Page 176 of Slack Tide Kill

Liam tapped through the channels, but all he got was static. He picked Tactical One and relayed their situation, hoping some of it got through to Gemmell back in Rye.

They passed the track to Umberside Lodge, then Edwin Pike's repurposed museum, eyes straining into the downpour ahead. He expected to see Mercer's vehicle emerge from the darkness at any moment, but there was nothing.

Then the radio crackled and caught. A voice came through, briefly clear and urgent.

"…repeat, Scots Float is gone! … pumps breached, all of Iden Lock is … cascade failure of the … everything just went white, we felt the vibration, and … Hoskins was out there! We're looking at … collapse, with … backflow across the marsh, the system wasn't designed for–"

The signal crackled away. Liam tapped buttons rapidly, trying to get the signal back, but it was gone.

Had he just heard that correctly? A bomb at Scots Float? He looked at Sally.

"Single point … of failure," she said.

Liam flashed back to Arthur Bledd standing atop the Scots Float pumps two days ago, berating several young environmental officers.

'Single point of failure,' he'd said. 'One catastrophic flood. One severe weather event paired with a failure of the pumps, and a century's worth of balance and delicate co-evolution is lost forever.'

All that meant something, but he couldn't quite grasp it. "Mercer did this," he mumbled. "Mercer bombed Scots Float. But why?" He looked at Sally. "What does it mean?"

She looked as stunned as he felt, but there was something else there too. Something building in her eyes. "It means … there's more, Liam. He's not done."

"Not done."

The words made no sense to Liam. Were they wrong about it all, and the reactor was never a target? Was the marsh somehow the real target?

The road dipped and the car plowed into a deep tranche of black sewer water. Sheetlike waves rolled to either side as their momentum bled away, and for a moment Liam thought they wouldn't make it. The car would stall and they'd be stranded.

But he downshifted, put the pedal down and they growled and coughed up the incline.

"Not only Dungeness," Sally muttered as the car jolted forward.

Liam kept trying to make sense of it as the car flew between swamped fields, right up to the T-junction at Lydd Road. Liam hit the brakes and the car skidded to a halt.

He turned to Sally. "Still up to Appledore, right? The circle route?"

Sally's eyes flickered left to right over the spread of swelling flood water.

"Sally?"

"Not Appledore," she said abruptly.

"What? Not Appledore? But we said–"

She sat up higher in the seat. The effort clearly pained her but she didn't stop. "Listen, Liam. Mercer. How did he trigger the … Scots Float bomb?"

"I don't know. Remotely?"

"Our radio doesn't work. Phone signal's … down."

That baffled him. "So, in person? Or just, close range?"

Sally nodded. "Close range. Mercer came through Appledore. Blew Scots Float. That keeps the marsh flooded."

Liam worked on that. "Massive environmental damage, so that's his plan? Not the reactor?"

Sally's eyes seemed to brighten. "I think it's both."

"Both? But how does that–"