Apocalypse

by Dean Crawford

  The words spilled from Joaquin’s lips without conscious effort, as though even now he was compelled to justify himself. Once, he had been intimidated and dwarfed by the incorruptible morals of his father, which seemed too pristine and too perfect to follow. And then the towering monolith, the indestructible center of Joaquin’s entire universe, had toppled and fallen, his father’s life extinguished not by disease or years but by the insufferable disgrace of suicide.

  ‘What’s worth it?’

  Joaquin bit his lip and cursed his melancholic reverie as he turned to see Katherine walk over to join him. She had changed into a smart, knee-length suit with a crisp white shirt, and as usual looked stunning.

  ‘Everything that IRIS is doing,’ he replied with a smile, as she slipped her arm round his waist.

  ‘And what is IRIS doing?’

  ‘Right now?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘Right now it is on the verge of being able to not just come to the aid of those suffering natural disasters around the world, but to prevent those disasters from happening in the first place.’

  Katherine looked at her husband for a few moments and smiled brightly, but a veil of confusion shadowed her green eyes.

  ‘You can’t save the entire world, Joaquin,’ she said. ‘It’s too big, even for you.’

  Joaquin chuckled. ‘Never say that. Nothing is impossible.’

  ‘The government wouldn’t let you do it, even if you could,’ she replied. ‘You know that.’

  Joaquin sighed.

  ‘They’re far too busy looking after themselves to be concerned with the needs of so many anonymous lives.’

  It was that same truth that had so embittered Isaac Abell and sent him into alternating paroxysms of fury and despair over the callousness of humanity and the self-interest of those charged with representing and protecting their fellow human beings.

  There were approximately seven billion people on earth, yet their lives were governed by just a few thousand politicians, many of whom struggled to serve honorably under the crippling demands of corporate capitalism, the twisting arm of the media and the machinations of countless narrow-minded pressure groups concerned only with their own personal or religious views of the world. Such idiocy enraged Joaquin as much as it had infuriated his father. No president, no matter how adept, could reach the White House without asserting their belief in God, despite the fact that nobody on earth even knew if any such deity existed. The media and major corporations funded the very campaigns that launched the careers of presidents, safe in the knowledge that their investments would result in policies carefully tailored to ensure their profits. The whole charade was a circus of self-serving, profiteering bullshit, democracy lost at the expense of civil liberties and justice.

  And so Joaquin had infiltrated the halls of power and set his organization to work rebuilding lands devastated by natural disasters, ravaged by disease and scoured of life by the horrors of man’s endless conflicts. Contracts were awarded by Congress, often after months of lobbying by IRIS, to reconstruct entire cities shattered by war, while at the same time IRIS was fighting off the equally determined lobbying of corporate giants which sought those same contracts purely for profit. Those contracts that IRIS won were used to bring peace where once chaos had reigned. Over, and over, and over again. It was becoming harder and harder to secure funding for charitable ventures, forcing Joaquin to entertain ever more radical ideas to force the hands of the politicians.

  ‘Your mind’s wandering,’ Katherine interrupted his thoughts with a gentle jab to his shoulder, ‘and the look on your face suggests weighty concerns that you can’t solve alone.’

  Joaquin sighed again.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘as ever. Maybe soon this will all come to an end, but for now I must try to convince the governor of Florida to lobby Congress to provide us with the funds we need to get supplies and medical equipment on the ground in Puerto Rico.’

  Katherine’s features sagged.

  ‘I thought we were staying here for a few weeks,’ she complained. ‘I only have to defend IRIS against a civil action, for which there is no evidence, and then I’m done. The kids have barely seen you these last two months and school’s out in a couple of weeks. You promised them.’

  Joaquin nodded and rubbed his temples.

  ‘I know, it just can’t wait. I’ll have to spend some time out on the reef at Deep Blue. It should only take a day or so at the most – in fact I know it will, and then we’ll be free.’

  Katherine sighed. Joaquin could see in her eyes that, despite her disappointment, she understood that the work he did took precedence over their own needs. One more day was often the difference between life and death for those in need. A delay in funding, or one of the infuriating legal barriers that often blocked IRIS’s access to disaster areas, could result in the loss of thousands of lives.

