by Jon Land
SIXTY-SEVEN
George H. W. Bush
“Enjoying the view, Father?” Red said to Jimenez, after finding the priest pacing the aircraft carrier’s main deck.
“I needed to get some fresh air.” Jimenez snapped his gaze from the waters. “And I need to present my report to the Vatican.”
“You going to tell them the Book of Revelation had things right all along, Father?”
“Is that what you believe?”
For a few moments, Red looked as if he had no intention of responding. As Jimenez regarded him, the bracing wind lifted his thick hair up and dropped it back down exactly in the same place. And when Red finally spoke, his voice was lower, as if buffeted by the wind, a man revealing himself for the first time to Jimenez as one might in the confessional.
“Let me tell you what I don’t believe. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that you, a Vatican investigator, was on the scene of three different meteor strikes that made no scientific sense.”
“Then what is it?”
Red flashed his familiar smirk that Jimenez now realized was rooted in uncertainty more than anything else. “You’re the miracle man, Father. That’s your specialty. Speaking of which, I have that picture from Brazil you requested.”
With that, Red removed a plain piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it to reveal the picture of a young girl clutching the remnants of a toy bear in the portion of the Brazilian rainforest that had been inexplicably blighted.
“Looks like you were right, Father.”
Jimenez crossed himself, refused to take the picture from Red’s grasp.
“You want to call this paranormal,” Red resumed, “go ahead. You want to call it supernatural, that’s fine too. But I think both of us have finally met our match when it comes to dealing with the inexplicable. I showed this picture to that Iraqi we questioned who survived the infection in his village. He looked at it and lost his breath—literally. When he got his breath back, he claimed it was the same little blind girl who appeared in his village. You want to tell me how that’s possible?”
“If you’re looking for a rational explanation, you won’t like what I have to say.”
“Try me.”
Jimenez looked away and spoke with his gaze drifting out over the sea. “She didn’t speak English, when I met her in Brazil, but she told me, ‘Your God is not here.’ The same thing Cambridge said to me just before the eclipse that changed my life forever.” He turned back toward Red. “How could she know that?”
“You tell me, Father.”
“The Brazilian authorities said her name was Belinha, but she corrected them, and told me it was Bituah. I should have realized then. It was right in front of me.…”
“What was right in front of you?”
Jimenez held Red’s stare for a moment before responding. “Bituah is one of several names across the world that the biblical Lilith goes by. According to the Old Testament Lilith was the mother of all demons.”
“So you’re saying this little blind girl is a demon? Is that it, Father?”
“No, not a demon,” Jimenez corrected. “As crazy as it sounds, I believe this little girl may be the devil himself.”
Red did a double take, waiting for Jimenez to recant his words, and responding only when he didn’t. “Sounds like you’ve found religion again, Father.”
Jimenez swung back toward him. “Religion has never been able to adequately explain the existence of good and evil.”
“And that’s what you believe we’re in the midst of, some ultimate battle between them?”
“I’m not sure how much the good actually figures in. The dark is winning. That’s why the little girl is here. She’s a personification of everything that is dark, now in the process of shutting out the last vestiges of light.”
“Pretty grim outlook for a man of God.”
“I became a priest because I was convinced a miracle saved my life.”
“There are no miracles, Father,” said Red. “You know that as well as I. Instead, there’s fate, and our particular place in it.”
Jimenez squeezed the deck railing so tight the blood rushed from his hands. “Cambridge was bitten by a snake in the Nigerian jungle, a snake likely infected by this pathogen in its base form. Beyond these waters, the Middle East is being overrun by monsters. I believe Cambridge, Mohammed al-Qadir now, was the first monster the pathogen created.”
Red nodded, studying Jimenez the whole time, rigid stare boring into him again. “Then let’s assume whatever was in those samples Cambridge took from you at the site of the Nigerian strike ultimately became the basis for what the WHO has labeled Medusa. Any idea what might have been in those samples?”
“No, not even a clue.”
“But they must’ve come from the meteor, right? Just like the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs maybe, or the meteor that may have infected that town in Siberia you also investigated for the Vatican.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“Oh, back about thirteen and a half billion years ago, when a massive collision of energy produced a vacuum in space, a Black Hole so to speak, that birthed physical matter out of intense gravitational pressure.”
“The Big Bang theory,” Jimenez nodded.
“I read your book on the subject, Professor,” Red told him. “I especially enjoyed your theories on singularity, specifically that the Big Bang released an immeasurable degree of pressure so intense that finite matter was crushed into infinite destiny. A planet reduced to something no bigger than, say, the size of your fist.”
“I’m glad I can count you as a fan.”
Red ignored Jimenez’s attempt at levity. “So what if the Big Bang produced a similarly infinite number of these singularities? Light matter gets left behind in droves and congeals the Universe. Dark matter sticks around only long enough for scientists today to realize it was there. It was isolated in CERN for a hundredth of a second a few years back in what was considered a major accomplishment.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“You’re a scientist too, Father. Why don’t you tell me?”
