Deep Silence

by Jonathan Maberry

  I pushed another key and one more image came up. It was of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. “Beneath the park is the Yellowstone Caldera,” I said. “Church, you even listed it as a possible target when we were at the hospital. One of our own analysts put together a paper on this a few years ago when we were tracking that Apocalypse Cult in Montana, the ones we thought might have brought in some old Soviet nukes bought on the Chechnyan black market. Because Montana’s just north of there, the analyst put the caldera at the top of our worry list, and for a good goddamn reason.”

  “Maybe I wasn’t in school that day,” said Smith, “but what the hell is a caldera?”

  “It’s a large volcanic crater,” Doc explained. “There’s a huge one beneath Yellowstone National Park. Between thirty-five to forty-five miles across. Absolutely massive. There is a nasty geological hot spot. Very similar to the Hawaiian Islands, actually, but this one’s on continental crust rather than oceanic crust. Geologic hot spots are when molten rock or magma continuously upwells from the mantle, burning a hole in the lithospheric plate above. That’s what causes eruptions on the surface of the Earth. What makes this one so bad is its size and location. Unlike in Hawaii, this one is not surrounded by ocean. It’s surrounded by America’s agricultural states. Shorthand answer is that we’re talking about a supervolcano.”

  “Well … shit,” breathed Smith. “Sorry I asked.”

  “Buckle up, because here’s more bad news. Each of the past three Yellowstone eruptions occurred between six hundred thousand to eight hundred thousand years ago. The last one was six hundred and thirty thousand years ago, so we’re technically due. By best geological guesses, though, there is only a small chance it will erupt in our lifetimes.”

  “Unless Valen uses his freaking machines,” said Tate.

  “Yes.”

  Duffy looked around. “Okay, but we had Mount St. Helens, right? I mean, bad, sure, but—”

  Doc looked sick. “Kids, if the Yellowstone Caldera blew, we’d be looking at a force twenty-five hundred times that of Mount St. Helens. That’s a blast equal to twenty-seven thousand Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs.”

  No one spoke. No one could.

  Doc nodded and turned the knife. “The last one laid down a layer of ash over most of the western central United States that is estimated to have been six hundred and sixty feet thick. That means the ash bed would have been thick enough to bury modern skyscrapers. And that doesn’t even count the ash released into the atmosphere. A supervolcano would change the climate, cooling the Earth. Maybe not into another ice age, but enough to affect crops.”

  “How bad?” asked Bunny.

  Doc Holliday turned to him, and for once she was not wearing that perpetual smile. Maybe things had to get this bad for her to lose the jackal grin.

  “How bad?” she echoed. “Let’s see. There would be about anywhere from three hundred to a thousand inches of ash over everything from Missoula to Denver and Boise to Rapid City. Gone. As much as thirty inches of it on the next ring outward, from Seattle to Chicago. Beyond that? Maybe as little as a couple of inches in New York. But all across the country’s fields and farms, there would be destructive hot ash; which would also choke the streams and rivers. We would lose years’ worth of crops, probably see a die-off of over ninety percent of animals like pigs, cows, and chickens. Timber and mining would stop. And you wouldn’t have enough people left to bury the millions of dead.”

  “And,” I said into the absolute silence, “we may be out of time to stop it.”

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SIX

  GRAND HYATT HOTEL

  NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

  Gadyuka sat cross-legged on the bed with three laptops around her. Her flight to Paris was scheduled to depart in six hours, which gave her plenty of time to watch it all start. Plenty of time before planes departing New York would be affected. She would be eating in a sidewalk café near the Louvre before it all fell apart. After that? She would take her time making her way back home. Three or four weeks, with plenty of time to sightsee and watch history change via the media.

  The news from Washington was stunning, and all of the coded messages from back home were filled with congratulations and praise. The ones from the highest offices hinted at promotion, medals, and some more substantial rewards.

  The prudent part of her mind would have had her halfway back to Moscow by now, but where would the fun be in that?