  ‘What’s so important, Joaquin?’ she asked him. ‘What did Sandra say to you this morning? And why do you need to be out on the coral reefs?’

  ‘I’m not going there for the coral,’ Joaquin explained patiently. ‘One of our aircraft was lost yesterday in the Florida Straits. I want to find and retrieve it before the damned media start swimming around like hyenas looking for corpses.’

  Katherine’s face fell again as one hand flew to her lips.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Were there any survivors?’

  Joaquin shook his head.

  ‘The situation’s under control but I want to oversee this personally, identify the victims, and then hand the aircraft over to the National Transportation Safety Board so they can figure out what the hell went wrong out there.’

  Katherine nodded, and he felt her arm slip from around his waist.

  ‘I’ll tell the children we’ll be away for a few days,’ she said. ‘They’ll be in school anyway.’

  ‘Okay,’ Joaquin replied. ‘The helicopter will meet you later today and will take you to the yacht when the court case is over. All I need you to do is keep the damned litigation wolves at bay for a little longer and then we can walk away from all of this and spend some time together, just like we used to.’

  Katherine nodded and smiled. Joaquin remembered the days before IRIS had taken on its mission to change the world, when he and Katherine had lived high on the company’s immense profits. They had met during a fund-raiser in New York for victims of the attacks that had so irrevocably changed the world in 2001. Katherine had been the legal representation for many of those victims, Joaquin a beneficiary and contributor to the fledgling plans to build the Freedom Tower. One night dedicated to the lives of others less fortunate had brought them together and neither of them had ever looked back. A whirlwind of travel followed, official appearances as a couple and then marriage and children, all of it featuring in glossy magazines on newsstands across the globe. And yet, despite all of that, they shared the same yearning for those early years that seemed so far away now – years of excitement and new love familiar to every couple, wealthy or not.

  ‘The prosecution doesn’t have a leg to stand on,’ she reported. ‘My guess is that the court will rule that there’s no case to answer. Damn it, the family wouldn’t even be living in the United States if it wasn’t for what you and IRIS did for them.’

  Joaquin smiled and kissed his wife on the cheek.

  ‘Give ’em hell,’ he said finally.

  Katherine picked up her bag as she left, and Joaquin turned to look out across the bay once more. The clouds across the immense sky above were being torn to shreds by high-altitude winds gusting through the atmosphere, invisible yet deadly. The oncoming storm.

  The door to the suite opened and Olaf Jorgenson walked in before closing the door behind him. Joaquin turned as the huge man lumbered across to his side, his eyes cold points of ice, as though still reflecting the bitter glaciers of his Nordic home.

  ‘What would you have me do?’

  Olaf’s thick, stilted accent only served to accentuate his appearance, that of
a ruthless terminator unhindered by such pitiful emotions as remorse or guilt. Utterly reliable, the big man was nonetheless several lifetimes short of genius, and Joaquin chose his missions with care.

  ‘Watch after Katherine,’ he said finally. ‘She’s likely to be targeted by activists or maybe enemies of the state: we don’t know who might try to prevent her from doing her job. Do what is needed to ensure the outcome we require.’

  14

  KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, MERRITT ISLAND, FLORIDA

  June 28, 10:12

  Warner stared in awe out of the window as the Gulfstream C-20D settled onto the runway of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s skid strip. As the aircraft slowed he could see rows of immense launch pads dominating the horizon, epic constructions of welded steel forged into history at the dawn of the space race. The names of missions that carried the weight of legend flashed through his mind, memories of what he’d witnessed in his childhood, as America’s most valiant heroes soared into the final frontier: Voyager; Mercury; Gemini; Pioneer; Apollo. Eagle.

  Launch Complex 39 stood out from the rest, the home of the entire history of the space shuttle, and where the Apollo program’s moon-shots had thundered into the Florida skies aboard the mighty Saturn-V rockets, still the largest and most powerful launch vehicles in history.

