Bishop stepped forward, followed closely by Crane and the MPs. Seeing them approach, one of the officers broke away from the cordon to intercept them.
“Dr. Bishop,” the man said over the screams. “I’m Lieutenant Travers. Ranking officer on the scene.”
“Give us the details,” Crane said.
Travers glanced at him, then looked back at Bishop. She gave a slight nod.
“The man is Randall Waite,” he said. “Machinist first grade.”
“What happened?” Crane asked.
“Nobody’s quite certain. Apparently, Waite had been acting moody the last day or two—quiet, not like himself. Then, just as he was about to go off shift, he started acting out.”
“Acting out,” Bishop repeated.
“Starting to shout. Crazy stuff.”
Crane glanced in the direction of the screams. “Is he angry? Delusional?”
“Delusional, yes. Angry, no. Seemed more like he’s—in despair, sort of. Said he wanted to die.”
“Go on,” Crane said.
“A few people approached him. Tried to calm him down, see what was wrong. That’s when he grabbed one.”
Crane’s eyebrows shot up. Oh, shit. That’s not good.
Ninety-nine percent of all suicidal attempts were attention-getters, pleas for help. Cutters, making slash marks mostly for effect. But when a hostage was involved, it became a different situation entirely.
“That’s not all,” Travers muttered. “He’s got a brick of C4 and a detonator.”
“What?”
Travers nodded grimly.
There was a squawk from Travers’s radio, and he raised it to his lips. “Travers.” He listened a moment. “Very well. Hold until you get my signal.”
“What was that about?” Bishop asked.
Travers nodded in the direction of a side wall, where the smoked window of a control room overlooked the hangar. “We’ve got a sharpshooter up there, trying to get a hard target.”
“No!” Crane said. He took a breath. “No. I want to talk to him first.”
Travers frowned.
“Why did you bring us down if not to defuse things?” Crane asked.
“He’s grown more agitated since that call. And we didn’t know about the C4 when we put out the code.”
“Does your man have a hard target?” Crane pressed.
“Intermittent.”
“Then there’s no reason not to let me try.”
Travers hesitated for a second. “Very well. But if he threatens that hostage—or if he tries to arm that detonator—I’m going to have to smoke him.”
Crane nodded to Bishop, then walked slowly forward until he reached the cordon. Gently, he pushed his way through. Then he stopped.
About twenty feet ahead, a man in an orange jumpsuit stood in the shadow of the equipment bay. His eyes were red-rimmed and tearing. His chin was flecked with mucus, phlegm, and frothy blood. Sprays of vomit slashed across the orange field of his jumpsuit. Poison? Crane wondered in a detached way. But the man showed no obvious signs of abdominal pain, paralysis, or other systemic symptoms.
The man held a woman before him—about thirty, petite, with dirty-blond hair. She was dressed in an identical jumpsuit. His arm encircled her neck, and her chin was pointed upward at a painful angle, rising from the crook of Waite’s elbow. A long, narrow screwdriver was pressed against her jugular vein. The woman’s lips were tight, and her eyes were wide with fear.
Jutting out of the man’s other hand was a whitish brick of C4 and an unarmed detonator.
The screams were shockingly loud here, and stopped only long enough for Waite to draw in fresh breaths. Crane found it hard to think over the noise.
Talk him down, the rule book went. Calm him, get him secured. Easier said than done. Crane had talked down a would-be jumper standing on a support cable of the George Washington Bridge. He’d talked down men sticking Lugers into their ears or chewing on shotgun barrels. But he’d never talked down somebody holding ten grenades’ worth of plastique.
He took a breath, then another. And then he stepped forward.
“This isn’t really what you want,” he said.
The man’s red eyes landed on him briefly, then jittered away. The screams continued.
“This isn’t really what you want,” Crane repeated, louder.
He couldn’t hear himself over the screaming. He took another step forward.
