The 6th Extinction

by James Rollins

Only now did he note how tense his companion had gone. All that easygoing manner had washed out of his form.

  “No . . .” Jason squeaked out.

  “Neither do I, but that was the stairwell door. Not the elevator. Don’t think Gray needs the exercise at this late hour.”

  The heavy tread of multiple boots on concrete reached them.

  Monk turned to Jason, his gaze dead serious. “I’m open to any bright ideas, kid.”

  4:06 A.M.

  Gray worked swiftly, knowing every second counted.

  As he swept along the seventh-floor hallway, he collected extra magazines from the dead, making sure they matched the weapon he had swiped. He didn’t know how many others were downstairs, but he was taking no chances. In a firefight, the difference between life and death could be a single round.

  “I’m heading below,” he said, pinning his cell phone to his ear with his shoulder. After finding Raffee dead, he had placed a quick call to Sigma for help.

  “I’ll get units to you as soon as I can.” Kat sounded tense, but even with her husband in harm’s way, she stayed focused. “Be careful.”

  “Only as careful as I need to be.”

  He hung up as he reached the end of the corridor. He paused long enough to grab a hammer from a construction worker’s toolbox. Despite Kat’s efforts, he estimated it would still take law enforcement several minutes to arrive on-site.

  Too late to help Monk and Jason.

  Gray stepped to the fire alarm on the wall and yanked the red lever down. An alarm immediately rang out. His goal was to light a fire under the enemy, hopefully scare them into flight. Failing that, it might make them at least hurry, perhaps even make needless mistakes.

  Plus the racket should help cover his own approach.

  He crossed to the elevator bay, knowing the stairwell would be guarded, and entered the same cage he took to get here. He pressed one of the lower floor buttons, but as soon as he felt the cage descend half a floor, he hit the stop button. A buzzing alarm sounded as the cage came to an abrupt halt, but the noise was easily drowned out by the louder clamor of the fire system.

  Using the claw-toothed hammer, he pried open the inner door of the elevator. As he’d hoped, the cage had stopped shy of the sixth floor, exposing the top half of the exterior door on that level. He reached and tugged the latch to manually release those doors. Once free, he ducked out of the cage—only to turn back and crawl beneath the stalled elevator.

  The open shaft yawned below him.

  With the cage above his head, he swung out onto the emergency ladder that ran down the wall to his left. Once mounted, he slid along its length, ignoring the individual rungs. He used his hands and feet to occasionally brake to control his speed, counting the floors as he fell past them. In twenty seconds, he had reached the subbasement doors marked L3.

  Hanging by one hand, he pulled the latch to release those doors, then lunged out as soon as they parted. He landed and skidded on his knees across the floor, his body twisted to face the neighboring stairwell door. As he had suspected, a lone gunman stood guard, holding the way open with one foot, keeping an eye on the stairs.

  Gray already had his stolen pistol out, still outfitted with a silencer. He shot the man in the head, the suppressed gunshot little more than a harsh cough. He quickly swung his gun toward the data center down the hall.

  Shadows moved in there, along with hushed, angry voices.

  “Maybe they were never here,” he heard one assailant call out sharply. “That dead guy could’ve lied about someone being down here.”

  Gray let out a breath. So Monk and Jason hadn’t been found. Maybe they’d already made it upstairs. But he had to be certain, especially after hearing a voice, full of command, bark out.

  “We’re out of bloody time!”

  Another voice: “Done! Got the worm delivered into the servers. It’ll delete all files here and any redundant backups elsewhere.”

  “Then get those last charges set and move out!”

  With the fire alarm still ringing, Gray moved down the hallway to the data center’s open door. He took a fast glance inside before ducking back out of sight.

  Four men.

  They were all staring through the window to the rows of mainframes in the neighboring room.

  Must be more men in there, setting the final charges.

