The Rising(98)

“But the life rafts are there!” Alex protested, holding his ground.

“Not all of them,” said Raiff.





100

LIFEBOAT

THEIR LIFE RAFT HIT the water hard, Alex tensing and instinctively taking a deep breath when it seemed certain to topple over from absorbing the initial brunt of impact solely on its nose. But the raft flattened out quickly, melding with the waves instead of fighting their swell, and it was just the four of them sliding about the soft bottom and going for the life vests clasped to the sides.

Except Raiff, who went for the oars instead, to get them clear of the tour boat before it keeled all the way over.

“Is everyone all right?” he cried out, as he began to row, alternating the oars to turn the raft away from the listing boat.

“Oh, my God,” Donati cried out.

“Alex, talk to me!”

“I’m fine!” Alex called back to him, as he tightened the straps on Sam’s life vest for her.

“Oh, my God,” Donati said again.

A big swell tossed a gush of water over the side, the raft feeling weightless against the power of the wave rocking it. Alex didn’t ski much but he’d taken to it quickly, as he took to pretty much anything athletic. He recalled the sense of “getting air” off a mogul jump or natural hump in the trail. That’s what this felt like, the whole raft getting air. He felt Sam throw herself against him and captured her in his grasp, hugging her tight. She clung to him, trembling horribly from the cold and shock. Alex ran a hand through her hair, tightened his grasp.

All he could do.

“Oh, my God,” Donati repeated.

Raiff had somehow managed to get the raft righted, the waves still fighting him every inch of the way, but now he seemed to be winning. Angling them for the nearest landmass, which was little more than a dark blotch set against the mist and the night.

“That’s it!” Donati cried out, rising in the raft to point in the direction Raiff was steering.

“That’s what?”

The next wave pitched Donati down into the water pooling at the raft’s bottom. “The wormhole! Dixon’s pattern plugged into an elementary algorithm to determine the location from which it’s going to be opened!”

“Where?” Sam yelled to him.

Donati pointed again, soaked now. “There!”

“Alcatraz,” Alex realized.





TWELVE

ALCATRAZ

We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking

if mankind is to survive.



—ALBERT EINSTEIN





101

ZERO-SUM GAME

FOR LANGSTON MARSH, LIFE was a zero-sum game. Somebody won and somebody lost, which must be the case in a time of war.

And in war there were casualties, many innocents inevitably among them. A necessary sacrifice, the level of life lost measured against the rewards that could be gained as a result.

A zero-sum game.

And the stakes here couldn’t be higher. Whoever and whatever Alex Chin really was, he represented the highest threat assessment Marsh had ever faced. Something was building, something was coming; he could feel it with the same cold pangs that had left him certain that his father would never return from his mission that fateful day. He had already cried for hours when the man in uniform rang the doorbell with cap tucked stiffly under his arm. His mother had taken on the crying duties at that point, Marsh unable to comfort her because he was too busy staring at the sky, picturing himself soaring up there in a jet suit to destroy whatever had killed his father.

Sometimes life really is that simple, he thought, as the Zodiacs clung to their position in a fog bank a half-mile off the aft side of the now fully toppled tour boat. The fog bank was thick enough to conceal them but thin enough for Rathman’s high-tech night-vision binoculars to clearly see the world ahead.

Marsh already knew this wasn’t going as planned. There were supposed to be four explosions and only two had gone off, accounting for survivors who should’ve been victims. Had things gone according to plan and Rathman’s divers done their job, the occupants of the Zodiacs would be steaming their way toward the chaos now to find the boy. If that meant killing any number of others in the process, so be it. Victims were far easier to deal with than witnesses.

The zero-sum game again.

As it was, though, the life rafts were filled with survivors fleeing the very chaos Marsh had planned to use in his favor. No sense exposing themselves now, not until they’d reacquired their target and moved to intercept him. Out here, in the bay at night with a suitable Coast Guard response still minutes out, his men still held a distinct advantage once they had the target in their sights.

“I’ve got him,” Rathman said, binoculars still pressed against his eyes.

And moments later the Zodiacs burst out of the fog bank on a direct course for Alcatraz.





102

BEACON

RAIFF MANAGED TO STEER their life raft through the final swells toward the dock used by tour groups to access the island.

“What do you mean, Doctor?” he said, supporting Donati as he tried to grab the ladder despite the lurching craft. “About the wormhole, the pattern leading here!”

“That’s what I said.”

“I know it’s what you said, but what does it mean?”