The Icarus Effect
Page 21
“You really don’t like to talk, do you?” Ben’s passenger yelled. The young man sitting to Ben’s right glanced over at him.
Ben kept his attention on the uneven road lying before them, not responding. Carlos Rivera turned back and looked out his side window. Over the past hour, Ben had hardly spoken, and what he had said was mainly instructive, telling Rivera to “call in to base” or “check Mo” in the truck bed. Rivera complied each time, but his offers to engage in conversation had been met with silence.
They drove on for another fifteen minutes, moving slowly over bumps and holes in the road. Finally, Ben pulled off the road and began guiding the truck over a small plain toward the edge of the forest. Behind it, a small mountain lifted itself from the flat ground, shadowed by Antler Peak to the north. As they drove, Ben took in the surroundings — it was beautiful, pristine. He took a deep breath and turned the radio back down.
“No, I don’t much care for talking,” he said. Rivera looked over and frowned as Ben continued. “I guess I always feel like I don’t know what to say. You’re a decent kid, Rivera. Thanks for helping out today.”
Rivera nodded, surprised, as they pulled up to the thick tree line. The section of woods in front of them stretched around the base of the mountain, ending about halfway up and turning into a scraggly patch of saplings and bushes. Ben maneuvered the truck backwards into a gap between two trees and jumped out. He unhitched the tie-downs on the side of his truck and waited for Rivera to do the same on his side.
Ben moved to the rear of the truck and started to pull the tailgate down.
“Did you feel that?”
Ben looked up at his partner. Out of nowhere, a heavy bass note rocked the ground at their feet, and Ben felt a pressure of sound burst through his head. The deep sound grew to a deafening tremor, then quickly died, reverberating through the trees.
“What the —” Rivera backed away from the truck, looking to the east and squinting through a strand of trees. His eyes grew wide. “Ben. Look.”
Ben followed the younger man’s gaze and saw a smoking mass growing from the horizon upward. The cloud billowed outward, growing wide and lifting from the ground.
Neither man spoke, but both stood silently staring at the mushroom cloud floating into the sky. Suddenly an earthquake tore through the trees, ripping roots and stumps from the ground and lifting the truck into the air. Ben’s body was thrown thirty feet head over heels, and the earthquake’s intensity grew. The ground seemed to be coming alive, and Ben felt his insides churning as the force of the impact, coupled with the earth’s vibrations, shook every muscle in his body.
He forced himself to sit up, trying to get his bearings. The truck lay on its side close to where he’d parked it, but now a widening gap was opening in the earth directly in front of him. The line grew and inched forward, cracking the dry soil and rocks as it approached the vehicle. Ben stumbled backwards, trying to stand.
We have to get out of here.
He finally found his balance and turned to look at the crack that had opened in the earth. It was wide and deep, but no longer seemed to be growing.
Ben waited for the massive wave to die down fully, then walked back toward the truck. The bear’s cage had toppled over the edge of the truck and now lay upside down nearby. He broke into a run and came up to the animal’s pen.
Working frantically, he unlocked the padlock on the door and unlatched the two enclosures. He swung the door open and reached in.
Just as he did, he ripped his arm back.
Good way to lose a hand, he thought. He looked into the cage to find the grizzly unmoving, but breathing. The great beast was still unconscious. Satisfied, Ben backed away from the pen and turned to the upended truck and the large crack in the ground.
Can I turn it over? he thought to himself. Maybe both of us...
Ben whipped around. Where is Rivera?
He spun in a full circle, at once looking for his fellow ranger and also taking in the devastation surrounding him. A mere thirty seconds, and the ground had lifted, been pushed together with cataclysmic force, and fallen back down again. Trees had fallen in front of one another, trunks battered and smashed in half. Boulders that had rested in place for a millennia now sat disturbed, some cracked and broken.
“Ben! Help!” Ben heard Rivera’s voice from somewhere on the other side of the truck, and he ran toward it. Coming near the edge of the new crevasse, Ben could see that the earth actually sloped downward for about twenty feet before it dropped straight down into a fissure.
It was this fissure that Rivera was holding onto. Ben saw the man’s white-knuckled hands gripping a tree root that was jutting up and over the open space above the cliff, and as he stepped to the edge, he could see Rivera dangling below.
“Give me a hand! I can’t hold on,” Rivera said. Ben dropped to his stomach and reached downward, grasping the other man’s left hand. He gritted his teeth, summoning all his strength, and began to pull.
The edge of the fissure wasn’t solid rock, and as Ben pulled Rivera upward, the sides of the cliff eroded and fell away. Ben struggled with the angle for a half minute, then stopped.
“Give me your other arm,” Ben shouted down to Rivera, “and try to hang on to this stump as I get you high enough over the edge.”
The young man’s eyes burned with a fear so intense Ben couldn’t look at them. He focused on the job, working to pull the man up and onto flat ground. Rivera’s arms began to shake, and Ben willed himself to pull harder, grasping at a strength he wasn’t sure was there.
Just then, an aftershock trembled through the woods. Ben lost his grip for a moment, but found that Rivera had indeed held onto the root. He reset his position on the ground, using his tall frame as leverage to pull up the other man.
