“So you prefer to think of it all as bad luck? Calder, that isn’t very—”
“Allie, enough, please. Thanks for answering my questions and being so honest. To be continued, okay?”
As they turned northward toward the Arctic Circle for their final task Calder marveled at how well Hero was performing. After her disastrous public debut last weekend it was a wonder she hadn’t malfunctioned, not even a little bit.
Maybe my luck is changing.
Or maybe there is a God after all.
He ruminated on the spiritual disinheritance he’d suffered since saying good-bye to Mother Yolanda and the sisters so many years ago. His thoughts led to a disturbing image of the yawning chasm clearly separating him from this woman he was beginning to love.
Little Mother, please pray for me.
There it was again, that inexplicable impulse!
He couldn’t stop himself.
Little Mother, please pray for m—for us.
FRIDAY, APRIL 28 (12:30 A.M. PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME)
POINT LOMA PENINSULA; SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
He paused to catch his breath. “Atta boy!” he said to himself.
Jared was standing on the outskirts of the Navy’s sprawling Point Loma military complex. He took out his cell phone. According to its GPS and the map of the base from the Navy’s website, he’d broken through the southern boundary and was within eyeshot of the Submarine Learning Center.
Fighting off gory images of Maggie’s bloodied body lying twisted on the rocks, he looked back over his shoulder at the brooding darkness that was the nature reserve he’d just traversed.
Get a grip!
It’s all about the revolution now.
It’s gotta happen.
Turning to face the base again, he peered hard in the direction of the learning center. At this late hour it looked deserted.
Perfect!
CHAPTER 21
SHEER MADNESS
FRIDAY, APRIL 28 (6:48 A.M. WESTERN GREENLAND SUMMER TIME)
NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN; GREENLAND
Hero was fast approaching the southern tip of Greenland, the halfway point of their journey to the Arctic. The cabin resounded with Eva’s staticky voice hailing them.
“Sí, chica,” Allie replied instantly, “you’re on speaker. What’s up? What’ve you got for me?”
“Nothing new about your sister, sorry. I’m calling because we’ve been trying to get through to the ice station in Alert. It’s the only inhabited place close to the stranding site; but no one’s answering our calls. The Space Weather Prediction Center is reporting a major magnetic storm all over the Arctic. Stu’s worried—we all are—about what you guys might be getting into.”
“Are you saying we should turn back?”
A hissing, crackling silence followed. Then Eva’s voice resumed. “Calder, what do you think? Is Hero equipped to handle a magnetic storm?”
“Well—it’s a good question.”
Allie wasn’t reassured by Calder’s equivocation.
She was certain he knew magnetic storms produced aurorae in the thermosphere, sixty miles above the surface and higher, which posed no physical threat to Hero. But the ship’s delicate electronics systems were another thing entirely.
“Calder,” she said, “what about Hero’s collision avoidance system?”
She didn’t want to face another situation like what happened in San Diego last weekend, when a failure of the collision avoidance system almost got them killed.
“If I hadn’t installed the new chip,” Calder answered, “I’d say there would be something to worry about. But now she’s got backups to her backups—I’d say we’re good to go.”
FRIDAY, APRIL 28 (7:46 A.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME)
DAVIS STRAIT; NORTHWEST TERRITORIES, CANADA
Allie, listening to Eva on the IFB, kept looking up. Multiple aurorae were painting the heavily overcast sky in an unnatural, menacing way.
“Ten seconds!” Eva said. “I just hope he knows what he’s doing.”
Allie was thinking the same thing but chose not to admit it. “Of course he does. Have a little faith, chica.”
“Yeah, right. Three . . . two . . . one. You’re on, girlfriend.”
Allie greeted viewers with far more brightness than she was feeling. “Dr. Sinclair tells me we’re less than thirty minutes from our destination—the northernmost beachhead of Ellesmere Island. Right now we’re cruising through Davis Strait toward Baffin Bay at roughly 500 knots. Greenland is on our right while the Northwest Territories are on our left. What you probably can’t see—hold on.”
