Piranha

“No?”

She could feel his heart beating next to hers. Desire began to well inside her, pushing her toward him. She needed him, needed to feel his arms wrapping around her, feel his skin on her skin. She needed to feel him push against her, wrap her legs around his.

“No,” she said.

“It’s there,” Stoner told her. She couldn’t tell whether he meant the ship he’d seen, or his feelings for her, or his lips. Suddenly she had an urge to throw herself into the water, just dive in. she started to move upward. Perhaps sensing her thoughts, he grabbed her; she slid into his arms and then said “no” again, the pointed.

Now she saw it too, a ship.

“The flare gun,” she said.

“We don’t have it,” said Stoner. The words emptied his eyes.

She’d seen the same blankness in Zen’s face when he told her she’d known for weeks, that he couldn’t feel his legs and would never feel them again.

Jeffrey. Her desire raged and she reached toward him. A wave pushed her to his chest, but then pulled the boat back; she struggled to push up, to throw herself around him, but Stoner was steadying himself in a crouch at the edge of the raft, trying to stand, or at least squat, waving.

“Balance me,” he told her without looking, his voice a whisper. “On the other end.”

She went to do so.

“No, they’re not going to see us. Paddle, we’ll have to paddle,” he said.

“The sharks,” she said, her words barely a whisper in her own ears. Before she could repeat them louder, he had slipped into the water/

“Wave,” he said. “Shout.”

“The sharks.”

“Wave, jump, anything. Get their attention.”

Airborne over the South China Sea

1355

The idea came to Zen only after it was too late:

Block the transmission, kill the feed. No one will know.

It was absurd and murderous, and once it occurred to him he couldn’t forget it: anger, jealousy, and shame surging together. But it was too late, fortunately too late—Dreamland had the feed, the radar had a good lock, the GPS data was now being fed not just to Iowa’s flight deck but to the Whiplash Osprey.

Too late, thank God.

Zen took the UMB from the computer, altering the course and going over each move carefully with Dreamland. There was a minor problem in one of the engines.

The scientists wanted him to give back control, send the plane back to Dreamland.

Not yet. Not until the mission was complete.

He used the rocket, engine five, took the massive robot to 140,000 feet, setting up a ten-mile orbit. The computer cut the flight path into a perfect circle.

The Taiwanese trawler spotted earlier was headed in their general direction. Da

“Dreamland Command, what do you think of giving the position to the trawler, see if they can pick them up?” said Zen.

“Zen, this is Bastian.

“Colonel.”

“Da

“Hold on.” Zen went to the UMB’s native radar, bringing up the search-and-scan panel. Look-down mode was limited; the unit had been optimized for flight requirements and, at this altitude and distance, the Chinese planes didn’t show up.

“I’m going to have to take your word, because they’re not on my screen,” Zen told him. “Is it the CAP patrol?”

“Negative. They’re going out to that spy ship at a good clip, and very low,” said the colonel. “They may be armed with antiship missiles. Wait a second.”

The line went dead a second.

“Jeff, at their present course and speed they’re going to be on the Osprey as well. They should find her in about sixty seconds. Kitty Hawk is sending some Tomcats out there. They’re a good distance off, though.”

“Yeah, okay, thanks for the heads-up.”

Why had she kissed him? Why?

The South China Sea

Date and time unknown

The ship was bigger. Brea

Stoner was starting to tire. He punctuated his kicks with rests on the side of the raft the grew longer and longer.