He smiled. “Vic, you’ve done your thing. We’re secure. Our people are safe. Maybe you need a break. Why don’t you go somewhere for a few days?”
Victoria was momentarily speechless.
“I can’t leave now,” she sputtered.
“Good. That’s settled then. You should relax and enjoy the show.”
“Hogwash. The guests you have arriving in”—she checked her watch—“one hour will provide a bigger target for the malefactors of the world than if you were hosting the G8.”
“No one knows they’re coming here.”
She rolled her eyes at his deliberate provocation. “You don’t really believe that, do you? You’ve just been wining and dining them all over Miami for the last few days. And they’ve all got their crackberries going twenty-four/seven. If anyone sees them get on that plane, everyone will know they’re coming here.”
“Big deal. No one will know why they’re coming. And this is the most secure location in the world. You’ve made it that. Everything is going to be fine,” he said in a patronizing tone that they both knew would infuriate her.
It worked. She took a slow breath. “Dennis—”
“Get over it, Vic,” he said flatly. “We’ve got it covered. You’ve got it covered. Bring it up again and I’ll think you’re obsessing.”
“Obsessing is part of my job description,” she said coolly. “And this is hardly—”
“This conversation is over,” he said, and switched on the powerful underwater lights so he could watch the bizarre creatures they were passing by. Victoria closed her eyes.
CHAPTER
4
9:30 A.M., Saturday, October 25, Miami, Florida
Finishing her walk around the sleek, one-hundred-foot-long Bombardier Global Express that bore The Paradise of Taino ornate purple and gold crest on its tail, Wendy ran her hand over the name painted below the cockpit windshield. As the plane’s first pilot, she’d had the privilege of naming it. She’d chosen Gaia as a salute to Garner, although she’d never told him. He’d find out when he heard the news that she’d completed her flight plan.
With a tight smile, she climbed the steps into the cabin. It still smelled new, but the mingled aromas of soft leather, rare tropical woods, and fresh coffee were incongruous against the airport’s acrid signature scent of hot asphalt and jet fuel.
Lieutenant Colonel Watson made her way to the state-of-the-art cockpit of the $40 million jet, smiling tightly at the crew milling around the pristine, streamlined, but fully equipped commercial kitchen that masqueraded as the plane’s galley. Each member of the crew smiled back as they greeted her. Wendy stopped herself from wondering if her crew—the three flight attendants, her first officer, and the chef—needed to die. The answer was yes, unequivocally yes. They were as much a part of the problem as anyone else.
The flight attendants were more than just beautiful to look at. Each one had completed rigorous security and antiterrorist training, and each was qualified to handle the most serious medical emergencies that could transpire aboard an aircraft. Because of Dennis Cavendish’s unerring ability to seriously infuriate the leaders of the world’s larger nations, each flight he took was like a military exercise with regard to the security measures taken, but the food was better and the surroundings more luxurious.
Entering the cockpit, Wendy slid into her seat. She automatically scanned the bank of controls in front of her and began her preflight checks.
Everything was in order, as she knew it would be. Even the weather was cooperating. All she needed now were the passengers.
A shadow moved across her instrument panel and she glanced up to see the senior flight attendant appear in the doorway of the cockpit. The woman leaned into Wendy’s space gracefully, her Jean Paul Gaultier–designed uniform showing to advantage the assets that had won her a Miss Something-or-Other crown several years earlier. A small diamond tiara displaying the Taino crest was nestled into an artfully tousled swath of honey-and-butter-blond hair.
The entire cabin crew, even the men, resembled the woman in the cockpit doorway: polished, glamorous, pampered. And lethal, if necessary.
“They’re going to be late,” the attendant—Wendy had never bothered to learn any of their names—purred in cool, cultured British tones that were alluringly underlain with unfettered Brazilian sexiness. “The helicopters are on their way now. Their ETA is twenty minutes.”
