The 6th Extinction

  As she requested, he had the pedal firmly pressed to the floor, flying across the deserted base. They had no time to spare with trivialities like stop signs or traffic lights. She stared down at Nikko. The dog would not likely last past the next couple of hours. He was showing evidence of major organ failure.

  Hang in there, Nikko.

  They sped into the empty parking lot of the small base hospital. The medical facility had just upgraded their radiological suite to include an MRI machine. Edmund Dent already waited at the entrance. Lisa had used the time preparing Nikko for transport to gather all key players to this one spot.

  The Ram truck blasted into the emergency bay and braked hard in front of Edmund. The virologist waved to some of his colleagues who were also scheduled to leave on the last chopper. Together, they all got Nikko out and rolling toward the radiology unit.

  Edmund panted beside her. “Already got the scanner warmed up. A technician attuned the magnets to”—he checked what was written on the back of his hand—“0.456 Tesla. Static field.”

  “What about a sample of the engineered organism?”

  “Oh, right here.” He reached to a pocket and pulled out a test tube that was tightly plugged and duct-taped.

  Nothing like improvisation.

  They reached the radiology unit to find two members of the nuclear team, along with Dr. Lindahl.

  “This had better not be a waste of everyone’s time,” Lindahl greeted her. “Plus after this is all over, I’m going to initiate a formal inquiry into your behavior. Absconding with a test patient.”

  “Nikko is not a test patient. He’s a decorated search-and-rescue dog who just happened to get sick assisting all of us.”

  “Whatever,” Lindahl said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  It took four of them to lift Nikko’s sealed patient containment unit from the gurney and place it on the MRI table.

  The technician pounded on the glass. “No metal!”

  Lisa swore under her breath. In all her haste, she hadn’t considered this detail. Nothing metallic could go through an MRI machine; that included the components of Nikko’s patient containment unit.

  Edmund looked at her.

  Got to do this the hard way.

  She pointed to the door. “Everyone out.”

  “Lisa . . .” Edmund warned. From his tone, he knew what she was planning. “What if the data is false? Or simply wrong?”

  “I’ll take that chance versus nuking these mountains. Besides, the science sounds right.” She shooed him toward the door, taking his test tube first. “Out.”

  Once clear, she crossed to Nikko’s PCU, took a deep breath, and cracked it open.

  Painter, you’d better be right.

  With great care, she gently lifted Nikko over to the table. His limp form seemed much lighter, as if something vital had already left him. She placed him down and rested a hand on his side. It felt good to be able to touch him with her bare hands rather than with a glove. She combed her fingers through his fur.

  Good boy.

  She placed the tube of virus next to the dog and gave the technician a thumbs-up.

  After a few seconds, the machine erupted with a noisy clacking, and the table holding Nikko slowly slid through the ring of those magnets. They did a double pass to make sure.

  All the while, she paced the room nervously, chewing a thumbnail.

  Gonna need a manicure before the wedding.

  “That’s it,” the technician announced over the intercom.

  Lisa quickly took a syringe from a rolling plastic cart and drew a blood sample from Nikko’s catheter. She injected the syringe into a Vacutainer tube. Then sealed both it and Edmund’s tube into a hazardous waste bag, which she handled only with sterile gloves. She left it near the door and stepped back.

  Edmund risked collecting it himself.

  “Hurry,” she said.

  He nodded and raced off, heading to his lab at the hangar.

  It was the longest ten minutes of her life. She used the time to pass her own body through the scanner to kill any contamination from handling Nikko. She then sat on the table with him, cradling his head on her lap.

  Finally a call came through, patched through the intercom.

  She heard the triumph in his voice. “Dead. It’s all genetic mush. Both the raw sample and the viral load in Nikko’s blood.”

  She closed her eyes and bent over Nikko.

  “See what a good boy you are,” she whispered to him.

  She took another moment to collect herself, then picked up the phone and spoke to Edmund. “What’s the plan from here?”

  She heard arguing in the background, raised voices, most of it coming from Raymond Lindahl.

