Pressure Read online

  “Punch it,” Abhi said.

  “That only works in movies,” Carrie replied. She turned around to Paolo and stuck out her hand. “Give me the gun.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I asked nicely.”

  Shaking his head, he turned the weapon over to her. Carrie flung the door open and sprang from the vehicle. She opened the guardhouse door and scanned the control panel, until she found a button to raise the gate. Hydraulics whined softly as it lifted into the air. Then, after making sure the coast was still clear, she got back into the vehicle and handed the pistol back to Paolo.

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m just glad you didn’t have to use it.”

  “Me, too.”

  They sped out of the garage and up a ramp. Bright floodlights snapped on, momentarily blinding them. Squinting against the glare, Carrie focused on driving. They followed the road, which brought them around to the front of the clinic, and then arrowed through the thick foliage before terminating at another guardhouse. Unlike the booth in the parking garage, this one was occupied. Two more security agents stood in front of the gate, weapons drawn.

  “Punch it,” Abhi said again. “And hope this actually works outside of the movies.”

  Seeing that they had no choice, Carrie stomped the accelerator and the SUV roared forward. She ducked down as low as she could. Abhi and Paolo did the same. The agents opened fire. Flashes burst from their pistols in the darkness, bullets pinged against the SUV, and then the sound of the gunshots followed. The vehicle shuddered and rocked as the bullets slammed into it. The steering wheel jerked in Carrie’s hands, but she managed to hold it steady. Then, the hail stopped as she closed the distance. The two men leaped aside as the speeding vehicle bore down on them.

  “Hang on,” Abhi shouted.

  They slammed into the gate with a crunch that shook the vehicle, but the mechanical gate snapped on impact and the SUV blew through the opening, shuddering and bouncing on its suspension. Paolo groaned from the backseat. Carrie’s arms were stiff as she gripped the wheel, expecting the airbags to deploy at any second, and was surprised when they didn’t. She glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the two agents scrambling to their feet. When she turned her attention back to the road, a tree loomed large in the headlights. Carrie yanked the steering wheel to the left, gritting her teeth as the tires scudded against a curb.

  Another agent rushed out of the foliage, his expression panicked and breathless. Armed with some type of compact machine gun, he opened fire as they sped past. The first few rounds slammed into their vehicle, but then the weapon’s recoil pulled him off target, and he sprayed the trees. She stared into the muzzle flash. When she looked away, spots danced before her eyes.

  “Anyone hit?” Carrie yelled.

  Neither Abhi nor Paolo responded, but she couldn’t risk glancing at them.

  Then, much to her surprise, she realized that they had exited the grounds. A main road stretched out in front of them. Headlights winked in the distance. She hit the on-ramp without slowing, and sped onto the road.

  Abhi sat up and glanced around. “Is everyone okay?”

  “I am.” Carrie nodded. “Paolo?”

  “I’m fine, all things considered. But it’s cold back here in just this hospital gown. Can you turn on the heat, please?”

  Carrie looked at the dashboard and saw that the check engine light was on. She turned the switch for the heat, and warm air blew across her feet. Despite having been shot at and used as a battering ram, the SUV seemed to be handling okay. Despite the warning from the check engine light, which seemed to glow balefully in the darkness, the temperature gauge seemed normal, and there was no sign of steam leaking from beneath the hood.

  “I think we made it,” she said. “This thing seems to be running okay. Although I’m surprised the airbags didn’t deploy. I, for one, will be writing the manufacturer a strongly worded letter…”

  “They’re not mandatory in Mauritius,” Abhi explained. “Probably never installed, or if they were installed, then they were never activated.”

  “Who cares?” Paolo sighed with relief. “Carrie’s right. We made it!”

  “Not yet,” Abhi replied. “You can bet your ass they’ll be coming after us. We should get off this road as soon as possible. Maybe even change vehicles, if we can.”

