by David Wood
Just a few steps into the passage, the perfect symmetry was marred by a wall of loose dirt and rock that could only be the result of a catastrophic cave-in. A second entrance to the cavern did exist, just a Jade had known it would, but it would do them no good. The way out was completely blocked.
SEVEN
Hodges admired the precision with which the soldiers of the Mexican Army deployed across the Teotihuacan archaeological preserve, establishing a secure perimeter. Because it was after hours—nearly midnight in fact—there were no tourists to evacuate, only a small staff of guards and caretakers who had been quickly escorted away. None of the soldiers had ventured near the Pyramid of the Sun or made any effort to establish contact with him. He wondered if any of them had the faintest idea what was going on at the center of the ancient city, or more precisely, under it. They had arrived swiftly, seemingly within minutes of his decision to make the call and take pre-emptive action, just as the protocols demanded.
When he had joined the cause, just a few short weeks before, he had secretly wondered if those protocols were not overly alarmist in nature. An Alpha level event seemed about as likely as an alien invasion or a zombie apocalypse. Even when Chapman had warned him that Jade Ihara had a way of finding “weird stuff,” even when he had secretly wired an improvised explosive device into Shelob’s thorax, he had not believed things could escalate so quickly, or that he would be at the center of the storm.
He would never have believed that he would have to make a decision that would result in the deaths of five people.
He had joined the cause to save lives, not take them.
The sound of another helicopter approaching snapped him out of his dark mood. He watched from the shelter of the passage entrance as it passed over the outer cordon and settled to the ground nearby, so close that he had to blink away the grit stirred up by its rotor wash. He saw that it was a civilian bird, not one of the UH-60s used by the Mexican troops. He took a moment to compose himself, and then headed out to meet it.
Hodges didn’t recognize the face of the man who stepped down from helicopter, but he knew his name—Andres Gutierrez, oil billionaire and the second wealthiest man in Mexico—and he knew, in a general sense who the man was. All senior leadership of the cause might have been cast from the same mold; intelligent, driven, richer than God, and a control freak. Gutierrez’s very presence was evidence that he did not believe in delegating authority.
“Hodges?” the man shouted from beneath the still turning rotors.
“Yes, sir.” He broke into a jog, and reached the man a few seconds later.
Gutierrez was tall and lean, and to Hodges’ surprise, looked about as Mexican as Brad Pitt. In fact, Hodges thought, he looked a lot like Brad Pitt—blond hair, blue eyes and the best rugged movie star good looks money could buy. He did not offer his hand, but looked past Hodges at the massive pyramid behind him. “Piramide del Sol is a symbol of my country,” he said, gesturing expansively. His English was as perfect as his appearance, with only his accent betraying which country he was referring to. “This had better not be a false alarm.”
“Yes, sir. I mean no, sir, it’s not.”
Gutierrez finally looked at him. “An Alpha event? You’re sure?”
Hodges briefly recounted what he knew of the discovery, realizing that all he really knew about the mysterious floating spheres was what Chapman and Jade Ihara had reported back to him. What if he had overreacted?
Gutierrez however just nodded. “You made the right decision.” He turned and waved to someone in the helicopter. A man wearing combat fatigues with three stars on his epaulets and carrying an olive drab duffel bag, got out and moved to join them.
“What’s that?” asked Hodges, eyeing the officer’s pack.
“I believe it is called a thermobaric device,” Gutierrez said. “It is a very powerful explosive device.”
Hodges knew exactly what a thermobaric device—sometimes also called a fuel-air bomb—was, and what it would do when it was detonated. The device functioned in two stages, the first blast scattered a cloud of fuel, usually some kind of reactive metal, into the air where it quickly mixed with oxygen to become extremely volatile. The fuel mixture permeated the target area; there was no defense against it, nowhere to take shelter. A second detonation would ignite it in a massive explosion that could collapse a hardened bunker, and set the very air on fire. Anyone surviving the blast would quickly suffocate, and if they survived that, the resulting vacuum created at the center of the blast could literally suck a person’s lung out through their mouth.
“If you use that down there, it could very well destroy the pyramid.”
Gutierrez gave him a cold stare. “I think now you understand just how serious we are about this. We must ensure that no trace of this discovery remains, and that there be no one left to tell the world about it.”
Hodges felt a surge of panic shoot through him. Had he overreacted?
Then he thought about Norfolk, and everything that he had lost, and knew that Gutierrez was right. He had made the right call.
Despite Jade’s insistence that even a blocked exit was better than nothing at all, and that the only way to win their freedom was to start digging, the mood quickly devolved.
In reality, it was mostly Acosta, trumpeting a litany of pessimism. Was it even possible to move so much earth? What if there was another cave-in right behind it and another? What it the entire passage back to the surface had collapsed? But his defeatism was spreading to the others. Sanchez was the first to succumb; Jade noticed that instead of actually moving dirt and rocks out of the way, the normally effusive scholar seemed to be pushing his burden around, like a child trying to conceal the fact that he wasn’t eating his vegetables by scattering them across a plate. Dorion, too started flagging after just twenty minutes of work.