As he reached out to him once again, the tree root broke loose and snapped away from the dirt. Rivera looked up into Ben’s face as he realized in that instant what had happened.
The tree root fell, and Rivera with it. Ben lunged downward, reacting to the freak accident, but it wasn’t enough. He missed Rivera’s collar by inches, and his hand slammed back into the wall of the cliff.
Rivera fell out of sight within seconds, and Ben called down to him. There was no answer. He lay on the edge of the cleft, stunned, for a full minute before rising and walking back to the truck.
Chapter Three
“What do you mean, crack?”
Ben paused, then looked up from the couch. “Crack. Fissure. A hole in the earth.”
“Carlos Rivera fell into a hole in the earth?”
Ben nodded. The officer sighed, then turned to a partner. The second officer stepped forward, resuming the line of questioning. “And you said you two were moving — relocating — a ‘nuisance’ bear?”
Ben’s boss, George Randolph, jumped in from the opposite side of the room. “A nuisance bear is a bear that’s caused no harm or considerable damage and just needs to be relocated to a more remote area. Mo, the grizzly, has three strikes against him now, but we were trying to get him far enough away that he’ll stay put.”
The officers wrote everything down, muttering amongst themselves. Ben sat motionless on the lounge couch, the only remotely comfortable place in the entire room. The lights above the gathered local officers, park rangers, and staff burned down on him like the sterile lighting in a hospital wing. Ben felt trapped, out of place, and anxious.
All the staff on duty during the explosion had been summoned to this staff building to “debrief,” as the local police called it. A SWAT team was on its way, due to arrive any moment. Ben also saw a few men and women milling about whom he didn’t recognize, talking quietly to individual members of the Yellowstone team about the morning’s events.
Government, he thought. One of the women walked toward him. Slim, fit, and wearing a tight suit that matched her demeanor, she seemed tightly wound and looked like the kind of person who took herself too seriously.
When the woman didn’t devia
te from her course, Ben almost groaned aloud.
The words left her mouth before she’d even stopped moving. “May I ask you a few questions?”
Ben didn’t respond. He glanced at her quickly, top to bottom, and aimed his eyes at the only window on this side of the building.
“Mr. Bennett, correct? Harvey Bennett?” she asked.
Again, he didn’t answer.
“People usually call you Ben, though, right?”
He frowned.
“Mr. Bennett, you’re a ranger here at Yellowstone? You’ve worked here for thirteen years, correct? First as an intern of sorts, then of course moving into your current role.” Ben knew she was no longer asking questions, but merely verifying the information some subordinate had given her. “You were nineteen, moved your life up here, and now live in a trailer just outside the park’s perimeter. May I ask what you were running away from?”
Ben clenched his jaw and continued to stare out the window.
“Later, then. What about Rivera? Mr. Carlos Rivera, twenty-three years old, from Albuquerque, New Mexico. How long had you worked with him?” The woman’s emphasis on the word “had” was not lost on Ben.
“Are you going to ask any questions you don’t already know the answer to?” he shot back.
The woman hesitated, then nodded once. “Fair enough. Mr. Bennett, can you talk about what you saw up there this morning? The explosion?”
Ben thought for a moment. “Looked like a bomb. Mushroom cloud and everything.”
“Right. And what reaction did you and Mr. Rivera have when you noticed it?”
“We didn’t have time to react to it — there was an earthquake, and then...” Ben didn’t finish the thought, but the woman in front of him didn’t push it. “Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m with the Centers for Disease Control, BTR Division, local out of Billings, Montana.”
Ben stood up from the couch. “Listen, uh, CDC… BTR… whatever, lady,” he said as he walked past her. “I’ve answered questions now for almost an hour. If you want more information, just read the reports.” He walked through the gathering of people, heading for the door. He pushed it open and stepped down onto the patio, not looking back.
As he left the patio, he heard the outer screen door slam closed, then creak back open again. He sighed as footsteps quickly pounded over the patio and down the steps. Within seconds, the woman was next to him. He didn’t slow down.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Bennett, I know you’ve had a rough morning, but —”
“A rough morning?” Ben stopped and wheeled around to face her. “A rough morning is what Rivera’s family is having. A rough morning is what the families of the — what, one hundred or so — people who were killed in that explosion are having. I’m just trying to have a morning, but it’s apparently not going to be possible.”
“I — I know, Mr. Bennett, I just —”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Okay, Ben, I just need to ask you some —”
“Right, I get it. You and everyone else need to ask a bunch of questions, hoping that someone here knows something different than what you’ve already figured out. A bomb went off and a lot of people died. It caused an earthquake, opening a fissure in the ground that Rivera fell into. What else do you need from me?”
The woman stopped, letting Ben gain distance from her, and spoke to the back of his head. “I just want to know exactly what happened.”
Ben sucked in a deep breath and turned to face her. “I tried to save him, okay? I had his arm, and he fell. What? You think I’m a suspect in a murder investigation or something?”
