Code to Extinction

by Christopher Cartwright

  Sam took a deep breath and beamed with satisfaction. “You know what this means?”

  Billie smiled. “We now have a map of the remaining temples of the Master Builders!”

  Chapter Twelve

  Sam’s heart pounded, and his muscles went tense with anticipation. He counted each of the meridian lines out loud. There were twelve lines in total. On a normal map of the Earth there were a total of a hundred and eighty meridian lines, but a normal map only displayed one line for every fifteen meridian lines.

  A wry smile formed on his open mouth. “You’re right, it is a map of the world!”

  Billie matched his smile. “And it shows where each of the remaining twenty-two temples are.”

  “But it doesn’t tell us which of the four temples we need to take the Four Horsemen stones we found in the Aleutian Portal to, does it?”

  “No.”

  Sam met her inquisitive eye. “Is there anything else you’ve found?”

  “Just this.”

  “Is there any way we can narrow this down more specifically, or are we going to have to find and search twenty-two temples around the world?”

  “You know as much as me. Once we’re back on board the Maria Helena, I’ll run some more tests, and see what I can find.” Billie sighed. “Once we know the map coordinates each of these gems corresponds to, we might be able to recognize a pattern or rule out some of them.”

  “You’re still confident of your theory?” Sam asked.

  “Yes, now even more so.” She spoke emphatically. “Those four stones found buried within the Death Stone will need to be placed at four separate temples – most likely running along contiguous meridians – in order to protect Earth…”

  “How?” Sam asked, incredulous. “The four stones are small enough to fit individually in one’s hand. So, what the hell are they going to do to protect us from an approaching asteroid?”

  “I have no idea. But previously, we’ve seen the Master Builder utilize ancient technologies in ways that our scientists can’t understand or explain. If they’ve known about this thing approaching for nearly thirteen thousand years, I’m willing to bet my life they’ve worked out a way of beating it.”

  “That’s good, because we’re all betting our lives that you’re right.”

  The sound of the engine changed its pitch, and the helicopter banked gently to the left. Sam glanced up ahead, out through the windshield. They were flying over water. Most likely they had reached the Caribbean Sea. He glanced at the sea below. It was calm, the rays of light glistening off the ripples beneath the helicopter blades.

  Roughly half a mile ahead, a vessel came into view.

  It was painted sky blue. And along the ship’s steel hull, in large emerald writing, were the words MARIA HELENA and below in smaller writing – Deep Sea Expeditions. From the distance, it looked like nothing more than an oversized tugboat or possibly an old icebreaker converted into a science vessel. On the aft deck a helipad could be seen – the only indication that it was anything more than a tugboat.

  The sight of his ship always made him smile.

  The nose dipped again, and the Sikorsky dropped its altitude before Genevieve leveled out and brought it into a gentle hover above the Maria Helena’s aft deck. A moment later, she placed it firmly on the deck and shut down the engine.

  The main rotors continued to whir almost silently above their heads. Billie glanced out the side of the helicopter. The sea was still moving swiftly.

  Her eyes turned to Sam, and she asked, “We’re moving?”

  “Yeah,” Sam answered, as though it was obvious.

  “Where to?”

  “We’re heading to Belize.”

  “Belize? What’s in Belize?”

  “Nothing, but in two days the USS Gerald R. Ford will travel through the Caribbean Sea on a routine set of sea trials. We’ve been instructed to wait at Belize and rendezvous with her to return their experimental Black Hawk – otherwise I’m going to owe Uncle Sam somewhere in the vicinity of forty-five million dollars.”

  “What are we going to do waiting around here for two days?” she asked, as though the thought of enjoying some much-needed rest and relaxation in paradise was abhorrent and repugnant to her.

  “I don’t know what you want to do, but I’m going free-diving. There’s an annual event. I booked tickets for Tom and I a week ago”

  Billie met his eye. “A week ago?”

  Sam shrugged. “On the off chance we had to wait for the USS Gerald R. Ford.”

  She smiled and shook her head at his lie. “Tom’s going to be pissed he can’t go diving with that leg wound.”

  Sam glanced over at him. “Yeah, he’ll be pissed. No reason I shouldn’t have some fun though. Besides, he can come watch.”

  “I’ll have a go deciphering the rest of the tablet and working out where each of the temples are that each of those sapphires correlates to,” Billie said. Then, after a long pause, “once I’ve slept.”

  Her tone brooked no argument, and Sam didn’t even try. His eyes were too heavy, and his body already shutting down for some much-needed rest.

  “Yeah, for sure – get some rest. We’re no good to anyone in our current state. I’m going to spend the day sleeping, and will probably take a few hours to enjoy the free diving competition tomorrow. After that, let’s see what you’ve found and where we’re going to go from here.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Sam paused. “Once we know which temples require the stones, and where they belong inside the temple, what then?” he asked.

  Billie looked up, a faraway look in her eyes. She shook her head. “Then we wait.”

  “Wait for what?” Sam wasn’t much of a waiter. He preferred action any day. A tendril of fear made the hairs on his arms stand up when he noticed Billie’s expression.

