“We haven’t seen it eat yet,” she points out. “We’re not even sure it has a mouth.”
“You have my sample. Run tests on it. Maybe we can destroy the eggs before they hatch?”
“Backtrack the Machine’s movements,” Graham chimes in. “Napalm the egg sites.” He shakes his head. “Won’t be possible under the ash.”
My mind whirls with possibilities, conjuring worst-case scenarios involving the billions of eggs being scattered by the Machine. But despite all of this new information, my thoughts return to my family. “Where is the Machine now?”
“Greenland,” Mayer says. “It’s been there for a week.”
“A week? What’s it doing?”
Mayer points the remote at the large screen and drags a satellite feed to the center of the screen, expanding it. The view is high above Greenland, recognizable because of its distinctive shape and the massive ice sheet covering three quarters of the world’s largest island.
The image zooms in on the southern portion of the island nation. The landscape looks ravaged.
“It’s been crushing mountains,” Mayer says. “One by one. It tramples them to dust and then moves on.”
“Is there anything there?” I ask. “You know, things the public might not know about?”
Mayer raises an eyebrow at me. “You mean like secret nuclear launch sites?”
“Things like that, yeah.”
“No.”
“And it’s just destroying mountains?”
“Flattening them, from the ice sheet to the coast.”
My legs grow weak and wobbly even before the realization fully resolves in my mind. “I know what it’s doing. It’s going to kill them.”
“Kill
who?
” Graham asks.
“My family.”
“Your family?” Mayer scoffs. “Why would it—”
“My family…and every single person anywhere near the Atlantic ocean. They’re all going to die.”
“When?” Mayer asks. “How long do we have?”
I point at the satellite feed. “Is this real time?”
“Yes.”
“Then now. It’s happening now.”
26
The room goes silent when everyone sees what’s taking place on the big screen. All 1,062,544 square miles of Greenland’s ice sheet, resting on a layer of liquid water, and held in place by a range of mountains. With most of those mountains now destroyed, the rest give way to the immense weight of all that ice, allowing it to slide away, toward the Atlantic Ocean. Because of our perspective, witnessing the event from far above, everything appears to be happening in slow motion, but the ice is covering a vast distance, in seconds, scouring all life from the coast and then plunging into the ocean, sliding into the depths and displacing a mind-numbing amount of water.
“Zoom out,” I say, my voice cracking, as tears well.
Mayer’s hand shakes as she raises the remote. Our view pulls back, revealing the northeast coastline of Canada and the U.S. on the left, and the already ravaged northwest coastline of Europe. Lit by the sun, and viewed from space, we can actually see the wave rise up and slide across the globe, spreading out in a ring of destruction that will wipe the landscape clean and sweep entire cities away. It will roll over the northern continents’ coastlines, followed by South America, Africa, and then Antarctica. Anyone within hundreds of miles of the ocean will be killed. Island nations will cease to exist.
The volcanic eruption and nuclear fallout killed millions of people, and would have slowly killed millions more. The event we’re now witnessing is going to kill billions.
Including us.
When that wall of water rushes over Spain and through the Strait of Gibraltar, tsunamis will race across the Mediterranean, decimating the refugee-laden southern coast of Europe, the northern coast of Africa and then the Middle East. While that wave will be less substantial, losing energy as it strikes Spain and Italy, Israel will take the hit head on.
I start to calculate how long it will take the wave to reach us, when I see the wall of sun-glittering blue sweep over Newfoundland and race south, toward the United States and my family.
Please don’t let them be there. Please, God, let them be gone.
I feel a tap on my left hand. I look down. It’s Graham, flicking my hand with his finger. He leans closer and whispers a barely audible, “How much time do we have?”
If he’s figured it out, there must be other people in the room already thinking the same thing. It won’t be long before even these hardened Mossad agents start to panic at the realization that they’ll be dead in… I lean closer to Graham. “Depends on where we are.”
“Mossad HQ is in Tel Aviv.”
Tel Aviv… Geez.
The city is positioned dead center, right on Israel’s coast, about as far away as you can get from her enemies in every direction, without actually wading out into the Mediterranean.
I don’t bother trying to figure out the math, and guess. “Ten minutes.”
“Stay close to me,” he says, and he takes a slow, subtle step back like he’s got nowhere to go and isn’t in a hurry.
I want to remind him that we are inside some kind of Mossad headquarters. And while there very well might be helicopters around that he can pilot, the odds of us absconding with one, while everyone outside this room is still oblivious to their impending demise, are slim. But I keep my mouth shut, because the odds of us dying inside this room, in ten minutes, are astronomical.
Mayer senses our departure, looking to where we had been standing and then back at us. Her hand goes for her weapon, but she doesn’t draw it. Instead, she walks toward us, calm and collected. The hand over her weapon never wavers, as she stops in front of us and says, “Where are you going?”
I glance at Graham, and when he says nothing, I reply with my usual candor. “Up. Preferably very high.”
“This building is ten stories tall,” she says.
“This building isn’t going to be here in nine minutes,” I tell her.
Mayer’s face pales. She hadn’t figured it out yet. She turns back to the screen, watching the wave roll over the entire U.K., unhindered by its cliffy coast, or mountainous highlands. She takes a step back into the room, urgency in her step.
She’s going to tell them. And when she does…
Graham grasps her shoulder. She spins around, drawing her weapon and leveling it at his face.
