Sigma Force 10 - The Sixth Extinction

by James Rollins

  She reached the two men, noting her brother’s face had gone pale.

  She crouched and examined the tear in his suit and the sliver of branch pinned to his leg by an imbedded thorn.

  The bit of stem and leaf were both black.

  “Get duct tape!” Drake yelled to the other Marine; then to Lisa he said, “We can patch up his suit. It’s not a big rip.”

  Instead, Lisa reached her gloved fingers and tore the hole larger. She got a peek at Josh’s shin. The skin around the impaled black thorn had already gone a purplish red.

  “Really stings,” Josh said, wincing.

  Lisa turned to Drake. “We need rope. A belt. Something to make a tourniquet.”

  Drake ran off.

  “You’re going to be fine,” Lisa said, but even her words sounded rote and unconvincing. She stood with her kid brother, finding his hand and squeezing tightly.

  Behind his mask, Josh breathed hard, his eyes narrowed by pain. He looked a decade younger, the fear turning him into a boy looking to his older sister for help.

  Words echoed in her head.

  Kill us . . . kill us all.

  Drake came pounding back, dragging everyone but the driver with him. He had a length of climbing rope in his hands. She helped secure it around Josh’s thigh.

  “Make it as tight as you can,” she said.

  Jenna stood with her arms anxiously crossed, clearly recognizing the threat. “Will the tourniquet keep it from spreading?”

  Lisa didn’t answer, not wanting to lie.

  Once the rope was secure, dug deep into the muscles of Josh’s thigh, the Marines helped haul Josh back to the Hummer. As they lifted him into the bed, Lisa crossed to the equipment box and retrieved what she needed.

  Painter came on over the private line. “Lisa . . .”

  “It has to be done,” she whispered back.

  “At least wait until you get back here.”

  “We’ll lose too much time.”

  Drake gaped when she turned, seeing what she was carrying. She passed him the fire axe.

  “At the knee,” she said. “Take it off at the knee.”

  9

  April 28, 10:17 A.M. EDT

  Washington, D.C.

  “That’s him,” Gray said.

  He leaned on his fists atop the computer station in Sigma’s nerve center. He was alone with Kat, though Jason was in the neighboring room, visible through the window, working on the files they’d recovered from DARPA’s servers.

  Thank God I still had that flash drive with me.

  Concentrating on the monitor, Gray stared at the photo of the man on the screen: his chiseled features, his pinched nose, his cropped blond hair. He remembered that same face glowering at him from the end of the hallway back at DARPA’s headquarters.

  “You’re sure it’s him?” Kat asked.

  “Without a doubt. Who is he?”

  Hours ago, after returning to Sigma command from Arlington, Gray had been debriefed by Kat. She also had him sit down with a sketch artist, while another team had collected the bodies from the seventh floor hallway of DARPA. They found no identification on the dead, but fingerprints were taken. It hadn’t taken Kat long to determine they were all former British special forces soldiers, specifically SAS—22nd Special Air Service. Most likely they had become mercenaries for hire, some elite team that fetched a steep price.

  Kat pointed to the screen. “Their leader here is Major Dylan Wright.”

  “Let me guess. He’s also SAS.”

  “Close. He’s British special forces, but he was with the SBS.”

  Special Boat Service.

  Gray knew about that UK detachment. The unit was established in World War II to conduct raids on German targets, mostly in the Mediterranean, Aegean, and Adriatic seas. Now they were deployed worldwide as a counterterrorist group.

  “If I had to guess,” Kat said, “I’d say this group was made up of former members of the British X Squadron. That specialized unit formed in 2004, made up of volunteers from both SAS and SBS.”

  Same as the team that raided DARPA.

  “X Squadron is considered the best of the best,” Kat finished.

  “So who hired these ex-soldiers?” Gray asked.

