Painter stepped over and ripped away the mask, earning a satisfying cry of pain. More blood poured from his shattered nose. His eyes were already nearly swollen shut.
“Take him,” Painter ordered Drake.
The sirens were louder now.
He saw that Schmitt had finished securing a tight wrap around the waitress’s belly. She should survive.
“Let’s go,” Painter said and waved everyone out.
Drake and Malcolm headed for the back door, the groggy gunman slung between them. Their SUV waited in the rear alley. It had been moved there by the Marines to facilitate a swift evacuation.
Drake manhandled their prisoner into the backseat. “What if this bastard doesn’t talk?”
Painter used a knuckle to wipe up a drop of the man’s blood from the car seat. “Maybe he won’t have to. But we’ll need help.”
21
April 30, 6:02 A.M. PDT
Sierra Nevada Mountains, California
Hang in there, Josh . . .
Lisa sat on an uncomfortable stool in the patient containment unit. She held her brother’s hand, wishing she could shed her gloves and truly touch him. Though he was right here, she felt a gulf between them. And it wasn’t just the barrier of the polyethylene suit that separated them. The medically induced coma had stolen Josh from her: his raspy laugh, his ready joke, his blushing bashfulness in the presence of a pretty girl, his studious frown when hanging on a rope from a cliff face.
All gone.
Josh had been placed on a respirator a few minutes ago as his condition deteriorated. Each inhalation was too sharp, too regular. Off to the side, monitors clicked, hummed, and gently beeped. That was all that was left of her brother’s energetic and full life.
The radio inside her suit buzzed, drawing her back straighter. She girded herself for more bad news. Then a familiar and welcome voice filled her head. She squeezed Josh’s hand harder, as if trying to urge her brother to keep fighting, that Painter would save him.
“Lisa,” Painter said, “how are you holding up?”
How do you think I’m doing?
Tears suddenly sprang to her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She had no way to wipe them away. She swallowed a few times to hide them from her voice.
“It . . . it’s not good out here,” she said, struggling to hold it together. “Every hour things get worse. I don’t know if you heard, but Lindahl has ordered a nuclear device to be shipped to the mountains. It’s en route and should arrive by this afternoon.”
“And there’s no way to deter him?”
“No. At daybreak, a whole team of surveyors mapped the contaminated areas—or at least those areas actively showing die-offs. It’s worse than the overnight reports indicated. The organism is still spreading, approaching what Lindahl calls critical mass, the point where even a nuclear option might not work. Nuclear scientists are still doing calculations of load and the radiation levels necessary to achieve the highest level of lethality.”
Lisa put as much urgency into her voice as she could muster in her exhausted state. “We need answers to stop this nuclear juggernaut. Or at least, some hope of a solution.”
She stared at Josh’s face, at his waxen complexion.
Please.
“We may have a good lead,” Painter admitted, though he sounded hesitant, plainly worried. He gave her a fast update of his situation in Brazil.
Lisa found herself standing by the end of his story. “Someone kidnapped Jenna . . .”
She let go of Josh’s hand and turned toward the complex of BSL4 labs across the hangar. Nikko was doing no better than Josh. The dog was on a plasma and platelet drip, growing moribund with every passing hour. In fact, the poor husky would already be dead if not for the herculean efforts of Dr. Edmund Dent. The virologist was using every medical tool in his arsenal to support Nikko and Josh. And while Edmund hadn’t been able to reduce the viral load in his patients, his palliative treatments seemed to slow the progression of clinical signs.
Painter offered one glimmer of hope. “We’re on our way to a facility in Boa Vista run by the Federal University of Roraima and tied to the Genographic Project. For years, they’ve been gathering genetic information from all the various indigenous Brazilian tribes, using autosomal markers to calculate migration patterns and subgroups of the various tribes. They’ve put together an extensive database. With a blood sample from the man we apprehended, we might be able to find out what tribe he belongs to.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Remember those photos Jenna took of the assailants who attacked her at the ghost town near Mono Lake?”
“I remember.”
“It appears that group that attacked us here were of the same native tribe. Makes me wonder if Cutter Elwes hasn’t gone all Heart of Darkness on us out in the rain forest, woven himself into that same tribe and bent them to his will. If we can find that tribe, we might find not only Elwes . . . but hopefully Jenna and Kendall Hess, too.”
A silvery surge of optimism cut through her dark exhaustion. She took in a deep, shuddering breath. “You have to find something,” she pressed. “Something I can take to Lindahl to halt or delay his plans.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I know you will. I love you.”
“Same here, babe.”
She wasn’t satisfied with his reflexive response. “Just say it back, so I can hear it.”
He laughed, which stoked that silvery shine inside her. “Not in front of the boys.”
She pictured Drake and his teammates and found a smile dawning on her lips. She heard the same smile in Painter’s voice.
“Okay,” he said. “I love you, too.”
After they said their good-byes, Lisa felt reinvigorated, ready to tackle anything. Her radio buzzed again. She hoped it was Painter, having forgotten to tell her something—anything to hear his voice again—but it was Edmund Dent.
“Lisa, you need to get back to your lab ASAP.”
