Extinction Code (Ancient Origins Series Book 1)

by James D. Prescott

  “Example?”

  “Sure, a beautiful and educated American woman.” The fingers of both hands gripped the wheel as Ollie let out a sardonic laugh.

  Mia felt a smile creep over her face as her mind traced over the word ‘beautiful,’ before she snuffed it out.

  “A sheila like you? Heck, it’ll be just like that Amanda Knox, the way her sexually liberated attitude rattled those uptight Italian detectives and prosecutors. I can imagine the same thing will happen with you. But who can really say for sure?”

  It didn’t take more than a little common sense to understand Ollie was probably right. At least with the American legal system back home, imperfect as it was, she knew what she’d be up against. Over here, she’d be putting her faith in a judiciary that might be rigged against her for no other reason than she was a woman with an offending passport. Surely the situation in the Gulf wasn’t helping things either. With Cuba standing up to what it perceived as American bullying, Brazil had fallen in line to support the communist country’s cause. On top of the legal risks, Mia would almost certainly become a political pawn in a proxy war between the United States and Latin America. She buried her face in her hands, overwhelmed by how badly the deck had been stacked against her.

  A few seconds went by before she felt Ollie’s hand on her back.

  “Don’t cry,” he said, uneasy.

  Mia lifted her head. Her cheeks were dry. “I cried all my tears a long time ago. I just don’t know what to do.”

  “Why don’t you start by telling me what happened?”

  She studied the hard lines on his face, wondering if he could be trusted. “I’m not sure.”

  “Listen,” he said, pointing to the camera gear in the back seat. “I’ve got a deadline of my own to meet. If I had any intention of turning you in, we’d be at police headquarters by now, not parked in this decrepit lot.”

  Mia knew she had to start trusting someone, or else the people after her would soon finish what they had started. Centering herself, she began by recounting the attack, ending right at the moment he arrived.

  “You ever used a gun before?”

  His question surprised her. “That’s all you can say? After everything I just told you?”

  “My friends always told me I liked to get straight to the point,” he said, grinning.

  “So you have friends?”

  He let out a deep burst of laughter. “Hard to believe, I know.” After a moment, he settled into something more serious. “About that gun, I sure didn’t mean any disrespect. The way you told the story, it sounded to me like you might have had the safety on.”

  Her face dropped. “Oh, maybe I did.” She smiled, embarrassed.

  “Show me your pistol.”

  Mia raised her bruised wrist. “You knocked it out of my hand when you came charging in.”

  He gritted his teeth and rolled his bottom lip in a silent apology. Ollie pulled out his own gun, a Beretta 9mm.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said. “Where on earth did you get that?”

  “When in Brazil,” he said, “do as the Brazilians. If you think I’m dumb enough to drive around this country without some kind of protection, you’re crazier than I thought.”

  He removed the magazine and racked the slide, popping the round out of the chamber. Before handing it to her, he showed her the safety, flicking it off and on with his thumb.

  “It was the heat of the moment, Ollie,” she said, her complexion still a little pale. “I hope you’re not trying to rub it in.”

  He shook his head. “Absolutely not. The heat of the moment, as you say, is the difference between life and death. You never know when you’ll need to pull the trigger for real.”

  Mia took the gun and fiddled with the safety, pointing it out in front of her. After a few more practice runs, she handed it back.

  “You still haven’t told me what you did to the Brazilian bloke who wanted you dead. You piss in his cornflakes or something?” Ollie’s shit-eating grin was back in full force.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “You got something better to do than talk?”

  “Get back home maybe.”

  He didn’t seem convinced. “That’ll depend on what this is about.”

  Ollie did have a point. And she couldn’t deny he had risked his neck to save her when it seemed everyone else was trying to do the opposite. Mia drew in a deep breath and went even further back this time, going over everything she knew. She was taking a chance, but at this point in the game she had nothing else to lose. In a world filled with adversaries, she was thankful for at least one friend, even if only for a while.