  “Unknown, but I’ve got the word out across various intelligence services, along with some contacts in the shadowy guns-for-hire world. Hopefully we’ll have some answers in the next few hours.” Kat glanced his way, a sympathetic cast to her eyes. “In the meantime, if you want to attend to any personal matters, now should be a good time.”

  Gray sighed. He’d already had a nap and swung by his father’s house. The day nurse had been there, and they had talked at length about installing door alarms and other security measures to help keep his father safe at night. But even she had admitted it was a stopgap plan at best, and that he and Kenny needed to think about taking that next step, which meant moving their father out of his home—if not into a memory care unit, at least into an assisted living facility.

  “I think I’ll go hit the gym instead,” he said, needing to clear his head. “Work off some steam.”

  Kat stared at him a second longer, then slowly nodded. “I think Monk is down there now.”

  Knuckles rapped on glass behind them, drawing their attention around. Jason waved for Kat to join him. Curious, Gray followed her into the neighboring office.

  Kat crossed behind the desk to join Jason. “Are you making any headway with those files?”

  “Some. But I wish I had been able to recover more than this single folder of information about the base. It’s like trying to get a complete picture of a room by peeking through a keyhole. If only I’d had more time to back up additional files . . .”

  Kat touched him on the shoulder. “The first thing you have to accept in the intelligence business is that you never have the complete picture. You learn to deal with the facts at hand and do your best to infer from there.”

  Jason frowned, still plainly unsatisfied. From the shadowy bags under his eyes and the Rockstar energy drink by his elbow, it looked like the kid hadn’t slept at all.

  “I did put in a call to the British Antarctic Survey,” Jason added, “to try to reach Professor Harrington, that paleobiologist who was in regular contact with Dr. Hess. He may be able to fill in a lot of the blanks in our investigation.”

  “Hopefully so,” Kat said. “But why did you call us in here? Did you find something?”

  “Maybe, but I wanted to run it past you. After so many hours buried in these files, I may be too close. I need fresh eyes.”

  “No worries. I’ve been there many times myself. Go ahead and use us as a sounding board.”

  Gray was struck by how gentle Kat was with the young man. It was a sharp contrast to her usual steely-eyed manner and no-nonsense sensibility. When he’d first met Kat, he felt like he always had to stand a little taller, his back a little straighter. She had that effect on people. Maybe it was the result of raising two girls, but here was a different side to her. While it was a far cry from warm and cuddly, she was clearly a good mentor.

  Jason straightened in his seat, his manner more confident. “Okay, but you’ll have to bear with me, as I’ve been neck-deep in what various British military and research teams were doing in Antarctica.”

  Kat glanced over to Gray, her meaning clear. British military again. Same as the team who had raided DARPA. Could there be a connection?

  “Go on,” Kat encouraged Jason.

  “Before I get to the history, let’s start with more current events. Back in 1961, the international Antarctic Treaty came into force, basically declaring that the continent was off-limits to territorial claims, that it was to be used for peaceful purposes only. Since then, a multitude of bases have been established across the breadth of Antarctica. Some are purely research outposts, but a majority—despite the treaty—are indeed joint military/research bases.”

  Similar to the one in California, Gray realized.

  “But p
rior to that treaty, an ongoing turf war was waged on that continent by international communities. Everyone wanted to claim a piece of that frozen pie. This fighting came to a head during World War II, due to the use of the Southern Ocean as a haven for Nazi U-boats. But even prior to the war, Germany was very aggressive in attempting to stake a claim. In 1938, they established the Deutsche Antarktische Expedition to explore the continent and set up a base.”

  Jason tapped the keyboard and brought up an emblem of the German team.

  “The official reason for this expedition was to look for a site to establish a whaling station, but most believed they were actually scouting locations for a German naval base. Oddly enough they even hired the famous American polar explorer, Richard E. Byrd, to lecture the group before they departed from Hamburg. Which is important.”

  “Why’s that?” Gray asked.

