The Water Wars - Cameron Stracher [40]
Just then a man emerged from one of the other carriers. He was tall, with white hair that stood straight up, and he wore a scientist’s white lab coat. Nasri followed closely behind him. The two men walked about ten meters, and then Nasri withdrew something from his pocket and waved it at the man.
“He’s got a gun,” I said.
The first man stopped, and Nasri walked two steps closer to him, leveling the gun at his back. The man turned, faced Nasri, and bowed his head toward the ground.
“It’s Dr. Tinker,” I said.
“I see him.”
“They’re going to kill him!”
Nasri stood before Dr. Tinker, his gun arm extended. I couldn’t believe it, but it really did appear that Nasri was going to shoot the doctor in cold blood. “Will!” I shouted.
The hover-carrier bolted forward, pressing me back into my seat. Nasri looked up at the same time, momentarily perplexed by the carrier bearing down on him. He stumbled backward just as the carrier stopped. “Get him!” Will shouted to me.
Will had positioned us between Nasri and Dr. Tinker, with the rear cargo door facing the doctor. Through the front viewscreen I could see Nasri looking at us, his eyes turning into slits that promised violence. I knew I had only a handful of seconds before he acted.
I dashed to the back of the carrier and flung open the doors. Dr. Tinker was still looking down as if he expected to be shot. “Quick, into the truck!” I called. He looked up but didn’t move, and I extended an arm. “Get in! Get in!”
He moved as if in a daze and grasped my hand as if unsure what he was holding. When he took his first steps into the carrier, I heard a pistol shot, and then Nasri appeared around the corner. He charged at me, raising his arm to fire a second shot. I shut my eyes. But the shot never came. Instead I heard Nasri scream, and I opened my eyes to see Will spraying him with hot steam from the desalinator. “The doors, Vera!”
I slammed the cargo doors shut while Will scrambled back into the driver’s seat. We took off with a jolt that sent both Dr. Tinker and me to the floor. But I didn’t mind. We weren’t dead. In the bulletproof hover-carrier, moving at two hundred kilometers an hour, it would be difficult for Nasri to hurt us.
I helped Dr. Tinker into his seat. He let me fasten his buckle and adjust the headrest.
“Who are you?” he asked when I was seated.
“Who are you?” asked Will, turning slightly from the driver’s seat.
“Doctor Augustus Tinker. Hydrologist.”
“Pleased to meet you,” I said. “I’m Vera. And this is my brother, Will.”
Dr. Tinker looked at us as if I had just told him Will and I were Martians come down to perform experiments on his brain.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” I added.
The hover-carrier dipped suddenly in the air, and Dr. Tinker’s head jerked forward then banged backward against the headrest.
“Sorry,” said Will.
“My brother’s never driven a hover-carrier,” I explained.
“I’m doing a pretty good job.” said Will sullenly. “Considering.”
“But who are you?” Dr. Tinker repeated.
I told him our names again, and said we had been kidnapped by pirates, then by PELA, taken to Minnesota and then into Canada, and had escaped when Will rewired the portable desalinator. “We were trying to find Kai,” I explained.
“Kai?”
“You know, the boy whose father works with you. The driller.”
“Rikkai Smith?”
Will raised an eyebrow. “Rikkai?” he repeated.
“Tall, blond hair, about Will’s age?” I asked.
The doctor nodded. “His father Driesen and I have been friends since before the Great Panic. But what made you think he was with me?”
“It’s what the pirates said. They were coming to find you.”
Dr. Tinker sniffed. “Instead those PELA thugs found me first.”
I considered this. “What did they want from you?”
“The same thing the pirates wanted.”
“Water,” I said.
“Yes. Everyone wants water.”
“But not everyone knows