John Ringo - A Deeper Blue

He kept yanking until he felt the flow was pulling him down instead of sideways. He could see a slight shelf just above water level. He lunged for it, got one hand on the ledge, then pulled the girl upwards against the lighter flow.

Heather had been sure she was dead. When she felt the water irresistibly pulling her under she’d taken a big breath of air. Surely they would stop the flow as soon as they realized what happened. And there were all these lifeguards and stuff around. She wasn’t going to drown !

But as time went on, as she felt that screaming craving to breathe, pinned against the intake, all she could think was that it was a lousy way to die. She was too damned young to die such a lousy way. It made her want to curse. It was just so unfair . She’d never seen anything . She’d never… done anything!

She hadn’t had much time so she’d prayed. She hadn’t cried, though, cause she couldn’t afford the air. She just hung on, fighting the will to breathe, letting out a bit of air from time to time, a trick she’d picked up in swimming class. She could feel her vision getting darker when somebody grabbed her by the arm and the hair ! Oh. My. God! That hurt! But she hung on. Then she started being dragged across the concrete and that hurt. But she was being dragged up. That was good.

She was half unconscious when her mouth cleared the water but she let out what air she had left and took a big glorious drink.

“Oh,” she said, taking another breath.

“Air’s great when you haven’t had any in a while, ain’t it?” the man holding her hair said. He let go of the hair and pulled her up into a little ledge were water usually flowed out. “You okay?”

“I am now,” Heather said, breathing deeply.

“Not too much,” the man said. “Calm it down. Or you’ll hyperventilate. And, uh…”

Heather looked down and realized that her bikini had… Well, it was hanging around her neck and covering her top about as well as a necklace.

“Oh,” Heather said, blushing and tying it back up. “Thank you. For both.”

“You’re welcome,” the man said. “I’d ask for favors, but you’re much too young. And you shouldn’t argue with your mother; she really loves you, you know?”

“How do you… ?” she asked then she ducked her head. “You’re the guy in the GT, right?”

“Right,” the man said. “And you’re the girl with the belly.”

“What?” Heather asked, looking down. “I don’t have a fat belly!”

“I didn’t say ‘fat,’ ” the man said, chuckling. “Wave for your mom to tell her you’re okay.”

Heather dutifully waved, then looked at the crowd. Everybody was out of the water and they were staying way back.

“What’s happening?” she asked. She felt weird. She’d nearly died and now she was chatting with some stranger while perched up on an outlet in full view of a big crowd.

“Somebody dumped poison in the water,” the man said.

“That’s why they were sucking it all out,” Heather said.

“Correct,” the guy said, looking over at her. The look gave her butterflies in her belly.

“Wha… who… why… Did somebody stop them or what?”

“Yeah,” the man said, standing up. The whirlpools were gone. “Somebody stopped them. Time to take a swim.”

“Okay,” Heather said, jumping into the water. She must have cut up her back because it really hurt. “Ouch!” she said as she surfaced.

“Pain is weakness leaving the body,” the man said, then followed her in.

“What ever ,” Heather said, frowning. “Hey, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” the man said, breast-stroking towards the side of the pool.

“Can I get a ride in your GT?”

“Not today, I’m a little busy,” the man said. “But I’ll find you tomorrow and you can then. If your mother says it’s okay.”

“What is it with adults?”

“You’re wet,” Britney said as Mike collapsed into the seat of the GT.

“Yeah,” he said. “And my cell’s trashed. Could you get me the rig out of the back?”

Britney picked up the case in the back and opened it as Mike pulled out. A state trooper car pulled in front of him, trying to block the GT, and he slid around it dexterously. Punching the accelerator he began weaving through the remaining traffic on I-Drive and blew through the red light at Kirkman, narrowly missing an SUV.

The case contained a tactical communicator but one of the smallest ones Britney had seen. There was an ear bud, a throat mike that wasn’t much more than a patch and a small device that looked like a PDA in a belt rig.

As Mike swept through the turn onto I-4 she attached the belt rig and the throat patch, then handed him the earbud.

Mike slid in the ear bud, weaving through traffic, then keyed on the communicator.

“Who’s there?”

“Lydia, Kildar, do you want an update?”

“Two major attacks? I-Drive and Wet and Wild?”

“Yes, Kildar,” Lydia said.

“Switch me to Dunn,” Mike said, sliding into the left-hand emergency lane to get around a rolling roadblock. He was doing over a hundred and the suspension did not like the rougher surface.

“This Jenkins?” Dunn snarled a moment later.

“You could start with ‘thank you for doing my job for me,’ ” Mike replied.

“You realize you’re on national TV at the moment?” Dunn asked. “I’m trying to convince everyone that the guy flying down I-4 in a GT is not a terrorist and doesn’t go around shooting people for the fun of it. But since I’m not sure myself …”

Mike glanced in his rearview and finally spotted the line of police cars trying to catch up to him.

“Good, at least they’re heading the right way,” Mike said.

“I’m watching you on TV,” Dunn said. “I can’t believe you’re able to talk. The only people I know that can do that are cops. Don’t ask me about eating lunch during a high-speed chase and I won’t tell you the story.”

“I’m good at multitasking,” Mike said, slipping through a gap between two semis at about twice their speed. The cop cars in the rearview either braked or tried to slip into the emergency lanes. He was just passing the onramp from the Beeline and saw three black Mercedes stacked up entering the interstate at high speed. “Okay, now is when it gets fun. I wondered when this would start…”

Mark Este, chief helicopter pilot and owner of World Helicopter Rides, Inc., wasn’t too sure about the latest charter. The man who had set it up said that they were photographers looking for some stock shots of the Orlando area. And the group had big bags, but they didn’t look like camera bags.

But, what the hell, a charter was a charter.

“Where do you want to go?” he asked as he took off.

“Down I-4 towards Disney,” the leader said as the helo gained altitude. “I am a pilot as well. Would you mind if I rode up front?”

“Sorry, FAA reg against it,” Mark said. He felt a cold circle on the back of his neck as the man slid into the co-pilot’s seat.

“You’ll forgive me if we ignore that,” the man said, strapping in and putting on the spare headphones. “My bird.”

The three Mercedes had obviously been souped up since they were, marginally, keeping up with the GT. The problem was the traffic. Mike was having to find the gaps and the Mercedes were following him through them. They were outdistancing the cop cars for that matter.

He didn’t flinch as the first rounds struck the GT but he did snarl.

“Those motherfuckers just shot my car,” Mike said. “They are so going to pay for that.”