  “The Nazis eventually carved a territorial claim out of a section of Antarctica called Queen Maud Land, which was considered Norwegian territory at the time. The Germans named the new place Neuschwabenland. Apparently this stoked the Americans to lead their own expedition, one led by the same Richard Byrd. There was much mystery surrounding this U.S. expedition. Byrd had commissioned the construction of a massive snow cruiser, a fifty-five-foot monstrosity capable of climbing polar mountains or forging giant crevasses. The top deck could even hold a small exploratory plane. Here’s a picture of it landing in Antarctica.”

  He clicked an icon to bring an image of the vehicle on the screen.

  “An impressive beast,” Gray admitted.

  “It was built to carry enough equipment and supplies to last an exploration team a full year, to operate with total independence, making it basically a mobile base.”

  “What was its purpose?”

  “Ah, now that’s when it gets interesting. While there was much publicity about the construction and transportation of this beast, once that cruiser reached Antarctica, everything went silent. Not only were Byrd’s orders for this expedition secret, but the very existence of those orders had been classified. Only years afterward did Byrd admit that the snow cruiser had explored nine hundred miles of unknown coastline, what he called the Phantom Coast. And that fifty-nine men had been left behind to carry on that exploration.”

  “What were they looking for?” Kat asked.

  Jason shrugged. “There are a lot of theories, some mundane, others pretty far out there. But Professor Harrington had copious notes and collated historical documents from that time. He believes the Germans discovered something incredible, something buried under the ice.”

  “What?” Gray scoffed. “Like a UFO?”

  “No, but you’re not as far off as you might think. Some old accounts support that the Germans had found a vast underground cavern system of warm lakes, vast crevasses, and tunnels.”

  Gray must have let his skepticism show.

  Jason glanced at Kat, who nodded as if allowing him to speak freely. “There’s some precedent for it,” he said, stammering a bit as if he had some personal knowledge of such matters.

  Gray wanted to know more, but Kat waved Jason to continue.

  He cleared his throat. “Actually recent geological surveys make the German claims seem less wild. Studies done over the past few years have revealed surprising anomalies deep under the ice. From ancient lakes and flowing rivers—both of which might be full of life—to trenches that dwarf the Grand Canyon. Even buried volcanoes have been discovered, some with lava flows melting a slow path miles beneath the ice.”

  Gray tried to picture such a strange landscape.

  “Either way,” Jason continued, “the belief in the existence of a Nazi base grew to national attention. Here’s an article published in the New York Times in 1945.”

  Gray leaned over his shoulder and read the headline. “Antarctic Haven Reported.”

  Kat made a small sigh of impatience. “Yes, but what does this have to do with Dr. Hess or the British Antarctic Survey?”

  “Everything. Professor Harrington put great stock in these prior expeditions. You see the Brits were actually some of the most active explorers in Antarctica. They were the first to establish a base there, they named most of the major landmarks, and in the ten years after the war, they led a dozen expeditions across the continent, most of them conducted by an organization called the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey.” Jason looked up at them. “The group changed their name in 1962 to the British Antarctic Survey.”

  “So it’s been the same group operating down there for decades,” Kat said, her expression turning thoughtful, weighing this information. “But why did they conduct so many expeditions, especially after World War II?”

  “You have to understand that at the end of the war, most of the major players in Nazi Germany ended up in British hands. Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler, and most important of all, the head of the German navy, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz. The Brits had unfettered access to interrogate these leaders and their confederates, well before we or the Soviets did.”

  Gray understood the significance in regard to their discussion. “And as navy commander, Dönitz would certainly have intimate knowledge of the U-boat activity around that southernmost continent.”

  “He did, including knowing the location of the Neuschwabenland base and what the Germans discovered on that continent. Apparently it was something incredible. Here’s a quote from Admiral Dönitz during the Nuremberg Trials, where he boasted about Nazi discoveries in Antarctica. He says they found an invulnerable fortress, a paradise-like oasis in the middle of eternal ice.”