The man’s eyes shot back to him. He gripped the woman tighter, pressed the point of the screwdriver deeper into her neck.
Crane froze. He could see the woman staring at him pleadingly, her face a mask of fear. He was uncomfortably aware of how exposed he was: standing between the cordon of military officers and the man with a hostage and a brick of C4. He fought back an urge to retreat.
He remained motionless, thinking. Then—slowly—he eased himself down on the metal floor. He undid one shoe, then the other, and placed them carefully aside. He removed his socks and put them to one side, arranging them with finicky precision. Then he leaned backward, resting himself on the palms of his hands.
As he did so, he became aware of something new in the hanger: silence. The screaming had stopped. Waite was staring at him now, the screwdriver still pressed dangerously against the woman’s throat.
“You don’t want to do this,” Crane said in a patient, reasonable tone. “There’s no problem that can’t be taken care of. There’s nothing worth hurting yourself or somebody else over. That’s just going to make it worse.”
Waite did not reply. He simply stared back, wide-eyed, drawing in ragged breaths.
“What is it you want?” Crane asked. “What can we do to help you?”
At this, Waite whimpered, swallowed painfully. “Make it stop,” he said.
“Make what stop?” Crane asked.
“The sounds.”
“What sounds?”
“Those sounds,” Waite replied in a voice that was half whisper, half sob. “The sounds that never…that never stop.”
“I’ll talk to you about the sounds. We can—”
But Waite had begun to whimper again, and the whimper was rising in pitch and volume. More screams were not far away.
Quickly, Crane grasped his own shirt collar, jerked downward violently. There was a loud rending of fabric and a clatter of buttons. He took off the ruined shirt, placed it beside the shoes.
Waite was staring at him again.
“We can work this out,” Crane resumed. “Make the sounds stop.”
Listening, Waite began to cry.
“But you’re making me very nervous with that detonator.”
The crying grew louder.
“Let the woman go. It’s the sounds we have to fight, not her.”
Waite was bawling now, tears almost squirting from his eyes.
Crane had waited, waited carefully, to use the man’s Christian name. He decided to use it now. “Let the woman go, Randall. Let her go and drop the explosive. And we’ll work this out. We’ll make the sounds go away. I promise.”
Suddenly, Waite seemed to slump. Slowly, he lowered the screwdriver. The other hand dropped to his side, the C4 falling heavily to the ground. With a cry, the woman sprinted for the military cordon. Quick as lightning, an MP who had been crouching to one side darted in, secured the C4, retreated.
Crane took a deep breath. Then, slowly, he rose. “Thank you, Randall,” he said. “Now we can help you. Now we can make the sounds go away.” And he took a step forward.
At this, Waite reared back. His eyes rolled dangerously in his head. “No!” he said. “You can’t make the sounds go away. Don’t you understand? No one can make the sounds go away!” And with sudden, unexpected speed, he raised the screwdriver to his own throat.
“Stop!” Crane cried, dashing forward. But even as he did he saw, with horror, the point of the screwdriver disappear into the soft flesh of the man’s neck.
11
When Howard Asher reached the executive co
nference room on deck 8, Admiral Spartan was already there, seated at the table, hands resting on the polished rosewood. He waited silently while Asher closed the door and took a seat across the table.
“I’ve just come from Medical,” Asher said.
Spartan nodded.
“Waite sustained a deep puncture wound to the neck, and he’s lost a lot of blood, but he’s stable. He’ll pull through.”
“You didn’t summon me to an emergency meeting just to tell me that,” Spartan replied.
“No. But Waite is one of the reasons I asked you here.”
Spartan did not reply; he merely gazed at Asher with his dark unfathomable eyes. In the brief silence that followed, Asher felt the old apprehension—which he’d managed to contain so long—creeping back again.