  Their mission was clearly to compromise those servers. He pictured Lucius Raffee upstairs. He imagined the handful of security guards in the building had suffered a similar fate. Had the director simply been at the wrong time and place, or was his execution another goal of this assault team? An hour ago, he had heard from Painter about the attempt to eliminate the only witness to events in California. Was this attack a part of that, an attempt to erase all trails that led back to that base?

  He had no way of knowing—except the one in command sounded like he had a British accent. He recalled Jason’s discovery of the connection between Dr. Hess’s work and a research team out of England.

  Could just be a coincidence, but maybe not.

  “All set!” a voice called from the server farm.

  “Clear out,” the leader said. “Double-time before we’re pinned down here.”

  Gray kept to the side of the doorway, half hidden behind a trash can. He was still mostly in the open, but he hoped that in their mad rush to flee, they’d dash right past him.

  As expected, men burst out of the control room and pounded down the hallway toward the stairwell—where the guard’s body still lay in shadows.

  Gray didn’t have much time to act.

  As soon as the last man barreled out, Gray rolled across the threshold and into the data center. He kicked the door closed behind him, swiping his black Sigma card to lock it from the inside.

  A shout burst from the hallway outside.

  Gray stood, staring through the bulletproof window in the door.

  A flashlight clicked on down the corridor, revealing a cluster of men around their fallen teammate. The tallest of the lot—burly-chested, with chiseled aristocratic features—turned and stared back at Gray.

  They made eye contact across the distance, the other glowering in fury.

  A teammate touched the man’s shoulder and pointed to his watch. They plainly had no time to force Gray out of the locked room, not with law enforcement closing a noose around the area and the charges about to blow.

  With a silent growl fixed to his lips, the leader waved the others up the stairs, then fled with them.

  Gray turned and opened the door that led into the server farm. A half flight of metal stairs led down to the air-conditioned, insulated space. From his perch, he searched the rows of tall black mainframes. He noted packages of C-4 affixed to the closest racks, their timers glowing, all counting down from 90 seconds.

  He bellowed into the space. “Monk! Jason!”

  Along the back row, a door to one of the towering refrigerator-sized mainframes swung open. Monk and Jason fell out, untangling their limbs.

  Thank God . . .

  Gray waved. “Move your asses!”

  They came running, dodging down the rows of servers. The pair bounded up the metal stairs to reach the data center room.

  Gray unlocked the door to the hallway with a swipe of his card.

  Monk slapped Jason on the back. “Quick thinking, kid.”

  Jason got knocked a step forward but collected himself. “It’s common for server farms to be overbuilt,” he explained, “to leave empty racks for future expansion. Figured DARPA would do the same.”

  Gray led them out and sprinted for the stairs. “This way.”

  Reaching the stairwell door, he found no body, only a pool of blood.

  “See you had some trouble reaching us,” Monk said, noting the stain.

  “More men were upstairs, too. They executed Dr. Raffee.”

  Monk swore as they rushed upward, sprinting from landing to landing. “Any idea who they were?”

  “They took the body bel
ow, but there are four more on the seventh floor. We might be able to ID them.”

  That’s if there’s a building still standing after all of this.

  They burst out onto the ground floor and ran across the lobby. Gray spotted the slack form of one of the building’s security guards collapsed behind his desk. Anger fired through him anew. He pictured the face of the assault team leader, and silently promised to even the score.

  But that would have to wait.

  Gray shoved out the front doors and raced across the apron of patios with the others. As they reached the sidewalk along North Randolph Street, a low rumble shook the ground, accompanied by a deep boom. Several of the building’s lower windows shattered outward. Moments later, black smoke began to roll out into the night.

  In the distance, a chorus of sirens echoed, descending toward their location.

  Monk sighed heavily. “So much for DARPA’s big move.”

  Gray herded the others away, leaving the cleanup to the approaching emergency crews. He wanted to get back to Sigma command, but more important, he wanted answers.

  Who the hell sent that team . . . and why?

  8

  April 28, 6:02 A.M. PDT

  Sierra Nevada Mountains, California

  I hope I’m doing this right . . .