  She swallowed, hard. “For the signs that the ending of the world has begun.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Great Blue Hole, Belize

  It was a typical, balmy day off the coast of Belize.

  The midday sun glistened in the clear blue and turquoise water, causing it to sparkle with the light of an infinite bed of crystals. Sam edged the Maria Helena’s inflatable Zodiac through the maze of corals that formed the Lighthouse Reef, and then through the gap into the Great Blue Hole. On the opposite side of the small runabout, Tom stretched out his injured leg with a bemused look on his face. They had both dived here extensively when they were in their early twenties. It felt like coming home to a childhood vacation spot.

  On an ordinary day, the giant sinkhole would have only had an occasional recreational dive boat and they would have been able to bring the Maria Helena right inside.

  But today, the entire place was a great flurry of activity.

  Boats full of spectators crowded the area where usually only dive boats bearing recreational divers were present. In the very center of the 300-foot, perfectly circular, submerged sinkhole floated a huge temporary diving barge. All the boats had been tied together to make one giant diving platform. At the very end of the flotilla was a single de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter Seaplane. Its owner had casually left it tied to the last boat in the flotilla, where it rested peacefully on the perfectly still water at the end of a single fifteen-foot line of rope.

  Sam tied the Zodiac up alongside one of the larger pleasure cruisers and climbed on board. Tom pulled himself up over the railing, and the two of them made their way across the series of tied-together boats to the main diving platform.

  Sam glanced behind him. Tom had a slight grimace he appeared to be working hard to conceal, but otherwise managed to step from boat to boat as nimbly as ever.

  “How’s the leg?” Sam asked.

  “Fine. Never better.” Tom grinned. “I told you it was a minor wound, I just needed to rest it for a day.”

  “That’s right. And have some fluids, a dozen stitches, and some antibiotics.”

  Tom shrugged. “Those, too.”

 
; Sam stopped at the main event.

  On the surface of the sea, the diving barge was a swarm of activity as well. Competition divers waited their turns to dive.

  “How long has it been?” Tom asked.

  “Since we last dived here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Gotta be fifteen years at least.”

  Sam completed his registration and safety briefing. Afterwards, he waited in silence, making the mental preparations for the dive. Both men had once held record-breaking dives at the site, but that had been a long time ago. Sam had no erroneous belief that he would score highly today. For him, it wasn’t about the competition, so much as simply enjoying the event and the rare beauty of the location.

  And it was stunningly beautiful.

  Sam’s eyes greedily raked the wonder before him. The Great Blue Hole was one of many such sinkholes around the world, but maybe the most famous and almost certainly the most beautiful and unusual. In contrast to the green of the surrounding sea, the sinkhole boasted intensely blue water, a result of its depth. Once situated high above the sea, it had begun its life as a cave, complete with karst sandstone stalactites and stalagmites.

  The reef was the only remaining vestige of the surrounding land in which the sinkhole had formed, in four events taking place hundreds of thousands of years ago. When the top of the cave had collapsed, the resulting sinkhole descended through what was once about one hundred and thirty feet of surface strata before opening into the cave system, for a total of over four hundred and five feet. Then the sea levels had risen with the melting of the ice caps at both poles, submerging the land and the sinkhole alike. What was once an interesting geological phenomenon was now a spectacular one, beautiful both from above and below, and carrying a mystique that caught the imagination of divers and non-divers alike.

  This sinkhole was particularly dangerous for free-diving, though extremely popular. Not recommended for the inexperienced, recreational diving here carried with it the potential to become lost within the stalactites and stalagmites protruding from the back-sloped walls that had formed before the area was submerged. In addition, the speleothems were off-vertical by a consistent five degrees, indicating a land shift and tilting of the underlying plateau in addition to the flooding by a rise in sea level. A diver could become disoriented among them.

  Because of those back-sloped walls, diving in the center required absolute buoyancy control to prevent sudden plummeting, as there was nothing to grab and stop one’s rapid and likely fatal descent. The depth of the hole meant it was, for all practical purposes to a human being, bottomless.

  It would require all of Sam’s skill to compete in this annual spectacle.

  There was a total of eight freediving disciplines in which people competed around the world. Today, Sam was participating in what was known as a Variable Weight free dive. The concept was to use a heavy sled to sink rapidly, feet-first, before dropping the weight, and using an inflatable balloon to return to the surface. In this case, Sam was wearing a purpose made free-diving vest, which utilized a high-pressured canister of air to rapidly inflate. It had been lent to him by one of the organizers of the event.

  Sam’s name was called, and he was told to prepare for the next dive.

  Tom shook his hand. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Stay safe out there.”

  Sam grinned. “Of course. I’m not going for any record. I just need some time to clear my head and relax.”

  Tom smiled with genuine pleasure for him. “Good for you. You deserve it. Take all the time you’d like. Preferably under three minutes though…”

  “I’ll try my best not to stay down too long.”