  Fun.

  She thought about that. The word, the concept. Was this fun?

  Gadyuka reached over to the bedside table for the glass of vodka and took a thoughtful sip. The effect would be fun. The New Soviet. A new party. Bigger and stronger than the one that had fallen when she was a little girl. Something that would outlive her, and would both dominate and stabilize the world. Yes, that would be fun.

  But getting there …

  Well, that was something else. Valen was falling apart, and her people on the ground out West told her that he was looking stressed and a little manic. Gadyuka was more than a little certain that her pet mad scientist did not necessarily want to live in the new world he was creating. That was something she could understand. It would be a problem for the New Soviet to have so many sleeper agents and others who had spent so much time in the West return to live in a true Communist society. Could they ever really adapt? And how could some, like Valen, reconcile what they had done with the peacefulness needed to be good citizens?

  Could she do it? When she’d read the e-mails and those hints at substantial rewards, was that a clue of some kind? A warning? Were they testing her to see if she was motivated by financial gain rather than the good of the Party? In the old days many millions had died to try and erase that hunger from the hearts and minds of the people.

  She sipped the vodka. It was Van Gogh. Not even a Russian brand. The stuff was made in Holland, for God’s sake. It was her favorite, and her next three favorite brands were Belvedere from Poland, 1.0.1 Vodka from California, and 42 Below, which came up from Australia. Gadyuka could not actually remember the last time she drank Russian vodka.

  She would have to give all of that up. Her fine clothes, the freedom to buy anything she wanted anywhere she wanted. The food. Good lord, she would miss American food. And all these lovely vodkas. Gadyuka drained her glass and shimmied off the bed to get the bottle out of the ice bucket. She was halfway there when the door to her hotel room blew inward off its hinges. It slammed into her, lifted her, smashed her against the bureau. The TV leaned forward and fell, exploding in sparks as it landed, partly on the door and partly on her.

  At first Gadyuka was too stunned to even understand what just happened. There was the smell of burned wood and plastic explosives in her nostrils and blood in her mouth. A fire alarm began screeching and the overhead sprinklers kicked on with a venomous hiss.

  She looked up and there, moving slowly through the smoke, was a figure. A woman she did not recognize. Tall, slender, in her late fifties or early sixties, with a face like a fierce and unforgiving queen in an old painting. She was dressed all in black—pants, a formfitting top, gloves. The woman tossed a small detonator onto the floor and drew a slender, double-edged blade from a sheath behind her back.

  “Get up,” said the woman in a heavily accented voice. It was not a Russian accent, not a Russian face.

  “Wh-what…?” stammered Gadyuka as she reached into her thigh holster for her gun. The door completely hid the action.

  “I said get up,” said the older woman.

  Gadyuka fired four shots through the door.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE HANGAR

  FLOYD BENNETT FIELD

  BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

  “The real question,” said Junie Flynn, “is what would cause the Yellowstone Caldera to erupt?”

  She and Doc Holliday were in the ORB alone now, with Bug on the screen. Echo Team had signed to try and cobble together a mission directive. Nevertheless, the holographic conference room
was crammed with hundreds of images and lists of data and other information. Some of it swirling as MindReader made connections; others stable and as fixed in place as a bullet hole.

  “The last eruption at Yellowstone was about six hundred and thirty thousand years ago,” said Doc. “To get things rolling now, if it was all left up to Mother Nature, and if she was in a bitchy mood, then you’d need the underground magma chambers to fill up and build pressure before it blows.”

  “What can Valen do with his damn machines?”

  “Well, since I haven’t had a chance to actually study the machines, I guess he’d have to use it to open conduits—cracks, in other words—from depth to allow magma to flow upward beneath Yellowstone. That happened around the Long Valley Caldera in California in the 1980s. Lots of earthquakes and dome-like swelling were thought to indicate an imminent eruption. They evacuated people, but luckily it never blew.”