  Jenna stood in the staging tent at the rally point outside of the hot zone. Through the translucent walls, the sunrise was a muffled brightness to the east. The air inside the tent smelled of a slurry of acidic chemicals and body odor.

  Something must have shown on her face because Dr. Cummings—Lisa, she reminded herself to call her—came over to her side. Both of them were already in their one-piece disposable Tyvek suits, which were said to be impermeable to most chemicals.

  At least I certainly hope so.

  As an additional safeguard, they were instructed to duct tape the ends of their gloves to the sleeves of their suits.

  “Looks good,” Lisa said, checking her over. “I’ll help you into the next layer.”

  “Thanks.”

  They crossed to a row of bright red encapsulation suits that hung from a rolling rack. The second layer would cover them from head to toe, completely sealing them from the outside atmosphere. They would breathe inside via air masks and shoulder-harnessed oxygen tanks.

  Together the two women helped each other into the respective suits. Jenna felt a claustrophobic moment of panic as the final seal was secured, gasping within her mask. Trying to hide it, she stood up and took a few steps, as if testing the weight of the tanks.

  “Strutting the runway, I see.” This came over the voice-actuated radio fitted into their air masks.

  She turned to see Gunnery Sergeant Drake salute her, equally encased in what was euphemistically called a bunny suit.

  “How could I not?” she responded back. “Especially when I’m wearing the height of fashion.”

  She tried to sound light, but it came out more doleful to her ear.

  “You’ll be fine,” Drake said, reaching to give her a pat on the shoulder.

  She shied away, fearful of ripping something.

  “The suits are tougher than they look,” Lisa assured her.

  The woman’s brother, Josh, stood behind her, also suited up. Another two Marines would be joining them in this expedition, but in her nervousness, she had already forgotten their names.

  The radio gave a burst of digital noise, then a new voice intruded. “Transport’s ready to move you all out.”

  It was Director Crowe. He was ten miles away, back at the Marine base, overseeing this mission and coordinating the emergency response teams around the region.

  His other duty—and an important one—was to pet-sit Nikko.

  She already missed the husky. His absence left her feeling unbalanced, but no one made biohazard suits for dogs.

  “How’s the video feed from the cameras?” Lisa asked, waving a hand in front of her face.

  “Perfect,” Painter replied. “With the satellite connection, I should be able to watch over your shoulders as you proceed. So be careful out there. Follow proper protocols and avoid any unnecessary risks.”

  “Yes, Dad,” Josh mumbled under his breath, but it still came through clearly over their sensitive radios.

  Painter ignored him and continued. “So far the margins of the hot zone seem to be remaining stable, but we don’t know what other dangers are out there.”

  Jenna stared through the translucent walls of the tent, thinking about where they were going. The quarantine border was a mile off. The toxic gas had finally reached its maximum spread in the last few hours, settling to the ground. Chemical monitoring stations ringed the area, watching in case the winds shifted and stirred up the dirt and sand.

  Their goal—ground zero of the blast site—was twenty miles off.

  At this point, no one knew if whatever broke containment at the base had been neutralized. She tried to imagine anything surviving both the heat of the explosion and that toxic cloud.

  She shivered in her suit at the very thought.

  Their mission was simple enough: Collect samples, survey the damage, and look for any clues to what happened.

  Painter had encouraged her to stay at the Marine base, to remotely observe the excursion into the hot zone alongside him. But she had always been a boots-on-the-ground sort of girl. It was why she had joined the park rangers, to get her hands dirty.

  She had also insisted on coming along for another reason. A nagging worry had kept her up most of the night, tossing and turning: If I had gotten to the base earlier, could I have done something to stop all of this?

  Perhaps it was a foolish conceit, born more of pride than reality, but she could not shake it. Especially after learning over thirty people had lost their lives at the station. As a park ranger, with a sworn duty to uphold the law, she refused to be sidelined in this investigation.

  Not on my home turf.

  “Okay, guys and gals,” Drake said, leading the way, “let’s mount up.”