In spite of his own reservations, Jimenez couldn’t resist picking up on Red’s question. “After the so-called Big Bang, light matter stuck around and formed planets holding at least the possibility of life. Dark matter got scattered light-years across space.”
“You’re getting warm, Father. Let me heat things up a bit more. The express train known as a black hole was taking passengers and that’s where dark matter’s ticket got punched. Thirteen and a half billion years ago, dark matter didn’t just get scattered, it went into the black hole on one side and came out an immeasurable distance away on the other. And it’s taken all this time for it to get back, starting sixty-five million years ago, drawn back to the light matter like one magnet to another.”
“Then these meteor strikes without meteors, the fist-sized objects that actually left the craters, like the one that brought on the Ice Age … You’re postulating they’re comprised of dark matter, coming home to roost?”
“I’m not postulating anything, Father; you suggested as much in your book. The strikes are coming more frequently as dark matter finds its way home: Nigeria, Siberia, Brazil, and who knows how many more in total. You want to know about good and evil, God and the devil? Then look no further. Science explaining superstition. Hey, it was Einstein himself who said that imagination was more important than knowledge.”
“We could use his help now,” Jimenez said, trying for a smile that never came.
SIXTY-EIGHT
Cape Horn
Dr. Ernst Stowell, the Swiss scientist Dale Denton lured away from a similar post at CERN to oversee operations for WET’s supercollider, looked up in amazement from his third read of the report prepared by Orson Beekman.
“You’re certain these figures are accurate?” he asked Denton, after clearing his throat.
“I was there, Doctor.”
Stow
ell turned to the photos but stopped short of regarding them again. “And these pictures?”
“Like I said, I was there.”
Stowell shook his head. “Amazing, incredible even, as well as terrifying.”
“That’s why we’re here, Doctor.”
* * *
A generation before, following the company’s whirlwind initial string of successes, Denton had been part of a consortium that had pushed for the okay to build a supercollider in Waxahachie, Texas. Desertron, as the project became known, would have created the largest particle accelerator in the world, surpassing even the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, in Switzerland. But after half the four-billion-dollar budget was spent with too little to show for it, and estimates to complete construction grew to twelve billion dollars, the project was shelved.
Denton had given up on Desertron, but he had no intention of giving up on owning a piece of a particle accelerator. So when the opportunity arose to buy the whole of one constructed in Cape Horn, Denton pounced. The price was a mere seven hundred million dollars, a fraction of the original construction costs.
He’d sold the Western Energy Technologies board of directors on the investment by demonstrating how they’d make their money back by leasing the facility’s vast capabilities out to any private concern or country that could afford them. In point of fact, little of that revenue had ever come to pass. Although his board was getting restless, Denton continued to assuage their reservations and misgivings, the whole time visualizing the day when the Cape Horn collider became his ticket to achieving his greatest dream of turning WET into the world’s most dominant energy producer and supplier.
The particle accelerator here was buried two hundred feet beneath tons of shale and limestone that provided the island its structural integrity. It was tubular in design and had been constructed inside a spherical tunnel that boasted a circumference of nearly twenty miles, even larger than CERN. A dozen feet wide, the tunnel was constructed of the highest grade tungsten steel available, its walls reinforced with the strongest concrete imaginable.
The asking price had been so low, it was almost like Chilean officials were paying him to take the facility over. And why not, Denton mused, given the virtual exchange of Chilean currency for dollars, thanks to the auspices of Western Energy Technologies. A win-win situation that Denton could only hope was about to pay off in a big way for him now.
* * *
“You want to test the capacity of your stone with the supercollider,” Stowell concluded, standing alongside Denton on a catwalk that overlooked the massive tunnel.
“That’s right.”
“In spite of your experiences back in Houston.”
“Because of those experiences, Doctor.”
“Have you ever heard of the Szilard Petition, Mr. Denton?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“It was a letter crafted by Professor Leo Szilard in the wake of meetings held at the University of Chicago to discuss a post-nuclear world. The petition was signed by a large number of scientists involved with the Manhattan Project and delivered to your President Truman in July of 1945 urging him not to drop the bomb on Japan. The signees were concerned about the morality involved in using nuclear weapons, and a few even believed the use of one outside the confines of a test environment could set off a chain reaction that could destroy the world.”
“The world was still standing the last time I checked.”
“You’re missing the point, Mr. Denton.”
“What point is that?”
“That man’s capacity for knowledge sometimes exceeds both his judgment and ability to control it.”
“You believe that describes me?”
“I believe your … discovery is as advanced beyond the atom bomb, as the atom bomb was beyond the bullet. I believe the results of your initial testing in Houston indicates that testing was rushed, and that far more study needs to be done on this rock before subjecting it to further experiments of such a nature.”
Denton broke Stowell’s gaze and looked down again at what, from this angle, looked like an elaborate train tunnel, albeit one fitted with literally thousands of superconducting magnets.