  “We’ve got no money and no identification,” Carrie reminded him. “And Paolo’s wearing a hospital robe. He looks like an escaped mental patient. I’m not hijacking another car. Stealing from those assholes is one thing. Carjacking from some innocent civilian is another.”

  “Well, then we had best lead them on a merry chase.”

  “Don’t worry,” Carrie said. “All we have to do is reach the embassy in Port Louis. Then we’ll be safe.”

  “Yes,” Abhi countered. “But to do that, we need to first figure out where we are.”

  “Good point. Watch for road signs.”

  They drove into the night, and the darkness seemed as oppressive as it had along the bottom of the ocean.

  FOURTEEN

  They rode in stunned silence for a while. Carrie assumed that Abhi and Paolo were each coming to grips with the situation in their own way. She felt nauseous and edgy as leftover adrenaline coursed through her system. Her hands and feet jittered, and her left eye kept twitching uncontrollably. Trying her best to ignore it, she guided the SUV on a bewildering series of turns, choosing at random, hopping from highways to back roads to service roads and then back onto the highways again, all in a desperate effort to lose any pursuit while also putting as much distance between them and the Alpinus facility as possible. She kept glancing in the rearview mirror, alert for any signs that they were being followed, but—beside a few nerve-wracking false alarms—the coast remained clear.

  She had hoped to find one of the roads that Maberry and Mariotte had used when the two had driven her and Abhi to Takenaka’s ship. At least then, she’d be able to find the harbor, and possibly help. But nothing looked familiar in the dark.

  “Check around,” she suggested, finally. “See if there’s anything in here we can use. Maybe there are more guns.”

  Paolo found nothing after checking around the vehicle’s rear. Abhi meanwhile searched the glove compartment and the other storage nooks, but came up empty other than an atlas of Mauritius, a packet of tissues, and a crumpled, empty cigarette pack. He consulted the atlas, squinting in the dark, and then glanced up at their surroundings.

  “Is that mountain over there Le Pouce?” Abhi pointed out the window.

  “I think so.” Carrie nodded.

  “Then that puts us in the Moka District.”

  “Not that far from Port Louis,” Paolo said. “All we have to do is make it over the Moka Range.”

  “Easy as pie,” Carrie muttered. “Nothing to it.”

  “You are much more optimistic than I am,” Abhi said.

  “Aren’t I always?”

  “The Moka Range is all winding mountain roads,” Abhi said. “There’s very little in the way of lighting or widely populated areas. If they’re going to hit us, those roads would be the best place for it. Great place for an ambush, too. How many bullets do you have left, Paolo?”

  Fumbling, Paolo ejected the weapon’s magazine and squinted in the dim light. “I think six? And maybe one in the chamber.”

  “We might need them,” Abhi said. “We have to consider the very real possibility that they’re following us right now.”

  “I haven’t seen any cars tailing us,” Carrie said.

  “They don’t need to tail us,” Abhi explained. “Barbet said they had aerial drones as part of their security at the clinic. And we know they had high-tech listening devices. It stands to reason they’ve got a GPS or something else tracking this vehicle right now.”

  “Shit.” Carrie’s skin prickled. “You’re right. In all the excitement, I never even considered that.”

  “It’s okay,” Abhi said. “I don’t think any of us wer
e in our right minds.”

  He paused, and glanced back at Paolo. There was an uncomfortable silence, and then Paolo cleared his throat.

  “I had no choice,” Paolo said. “I thought he was going to kill me, or take the gun and kill one of you. What would you have had me do?”

  “I don’t know,” Abhi admitted. “And yes, I know very well what their plans were for us. But still, I just … it’s the first time I’ve ever been involved in killing someone, Paolo. You’ll have to excuse me if I’m a little … what do the kids say? Freaked out?”

  “How do you think I feel, Gordo?”

  Abhi swiveled around so fast that it startled Carrie. The SUV swerved into the other lane.

  “I told you before,” Abhi warned, “don’t call me fat. And as for how you feel about killing a man, I don’t know. Maybe you don’t feel anything at all. You’re always so goddamned smug. I don’t know what Carrie sees in you.”