The atmosphere of negativity just made Jade angry, which was almost as counterproductive. She kept her emotions at bay only by contemplating how she would gloat when she led them all to freedom. Only Professor seemed immune to the pervasive attitude of failure, working at the top of the earthen mound, using his knife to loosen the packed soil. Jade suspected his relentless industriousness was his own way of coping with Hodges’ evident treachery, but there was nothing to be gained by pointing that out.
Professor made a triumphant sound. “Just broke through.”
Jade climbed up behind him and peered into the small cavity he had created. He continued hacking with the knife, pushing the loose dirt forward into the hole where it disappeared. She was just turning back to let the others know when she heard Acosta cry out.
“They’ve come to rescue us!”
The administrator was pointing into the darkness behind them, except it was no longer dark. A light was shining in the distance, reflecting Jade assumed, from the polished golden sphere in the center of the cavern. Acosta immediately started running toward it, waving his arms and shouting. Sanchez took a few tentative steps after him.
Jade slid down to the bottom of the rock pile. “Dr. Acosta, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea…”
Professor was right beside her. “Come back here, you fool. They tried to kill us. No one is coming to rescue us.”
His words stopped Sanchez, but Acosta was beyond the reach of his voice, figuratively if not also literally.
Jade turned to him. “You think Hodges is coming to finish what he started?”
“I don’t think we can afford to take the chance that he isn’t.” He scrambled back up to the top of the cave in and peered into the hole he had made. “I think it’s big enough to get through. Come on.”
Jade turned to the two men still waiting below. “Paul, Noe. Let’s go.”
“But Dr. Acosta…?”
Jade felt a pang at abandoning the administrator to an uncertain fate, but she knew that nothing she could say would dissuade Acosta. She found herself wishing that the Earth stone—or whatever strange phenomenon had been at work—had shown her this out
come. What if the light was from a rescue party?
“Jade!”
Professor’s shout snapped her out her reverie. She knew that Professor, with his quaint ideas about chivalry, would not go through until she was safely on the other side, so she climbed up, plunged head and shoulders into the narrow gap and started crawling.
It was a tight fit, so tight that she wondered how the larger men would get through, but after scooting just a few feet, she felt the dirt move beneath her, and then she was sliding down a steep slope.
The air beyond was stale and smelled of dampness and decay. Her headlamp revealed only a little of what lay beyond, but it was enough for her to see that the tunnel, unlike the vast cavern, had not been sealed off from the outside world.
There was a scrabbling noise behind her and she turned to see Dorion struggling to get through the opening. She reached up, caught one flailing hand, and pulled.
Dorion shot forward like a cork from a champagne bottle and they tumbled down the slope together, landing in a tangle at the bottom. She was back up in an instant, ready to help the others through, but no one came. She could hear Professor shouting to Sanchez, urging him to move. She ascended to the opening once more and peered through, adding her own voice to the effort.
There was a bright flash at the center of the cavern.
Jade heard Professor shout a rare profanity and propel himself into the mouth of the dugout tunnel with such forcefulness that when he burst through, it triggered a small avalanche.
“Get down!”
Jade did, covering her head, but not before she caught a glimpse of another figure struggling to get through the opening. It was Sanchez. Professor threw a hand up to pull him through, but as their fingers touched, Sanchez’s eyes widened in alarm.
The world jumped, as if God had banged a fist down on the earth’s crust. Dirt flew up, fine dust particles creating a choking cloud, and suddenly the air felt as hot as the throat of a dragon. The shockwave of an explosion—not a mere firecracker like the IED in the robot, but a detonation that felt like the end of the world—vibrated through every fiber of Jade’s body. It was like being hit by a bus while in free fall.
She saw Sanchez writhing in agony, Professor struggling through the chaos to pull him free and then, he was gone, snatched away by some invisible force. Through the opening, she could see nothing but fire.
Jade felt the air sucked out her lungs. She couldn’t cry out, couldn’t even gasp. A gale force wind swept out of the unexplored darkness behind them, carrying with it a dust storm that scoured her exposed skin as it was sucked through the opening where Sanchez had been only a moment before.
Then, only silence.
Half a mile from the pyramid, Hodges felt only a faint thump rise up from the earth. He held his breath, half expecting the enormous man-made mountain to fly apart or crumble into a heap of stones, or perhaps simply sink into the earth in one piece, filling the void where the strange cavern had been.
When it became evident that none of those things would happen, Hodges felt strangely relieved. At least he would not add the destruction of the one-of-a-kind historical monument to his list of crimes.
The thermobaric weapon had been relatively small and if the cavern was indeed as large as Chapman had indicated, most of the bomb’s explosive force would have been diffused, compressing the air in the chamber without necessarily weakening the surrounding rock.
Gutierrez nodded in satisfaction. “It’s done.”
“How will we explain what happened here?”
