Ramses turned and studied his work for several seconds before speaking.
“Once we open this box, there’s no way to put the lid back on it. I can shut down this system right now and we can all just walk away.”
He looked pointedly at Mason with an expression of genuine concern on his face. Ramses knew how much this investigation had already cost him, and how much he still had left to lose, but he couldn’t walk away now. Kane’s final words haunted him.
This is only the beginning.
“This is my fight,” Mason said, “and I’m finishing it.”
“Our fight,” Gunnar said. “You’re not the only one who’s owed a little payback.”
“Then where do we start?” Ramses asked.
“There are still inconsistencies I can’t explain,” Mason said. “Questions I can’t answer.”
“Like what?”
“The deal you tipped us off to. The one in the building out by the airport. It was an elaborate trap designed to incinerate all of the evidence inside, along with whoever broke the plastic seal. Our forensics guy, Todd Locker, called it a ‘very sophisticated self-cleansing gas chamber,’ which is a completely different MO than the Hoyl employed.”
“You’re suggesting he wasn’t working alone,” Gunnar said.
“I’m certain he wasn’t working alone. Someone was obviously pulling his strings, the same someone whose bloodline has employed successive generations of Fischers to release their deadly diseases and capitalize on the cures for them. But I’m also starting to wonder if he wasn’t also working in parallel. I keep coming back to something Kane said. ‘You think ours was the only game in town?’”
“Don’t tell me there’s another psycho like the Hoyl out there,” Ramses said.
“Locker said the dead men inside the trap had contractures, a specific autonomic response of the central nervous system to an external stimulus. At the time, I assumed the cause was biological, but what if I was wrong? None of the Hoyl’s victims exhibited contractures.”
“Then what could have caused them?”
“When I was inside Steerman’s, before the whole place burned down, I found a room filled with enormous stainless-steel vats, like the kind breweries use. Massive tanks with pressure gauges and valves. The setup was completely separate from the rest of the slaughterhouse, and it almost looked like someone had been living in one of the adjacent rooms. Whoever it was obviously cleared out of there in a hurry, too. The only thing he left behind was a torn piece of paper with a partial chemical formula on it.”
“You think they exposed the dead men in the building to this chemical and used the explosion to eradicate the evidence?” Gunnar asked.
“A nerve agent would certainly explain the contractures.”
“Do you remember the formula?” Ramses asked.
Mason closed his eyes and tried to recall the letters written on the piece of torn paper.
“I need something to write with.”
There was a pen on the desk beside Alejandra. She handed it to him and he wrote the formula on his palm. [(CH3)2CHO]CH3P(O)F + CCl2FNO2. Held it out for the others to see.
Ramses grabbed him by the wrist and pulled his hand closer to the keyboard. He typed the first half of the formula into a search engine.
“That’s not good,” he said.
Mason stared at the results. It felt like the early had spun off its axis.
“What is it?” Alejandra asked.
“Sarin,” Mason said. “Exposure to a few drops is fatal. Convulsions, paralysis, respiratory failure. An excruciating death within a matter of minutes. A single bucket could create a vapor cloud large enough to kill everyone in downtown Denver. And there had to have been at least twenty vats, each of which could have easily held a thousand gallons.”
“What about the rest of the formula?” Gunnar asked.
Ramses opened another window and searched CCl2FNO2.
“Dichloro(fluoro)nitromethane,” he said. “What the hell is that?”
“Move over,” Gunnar said.
“Are you seriously kicking me off my own computer?”
“For once, would you just—?”
“Fine,” Ramses said, and slid back from the console. “But I’m keeping the chair.”
Gunnar sighed, knelt on the floor, and set to work. His fingers buzzed on the keyboard and lines of code scrolled past on the monitor in front of him. His brow furrowed and his lips moved as though he was speaking silently to himself. When he finally sat back on his haunches, the color had drained from his face.
“What is it?” Mason asked.
“Worst-case scenario,” Gunnar said.
“What do you mean?”
