SDVs became a frenzy of silent activity, but finally everything was set. Otto was safely taped up in the KIA'ed chief's dolphin, the eyeholes shuttered, his Draeger set on heliox and his arms strapped to his sides, a mask on with no readouts and no sound. SEAL One's empty dolphin was slaved to Two's. Clayton controlled Otto's, Seven the cargo SDV, and SEAL Eight guided the other empty, Nine's. They went with the river this time, not against it, and in a wild charge of flailing mechanical flukes they were past the bridge, the pillboxes on the beach, even the barbed- wire entanglement. They rode the rip through the surf, using the outgoing tide, and after thunderous pounding and buffeting all ten SDVs were clear. Jeffrey had to keep swallowing; his punished eardrums hurt bad.
Jeffrey read his chronometer. Any second now.
'All numbers go deep,' Clayton ordered. 'The sea-water's good shielding.'
'Don't get too close to the bottom,' Jeffrey warned. He twisted his handgrips and dived. On his head-up display he saw the blips of the other dolphins.
There was a brilliant blue-green flash through Jeffrey's eyeholes, enough to light up the reef. There was a quick sharp bruising thump-thump, the ground-and airborne shock waves hitting the water. As the sparkling blue- green glow persisted, Jeffrey saw the bottom muck stir up, threatening to engulf him. There was another flash, more local, diffuse and flickering. Then things began to come down. His SDV was pelted. Jeffrey swore he saw a tail rotor go by. Five blades — an SA.330 Puma?
Jeffrey felt his dolphin back and surge.
'The seiche!' he heard Ilse shout, the terrible seismic sloshing. There must have been an underwater landslide. The outbound tsunami hit, tumbling him over and over and over.
DURBAN
A demonic purple-white flash lit the sky, 10,000 times brighter than lightning. Van Gelder hit the deck as he felt an unnatural warmth. The eerie sensation continued and he knew he was too exposed. Holding his cheap goggles flat to his face, he rolled behind a cargo crate. He heard auto brakes squealing and then a very hard crash. He saw dock workers scramble for cover, pulling others too blinded or stunned. Sirens began to go off amid shouting and screaming. He looked up at the bluff. Its whole face stood out starkly in the unforgiving light. He saw people dash through the blast doors as the outer barriers closed. By a reflection in the side window of a staff car he saw something else in the distance, something that took his breath away, the most beautiful golden-yellow incandescence blooming into the air. He screwed his eyes shut and waited for the overpressure to kill him, but it didn't come. He heard a whimpering yell and a splash as a forklift ran off the quay. As ship horns hooted alarms, Van Gelder glanced again at the car window. A mushroom cloud rose over Umhlanga Rocks. By its harsh illumination he noticed the lighthouse there was gone. On the slimy ground by his feet he saw two rats running in circles. One of them, sightless and panicked, hit a gantry crane head-on. He felt a tremor through the ground, but still the airborne shock wave hadn't come. He remembered to cover his ears. Van Gelder watched the swirling, pulsing mushroom cloud shoot higher, frighteningly silent, red now near its base and capped by a giant smoke ring. The underside of the overcast glowed pink, and tendrils of ethereal blue now interlaced the fireball. Then a deafening crack sounded and the staff car windows were smashed. A sledgehammer punched Van Gelder's gut as the thundering roar went on. The negative pressure pulse hit, trying to tear out his lungs. The blast wind struck, moaning and screaming inhumanly, toppling unsecured cargo, enshrouding Van Gelder in sea spray and dust. Ilse floated helplessly. She had no diver data, no gertrude or sonar, and no propulsion or depth control. She knew that sensing up and down underwater in the dark was always hard. It wouldn't work to blow bubbles and follow them to the surface, the standard trick, wrapped up as she was within the dolphin. Besides, right now the surface was the last place she would ever want to be.
The pressure in Ilse's ears told her she was slowly rising, confirmed by her backup wrist-mounted mechanical pressure gauge. She thought she saw a slight glow through her eyeholes. If so, the SDV was upside down. She tried her hand controls again, but nothing happened. She tried to move her legs, to propel the vehicle the hard way, but it was useless.