  “Still trouble,” Edmund said. “And you can guess from who.”

  She hung up and stared at the door, wondering what she should do.

  Before she could decide, the door shoved open, and Sarah flew in, pointing a finger at her. “I heard. You’d better get over there. I’ll dog-sit. Dennis will drive you.”

  She smiled, hugged the corporal, and flew out the door.

  Dennis drove his Ram truck at top speed over the quarter of a mile to the hangar. She was out the door before it had even stopped moving. She ran into the hangar to find Lindahl with his back to her, nose to nose with the head nuclear technician.

  “We stick to the original plan until I hear otherwise from D.C.,” Lindahl said. “All these new results are . . . are at best preliminary. And in my opinion, still disputable.”

  “But, sir, I can readily modify—”

  “Nothing changes. We stay the course.”

  Lisa strode up behind Lindahl and tapped him on the shoulder. When he turned with a look of stunned surprise to find her there, she drew back her arm and punched him hard in the face. His head snapped back, and he slumped leadenly to the floor.

  Wincing, she shook her hand and nodded to the head tech. “You were saying?”

  “From what we just learned, I should be able to lower the yield of our nuke to as little as a single kiloton. If we can get that bomb to blow four miles up—which that drone chopper can reach—it should produce an electromagnetic pulse of at least 0.5 Tesla. It’ll cover more than enough territory to sweep the hot zone with negligible radiation. Nothing worse than what you’d get from a dental X-ray.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “I can still make that noon deadline.”

  She nodded. “Do it.”

  “What about D.C.?”

  “Let me worry about D.C. You get that nuke in the air.”

  As he hurried off, she looked at her bruised knuckles.

  Definitely will need a manicure.

  2:45 P.M.

  Roraima, Brazil

  Kendall watched the tepui drop below as the V-280 Valor fled from the summit. They had only a minute to spare before Cutter’s charges exploded, destroying his macabre experiment in synthetic biology and genetic engineering.

  Good riddance.

  He returned his attention to the cabin. The space was packed with people. Cutter’s private helicopter had already left with Ashuu and Jori, but only after ferrying two flights of native workers out into the surrounding rain forest, getting them clear of any danger.

  He presently shared the back of the cabin with Cutter, who was strapped down in his stretcher, one wrist handcuffed to a railing. An IV line ran to a catheter in the back of his hand. His deep wounds still needed surgical attention, but a thick compression wrap around his chest should last until the aircraft reached Boa Vista in a couple of hours to refuel.

  Cutter stared out the window near his head. “Ten seconds.”

  Kendall followed the other’s gaze toward that cloud-wrapped summit. He silently counted down. When he reached zero—a towering blast of smoke and rock shot from the summit, occluding the sun, turning it bloodred. Thunder rolled over that shattered mountaintop, as if mourning the deaths of so much strange life. Then slowly the plateau cracked, s
hedding a shoulder of rock, like a calving glacier. The pond on top spilled over that fracture, reflecting that bloody sunlight, becoming a flow of fire down that broken rock.

  “Beautiful,” Cutter whispered.

  “A fitting end to Dark Eden,” Kendall added.

  Cutter glanced over to Jenna. “But you saved a sliver of it. For her.”

  “And maybe for the world.” He pictured his frantic search for those vials before destroying the lab. “That counteragent may hold some promise of treatments for other mental disabilities. It will certainly bear more study. Some good may yet come from your work.”

  “And you saved nothing else? Nothing from my genetic library?”

  “No. It’s better off lost forever.”

  “Nothing’s lost forever. Especially when it’s all up here.” Cutter tapped a finger against his skull.

  “It won’t be there for long,” Kendall said.

  The man was simply too dangerous.

  With everyone distracted by the show beyond the window, Kendall lifted what he had secretly pocketed back at the lab, what Cutter himself had foolishly left on a tabletop in his panic over his son. He leaned forward and pressed the jet-injector pistol against the side of the man’s throat. It was the same tool used on Jenna. The intact vial still held one last dose of Cutter’s engineered code.

