Wave of Terror

by Jon Jefferson

  A dim rectangle of red appeared on the dome’s far side—the doorway to the lounge, a room illuminated by a dim red bulb so as not to wreck the astronomers’ night vision—and then winked shut. But in the moment it was open, O’Malley glimpsed Iñigo’s silhouette and that of another figure. A woman’s figure. The woman, she was sure, who had hit her car. Dammit, she thought at the woman. Just because you were distracted by the prospect of nookie?

  Iñigo was zipping a jacket as he arrived at the control console; underneath the jacket, he appeared to be shirtless. “Is there a problem?”

  “A huge problem,” O’Malley said, biting back a snarky comment. “I just spent an hour getting locked in on my reference stars, and the second I finished, the telescope jumped.” She held up a hand and shook it violently to demonstrate. Iñigo looked puzzled, or maybe skeptical, so she elaborated. “The image shifted. The scope moved. Jumped. Jerked. I completely lost my fix.” She repeated the hand gesture to make sure he understood how abrupt the movement had been. “There must be something wrong with the drive mechanism.”

  Iñigo shook his head slowly, looking distressed to be contradicting her. “No, I don’t think so. The telescope is perfect. As solid and steady as the earth. It moves”—he held up a hand and swept it in a fluid arc—“like the moon and the stars.”

  O’Malley noticed two things: first, that Iñigo spoke and gestured more like a poet and a dancer than a technician, and second, that his jacket was half-open, and his chiseled chest made it difficult to concentrate.

  She realized that he was looking at her, waiting for a response to a question or comment she had failed to hear. “Sorry, what?”

  “Let me see,” he repeated. “Show me the picture.”

  Together they huddled over the console, whose array of screens and dials and controls resembled those of an airliner or a nuclear power plant. The largest screen showed what the telescope was “seeing” in real time—a modern, computer-age substitute for an eyepiece, which the INT did not actually possess. Eyepieces were obsolete, except on small, amateur telescopes; many of the astronomers O’Malley knew had never even looked through an eyepiece, and some dealt exclusively with numbers rather than images. O’Malley was good with data, but she still loved seeing stars and planets; the beauty of the night sky was what had attracted her to astronomy in the first place and what kept her enthralled still.

  Beside the main monitor was a smaller screen showing thumbnails of time-exposure photographs the telescope had taken. She clicked on the first image to enlarge it. The screen filled with pinpoints of light. “You see,” said Iñigo. “Perfect. As steady as the earth itself.”

  O’Malley opened the next picture, which, instead of precise pinpoints, showed jerky, zigzagging tracks of light. “This one’s not perfect; this one’s not steady. This one is useless, Iñigo. Maybe there’s sand in the tracking mechanism. Or maybe one of the gears has a chipped tooth.”

  Iñigo frowned. “No, I do not think so. I have seen this before,” he mused, tapping the screen.

  “It’s a chronic problem? Jesus, why hasn’t it been fixed? People come from all over the world to use this instrument. I’m missing a week of teaching, and I’m spending ten thousand dollars of my budget on three nights of telescope time here. It’s a huge waste if the telescope doesn’t work right.”

  “Ah, forgive me,” he said gently. “I am explaining badly. I have seen this before—just one time. We could not understand it; we could not explain it. We took the telescope apart to find what was wrong. No success. Finally, we learn the answer. A terremoto, an earthquake. Very small, but magnified many times by the instrument. If the island shakes, the telescope shakes. So, you see? As solid as the earth.” He smiled, and O’Malley felt herself redden. She told herself the flush stemmed from embarrassment over her accusatory behavior—that it had nothing to do with the man’s warm smile, the charming gap between his two front teeth, the chiseled chest.

  “Iñigo?” The call came from the direction of the lounge. In the faint red light spilling through the doorway, O’Malley glimpsed the woman’s silhouette once more.

  Iñigo gave O’Malley a sheepish shrug. “Try again,” he suggested. “I think you will not have the problem now.” He smiled once more, with a slight nod that might have been a hint of a bow, then turned and walked away. O’Malley sighed. Cute butt, dammit, she thought again as he sauntered toward the lounge—toward the dark-eyed, dark-haired, long-legged woman for whom the earth seemed likely to move in a more pleasing way than it had moved for O’Malley.

