Checked Mr. Watch. Somehow, despite feeling that we’d only been on this island for a few minutes, all of this had taken a hefty chunk of time—we were getting close to dawn. And we hadn’t found a single thing that would tell any of us what the Close Encounter Doomsday Plan was.
Turned away from the TV and looked behind me. There was a whole bank of extremely old-fashioned computers on the wall opposite the one Jeff and the others had been strapped against. Several chairs had gotten toppled during the fighting, but the computer system appeared to be running.
The next, lesser pile of bodies from the many we had in this room was tested, with Chuckie again at the controls. While the Killer Octopus zapped a bunch of Reid clones and the dismembered portions of LaRue, we again lost the lights and the TV while the backup lights came on again this time. But the computer system didn’t stop. Meaning it was on the main system and the backup generator both.
“Chuckie, let someone else have a turn with the new toy. I need you over here. And, seriously, dudes, we need to get the giant dead lizard over to Dulce before it starts to smell.”
Reader took over Nozzle Control, Jeff manned the plug just in case, while Tim called for Rexie transport and Chuckie came to me. “What are you thinking?”
“That whatever the Close Encounter Plan is, it’s tied to this ancient computer.”
Wruck, Mossy, Chuckie, and I all stepped closer. Chuckie examined everything. “There’s a timer. It shows seventeen minutes.” As we look at what he was pointing to, the timer flipped to sixteen minutes.
The power came back on. Looked over my shoulder to see how the team was planning to move the Long Armed Rexie corpse in order to send it through a floater gate, when the TV came back on at the same time as my music changed to “Blues Before And After” by The Smithereens. The Treeship looked close enough to the water that I had to figure it was going to land in the next few minutes.
“When is dawn here?” I shouted to the room at large, as the next pile of dead bodies got zapped and we lost all power to everything other than the creepy lights and this computer system. “As in, is it within fifteen minutes?”
“Yes,” Kozlow replied. “Almost exactly.”
“Crap.”
CHAPTER 92
“RUSSELL, did Cliff have Nerida doing anything in the water of the gulf?”
“Yes, he had her put water mines around the dock and the island so that no one could arrive unannounced.”
“So, he could turn those mines on and off?”
“Yes. Though I don’t know how.”
Anyone who’d know how was dead now, which was an irony I was going to totally ignore. And Nerida had been powerful. Maybe not precise, but powerful. For all we knew, her clones had been placed near to every mine so that she could pull them out of the water as needed. Or send them deeper down.
Looked at Chuckie, who’d clearly made the leap along with me, based on the look of horror on his face. “Close Encounter is the doomsday plan for when aliens arrive. LaRue would have known about the landing area in these waters and, if not, the Z’porrah certainly do, and Cliff would have known that this day would come and come sooner as opposed to later. There’s at least one mine attached to the structure the Treeship is going to try to connect to. Christopher!”
He zipped over. Explained what was going on. “Are you able to swim down there at Flash speeds?”
He shook his head. “I’m not confident. It’s deep, meaning I’d need deep-sea diving equipment, equipment that I’ve never used before. Plus, we don’t know where it is, other than under the area the Treeship is over. I can try, but we can’t count on me.”
“I could go with him,” Mossy said. “However, the depth could prove an issue. But I am also willing to try.”
“Call Jeremy, Raheem gave us scuba equipment.” Christopher stepped away and made the call. Mossy went with him. “If he can’t do this, we don’t have time to find the bomb, and with Nerida dead, we have no one who can pull it out of the water.”
“What are we going to do?” Chuckie asked quietly.
“Well, what I’m going to do is give this one to the smartest guy in the room, who thankfully still has all his brain capacity intact. Take it away, Chuckie.”
“Thanks for that,” he said with a laugh as he turned back to the computer and started to fiddle around. “I need help, Kitty. This equipment is potentially older than Richard.”
“I’ll choose not to take offense,” White said from behind us. “Adriana shared that all of our computer team is fully aware of what’s going on. You’re on speaker,” he said as he put his phone down.
“Chuck, it’s Stryker. You have the whole team, including Chernobog and Olga, all on the line. Tell us what you’re seeing, we’ll get it solved.” Chuckie started saying technical things very quickly and getting technical answers back just as fast, and without bickering. Clearly Hacker International was aware of the magnitude of the issue.
This was not quite as bad as hearing A-Cs talking at hyperspeed, but it was close enough. Stepped away and went over to Christopher and Mossy. Jeremy came through a floater gate carrying equipment at the same time.
Jeff joined us. “No,” he said, as he took the equipment away from Christopher. “We can swim, baby, but we aren’t a water race. Swimming in and running on water are one thing, but deep-sea diving is another. The pressure of the water will make it difficult for both of them to get back to the surface. If it takes them too long to find the bomb, then they’ll be at even more risk. I can’t allow it. And yes, I’ll take the hit and the blame if we can’t save these people any other way.”
“Jeff, are you sure?” Christopher asked. “I can at least give it a try.”
“This is an order,” Jeff said. “No one’s going down there, you least of all.” He looked at Mossy. “And not you, either, so don’t get any ideas.” Jeff handed the equipment back to Jeremy. “Thank the king profusely for his generosity. Then get a lot of agents here to get that thing,” he indicated the dead Rexie, “over to Dulce for study.”
“The agents are on their way, per Commander Crawford’s request,” Jeremy said. “The Science Center is just preparing a room for the cadaver.” He nodded to us and stepped back through the floater gate.
Leaned my back against Jeff’s chest, he wrapped his arms around me, and we both stared at the TV.
“Thirteen minutes,” Adriana called.
“The pressure isn’t helping,” Chuckie shared.
And neither were we. My music changed to “Fly” by Sugar Ray. Took the hint. Pulled out my phone and dialed.
“Commander, it’s always so nice to hear your voice. How goes the offensive?”
“It’s our usual, Jerry.”
“That bad, huh? What can your favorite flyboy do to help?”
“Um, right now? Not let the Treeship land.”
There was silence. “That’s not possible,” he said after a few long moments. “They’re in final approach. If they try to take off now the Treeship will rip apart.”