She yanked a lipstick camera from the bulkhead and aimed it skyward. “The Arctic is being hit by a magnetic storm and as you can see it’s creating all kinds of aurorae. Usually you see these only at night. Seeing them in broad daylight is a rare treat.”
She halted, realizing she’d almost said, “rare threat.”
FRIDAY, APRIL 28 (8:09 A.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME)
BAFFIN BAY; ELLESMERE ISLAND, CANADA
Hero’s deep-throated horn yanked Calder’s attention away from the ugly-looking sky.
“Isn’t that the collision alarm?” Allie cried out.
“Hold on, Allie!”
For the next few moments he wrestled with a situation he didn’t entirely understand. Then he spotted the problem and instantly activated the emergency brake.
“Allie!” His heart was banging against his rib cage. “Hang on!”
She screamed.
Hero shuddered to a halt.
He blinked hard at the phantasmagoric sight. All around them the surface of Baffin Bay was being ripped to shreds by the manic struggles of hundreds upon hundreds of whales, climbing over one another to gain the nearby beach.
Good god!
An instant later his eyes swept skyward. Something about the hideous-looking colored lights was changing. Seconds later he realized what it was: the aurorae were dissipating.
He swiped at his eyes to make certain he wasn’t hallucinating.
This just keeps getting weirder and weirder.
“Are you seeing this?” Allie said.
He dipped his head apprehensively. “Oh, yeah.” Then his gaze lowered.
The churning tangle of whales was unraveling, the surface of the water settling down. Moments later, with the complete departure of the aurorae, the maniacal behavior stopped altogether and the animals began to disperse, like football fans after a game.
At length the coastal waters were calm and clear enough for him to reignite Hero’s Q-thruster. He decided it was time for a pit stop. Time to figure out what the devil was going on and what their next move should be.
“I’m going in for a surf landing,” he said. “You up for some fresh air?”
FRIDAY, APRIL 28 (3:11 P.M. ISRAEL DAYLIGHT TIME)
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL
Lorena, sporting a contented smile, crossed the street onto Mordehai A’liash. The weather was skin-temperature warm with a slight breeze—yet another perfect blessing from God, she exulted.
The previous evening, when the ER doctor peppered her with questions—designed, she knew, to figure out if she posed a danger to herself or others—she felt the Holy Spirit’s help in answering them perfectly. Then after her departure from the hospital, the Lord guided her to a small, clean hotel well away from the King David, where she was able to get a delicious, undisturbed night’s sleep.
Now, her pulse quickened. After hours of walking across town she was within eyeshot of her first destination: a warehouse on the outskirts of northern Jerusalem. As she neared the main entrance, she read with great excitement the large, hand-lettered sign: Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement.
For the past year she’d been sending in donations to support the movement’s goal of taking back the Temple Mount from the Arabs and building on it the long-prophesied Third Temple. According to the conventional interpretation of Scripture, reconstructing the Temple was a prerequisite for Jesus
’s second coming. She herself believed Jesus’s return would precede the new Temple, but either way she was all for what the movement was doing.
Stepping through the entrance, she saw several brawny men with ropes and wenches struggling to load a massive marble block draped with an Israeli flag onto a flatbed truck. No doubt it was what she’d read about on the movement’s website: one of the five-ton cornerstones hewn from a local quarry and destined for the rebuilding of the Temple.
During the week to come, on Yom Yerushalayim—the annual national holiday commemorating Israel’s capture of Old Jerusalem during the Six Day War—the movement’s supporters would march from Ammunition Hill to the sacred Mount, where they’d attempt to lay the cornerstones. Each year since 1989 they were prevented from doing so because Jerusalem police feared violence from Muslims, whose own religious shrines currently occupied the Mount. But Lorena was praying this year would be different.
