by Nick Thacker
Why the nice shoes, officer?
The shoes were part of what Larson deemed “environmental juxtaposition,” a term he had developed at a training conference he’d spoken for years ago. They were out of place, but in an odd way. While he assumed it must be possible for an officer to put on the wrong shoes in the morning, he doubted they’d put on their nicest pair of shoes, waxed and polished, that were meant to be worn with a suit.
Then there was the odd line of questioning. Surely the police would understand protocol and know that a body, even one as mangled and charred as a burn victim, would have been the first thing removed from the scene. Larson continued scrutinizing the man, piecing things together.
This man wasn’t a police officer.
So who are you, then? he wondered.
He needed to stay below the radar on this one. If there was, in fact, something more going on than a fatal house fire, and his partner had been a target, there was good reason to believe that he himself was one as well.
Whoever wanted Dawson dead had succeeded, and if it was because of his involvement with the Agartha case, he might be next in line. His connections in Washington aside, this case was turning out to be larger than he’d imagined.
The man with the fancy shoes turned and caught Larson’s eyes. The man frowned, then quickly recovered and nodded once. Larson had caught the man by surprise, and he could tell that he’d been recognized.
So there it is, Larson thought. Government. You and I both know what we were working on, and how close we must be to figuring it out.
He turned and made for the ladder. Without bothering to look back to see if he was being followed, he left the house and walked toward his car. Reaching for his keys, he suddenly changed his mind and pulled out his phone instead.
Larson dialed a number and waited.
“Yes, thank you. I need a taxi.” He waited. “As soon as possible.” He gave the address of a neighboring intersection, then hung up and started walking.
48
“I’m all ears, Gregory.”
“I can’t explain the situation. You already know that. I’ve held information from you only because I wasn’t sure who was in on it.”
“You thought I might be?” Larson asked.
“Come on, Craig. You would have done the same thing.” The voice on the other end of the phone paused for a moment. “So you’re in it now. Sorry to hear about Dawson.”
“Me too. Thanks,” Larson said. “What can you tell me?”
“Nothing you haven’t probably already figured out by what’s happened. We think there’s a small cell operating within your government that’s working with Nouvelle Terre.”
“Within the government?” Larson asked incredulously. “I knew this reached pretty high, but I never thought—”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re out of time, Craig.”
Larson considered what his friend had said. The British had been tracking Nouvelle Terre for a few years, trying to keep a finger on the pulse within the small and fractured scientific community they were a part of. Without showing their cards, they’d maneuvered well enough through the political mess to get a small unit of soldiers into the United States, then down into the station.
Malcolm Vertrund, Durand’s boss, thought the organization might be operating out of the research station that had previously been a United States-funded program. When the US government eventually sold it to the British, it had been in disrepair and left unused for over ten years.
“What can we do? There’s no way I’m calling up to the Pentagon.”
“No—no, that’s not going to work.”
“Can you get Vertrund to pull some strings?” Larson asked.
“Probably. What are you thinking?”
“Is there a standing vessel anywhere nearby? If you can get close enough, they might be able to stop anything that goes awry.”
“We’ve already got a team of Royal Marines down there, as you know, but the sub they embarked on was lost. It was destroyed when they landed. We lost communications with the team, since the sub was going to act as a relay station. Hell, we don’t even know if the team’s still alive.”
“So whatever blew up that sub is still floating around out there?”
“Neither government is acknowledging the attack, obviously, which means it was one of them. Again, probably the US. If it was foreign it would have been an act of war, and we’d be having a different conversation now. But yeah, I think whatever it was that attacked our sub is patrolling nearby. Whoever’s in that station does not want company.”
“We have to take the chance, Durand.”
“Craig, you’re talking about redirecting a British naval ship. There’s no way—”
“Vertrund can do it. You and I both know that.”
“To do what, though?” Durand said. “Anything we send out there is going to be intercepted by that other vessel, and then what? We just keep sending ships out there to sink?”
“Listen. You got me in this mess, Gregory, and you wouldn’t have if you didn’t think it stunk like an inside job. Nouvelle Terre can’t be trusted, and we know there’s something bigger going on with at least one of our administrations.”
Neither man spoke for a moment.
“Get me a ship, Durand. Get me something that won’t go quietly, if you know what I mean.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll be on the boat.”
49
The blond woman left the group behind and climbed the set of stairs leading to the catwalk. She disappeared behind the wall when Jen and the others heard soft pop, and then a hissing sound.
“The docking station,” Saunders said under her breath. “Someone actually is here.”
“I wouldn’t hold your breath on their being friendly,” Nelson responded.
They waited for another minute, both sides frozen in anticipation. The only member of the group who seemed unfazed—uninterested even—was Jeremiah Austin, who’d resorted to chewing on a section of his fingernail.
After a long moment, more pops rang out from somewhere in the distance.
“Is that—”
“Gunshots,” Mark said, before Jen could finish.
