Cabrillo dove into him at full speed just as the tanker shifted again and the two sides of the tear scissored closed. He tumbled with Singer amid a spray of warm liquid and a keening cry that pierced his brain. When he recovered from the fall he looked at Singer. Everything below the top of his thighs had been cut off and had dropped into the tank. Blood spilled from the clean slices in torrents that turned pink in the rain.

He crawled to Singer and turned him faceup. He was ghostly pale and his lips had already turned blue. His scream suddenly ended as his brain refused to feel anymore pain. He was slipping into shock.

“Why?” Juan demanded before the man succumbed to the trauma.

“I had to,” Singer whispered. “People have to act before it’s too late.”

“Haven’t you figured out that the future takes care of itself? A hundred years ago you never saw the sun in London because of the industrial pollution. Technology evolved and the pall went away. Today you say the problem is cars causing global warming. In ten or twenty years something will come along that makes the internal combustion engine obsolete.”

“We can’t wait that long.”

“Then you should have spent your millions on inventing it sooner rather than squandering it on a demonstration that can’t possibly change anything. That’s the problem with your movement, Singer. You’re all about propaganda and press releases, not concrete solutions.”

“The people would have demanded action,” he said weakly.

“For a day or a week. To effect change you need alternatives, not ultimatums.”

Singer said nothing, but as he died it was his defiance that was the last thing to fade from his eyes.

Fanatics like him would never understand the nature of compromise and Juan knew he shouldn’t have bothered. He lurched to his feet to recover the battery pack and started running for the bow.

“Talk to me, Max.”

“You’ve got three minutes before the torpedoes run out their charges.”

Because of the guide wires spooling out from the Oregon, the outer tube doors couldn’t be closed to load any more torpedoes from the ship’s store. If Juan didn’t set off the Hypertherm now it would take thirty minutes to get two fresh torpedoes into the water and he knew the Gulf of Sidra would break up before then.

“Don’t wait for me no matter what. If I can’t detonate the Hypertherm, hit the ship with the torpedoes anyway. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the blast will ignite the cutting charges.”

“I hear you, but I don’t like it.”

“How the hell do you think I feel?” Juan said as he ran.