A bespectacled, elderly man supervising the effort looked in her direction. “Mrs. O’Malley, is that you? Oh, my goodness, shalom! Shalom!”
Asher Hershkovitz, head of the Temple Movement, looked exactly as he did in online photos: a rangy Alan Dershowitz whose curly, grey hair was topped with a black embroidered kippah. She’d phoned him earlier, telling him of her visit and describing her appearance.
He rushed to her with widespread arms. “Welcome! Welcome!”
“Asher, my brother. How wonderful to finally meet you!” She embraced his tough, slender body and kissed both sides of his taut, grizzled face.
“My feelings exactly. You’ve been so generous to our cause and now I get to thank you in person.” He looked around. “And Dr. O’Malley? Is he here too?”
She brushed back some stray hairs. “No, I’m afraid he’s too busy. Always working, you know. But he sends his greetings.”
“Come, let me show you the cornerstones! We have three of them now, thanks be to God—and to loyal friends like yourself.”
A moment later they came alongside two massive stones sitting on the ground—the third stone already on the truck. Each marble block, she knew, was anointed by orthodox rabbis.
“May I touch?”
“Of course, of course.”
Feeling great reverence, she ran her fingers gently across the roughhewn surface.
“As you know, we’re getting ready for next week’s march,” Asher said. “This year, I just feel it. This year, nearly two thousand years after the destruction of the Second Temple, the prophecies of Isaiah and Micah finally will be realized and the way cleared for the Messiah.” He took her hand and kissed it. “You being here is a good sign.”
She did not challenge Asher’s belief in the conventional order of events—Temple, then Messiah. It was not the right time, nor would it be appropriate. She believed deeply in Asher’s cause, admired him as a man. He was a war hero who witnessed Israeli soldiers reclaiming the Holy Land in 1967; who felt betrayed, like many others, when then Defense Minister Moshe Dayan immediately returned religious control of the thirty-five-acre Temple Mount to Jordan and endorsed Muslim laws preventing Jews from even praying there.
“Where are you staying?” Asher asked. But before she could answer he waved his hands. “Never mind, never mind, it doesn’t matter. You must stay with Myra and me. She would be devastated if you didn’t.”
CHAPTER 22
MAGNETIC THERAPY
FRIDAY, APRIL 28 (8:15 A.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME)
NUNAVUT, CANADA
As she and Calder climbed out of Hero, Allie looked up and down the deserted beach. “It’s so strange.”
“What?”
“The whales. One minute they’re careening for the beach, next minute—poof!—they’re all gone. It’s weird.”
Calder was hammering a metal stake into the gravelly beach, to which he would tie Hero’s mooring rope. “That’s what I wanted to talk about before planning our next move. The whole thing’s got me stumped.”
She stared out at the steel-colored water. “And it’s not the first time, if you think about it.”
“What do you mean? I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
“It’s the first time we’ve seen it with our own eyes, yes. But think back to what happened in Darwin and Cádiz. The strandings stopped spontaneously while we were there—we didn’t have to do any wrangling. In fact the only time we’ve had to was in San Diego, when we started out.” She looked at him. “Don’t you think that’s odd?”
Both remained silent—Calder securing Hero, she staring out at the gray horizon.
The air was calm but frigid. She hugged herself and stomped her feet; they weren’t properly dressed for arctic temperatures. She scanned the shoreline once again for the slightest clue. Her mind began to wander.
Dallan’s up here in the Arctic somewhere. Or was.
Does he know about Lolo?
Does he care?
How do people stand living in this kind of isolation?
It’s beautiful, but . . .
“After rats, humans are the most adaptable creatures on the planet,” she said finally. “Did you know that?”
Calder chuckled. “That’s so totally random.” Then he added, “How do you know all this stuff?”
“It’s my job.”
“Speaking of adaptability, I remember hearing about the rats in Chernobyl. They’re supposedly bigger and fatter now than before the reactor accident. They love the radiation. It’s incredible.”