She paused, then lowered her voice. “No, I don’t, Ben. But my boss isn’t the kind of man who will just let things be. He’s going to ask some questions — some very specific questions — and I need to be able to answer them to his satisfaction. I just want to get back to Montana, back home.”
Ben kicked at a stone at his feet, then met the woman’s eyes again. “Where exactly is home?”
“Outside Billings, small town called Lockwood.”
He thought for a moment. “You do me a favor, uh —”
“Julie. Juliette Richardson.”
“Right. Can you do me a favor, Julie?”
She waited.
“Can you make sure I don’t have to talk to anyone else about this mess? I’ll tell you what I know; what happened, and that’s all I can do. But I don’t want to screw around with the other government types like you or anyone else. Fair?”
She smiled. “I think I can work that out.”
###
Continue reading the next book in the series, The Enigma Strain.
Afterword
If you liked this book (or even if you hated it…) write a review or rate it. You might not think it makes a difference, but it does.
Besides actual currency (money), the currency of today’s writing world is reviews. Reviews, good or bad, tell other people that an author is worth reading.
As an “indie” author, I need all the help I can get. I’m hoping that since you made it this far into my book, you have some sort of opinion on it.
Would you mind sharing that opinion? It only takes a second.
Nick Thacker
Honolulu, HI
About the Authors
MP MacDougall
M.P. MacDougall is an American historian and author of thrillers, humorous satire and fantasy. The youngest of twelve children, he grew up on a suburban farm, spending much of his free time chasing cows, perfecting bicycle stunts and playing in the dirt, and he never had to wear a helmet or use anti-bacterial soap. He was a professional Air Traffic Controller for more than twenty-six years, and a practitioner of the art of sarcastic banter and snide commentary for much longer than that. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in World Military History, because he’s afraid he’ll lose it if he puts it down. He lives with his very patient wife and kids in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
This is his fourth book, and his first collaboration with his good friend, Nick Thacker.
Nick Thacker
Nick Thacker is an author from Texas who lives in a cabin on a mountain in Colorado, because Colorado has mountains, microbreweries, and fantastic weather. In his free time, he enjoys reading, skiing, whiskey, and hanging out with his beautiful wife, tortoise, two dogs, and two daughters.
In addition to his fiction work, Nick is the founder and lead of Sonata & Scribe, the only music studio focused on producing “soundtracks” for books and series. Find out more at SonataAndScribe.com.
For more information, visit Nick online:
www.nickthacker.com
nick@nickthacker.com
Also by MP MacDougall
Thank you so much for reading this book! If you enjoyed reading it half as much as I did writing it, then I’ve done my job.
If you found this book because you’re a fan of good thrillers, you might like the first thriller in my Lawson Holland series, The Blood of Tyrants. Lawson Holland is a retired Navy SEAL thrust into an impossible situation, forced to choose between patriotism and revenge. Check it out here.
The second book in the Lawson Holland series, The Blood of Patriots, will be coming out early in 2019 – keep an eye out to find out what happens next to Holland and company!
On occasion, I also write humorous satire. If you like a good laugh, check out the first two books in the How to Steer Your Kid series: Jet Screamer: The Pout Before the Storm, followed by: Meat Sandwiches: What REAL Men Eat.
Still haven’t had enough? Fantastic! Check out some of my more serious work (sprinkled with more silliness and hearty sarcasm) at MPMacDougall.com
Again, thanks so much for reading!
Also By Nick Thacker
Mason Dixon Thrillers
Mark for Blood (Mason Dixon Thrillers, Book 1)
Death Mark (Mason Dixon Thrillers, Book 2)
Harvey Bennett Mysteries
The Enigma Strain (Harvey Bennett Thrillers,
Book 1)
The Amazon Code (Harvey Bennett Thrillers, Book 2)
The Ice Chasm (Harvey Bennett Thrillers, Book 3)
The Jefferson Legacy (Harvey Bennett Thrillers, Book 4)
The Paradise Key (Harvey Bennett Thrillers, Book 5)
The Aryan Agenda (Harvey Bennett Thrillers, Book 6)
Harvey Bennett Thrillers - Books 1-3
Jo Bennett Mysteries
Temple of the Snake (written with David Berens)
Harvey Bennett Prequels
The Icarus Effect (written with MP MacDougall)
The Severed Pines (written with Jim Heskett)
Gareth Red Thrillers
Seeing Red
Chasing Red (written with Kevin Ikenberry)
The Lucid
The Lucid: Episode One (written with Kevin Tumlinson)
The Lucid: Episode Two (written with Kevin Tumlinson)
The Lucid: Episode Three (written with Kevin Tumlinson
Standalone Thrillers
The Golden Crystal
The Depths
The Atlantis Deception (A.G. Riddle’s The Origins Mystery series)
Relics: A Post-Apocalyptic Technothriller
Killer Thrillers (3-Book Box Set)
Short Stories
I, Sergeant
Instinct
The Gray Picture of Dorian
Uncanny Divide
Nonfiction:
Welcome Home: The Author's Guide to Building A Marketing Home Base
Expert Blogging: Building A Blog for Readers
The Dead-Simple Guide to Guest Posts
The Dead-Simple Guide to Amazing Headlines