He doesn’t even flinch. The two warriors glare at each other for a moment, and then Graham breaks the silence. “No borders, remember?”
“They’ll all die,” she says.
“They’ll all die, either way.”
She sneers, her finger wrapping around the weapon’s trigger. “What makes your life more valuable than theirs?”
“Not my life,” Graham says, and then he pokes my shoulder. “His.”
Mayer’s eyes snap to mine while the gun remains pointed at Graham’s gut. Agent Zingel looks back at us, but doesn’t move. I think he’s in shock, but Mayer has also positioned herself so that no one else in the room can see the gun. Given the circumstances, anyone looking on would probably think she was grilling us about the wave, not debating whether or not to tell them it will soon be crashing through the building’s walls.
“Since the very first moment that thing emerged from Iceland, he has been one step ahead of it. He’s survived multiple encounters, while millions have died. He stood on its back and took a sample. He understands it, and the ramifications of its actions. He might not agree with me, but I’m certain that if anyone is going to figure out how to stop this thing, it’s him.”
He’s right, I don’t agree, but at the moment, I’m not going to argue, either. The only way I might ever see my family again—assuming they’re able to escape Washington, D.C before it’s decimated—is if we leave this place in the next few minutes.
She glances back at the room full of people, many of whom she likely knows, as colleagues, maybe even as friends—all of whom have families. Her body language shifts, becoming rigid. Stoic. She might care about a lot of these people, but she’s also a Mossad agent, trained to make life-and-death choices without flinching. She looks back at the big screen. The U.K. is submerged. Water eats its way across Europe, sliding over Spain, toward the Mediterranean. In New England, the states of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont have been consumed.
When she turns back to us, her face is transformed. The friendly woman who freed me from the interrogation room has been replaced by someone I have no doubt could get the most hardened enemy to talk. “Turn around. Second door on your right. I will be right behind you.” Even her voice sounds different. Tight. Sharp. Lethal.
Graham nods and heads for the door, walking casually, like nothing important is happening. He stops by the door and waits for Mayer.
She presses her hand against a print reader mounted beside the door. A light shines green, and the lock snaps open. She pushes the door inward, motions to a flight of stairs and offers a smile that looks genuine. “Head on up.” The killer is gone once more, but this time, I know it’s an act.
Graham starts up the steps, his pace casual. I have a hard time not prodding him to move faster. My imagination is continuing the satellite feed in my head. The water will be nearing Gibraltar. It won’t be long before everyone else in the control room knows they’re doomed. And when that happens…
The door behind us closes. I look back expecting to see Mayer at the door, but she’s already surged up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. She passes me in seconds. When I follow her passage around me and turn forward, Graham is already gone, sprinting upwards a flight above me.
“Shit,” I whisper, and I charge up the stairs, my legs once again reminding me that they have been severely abused. But I don’t waver. Charging up ten flights of stairs isn’t easy, but I’ve gone through and survived worse. My legs are stronger for it, but so is my will. By the seventh flight, I catch up with Mayer and pace her all the way to the top.
We exit onto the roof where there are two landing pads, both occupied by olive colored Black Hawk transport helicopters. Graham wrenches the door open and slides into the cockpit. Mayer walks to the far side of the chopper and does the same, leaving me to open the side hatch and climb in the back.
While the rotor starts to whine and spin, Mayer takes out her phone, taps the screen a few times and places it against her ear. After waiting for a moment, she says, “Get out of there,” and hangs up. I’m about to ask her who she called, when the rotor chop grows too loud to be heard. I put on one of the headsets, sit back in the seat and buckle myself in. When a powerful wind slaps up against me, I realize I never closed the side door. The chopper can fly just fine with it open, so I stay in my seat, white knuckle-clutching the straps over my chest.
Then I look through the open door.
My mental calculations were off.
The wave is here. And it’s bigger and faster than I thought.
“Lift off!” I scream.
There’re a few seconds of raw terror-filled stagnation that seem to draw out in slow motion, the wall of water growing steadily closer, and higher. And then we’re airborne, lifting up and away from the rooftop, ascending fast enough to crush me into my seat, while at the same time moving inland, away from the wave.
But not nearly fast enough to outrun it.
I watch the water’s approach through the open side door. High above Tel Aviv, I see the water slide away from the coast, gather into the wave, arc up and then return with a vengeance, sliding not just through the city, but over it, rising higher as it climbs up onto dry land, and crests a thousand feet up.
The rotor whines.
The pressure on my body increases as my blood pressure spikes. I feel like a cooked sausage, ready to burst.
I try to scream, but fail.
The water races at us, a wall of gray-blue.
We rise steadily higher as the Black Hawk tilts at a steeper angle, turning my view upward to the sky, and the frothing white crest of a nation-devouring wave.
The water arcs high, blots out the sun and then crashes downward, rushing toward the chopper, the open side door and my shrieking form. And in that moment of abject horror, of knowing that my life has come to an end, I find myself back in that foxhole mindset, begging an all-powerful being I don’t believe in to spare my life. My silent plight rises up, no doubt mingling with a chorus of others around the world, all crying out to be heard, to be spared.
But there is no one listening.
The roar of water and screaming voices, the scent of salt rushing past on the tsunami-propelled wind, the sight of civilization’s eradication; that is the only response forthcoming, and it’s not God speaking.
It’s the Apocalypse Machine.
Crashing water snuffs out my voice, and moments later, my soul.