Science and the military made for strange bedfellows. Deep Storm, Asher knew, was at best a marriage of convenience. He and his team of scientists needed this station, and the bottomless resources of the government, in order to undertake such a mind-boggling excavation in the first place. Spartan needed the scientists and engineers to plan the dig and analyze the finds. But the recent, unexpected developments were putting a strain on an already fragile relationship.
The door opened quietly, then closed again. Asher looked back to see Commander Korolis. The man nodded, then wordlessly took a seat at the table.
Asher’s apprehension increased. To him, Korolis symbolized everything was wrong about this project: secrecy, disinformation, propaganda. Asher knew that Waite was asleep in Medical, heavily sedated; otherwise, Korolis would be at the patient’s side, ensuring that no word of what went on below deck 7 reached non-classified ears.
“Proceed, Dr. Asher,” Spartan said.
Asher cleared his throat. “Waite is just the latest and most acute in a series of medical and psychological traumas. Over the last two weeks, this Facility has seen an alarming spike in illness, across the board.”
“Which is why you’ve brought in Crane.”
“I asked for several specialists,” Asher said. “A diagnostician, a—”
“One is sufficient enough risk,” Spartan replied, his voice low and even.
Asher took a deep breath. “Look. Once Waite is stable, we have to get him to the surface.”
“Out of the question.”
Now annoyance began mixing with Asher’s apprehension. “Why is that, exactly?”
“You know the reasons as well as I do. This is a secret installation, undertaking a classified mission—”
“Classified!” Asher cried. “Confidential! Don’t you understand? We have a serious medical issue here. You can’t just ignore it, sweep it under the rug!”
“Dr. Asher, please.” For the first time, Admiral Spartan allowed his tone to stiffen slightly. “You’re overreacting. We have a fully equipped medical facility here, staffed by skilled personnel. Against my better judgment, I’ve bowed to your request to bring in an additional resource—over the objection, I might add, of Commander Korolis here.”
This was bait, and Asher did not rise to it.
“Besides,” Spartan went on, “I don’t see the need for panic. Have you, or the good Dr. Crane, identified a cluster?”
“You know we haven’t.”
“Then let’s be reasonable here. Many of your scientists aren’t used to working in conditions like these. Confined to the Facility, cramped quarters, stressful working environment—” Spartan waved a meaty hand. “Irritability, sleeplessness, loss of appetite—these things are to be expected.”
“It’s not just scientists who are being affected,” Asher replied. “So are members of the military. And what about the ministrokes? The arrhythmias? What about Waite?”
“You’re talking about a very small section of the population,” Korolis said. It was the first time he’d spoken. “You get enough people together, something’s bound to pop up.”
“The facts are these,” Spartan went on. “There is no commonality. People are complaining about all sorts of things—that’s what people do. Aside from Waite, there’s no severity. I’m sorry, Dr. Asher, but that’s the truth. Bottom line: there’s no outbreak. Period.”
“But—” Asher began. He fell silent when he saw the expression on Spartan’s face. Scientists have no place in a military operation, that expression seemed to say. And all this whining proves it.
He decided to change the subject. “There’s something else.”
Spartan’s eyebrows rose.
“Earlier today, Paul Easton, the marine geologist, came to see me. Turns out we’re wrong about the dating.”
“What dating is that?” Spartan asked.
“Of the burial event.”
There was a brief silence.
Spartan shifted in his chair. “How wrong?”
“Very.”
Korolis exhaled slowly between his teeth. To Asher, it sounded like the hiss of a snake.
“Specify,” the admiral said at last.
“We’ve always assumed—based on rough visual inspection and other factors—that the entombment happened ten thousand years ago or even longer. Easton took that assumption a little too far. He never bothered to date the site using magnetic field reversal.”
“Using what?” Korolis said.
“A method for dating the vulcanism around the burial site. Not to get into the scientific details”—and here Asher glanced at Korolis—“but once in a great many years, the earth’s magnetic field reverses. Flips. The north pole becomes the south, and vice versa. Our original dating of the burial event would have placed it in the last magnetic reversal. But it seems we were wrong.”