  Carrie’s eyes went wide. “Hey!”

  “I still don’t understand your motivations for joining us in this,” Abhi continued. “I know you said you were worried about Carrie and worried about your reputation, but—”

  “Enough,” Paolo interrupted, holding up his hand. “Enough, Abhi. Please. You’re right. I haven’t told either of you everything. And I will, right now. I swear it. But first, we must figure out what to do about this car. I think you are right. They are probably tracking us. Not counting Ochse, there are twelve agents assigned to the facility. We can account for the two in the truck, the one in the custodian closet, the three at the gate, and the two that got off the elevator as we were leaving.”

  “And the one that you shot,” Abhi replied.

  “Yes, him, too. That means the others are unaccounted for. And have probably freed the others by now. Probably called the cops, too.”

  “I’ll find a populated area,” Carrie suggested. “The village of Moka is just up the road. We’ll find somewhere with lots of lights and people. Somewhere they can’t confront us in the open without witnesses. Then we’ll abandon the SUV and get a taxi to take us to the embassy.”

  “How are we going to pay for it?” Abhi asked. “What little money we had left is back at the clinic.”

  “We’ll figure that out when we get to the embassy. What we need to do first is ditch this thing and find us a cab.”

  After both men agreed with the plan, Carrie and Abhi stayed silent, waiting for Paolo to continue with whatever he had been about to tell them. When he didn’t speak, Carrie prodded him gently.

  “Now, what were you saying, Paolo? Something about not telling us everything?”

  “I know what the creatures were,” he said softly. “And I know why Alpinus is trying to kill us.”

  Carrie and Abhi glanced at each other. Then Carrie’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror. Paolo stared out at the passing countryside, his expression one of grim resignation.

  “And how did you come by all this information?” Carrie asked, afraid that she already knew the answer.

  Paolo sighed. “Because I work for Alpinus. When the United Nations awarded Alpinus the expedition contract, it led to certain risks. There were things they didn’t want uncovered. I was assigned to spy on the expedition, and keep anyone, including you—especially you—from discovering the wrong things.”

  “Which is?”

  “The research and development arm of Alpinus Biofutures has been working on nanotechnology for the last decade. The progress they’ve made is absolutely stunning, but there is only so much you can do in a laboratory setting. Two years ago, they began testing nanobots in the wild.”

  “What the hell are nanobots?” Abhi asked.

  “Tiny robots,” Carrie explained. “Built on the scale of a nanometer. Microscopic in size. In theory, you could inject them into a human being and repair damaged tissue or attack cancer cells, or utilize them in molecular research.”

  Abhi shook his head. “And I have trouble sending an e-mail. Do these things actually work?”

  “They were supposedly theoretical, for the most part,” Carrie said. “A few primitive versions have been tested, but it sounds like Alpinus got much further along.”

  “You have no idea,” Paolo said. “And that’s the way it always is. Over the last five years, drones have dominated the news. You see them discussed everywhere as the latest in cutting-edge technology. They’re used in everything from warfare to home deliveries. But your Central Intelligence Agency had developed drones and were using them in the field as far back as the Vietnam War. Not big, bulky drones, but sophisticated, advanced units, built to scale and designed to look like dragonflies, catfish, and other creatures.”

  “Why would anyone make a catfish drone?” Abhi asked.

  “It’s easy,” Paolo replied. “Suppose there is an enemy dam you wish to destroy. You pilot the drone up the river and monitor the dam. You take pictures, via the drone, of the best place to plant explosives. If anyone sees it, there’s no chance of discovery, because they assume it’s just another catfish. But getting back to my point, drones aren’t some brand new thing. They’ve been in development for decades. They’re only new to the public. It’s the same with nanotechnology. Carrie said that only a few primitive machines have been tested, but it goes way beyond that. Those primitive machines were being secretly tested back in the early seventies. They’re much more advanced now.”