“Why?” She glanced in that direction. “Has Nikko gotten worse?”
“I was changing a bag of plasma for the big guy, and Lindahl left his radio mike open, broadcasting to the team here. He plans to have the nuclear research team experiment on Nikko. They want to know the effects that radiation will have on the organism when it’s deeply entrenched in living tissue, to calculate a dosage that’s high enough to kill it inside a body.”
“They’re planning to irradiate Nikko?”
“In ever-escalating dosages while taking biopsies of his kidney and liver, to see how much radiation it will take to eradicate the virus.”
All the shining optimism from a moment ago ignited into a fiery anger. Jenna had put her life at risk to help them all, and they planned on killing her dog, torturing him, when the ranger’s back was turned.
Over my dead body.
She rushed to the air lock of the quarantined ward.
“You’d better hurry,” Edmund warned. “I just overheard another order from Lindahl on the radio.”
“What now?”
“He’s commanded the Marine security team to bar you from your lab if you show any resistance.”
That bastard . . .
She yanked the air lock door open and began the decontamination process. As the jets sprayed the exterior of her suit, she struggled to find a solution, a way of saving Nikko. By the time the green light flashed the all clear, allowing her to exit, she had come up with only one possibility—a gambit that would require great personal risk.
But she would take that chance.
For Nikko . . .
For Jenna . . .
She owed them both that much, but a worry nagged at the edges of her resolve as she stepped out of the air lock and crossed the dimly lit hangar toward the suite of BSL4 labs.
How much time did Nikko have? How much time did any of them have?
She knew only one thing for sure.
Somebody needed to find an answer—and fast.
22
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April 30, 1:03 P.M. GMT
Queen Maud Land, Antarctica
“We can’t just keep hanging around here,” Kowalski commented, looking ready to kick the side of the stalled gondola.
Gray understood his teammate’s consternation. He adjusted his night-vision goggles as he surveyed the landscape beyond their small cage in the sky. Their gondola hung four stories above the cavern floor. Dark waters washed against a shore of rock directly below. There was no going back the way they’d come, and the infrared illuminators along the undercarriage of the cage failed to penetrate very far ahead, revealing only a few of the ubiquitous petrified trunks, like pillars holding up the roof.
Who knew what horrors lay beyond that darkness?
Because what was visible here was terrifying enough.
The slow-moving river below churned with hidden life. Sleek fins broke the surface occasionally. He watched a turtle-shell-backed creature lumber through the shallows, its head spiked like the tail of a Stegosaurus. A crocodilian beast slithered on its belly from the algae-covered bank to avoid this hulking trespasser and vanished into the waters. Higher on the shore, clouds of batlike birds, looking little larger than thumb-sized sparrows, swirled up in tidy eddies and whorls, like smoke rising from their guarded nests. As Gray’s eyes adjusted, finer details emerged. Patches of mossy growths sprouted from the algal beds; mists of tiny gnats or other midges swirled among the trunks of the petrified forest; pale white slugs inched up the walls, leaving glowing trails, like slow-moving graffiti artists.
Stella spoke to her father, drawing his attention around. “He’s right.” She nodded to Kowalski. “We can’t stay here. Dylan Wright must know where we are and that we’re trying to reach the Back Door. By now, he must have discovered that you reengineered the bunker busters to be shut out from the main station. After failing to reel us back in, he’ll send a team after us.”
“Through this hellscape?” Jason asked, purposefully mispronouncing the British installation’s name for emphasis.
“He could use our CAATs,” Professor Harrington said dourly. “Come by ground transport. We’re only a mile or so away.”
And three miles from the Back Door, Gray thought.
The older man hooked his arm around his daughter. Fear and worry etched the lines of his face deeper. She leaned into him, just as anxious about her father.
The lights grew incrementally dimmer. At first Gray thought it was his own terror narrowing his vision, but Kowalski swore, tapping at his goggles.
“When I decoupled us from the cable,” Harrington explained, “it cut us off from the power conduit running along the roof. We’re running on a battery charge right now.”
“How long until we’re out of juice?” Gray asked.
“A couple of hours at best.”
Gray gave his head a slight shake. He did not want to be sitting here in the dark, waiting for Wright’s team to discover them trapped in the dead gondola.
“What about that German sub?” Jason offered. “It’s only two hundred yards back. Is there any way we could make it over to that shelter? Perhaps hole up inside there?”
Gray turned to Harrington. “Is that possible? Can we evacuate out of this gondola?”
Stella slipped from her father’s arms and stepped to the hatch that blended into the floor. She tugged it open. A folded wire-and-metal ladder was stored inside. “If you pull that red lever, an emergency escape door will drop below and the ladder will deploy. It should reach the ground.”
“No friggin’ way I’m going down there,” Kowalski said.
Harrington looked like he agreed, glancing apprehensively toward his daughter. Still, he turned and opened another cabinet along the wall. Inside, racked one atop the other, were three rifle-like weapons with barrels twice as thick as those of a 12-gauge shotgun.
“Directed stick radiators,” Harrington explained. “Or DSRs. Built by the American Technology Corporation. They use a stacked series of disks in their barrels to amplify a pulse, producing the equivalent of a sonic bullet.”
