James Swallow: Icarus Effect

She turned back to Saxon. "Down," she told him, a plan forming in her thoughts. "We've got to go down. There's no other escape route." The risk of what she was suggesting made her blood run cold; but at the same time she knew there was no other option open to them.

"This boat's sinking, or hadn't you noticed?" he retorted. "Those decks will be full of water."

"I don't plan on burning or drowning," Anna snapped back. "Saxon, you have to trust me. I know a way out! Come on!"

He nodded, with effort. "Go, then," he said, and limped after her, deeper into the dying vessel.

The corridor to the aft canted at a forty-five-degree angle and the cold water of the lake was at Saxon's waist. All around them, the Icarus was dying, electrical systems firing blasts of sparks over their heads, the hull moaning as it buckled.

At the door to the tender garage, Saxon and Kelso had to put their full weight behind the hatchway to swing it open against the pressure of the water. The pain in his arm and his belly were numbing fires.

The small bay was a mess, debris scattered across the room floating in drifts and the yacht's launch already overturned and knotted in its own guide ropes. Water was pouring in from the port side, and what space they had to breathe was thick with suffocating smoke.

"This is your way off?" Saxon asked.

Anna didn't answer him; instead she dropped beneath the surface and vanished into a cloud of bubbles. A moment later, she broke through again and pulled at his arm. "You can swim, right?"

"Of course I can bloody swim."

"There's a dive hatch set in the deck. We get it open, we can get out into open water."

He shook his head. "This wreck is on fire! We're surrounded by burning fuel, we try to surface out there and we'll die!"

Anna shook her head. "That's not what I said. I told you to trust me, so trust me!" She grabbed his other arm and pulled him.

A crash of fire and heat rippled down the corridor behind them, ending any more argument from him. Taking as deep a breath as he could,

Saxon followed her into the water. His hands brushed the deck beneath them and found the edges of the hatch.

Together, they pulled at the latches as the water around them churned and boiled.

Namir turned the helo in a tight orbit over the Icarus, but it was difficult to make out anything. Thermals from the raging fires buffeted the flyer, and he didn't dare venture too low, as gas tanks in the midsection began to combust one by one, lashes of orange flame jetting into the air as the heat broke them open.

The yacht's bow crumpled and fractured down the length of it. The craft was taking on water as fast as it was burning, and it would be a race to see which would claim it first.

He looked over his shoulder at Federova, who scanned the blazing wreck down the sights of a heavy battle rifle.

"Anything?"

She gave a curt shake of her head, and Namir knew she was itching to rake the craft with a hail of 5.56 mm rounds, just to make certain that the Icarus was Ben Saxon's grave.

"Company!" Barrett called out to him and pointed across the lake.

Namir glanced back and saw the blue-and-white hulls of the police patrol boats cutting through the wave tops toward them. "Time to go," he said, and grabbed the helo's throttle, pushing it forward to maximum. The flyer's nose dipped down and Namir guided it through the clouds of fire smoke, and away toward the far coastline.

Under cover of destruction, the Tyrants vanished.

The Icarus perished with a final, spasming explosion as the diesel fuel reached combustion point and flashed into fire. The blast took the yacht apart and rained fragments down in a cascade of shards and flaming debris. Anyone caught on board would have been killed instantly, ripped apart or burned to ashes.

Beneath the surface of the lake, the concussion resonated through the water and beat at Saxon and Kelso, a heavy hammer of force battering them down into the depths.

Saxon lost control and tumbled; blue-water ops had never been his thing, and now the pain and the hurt and the fatigue all combined with the blast to rob him of his last breaths, the oxygen in his lungs streaming from his mouth in a gush of bubbles. He was going to drown, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Then Anna was there, her arms snaking around his back, pulling herself close to him, fighting the undertow to draw them together into an almost intimate embrace.

Through his clouded vision he saw her face, milk-pale like some ghost come to claim him. Over her shoulder he saw other shadows, other men.

The dead and the gone, the true ghosts beckoning him to join them. He reached out, and tried to speak. I'm sorry, he wanted to say, I let you down.

Anna's face closed in and she pressed her lips to his, cupping the back of his skull, pushing them together.

The kiss was like an electric shock; and then from it new breath flooded into his mouth and his lungs, trickles of bubbles escaping as Kelso gave up her air for him.

Pressed to him, he felt something flutter against his chest, something beneath the flesh of Anna's breast; a rebreather implant. She turned her head away, peering through the murk as they drifted there, gently exhaling, breathing without breathing before she turned back and gave him another moment of life. The implant could act like a small reservoir of air if needed, increasing lung capacity against gas effect, suffocation… and drowning. He had trusted her, and now in turn she saved him.

Saxon saw her face, saw the pain hiding beneath the surface, the scars that didn't see the light of day. They were alike, the two of them. Both damaged by the same lies, both survivors of it. Both haunted.

Beneath the shroud of flame across the surface of the water, between the shafts of light and the fall of the wreckage, they held on to life, and to each other.

Eiffel Tower-Paris-France

The private elevator took him to the second tier of the tower, which, as he had expected, was closed to the public for the duration. The restaurant Jules Verne was equally empty, the only figures moving between the tables a discreet pair of young waiters who doubtless had been thoroughly vetted for their reliability.

DeBeers dismissed his men with a glance and they found themselves somewhere to stand, out of his sight line. He crossed to the table where his colleague was waiting. Morgan Everett got up, extending a hand and warm smile, framed against the windows and the view of the Champs de

Mars beyond.

"Lucius," he began. "It's good of you to come. It's been a while."

"Since we were face-to-face? Indeed." DeBeers took his hand and shook it. "You look well, Morgan. Paris agrees with you."

That got him a smile in return. "This city has always been important to the group. And the truth is, a lot of things here agree with me." Everett gestured to the chair across from his and they sat.

DeBeers found the glass of Les Forts de Latour waiting for him and considered it. "How is Elizabeth, by the way?"

"She sends her best," said the other man. "She has other obligations." He nodded toward the waiters. "I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of ordering for you." "I trust your judgment," he replied. "So, this is just the two of us, then?"

Everett sipped his wine and leaned forward. "You're not going to pretend you thought it would be anything else?"

"I suppose not," DeBeers allowed. "I'm concerned that the council might be dismayed at the thought of us meeting in secret."

"To conspire?" Everett chuckled. "Lucius, you've been an excellent teacher all these years, and one lesson I learned very early on was that there is an elite within the elite."

"Some believe that," he agreed. "Page and Dowd."

"Bob Page has enough to do with the biochip initiative and his projects at Majestic 12." DeBeers detected a note of irritation in his old friend's voice, but chose not to comment on it. "And dear old Stanton won't leave New York for anyone."