The 6th Extinction (30 page)

“It’s more about what I can do
for
you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want to help you stop the plague that’s sweeping through California. Since you’ve been under my wing, your synthetic organism has spread, breaking out of its initial containment, pushed far and wide by recent flooding. It won’t be long until it’s everywhere, eating its way across your country—and beyond.”

Kendall had feared such an outcome, but now to hear it come true . . .

“But there’s no way to kill it,” Kendall admitted in a hushed, frightened voice. “I tried everything.”

“Ah, that’s because you are locked inside a box.” Cutter tapped his own skull. “Sometimes you must crack that shell of established scientific dogma. Look for new or creative solutions. In fact, I’m surprised you didn’t figure it out yourself by now. It’s been staring you and Professor Harrington in the face this entire time.”

Cutter’s words left little doubt that he knew about Harrington’s work. With every statement, hope died a little more inside of him.

“And what do you want in exchange for this cure?” Kendall asked.

“Only your cooperation, nothing more. While I was able to re-create that clever viral shell of yours, I’ve continued to fail to
fill
it, to turn that empty shell into a living organism.”

Kendall understood his frustration. It had taken his team years of trial and error to come up with that process. Afterward, he refined it personally and kept the technique guarded from everyone. But what weakened his knees now was the fear of
what
Cutter intended to seed into that viral shell, what he planned to unleash upon the world.

Cutter must have read the trepidation in his eyes and held up a palm. “I swear that what I intend to do will not kill a single human being or creature on this planet.”

Kendall wanted to doubt his honesty, but he knew Cutter was a man of his word. He had a strange sense of honor in that regard.

“But if you don’t cooperate, with every passing hour, the situation will grow worse in California. Soon it may grow beyond even my cure to resolve. Help me and you save the world. Refuse and the world will die by your own hands, by your own creation. That will be your legacy.”

“You swear you have a cure.”

Cutter kept his palm up, staring him in the eye. “I do, and I’ve tested it. It will work, but like I said, there may be limitations if you wait too long.”

“And if I cooperate, you’ll give me this cure, let me share it with the proper authorities.”

“I will. I have no desire to see your creation wreak such havoc. I want to stop it as much as you do.”

Kendall believed him. Despite his dark turn, Cutter remained an environmentalist. He would not want to see the world die. Still . . .

“Then why did you sabotage my lab?” Kendall asked, some of the heat reentering his voice. “Why kill everyone, and let that virus loose?”

Cutter stared at him as though the answer was self-evident.

Kendall suddenly understood and quailed at the sheer audacity of this man. “You did all of that as simple leverage, didn’t you? To get me to reveal what I know.”

“See, my dear friend,” Cutter said, turning away. “You’re already thinking outside the box. Now let’s get to work.”

But after taking a couple of steps, a cell phone rang from a pocket of Cutter’s safari vest. He plucked it out, spoke briefly in what must be the Macuxi language. The only sign of Cutter’s consternation was a single crease that formed in his perfect forehead.

Once finished, he sighed. “Seems like there is another problem, something that’s followed you down here from California. Somebody has been making inquiries where they shouldn’t be.”

Kendall felt a flicker of hope, but it died as Cutter shook his head, clearly pushing this new worry behind him.

“No matter. It’s a simple matter to quash.”

8:07
A
.
M
.

“The fool can’t be serious,” Painter said on the phone.

He paced outside a café near the central district of Boa Vista. The others were inside getting coffee and breakfast. He had already called Kat to gather as much intelligence as she could about Dark Eden’s former founder, a dead man named Cutter Elwes. While he waited for her to call back, he placed a call to the Mountain Warfare Training Center to get an update.

“It’s gotten bad here,” Lisa said. “Last night’s storm washed contamination well past many of the barriers. We’ve got pockets blooming miles away from the original site, connected by tendrils of die-offs along the drainage routes we weren’t able to successfully block.”

Painter pictured a cancerous black inkblot seeping in all directions across those mountains.

