Her comment struck Matt like a bucket of ice water.
“What makes you say that?” the man asked, his voice snapping to attention.
“Well, I heard him come back. These are old houses, and even with the refurb, the floorboards have this creak in them that’s always there, and I can hear him coming in and out, especially when it’s late and it’s quiet outside—”
“Ma’am,” the man interrupted abruptly, clearly impatient.
“I think he came in earlier,” she said with more urgency, “and then he went out again. But then he came back.”
“When did you hear him come in?”
“Not long ago. Ten minutes, maybe? He should be upstairs.”
Matt’s nerves went haywire.
He heard the man’s tone take on a much harder edge as he ordered the woman, “I need you to let us in, ma’am, right now,” followed by a shout to his partner and the distinct sound of the entrance door snapping open.
Seconds later, heavy footfalls were charging up the stairs.
Chapter 21
Amundsen Sea, Antarctica
Gracie’s stomach fluttered as she watched Dalton rise off the deck of the royal research ship. Unlike the Shackleton, its stablemate, the James Clark Ross wasn’t endowed with a helipad. Transfers at sea could only be made by winching passengers to and from a hovering chopper. Which, in sub-zero weather and with a gargantuan wall of ice collapsing a few hundred yards away, wasn’t for the fainthearted.
It was now six hours since the sign had first appeared. After their extended, high-definition clip was broadcast and carried by the other channels, the news had simply exploded. It was all over the news updates, splashed across the world’s TV screens, and on every Internet news site. Armies of reporters and pundits were talking about it, wondering about it, offering wild theories. People across America and in the rest of the world were being interviewed and asked what they thought the sightings meant. As expected, some of the responses were glib and dismissive, but most people were seriously intrigued. And it was still the middle of the night across North America. Most people there were asleep. The next day, Gracie knew, was when the real frenzy would begin. Her satphone hadn’t stopped ringing with requests for interviews and comments, and her inbox was also flooded.
Across every channel, every news network, one expert after another was being wheeled in to try and explain it. Physicists, climatologists, all kinds of scientists, dragged in from every corner of the planet. None of them had a clue. They couldn’t offer any remotely convincing insight into how or why it was happening, and while that excited some people, it also scared a lot of them. The religious pundits were faring better. Faith was one explanation that didn’t carry the burden of proof. Priests, rabbis, and muftis were voicing their thoughts on the sign with increasing candor. On one clip that Gracie had watched, a Baptist pastor was asked what he thought about it. He replied that people of faith everywhere were watching it very closely, and wondered if there was anything other than the divine to explain it. It was a view that several other interviewees also expressed—and that perspective was gaining ground. Faith, not science, was where the true explanation lay. The thought consumed Gracie as she strained against the downdraft from the Lynx’s powerful rotor and shielded her eyes to watch Dalton’s slow ascent. A small smile cracked across her face as he waved to her from above, coaxing a wave back. Consummate filmmaker that he was, he held a small camcorder in one hand, capturing every hair-raising moment.
She noticed Finch turn, and followed his gaze to see the ship’s captain join them. He looked up, taking stock of the transfers’ progress, which had to be swiftly executed, as they were already at the edge of the helicopter’s operating range, even with its additional fuel tanks, then turned to Finch and Gracie.
“I got a call from someone at the Pentagon,” he informed them, shouting to be heard against the deafening rotor wash.
Gracie glanced over at Finch, both of them visibly and suddenly on edge.
“They wanted me to make sure no one left the ship before their people got here,” the captain added. “You in particular,” he specified, pointing his finger at Gracie.
She felt a paralysis of worry. “What did you tell them?”
The captain grinned. “I said we were in the middle of nowhere and I didn’t think anyone was going anywhere for the time being.”
Gracie breathed out in relief. “Thanks,” she said and beamed at him.
The captain shrugged it off. “It wasn’t even a request. It was more like an order. And I don’t remember signing up for anyone’s army.” His words were laced with bemused indignation. “I’ll expect you to kick up a big stink if they ship me off to Guantánamo.”
