Khalif grabbed his son, placing the pistol in the young boy’s hand. He picked up the old rifle from beside one of the dead bandits. He plucked the curved knife from the ground as well and moved deeper into the tent.
His older sons lay there as if resting side by side. Their clothes were soaked with dark blood and riddled with holes.
A wave of pain swept over Khalif; pain and bitterness and anger.
With the gunfire raging outside, he stuck the knife into the side of the tent and cut a small hole. Peering through it, he saw the battle.
Sabah and three of the men were firing from behind a shield of dead camels. A group of thugs dressed like the bandits he’d just killed were out in the oasis itself, hiding behind date palms in knee-high water.
There did not seem to be enough of them to have taken the camp by force.
He turned to Jinn. “How did these men get here?”
“They asked to stay,” the boy said. “We watered their camels.”
That they’d played on the tradition of Bedouin generosity and the kindness of Khalif’s sons before killing them enraged Khalif further. He went to the other side of the tent. This time he plunged the knife into the fabric and drew it sharply downward.
“Stay here,” he ordered Jinn.
Khalif snuck through the opening and worked his way into the darkness. Moving in a wide arc, he curled in behind his enemies and slipped into the oasis.
Preoccupied with Sabah and his men at their front, the bandits never noticed Khalif flanking them. He came up behind them and opened fire, blasting them in the back from close range.
Three went down quickly and then a fourth. Another tried to run and was killed by a shot from Sabah, but the sixth and final thug turned around in time and fired back.
A slug hit Khalif’s shoulder, knocking him backward and sending a jolt of pain surging though his body. He landed in the water.
The bandit rushed toward him, perhaps thinking him dead or too wounded to fight.
Khalif aimed the old rifle and pulled the trigger. The shell jammed in the breach. He grabbed the bolt and worked to free it, but his wounded arm was not strong enough to break loose the frozen action.
The bandit raised his own weapon, drawing a bead on Khalif’s chest. And then the sound of the Webley revolver rang out like thunder.
The bandit fell against a date palm with a puzzled look on his face. He slid down it, the weapon falling from his hands into the water.
Jinn stood behind the dead man, holding the pistol in a shaking grip, his eyes filled with tears.
Khalif looked around for more enemies, but he saw none. The shooting had stopped. He could hear Sabah shouting to the men. The battle was over.
“Come here, Jinn,” he ordered.
His son moved toward him, shaking and trembling. Khalif took him under one arm and held him.
“Look at me.”
The boy did not respond.
“Look at me, Jinn!”
Finally Jinn turned. Khalif held his shoulder tightly.
“You are too young to understand, my son, but you have done a mighty thing. You have saved your father. You have saved your family.”
“But my brothers and mother are dead,” Jinn cried.
“No,” Khalif said. “They are in paradise, and we will go on, until we meet them one day.”
Jinn did not react, he only stared and sobbed.
A sound from the right turned Khalif. One of the bandits was alive and trying to crawl away.
Khalif raised the curved knife, ready to finish the man, but then held himself back. “Kill him, Jinn.”
The shaking boy stared blankly. Khalif stared back, firm and unyielding.
“Your brothers are dead, Jinn. The future of the clan rests with you. You must learn to be strong.”
Jinn continued to shake, but Khalif was all the more certain now. Kindness and generosity had almost destroyed them. Such weakness had to be banished from his only surviving son.
“You must never have pity,” Khalif said. “He is an enemy. If we have not the strength to kill our enemies, they will take the waters from us. And without the waters, we inherit only wandering and death.”
Khalif knew he could force Jinn to do it, knew he could order him and the boy would follow the command. But he needed Jinn to choose the act himself.
“Are you afraid?”
Jinn shook his head. Slowly, he turned and raised the pistol.
The bandit glanced back at him, but instead of Jinn buckling, his hand grew steady. He looked the bandit in the face and pulled the trigger.
The gun’s report echoed across the water and out into the desert. By the time it faded, tears no longer flowed from the young boy’s eyes.
CHAPTER 2
INDIAN OCEAN
JUNE 2012
THE NINETY-FOOT CATAMARAN LOLLED ITS WAY ACROSS calm waters of the Indian Ocean at sunset. It was making three or four knots in a light breeze. A brilliant white sail rose above the wide deck. Five-foot letters in turquoise spelled out numa across its central section—the National Underwater and Marine Agency.
Kimo A’kona stood near one of the catamaran’s twin bows. He was thirty years old, with jet-black hair, a chiseled body and the swirling designs of a traditional Hawaiian tattoo on his arm and shoulder. He stood on the bow in bare feet, balancing on the very tip as if he were hanging ten on a surfboard.
He held a long pole ahead and to the side, dipping an instrument into the water. Readings on a small display screen told him it was working.
He called out the results. “Oxygen level is a little low, temperature is 21 degrees centigrade, 70.4 Fahrenheit.”
Behind Kimo, two others watched. Perry Halverson, the team leader and oldest member of the crew, stood at the helm. He wore khaki shorts, a black T-shirt and an olive drab “boonie” hat he’d owned for years.