“Tomorrow morning, the news will report a minor earthquake. No one will question this; I will see to it. The site will be closed to the public until the extent of the damage can be assessed. I doubt there’s anything left down there, but we will fill the cavern with concrete to ensure that every trace of this discovery is sealed away forever.” As if sensing Hodges next question, the billionaire continued, “When you report to your superiors, you can tell them that your colleagues were killed in the cave in. That should ensure your cover remains intact. You may wish to remain here for a few days.”
“Surely you don’t think they survived that?”
“No, but for appearances sake, you should make a token effort to search for them.”
“And then?”
“Then? Go back to your assignment. Our war has only just begun.” Gutierrez clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t look so depressed. You may have just saved the world.”
EIGHT
Jade’s first breath burned in her lungs like acid. It seemed as if the oxygen in the air had been used up, replaced by some poisonous vapor, but her body demanded that she inhale. She coughed, feeling grit in her mouth and throat, and tried again with only marginally more success.
She sat up and straightened her headlamp, which miraculously had survived the blast. She saw Dorion and Professor—the latter was already on his feet and climbing up to look through the hole leading back to the cavern. Jade shuddered as the image of Noe Sanchez, sucked through that hole and into the heart of the firestorm, came unbidden into her mind.
“What the hell was that?”
“A bunker buster,” snarled Professor without looking back. “A fuel-air explosive. Military grade. When I get my hands on Hodges…” He faltered, unable to conceive an act of retribution sufficient to balance the scales. “Are you okay?”
“Hard to breathe.”
“It’ll pass.” He slid down to join her. “The bomb burned most of the oxygen in the cavern, but the resulting vacuum sucked fresh air, relatively speaking, up from this tunnel. That’s good news at least. It probably means there’s a way out.”
He sighed, looking defeated. “Jade, I’m sorry. I didn’t see this coming.”
She stared back at him, wondering if she had any right to be angry with him. “Forget it,” she said, hoping it didn’t sound as insincere as it felt. She coughed and tried again. “If it hadn’t been Hodges, it probably would have been someone else. You saved us.”
“Not all of us,” he muttered.
Jade turned away and knelt to rouse Dorion. The physicist was awake, but had a wide-eyed, shell-shocked expression, and Jade thought it best to use a light touch. “Paul, we have to keep moving, okay?”
Dorion looked past her as if unable to focus, but nodded.
Jade turned her light into the depths of the tunnel ahead. The walls were rough, cut from the surrounding igneous rock, much like the tunnel that had led from the surface into the first chamber beneath the pyramid, but broader, more open. There was evidence of further collapse along the length of the tunnel, but nothing of the same scale as what had blocked the opening. As they advanced, Jade tried to imagine the ancients rolling the enormous golden sphere through the passage to its final destination, and then wondered if there was anything left of it now.
She wanted to ask Dorion about the spheres and dark matter, and how he seemed to know about her prescient vision, but he seemed in no state of mind to answer such questions. She turned instead to Professor. “What I don’t get is this: if Hodges is working with the Dominion, why destroy the spheres? That’s not their style.”
Professor pondered this for a moment. “Someone else then? It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Wonderful.”
“Well, at least now we don’t have to worry about the Dominion using those spheres to power some new apocalyptic weapon.”
“Look at you, finding the silver lining.” She meant it to be playful, but in her own ears, it sounded sarcastic, so she quickly added. “Except of course that there’s still one out there.”
He gave her a sidelong glance. “What do you mean?”
“The Moon stone.”
“We don’t even know that there was a Moon stone.”
“What happened to Mr. Sunny Optimism?”
He gave her quizzical glance. “Why on earth would you want there to be another one of those things out there?”
The question caught her off guard only because she
thought Professor knew her better. “Because if it’s out there, I want to find it.”
“I repeat, why on earth, et cetera?”
She shook her head. “Because it’s there.” Even as she said it, she knew that was not the whole answer. “And because I need to know if what happened back there really happened. I need to know that I’m not going crazy.”
“You are not going crazy,” said Dorion, breaking his long silence. “It really happened. I know because it happened to me.”
As they kept moving forward through the serpentine tunnel, their way lit only by Jade’s headlamp since it seemed prudent to conserve the batteries in the others, Dorion related his story of a strange day at CERN. Both Jade and Professor listened without comment as the physicist told of the strange premonition of his co-worker’s death in a climbing accident.
“The memory of attending her funeral, of knowing that she was dead, was so intense that I could not dismiss it as a coincidental dream,” he said. “I do not believe in psychic abilities, much less a deterministic universe where the future is already written, but I was at a loss to explain it any other way.
“Then it occurred to me to consider the circumstances surrounding the event. It had happened inside the CMS—the Compact Muon Solenoid—which I helped design and which had only just been powered down after months of operation in which thousands of high speed particle collisions had been observed. Our experiments were, quite literally, recreating the Big Bang on a very small scale. The detectors were looking for very specific particles, but it stands to reason that other particles, similar to those that came into existence at the moment the universe began, might also have been produced.”
“Like dark matter?” suggested Professor.
“Exactamente,” replied Dorion, slipping into his native tongue.
“When we first met,” Jade said, “you said that you had seen me before. This happened years ago. So, you weren’t just limited to a peek at the near future. How does this work exactly?”