“How do you know that?” Spartan asked.
“Because when the earth’s crust becomes molten, its iron particles swivel around, align themselves with the planet’s magnetic field. Then, as the rock cools, they stay aligned. It’s like tree rings in a way: you can date geologic events by examining that alignment.”
“Well, maybe it’s far older, then,” Korolis said. “Two magnetic reversals ago. The north pole would have still been north then, correct?”
“Correct. But the event was not far older.”
“So it wasn’t as old as you thought,” Spartan said.
Asher nodded.
“I presume that, since we’re here, you were able to get a more accurate date.”
“I had Easton send out a rover, equipped with a highly sophisticated magnetometer. It can measure, very accurately, the drift of a magnetic field. We used samples from the burial site as a starting point.”
Spartan frowned, shifted again. “And?”
“The site isn’t ten thousand years old, or fifty thousand. It’s six hundred years old.”
There was a moment of frigid silence.
Spartan was the first to speak. “Does this—oversight have any bearing on our chances of success?”
“No.”
Asher thought he detected a fleeting look of relief cross the admiral’s face before the expressionless mask descended again.
“Then what, exactly, is the bottom line?”
“Isn’t it obvious? This has gone from an event in the unthinkable past to an event within recorded history.”
“And your point, Doctor?” Korolis said.
“My point? My point is that there may have been eyewitnesses to the burial event. There may be written accounts.”
“Then we should dispatch a researcher to look into it,” Spartan said.
“I’ve already done that.”
Spartan frowned. “With the proper credentials? And discretion?”
“His credentials are excellent—medieval historian from Yale. And, yes, he has no clue as to the real reason I’m interested.”
“Good.” Spartan rose. “Then if there’s nothing else, I’d suggest you return to Medical and see if Dr. Crane has made a miracle diagnosis.”
Asher stood, as well. “He’ll need to be brought inside,” he said in a low voice.
Spartan’s eyebro
ws shot up. “Excuse me?”
“He should be fully briefed. He’ll need access to the classified levels. Unrestricted access. And not with a phalanx of MPs, either.”
“That’s impossible, Dr. Asher,” said Korolis. “We could never allow such a security risk.”
Asher kept his gaze on the admiral. “Crane needs to talk to the patients, learn their movements, search for vectors, identify possible exposures. How can he do that if we keep him both gagged and blindfolded?”
“I have the greatest faith in your choice of specialists, Dr. Asher,” Spartan said mildly. “You should, too.”
For a moment Asher just stood there, breathing heavily, mastering himself. “We were given a mandate, Admiral,” he finally said, voice husky. “A joint mandate to run this Facility. Together. So far, I haven’t pushed the point. But if it comes down to a question of secrecy or the safety of this installation, I’ll put aside secrecy in a heartbeat. And you’d be wise to remember that.”
Then he spun on his heel, pulled open the door, and was gone.
12
There were two squash courts on Deep Storm, and a three-day waiting list to get court time. It was an example of Asher’s clout, Crane thought, that the man had been able to get them a half-hour slot with a few minutes’ notice.
“I never figured you for a reader of poetry,” Asher said when they met on the court. “But your being a squash player is a no-brainer.”
“Maybe it’s my gazelle-like physique,” Crane replied. “Or maybe you’ve just been re-reading my jacket.”
Asher, juggling the little gray ball idly in his serve hand, laughed.
Crane wasn’t surprised Asher wanted a meeting. After all, he’d been on station now over thirty-six hours: the chief scientist would want a report. The only surprise was the suggested location. But then, he was already getting used to Asher’s modus operandi: maintain an affable exterior, imply a low-key atmosphere; but make it clear that results were expected, and expected right away.
That was fine with Crane; in fact, part of him welcomed the meeting. Because he happened to have an agenda of his own.
“Let’s warm up for a minute or two,” Asher said. He held out the ball. “Serve?”