The 6th Extinction (11 page)

“I know how to use a flash drive. I’m not a dinosaur.”

“Sorry. You’re like twelve years older than me. In digital times, that’s at least the Pleistocene era.” He hid a grin behind his Starbucks cup as he tried to suck down the last dregs of coffee.

Monk clapped Jason on the shoulder. “I now get what Kat sees in this kid.”

Gray pocketed the drive and headed toward the door. “Keep searching those files,” he ordered. “See if you can dig up anything else while I talk to Director Raffee.”

Gray strode down a short basement hallway, entered the security elevator, and inserted his black Sigma card, emblazoned with a silver Greek letter ∑, the mathematical symbol meaning the “sum of all,” which was Sigma Force’s credo for combining the best of body and mind to deal with global threats. The card also served as a skeleton key for most locked doors in D.C.

He tapped the button for the seventh floor. As the car rose smoothly upward, Gray pulled out his phone, looking to see if there was any message from Kenny about their father. It was Gray’s first chance to check in the past hour, as the subterranean data center had no cell reception. He let out a sigh of relief when he saw no messages.

At least it should be a quiet night.

As the elevator opened, Gray hurried through the dark, deserted corridors. It was a maze up here, made tighter by the stacks of boxes standing outside doors. Scaffolding and paint cans also blocked the way. DARPA was still transitioning from its old headquarters a few blocks away to this one in Founders Square. Some divisions were still in the former building; others had either moved out or were in the process of settling in. He imagined the chaos during the day, but at this late hour, everything was hushed and calm.

Turning a corner, he spotted a cracked open doorway aglow with lamplight. It seemed Raffee had earned a corner office. Gray hurried toward it—when a harsh shout stopped him.

He faded against one wall.

The voice, muffled by distance, hadn’t sounded like the director. Gray’s hand reached to his service weapon, a SIG Sauer P226, from the shoulder holster under his jacket. As his fingers tightened on the grip, a distinct
pop, pop, pop
echoed to him.

The door to Raffee’s office swung open, casting light far down the corridor. Gray slunk lower, sheltering behind a parked Xerox copier in the hallway. He peeked out enough to see four men—dressed in black camo and carrying pistols equipped with silencers—file out and sweep toward his position. Gray glanced behind him. The nearest door was yards away.

Too far
.

He calculated quickly. His pistol held a dozen .357 rounds. He would have to make each shot count, especially if the combatants were equipped with body armor. His only advantage at the moment was the element of surprise.

He steeled himself to act, centering his breath.

The last man through the door barked into a radio. “The others are downstairs. Sublevel three. Take the stairs, we’ll use the elevator.”

He pictured Monk and Jason, ensconced in the small room, unaware of the firestorm headed their way.

Gray waited until the first two men passed his hiding spot. Focused on their goal, they failed to see him crouched behind the Xerox machine.

He fired twice, both head shots—then pivoted and rolled low into the open. He aimed back toward Raffee’s office and the other two men. He shot the closest in the knee, dropping him—but even in pain and caught off guard, the man fired his pistol as he fell.

The round whistled past Gray’s ear.

Damn . . .

These were plainly hardened professionals, likely former military. As the other’s shoulder hit the floor, Gray blasted him point-blank in his face, not taking any further chances.

The final gunman retreated behind a piece of scaffolding, peppering rounds down the hall. Gray stayed flat on the ground, using the body in front of him as a shield. Shots pounded into the man’s teammate or ricocheted off the linoleum.

Gray had to act before his target fled back into Raffee’s office. From the way the man cast a glance in that direction, it was clearly his intent: to get to safety and call up reinforcements.

Can’t let that happen
.

Gray popped up and strafed at his adversary’s position. Rounds pinged off the scaffolding or buried into the far wall behind his target. The man kept hidden as Gray kept pulling the trigger, his arm straight out, stepping over the body on the ground.

Finally he reached his twelfth shot—and his slide locked.

Out of bullets
.

His adversary rose back into view, aiming his smoking weapon, a triumphant sneer fixed on his face.

Gray dropped his SIG Sauer. As the other’s eyes twitched to follow its fall, Gray used the distraction to swing up his other arm, revealing the pistol he had hidden behind his thigh, a weapon he had confiscated from the dead man on the floor. He pulled the trigger twice—but once would have been enough.

A clean shot through the eye dropped the final combatant to the floor.

Gray rushed forward and burst into Raffee’s office. He didn’t hold out much hope that the director was still alive, but he had to check. He found the man in his chair, his jacket off, his sleeves rolled up. A bloom of crimson stained the center of his white shirt and a clean round hole pierced his forehead.

Biting back his fury at the callous execution, he grabbed the phone atop the desk, but he immediately saw the cord had been cut. He took a breath, considered searching for another phone; even if he found one, he wasn’t familiar enough with the system to know how to reach the subbasement extension. And with no cell reception down below, the phone in his pocket was useless.

He had no way of warning Monk and Jason.

4:04
A
.
M
.

“Maybe those debunkers are wrong about that Piri Reis map,” Jason said, straightening his hunched shoulders from the monitor. He took a deep breath, hiding his nervousness about broaching such a conclusion on his own. He knew about the past exploits of Commander Pierce and his partner and felt out of their league.