  Cutter’s eyes widened with horror as Kendall pulled the device’s trigger. Compressed gas shot the dose into the man’s neck.

  With his other hand, Kendall injected a sedative into Cutter’s IV.

  “By the time you wake, my friend, it’ll all be over.”

  Cutter looked on in dismay.

  “This time Cutter Elwes will die,” Kendall promised. “Maybe not the body, but the man.”

  34

  May 29, 11:29 P.M. PDT

  Yosemite Valley, California

  “Wasn’t exactly your beachside wedding,” Painter said, swirling a glass of single malt in one hand, the love of his life snuggled under his other arm.

  “It was perfect.” Lisa pulled tighter against him.

  They had both changed out of formal attire and found this deep-cushioned love seat before the massive stone fireplace of the Great Lounge of the Ahwahnee Hotel. The reception party was winding down behind them as guests either filtered to rooms or headed home.

  The wedding had been at sunset on a great swath of lawn, beautifully lit, flowers bountiful, including his wife’s favorite chrysanthemums, each petal a deep burgundy trimmed in gold. The hotel had even picked up the tab, a small thank-you for all the pair had done to save the valley and surrounding area. The generous offer was made possible because tourism was still slow to return.

  Bioterrorism and nuclear bombs . . .

  It would take a little more time to shake that reputation, but it made it easier to arrange these last-minute wedding plans. They had held off until Josh was recovered enough to attend, sporting the latest in DARPA prosthetics. He and Monk had plenty to talk over at the dinner table. Lisa’s kid brother was remarkably resilient considering the circumstances, even amped to get back out on the mountains and face new challenges.

  The final reason they’d chosen this venue was its proximity to the cleanup and monitoring of the neighboring Mono Lake area. Lisa was still working with Dr. Edmund Dent, the virologist, and his team. In turn, Painter used the opportunity to spend some time away from the office with Lisa. Kat was able to handle the day-to-day, with the exception of this weekend.

  She and Monk had left shortly after dinner with the two girls propped up in their arms, returning to their rooms before an early morning flight home. During their absence, Gray had been holding down the fort out in D.C., having to stick close to home for personal reasons.

  Some other guests, well . . .

  Kowalski sidled up to them, his jacket over one arm, the top two buttons of his shirt undone. He puffed on a cigar.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to smoke in here,” Lisa warned.

  Kowalski took the stogie out and stared at it. “C’mon, it’s a Cuban. Can’t get any more formal than that.”

  Jenna passed behind him with Nikko on a leash. “Gotta see a man about a horse!” she said, heading for the parking lot. “Or at least Nikko does.”

  Like Josh, the Siberian husky had fully recovered, even earning a medal for his actions.

  Kowalski scowled after the pair and shook his head. “First Kane, now that dog. Before long, Sigma will have to build its own kennel.” He pointed his cigar at Painter. “And don’t get any ideas—I’m not cleaning up after them.”

  “Deal.”

  Kowalski nodded and headed away in a cloud of cigar smoke.

  Painter sighed and held out his hand. “Shall we retire ourselves?”

  “Certainly.” She placed her palm atop his. “But you weren’t expecting to sleep?”

  With a gentle tug, Painter pulled her to him, slid his hand behind her head, and kissed her, breaking away only long enough to say, “Who can sleep? We’ve got a family to start.”

  May 30, 6:36 A.M.

  Lee Vining, California

  Jenna headed down 395 through the center of town in her new Ford F-150 pickup, freshly decaled with the star of the California State Park Rangers. It was courtesy of the department after everything that had happened. Even the interior still had that new-car smell.

  Not that it’ll stay that way for long.

  Nikko panted in her ear from the backseat. She would normally scold him, but instead she reached back and scuffled his muzzle. Though he had recovered physically, she could read the smaller signs of post-traumatic stress. He clung more to her and was incrementally less apt to charge into situations, but he was slowly recovering even from that.

  Like me.

