A crackling buzz began to emanate from hexagonal pods in the speaker box. Out on the water, a hundred feet away, a ripple began to form, and in moments a fifty-foot swath of water was shaking and splattering as if it was being boiled or agitated somehow.
Tautog waved another hand. Along the wall of the bluff seven additional fences of the camouflaging material were removed. As the generators in these units were cranked up, the whole beachfront entered a similar state of agitation.
Kurt noticed fish fleeing the onslaught, launching themselves over one another like salmon racing up a ladder. A pair of night birds dove after them, thinking them easy prey, but turned away suddenly as if they’d hit a force field.
Some kind of vibration was definitely issuing from the speaker boxes, though all Kurt heard was a crackling buzz like high-voltage lines carrying too much power. “Sound waves.”
“Yes,” Tautog said. “If the Japanese come, they will never get off the beach.”
Kurt noticed the birds and fish were okay. “It doesn’t appear to be lethal.”
“No. But the causing of pain will bring them to their knees. They will make easy targets.”
“A weapon made out of sound,” Leilani said. “It almost seems crazy, but you see it in nature already. On dives with Kimo I’ve seen dolphins use their echo-location to stun fish into a stupor before snatching them in their jaws.”
Kurt had heard of that but never witnessed it. He knew of sound weapons from another angle. “The military has been working on systems like this over the past few decades. The plan is to use them as nonlethal crowd- control devices, saving the need for all those rubber bullets and tear gas canisters. But I didn’t know the concept went as far back as the Second World War.”
“Any idea how it works?” Leilani asked.
“Just a guess,” Kurt said. “Simple harmonic vibration. The sound waves travel at slightly different speeds and slightly different angles. They converge in the zone where the water is jumping, amplifying the effect. Almost like a beam of sound.”
“I’m glad you didn’t use it on us,” Leilani said to Tautog.
“You landed on the wrong beach,” Tautog replied matter-of-factly.
Kurt was glad for that. “One point for hasty navigation.”
As he watched the water buzzing, a new idea began to form in his mind, but to risk it he first needed to know how effective the Pain Maker really was.
“I want to test it.”
“We can demonstrate on the prisoner if you like.”
“No,” Kurt said, “not on the prisoner. On me.”
Tautog regarded him strangely. “You are a curious person, Kurt Austin.”
“I do what I have to in order to survive and get the job done,” Kurt said. “Other than that, I’m not interested in seeing anyone suffer. Even a former enemy.”
Tautog pondered this, but he voiced neither agreement nor disagreement. He flipped a switch, the speaker box near them shut off and a gap in the wall of sound appeared over the beach and out onto the bay.
Leilani grabbed his arm. “Are you nuts?”
“Probably,” Kurt said, “but I need to know.”
“I warn you,” Tautog said, “the impact will hurt a great deal.”
“Strange as it sounds,” Kurt replied, “I honestly hope it does.”
A minute later Kurt was on the sand at the water’s edge. He noticed a few fish floating motionless in the waves. Apparently they hadn’t all escaped unscathed.
Around him, the sound waves from the other speakers reverberated and continued to vibrate the air and water, but most of the energy was in a range beyond human hearing. What he could hear were ghostly and ethereal sounds.
Kurt looked back up the beach to the bluff. He saw Leilani with her hands clasped in front of her mouth. Tautog stood proudly, and Kurt steeled himself like a gladiator about to do battle.
“Okay,” Kurt said.
Tautog threw the switch. Kurt felt an instant wave of pain through every fiber of his body as if all his muscles were cramping up at the same time. His head rang, his eyes hurt, the ethereal buzz he’d heard before was now a wailing sound he felt through his jaw and into his skull. He thought his eardrums would burst, and maybe his eyeballs too.
With all the considerable strength and willpower he possessed, Kurt stayed on his feet and tried to fight his way forward. It felt like he was pulling a great stone block behind him or pushing one up the beach. He could barely move.
He made it one step and then another, and then the pain became unbearable and he collapsed in the sand, covering his ears and head.
“Turn it off!” he heard Leilani shout. “You’re killing him.”
At another time and place Kurt might have chalked those words up to female hysterics, but as the waves of pain racked every millimeter of his body he thought she might be right.
The speaker shut down and the agony vanished like a rubber band breaking—one instant it was everywhere, the next it was gone.
It left behind fatigue and a feeling of complete and utter exhaustion. Kurt lay on the sand unable to do any more than breathe.
Leilani ran to him and dropped down in the sand beside him.
“Are you okay?” she asked, rolling him over onto his side. “Are you all right?”
He nodded.
“Are you sure?”
“Don’t I look it?” he managed.
“Not really,” she said.
“I am,” he insisted. “I swear.”
“I haven’t known you very long,” she said, helping him to a sitting position, “but you’re really not normal. Are you?”
Even through the exhaustion Kurt had to laugh. He was hoping for something like
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“I really thought you were going somewhere else with that,” he said. “But that doesn’t make you wrong.”
She smiled.
“How far did I get?” It felt like he’d climbed Mount Everest with a heavy pack on his shoulders.
“All of two feet,” she said.
“That’s it?”
She nodded. “The whole thing lasted only a couple of seconds.”
It had seemed like an eternity.
Around them the other beams shut down. Tautog came to see them, arriving as the first undisturbed wave lapped the beach.
“I agree with her,” he said. “You are not even close to normal.”
Kurt felt his strength returning. “Well, as long as we’ve settled that question, my next request shouldn’t come as any surprise.”
Kurt put out his hand. Tautog grabbed it and pulled Kurt up to his feet.
“And what request would that be?”
“I need a boat,” Kurt said, “a dozen rifles and one of these machines.”
“You are planning to rescue your friends,” Tautog guessed.
“Yes,” Kurt said.
Tautog smiled. “Do you really think we will let you go alone?”
