John Ringo - A Deeper Blue

Mike leapt the entry stall one-handed and drew his pistol as the unarmed security guard ran towards him.

“Mike… crap what day is it?” he shouted. “CIA. You’re under terrorist attack. Where’s the place where they’ve got all the pumps!”

“Lieutenant Britney Harder,” Britney said, holding out her badge. “SOCOM Intelligence. Answer the question!”

The befuddled security guard just stared at the badge in one hand and the gun in the other.

“You’re who ?” he asked.

“Oh, fuck,” Mike said, looking around for any signs of intelligence. There was one girl in uniform who was pretty wide-eyed but didn’t seem completely shut down. “You,” he said, pointing his finger at her. “Pumps?”

“This way,” she said, gesturing. “How fast should we be going?”

“Faster than this,” Mike said, trotting past her. “How fast can you run?”

“I’m one of the lifeguards here,” the girl said, speeding up.

“Good,” Mike said. “Think Baywatch fast.”

The VX traveled into a main supply pipe and most of the way through the park towards the outlets at the wave pool. From the wave pool, water was pulled in, pumped to other attractions and then, eventually, reprocessed.

It would take two minutes for the first of the load to reach the wave pool…

Massoud hooked up the last circuit and the pump began throbbing.

“Now it is going down,” he said, pointing to the barrel. “And I’d really prefer not to be a martyr, thank you.”

“You have grown soft,” the Pathan said. “You have let the infidel women infect you.”

“Seriously, dude,” Massoud said, dropping his hands in resignation. “You need to get over yourself. Have you seen those bitches? Wait, don’t shoot. We just walk up to the top of the pump station and you can see for yourself. Holy Allah, seventy-two virgins? There’s about a thousand of them out there in these little yellow bikinis that are sooo tight…”

“You make me sick,” the Pathan said, lifting his pistol.

Mike was barely panting when he reached the door of the pump room. The lifeguard had gasped directions to him halfway across the park and he could hear she was still back there somewhere. Britney, the dear, was right on his ass. She was also unarmed.

“Back,” Mike said, cursing himself for not getting God-dammed MOPP gear. Again. He took three breaths to steady himself and snatched open the door.

Massoud ducked and covered as gunshots rang out. He felt his body, gingerly, wondering where the bullet had gone, then looked up. A man with a smoking pistol was standing by the Pathan’s body.

“If you don’t shut this shit down, right now, I’m going to feed it to you,” the man said.

Massoud scrambled to his feet and pulled the connections for the pump in a spiral of sparks, then dropped the input to the injectors.

“I don’t know how much got in,” he shouted. “I am not jihadist! I spit in all jihadist’s faces! This is not the religion I was born in!”

Mike looked at the barrels, then at the big pump room. He had no fucking clue how to run any of this shit.

“We need to stop it,” Mike said. “And suck back any that got out.”

“Back-feed,” the man said, nodding. “I can do that.”

He turned to a big control console and began hitting switches. Mike backed up, just in case any of the VX was in the air. But the barrels were well sealed. This had been a professional operation, probably because of the guy at the console.

“What happens when you back-feed?” Mike asked.

“It is a way to wash the filter system,” the man shouted through his mask. “It will pull water in through the main outlets and flush it back through the system then into the sewer system. What is this, really?”

“VX gas,” Mike said. “What did they tell you?”

“A caustic agent,” the man said, shrugging. “I wasn’t going to try to fuck with Taliban.”

“You’re Afghan,” Mike said.

“I’m an American citizen. Have been for three years. This really wasn’t what I was planning on doing today.”

“We keep anybody from dying and I’ll see what I can do,” Mike said. “Wait, you’re going to suck water back in from the outlets?”

“Yeah,” the man said. “Anybody by them better watch out. It’s really gonna… suck. I’ll add some agents to neutralize the poison, too.”

“Shit,” Mike said, running out of the room and brushing past Britney. The panting female lifeguard had just reached the entrance to the pump room when he leapt down the steps.

“Main outlets for the water?” Mike said. “Where?”

“Wa… Wave po…”

“Wave pool,” Mike said, running past her. “Get on the horn. Everybody out of the pool.”

Heather frowned and popped up again as the wave action stopped. There was some sort of oily slick over to her left and she instinctively avoided it. But she was the only one up by the outlets so nobody else was near it.

She considered, again, getting out, but the waves were probably going to start up again any time now. She leaned back and floated on the surface for a bit. That had gotten easier lately and she wasn’t sure why.

Then she felt the water shifting around her and went vertical again, holding herself up by fanning her hands. The wave generator sucked in and then pushed back out and she felt the suction, riding it down to the grates. But it wasn’t blowing back…

“Heather!” the woman screamed.

“Ma’am, you need to get back,” the lifeguard said. They were all getting people out of the pool and driving them as far back as they could. The news had been all over the VX story with lurid details of what it did and when they got the news and saw the oil slick on the surface… Well, they didn’t get paid enough to die.

“My daughter is in there!” the woman shouted. “She was down by the wave thing!”

The guard looked over his shoulder and could see where whirlpools had formed as the massive pumps reversed. The pressure would be enormous; if there was anyone down there they weren’t coming out.

“Ma’am, I’m sure she’s not down there,” he started to say as the crowd surged forward and parted.

A heavy-set guy was head down, pushing through the crowd and panting hard as if he’d been running. As he passed the guard he looked at the woman.

“Where?” the guy panted.

“On the right, I think,” the woman said.

“On it,” the man said, diving into the water.

“Hey!” the guard shouted. “No diving!”

Mike knew he was fucked. Those were big fucking pumps, designed to drive masses of water like son of a bitch. Then there was the VX, which was probably in the water somewhere.

But he also could see a figure pinned against the grates. The figure’s arms were up but the person couldn’t reach the surface. They were caught like a spider in a web, only a few feet from air.

But inches from air could kill you.

He could feel the suction of the inlets, now, drawing him in. He rode the current, his feet forward, and slammed with both feet onto the grate. The grating was small specifically to keep people from being sucked in by the waves. It wasn’t actually hard to stay “upright” sideways.

He crouched and walked, carefully, to where the figure, a girl naturally, was pinned in a rather charming spread-eagle. But at that point he was sort of stuck. He couldn’t figure out how to get her unglued.

Up was the only rational choice but it was going to hurt like hell. Especially since the only thing he could get ahold of was one arm and her hair.

He grabbed both, crouched and yanked her upwards. He gained a few inches, stepped forward and tried it again. So far so good. Now if she just wouldn’t die on him.