The sounds continued, growing louder and more intense, then finally dying away to short bursts every few seconds.
After the gunshots stopped, the blond woman, Sylvia, appeared again on the stairway, followed by the Russians, and finally a tall, slender man in a blue sport coat.
They walked back toward the group at the center of the level, and Jen gasped as she recognized the man.
“That’s… that’s—”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Austin said, enjoying the grandeur of the moment, “may I proudly present to you the President of the United States of America.”
Mark’s eyes widened, but he was otherwise unsure of how to react. He stayed motionless, awestruck.
Sylvia slid up to Austin’s side like a snake, then spoke. “The president has successfully disembarked, and we’ve permanently disabled the second docking station. But there was another sub—probably an escort—that is still nearby.”
Austin took in this new information, thought for a moment, then continued, the knowledge apparently not meriting a change of plans.
“The president and I are old acquaintances, you could say. And when I discovered our shared interests, we began working toward a goal that ultimately has brought us here today. The plan started as I’d mentioned before, beginning with the destruction of modern society, governments, and most of humanity. Bold, yes, but effective as well.
“You see, it’s only through careful engineering of urban areas that we can truly live in a world that’s mutually beneficial with our natural counterparts. Finally, we’ll experience a world that’s not destroying itself, but one that’s improving itself.”
“Because you’re destroying it here, Austin. Everything. Everything will be gone. You understand that, right?” Mark said.
&
nbsp; Meanwhile, the president just looked on, as if he hadn’t heard anything that had been said.
“Trust me. I—we—fully understand the implications, Adams. But you must admit that society has taken a dreadful turn for the worse. We’ve experienced more human-caused famine, devastation, and plagues in the last century than in the last ten combined.
“We’ve created monstrosities of greed and pillaged what’s left of most of our natural resources. We live in a world that’s completely and utterly unsustainable.”
Jen knew Mark was taking advantage of Austin’s passion, getting him to talk.
Whatever it takes to buy us time, she thought.
“So you’ve decided to wipe it out completely,” Mark said.
“No, that’s just it! We don’t want to wipe it out completely. Just enough to rebuild, on fresh earth, breaking new ground.”
“We?” Mark asked. “The President of the United States is really in on this crap?”
“He was the original source of the idea. ‘All it would take is another world war,’ he said. I took it seriously and started working on this project a few years ago. With a little antagonizing, we could get some simple warheads thrown back and forth between countries, starting some panic, and then use the hysteria to send the world spinning.
“And then, for the finale, we’ll use this thing we’re standing on top of now to create fresh land using the mantle’s near-endless supply of volcanic materials to create some islands. As you know, Hawaii, the Philippines, and other island chains were created this way. We’ll of course do it in a much quicker way, destroying the North American continent and putting in its place a pristine landmass that will never be overrun by our pitiful race. We’ll go into a rapid decline, and finally the world will be able to restore its natural order. I must admit, most of the work was already completed when we arrived five years ago, thanks to the efforts of both the US and British governments.
“We made some alterations, but it’s a sound device, and one that will serve our purposes well. The president wasn’t originally on board with the entire plan, either, but as you can see, he’s now a huge proponent.”
Jen looked at the man she knew as the leader of the free world. His mouth was open slightly, as if in deep thought. When he sensed her looking his direction, he smiled a cocky grin and nodded. “Yes, yes, of course, yes,” he said.
Then he stared off into the distance again. Jen frowned.
“Anyway, he’s ready to go. Our president ordered missile launches yesterday from ten locations around the globe, all targeting our sworn enemies. Then he left to join us here, to investigate the station for himself after Mark revealed its existence. After he was delivered to an aircraft carrier in the mid-Atlantic and then to a submarine close by, we just needed to persuade some of the submarine crew members to sedate him for awhile.
“Like l said, he wasn’t initially a fan of the full plan. He thought a simple war would be enough. But there is a rather resilient property to the human race; wouldn’t you agree? It would never work by itself. Needless to say, after he awoke from his little ‘nap,’ he was as excited as ever to join us here for the final leg of the mission.”
“What was all the fighting about, then?” Erik asked.
“That? Oh, that was just the president’s entourage. They have always been an uptight bunch, so we couldn’t have them stalking around here while we finished up. They were exceptionally useful in keeping this whole project under wraps, but I’m afraid they were no longer able to assist us.”
Jen was growing more and more horrified as she listened.
The human race was going to be engaged in a world war.
Austin planned to start off a series of events that would have cataclysmic consequences.
And there was no way her family was going to live through it.
Jen realized something at that moment, standing in the open fields of a government research station under the Atlantic Ocean.
I have nothing more to lose.
50
Mark had heard enough.
Austin’s plan was the most insane idea he’d ever been faced with, real or not.
More importantly, it put his family at great risk.
He counted silently the number of armed hostile forces surrounding him.
Assess.
Analyze.
Abstract.
Achieve.
His training once again took over, and he moved from analytical data scientist to a man bent on staying alive.