  Jenna followed with the others, shifting the shoulder harness to better balance her tanks. It was already getting warm inside her suit. They exited the tent, like a group of astronauts stepping out onto an alien landscape. She recalled the tourist yesterday claiming how Mono Lake looked like the surface of Mars.

  And here I am now . . . further proving his point.

  Outside, a green military Hummer stood parked on the road heading into the hot zone. The vehicle had been configured as a troop carrier, with a crew cab in front and an open bed in the back with bench seats. One of their Marine escorts—Lance Corporal Schmitt, she suddenly recalled—climbed behind the wheel. The rest of them were assisted into the rear bed.

  Once they were all seated, Drake patted his gloved palm on the cab. “All set, Schmitty.”

  The engine coughed to life and rumbled. Then they were moving, climbing toward the border of the quarantine zone. Jenna swallowed hard and kept checking the sealed zippers on her suit.

  Lisa sat next to her. “Shouldn’t be much to worry about. The majority of the toxin has settled and is rapidly losing potency.”

  Still, Jenna felt little relief, especially after seeing the cloud of dust kicked up by the wide tires over the gravel road. She fought to even her breathing, to preserve her oxygen supply. They had additional tanks loaded on board, but the goal was not to have to switch them out in the hot zone if possible.

  After a couple of minutes, Lance Corporal Schmitt tapped his horn and pointed an arm out the open window.

  A waist-high cylinder—one of the chemical monitors—sat roadside. A tall antenna sprouted from its top, along with a three-cup anemometer used to gauge wind speeds. Thankfully the small vane remained perfectly still.

  Drake eyeballed it as the vehicle trundled past the marker. “Kiss the clean air good-bye, folks.”

  They were entering the hot zone.

  The road climbed higher into the scrubby hills, the view interrupted by occasional stands of Jeffre
y pines. Everything looked fine at first, just another day-trip into the mountains. Then the first mule deer appeared alongside the shoulder of the road. It lay on its flank, its neck twisted from a final convulsion, a thick pink tongue protruding from soft lips.

  Jenna gulped and looked away, but after another mile, there was no relief in any direction. Wildlife in the basin was notoriously shy, hard to find, especially during the day. But the explosion, the smoke, and the poison seemed to have driven everything out of their dens, warrens, and holes.

  Soon their tires crunched over the broken bodies of seagulls, rock wrens, and ground squirrels. Furred lumps of cottontails and jackrabbits dotted the surrounding slopes. Larger shadows marked a felled herd of mule deer. Elsewhere one of the area’s rare bighorn sheep lay crashed on its front legs, curled horns tangled in a thornbush.

  A tear rolled down her cheek. She couldn’t wipe it away. Even as a park ranger, she had never imagined there was so much hidden life in these hills.

  Now all dead.

  The truck made a stop every mile. Drake would take soil samples while Lisa gathered hair and tissue specimens from the dead animals. Jenna helped her try to collect a blood sample from a black bear. Unfortunately, when they rolled the bulk over for a jugular stick, Jenna found a small cub crushed under its mother’s bulk.

  Seeing this, Lisa stopped and strode away. “That’s enough,” she said. “That’s enough.”

  The quiet banter among them died away with each successive mile, until the only noises were their own breathing, the rumble of the engine, and the crunch of the tires.

  When they were about three miles out from ground zero, Drake finally spoke up again. “Look at the vegetation covering the slope up ahead.”

  Jenna rose from the bench for a better look.

  Until now, the hills had looked normal enough, covered by sagebrush interspersed with monkeyflower, phlox, and a few stands of pinyon pines. But up ahead that all changed. On both sides of the road, the slopes were blackened, without a single shoot of green showing.

  “Could the explosion have triggered a brush fire?” Lisa asked.

  Jenna shook her head. She had plenty of experience with such blazes, some triggered by lightning strikes, others by careless campers. Between the dry grasses and combustible brush, flames could clear through acres in minutes. All that would be left would be ash and the burned trunks of some of the larger pines.