“It’s true—I’ve reported on it.” She kicked at some loose, gray rocks. “So what do you wanna do?”
Part of her wanted to beat it back to San Diego; the G-20 leaders would be arriving tomorrow. But during the past several days her body had taken a major beating from the long hours of confinement, fitful rest, and severe jet lag—not to mention the unending updates she needed to broadcast. She bridled at the thought of climbing back into Hero right away and toughing it out another thirteen hours with maybe only one pit stop.
Besides, this bizarre mission, which was getting stranger by the minute, had become an even bigger story than the G-20. According to Eva the ratings worldwide were through the roof and still climbing.
“The ice station Eva told us about is not far from here,” she said, making up her mind. “About a half-hour walk. I wouldn’t mind stretching my legs and getting to someplace warm.”
Calder readily agreed and they set off.
The stony ground was covered with snowy patches. Twenty minutes into the hike it began turning icy, which made for treacherous footing.
“What the—?!” she said, stopping and pointing. “Calder, look at that!”
Just ahead of them was an icy field strewn with what appeared to be singed corpses of some sort.
“They look like foxes—wolves—birds too—what’s left of them. Ugh!”
Calder had kept walking and was closer to the ghastly scene. “Good god, what could’ve caused this?” he called out. “It’s like the place was torched.”
She caught up with him. “Look there!” She was gesturing to the tops of buildings in the far distance. “I don’t know about you, but I’m running the rest of the way. This place gives me the creeps.”
Less than ten minutes later they arrived, short of breath, at a boxy gold and red structure; it might’ve been an oversized outhouse. Stepping inside, they were greeted with looks of astonishment from the three people inside.
“Hello!” exclaimed a young man in military uniform, dropping what he was doing. “Who are you? Where in the world did you come from?”
After they explained things, trying to catch their breaths in the process, the man visibly relaxed, although not entirely. She wondered what his first impression of them must have been. Spies? Terrorists? After all, per Eva, this place was a military watchdog installation.
The young officer offered them a hot beverage—a polite way, she thought, of making certain they stayed put. “I need to get Major Brody,” he said anxiously, making a quick exit.<
br />
When the major arrived and was fully briefed he shook his head in wonderment. “We’ve been out of touch with the world for the better part of the week, so you can understand how surprised we are to see you. It’s surreal, actually.”
“We totally understand,” she said. “We didn’t mean to scare you.”
“No, no, please.” The major’s countenance turned serious. “But tell me: you must’ve seen what just happened, eh?”
She jumped on the question. “Yes, we were going to ask about that. What happened to all those animals out there? It’s like they were incinerated.”
“That isn’t what I meant. I was talking about the sudden disappearance of the magnetic storm.”
“The aurora?” Calder said. “Oh, yeah, we saw it all right. We were out on the water and all of a sudden the skies cleared.”
“And the whales, too,” she said. “One minute they’re all over each other trying to beach themselves and then the next moment”—she snapped her fingers—“they’re heading back out to sea. It’s like someone flipped a switch or blew a whistle or something.”
“That’s how it was here as well—with the magnetic field, I mean,” Brody said. “It started last Friday. The magnetic field above the Arctic began fluttering then actually disappearing, bit by bit. We have no idea why. Yesterday it vanished completely, left a magnetic hole a thousand miles across. But now, suddenly, the polar field is back to normal. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”
Allie was feeling positively warm. “You had a hole in the magnetic field?”
The major nodded. “A huge one and now, nothing.”
Her mind was busy connecting the dots. “So that explains the daytime aurorae. The amount of radiation flooding through the hole must’ve been huge to create that much light. But the stranding.” Then it struck her. “Wait a minute. Was it caused . . . ?”
“Yes,” Brody said. “We think the magnetic disruption is behind the stranding. A visiting biologist here was the first to explain it to us. Whales depend on the magnetic field to navigate; they use it like we use a magnetic compass.”
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