Beside him, Thalia Quivaros, who everyone called T, stood on the deck in white shorts and a red bikini top that accented her tan figure enough to distract both men.
“That’s the coldest reading yet,” Halverson noted. “Three full degrees cooler than it should be this time of year.”
“The global warming people aren’t going to like that,” Kimo noted.
“Maybe not,” Thalia said as she typed the readings into a small computer tablet. “But it’s definitely a pattern. Twenty-nine of the last thirty readings are off by at least two degrees.”
“Could a storm have passed through here?” Kimo asked. “Dumping rain or hail that we aren’t accounting for?”
“Nothing for weeks,” Halverson replied. “This is an anomaly, not a local distortion.”
Thalia nodded. “Deepwater readings from the remote sensors we dropped are confirming it. Temperatures are way off, all the way down to the thermocline. It’s like the sun’s heat is missing this region somehow.”
“I don’t think the sun’s the problem,” Kimo said. The ambient air temperature had reached the high in the nineties a few hours before as the sun had been blazing from a cloudless sky. Even as it set, the last rays were strong and warm.
Kimo reeled in the instrument, checked it and then swung the pole like a fly fisherman. He cast the sensor out forty feet from the boat, letting it sink and drift back. The second reading came back identical to the first.
“At least we’ve found something to tell the brass back in D.C.,” Halverson said. “You know they all think we’re on a pleasure cruise out here.”
“I’m guessing it’s an upwelling,” Kimo said. “Something like the El Niño/La Niña effect. Although since this is the Indian Ocean, they will probably call it something in Hindu.”
“Maybe they could name it after us,” Thalia suggested. “The Quivaros-A’kona-Halverson effect. QAH for short.”
“Notice how she put herself up front,” Kimo said to Halverson.
“Ladies first,” she said with a nod and a smile.
Halverson laughed and adjusted his hat.
“While yo
u guys figure that out, I’ll get started on the mess for tonight. Anyone for flying-fish tacos?”
Thalia looked at him suspiciously. “We had those last night.”
“Lines are empty,” Halverson said. “We didn’t catch anything today.”
Kimo thought about that. The farther they sailed into the cold zone, the less sea life they’d found. It was like the ocean was turning barren and cold. “Sounds better than canned goods,” he said.
Thalia nodded, and Halverson ducked into the cabin to whip them up some dinner. Kimo stood and gazed off to the west.
The sun had finally dropped below the horizon, and the sky was fading to an indigo hue with a line of blazing orange just above the water. The air was soft and humid, the temperature now around eighty-five degrees. It was a perfect evening, made even more perfect by the notion that they’d discovered something unique.
They had no idea what was causing it, but the temperature anomaly seemed to be wreaking havoc with the weather across the region. So far, there’d been little rain across southern and western India at a time when the monsoons were supposed to be brewing.
Concern was spreading as a billion people were waiting for the seasonal downpours to bring the rice and wheat crops to life. From what he’d heard nerves were fraying. Memories of the previous year’s light harvest had sparked talk of famine if something didn’t change soon.
While Kimo realized there was little he could do about it, he hoped they were close to determining the cause. The last few days suggested they were on the right track. They would check the readings again in an hour, a few miles to the west. In the meantime, dinner called.
Kimo reeled the sensor back in. As he pulled it from the water, something odd caught his eye. He squinted. A hundred yards off, a strange black sheen was spreading across the ocean surface like a shadow.
“Check this out,” he said to Thalia.
“Stop trying to get me up there in close quarters,” she joked.
“I’m serious,” he said. “There’s something on the water.”
She put down the computer tablet and came forward, putting a hand on his arm to steady herself on the narrow bowsprit. Kimo pointed to the shadow. It was definitely spreading, moving across the surface like oil or algae, though it had an odd texture to it unlike either of those things.
“Do you see that?”
She followed his gaze and then brought a pair of binoculars to her eyes. After a few seconds, she spoke.
“It’s just the light playing tricks on you.”
“It’s not the light.”
She stared through the binoculars a moment longer and then offered them to him. “I’m telling you, there’s nothing out there.”
Kimo squinted in the failing light. Were his eyes deceiving him? He took the binoculars and scanned the area. He lowered them, brought them up and lowered them again.
Nothing but water. No algae, no oil, no odd texture to the surface of the sea. He scanned to both sides to make sure he wasn’t looking in the wrong place, but the sea looked normal again.
“I’m telling you, there was something out there,” he said.
“Nice try,” she replied. “Let’s eat.”
Thalia turned and picked her way back toward the catamaran’s main deck. Kimo took one final look, saw nothing out of the ordinary, then shook his head and turned to follow her.
A few minutes later they were in the main cabin, chowing down on fish tacos Halverson style while laughing and discussing their thoughts as to the cause of the temperature anomaly.
As they ate, the catamaran continued northwest with the wind. The smooth fiberglass of its twin bows sliced through the calm sea, the water slid past, traveling silently along the hydrodynamic shape.