  She told him about Alan’s work and their feud, skipping over the salacious details that were frankly none of his business. She told him about Alan’s discovery of Salzburg a few years back and the disorder’s emergence sometime in the nineties. She also told him about the encrypted data Alan had sent her and his belief he had located some sort of message in this new and mysterious human chromosome.

  “But why you?” Ollie asked. “I don’t mean any disrespect, but if I understood your story, the guy hated your guts.”

  She found herself about to relitigate her entire disagreement with Alan and bit her tongue. “It’s complicated. But I do know that when I left, he considered me his protégée.”

  “Waiting for a bloke who’s gone underground to contact you is liable to take months.”

  “He has gone underground,” she corrected him. “But not in the way you’re suggesting.”

  Understanding broke on Ollie’s face. “He’s dead?”

  She nodded. “Maybe I’m better off throwing this stuff in the trash.”

  He considered this. “And if there’s something in what that Alan fella discovered that could help those sick people, what then? I mean, didn’t you say the emergency room at Santarem Municipal was suddenly filled with folks who had Slazburg?”

  “Salzburg,” she corrected him, considering his point.

  “If someone is after you, do you really think they’ll stop just because you threw the stuff away? It sounds to me like this Alan handed you a death sentence and the only way out is to figure out what he found and get it in the right hands.”

  “So what do you suggest?” she asked. The grip on her bag had slackened a little.

  Ollie balled one hand into a fist and drummed his fingers against the space between his knuckles. He remained like this for several minutes, deep in thought. Then, “I got it. You mentioned something about an encrypted flash drive.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t have the username or password.”

  “We might not need it. I did a story a couple years ago on computer hackers. I interviewed white hats, black hats and even a few blokes claiming to work for the Chinese and Russian governments. One of those white hat gents was a computer genius living in Argentina. Goes by the name Armoni. I can send him an email and see if he’d be willing to meet you.”

  She hesitated.

  Ollie pulled out his phone. “What’s wrong?”

  “I just thought maybe you could…”

  He glanced over at her, his chin sunken into his chest. “What? Go with you? Sorry. No. Can. Do. I got a deadline to meet.”

  “All right, fine,” Mia said, biting her lip. “It was just a thought. I’m a grown woman, I can take care of myself.”

  “I have no doubt you can. Besides, I don’t know a thing about genetics.”

  “Maybe not, but you know how to stay alive. I make one mistake and I’m done.”

  Ollie held her gaze before he returned to his phone, his fingers dancing over the tiny digital keys. Thirty seconds later he looked proud of himself and pushed his back against the seat. “That’s done. First we wait for a response and then get you on a plane.”

  “But won’t the cops be watching outgoing commercial flights?”

  He winked at her. “Those aren’t the ones I’m thinking of.”

  Chapter 19

  Comm
ander Hart met the scientists on the Grapple’s helipad. Toward the stern, a boom arm maneuvered in place over a large white submersible, the name Trident stenciled on the side in bold black letters.

  Hart glanced back as Jack watched sailors attach the load hook to the sub. “That’s our ride,” Hart told him. “A real beauty, isn’t she?” The SEAL smiled in a rare display of lightheartedness, the edges of his dense beard rising to meet eyes narrowed into half-slits.

  “So long as she gets us there in one piece,” Jack said, not ashamed of the uncertainty creeping into his bones. He wondered if his hatred for flying would be matched by the underwater equivalent.

  “Leave your things on the chopper,” Hart instructed them, brushing aside Jack’s concerns in the process. “The sailors will load them on board after we’re settled.”

  Hart led them down the walkway and toward the stern.

  “Aren’t we going inside for a final briefing?” Gabby asked, a note of desperation in her voice.

  “No, ma’am. This bus is leaving.”

  Jack followed, noticing for the first time Commander Hart wasn’t weighed down by body armor, ammo magazines or any visible weapons.