  She still remembered the sense of feeling herself slipping away, the fog flowing thicker, filling her up and pushing all else out.

  Even now she shuddered. She found herself constantly doing personal inventory. If she forgot her keys, was that a sign of residual damage? What if she fumbled for a word or couldn’t recall an address or phone number? That alone was disconcerting.

  So she had taken to getting up at daybreak. She had always loved the mornings on the lake. The sun turned the mirrored waters into myriad shades, changing with each season. The streets stayed mostly deserted. Or if it was high season, then the city would just be beginning to wake, yawning and stretching its legs.

  The quiet of the mornings had always given her time to think, to collect herself. And right now she needed that more than anything.

  But mornings meant one other thing to her now.

  She picked up the radio and called into dispatch. “Bill, I’m going to stop and fuel up.”

  “Got it.”

  She parked under the yellow sign of Nicely’s Restaurant and hopped out, followed by Nikko. She headed inside, the bell tinkling. Behind the counter, Barbara lifted the to-go cup already full of hot black coffee, the best in town, and tossed Nikko a dog biscuit, which he caught midair, a skill learned from years of experience.

  But she now had a new routine.

  A figure called to her from a booth, not even bothering to look up from his paper. “Morning, dear.”

  She crossed and slid into the booth with her coffee. “So what’s your day look like?” she asked Drake. He had accepted a permanent position as a Marine trainer at the mountain base.

  “You know,” he said, “probably have to save the planet again.”

  She nodded, sipped her coffee, winced at the heat. “SSDD.”

  Same shit, different day.

  He passed her the sports page, which she accepted.

  Nothing like keeping it simple.

  2:07 P.M., GMT

  Queen Maud Land, Antarctica

  “Mate, if you keep coming back here, you might want to sign up for my frequent flier program.”

  Jason clapped the UK airman on the shoulder and zippered more snugly into his parka, pulling up the hood. “I just mi
ght have to do that, Barstow.”

  Jason hopped out of the Twin Otter and onto the ice. He stared at the cluster of buildings that had spread like a tumble of toy blocks in the shadow of the black crags of the Fenriskjeften mountains. It was as if the Back Door substation had been a seed that had germinated out of the warmth below and sprouted into this ever-growing international research complex on the frozen surface.

  They’d made a lot of progress.

  Still, he remembered that journey a month ago, rising out of Hell’s Cape through that Back Door with Gray, Kowalski, and Stella. As Stella had promised, they found an emergency CAAT garaged on the surface and used it to venture back to the coast, joining up with Dr. Von Der Bruegge and the remaining researchers from the Haley VI station. With the solar storm ended, they were able to contact McMurdo Station for help.

  Now I’m back again.

  But he had a good reason. She came out of one of the tallest of the new structures, which was painted in the red-and-black of the British Antarctic Survey, a match to the Otter’s coloring. Even her parka had the letters BAS emblazoned on the chest.

  She strode toward him, her hood down, as if strolling across a park versus forging through an Antarctic winter. This time of year the continent was sunk into a perpetual midnight, but the sweep of bright stars and a silvery full moon offered plenty of light, especially when accompanied by the swirling electric tides of the aurora australis.

  “Jason, it’s so great to see you.” Stella hugged him, her embrace lingering a little longer than expected—but he wasn’t complaining.

  “I’ve got so much to show you, to tell you.” She started to lead him toward the station, but he kept his place.

  “I’ve been reading the reports,” he said, smiling. “You do have a lot on your hands. Opening select sections of Hell’s Cape as protected biospheres must be a sensitive endeavor. I kept promising you some experienced help, so I’m here finally delivering on that in person.”

  Jason waved to the rear compartment of the Otter. The hatch opened and two people climbed out in well-worn arctic gear. The woman tucked a long tail of curly black hair, shot through with a few strands of gray, back as she pulled up her parka’s hood. She was helped out by a taller man, ruggedly built, whose age most people would have never guessed. Like their gear, they looked well worn together, an inseparable couple.