And then something began to change. The water’s viscosity seemed to thicken slightly. The ripples grew larger and they moved a fraction slower. The brilliant white fiberglass of the boat’s pontoons began to darken at the waterline as if being tinted by a dye of some kind.
This continued for several seconds as a charcoal-colored stain began spreading across the side of the hull. It began to move upward, defying gravity, as if being drawn by some power.
A texture to the stain resembled graphite or a darker, thinner version of quicksilver. Before long, the leading edge of this stain crested the catamaran’s bow, swirling in the very spot where Kimo had stood.
Had someone been watching closely, they would have noticed a pattern appear. For an instant the substance shaped itself like footprints, before becoming smooth once again and slithering backward, headed toward the main cabin.
Inside the cabin, a radio played, picking up a shortwave broadcast of classical music. It was good dinner music, and Kimo found himself enjoying the evening and the company as much as the food. But as Halverson fought against divulging the secret of his taco recipe, Kimo noticed something odd.
Something was beginning to cover the cabin’s broad tinted windows, blocking out the fading sky and the illumination from the boat’s lights high up on the mast. The substance climbed up the glass the way wind-driven snow or sand might pile up against a flat surface, but much, much faster.
“What in the world …”
Thalia looked to the window. Halverson’s eyes went the other way, glancing out at the aft deck with alarm on his face.
Kimo swung his head around. Some type of gray substance was flowing through the open door, moving along the deck of the boat but flowing uphill.
Thalia saw it too. Heading straight for her.
She jumped out of her seat, knocking her plate from the table. The last bites of her dinner landed in front of the advancing mass. When it reached the leftovers, the gray substance flowed over the bits of food, covering it completely and swirling around it in a growing mound.
“What is that?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Kimo said. “I’ve never …”
He didn’t have to finish his sentence. None of them had ever seen anything like it. Except …
Kimo’s eyes narrowed, the strange substance flowed like a liquid, but it had a grainy texture. It seemed more like metallic powder sliding across itself, like waves of the finest sand shifting in the wind.
“That’s what I saw on the water,” he said, backing away. “I told you there was something out there.”
“What’s it doing?”
All of them were standing and easing backward.
“It looks like it’s eating the fish,” Halverson said.
Kimo stared, vacillating between fear and wonder. He glanced through the open door. The rear deck was covered.
He looked around for a way out. Moving forward would only take them down into the catamaran’s berths, trapping them. Going aft would mean stepping on the strange substance.
“Come on,” he said, climbing onto the table. “Whatever that stuff is, I’m pretty sure we don’t want to touch it.”
As Thalia climbed up beside him, Kimo reached toward the skylight and propped it open. He gave her a boost, and she pulled herself up through the opening and onto the cabin’s roof.
Halverson climbed onto the table next but slipped. His foot slammed into the metallic dust, splashing it like a puddle. Some of it splattered onto his calf.
Halverson grunted as if he’d been stung. Reaching down, he tried to swipe it off his leg, but half of what he swiped clung to his hand.
He shook his hand rapidly and then rubbed it on his shorts.
“It’s burning my skin,” he said, his face showing the pain.
“Come on, Perry,” Kimo shouted.
Halverson climbed up on the table with a small amount of the silvery residue still clinging to his hand and leg, and the table buckled under the weight of the two men.
Kimo grabbed the edge of the skylight and held on, but Halverson fell. He landed on his back, hitting his head. The impact seemed to stun him. He grunted and rolled over, putting his hands down on the deck to push off with.
The gray substance swa
rmed over him, covering his hands, his arms and his back. He managed to get up and brace himself against the bulkhead, but some of the residue reached his face. Halverson pawed at his face as if bees were swarming around him. His eyes were shut tight, but the strange particles were forcing themselves under his eyelids and streaming into his nostrils and ears.
He stepped away from the bulkhead and fell to his knees. He began digging at his ears and screaming. Lines of the swarming substance curled over his lips and began flowing down into his throat, turning his screams into the gurgles of a choking man. Halverson fell forward. The spreading mass of particles began to cover him as if he was being consumed by a horde of ants in the jungle.
“Kimo!” Thalia shouted.
Her voice snapped Kimo out of his trance. He pulled himself up and scrambled through the opening onto the roof. He shut the skylight and sealed it hard. From the spotlights high in the mast he could see that the gray swarm had spread across the entire deck, both fore and aft. It was also creeping upward along the sides of the cabin.
Here and there it seemed to be swarming over things as it had done to the fallen dinner items and Halverson.
“It’s coming up over here,” Thalia shouted.
“Don’t touch it!”
On his side the invading swarm had made less progress. Kimo reached over and grabbed for anything that would help. His hand found the deck hose and he turned it on, grabbing the nozzle and spraying high-pressure water at the gray mass.
The jet of liquid swept the particles backward, washing them off the cabin’s wall like mud.
“On this side!”
He stepped to her side and blasted away at the muck.
“Get behind me!” he shouted, directing the hose.
The pressurized stream of water helped, but it was a losing battle. The swarm was surrounding them and closing in on all sides. Try as he might, Kimo could not keep up.