Gracie smiled. “You’ve got it.”
He glanced overhead at the chopper, then leaned in closer. “We’re also getting flooded with requests from journalists and reporters from all over the place. I’m thinking we should seriously bump up our room rate and rake in some cash.”
“What are you telling them?” Finch asked.
He shrugged. “We’ve hung up a no vacancy sign for the moment.”
“They’ll keep asking,” Gracie told him, “if they’re any good at what they do.”
“I know,” the captain said, “and it’s hard to say no, but this is a research ship. I don’t want to turn it into a Carnival cruise. Trouble is, we’re the only ones out here. The only other ships within a couple hundred miles are a Japanese whaler and the Greenpeace vessel that’s hounding it, and I don’t think either of them’s in a particularly hospitable mood.” His deep-set, clear eyes twinkled mischievously at Gracie. “Looks like it’s still your exclusive.”
She smiled back, the gratitude evident in her expression. “What can I say? I must be blessed.”
“I’m kind of surprised you’re in such a rush to get off my ship while everyone else seems so desperate to get on,” the captain queried with playful, barely disguised suspicion.
Gracie glanced at Finch; then, without trying too hard to throw their host off the trail, she grinned and told him, “That’s what makes us the best damn investigative reporting team in the business. Always one step ahead of the story.”
As if to rescue her from the uncomfortable moment, the harness appeared again, and a crewmember helped Gracie strap herself into it. Once she was safely locked in, he waved to the winch operator in the chopper, and the slack in the cable began to tighten up.
“Thanks again, for everything,” she yelled to the captain, emphasizing the last word in reference to Finch’s request that he keep their departure under wraps. He’d graciously agreed, without asking questions, and she felt a slight pang of guilt at not being able to share the whole story behind their hasty exit with him.
He flicked her a small parting wave. “It’s been our pleasure. Just let us know what you find out there,” he added with a telling wink. “We’ll be watching.”
Before she could react, the cable went taut, yanking her into the ice-speckled air. She breathlessly watched the ship recede beneath her, dreading the marathon journey ahead and the uncertain reward awaiting her at its end.
Chapter 22
West Antarctic Ice Sheet
The four ghosts on the ice shelf stayed low and watched as the Royal Navy chopper glided over the ship, just under half a mile west of their position.
They weren’t worried about being spotted. Their gear would more than take care of that. They just lay there, hugging the packed snow, invisible in their full “snow white” camouflage parkas and pants, faces hidden behind white balaclavas, eyes and mouths peeking out from unsettling round openings. Even the soles of their boots, which they scrubbed down every morning before heading into action, were white. Four snowmobiles, also white and without markings, squatted nearby. Hidden under white camouflage netting, they were also virtually undetectable from the sky.
The team leader monitored the chopper through his high-powered binoculars as it lifted the last of the news crew
off the ship. A hint of a smile of satisfaction flitted across his chapped lips. Things were going as planned. Which wasn’t a given, considering how tight the timing had been and how frantic the deployment of his unit had been.
The operation had gone live four days earlier. They’d left their training camp in North Carolina and flown to Christchurch in New Zealand, where an Air National Guard C-17 Globemaster had been waiting on the tarmac to whisk them down to the National Science Foundation’s McMurdo Station, on the ice continent’s Ross Island. From there, an LC-130 Hercules aircraft fitted with skis had ferried them to an isolated staging area on the ice shelf itself, fifteen miles south of their current position. Snowmobiles that they’d flown in with them had carried them on the last leg of their thirteen-thousand-mile journey.
The extreme change of climate and the travel through multiple time zones were brutal and would have debilitated most people, but it didn’t affect them. They’d trained extensively for this operation and knew what to expect.
