by Graham Brown
“You have fourteen minutes,” he said finally. “Don’t waste time talking to me.”
The call dropped and Moore sat alone listening only to the static over the speaker. Reluctantly he reached forward and pressed the button, cutting the line.
He took a breath. He had no choice but to contact the president and update him on the situation, but before he could do so a knock sounded at his door.
Too tired to stand or even call out, Moore flipped the switch that controlled the wall’s opacity. For the first time in months they turned instantly clear. Walter Yang stood on the other side of the door.
“Now’s not a good time, Walter.”
“I have information,” Yang said. “It’s about the virus.”
In the Persian Gulf, the small powerboat moved through the darkness half a mile from the northern tip of the island. A bit of luck in their favor had the wind out of the south, which would help mask the low rumbling of their engine. In addition, the night was black as ink, though the moon would be up in ten minutes.
Until then the darkly colored boat with its low profile would be difficult to spot unless someone was looking directly for them. A fate that was a distinct possibility.
Crouched in the aft section of the boat, dressed in a black wetsuit, Danielle stared through a thermal scope looking for signs of trouble. She saw no sign of men or machinery operating on this side of the island. Only small dots here, there, and everywhere that she took to be cormorants in their nests. The species was known to claim the island at this time of year.
Beside her Hawker was busy securing their weapons and strapping their body armor to dive harnesses.
“How close you want me to get?” Keegan whispered.
They were cruising slowly now, making almost no wake at all. Danielle wasn’t sure at what point the need to conserve time would be trumped by their desire to maintain the element of surprise.
She glanced at Hawker.
He’d grown tremendously quiet, his demeanor changing and darkening. She sensed a fire of grim determination in his heart. He had to expect the worst when he stepped on that island. In all likelihood, whatever they found there would bring him pain.
If Sonia had held out against the cult’s demands, she was probably in a horrendous state by now, alive because they needed her, almost certainly beaten and tortured. Savi and Nadia would have fared worse.
And if Sonia had given the cult what they needed, she might be dead already.
“See any lookouts?” he asked.
She shook her head. Hawker turned to Keegan.
“Kill the engine,” he said. “Take us in as far as we can coast,” he said.
“You sure you want to get that close?”
“If they’re watching we’re dead anyway,” he said. “I’d much rather have them start taking potshots at us while we’re still in the boat.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Then we save five minutes swimming.”
Keegan goosed the throttle a touch, picking up some more speed, and then feathered it back and cut it. The narrow boat knifed through the calm water toward the rugged, tawny-colored rocks.
Danielle swept the coast with the thermal scope as Hawker did the same with a night-vision scope mounted to the barrel of one of the rifles. No one shot at them, no one challenged them.
“Too good to be true,” Hawker whispered.
A minute later she and Hawker slipped off the back of the boat a mere hundred yards from the beach. Keegan turned the boat away and coasted north, drifting with the wind and the current. He would drift for a while and then circle the island and come in near the freighter to pick them up. If they had any hope of surviving, they would need his help to get off the island before those missiles hit.
When Danielle emerged from the water, she was a few yards from the shore. Ten feet ahead, Hawker crouched by a VW-sized boulder on the beach. She moved up beside him.
“See anything?” she asked.
“Not yet,” he said.
They pulled on their flak jackets and began to move, traveling up over a ridge before pausing again. Another round of scanning revealed nothing to trouble them.
In a crevice to the right a pair of bird nests sat empty, prodigious droppings marring the ground all around them.
“Let’s not disturb the flock,” Hawker said.
Danielle agreed. A hundred cormorants suddenly launching into the air would probably give them away.
She covered Hawker as he began to move, navigating across the weatherbeaten island before coming to a sudden stop. He dropped to the ground and then signaled her to stay put. She held her position.
He moved to the right, stepped around a large boulder with his weapon raised and ready, and then he stopped again. For several seconds he stood there, appearing from a distance to be confused. He poked at something on the ground with his rifle and began looking around.
What the hell was he doing?
Wearing black in the darkness he was nearly invisible, but even so, standing in the open was foolish.
Finally he crouched and waved her up.
She dashed forward, pressing against a boulder as she reached him.
“What the hell was that all about?”
“Something’s wrong,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
He motioned to the other side of the boulder and she moved forward to see what he’d been inspecting.
There, lying across a bundle of pipes and hoses that seemed to spread across the island like vines, she saw two men. Armed men. Dead men.
“Look at this,” Hawker said.
With the tip of his rifle, he opened one of their shirts. Danielle could see the branding on the man’s chest. GEN 2:17, just like what they’d found on Ranga and Yousef.
“Members of the cult,” she whispered.
“Shot in the head,” he told her.
She bent closer, examining the wound and realizing it was from a small-caliber weapon, just like on the bodies of Lavril’s men in Paris. She noticed something else.
“They’re still warm,” she said.
“Not dead long,” Hawker replied, looking at her. “What the hell is going on here?”