Nine soldiers, plus Austin, the president, and Sylvia. Austin’s the target, but I need to keep Jen, Reese, and the president alive.
That meant nothing rash; nothing unplanned.
His eyes met Austin’s, and he knew he needed to keep the ruse going.
“Austin, one more thing.” Appeal to the man’s ego, he told himself. “What about this place? How did you get here? And what happened with it?”
“It is an intriguing thought, Adams,” Austin said. “But you know how government projects are—troubled by scope creep and ever-shrinking budgets. They finished the outer shell but never got around to the interior of the place.
“Nouvelle Terre, under the joint direction of my predecessor and Dr. Mitchell Storm, submitted a bid—under the umbrella of a different company, of course—for the construction to continue. We lobbied to have a floor to ourselves for research purposes.
“The proposal was granted, and we started work again about ten years later. The US government took the reins from the other two companies involved and conveniently hid all documentation regarding the base and its completion. It was a perfect situation for Nouvelle Terre, who was already dealing with political pressures from other activist groups.
“Anyway, Mitchell—who tended to be far more brash than I—finished the damn thing. He moved in, lived here, and died here. He actually named one of the levels after us.”
Mark saw Jen’s eyes grow with understanding.
“Nouvelle Terre—‘Level Ten: Rue Or.’ A simple anagram,” Austin said, satisfied. “Today, most of the station is functioning without oversight or human interaction, as you’ve probably guessed. Level Ten is our personal space, with our research labs and offices, but it’s relatively unoccupied, of course.”
As Austin spoke, Mark eyed his opening. He waited for the Russian soldier—standing two people to Mark’s right, and the only one who was still pointing his weapon at Jen, and Reese in the center of the circle—to drop his rifle. Finally, the man let his guard down for a moment, and Mark lunged. He took two steps to gain speed, then forced his body out toward the soldier to his immediate right.
The impact knocked the soldier off balance and sent both of them crashing into the next soldier in line. Mark found his feet and continued moving, jumping upward and punching at the same time. He caught the man under the chin and knocked him unconscious.
With his free hand, he reached to the man’s side and gripped the KA-BAR knife sheathed there. As the man fell, he held onto the handle of the knife and slipped it away from his body. He turned just as another Russian soldier was running toward him. Mark grabbed the knife in a tactical grip and thrust out quickly, dropping the man before he had a chance to attack.
A few of the other soldiers around the large circle had a quicker response time, and they lifted their weapons to fire just as Mark had turned toward them. They focused their attention on Mark, leaving Saunders and Nelson unattended.
Saunders had begun moving just as Mark was tackling the first soldier, and she reached out and crushed the gun-wielding hand of one of the soldiers with her elbow. He howled in pain, but the sound was quickly silenced as she ripped his head backwards with all her strength. He crumpled to the ground, and she picked up his weapon. She tossed another toward Erik, who was standing dumbstruck at the edge of the circle. “Move!” she yelled to him. Erik burst into action, fueled by fear, and began to run backwards, firing wildly at soldiers left and right. One of his shots hit the mark, and a Russian
fell to the ground inches from Mark.
Nelson was engaged in combat as well, though without as much luck as his two counterparts. The person standing next to him was a Russian woman, and she was prepared for his attack. She punched him once in the gut, and he felt his eyes bulge as she landed a forceful blow to his kidney. She was fast, moving around him before he could turn, and she jumped on his back.
He reacted the only way he knew how and jumped up and backwards, trying to land on top of the woman. She swiveled around quickly and left Nelson to fall onto his back on the hard dirt, the wind leaving his body.
“For Christ’s sake,” he muttered, as he saw through tear-filled eyes the woman preparing to pounce on his exposed chest. She held a knife in one hand, and it was all he could do to roll out of the way at the last minute. She struck the dirt next to him with the knife, the blade stabbing deep into the ground, and she screamed as she realized she’d missed her target.
Nelson was ready for her.
He kicked the blade—and the woman’s hand—as hard as he could, breaking two of her fingers, then he reached out and grabbed her arm. He twisted it, causing the woman to shriek, but she turned the rest of her body to remove the pressure and punched at him with her other arm.
The punch didn’t land, and Nelson used her own momentum to launch her toward a group of three men he saw racing toward Mark.
She bowled into them, causing one of them to fall over, and he reached down to pick up a gun that lay at his feet. He was about to fire when he heard Mark yell over the cacophony.
“Nelson! The president!” Mark was under bombardment from five Russian soldiers. They hadn’t fired at him, for fear that they’d hit one of their own, but it was clear that they were well versed in self-defense. Mark had been punched, kicked, and elbowed by each of them it seemed, though none of the hits had been debilitating blows.
He punched one soldier as another kicked at him, forcing him to dodge at the last second and thus lose his power.
The fighting in the main compound grew intense. Mark successfully held them off, using the advantage of being the only real objective they had. He ran for the outskirts of the fields, letting them take potshots as he developed a plan of attack.