Commando. Within his mask, the White Tiger shouted in surprise. Ru dragged his partner off the T-9, which rolled now with the power of the swell. Releasing his partner—who drifted farther away—Ru frantically fought for a purchase on the T-9. With a growl of noise within his mask, Ru heaved himself onto the vehicle.
Kwan and his partner were arguing on their T-9.
“Lu May,” whispered Ru, his chest hurting with the thought of never seeing his wife again. He pressed the starter button. With a lurch, he drove the T-9 away from Kwan and away from his own partner floating in the sea, watching him. Ru crouched low as he headed back toward the American oil rig. One way or another, he would survive. He would find a way to either slip into China or sneak Lu May out. They would be together again, a family.
A white plume splashed near. Ru twisted around. Kwan was giving chase, plowing down a swell and into the trough after him. Little flares of flame emitted from a pistol. Kwan must have taken his partner’s gun and then shoved the Commando off his T-9. Despite the pistol’s inaccuracy above water, two steel darts struck Ru’s vehicle. The darts shattered the tough ceramic-plate, and one of them must have hit something vital. Ru’s vehicle lost power.
Ru swiveled around as his T-9 slowed. Staring through the full-face mask, Kwan looked stern and resolved. He brought his T-9 closer. Then Kwan pulled the trigger…but nothing happened.
He’d already shot his last dart.
Kwan holstered his pistol, clutched the controls and aimed his T-9 at Ru’s wallowing vehicle. Ru slid off on the other side, entering the water and submerging as Kwan hit. With a cracking sound above Ru’s head, his T-9 skidded away. A bulky object showed where Soldier Rank Kwan fell in.
Ru judged the distance between them. It was too far. Kwan was already drawing his pistol to reload. Ru jackknifed and kicked down toward the depths. He propelled himself through the nearly silent sea, and he glanced back. Near the surface, Kwan shoved a fresh clip into the pistol. With fierce resolve, Ru kicked harder. He needed more depth in order to shorten the underwater pistol’s range. Looking again, Ru saw that Kwan came after him.
Something flashed past him into the depths—Ru assumed it was a steel dart. What else could it be? Two more went past. Then fiery pain burned in Ru’s thigh. He felt there with his hand, and plucked out a dart.
Ru reversed direction, kicking upward toward the silvery surface. Kwan was a blot of darkness.
Ru drew his combat knife and kicked his fins, straining to reach the White Tiger Commando. As Ru neared, a thrill of fear surged through him. Kwan snapped the underwater pistol shut. As Kwan aligned it, Ru came out of the depths like a shark. His razor-sharp knife sliced Kwan’s hand as the trigger-finger pulled. The retort was a sharp noise underwater. The steel dart hissed past Ru’s head. Then the TOZ-2 floated in a swirl of blood. Ru let go of the knife, beat Kwan to the neutral buoyancy pistol, and kicked out of the Commando’s grasp. In a moment, Ru aimed the pistol at Kwan.
Three sharp retorts sent three steel darts puncturing into Kwan. Pain creased the White Tiger’s face. Then Kwan relaxed as blood oozed from his floating, twitching corpse.
In moments, Ru surfaced. He’d hurt his arm, probably when Kwan had struck his T-9. He swam to Kwan’s wallowing craft, climbed aboard, and then continued heading east for the oil rig. He didn’t know what had happened to the others. At this point, he didn’t care.
When the T-9 ran out of battery power and stopped running, Ru slid into the water for the last time. He used his compass and rangefinder, and he began the journey back to the platform. He was under a severe time constraint. He needed to return and take the Americans down to the stanchions in order to remove the CHKR-57 before the high explosives destroyed the platform. Surely, the oil people would reward him for saving their precious product and saving their American environment. Americans were frightened of spilling oil into the sea. He had heard more than his share of “ethnic” American jokes on the subject.
His injured thigh began to throb, but it was mere pain. By enduring, he would return home to Lu May and his unborn baby. Well, he could never go home again, but there would be a way to secret her out of the country. Greater China was huge and filled with teeming millions—no one would miss a single woman.
A beep alerted him. Ru stopped and shook his head. He didn’t need the locator now. The large oil platform glittered in the darkness. He checked his watch, but it had stopped working. Kwan must have damaged it during the fight.
Ru wrinkled his brow. Would it be better to bypass the oil rig and attempt swimming all the way to the American coast? No—he was too tired. Despite his training, he had swum too far tonight to try a marathon journey to Los Angeles. So he headed for the oil rig.
Three quarters of the way there, he heard a motorboat. Ru stopped and waved his good arm. The dark blot of a boat threw up whitish-colored waves in the moonlight. They had already spotted him, or someone had. That was the reason why the Commandos had come in so deep before.
In time, as outboard engines gurgled and as a large barn-sized object thumped slowly toward him, mercenaries with automatic weapons shouted orders. Ru shouted through his speaker in Chinese, understanding their anger but not knowing their barbaric language. As they looked down at him, the mercenaries jabbered among themselves before two threw down a scaling net. Ru needed help, but with it, he soon flopped onto the boat’s deck.
A heavy man with good boots shoved him onto his back. Another used a knife and cut away the full-face mask. The heavy man placed a heel on Ru’s chest. The mercenary poked him with the barrel-tip of an automatic weapon. The man spoke more gibberish.
“
The mercenaries jabbered again, angrily, as the patrol boat moved faster. It thumped across the seawater, a bumpy ride and loud, too, as they headed for the oil rig. The man with the automatic weapon poked it harder against Ru’s sternum as he repeated his words. Ru heard certain similarities now in the barbaric speech, but still couldn’t understand what they asked.
“
Several of the Anglo mercenaries traded glances with each other. Two of them stared at the nearing platform.
“
With a steel-toed boot, the heavy man with the automatic weapon kicked him in the head. The next thing Ru knew, the patrol boat motored toward a large elevator in the oil platform. The thing was like a Shanghai skyscraper in its towering monstrosity. It throbbed with life, big wheels and gears moving. To Ru it seemed like a hungry dragon, waiting to devour him. He groaned. He was trying to save the Americans and they attacked him. How could they be so stupid?
“
That started the mercenaries arguing again. To Ru, they were pointing fingers everywhere. He wanted to sleep, but if he did that, he’d never see Lu May again. Why had the Party leaders who preached about honor broken their word and sent him back onto the frontline? That was wrong. Lu May—
It was then the CHKR-57 detonated. Water geysered upward. Anglo mercenaries howled, bringing up their weapons. Ru lay on the patrol boat’s deck, his head hurting. It looked to him as if the entire oil rig was leaning, as if it was moving and toppling.
Then he realized it was.
“Lu May,” he whispered. “I love you, my—”
Ru never finished his words, as his world ended with the destruction of Platform Number Seven. Falling jagged metal pierced his chest. He knew a moment of scalding pain, and then everything went blank as he died. The same metallic shard tore a hole in the patrol boat.
The boat sank as Blacksand mercenaries jumped into the water, shouting and thrashing to get away. They didn’t. Mighty Platform Seven crashed on them, sucking many under as it sank down into the sea. Several years ago,
