Riptide

He checked his watch again. 'Dr. Magnusen, is the comm station in order?'

'Yes, Captain,' the engineer said, brushing her short hair back. 'All five marker buoys are transmitting clearly, ready for your arming signal.'

'Is Wopner in Island One?'

'I beeped him about five minutes ago. He should be there shortly, if he isn't already.'

Neidelman strode toward a bank of controls and snapped the radio to life. 'Naiad and Grampus, this is Orthanc. Do you read?'

The boats acknowledged.

'Take your stations. We blow the charges in ten minutes.'

Hatch moved to the window. The mist had retreated to a distant haze, and he could see the two launches power away from the pier and take up positions offshore. Ringing the inside of the reef, along the southern end of the island, he could make out the five electronic buoys that marked the flood tunnel exits. Each flood tunnel, he knew, had now been mined with several pounds of Semtex. The buoy antennas winked in the light, ready to receive the detonation signals.

'Island One, report,' Neidelman spoke into the radio.

'Wopner here.'

'Are the monitoring systems on-line?'

'Yes, everything's hunky-dory.' Wopner sounded dejected.

'Good. Advise me of any changes.'

'Captain, why am I here?' the voice complained. 'The tower's fully networked, and you're gonna be running the pumps manually. Anything you need to do, you can do there. I should be working on that damn code.'

'I don't want any more surprises,' Neidelman replied. 'We'll set off the charges, seal the flood tunnels, then pump the water out of the Pit. You should be curled up with that journal again in no time.'

There was a flurry of activity below, and Hatch could see Streeter directing a team into position around the pump hose. Bonterre came back in from the deck, her hair streaming behind her. 'How long until the fireworks start?' she asked.

'Five minutes,' said Neidelman.

'How exciting! I love a big explosion.' She looked at Hatch with a wink.

'Dr. Magnusen,' Neidelman said. 'A final check, if you please.'

'Certainly, Captain.' There was a brief silence. 'Everything's green. Comm signals are good. Pumps primed and idling.'

Rankin gestured Hatch over and pointed toward a screen. 'Check it out.'

The screen showed a cross section of the Pit, marked in ten-foot intervals down to one hundred feet. A blue column sat inside the cross section, level with the surface.

'We were able to snake a miniature depth meter into the Pit,' he said excitedly. 'Streeter sent a dive team down earlier, but they couldn't get farther than thirty feet because of all the debris clogging the works. You wouldn't believe how much junk has collected down there.' He nodded at the screen. 'With this, we'll be able to monitor the water level drop from here.'

'All stations, listen up,' Neidelman said. 'We'll blow in series.'

A silence fell in the observation tower.

'Arming one through five,' Magnusen said quietly, her stubby fingers moving across a console.

'Ten seconds,' Neidelman murmured. The atmosphere deepened.

'Fire one.'

Hatch looked seaward. For a pregnant moment, all seemed still. Then an enormous geyser ripped out of the ocean, shot from within by orange light. A second later, the shock wave shivered the windows of the observation deck. The sound rumbled across the water, and thirty seconds later a faint answering rumble echoed back from the mainland. The geyser ascended in a strange kind of slow motion, followed by a haze of pulverized rock, mud, and seaweed. As it began falling back in a dirty plume, steep-walled waves spread out across the ocean, beating against the chop. Naiad, the nearer of the two boats, rocked crazily in the sudden swell.

'Fire two,' Neidelman said, and a second explosion ripped the underwater reef a hundred yards from the first. One by one, he detonated the underwater explosives, until it seemed to Hatch that the entire southern coast of Ragged Island had been caught in a lashing waterstorm. Too bad it's not Sunday, he thought. We'd have done Clay a favor, waking all those people asleep at his sermon.

There was a brief pause while the water settled and dive teams examined the results. After receiving word that all five tunnel entrances were sealed, Neidelman turned to Magnusen. 'Set the outflow valves on the pumps,' he said. 'Maintain a 20,000 GPM rate of flow out of the pit. Streeter, have your team stand by.'

Radio in hand, he turned toward the group assembled in the tower.

'Let's drain the Water Pit,' he said.

There was a roar on the southern shore as the pump engines came to life. Almost simultaneously, Hatch heard a great, reluctant throbbing from the Pit as water was sucked up from its depths. Looking down, he could see the thick hose stiffening as the water began its journey out of the Pit, across the island, and back to the ocean. Rankin and Bonterre were glued to the depth display, while Magnusen was monitoring the pump subsystem. The tower began to vibrate slightly.

A few minutes passed.