Kowalski snorted and mumbled under his breath. “Give me real bullets any day of the week.”
Harrington ignored him. “The DSRs can also transmit speech or in reverse operation, be used as a directional microphone.” He tapped what looked like a rifle sight on top. “I added portable IR illuminators for deployment down here.”
“And these sonic rifles can protect us?” Gray asked.
“Mostly. They’re not as potent as the larger LRAD units, but they’ll send most life-forms down here scurrying away. But you need to be careful. The kinetic recoil of these guns is strong enough to knock you on your butt.”
Gray stepped forward and picked one up, examining it thoroughly. Once done, he passed it toward Kowalski, who looked like he’d been offered a rattlesnake. Jason took the weapon instead.
Stella moved forward and grabbed a rifle for herself.
“She’s a good shot,” Harrington commented with pride. “Bloody things give me migraines if I try to use one.”
Gray hauled out the last weapon, slinging it over his shoulder.
Harrington wasn’t done yet. He stepped over and opened the hatch that led down to the canopied bubble on the underside of the gondola. Dropping to his knees, he reached inside. When he straightened, he had a more familiar weapon in his arms, struggling under its weight.
“I heard what you said earlier,” he told Kowalski. “Thought you might like this instead.”
Kowalski grinned, lifting the M240 machine gun from the professor’s arms. He cradled it like a baby. He then dropped to a knee next to the professor and hauled out a long belt of 7.62x51mm NATO cartridges and flung the bandolier over his shoulders like a deadly scarf.
He stood up, puffing out his chest. “Now this is more like it.”
Jason eyed the folded ladder, looking suddenly less sure of the wisdom of his plan. “So we try to make it over to the German sub?”
“No,” Gray answered. “If found, we’d be trapped inside there. And even if Wright misses us, we’d leave the path open for his team to reach the Back Door first.”
“Then where are we going?” Jason asked.
An old Churchill slogan popped into Gray’s head.
If you’re going through hell, keep going.
He pointed ahead. “We’re going to strike out for that substation, try to reach the Back Door.”
Kowalski’s grin faded back to its usual scowl. “How the hell are we going to do that?”
He had no better answer—but somebody else did.
“I know what we can do,” Harrington said, still sounding none too happy. “But we’ll still have to trek some distance first.”
1:22 P.M.
Hell became all too real, striking his every sense.
Jason descended cautiously down the rungs of the swinging ladder with his DSR slung across his back. Since lowering out of the gondola, the harsh world swallowed him whole.
Each breath brought in the reek of sulfurous brimstone, belched out from the volcanic forces underpinning this world. He could taste the foulness on the back of his tongue, while moist heat burned his skin, drawing beads of sweat from every pore. The silent world now whispered with creaks, croaks, laps of water, and a faint continual buzzing coming from a mix of nattering insects and a vague sense of ultrasonics bouncing off the walls, cast out by the life found down here.
The last set his teeth on edge, tickling the hairs on the back of his neck—or maybe it was simply the fear.
He stared below his feet. Gray and Kowalski had already reached the stone bank of the river. They had their weapons at their shoulders. The IR illuminator atop Gray’s rifle cast out a pool of illumination into the darkness. Kowalski held his machine gun up, its belt of ammunition dragging all the way to the ground.
Jason watched Harrington step off the last rung of the ladder and join the other two men. They spoke in whispers, following the instructions given to them by the professor: In this
world of eternal darkness, sound is vision.
It was why the sonic weapons employed here were so effective.
At least I hope they are.
Jason shifted his DSR more securely over his shoulders and continued his descent along the shaking ladder. He eyeballed the river below. He might survive a fall from this height if he hit the water—but getting out alive from that river would be the true challenge.
Harrington had shared another nugget of wisdom before they vacated the gondola: Whatever you do, stay clear of the water.
The ecosystem down here was dependent on that main river and its lakes, all of it fed by geothermally melted ice from the miles of glaciers overhead, and drained under the continent to parts unknown.
Before the gondola had stalled, the professor had educated them about the primordial world down here, how it was mostly amphibious in nature, thriving at that boundary between solid ground and the flowing rivers and pools. Many of the life cycles had evolved to incorporate stages that transitioned between those two extremes: juveniles sheltering along the rocky banks, adults living in the water, or vice versa.
Harrington had described the ecosystem as being stuck in the Carboniferous Period, an era when the topside world was dominated by primordial swamp forests. The professor had noted parallels in the evolutionary pathways taken by the life down here. Only this isolated and insulated world had become stagnant, never experiencing the radical changes wrought upon the world above by the breakup of the supercontinent of Pangaea or by the ravages of meteoric impacts. Still, the highly adaptable XNA genetic matrix had compounded the inventiveness of life dwelling inside this cavern system.
Soft words reached him from below, another warning from Harrington, directed mostly at Kowalski.
“Careful with your gun,” the professor said. “Besides noise, scent is a strong trigger, especially blood. The racket of that weapon and resulting bloodshed could trigger a feeding frenzy.”
Jason pictured the angry thrashing of sharks through spilled chum.
“To your right,” Stella called quietly but urgently from above, drawing his attention in that direction.