“Thank you,” Wendy replied tonelessly, looking away from the practiced smile, the flawless makeup, the endlessly long legs.
It wasn’t the crew members’ beauty that annoyed her, nor their overtly sexual languor. It wasn’t even their studied vapidity. What annoyed her, when she bothered to think of it, was their lack of purpose. They were drones with no drive and no goals, squandering their utility. It was wasteful, and in direct contradiction to her own life.
Wendy had been born to parents who had worked hard to pull themselves out of their lower-middle-class background and into the cloistered cocoon of Darien, Connecticut, where expectations were high and wealth was assumed. They had no idea that their aspirations and pretensions had isolated their only child from her schoolmates, no idea how difficult it had been for her to assimilate. They had wanted a better life for her, and had raised her against the backdrop of the town’s burgeoning wealth and blatant ostentation. Wendy had been indoctrinated every day of her life with the importance of reaching ever higher. Bettering themselves in the eyes of others was her parents’ mission in life; for them, to stop moving upward was to stop living.
It was a philosophy she’d never accepted or understood.
Now, after decades of searching for meaning in her life, she had found direction. She would repay the generous sacrifices of past generations of the Earth’s creatures with a gift to all future generations. Garner Blaylock had entrusted her with the honor of laying the cornerstone of a new world order in which all creatures would have equal worth and be granted equal esteem.
Her time had finally arrived.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Colonel?”
Wendy picked up a clipboard that rested on the still-empty seat beside her. As usual, her first officer considered flirting more important than doing his job.
“Yes, there is something you can do for me. Arrange for me to have some solitude, if you can manage it,” Wendy replied bluntly, her flat, American intonation a stark contrast to the sensual tones of the other woman.
A minuscule pause was followed by the soft rustle of fabric. “Certainly, Colonel. I’ll inform the crew you are not to be disturbed. Please press the call button if you wish for any attention.”
The cockpit door closed with the softest of clicks and Wendy continued running through her preflight checks without giving the crew another thought.
A burst of muffled conversation a short while later was followed by laughter and the sound of the passengers embarking. Fifteen minutes later, after the commotion had quieted, Jason Randall, her first officer, entered the cockpit and strapped himself in.
“Is everyone aboard?” Wendy asked, not looking up from what she was doing.
“All aboard who’s going aboard,” he replied breezily. “Strapped in nice and tight with their Wall Street Journals in one hand and their Cristal mimosas in the other.”
Wendy rolled her eyes and said nothing as she stood up and slipped into her jacket. She emerged from the cockpit with her impeccably tailored uniform in perfect order, the traditional, military-style officer’s cap placed at a precise angle on her head, and moved through the cabin to personally greet the CEOs of nine of the world’s largest corporations. Looking each one in the eyes, she shook hands and smiled and forced herself to make small talk.
They represented so much money, so much power. So much devastation.
It would be a pleasure to kill them.
Dennis wasn’t in evidence, but the door to his private cabin at the rear of the plane was closed. It wasn’t unusual for him to retreat there to take pho
ne calls, so Wendy didn’t think twice about it. The senior flight attendant assured her the head count was complete. As the crew continued its well-rehearsed program of making everyone comfortable, Wendy excused herself to return to the cockpit. She contacted the tower for a departure time for what everyone expected would be a quick trip to Taino.
They had a long wait for a break in the heavy outbound traffic from Miami International, so it was forty-five minutes later that Wendy noted with a distinct surge of pride that her hands were steady and dry as the plane began its initial descent to the lush, low-key Caribbean paradise called Taino.
The sea below them was mottled, the sapphire blues and tropical greens demarking reefs and sand spits and sheer drops into the abysses of the ocean. It was a sight that would be familiar to everyone in the world within an hour or two.
In three minutes they would exit American airspace and transit Bahamian territory for a few minutes before turning into Taino’s airspace, where the flight would terminate, albeit differently and earlier than anyone save Wendy and Garner Blaylock anticipated.