  ‘We’ll disembark and drive to the operations center,’ Jarvis informed them as they unbuckled from their seats. ‘I’ve called ahead and gathered a couple of Charles Purcell’s former colleagues to see what they can tell us.’

  Ethan, Lopez and Jarvis were picked up by an Air Force crew transport and driven across a causeway that linked the base to Merritt Island and the Kennedy Space Center. Ethan watched as the headquarters building came into view, a long white three-story affair lined with palm trees, which shone in the bright sunlight as the truck pulled in. Jarvis led them out and a young Air Force ensign guided them into the building, hurrying through the administrative areas and into a large briefing room guarded by a pair of security personnel.

  The guards recognized Jarvis on sight and opened the doors to the briefing room.

  ‘Judging by the guards they’ve got everybody in on this,’ Lopez whispered to him as they walked through the doors. ‘At least we’re not on our own this time.’

  Ethan frowned.

  ‘That’s what makes me nervous,’ he replied. ‘I’m wondering what’s gotten them so worked up.’

  Two men were waiting for them within the room as Jarvis closed the door behind Ethan.

  ‘This is astrophysicist Thomas Ryker,’ Jarvis introduced the younger of the two men, a scrawny guy with a narrow beard, big round glasses and a T-shirt bearing a picture of Star Trek’s Seven of Nine, ‘and this is astronaut Mitch Hannah. They both worked with Charles Purcell on the Hubble Space Telescope program.’

  Mitch Hannah was a grizzled-looking older guy who wore a jacket emblazoned with the legend ‘VF-84’ and a skull-and-crossbones motif. Ethan recognized it immediately.

  ‘Fighting 84th,’ he said, identifying the legend. ‘You’re Navy, right?’

  Hannah nodded with a proud grin.

  ‘Twenty-two years,’ he replied, ‘Phantoms and Tomcats, Nimitz and Enterprise. With the astronaut program now. You a Navy pilot?’

  ‘Fifteenth Marines,’ Ethan replied by way of an explanation. ‘You been up in the shuttle?’

  ‘STS-117,’ Hannah nodded.

  ‘Goddamn,’ Ethan smiled in awe, ‘I’d have given my right arm for a ride on that thing and—’

  ‘Good to see you two are on the same page,’ Jarvis cut him off. ‘You can catch up on old times later. Right now, we need to talk about Charles Purcell. Thomas Ryker worked with him for years.’

  Ethan and Lopez looked at Ryker. The astrophysicist, for his part, stared wide-eyed at Lopez, as though captivated by a work of art.

  ‘You can put your tongue back in,’ Ethan said. ‘We’re here on business.’

  Ryker shifted his gaze away from Lopez with some considerable effort and blushed.

  ‘What’s up with Charles?’ he asked, in an effort to distract the visitors from his flushing cheeks.

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’ Lopez asked.

  ‘Couple of weeks ago, I guess,’ Ryker replied. ‘Visited his family down Coral Gables way – his wife’s a great cook. But since he started working freelance we haven’t met up as often as we’d like. Are they all okay?’

  Ethan decided not to hold back any further. ‘He’s on the run and his family have been shot and killed. We’re trying to figure out if he’s responsible for the murders.’

  All of the emotion dropped out of Ryker’s features. ‘Michelle and Amy are dead?’

  ‘Yesterday evening,’ Lopez confirmed gently. ‘Both were shot in the head. Purcell was seen fleeing the scene.’

  Ethan watched the kid closely. He was staring at Lopez again but this time the adolescent lust was replaced by cold disbelief.

  ‘He wouldn’t have, he couldn’t,’ Ryker uttered. ‘There’s just no way.’

  ‘That’s not how it looks right now,’ Ethan pointed out. ‘And if Purcell is innocent we’ve only got a few hours to prove it.’

  ‘How come?’ Mitch Hannah asked.

  Ethan glanced at Jarvis, who nodded, and Ethan explained what he and Lopez had seen in Purcell’s rented apartment in Miami: the code and the scrawled warning. Ryker and Hannah exchanged a glance with each other and the older man looked at Jarvis.