  Two hours later, the telescope jerked again. “Dammit,” said O’Malley when she checked the image and saw the zigzag star tracks again. “Fucking hell.” She had only two more nights of telescope time here, and if tonight was any indication, she was wasting her time and her research funding.

  She turned toward the lounge to call for Iñigo, but then she thought better of it—she’d be interrupting his lovefest again; besides, he’d already made it clear that he was unable to solve her problem. Not tonight, anyhow. She stared at the screen, stewing. One by one she scrolled through her images again, staring at them, searching them: not for Planet Nine—even if it was there, in one of her images, there’d be no way to see it—but for . . . what? What might she see, if she looked at the images in just the right way? She let her gaze soften and drift sideways, hoping to sneak up on whatever was just out of view.

  Her gaze softened further, her head moved closer to the screen, and before she knew it, she was facedown on the console, snoring softly.

  She was climbing a high, narrow scaffold. As she ascended, she saw that it actually wasn’t a scaffold; it was the open steel framework of an immense reflecting telescope: the skeleton of a vast tube, without an outer skin. When she reached the top—the telescope’s open end—she hoisted herself up and stood, balancing on a narrow, curving beam of steel. Overhead, the Milky Way flowed across the sky, its stars so abundant in the high, clear air of La Palma that it seemed a solid river of light rather than billions of individual specks.

  O’Malley narrowed her gaze, ignoring the sky-spanning splendor, and focused intently on one small region: the region, blacker and closer than the backdrop of stars, where she suspected a dark, frozen world lurked, unseen and yet powerful, exerting its influence on every other planet, including Earth. “Where are you?” she whispered to it. “Show me. I’m here to find you.”

  As if in answer, she felt a slight buzzing sensation—some force field from afar. “Show me,” she repeated, and the sensation strengthened, became a shiver and then a shudder.

  But the vibration was not originating from the sky overhead. It was coming from beneath her feet, and as it intensified, the telescope’s steel framework began to shake. O’Malley teetered on the narrow beam, her arms flailing for balance. And then she fell, tumbling headfirst into the telescope, her open, screaming mouth magnified a thousandfold by the immense object that she recognized, in her final instant, as the unfathomable Eye of God.

  CHAPTER 2

  Fort Wadsworth

  Staten Island, New York

  Dawtry took a step closer to the edge of the crumbling stone parapet and squinted across the Narrows. Seven miles north, lower Manhattan’s temples to the gods of commerce and capitalism glinted in the morning sun. The light ricocheted off the blue-gray glass of One World Trade Center—“Freedom Tower,” Dawtry sometimes called it aloud, though his private, unspoken name for it was “Tombstone Tower”—shattering into millions of sparkling shards on the mile-wide strait that formed the gateway to New York Harbor. Then Dawtry—FBI Special Agent Christopher “Chip” Dawtry—swiveled his gaze upward, scanning the long, dark underbelly of the suspension bridge that loomed above him.

  Dawtry’s vantage point, an archaic artillery battery, had been built during the Civil War to repel Confederate ships that never came. With its massive arches of rough brick and stone, the fort would not have looked out of place in ancient Rome. High above, fifty thousand under
dressed runners were jumping and jogging in place, their breaths fogging the November morning as they waited for the crack of a gunshot.

  “We need you to call it,” a voice murmured in Dawtry’s earpiece. “Green or red? Go or no go?”

  “One minute,” Dawtry muttered into his mic. “I just need one last look.” Pacing the parapet, he felt himself shiver. Perhaps the shiver was a gesture of solidarity with the huddled masses suspended above him—Huddled masses yearning to run free, he thought, the riff inspired by the Statue of Liberty, a few miles to his left. Or perhaps the chill was closer to the bone: the shadow of Richard’s death, which still fell across him whenever he glimpsed the skyline of the financial district. Whatever the reason, Dawtry felt a vague sense of unease—a deep reluctance to green-light the start of the race—but he could see nothing to justify delaying further.

