Chapter 74 - Blood on the Salt Flats
As the RHIB neared the perimeter of the platform, the water around us began to boil.
"Thermal defense perimeter!" Hayes yelled, pulling back on the throttle as a curtain of superheated steam erupted thirty yards ahead, cooking the sea into a scalding froth. "They're dumping core heat into the shallow shelf! If we touch that water, the pontoon melts!"
"They're not just venting heat," I observed, studying the pulsing patterns of light along the sea-level caissons. "The facility is ballasting down. It's submerging to launch depth."
"We can't board from the waterline," Miller said, grimacing through the pain of his broken collarbone. "Look up. The maintenance gantry at the two-hundred-foot level. There's a recovery crane with an active arrestor cable swinging loose."
"I see it," I said. "Miller, can you hold this boat steady against the swell under the lee of that support column?"
"I can hold it for thirty seconds," Miller grunted. "After that, the backwash from the hydraulic legs will pull us into the intake turbines."
I grabbed the heavy magnetic grappling launcher from the boat’s tactical locker, securing the titanium hook to the reinforced Kevlar line. I turned to Hayes. "Keep Eleanor secure. If I don't signal within ten minutes, blow the RHIB's fuel tanks against the lower heat exchangers. Don't let her leave this perimeter alive."
Eleanor's eyes flashed with venom. "You're going to your death, David. Vance has an entire security battalion from the Iron Gate contractor division on that gantry. You are nothing but a ghost in a dress uniform."
"I earned this uniform in the mud of Al-Qaim," I said quietly, checking the action of my suppressed carbine. "Vance bought his at a boutique in Georgetown. Let's see whose blood holds its color."
I fired the grapnel. The compressed-gas canister kicked hard against my shoulder, and the magnetic head whistled up into the blinding spray, clamping onto the lower flange of the crane catwalk with a resounding metallic clang.
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I grabbed the mechanical ascender, hooked my harness, and hit the winch.
The salt air whipped my face as the high-speed electric motor dragged me out of the RHIB, hoisting me up into the roaring darkness. Below me, the boat shrank into a speck amid the foaming Atlantic swells. Above, the monolithic black walls of Tartarus-Alpha loomed like the gates of a sunken necropolis, bristling with automated sensory domes, automated CIWS turrets, and the unmistakable silhouettes of armed sentries peering through the tempest.
