard a shot from above. She had been so wrapped up in the assault on Ship Rock that she had forgotten about the net that was swinging above her. Grabbing the rock as Rivette had done, she took off her mask and pulled herself up to the mesh and then onto the line. She was arm-weary from taking the outpost and the patrol boat, but she would be damned if she’d give Rivette bragging rights that he climbed and she did not.
Reaching the ledge, she saw a solemn assemblage. The man she assumed was van Tonder was on his knees, halfway between the ledge and where it looked like struts had flattened the grass.
“Dude just took off,” Rivette said when she arrived.
“That was Lieutenant Mabuza?”
Rivette nodded. “Commander heard the rotors but couldn’t stop him, couldn’t let go or we would have lost the doc.”
The South African was leaning on a boulder, eyes downcast. She had no desire to go to him. There also wasn’t time. They had to contact the outpost and arrange to get out of there.
Rivette still had the Chinese radio. She took it and went to van Tonder.
“Commander, I’m very sorry,” Grace told him.
“I’ll miss him, but I’ll say this—he died where he belonged, behind the controls. Just too bloody soon, because people have lost their goddamn way.”
“Amen to that. But if fire was the answer, he definitely managed to destroy every particle of this thing.”
Van Tonder pulled off his own mask and rose. “Bless you, Tito,” he said to the smoking cliff beyond the ledge.
Just then, all eyes turned to the western cliff as a new arrival trudged up the last segment of ridgeline. Ryan Bruwer approached the others, his eyes falling on Dr. Raeburn then shifting to Grace.
“You did it,” he said. “You actually got him off the boat.”
“Somehow,” Rivette said, walking over.
“Who is this man we pulled up?” van Tonder asked.
“The man you rescued is the man who invented the bacteria,” Grace told him.
She watched van Tonder walk toward his fellow South African. For a moment, Grace would not have put money against the commander using the submachine gun that was still in his hand.
Raeburn seemed uncertain, then afraid.
“I couldn’t save my mate because I was saving you,” the commander said to him.
Grace had never heard a whisper so full of fire.
“I came here to help him,” Raeburn said helplessly.
“You did a shitty job of it, Doctor. You can thank whatever pig god you worship that judgment will be in the hands of the military and the Lord, not me.”
Van Tonder turned and walked to the cliff, where he knelt facing the smoldering ruins.
Rivette looked at Grace, who was uncommonly somber. He was glad he didn’t have her cosmic Daoism complexities as an algorithm. To him, this doctor, the Chinese, Black Wasp—they were no different than the street gangs he grew up around. The only difference was the size of the turf and the stakes that came with winning or losing. Plus, this time, the bad guys lost bad.
He faced Bruwer. “So what happened to our chilly-ass friends in the plane?”
“The pilot managed to get the engine going, not to fly but enough to trudge back to where he started. The Chinese are with him.”
“Beijing’s going to love trying to explain that,” Rivette said.
“You want to see if you can raise Ensign Sisula at the outpost?” Grace said. “You’ve got the radio and—I don’t want to bother Commander van Tonder right now.”
“No—sure. I’ll call him, get us a ride home. I think we all wrecked enough aircraft and seacraft for one day.”
Grace nodded.
“But you know what’ll make this okay when I finally sit down and take off my boots?”
She shook her head.
“The most important ones are still flying,” he said. “A pair of Wasps.”