“Imagine a chemical that not only ratchets up the effects of a volatile nerve agent, but also stabilizes it in the process. Makes it persist for indefinite periods of time in both liquid and gaseous states. Causes it to linger exponentially longer in the environment. That’s what dichloro(fluoro)nitromethane does for sarin. The reaction of the two produces a single chemical with the formula C5H8Cl2F2NO3P, which just happens to be the same formula as an experimental Soviet nerve agent known as A-234.”
“There’s no proof they were able to produce any of the so-called Novichok agents,” Mason said. “They made their grand announcement during the Cold War, at the height of the KGB’s disinformation campaigns.”
“Whether they succeeded or not is irrelevant. Someone in that slaughterhouse was following their recipe, and if he managed to create a nerve agent that can do what the Russians claimed, we’re dealing with an evolved version of sarin that’s ten times as lethal and undetectable by conventional sensors.”
“Jesus,” Mason said. “And if those tanks were full, they have enough to wipe every major city in the world off the face of the map.”
“Someone should probably make sure that doesn’t happen,” Ramses said. “What with us living in one of those major cities and all.”
“You think?” Gunnar said.
“We have to do more than that,” Mason said. “We narrowly averted one catastrophe, only to find another ready and waiting. These men will stop at nothing to get what they want. They’re just going to keep coming and coming until either we stop them or they enact their genocidal agenda. We can’t afford to let that happen, but with a hundred-year head start, it’s only a matter of time before it does. Our only option is to go on the offensive. We have to find the Thirteen. And we have to destroy them.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Publishing a novel requires a tremendous amount of luck, talent, and hard work; I’m lucky to have the most talented and hardest-working people in the business on my side. Alex Slater, literary agent extraordinaire, championed my manuscript from the beginning and made my dreams a reality. Pete Wolverton, my brilliant editor, challenged me every step of the way; this book is infinitely better for his tenacity and unerring vision. Jen Donovan not only kept this tram on the rails, she provided key insights and unlimited patience. Carol Edwards knocked the copyediting out of the park. The teams at both St. Martin’s Press and Trident Media Group went above and beyond the call of duty on my behalf.
No less integral are the poor souls who don’t get paid to deal with me: my wife, Danielle, who’s always believed in me; my kids, whose support and understanding mean the world to me; my mom, who read all of my early work, and yet still encouraged me; and my dad, whom I wish, more than anything, could be here now.
Special thanks to: Andi Rawson and Kim Yerina, my invaluable beta readers and friends; Jeff Strand, as gifted a novelist as you’ll find; Jennie Levesque, generous to a fault; Liza Fleissig; Don Koish, Shane Staley, and Paul Goblirsch; Leigh Haig; Matt Schwartz; Borderlands Boot Camp; Team TPMI; and to everyone else who’s contributed to my success on a personal level: You know who you are and how much you mean to me.
I offer my eternal respect and thanks to David Bell, Steve Berry, Lee Child, Richard Chizmar, Douglas Clegg, John Connolly, Mark Greaney, Brian Keene, Jack Ketc
hum, Michael Koryta, Jonathan Maberry, Jim Marrs, Thomas F. Monteleone, David Morrell, Douglas Preston, Matthew Reilly, James Rollins, Michael Marshall Smith, A. J. Tata, Thomas Tessier, and F. Paul Wilson for the inspiration and kind words along the way.
My undying gratitude to all booksellers and librarians, who keep the torch of literacy burning.
And, most important, to all of you, my readers, without whom this book wouldn’t exist.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Laurence was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado to an engineer and a teacher, who kindled his passions for science and history. He studied biology and creative writing at the University of Colorado and holds multiple advanced certifications in medical imaging. Before becoming a full-time author, he worked as an x-ray/CT/MRI technologist and clinical instructor. He lives in suburban Denver with his wife, four children, and a couple of crazy Labrador Retrievers. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
One Year Ago
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part I
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Part II
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Part III
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Part IV
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Part V
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Part VI
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE EXTINCTION AGENDA. Copyright © 2019 Michael Laurence McBride. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-15848-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-15850-5 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250158505
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact your local bookseller or the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First Edition: August 2019
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The Extinction Agenda Page 41