“Maybe you’re forgetting who’s in charge here,” Denton snapped, turning back toward Stowell so abruptly that the scientist recoiled.
“Me,” Stowell said, without hesitation. “Last time I checked, anyway. I read my contract before I signed it.”
“Then take a look at your paycheck and see who signs that. I’ve been paying you a fortune to operate this facility ever since my company took it over, and you have the balls to refuse a direct order?”
Stowell bristled, his slight, bony shoulders stiffening. “My grandparents were killed for resisting the Nazis.”
“Here’s the difference, Doctor: your grandparents didn’t work for the Nazis. You work for me, and if you don’t do what I tell you, you’ll never work for anyone again.” Denton paused to let his point sink in, but he wasn’t finished yet. “By the way, your father learned from the experience of your grandparents, didn’t he?”
Stowell tried to look away.
“Klaus Stowell joined the Nazi Party in his late teens and ended up a member of the Waffen SS. But he went by the name of Heinrich Strauss at the time. Managed to escape Nuremberg and build himself an entirely new identify after the war ended.”
“How do you know all this?” Stowell asked, not bothering to deny Denton’s assertion.
“You work for me, Doctor. I made it my business to know. And what do you think the world would make of such a revelation? What do you think it might do to that sterling reputation of yours?”
“Then at the very least, hear me out. You’re correct in the assumption that the controlled environment provided by the particle accelerator is the ideal way to accurately measure your rock’s capacity to generate energy through amplification.”
“So we’re finally on the same page.”
“But a different book. The assumption only holds so long as the seals of the collider are intact. Should they rupture, should the collider implode, we would be talking about an energy burst millions of times more powerful than the one in Houston that caused a sub-sea earthquake.”
“A risk I’m willing to take.”
“Did you hear what I just said?”
“I didn’t get where I am by sitting on my ass and watching others take the chances.”
“This isn’t like searching for oil, Mr. Denton,” Stowell insisted, regaining his bravado.
“If you have something to say, Doctor, just say it.”
“Imagine the world without gravity, Mr. Denton. Imagine the oxygen we breathe sucked into the atmosphere like air from a popped balloon. Because that could be what exposing the stone to the supercollider could yield. You want my advice? Go home. Give me some time to study your rock, come up with a definitive analysis and concrete strategy for containment. Six months, a year at most.”
“I’ve waited too long already, and I can’t wait any longer.”
Stowell nodded. “Then perhaps I should contact your board of directors for approval. I wonder what they would make of all this, if they’re even remotely aware of how much you’ve been keeping from them.”
Denton nodded, remaining unflappable, as he took his cell phone from his pocket and extended it toward Stowell. “Call your son.”
The man’s lips quivered. He looked suddenly unsteady on his feet.
“Ask him where your grandchildren are,” Denton continued, the appropriate precautions he’d ordered Spalding to take now justified. “He’ll tell you they’re late coming home from soccer practice. He’ll tell you they’re not answering their phones. He’ll tell you he’s beginning to get worried.” Denton waited until Stowell met his stare again. “Do you want your grandchildren to ever come home again?”
“You’re not just a criminal, you’re a monster,” Stowell hissed, his eyes welling with tears.
“A monster who made you rich, who wil
l stop at nothing, absolutely nothing, to get what he wants. Control energy and you don’t just control the world, Doctor, you own it. And now you’re going to help me do that.”
“You can’t own something if you have to destroy it first, Mr. Denton.”
“Just focus on your job, and think of your grandchildren,” Denton told him, “and then tell me when you’ll be ready to get started.”
SIXTY-NINE
Western Iraq
Max was mission commander for the three SEAL teams transported from the George H. W. Bush to Ayn al-Asad Airbase in the western Iraqi province of Al Anbar. From there, the SEALs would transfer onto a trio of Black Hawks for the sixty-mile trip over the desert to the village of El Mady, where they’d be rendezvousing with personnel attached to both the WHO and CDC, within territory that was as hostile as it got.
“Enjoy your vacation, Pope?” Griffon asked him, as they boarded the Black Hawks.
“New York is beautiful this time of year.”
“New York? You mean you didn’t visit your heavenly father on high?”
“That was my second choice.”
The members of the three SEAL teams, amounting to thirty-six in total, were back in the air as soon as their equipment was loaded.
“So what do you make of this bug hunt?” Griffon asked him, settled in the back of their chopper while they waited for takeoff.
“That those things they showed us photos of make bug hunt an apt metaphor.”
“Shoot for the head, right?”
“SOP for us, Grif. This is gonna be a cakewalk compared to what we faced in Yemen.”
“You really believe that?”
“No,” Max told him, “not even a little.”
* * *
“Coast is clear according to intel,” Admiral Darby reported through Max’s earpiece, as the Black Hawk pilot finally settled into his seat. “No NIF fighters or any trace of those creatures in the area.”
“So we’re good to go,” Max said, into his throat mic.
“We’re a go, but there’s nothing good about this I can see, son.”
“You’re smoking a cigar now, aren’t you, Admiral?”