  “No guns?” he asked, noticing the same thing.

  “Doc, this is a scientific expedition. What would we need guns for?”

  Jack glanced back, exchanging bewildered looks with the scientists.

  Ahead of them, the sailors were rolling the metal staircase in place. Getting in and out of the Trident was accomplished through a sail hatch at the top of the submersible.

  “I was hoping to have a final word with Rear Admiral Stark,” Jack protested.

  Commander Hart stopped, a look of annoyance spreading over his features. “What for?”

  “The USO is a mile across and half a mile high. Ninety-six hours won’t be nearly enough time to get what we need.”

  “The rear admiral was very clear about that in the briefing. You’re here to find out what this thing is and why it’s here with the time you have. Anything else you find is icing on the cake.”

  “And what’s your role in all of this?” Jack asked, sweating now and not just from the stifling heat.

  “Our first mission is to keep the lot of you out of trouble. Our second mission is to determine whether the beings who left this here intend to do us harm.”

  •••

  Ten minutes later, the passengers and most of their gear were stored away. A seaman checked that all were accounted for before sealing the hatch. With a sudden jolt, the massive boom arm went to work, lifting the sub off the tarmac and slowly swinging it out over the water.

  Jack found it hard to breathe. Inside, the craft was sweltering. A small mezzanine hung above them toward the bow where the cockpit was located. Below that was the forward airlock, in the center of that a tiny porthole window.

  Rajesh sat clutching Anna in his lap. He had opted to forego bringing a suitcase in order to free up enough space for a few more of her processors.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, travel time to the Orb will be thirty minutes,” Hart announced over the loudspeaker. “The weather at our destination is a chilly twenty-three degrees. As we start our descent, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position and make sure your seatbelt is securely fastened at all times. Thank you.”

  Dr. Eugene Jarecki glanced down, digging into the seat for a safety belt. By the looks of it, his growing panic at not finding one was the highlight of Lieutenant Olsen’s day. If the SEALs could have gotten away with hanging the poor doctor on a locker by his underpants, surely they would have. But who knew, the day was still young.

  The tiny portholes along the sides of the sub revealed a strange world bathed in shifting blues and emerald greens. Soon those colors began to darken before the sea became altogether black.

  Grant’s face was pressed against the porthole nearest him. “Hardly any light filters down further than two hundred meters.”

  The bizarre and rather frightening sensation of floating in space was now even more acute. Any concept of up, down, left or right was completely meaningless.

  As if in response, the outside lights switched on, providing those inside a semblance of orientation.

  Jack became aware that he was calm and clear-headed. Flying under the waves didn’t send him into a panic the way it did in the air. The dangers were no less real, but his mind somehow drew a distinction he did not understand, but one he was thankful for nevertheless.

  Before long, they entered the fissure, the gaping wound created by the blast wave. This was something Stark had asked him about privately on several occasions. More than intrigued, the admiral seemed positively obsessed with it. Was he evaluating how such an event might be weaponized? Surely not, since the power required to create the kind of gamma ray dispersion they had experienced was likely far beyond the means of modern science. Stark also wanted to know if it would happen again, as to which Jack was equally ignorant.

  Despite their concerns, the Navy had gone ahead and secured the Orb to the USO’s opening anyway. But given the limited amount of information he had, the only conclusion Jack had been able to draw was that when the drill bit had struck the outer hull it had set off some sort of defensive countermeasure, a theory which had led to the formation of an even more troubling thought. What else might it do if it felt attacked?

  Chapter 20

  A shimmering mirage soon began to materialize from out of the gloom. Gradually it grew, until finally it took on a distinctly rounded shape. They were seeing the Orb. Minutes later, both the bow and stern airlocks became visible, along with clustered rows of tiny portholes, a handful on each of the habitat’s five levels. On land it might have been an impressive sight. They were told the habitat was the approximate height of a T-Rex, which was to say forty feet. But down here, next to the alien object, it looked far more like a pimple.