  “Hang on,” Carrie said, noticing a pair of headlights closing fast on their rear. She held her breath and gripped the steering wheel tighter as the other vehicle approached. Then, it sped past them. She caught a glimpse of four young faces—kids, out having fun in a fast car. She exhaled, and her grip loosened.

  “About a year and a half ago,” Paolo continued, “Alpinus released nanomachines into the ocean here. As you know, with the exception of the northern fringe, the water temperatures in this area keep the production of phytoplankton low. As a result, life in the ocean is more limited than it is in other regions. That and the warmer temperatures made it an ideal location for their experiment, the intent of which was to ultimately create a temporary hypoxia that they could dial up or down at will.”

  “Hypoxia?” Carrie frowned. “Why would they want to do that?”

  Paolo shrugged. “Control the oceans, and you control an array of natural resources. Some of the world’s biggest oil and natural gas reserves are beneath the ocean floors. Consider how the oceans feed us. If you controlled the oceans, you could create famines, which do wonders for the prices of various commodities. If successful, Alpinus would have unprecedented control of not just their competitors, but entire populaces—entire nations. Billions of people would be dependent on them.”

  “Jesus,” Carrie muttered.

  “Well,” Abhi said, “that settles it. Once we get to Port Louis, I’m calling Alpinus and quitting.”

  The joke elicited only a wisp of a smile from Carrie, who was struggling to control her anger at these revelations. And what bothered her more than Alpinus’s unscrupulous experimentation and sheer arrogance, was the fact that Paolo had known about all this, and said nothing. Indeed, by his own admission, he’d been paid to keep her—and anybody else—from discovering the truth. Her emotions regarding Paolo had just started to warm. This betrayal was like plunging into the Arctic Sea.

  “So, what went wrong?” Carrie fought to keep her tone neutral.

  “There were unexpected … complications. The experiment led to a rapid mutation of the sea life near the trench. The nanobots began building, using various bits of the sea life around them. Tentacles, gills, claws—it was like they borrowed something from everything they encountered and used it to make their very own Frankenstein’s monster. I don’t begin to understand the science involved. In truth, I don’t think there are many at Alpinus who understand what happened, either. Somehow, these mutations ultimately yielded the two massive nanomachine-enhanced apex predators we contended with.”

  “Wait a minute,” Abhi said. “Those monsters
were really just tiny robots?”

  “No, they were biological,” Paolo corrected. “They were flesh and blood. We don’t know what their original stock was, but they were enhanced by nanobots. The machines took the best from a variety of sea life near the trench, and mutated it, the same way they were starting to mutate my brain. But while the process was halted in me, it went unchecked in the trench. Those two predators were the result. And somehow, their presence and the hypoxia effect have led to the rapid deterioration of the sea floor.”

  “That’s a lot to swallow,” Abhi mused.

  “Perhaps so, but that doesn’t make it any less true. There is also the very real danger of this spreading farther out into the ocean. Not only will they wreak havoc on other ecosystems, but they’ll gain access to a greater variety of life from which to feed and build. And sooner or later, humans will be part of those raw materials. But unlike what happened with me, the process won’t be halted.”

  Carrie’s head throbbed. “So, why tell us now, Paolo? I mean, you strung us along. You goddamn knew what was down there when we dived—”

  “I didn’t know the full extent—”

  “Shut up.” Carrie spat. “I don’t want to hear your excuses. Peter died because of this. You knew what was down there and you didn’t warn us. Peter would still be alive now!”

  “But I honestly didn’t know,” Paolo insisted. “I don’t think anyone from Alpinus knew the true extent. The mutations—the impact on the trench—none of that was supposed to happen. The nanobots were just supposed to engineer a controllable version of hypoxia. Alpinus knew they would copy some lesser forms of sea life, but it wasn’t supposed to be anything like this. Certainly not predators like the ones we encountered. Their size, their aggressiveness, the fact that they are breeding—it was unexpected. Nobody at Alpinus knew the true extent of it until after you and I dived.”

  Carrie gripped the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles popped.

  “They must have suspected,” she reasoned.