  “We’ve got fifty thousand people lined up to cross that bridge, Agent Dawtry,” the voice urged. “They’ve come from all fifty states and more than a hundred countries to run this marathon. Do we say go, or do we tell ’em the FBI says to get the hell out of here? Make the call, man.”

  “I said sixty seconds,” snapped Dawtry, jogging to the corner of the parapet. A stone’s throw away, the south tower of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge reared from the water and rose seven hundred feet above him. His breath coming faster than the brief jog accounted for, he took one final look at the bridge tower, his view magnified and sharpened by the augmented-reality goggles he wore: sleek, Star Trek–looking glasses whose AR capabilities he’d been tasked with evaluating—and today, of all the high-stress days. The reasons for the urgency weren’t entirely clear to him. What was clear, though, was the view through the lenses. The view was glare-free, contrast enhanced, and high resolution, with a distance scale superimposed on the imagery and a magnification of up to thirty times normal. Magnification sufficient, at this moment, to reveal dozens of streams of urine sparkling in the morning sun, as waiting male runners relieved themselves over the railing one last time before the race began. “Nice,” Dawtry muttered, grateful that the wind wasn’t blowing in his direction.

  The FBI had gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure the safety of the runners and spectators throughout the twenty-six-mile course. The 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, together with a continuing spate of ISIS-inspired attacks around the world, had made the New York City Marathon’s organizers understandably skittish. Thousands of NYPD officers and New York State Police had been posted all along the race’s five-borough route; in addition, the Bureau had detailed hundreds of special agents from the New York City Field Office, the Counterterrorism Division, and even the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. With dotted-line responsibilities to both Counterterrorism and WMD, Dawtry was the Bureau’s logical point man to give the go-ahead—which also meant that he’d be the fall guy if anything went wrong.

  He had chosen his own observation point—almost directly beneath the race’s starting point—through a grim combination of imaginary empathy and cold-blooded calculus: if he were a terrorist trying to kill the most people and inflict the deepest, most impressive wound possible, what would he do? The answer had come to him with swift and terrible certainty: Hit the bridge at the start, when it’s got fifty thousand people on it—and a shitload of cameras streaming it around the world.

  As the sun inched upward, the shadow of the bridge tower fell across the fort like some dark portent, at least to Dawtry’s worried mind. Setting off bombs simultaneously at each end, when both decks of the roadway were packed with runners, would surely cause a deadly stampede toward the center, one that could crush hundreds or even thousands of people. The real prize, though, would be to bring down the bridge completely, like the World Trade Center towers. It would be a stunning coup, Dawtry thought: toppling America’s biggest bridge and killing fifty thousand people. He flashed to the climactic scene from Richard’s favorite World War II movie, The Bridge on the River Kwai—a scene in which US commandos blow up a strategic Japanese bridge, while a misguided British colonel tries to stop them. “Madness,” Dawtry quoted, swept up in the conflation of the movie scene, the augmented reality of the goggles, and the insidious combination of his own imagination and memory.

  Zooming out, Dawtry gave the belly of the bridge a last look, as if one more glance could possibly show him something new. As if he hadn’t already studied the structure a hundred times or more over the past three days, not just in the daylight but at night by floodlight and infrared light and dream light—nightmare light. His gut felt queasy, but Dawtry reminded himself—or prayed—that the nausea was owing only to the greasy eggs he’d eaten at 4:00 a.m. He gave the sky a quick scan, making sure no airliners were banking toward the bridge. He thought of Richard again, wondered for the thousandth time if his brother had seen the plane before it hit.

  “Time’s up,” the serpent whispered in his ear again. “Call it.”

  Dawtry grimaced. Ignoring the vague inner voice shouting wait, he said, “Green light,” his voice projecting more confidence than he felt. “Let ’em go.”

  Five seconds later, he heard a faint pop high overhead, then a chorus of cheers and whoops and boat whistles, followed by the siren of the lead motorcycle. Underneath those sounds, almost imperceptible at first, came a muffled but steadily rising rumble: the rumble of a hundred thousand feet, each pair marking a slightly different cadence, but combining to create a deep, almost visceral vibration.