  Jason let that fact sink in before continuing. “And what’s even more unusual is that this admiral, one so high up the Nazi chain of command, ended up serving only ten years in Spandau Prison in Berlin. So while others were put to death, the Nazi fleet commander escaped with barely a slap on the hand. Why is that, do you suppose?”

  “Let me guess,” Gray said. “He made some sort of deal. A lighter prison sentence in exchange for information.”

  Jason nodded. “That’s what Professor Harrington claims in his exchanges with Dr. Hess.”

  “And this British group has been searching for this lost cavern system for decades?” Kat said. “Why is it so important?”

  Jason took in a sharp breath. “That’s all there is about it in the history files, but Professor Harrington’s private notes hint at some secret papers—maybe a map—something once in the possession of Darwin.”

  Gray couldn’t hold back his shock. “As in Charles Darwin.”

  “That’s right.”

  Gray pointed to the file name at the top of the computer screen.

  D.A.R.W.I.N.

  “Is that why the folder we copied from DARPA’s servers is titled like that?” he asked.

  “Maybe, but it’s also apparently the acronym for the main philosophy shared by Harrington and Hess. They discuss it in several of their e-mails. It stands for Develop and Revolutionize Without Injuring Nature. The two researchers were united in an effort to seek a way to halt the current great extinction that’s sweeping the globe.”

  The sixth extinction.

  Gray remembered Dr. Raffee’s description of Hess’s mission: to try to engineer a way out of this mass extinction.

  “But what does this past history have to do with Hess’s current synthetic biology project?” Kat asked.

  “I don’t know, but I believe it all came to a head in 1999.”

  “Why then?”

  “Both scientists kept referencing a discovery made in October of that year, describing it as a breakthrough in both their pursuits. Harrington described it more ostentatiously, as the key to opening Hell’s gate.”

  Gray didn’t like the sound of that.

  “They were both very cagey when writing about it. But they did reveal what that key was.” Jason faced them. “It’s why I called you in here. I thought it might be important in regard to what’s happening in California.”

  “What was it?” Gray press
ed.

  “I confirmed this with independent sources. This particular detail is definitely true. Back in 1999, a group of researchers discovered a virus in Antarctica—one to which no animals or humans were immune. What’s even odder is that this microbe was found far out on the desolate ice fields, where nothing else lived. Some of the scientists from that time speculated the virus could have been some form of prehistoric life that thawed out of the ice . . . or maybe it was part of an old biological weapons program. Either way, the discovery excited both Harrington and Hess.”

  Gray understood why this detail had provoked Jason. Considering what was happening in California, it could be significant.

  Before they could discuss it further, the phone on Kat’s desk rang. She picked it up. Gray hoped it was further news from California. He checked his watch; the expedition team should be on their way back out of the hot zone—hopefully with some answers.

  Kat glanced to Gray. “I’m being connected to Professor Harrington.”

  He straightened. Maybe this was even better.

  Kat put the call on speaker.

  “Hello, hello.” The connection was faint, cutting in and out. “This is Alex Harrington, can you hear me?”

  “We can, Professor. You’re speaking with—”

  “I know,” he said, cutting her off. “You’re with Sigma.”

  Kat glared at Jason.

  He mouthed, “I didn’t say a word.”

  “I was good friends with Sean McKnight,” Harrington explained.

  Gray and Kat gave each other startled looks. Sean McKnight had founded Sigma Force. In fact, he had recruited Painter into the fold over a decade ago, and eventually the man gave his life in the line of duty, dying within these very walls.

  “Sir,” Kat said, “we’ve been trying to reach you. I don’t know if you heard about the accident at Dr. Hess’s lab in California.”

  There was a long pause, long enough that Gray worried the connection had been lost.

  Then Harrington spoke again. He sounded panicked and angry. “That fool. I warned him.”