To say the job was a high-value, priority-one assignment was underselling it, big-time. He’d never experienced anything quite as intense, nor as uncompromising, as the rigorous interview process and psychological profiling he’d undergone before getting the job. Once that was settled, no expense had been spared in either the training facilities or the gear that was made available to him and his team. The client clearly didn’t have budget issues. Then again, a lot of the firm’s clients were governments—the U.S. government being its biggest—and they could usually afford what the job requirements would dictate.
In this case, however, it was clear to the team leader that the stakes were higher than on any of his previous assignments. Beirut, Bosnia, Afghanistan, then Iraq—he now saw those frenzied, violent years as mere stepping-stones. They’d led him here, to being selected to lead this unit.
It was, without a doubt, the gig of a lifetime.
And now, after all the preparation and after an interminable wait, it was finally under way. He’d started to think it would never happen. After completing their training, he and the rest of the small team of “contractors”—the spin-speak name always made him smirk, but he was more than happy to avoid the disdain associated with the more accurate “mercenary” label—had been put on standby. They’d waited for the go signal for months. The team leader didn’t like getting paid to sit still. It wasn’t his style. Like the others in his squad, he was ex-Force Recon, the U.S. Marines’ equivalent to the Navy’s SEALs or the Army’s Delta Force. Swift, Silent, Deadly, the Force Recon motto, didn’t exactly apply to sitting around watching endless hours of TV in isolated, if comfortable barracks. The world out there—misguided, tyrannized, evil—was waiting.
Something in his pack warbled. He glanced at his watch. The call was expected.
He checked on the chopper’s position again. It was banking away in a wide arc. He pulled out his satellite phone, a tiny Iridium handset. It was no bigger than a regular cell phone, if not for the ten-inch antenna that pivoted out from it and the STU-III voice encryption module clipped onto its base. He pressed the answer key. A sequence of beeps mixed with static told him the call was bouncing its way halfway across the planet. He waited for the red LED to tell him the call was secure, then spoke.
“This is Fox One.”
After the briefest of lags, a computerized male voice responded. “What’s your status?”
It sounded like Stephen Hawking was calling, and he knew his own voice sounded just as robotic at the other end. Although he and the project’s overseer had dodged bullets together on more than one continent, the military-level, 256-bit voice encryption made their voices unrecognizable, in case someone was eavesdropping. Which was unlikely enough, but one could never be too careful, which was also why a second safeguard was built into his phone’s microchip, enabling a hybrid of hopping and sweeping scrambling. Only another phone fitted with the same chip could decode their transmissions. Any other phone would only pick up a burst of ear-piercing static.
“We’re ready to roll,” Fox One replied.
“Any problems I should know about?”
“Negative.”
The synthesized voice came back. “Good. Pull your men out and initiate the next phase.”
The team leader terminated the call and glanced up at the sky. It was back to its monotone, off-white, bleak self again.
Not a trace, he mused. Perfect.
Chapter 23
Cambridge,Massachusetts
Matt slipped the phone back into its cradle and eased the door shut before darting through the hallway and into the main bedroom.
He had to get the hell out of there. They were only seconds away.
He ignored the near window in the bedroom and went straight to the back wall where, in the pale moonlight coming in through the window, he’d earlier spotted a half-glazed door that gave on to a ten-foot-square balcony. With his heartbeat throbbing in his ears, he peered out and saw that, as he’d suspected, it led to a fire escape.
He joggled the door handle, but it was locked. He looked left and right for a key, but there was nothing in plain sight. He pulled and yanked at it again, a hopeless, desperate gesture, the door stubbornly refusing to budge, then was glancing back toward the hallway, his brain tripping wildly, like the ever-accelerating countdown of a time bomb, wondering how much time he still had, visualizing the two men bursting into the apartment, when a heavy knock pounded the front door.
“Open up, police.”
He didn’t want to get caught in there. He was sure Bellinger was dead, and here he was, in his apartment, an apartment he’d broken into, the apartment of a dead man who was last seen running away from him after they’d had a bust-up in a crowded bar.
A slam-dunk with any jury—if it ever got to that.