She wasn’t sure but a thought sprang to her mind. “Endgame,” she said. “Jonestown, Waco, Aum Shinrikyo.”
“But these bastards didn’t kill themselves.”
“Neither did all those people,” she assured him. “Plenty who didn’t want to go were helped along.”
Hawker seemed to understand what she was saying, but he also seemed to have doubts. “Yeah, but those groups were about to lose. These people are in their moment of victory.”
She agreed that was a difference, but they were still dealing with an apocalyptic cult.
“I’m telling you something’s wrong here,” he said. “I don’t know what it is, but we’re misreading something. I feel it in my bones.”
She felt differently. “Endgame,” she repeated, looking at her watch. “And we have eight minutes.”
CHAPTER 50
Captain Laurence Petrie of the guided missile cruiser USS Shiloh stood watch on the bridge studying the orders that had come in from the commander in chief of Persian Gulf forces. His communications officer and the officer of the deck stood at attention, awaiting a response.
The orders directed him to launch a Series of eight Tomahawk missiles against a single target. That alone was strange. The Tomahawk carried a hell of a kick, either a thousand-pound high-explosive warhead or what the navy called a combined effects bomb, which spread a hundred smaller warheads over a wide area, all designed to explode roughly simultaneously.
The combined effects bomb created a wide killing zone filled with flying shrapnel, explosive concussion waves, and, from the incendiary core of the charges, a storm of overlapping flame that burned well above a thousand degrees Celsius.
The fact that eight such weapons were being directed against the same target surprised him. In Iraq, Af
ghanistan, and most recently Libya, the weapons were used primarily in ones and twos, usually against air defense systems or hardened command and control bunkers. When the papers reported a hundred missiles fired they were usually fired at a hundred different targets. The idea of launching eight missiles against a single target sounded like massive overkill.
The fact that the target was an abandoned rock in Iranian waters made the order seem even stranger.
“Did you confirm this order, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir,” the communications officer said. “All proper communication protocols were followed and verified. The order is authentic.”
“I’m not worried about its authenticity,” the captain said. “I don’t think anyone broke into the communications suite in Qatar and pranked us. But I’m concerned with its accuracy. I don’t want to find out after the fact that we fired eight of those multimillion-dollar birds when we were supposed to fire one.”
The officer of the deck spoke up. “Sir, the rest of the order indicates this is a joint operation. The San Jacinto and the Bunker Hill will be firing equivalent number of missiles as well. The Normandy has been placed on standby should either we or any of the other vessels have operational difficulties that prevent us from firing.”
Captain Petrie glanced at the rest of the order. Twenty-four missiles aimed at a single target. He’d never heard of such a thing.
“Whatever’s on that island,” the officer of the deck added, “command wants it erased from existence.”
Silently, Captain Petrie had to agree. He folded the order sheet and handed it back to the officer of the deck.
“Sound general quarters,” he said. “Prepare to launch missiles.”
Within seconds the whooping sound of the general quarters alarm was reverberating throughout the ship, accompanied by the words This is not a drill.
CHAPTER 51
Hawker and Danielle continued across the island, arriving in sight of the ruined buildings, pump houses, and battered helipad.
Hawker studied the layout. One building had a small amount of light inside. The others were dark. The grounded freighter lay just beyond, leaning toward the helipad. It loomed large in the darkness, tilted at such an odd angle and far too close to the buildings on the land.
There was a strange, apocalyptic aura to the scene, as if the world had already run down and all that remained was dark, lifeless rock, still waters, and the battered machines of man.
A muted hooting to the left reminded him that some life still existed.
Through the night-vision scope he could see one of the gangly long-winged cormorants moving around in its nest, plucking and pulling at what looked like a power cord or a drip line of some kind, like those used in landscaping.
“There’s a heat source in that shack,” Danielle told him. “No movement, though.”
Hawker could guess what she was thinking. “Better hit it anyway.”
He raised his rifle, screwed in the suppressor, and aimed. Pressing lightly with his finger, he activated the laser sight. The red dot appeared on the building, clearly visible for both him and Danielle to see.
“Left four feet,” she said, matching the thermal reading with the reflection of the tiny laser.
Hawker adjusted his aim.
“Down one foot.”
He lowered the rifle.
“Fire.”
Theut, theut. Two shots went out. Then two more.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Whatever it was, you hit it,” she said, staring through the scope a little longer. “But it never moved.”
Hawker got up and dashed to the small building. It was nothing more than a metal frame with blown-out windows. It looked like a tollbooth.
Inside lay pump controls, some corroded, others looking newer. One of the cult members lay dead on the floor, exactly where Hawker had hit him. The bullet holes from his rifle were obvious, but there was little blood oozing from the wounds.
Danielle came in behind him.
“Dead?”
“Already dead when I hit him,” Hawker said. “These guys are killing off their own, just like you said.”
“That’s not a good sign,” she replied.