Harboring the same fear-tinged thrill that had marked every dangerous mission she’d ever flown, Wendy was unable to keep a smile completely off her face as she looked over at her copilot. “He’s been awfully quiet.”
Jason looked up from his greasy breakfast burrito and hastily swallowed his mouthful. “Who?”
“Dennis.” The loathing in her voice was barely perceptible to Wendy’s ears, and she knew Jason would never pick up on it. “He’s usually poked his head in here at least once by this time.”
“Gee, Wendy, that might be because he’s not on board,” he said with a roll of his eyes. Then, losing what little interest he’d had in the conversation, Jason returned his attention to the disgusting tangle of eggs and cheese and tortillas in his hands.
Doing so, he missed what would be his only chance to see a crack in the legendary composure of Lieutenant Colonel Wendy Watson. Nausea punched her hard and fast, filling every recess in her gut with panic and something even more foreign to her: the certainty of failure.
“What do you mean?” she demanded, her voice held low and steady only through the forceful application of the lessons learned over a lifetime. “He boarded the aircraft with the other passengers. I heard him talking with the crew.”
Jason glanced up again, wiping a slash of grease from his chin with a wadded paper napkin. “No you didn’t. Cavendish headed back a few hours ago on the Lear. Four in the morning or something. I thought you knew.” He shrugged. “Anyway, what’s the big deal?”
Wendy shook her head and unbuckled her seat belt. “Take the controls. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Ignoring his annoyed curses and the startled expressions on the faces of the crew members she passed, Wendy barged into the crew’s head, locked the door, and slumped against the wall. She believed too completely in fate to consider this a coincidence.
This failure will be my legacy.
She swallowed against the bile rising in her throat. No one inside or outside of GAIA would suspect her of complicity. She was certain of that. Her loyalty had never been questioned by anyone, nor would it ever be. But this failure would leave the organization—now her only family—with the mistaken notion that they had a traitor in their midst. Searching for a traitor who did not exist would fracture the bonds of trust that Garner had tempered and strengthened carefully over many years, beginning long before she had joined him. Wendy knew, from her years in the military, that misplaced suspicions led to carelessness, to indiscretions, to real leaks, which inevitably led to discovery.
Two decades of Garner’s effort would be jeopardized. Millions of dollars in investments would be compromised. The plans of dozens of men and women who had committed themselves to leading a chastened world back to the doorstep of their Earth Mother would be curtailed. Their beliefs would be mocked and marginalized, their actions demonized, their voices silenced.
It could take another decade, maybe more, to regain what GAIA was about to lose.
The cruelest realization was that even though she had not been thorough, had not confirmed Dennis’s presence on the plane, Wendy had no option but to follow through as planned. But now she would not die as a triumphant martyr to the cause, one whose sacrifice would be celebrated. She would die a failure.
The synchronized bombs she had placed so carefully throughout the fuselage yesterday could not be defused or deactivated, nor could she send a warning to Garner. All onboard communications would be scrutinized when—if—the black box was found. News of an encrypted message sent from the pilot of a private jet to an anonymous Internet dead-drop minutes before a midair explosion would trigger too many questions, inspire too many investigations. She couldn’t do that to Garner. She wouldn’t.
Wendy took a slow breath, keeping her eyes open and focused as she had always done in the face of danger.
Subterfuge was an option—making her stupid pig of a copilot the scapegoat. She could kill him with one quick blow to the throat, and claim later it was self-defense with no one the wiser; there was barely time enough to begin a rapid descent, to issue a Mayday call and evacuate the passengers and crew, to ditch the plane in the ocean before—
Coldness gripped her, seeped through her with the sureness of death, the implacable knowledge of fate achieved.
There would be no life for her if she aborted the plan. Yes, she would be crowned with the halo of heroics by the media and the world, but Garner would despise her. He had changed her life, had changed her by making her see what she had been too blind to see before. Living on the same Earth, breathing the same air while knowing he loathed her, would be intolerable.