“They’ve pulled the quarantine zone back another twenty-five miles in all directions. Yosemite has been emptied out. It’s only a little after five in the morning here, but at daybreak a more thorough search will commence. Depending on what they find, a decision will have to be made. To make matters worse, more inclement weather is expected to hit over the next three days. Storm after storm.”

Painter had hoped for some break, but that didn’t appear to be the case. Mother Nature seemed determined to confound his efforts.

Lisa continued. “Fearing that this contagion could get a wider and deeper foothold in California, Lindahl has placed the nuclear option on the table. It’s seriously being considered.”

Painter suddenly regretted coming here.

I should’ve known Lindahl would try something stupid like that
.

“How
seriously
is this option being considered?”

“Very. Lindahl already has the support of the team that’s been looking for a way to kill the organism. Their consensus is that the firestorm and radiation from a medium-yield blast could be the best hope. Models are being worked up, and worst-case scenarios are being calculated.”

“What do you think?”

There was a long hesitation before she responded. “Painter, I don’t know. In some ways, Lindahl is right. Something has to be done, or we’ll reach a critical mass out here and we lose everything. If the blast could be controlled to limit the fallout, it might be worth risking it. If nothing else, such a drastic measure could at least knock this agent back on its heels, buy us more time to come up with a new strategy.”

Painter still could not believe such an option was their only viable recourse.

“Or maybe I’m just tired,” Lisa added. “Not thinking straight. Josh has continued to decline. The doctors put him into a medically induced coma in an attempt to control his seizures. And Nikko isn’t doing much better. Like I said,
something
has to be done.”

Painter ached to reach through the phone and hold her, reassure her. Instead, he had to put more pressure on her. “Lisa, you have to buy us more time. Keep Lindahl reined in. At least for another twenty-four hours.”

“If we have that long . . .”

“We’ll find something,” Painter promised, but his words didn’t come out as convincingly as he had hoped. “If not our team, then Gray’s.”

“Has Kat heard anything from the others?”

“No, not yet. But she says the solar storm is dying down, and satellite communications will hopefully resume later today. So let’s at least try to hold back that nuclear option until we regain contact with Gray.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Me, too
.

He said his good-byes and stepped back to the café door when a bullet clipped his arm and shattered the restaurant window.

He fell to a knee while more rounds strafed the front of the café. Glass exploded over him as he rolled for cover behind a trash bin.

He caught a brief glimpse of his team inside, ducking for cover—he also saw three men in black camouflage burst from the kitchen behind them, assault weapons blazing into the morning diners. Across the street, another trio of assailants came charging, rifles smoking.

Pinned down, Painter had time for only one thought, recognizing the direness of their situation.

Gray, you’d better be having more luck
.

19

April 30, 12:09
P
.
M
. GMT
Queen Maud Land, Antarctica

“Everybody get aboard the lift!” Harrington shouted, as he rushed to the gondola that hung from its tracks alongside the observation deck of the beseiged Hell’s Cape station. “Now!”

Gray had a hard time obeying, his gaze fixed to the dark netherworld beyond this glass-enclosed perch. Floodlights along the backside of the steel superstructure illuminated the immediate area below. But even those powerful xenon lamps failed to penetrate very far into that inky, cavernous blackness.

After fifty yards, the rock floor disappeared into a vast lake. The black surface bubbled and belched a yellowish steam, creating a toxic haze over the water. A higher shelf of wet stone hugged the lake’s right bank. Muddy tread tracks ran from the base of the superstructure out to that natural bridge.

Gray pictured those smaller CAATs parked in the hangar. He now understood the necessity for amphibious craft in the frozen arctic.

“Hurry!” Harrington barked.

The professor had opened the double set of doors that allowed access to the gondola and ducked through them. He crossed to a panel inside and hit a large red button. A siren ignited, blaring loudly, echoing from inside the steel superstructure and beyond.

Gray pushed Kowalski toward the waiting cage. “Go!”

Jason followed them with Stella.