'Any unit, Four, come in,' she called into her mouthpiece mike. There was no answer. She double-checked that the fiber-optic link between her mask and the dolphin's electronics was firmly in the jack. The mask remained completely dark.
'Any unit, Four…Any unit, Four.' Nothing. 'Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is Four.' Still nothing.
Jeffrey's tumbling dolphin went into a corkscrewing gyration, then he felt a bump. His sonar told him he was on the bottom, depth ninety-seven feet. He brought his SDV back up to ninety and strobed his secure acoustic IFF, Identification-Friend-or-Foe. Only eight other units responded — Ilse had dropped off the screen.
Jeffrey pulsed on active sonar. Now there were ten contacts. One of the two new ones was moving and one was not. The one that moved was big, too big, much bigger than the SDVs. It also moved too fast.
'All units,' Jeffrey heard Clayton call, 'sound off for a status check.'
'Two,' the SEAL team corpsman said.
Then there was a pause.
'Five, this is Four,' Jeffrey called. No response. 'Ilse, come in, please.' Eventually Clayton said, 'Six.'
'Six, Four,' Jeffrey said, 'I think Ilse's damaged.' 'Acknowledged,' Clayton said. 'All numbers keep sounding off.'
There was another lengthy silence.
'Seven, this is Six,' Clayton called. 'Eight, this is Six, come in.' Neither answered.
'Six, Four,' Jeffrey said, 'I have them both on IFF, immobile on the bottom.'
'I see them,' Clayton said. 'Their slaved units are in shutdown mode. They must have all had system failures.'
Jeffrey pulsed on active again. Ilse's SDV was barely moving, and the tenth contact was converging on her. The bogey weaved erratically beneath the surface.
'Six, Four, Ilse's in trouble. I think it's a shark. My sonar's holding her at shallow depth. I'm moving in.'
Jeffrey's acoustic intercept showed Clayton pulse on active too. 'I'll be your wingman,' Clayton said.
'Negative,' Jeffrey ordered. 'Otto's priceless. You and Two guard him and the cripples. Form a defensive mulberry on the bottom, a spinning circle, with the units you control.'
'Acknowledged,' Clayton said.
'Activate your SharkPODs,' Jeffrey said. He powered up his own, then saw the irony — the protective oceanic devices were invented by the Natal Sharks Board.
'I do not concur,' Clayton said. 'SharkPODs put electric fields into the seawater. Moving through a conductive medium creates a magnetic anomaly.'
'Shaj,' Jeffrey said, 'we just set off an A-bomb up there. The last thing we need to worry about is our MAD signature.'
After hesitating Clayton said, 'Concur.' Then he added, 'Good luck, sir.' Jeffrey aimed toward Ilse and the shark.
Ilse felt a sudden turbulence, as if something had rushed right past her through the water. Then it returned and there was a sharp thwack against her legs. She was nearer to the surface now. Above her was burning fuel. She caught a glimpse of her assailant in silhouette. Ilse's blood ran cold. It was the largest great white she had ever seen, almost eight meters long. It had to weigh two metric tons, ten times her weight and her SDV combined.
She caught another glimpse. It was coming back.
Jeffrey drove his SDV between Ilse and the shark, hoping to repel it with his electric field. It had no visible effect. He switched the SharkPOD off and on again, then checked the status readout. It was functional, but the shark was too maddened by the A-bomb blast to notice or to care.
Through an eyehole Jeffrey saw the shark bite off one of Ilse's bowplane flippers, then spit it out.
Ilse felt a tug and heard a snap. It thinks I'm a dead dolphin, she realized. It's begun to feed. It won't be satisfied with just a fin or fluke. Its teeth are sharp enough to get through Kevlar.
Jeffrey told himself to think like Ilse would, think like a dolphin and a shark. From some long-forgotten nature show his brain screamed that bottlenoses sometimes fought great whites and drove them off, to protect their