Somehow, he didn’t think he’d make it that far.
His reflexes took over.
He grabbed a side table by the bed, swung it back, and hurled it through the window of the balcony door. Glass exploded as the heavy wooden console flew out and thudded heavily onto the decked floor. The posse outside the door must have heard it, as a more pointed shout of “Open up, police” echoed from the stairwell, a shout with a distinct finality to it. Matt dashed across the room, only he didn’t go for the balcony. Instead, he scurried in the opposite direction, away from it, and dived behind the door to the bedroom just as the front door erupted inward.
Two men thundered in, quickly got their bearings, and charged into the master bedroom, rocketing up to the shattered balcony door. Matt squeezed himself tightly against the wall and heard one of them yell, “He’s gone down the fire escape,” adding, “Check out the rest of the place” while using the muzzle of his handgun to sweep away the shards of glass that stuck up from the window frame, before clambering over and disappearing into the darkness outside. His partner darted past Matt, and just as he felt him go by, Matt slipped out from his hiding place and launched himself after him.
The man was halfway through the dark hallway when Matt tackled him from behind. They tumbled onto the hardwood floor, spilling over each other, something metallic clattering across the floor away from the downed cop. A handgun, by the sound of it. The man wasn’t too tall or bulky, but his thin arms had a fierce, coiled energy within them and he fought back like a caged mongoose, twisting around and lashing out with rapid-fire blows to try and get out from under Matt. Matt knew he didn’t have time on his side and had to end this fast. He weathered a couple of sacrificial blows to his ribs to set up an opening for a solid hit, then saw one and let loose with an anvil of a punch that caught the downed man just below the left ear and pounded the air out of him. The man curled over, groaning heavily. Matt used the brief respite to roll him back onto his front and felt something under his jacket. He reached under it and found a pair of handcuffs in a belt pouch. He pulled the groggy man a couple of feet to the wall and quickly locked his arms around a radiator pipe. A quick glance around yielded a coat rack overhead that hel
d some jackets, caps, an umbrella, and a scarf that Matt yanked down and stuffed into the man’s mouth before roping it around his head a couple of times and tucking it in to secure it in place.
Without even glancing back, he sprung to his feet and flew out of the apartment, hurtling down the stairs three at a time. He plowed to a sudden stop at the main entrance to check out front. There was no sign of the man who’d gone down the fire escape. He took a deep breath to clear his senses, steeled himself for the move, and slipped out into the cold night.
The street was disconcertingly quiet, oblivious to his plight. He scuttled down the steps and crept over to the parked sedan, pulling out his Leatherman and slashing one of the car’s front wheels with its blade. He watched for a split second as its air rushed out, then leapt over the small picket fence by the pathway that led up to the house and skirted the front façade, avoiding the sidewalk and scanning ahead and back until he reached the alley.
The Mustang was still there, squatting in the shadows, waiting for him. He slid into it as quietly as he could, and pulled the door half-shut. With his breathing still coming short and fast, he spurred the engine to life without switching on the headlights, and just as it ticked over, the other cop appeared at the mouth of the alley, behind him, backlit by the streetlights. He hollered, “Stop, police,” reaching for his handgun and holding his other arm up, palm out and flat. He was blocking the way, leaving Matt no way out but to back out and charge him, risking a game of chicken that could end really badly for the one of them who wasn’t cocooned inside two tons of steel. It was either that, or—
Matt cursed under his breath, slammed the car into gear, and floored it. The Mustang’s wheels spun slightly in the thin snow cover before biting into the asphalt, and the car leapt forward, howling angrily through the alley, rushing deeper into its dark recess. Matt strained to see where he was headed, what waited for him at the end of the alley, and when it finally came into view, it wasn’t good. The alley ended in a mound of bushy terrain that rose into a thicket of trees. A Hummer might have had a chance. The Mustang wasn’t built for this. It didn’t have a hope in hell of making it through.
The Sign Page 12