“No,” he agreed. Even though he couldn’t understand it, even though it still felt slightly off to him, it certainly seemed like a final act. It only increased his fear for Sonia.
“Come on.”
They climbed down a rickety flight of steps that clung to the edge of the rock wall and led to the helipad. From there they dropped onto the ship. Moments later they were crawling along the aft section of the beached freighter. And still no one challenged them.
A new thought sprang to mind. Maybe the final act was over. Maybe they were already too late.
The accommodations block at the rear of the freighter stuck up like a giant tombstone from the flat deck of the ship. They made their way inside, checking several compartments.
In one they found two more dead men. One of the bodies lay slumped forward in a chair, its head on a desk as if the man were asleep. The other lay sprawled on the deck.
Hawker pulled the sitting man’s head back. The man was blue, his tongue bulging in his mouth as if he’d been poisoned.
Without someone to tell them if the lab or the prisoners were even on board, they’d have to go compartment to compartment.
“You need to go for the missiles,” he said. “Whatever else happens we have to make sure they don’t launch.”
She nodded. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going deeper,” he said. “This isn’t a cruise ship. If they’re here, they’ll be in the accommodations block. The rest are just cargo holds.”
Danielle nodded. “Be careful,” she said, and then she ducked out the door.
Hawker placed the dead man’s head back down on the desk and began to move. He continued to be cautious for a moment and then began to move faster. From door to door, compartment to compartment. Most were empty, but a few held dead bodies.
Down the stairs he went. The next level was the same. A ship of the dead. He hoped Sonia, her sister, and aunt were not among them.
Sonia Milan stood in the gleaming white confines of a lab in the deep recesses of the grounded freighter. Draco and a man he called Cruor, who seemed to be his first lieutenant, stood by.
She finished looking through the microscope in front of her. There would be no proof that what she’d done would work until it was tested and the test subject’s altered DNA was examined, but she knew what she was doing and the samples in front of her all showed the desired effects.
“It’s working,” she said. “The cell cultures are dividing as they should. The new DNA is in place.”
The Eden serum had been extracted from the seeds. The dormant virus revived and mated with the UN carrier virus. Under the electron microscope, the DNA fragment from the seed they’d recovered at the Garden had taken its place perfectly. The new cells showed lengthened telomeres.
Beside her a Series of tubes marked with white stripes were filling slowly with the virus she’d created. The delivery system now had its payload.
“You’re sure,” Draco asked.
“We should test it on—”
“We have our lab rat,” he said. He moved to the rear of the lab, where little Nadia lay strapped to a gurney like a patient in a psych ward. She wasn’t moving.
“What have you done to her?” Sonia exclaimed.
“She wouldn’t stop crying so I had her sedated,” Draco said. “But if you’ve done what you said, she will soon be on the road to recovery.”
“And the rest of the world?”
“Different road,” he said. “Different destination.”
“There’s no need for this,” Sonia pleaded. “We can test it on the animals. We can test it on rats, not people.”
“I have no argument with the rats,” he said. “It’s humans I want to fear me.”
“It wouldn’t take long. I would—”
“You would stall and procrastinate!” he shouted. “You would keep me waiting hoping that some rescue would come.”
“No,” she said, realizing she would have tried exactly that. “But this might not work as we—”
“You’d better hope it works,” he said. “Or Nadia will die and then we’ll start dragging people off the street and you can accidentally kill them one by one until you get it right. Do you understand me?”
Before she could answer, an alarm on some hastily rigged piece of equipment began chirping.
“Motion sensors,” Cruor said. “We have visitors.”
Draco looked surprised, and for the first time, uncomfortable. “They’re early. They’re more resourceful than I thought.”
“They’ll kill you,” Sonia said, trying anything to put some fear and doubt into the man. “Even if you kill me, Hawker will find you and he’ll kill you. I promise you that.”
The backhand she’d expected the day before finally came, catching her across the face and sending her to the floor. Her eye began to swell.
“You think I didn’t expect this?” he said. “It’s just a timing problem. Fortunately our two viruses are ready.”
“What do we do?” Cruor said.
“We get to see their end in person, and then leave,” Draco said.
Cruor seemed nervous to her. Strange, since he was huge and menacing, but apparently he was the follower.
“They’re eminently predictable,” Draco insisted. “The woman will go for the missiles, because that’s her job and she does what she’s supposed to do. The man will come for this one, because that’s what he does. Orders don’t matter to him. But a damsel or two in distress …”
“I will wait with you,” Cruor said.
“I have a place for you,” Draco said. “Are the others dead?”
Cruor nodded.
“Good,” Draco said. “They were not worthy. We will do better next time.”
A second alarm began to chirp.
“They’re splitting up,” Cruor said. “One on the deck, one inside.”
Draco began to laugh. “As I said: predictable.”
Hawker had made it to the bottom deck. He broke into a larger bay and stopped. Crates lay on the floor. Long, rectangular crates. They were empty, but he knew what they were. He’d seen them before, in La Bruzca’s warehouse.