  ‘I’ve got less time with Purcell than Tom here, but I’d vouch for him as being a straight up kind of guy. If he’d had marital problems he’d have shared them, not gone home and shot his family.’

  ‘Right on,’ Ryker chimed in. ‘Charlie loved his family, never stopped going on about them. Whatever happened, he didn’t kill them.’

  Ethan sat down on the edge of a desk.

  ‘Point is, Purcell appears to have been able to predict things happening before they actually did.’

  Ryker leaned forward. ‘How far in advance?’

  The direct question left Ethan momentarily stumped, and he realized that he’d expected Ryker to say that what he’d suggested was impossible, like most everybody else.

  ‘At least twenty-four hours,’ Ethan replied. ‘You think that he could actually do that?’

  Ryker sat back again and pushed his spectacles up on his nose as he considered the question.

  ‘It’s not impossible, let’s put it that way.’

  ‘Yes it is,’ Mitch Hannah scoffed. ‘Time travel is the stuff of science fiction. It just can’t be done.’

  Ryker nodded.

  ‘That’s absolutely right,’ the kid agreed. ‘Time travel is indeed impossible as far as we know. But I didn’t say anything about travelling through time, did I?’

  ‘Then what did you mean?’ Lopez asked, confused.

  Mitch Hannah rolled his eyes.

  ‘Tom, these guys are investigating a homicide. We don’t have time for Star Trek fantasies. They need answers, and if there’s one thing I’m damned sure of it’s that Charles Purcell can’t see into the future.’

  Ryker blinked, suddenly unsure of himself. Ethan was about to interject when the door to the room opened and a member of the center’s staff poked their head inside.

  ‘There an Ethan Warner in here?’

  Ethan turned to face him. ‘Sure, that’s me.’

  The staffer walked in with a package and handed it to Ethan. He took it in surprise, seeing his name on the parcel and the address of the Kennedy Space Center.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked.

  ‘Arrived a moment ago,’ the staffer said.

  Ethan looked at the postmark on the parcel and felt a shiver run down his spine.

  ‘It was posted yesterday,’ he uttered in disbelief.

  Mitch Hannah stood up from the desk and stared at the parcel as though it were a ticking bomb.

  ‘Tell me that somebody knew you were going to be here.’

  Ethan s
hook his head.

  ‘I’ve never been in this building in my life and didn’t know I was coming here until an hour ago.’

  Lopez looked at Ethan. ‘Who sent the parcel?’

  Ethan looked at the bar-coded UPS sticker on the parcel.

  ‘It’s from Hallandale, Florida,’ he murmured. ‘Where Purcell was hiding out.’

  The parcel contained something slim and hard, like a CD case but larger. Gambling that there was nothing sinister within, Ethan tore off the edge of the parcel and slid the contents out.

  ‘It’s a diary,’ Lopez said, looking at the black book in Ethan’s hand.

  Ethan set the packaging down on the table beside him and opened the diary’s first page.

  The words that he read there chilled him to the core. ‘Oh my God.’

  15

  KENNEDY SPACE CENTER

  ‘What does it say?’

  Lopez tried to look at the diary that Ethan held in his hands, and he turned it to face her.

  ‘Holy crap,’ she muttered.

  By now Ryker, Hannah and Jarvis were all craning their heads to see the diary. Ethan turned it to them and Mitch Hannah read the message scrawled on the open page.

  You’ve cracked the first code by now, Ethan. Crack this one and you’ll understand why my family were killed. Ivy Mike has the answers. Time is running out and more will die before this is over. Make sure you’re not one of them.

  CP

  ‘Who the hell is Ivy Mike? And how the hell could Purcell have known that we would be here?’ Lopez asked.

  It was Thomas Ryker who replied.

  ‘Because he has seen the future.’

  Mitch Hannah ran a hand through his hair in disbelief. Ethan looked at Ryker.

  ‘How? You said yourself that time travel is impossible.’

  Ryker searched the air above his head and stroked his feeble beard, as though hoping a suitable response would fall from the ceiling.

  ‘We don’t have enough time for a physics lesson here, Mr. Warner, so this is going to have to be brief. Have you ever looked into the past?’