I’m only a glorified tech geek
.

Still, his gut told him that what he’d found might be important.

“What do you mean?” Monk asked, letting out a jaw-popping yawn. He sat with his boots up on the neighboring desk.

“You’d better check this out.”

Monk grumbled under his breath—something about kids always waking him up. He shifted his feet to the ground and slid his chair next to Jason. “What did you find?”

“I’ve been looking through the other historical maps included in the folder from the British Antarctic Survey and reading through Professor Harrington’s notes on them.”

“The paleobiologist.”

“That’s right.” Jason cleared his throat, swallowing hard. “Here’s another pair of maps of Antarctica, both dating about twenty years after the Piri Reis map was drawn in 1513. One by a fellow named Oronteus Finaeus and the other by Gerardus Mercator.”

“Notice again that they both show Antarctica without ice,” Jason said. “Harrington also notes that the maps reveal mountain ranges, peaks that are currently buried deep under glaciers and should not have been visible back in the sixteenth century. Likewise, the maps include fine details about the continent, like charting Alexander Island and the Weddell Sea.”

Monk scrunched his brow. “And both of these maps were drawn centuries
before
the continent was ever officially discovered.”

Jason nodded. “And many millennia
after
Antarctica’s coastlines were ever free of ice. There’s also this map from 1739 by a French cartographer named Buache.”

“See how this chart shows Antarctica being depicted as
two
landmasses, separated by a river or sea. That’s true. While the continent appears to be one continuous landmass, strip away the ice and it’s actually a mountainous archipelago broken up into two main sections: Lesser Antarctica and Greater Antarctica. This detail wasn’t known until seismic mapping was done by the U.S. Air Force in 1968.”

“And this map was from the eighteenth century?”

“That’s right.” He couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice.

“But what does any of this have to do with Dr. Hess’s research in California?”

The question deflated his enthusiasm. “I don’t know, but there’s a lot more from Professor Harrington in this folder, some files dating back to World War II. Much of it highly redacted. I’ll need time to go through it all.”

“Sounds like you’re going to need a keg of coffee when we get back to Sigma command.”

Jason resigned himself to this fact. “I suppose when it comes to mysteries surrounding Antarctica, it’s better me than anyone else.”

Monk stared harder at him. “What do you mean?”

“Kat . . . I mean Captain Bryant . . . never told you?”

“There’s lots of things my wife doesn’t tell me. Most of it for my own good.” Monk pointed a finger at him. “So spill it, kid.”

Jason stared at the man’s raised hand, noting the slight unnatural sheen to its surface. It was a prosthetic, eerily lifelike, showing fine hairs on the back and knuckles. Jason knew the story of how Monk had lost the hand and respected the man all the more for it. Afterward, DARPA had replaced it with this marvel of bioengineering, incorporating advanced mechanics and actuators, allowing sensory feedback and surgically precise movements. Jason had also heard that Monk would detach the hand and control it remotely via contact points on the titanium cuff surgically attached to the stump of his wrist.

Jason would love to see such a performance someday.

“If you’re done staring . . .” Monk warned, a slight growl in his voice.

“Sorry.”

“You mentioned you had a connection to Antarctica.”

“I once lived there, but it’s been a while. My mom, stepdad, and sister are still there . . . near McMurdo Station.”

Monk squinted at him, sensing there was more to his story, adventures left untold, but he left it there. “Then with your background, maybe you should be the one to interview this Harrington guy. Find out what the Brit knows.”

Jason perked up. He always wanted to do fieldwork someday, and this might be the opening he needed. Anything to break free of motherboards, logic circuits, and code-breaking algorithms.

A door closed down the hallway, the sound echoing to them.

Monk stood up.

Jason glanced over his shoulder. “Sounds like Commander Pierce is back.”

Hopefully with something more exciting to do than look at maps
.

“Kid, do you have a side arm?”

Only now did he note how tense his companion had gone. All that easygoing manner had washed out of his form.

“No . . .” Jason squeaked out.

“Neither do I, but that was the stairwell door. Not the elevator. Don’t think Gray needs the exercise at this late hour.”

The heavy tread of multiple boots on concrete reached them.

Monk turned to Jason, his gaze dead serious. “I’m open to any bright ideas, kid.”

4:06
A
.
M
.

Gray worked swiftly, knowing every second counted.

As he swept along the seventh-floor hallway, he collected extra magazines from the dead, making sure they matched the weapon he had swiped. He didn’t know how many others were downstairs, but he was taking no chances. In a firefight, the difference between life and death could be a single round.

“I’m heading below,” he said, pinning his cell phone to his ear with his shoulder. After finding Raffee dead, he had placed a quick call to Sigma for help.

“I’ll get units to you as soon as I can.” Kat sounded tense, but even with her husband in harm’s way, she stayed focused. “Be careful.”

“Only as careful as I need to be.”

He hung up as he reached the end of the corridor. He paused long enough to grab a hammer from a construction worker’s toolbox. Despite Kat’s efforts, he estimated it would still take law enforcement several minutes to arrive on-site.