  Now zooming in on the bridge’s upper deck, Dawtry glimpsed a line of bobbing heads near the rail—elite runners, already streaking toward the center of the main span, which was the one-mile mark. He checked his stopwatch, which he’d instinctively started when he’d heard the pop of the starting gun. A five-minute first mile: amazing, considering that the whole mile was one long climb—up the ramp and up the sloping deck to the center of the bridge, the roadway’s highest point. Dawtry felt himself beginning to relax now, his jangled nerves and queasy stomach gradually settling. He glanced to his right, where a Bureau sharpshooter—a guy he didn’t know, from the Hostage Rescue Team—scanned the bridge and the shoreline over the scope of his sniper’s rifle. Dawtry tried to recall the guy’s name—Walton? Dalton? “Looks like a fast start,” Dawtry said, just for something to say.

  “Weather’s perfect for a marathon,” replied the sniper. “Low fifties—supposed to stay that way for the next couple hours. By then, the top runners’ll be in Central Park, sprinting for the finish line.”

  They watched the leaders disappear down the far side, moving even faster on mile two, aided by the downhill slope as they descended toward Brooklyn. By now the entire span was jammed, the runners packed tight, their shoulders practically touching, their legs churning inches apart. “Wonder which weighs more,” Walton/Dalton mused, “the usual traffic, or all these people jammed together, fifteen or twenty of ’em in the space one car takes up.”

  “Well,” Dawtry mused, “fifty thousand runners averaging, say, a hundred fifty pounds apiece. That’s, what, seven, eight million pounds? The bridge’s decking itself weighs a hundred million pounds, say the engineering specs. So the weight of the runners is trivial. A fly on an elephant.”

  “A hundred million pounds?” said Walton/Dalton. “Hanging from just four cables?” Dawtry gave a goggled nod. “Imagine if one of those cables snapped.” The sniper paused. “Imagine if all four snapped.”

  “Cut it out, man,” said Dawtry. “Don’t jinx it.”

  “Snapped,” the guy repeated. “Or got cut.”

  “Stop.”

  “I saw a cool YouTube video the other day. Showed an old suspension bridge over the Ohio River being demolished,” he went on, now ignoring the race and looking straight at Dawtry instead. “The demo contractor used explosive charges to cut the main cables, and the whole damn thing just folded in on itself and plopped into the river.” The guy’s mouth was twitching in a slight, smug smile, and Dawtry’s blood turned icy. “Can’t help wondering, what if something went
wrong with the cables up there right now?”

  “You’re not from Hostage Rescue,” said Dawtry, a terrible realization dawning. “Who the fuck are you?” He reached for his sidearm, and the guy’s smile got bigger and smugger.

  “Look up there,” he told Dawtry. “About ten feet from the end of that nearest cable.” He pointed with the barrel of the rifle. “See that thing that looks like an angle bracket running around the cable? You can zoom in pretty tight with those goggles. Magnification of what, twenty?”

  “Thirty,” said Dawtry, all life drained from his voice now.

  “Oh, right. Thirty. Zoom in on that angle bracket thing, tell me what it looks like at thirty X.”

  Dawtry zoomed in with the goggles, full tight. “Looks like it’s got an electrical wire connected to it,” he heard himself say, as if in a bad dream. “Looks like I’ve fucked up big-time.”

  “Sure does,” the guy agreed. “’Cause that thing that looks to you like an angle bracket? To a demo expert, it looks like a shaped charge—a cutting charge—circling that cable. The other cable, too. Both ends of both cables. You might want to zoom out wide, Agent Dawtry, so you can see the whole bridge, ’cause those charges are fixin’ to blow.” The guy checked his watch. “Right . . . about . . . now!”

  And at that moment, as Dawtry watched, paralyzed, a cluster of quick, bright halos encircled the ends of the suspension cables—A burning ring of fire, Dawtry thought—and then the high-tech lenses of the AR goggles filled with the sight and sound of the taut cables snapping, thrashing like dragons’ tails. The massive bridge towers shrieked and groaned, leaning slowly inward, and then began to topple toward one another like seven-hundred-foot redwoods. As they fell, the entire span of the bridge plunged down, down, down toward the slate-gray water of the Narrows, taking fifty thousand runners with it.