She took a steadying breath. Better to complete the task as honorably as she could, even knowing that GAIA, the people who shared the ideals for which she was sacrificing her life, would remember her as committed but ultimately a failure. If her name was mentioned at all in the future, it would be with scorn, or in the context of a cautionary tale. She retched into the bidet, knowing the toilet floor was a better place to die than she deserved.
This flight had been chosen by Garner specifically because of its passenger list and destination. Everything had depended upon Dennis’s being among the victims.
Wendy stood, cleaned herself up, and returned to the cockpit. She could do no less than die as she had agreed to. At the controls of the aircraft.
She was barely buckled into her seat when the first explosion rocked the plane. Her training took over and Wendy barely blinked against the harsh, sooty fumes before pulling on her breathing mask and goggles. Icy cold air pulled at her as she began to transmit the Mayday call. Next to her, Jason had slammed his equipment onto his face and had already opened the box housing the inflatable vision unit. Within seconds, he had the IVU attached, inflated, and activated, providing them with an unobstructed view of their instruments and chart. Wendy knew the device wouldn’t help them for long, and she braced herself for the second set of explosions.
The roar was deafening, and instantly the plane’s nose lurched downward at a sickeningly steep angle. Like a rookie, Wendy threw up in her mask as the plane began to plummet toward the water. The momentum of the plane’s freefall made it difficult to pull the vomit-filled mask from her face, and as she did her elbow hit something warm and solid. Turning, she saw her copilot’s body slumped over the side of his seat. Wendy realized then she would be alive when she hit the water.
Seconds later the detached cockpit began to cartwheel insanely across the waves. A terrible dizziness and searing pain were rapidly replaced by a cold, wet darkness, and then by nothing at all.
CHAPTER
5
10:35 A.M., Saturday, October 25, off the coast of Taino
Dennis Cavendish was endlessly fascinated by what lay beneath the sea. Not just the life he found there, but the possibilities. From the time he’d strapped on his first snorkel in an unheralded attempt to face another fear, he’d been hooked. He’d
quickly graduated from snorkeling to scuba diving, to going on successively deeper, more challenging dives until he’d been able to persuade a small firm to let him dive using a one-atmosphere dive suit.
Sealed inside the bulky, jointed “robot suit,” he’d been strapped onto a small platform affixed to the outside of a deep-diving submersible as if he were a piece of machinery rather than a live man dependent on rebreathers and meticulously sealed joints for his survival. The submersible had been lowered from the research boat into the warm, sparkling waters off the Florida coast and released. Unencumbered by any tethers to surface ships, the small, rotund craft had descended steadily through the graduated light and then indescribable darkness to the seafloor eleven hundred feet below the surface.
Once the craft had settled gently onto the silty seafloor, Dennis had been released from his bonds and had taken one step, then another into a world in which he was the alien and the locals were unafraid.
Given the relative distances involved, it was inconceivable to him that more people had “walked” in outer space than on the bottom of the sea at such depths. Dennis’s experience had changed his life by awakening him to the realization that the sea wasn’t the barren, underwater desert so many assumed it was. It was brimming with life and an energy he couldn’t describe.
He’d spent two hours walking in the shifting circle of brilliant light cast by the submersible’s headlamp. When he’d arrived back at the surface, Dennis hadn’t known how to parlay what he’d just been through into something useful. What he did know was that his time on the seafloor had changed his life’s purpose irrevocably.
It was no longer about accumulating money.
It was no longer about facing a challenge.
It was about mastery. Conquering what others declared unconquerable and changing the way the world worked.
Dennis started reading everything he could find on deepwater research. He attended conferences where he was the only one without a string of letters and honorifics after his name. He funded off-the-wall research that earned him public ridicule instead of private riches. He didn’t care. He had enough of the latter.
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