  “I saw the green reptile guy do something that folded the stone walls in the hallway at Pushkin like they were shower curtains. If that’s how the technology works, then Valen can use them to open channels to the magma chambers.”

  Bug asked, “If they could do this, then why hit Washington?”

  Doc Holliday walked around the hologram of the God Machine, then turned to look at a series of photos of Valparaiso, the military base in Ukraine, and newer pictures of Washington.

  Junie fielded that. “Joe once tried to explain boxing to me. He said some boxers like to batter their opponents’ arms to make them too sore and achy to lift, which makes them too slow to block a solid punch to the face. Other boxers go a different route and try to hit their opponent on the nose early on. Especially if it looks like the other boxer’s nose hasn’t been broken before. It’s a psychological and physiological thing. I mean, what happens when someone gets a broken nose?”

  Doc shrugged. “Intense pain. Bleeding. Externally, of course, from torn tissue, and internally. Blood in the throat and Eustachian tubes. The eyes water. If the punch is heavy enough there’s even a chance of whiplash. And there’s possible disorientation and loss of balance if the synovial fluids in the inner ear are disturbed.”

  “Right. All of that is disorienting and distracting. Joe says that he’s won more fights by punching the nose than by any fancy martial arts moves. Plus, he says that we tend to ascribe emotional meaning to physiological effects. Break a nose and the boxer’s eyes tear. For an experienced boxer that’s nothing; but to someone far less experienced, the tears are equated with crying, with weakness or fear.”

  “Which then becomes an internal and therefore greater distraction,” said Bug. “Okay, I get it. It’s what boxers call ‘taking the enemy’s heart.’ They lose the fight because they are too distracted, too emotional, too confused, and no longer confident in their own strength.”

  Doc gave him a dazzling smile. “Well, well, you’re more than a sexy mind and clever fingers, aren’t you. I’ll text you my private number.”

  “Behave,” said Junie.

  “Where are you going with this?” asked Cole, steering the conversation back to the point.

  Junie spread her hands over the satellite image of Washington, D.C. “This is America’s broken nose. We have a new administration, a president who isn’t a politician and hasn’t handled a major crisis, fractured infrastructure, political infighting, and party polarization. Then the earthquake hits. Now we have pain, distraction, indecision, the practical—or perhaps impractical effects of party politics, disorientation, and too much raw emotion.”

  Cole’s eyes went very round as the full impact of this hit her. “God almighty. If Yellowstone blows, we’re not going to be able to react or respond in any way except badly. Jesus H. Christ, Esquire. If we can’t stop this, we’re going to lose the whole damn country. Not just the crops … we’ll lose everything, including any chance we have of protecting the survivors.”

  Duffy gave a weird little smile. “But, hey, no pressure.”

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-EIGHT

  GRAND HYATT HOTEL

  NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

  The hotel door was heavy and it took effort to shove it off of herself, but as soon as it thumped away, Gadyuka scrambled to her knees, raising the gun, aiming it through the falling sprinkler water.

  At nothing.

  The older woman was not there.

  Water splatted down on the carpet, making bloody droplets dance. Then there was movement coming from her right, from the wrong side of the room. Gadyuka snarled and spun and fired at the same time a foot lashed out and caught her in the hip. Gadyuka whirled and tried to use the impact to spin her all the way around so she could slam her attacker with the butt of the pistol. She put all her fear and anger into it, but the gun whistled through empty air as the woman ducked and punched her hard in the ribs. Gadyuka coughed and staggered, and then the woman chopped down with an elbow, nearly breaking her hand and sending the gun spinning away.

  Gadyuka struck with her left hand, landing a brutal blow over the attacker’s heart that sent her staggering back. They paused for a moment, taking each other’s measure. The woman was bleeding from a gunshot wound to the lower left side, though based on the speed with which she moved she was either not badly hurt or insane. Maybe both.

  “Who the fuck are you?” demanded Gadyuka.

  The woman smiled a killer’s smile and there was blood on her teeth. “Call me Lilith.”