  “Ten meters,” the submersible pilot called out as they drew even with the rear airlock. This was by far the most dangerous part of the operation. Here, the slightest miscalculation, a nervous twitch, could send them thudding into the habitat and rupturing both hulls. At over five hundred meters down, their chances for survival were zilch.

  “Five meters. Four. Three. Two. One. Contact.”

  The sub lurched forward, nearly pushing Gabby out of her seat. Jack swung an arm out to keep her in place. Then came a loud clang as the locking mechanism was engaged.

  “Welcome to the Orb, folks,” Hart said, hanging the mic on the nearest bulkhead.

  One of the pilots climbed down from the cockpit and spun the airlock door. Air hissed out as the pressure equalized. Jack stepped onto the Orb. He turned to Grant, who was right behind him. “It’s got that new-car smell.”

  It took close to an hour to unload all of their gear and equipment. Tight quarters didn’t begin to describe what they encountered on the Orb. Jack’s grandfather—step-grandfather, to be precise—had served aboard a sub during WWII. His grandfather had only spoken about it once and when he did he’d said the overall sensation was like riding inside a clown car with thirty other men.

  Sure, the submersible was a confined space, but they weren’t expected to live there. A spiral metal staircase led from floor to floor. The top two levels held a series of bunks, two high and shoulder-width apart. A six-foot length of foam wrapped in plastic served as a mattress. For a pillow they were given a chunk of foam covered in cotton fabric. No one complained. Nor should they have. With any luck, they would be so exhausted from studying whatever was inside the structure, they’d be able to fall asleep on a slab of concrete.

  The middle deck was where the galley and mess were located. A small fridge and microwave stood at one end. A handful of tables and chairs were scattered about the rest of the space.

  Over by the fridge was the inner airlock, which led to the USO. Jack crossed the room and peered through the porthole. Recessed neon lighting gave the chamber a sterile, forbidding feel. Red hazmat suits
lined both walls. Beyond this airlock was one more and beyond that a world no human had seen with their own eyes.

  Below the mess was where the comms equipment would be located. This was Olsen’s world and he was busy checking that the fiberoptic link was working. It was from here that the Orb would keep in contact with Rear Admiral Stark, who had decided to remain on board the USS Grapple. On the bottom deck was where most of the science would take place. Already, the bulk of the instruments had been set up.

  The crew, as they were now known, was scattered about the Orb performing a variety of final sorting tasks as they hurried to put the place in order. Jack found Rajesh and Anna on the comms level. Rajesh was busy setting up the powerful computers used to maintain and expand Anna’s impressive intellect. The fiberoptic cable would also allow her to access the servers on the rig.

  “Hello, Dr. Greer,” Anna said, turning her digital face to watch him descend the spiral staircase.

  Jack spread out his hands, motioning to their surroundings. “So what do you think?” It was a question more designed to fill an awkward silence than a legitimate inquiry. As impressive as she was, he couldn’t help feeling a little irked by the way her deep brown eyes were regarding him. She blinked twice before answering. The facial tics were a nice touch, Jack thought.

  “The average human takes up three square feet when standing,” Anna told him, her expression calm and jovial. “Four point five square feet while seated. I’ve calculated each level of the habitat to be five hundred square feet for a total of twenty-five hundred square feet. I then subtracted one fifth of that for furniture, scientific instrumentation and computer hardware. That leaves two thousand square feet to be shared among nine individuals. Given the circumstances, I think it’s more than adequate.”

  Jack rolled his eyes. She still didn’t quite get context, but there was something else she did get that Jack found interesting. When dividing up the Orb’s square footage among its inhabitants, she’d included herself among those counted. On some level she seemed to understand the concept of inclusion, or at least felt—or maybe believed—that she was one of them. Jack’s mother had always hated when people fed the family dog at the table. Said it confused the animal into thinking it was human. Maybe the same thing was happening with her?