Gray cringed at the noise as he climbed inside. As the doors closed, the din of the emergency klaxon died to a muffled ringing, proving how solidly insulated the gondola was.

“What’re you doing, Professor?” Gray asked. “What’s your plan?”

“To get somewhere safe.”

Harrington pulled a lever and the cage began moving. But the gondola didn’t head back through the superstructure toward the battle being waged in the hangar. Instead, it rode
forward
, out into that vast cavern.

Ducking a bit and craning his neck, Gray saw the black steel tracks continuing along the cavern roof, supported by trestles in places to create a relatively even run.

“Where are we going?” he asked as he straightened.

“To the Back Door.” Harrington waved ahead with one arm; his other hand remained on the long red lever. “It’s a substation about four miles out. It leads back to the surface, just beyond the Fenriskjeften crags.”

Gray pictured that line of jagged peaks near the coast.

“There’s a radio there,” Stella added. “And a garaged CAAT.”

“So we’re just going to run?” Kowalski asked.

“No.” The professor pointed to the red button he had struck. “I just sounded a general evacuation alarm. The British forces will hold off Dylan Wright’s commandos for as long as possible, but after thirty minutes, they know to run. To get clear of this area.”

“Why?” Gray asked.

“The entire backside of this station is packed full of bunker buster bombs, including an American-made thirty-thousand-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator. It will destroy the base and seal up the mouth of the cavern system, bottling up what’s down here.”

“When’s it set to blow?”

Harrington looked worried.

Stella answered, “It can only be deployed from the Back Door. Only my father has the blast code.”

Gray frowned.
So the British forces will flee out the front while we sneak out the back door, blowing everything behind us. What the hell required such a level of security?

Before he could ask, Gray felt a mother of all headaches flaring behind his eyes—but it wasn’t only him.

Kowalski clutched the sides of his head, groaning. “Motherfu—”

Jason leaned on his knees, looking ready to vomit.

Harrington spoke through a tight jaw. “We’ll be through the worst of it in another few seconds.”

Gray breathed deeply, close to losing his breakfast, too. Then slowly the pain subsided; his back molars stopped vibrating in his skull. He could now guess the source of the sudden agony.

“LRAD?” he asked.

Long Range Acoustic Device
.

Harrington nodded. “We have a series of sonic cannons pointed continually into the cavern at the edge of the station. As a buffer to keep everything as far back as possible. We’ve found a mix of ultrasonic and infrasonic frequencies to be an effective deterrent down here. Better than guns.”

Gray leaned a hand against the wall, steadying himself, glad the gondola was so well insulated. He could only imagine the raw intensity of that sonic deterrent outside.

Jason pointed between his feet to a glass hatch in the floor. Through the window, a chair could be seen below, bolted inside an enclosed undercarriage canopy. A weapon with a large conical dish was racked in front of the seat.

“That’s another LRAD cannon, isn’t it?” Jason asked.

Stella nodded. “You can also swap it out for a machine gun, if need be.”

“Once we’re beyond the buffer zone,” Harrington warned, “we may need both to protect the lift if we run into any serious trouble.”

Trouble from what?

Out the windows ahead of them, the world was pitch-black. Behind the gondola, the station’s lamp-lit bulkheads continued to recede into the darkness, reflected in the boiling lake. Then the tracks followed a bend in the cavernous tunnel and even that last light vanished.

Harrington stepped to a cabinet and opened a door. From hooks inside hung a row of heavy goggles—night-vision gear. “Put these on. I’m going to extinguish our cabin lights before we attract any attention. Then I’ll ignite our exterior infrared lamps.”

Gray tugged the gear over his eyes as Harrington doused the lights inside the gondola. His goggles picked up the small specks of light from diodes on the conveyor’s control panel, but beyond the windows, the world remained dark. In this sunless and moonless underworld, even night-vision was useless.

Then the professor kicked on the exterior lamps, and beams of infrared penetrated that endless darkness. Though the wavelength was invisible to the naked eye, the goggles turned those beams into the brightest spotlights—illuminating what the darkness had hidden a moment ago.