  Gadyuka could actually feel her blood turn to icy slush. Lilith. Dear God.

  The savage smile brightened. “Good. You’ve heard of me. I’ve heard of you. Your pet toad, Ohan, told us so many interesting things about you before we skinned him alive and cut his throat. He was only a lackey, but you actually gave the order. Imagine what I am going to do to you.”

  Gadyuka dove for the bed, bounced onto and over it, and snatched up her purse. She dug something out, flung the purse at Lilith, and rose into a fighting crouch, snapping her wrist to release a telescoping spring-metal fighting stick.

  “Come and take me, you old hag.”

  Lilith reached into an inner pocket and drew out a knife with a blade so long and slender it looked like a needle. A boning knife.

  “If you insist,” she murmured.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-NINE

  IN FLIGHT OVER WYOMING AIRSPACE

  Bug called me just as we were dipping toward the runway.

  “I think I have something,” he cried, sounding agitated to the point of near hysteria.

  “Hit me.”

  “It was you mentioning the Chechnya thing during the ORB conference. About the Apocalypse Cult? Well, a bunch of the members of that cult came from prepper groups. Not the normal survivalists, but the lunatic fringe. The ones who want the world to end so they can be proven right. The ones who seem to think it’ll solve their problems, cancel their debt, and get the government off their back.”

  “Yup. So what?”

  “We ran backgrounds on them and have kept tabs on the scarier ones. Some are dead now, some are in jail, and a few dropped off the grid to the point of no Wi-Fi or cell phones and no utility bills in their names. But there’s a bunch of them—just over forty—who are very much on the grid because they work for one of two big trucking companies based in Washington state.”

  “Ah,” I said. “And now you’re going to make me happy by telling me that these are the same companies Pushkin Dynamics sent their boxes of God Machine parts to, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am,” he said, and almost giggled. “It gets better, though. When I hacked the records for the companies, I found shipping records for a last batch coming from one of Pushkin’s dummy companies. The trucks carrying those shipments arrived this morning.”

  “Arrived where?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Their cargo is listed as parts and equipment to install a thermal venting system intended to regulate pressure buildup at the Yellowstone Caldera. Cowboy … they’re right there, right now.”

&nb
sp; CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTY

  GRAND HYATT HOTEL

  NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

  People were running and yelling; alarms howled and the sprinklers hissed. A hotel assistant manager, responding to the crisis, reached room number 2301 and skidded to a sloshy stop in the doorway. The entire frame was ruined and the door lay inside, the dense wood splintered and pocked with holes. The whole room was in ruins. TV shattered, mattress torn and bloody, sheets scattered around, coffee maker crushed as if stepped on, and the big reinforced glass window completely smashed. The only consolation—and it was a small one—was that there was no fire.

  He yelled at someone to shut the sprinklers down, but they twitched and sputtered and died anyway, the heat sensors failing to find cause. Water dripped heavily onto the soaked carpet. His boss, a stern-faced Asian woman of fifty, came hurrying into the room and stopped beside him.

  “What happened?” she demanded. “Where’s the guest?”

  All he could do was shake his head. They stared at the window and walked numbly toward it in complete silence, terrified of what they might see splashed far below. They leaned carefully out over the jagged teeth remaining in the frame.

  A few people stood on the pavement, glancing down at the glittering shards of glass and then up to see where it had come from.

  “Where’s the body?” asked the manager.

  * * *

  Six floors lower, in a junior suite with the blackout drapes closed and opera playing very loud, two women had a conversation in the bathroom.

  One was dressed only in blood. The other wore white, disposable coveralls of the kind used by crime scene forensics technicians. It was a corner suite, chosen because there was no one on the other side of the bathroom wall. The soprano arias sounded enough like screams to convince passersby in the hallway, should other screams get too loud.

  Lilith sat on the closed lid of the toilet, forearms resting on her thighs. She held the boning knife loosely between the thumb and index finger of her left hand.