  Sam stepped off the diving barge and dipped into the water feet first. The temperature in the Blue Hole at a hundred and thirty feet is a constant seventy-six degrees Fahrenheit all year round, and on the surface, it was closer to eighty. It felt like diving into a bath, only a little cooler than the outside temperature – and yet instantly refreshing.

  He surfaced and made a signal to Tom that everything was all okay, before casually swimming across the surface to the weighted dive sled. It was being held by a rope and diving crane that reached out several feet from the diving barge. Two safety divers on the surface gripped either end of it to keep it steady. Sam had always felt the name, diving sled, was wrong, giving a false impression. Unlike a sled, it appeared more like an iron pogo stick crossed with a heavy spade. There was a sixty-pound nose in the shape of a wide shovel, followed by two horizontal pegs on which to stand his feet. At his chest height, was a t-shaped handlebar. All of it was made of iron and came to a total weight of one hundred pounds.

  Sam placed his feet on the pegs, and grasped the heavy metal bar. Another diver helped slide a small rubber clasp over his feet to stop him from slipping off and coming away from the sled during his rapid descent.

  The judge then said, “Dive when ready.”

  Sam closed his eyes. He slowly went through the time-honored process of preparing for a free-dive, by reducing his metabolic rate through meditation. He took slow, deep, full breaths, blowing off any excess carbon dioxide in his system, sending his body into a slightly alkaline state and consciously slowing every individual system down. His heart rate dropped from eighty beats per minute down to a staggering forty beats per minute.

  He opened his eyes and nodded at the two divers who were keeping the sled from dropping. They let go – the sled lurched downward, and Sam began his race to the bottom of the Great Blue Hole.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The dive sled picked up speed.

  Soon Sam reached a descent rate of two to three feet per second. As cooler water rushed past his face, his mammalian dive reflex kicked in, and the ancient adaptation for conserving oxygen consumption underwater started to manifest.

  Blood volume and flow was redistributed toward vital organs, as his peripheral blood vessels constricted. His heart rate slowed further to twenty-eight beats per minute. He swallowed constantly, to equalize the pressure in his middle ear.

  Four feet to his left, the vertical dive line raced by.

  He closed his eyes.

  And found the sort of solitary calm and mental tranquility he’d been unable to achieve in any other place on Earth.

  For less than two minutes, his mind was completely empty.

  He no longer cared about the unforgiving celestial object rapidly approaching humanity, soon to complete its invisible thirteen-thousand-year-old celestial orbit, that would have it return to Earth.

  Nor did he care about the potential conflict between the remaining Master Builders – who he was no longer certain had the best interests of mankind at heart.

  Instead, he simply felt at peace.

  Sam opened his eyes and glanced at the depth gauge. It read two hundred and five feet. Much less than he’d been able to achieve in his twenties, but more than he had any intention of trying to reach today.

  He flicked the release valve and compressed air filled his lift bag.

  But instead of sending him upward, he continued to rush toward the bottom. Sam’s head snapped around to look at his lift bag. Gas bubbles spurted out through two giant gashes in his inflatable vest. Under normal circumstances, the entire canvas vest would have been folded in on itself until Sam had pulled the release string, and the air super inflated the balloon.

  It was impossible to notice the gash without taking the vest apart before the dive to examine, and now impossible to fix. Which meant, he was going to have to somehow make his own way to the surface the old-fashioned route – by pulling on the dive line and kicking his legs.

  He let go of the dive sled, but his foot snagged, and he continued to be pulled deeper. He bent down until he could see the problem. The rubber foot clasp had been replaced with a plastic cable tie. It fitted loosely around his right ankle and the vertical rung of the dive sled, so that he hadn’t felt it until now.

  There was no reason to have such ties
on the dive sled, let alone around his ankle. Therefore, it wasn’t an accident – and more importantly – it meant someone wanted him dead.

  Sam placed his hand and mouth near the small air canister, and took in a deep breath. It would disqualify him from the tournament, but he was more interested in living than breaking records today. There was just enough for a single breath, before the tank ran out.

  He kicked his right leg, trying to free his foot. There was plenty of movement, but he remained trapped by the sled – being dragged to the bottom.

  The depth gauge now read 275 feet.

  He used both his hands and tried to break the plastic. It was impossible. Military Police had been using similar ties to restrain prisoners for years. Without anything sharp to cut it, Sam was wasting his energy by fighting with it.

  But what other option did he have?

  The alternative was to simply give up and die. He fought with it for another few seconds, and then stopped.

  The depth read 350 feet.

  He would reach the bottom soon. Then what? Even if he could free himself, without the lift bag, there would be little chance of reaching the surface alive. Seawater became clearer the deeper he got, and despite the darkness, he could now see the bottom.

  A seabed of sand and limestone raced to meet him.

  Stalagmites, twelve feet tall and higher riddled the seafloor, like the pillars of an ancient city, lost for millennia. Below which, large erosions in the limestone formed jagged scars and deep crevasses and cave systems that stretched a further hundred feet below.

  Next to him, the end of the vertical dive-line stopped ten feet short of the seafloor. Dangling off the very end of it, and placed there for emergencies, was a single tank of air and attached regulator. It was a divine gift if he could reach it.