Code to Extinction

by Christopher Cartwright

  Genevieve shouted, “That’s great. Now, go!”

  “I’m trying, but I can’t find reverse!”

  Genevieve glanced at the center console. A single button with the letter R sat directly opposite the number one.

  She leaned over and pressed it.

  The gear shifted smoothly into reverse.

  “Thanks!” Tom said.

  He pressed the accelerator down hard, swinging the steering wheel left and turning back onto the end of Via del’Olmo.

  He glanced in his rear-view mirror.

  An Aprilia RSV4 yellow motorcycle raced toward them. Its female rider drew a handgun. The rider fired two shots, shattering Tom’s side mirror.

  Genevieve shouted, “We’ve got company!”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Tom pressed the number one button at the top of the center control panel, shifted into first gear, and gunned the engine. The Alfa lurched forward, and Tom swung wide into Via Pecorreli. The 1.7-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine whirred in a symphony of induction noises. The turbo quickly reached 1.4 bars of boost, and Tom felt his stomach lurch as it extracted every bit of the car’s potential 177kW of power and 350Nm of torque.

  The narrow cobbled street raced by in a blur.

  Tom quickly lost sight of the names of any street signs, not that it was a problem. Away from the main tourist section, he didn’t have a clue where they were heading. It didn’t matter. He was already putting distance between them and their attacker.

  Unable to aim and shoot, the rider had backed off a bit. Every now and again, she would gain on them, and Genevieve would fire another shot. The Alfa 4C wasn’t designed for rearward shooting. Its carbon fiber shell and mid-positioned engine made for decent protection, but a lousy shooting platform.

  Four or five blocks passed by quickly. The main road separated into two smaller one-way streets. Tom glanced at Genevieve. “Which way?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Genevieve asked. “There’s no map. Go right.”

  Tom braked hard and swerved right.

  The lateral G-force meter read 1.3 gravities. He felt his entire body slide to the left, and then he straightened up and it returned to zero.

  The street opened into a small piazza.

  “Corso Cavour up ahead!” Tom said, spotting a street sign.

  “Go right.”

  Tom rounded the corner, without easing off the speed in the process. The G-force meter read 1.6 before the back-end started to slide. He worked the steering wheel and accelerated out of the slide, straightening up in an easterly direction.

  “You know where we are?” Tom asked.

  “No!” Genevieve smiled like she was enjoying herself. “But look what just fell on me from behind my seat.”

  Tom glanced at her. She looked beautiful. Her short brown hair had become tousled in the wind, and her sapphire-blue eyes sparkled as they deliberately fixed on a tourist map of Orvieto. Her lips curled in that mischievous smile that depicted everything he’d come to love and adore about her. “Look what I just found!”

  “Nice. Where are we headed?”

  “Stay on this one and take the left onto Via della Cava.”

  Tom turned left and sped down and under a small bridge.

  At the roundabout Genevieve said, “Go left again!”

  “Okay.”

  Tom took the left onto Str. di Porta Romana. He glanced in the rear-view mirror. The rider was a fair way off, but it wasn’t going to take much for her to catch up once they were out in the open away from Orvieto.

  A signed pointed to the entrance to Orvieto.

  “Shouldn’t we be heading away from here?” he asked.

  “Not yet.” Genevieve grinned. “There’s a sharp bend coming up.”

  “I see it!”

  “Good. I need you to put as much distance as you can between us and our pursuer. When you get around the blind side of the bend, stop the car and let me out.”

  “Then what?”

  “Keep going, and I’ll get rid of our tail.”

  Tom thought she was crazy, but she had the right idea. He took the sharp bend into Via Ripa Medici at eighty miles an hour. The G-meter went berserk, indicating a 2.1 G lateral force. Tom glanced at it and wondered at what point the little Alfa would cease to defy the laws of physics and roll.

  He straightened up and jammed on the brakes.

  The car skidded to a stop.

  Genevieve jumped out and aimed her Beretta toward the edge of the blind corner. Tom put his foot down and took off again.

  In his rear-view mirror, he spotted the Aprilia leaning heavily into the left as it rounded the tight bend. Then he heard the shots fire. Three of them in immediate procession.

  The bike wobbled, and the rider threw her body into the right side trying to save it. She might have succeeded, too, if there was more room. But in the narrow bend approaching Via Ripa Medici, there just wasn’t enough time.

  The rider realized it at the last moment, but it was too late.

  The Aprilia hit the guardrail. In an instant the rider and bike were flung off the edge of the fortress-like wall that surrounded the outer ring around Orvieto – falling more than a hundred feet to the ledge below.

  Tom spun the car around and picked up Genevieve.

  He took off again. Driving at a normal speed, he turned left at the roundabout and down the winding Via della Segheria.

  “Now where do you want to go?” Tom asked.

  “Florence airport.”

  Tom looked at her and smiled. “Perguia’s closer. That much I know.”

  “Sure, but Sam’s jet won’t be here for another three hours to pick us up, and I bet you anything you want, Perguia’s the first place our new-found friends will go to look for us.”

  “There’s plenty of things I want.” He smiled lasciviously. “And all of them are with you. But you’re probably right.”

  “I’m always right,” she said.

  “And magnanimous in your victory, too.”

  He pulled onto the A1 Autostrada del Sole and floored the accelerator. The four-cylinder turbocharged engine purred in delight. “It sounds like a great day for a drive…”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Lord Howe Island

  The Gulfstream G650 circled the picturesque island.

  Sam glanced out the large window to his side at the idyllic sight of a bygone world. Positioned some 436 miles northeast of Sydney, Australia in the Pacific Ocean, the irregular, crescent-shaped volcanic remnant formed a well-protected cove to the west that appeared turquoise from the air. The island was home to a variety of endemic flora and fauna, while its reef boasted the most southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef and was filled with a plethora of marine-life.

  The aircraft came in to land, using up nearly every single one of the 2,907 feet of runway. The island normally didn’t accept jets, but today they were just going to have to make an exception. On board during the flight, Sam, Tom, Billie, Genevieve, and Elise were each combing through digital databases of the island for any indication of an old burial ground, or deep underground recess or cave. So far, they’d found nothing.

  Sam ended his cell phone call.

  Billie looked at him and asked, “Find anything?”

  “Yes. We got our first lead.”

  “It’s on the island?” she asked.

  “No.”

  Tom entered the conversation. “Then where are we going?”

  “Beneath Ball’s Pyramid.”

  Elise was incredulous. “Not much of a hiding spot for a temple, is it?”

  Sam smiled at that. “No. But I’ve spoken to Demyan, the volcanologist we met in Hawaii. He tells me that Ball’s Pyramid is the ancient erosional remnant of a shield volcano. He’s crunched the numbers, and given the natural movement of the shape of the earth over time, the location makes a better match for the antipode than Lorde Howe Island.”

  “That’s your lead?” Billie asked.

  “Think abo
ut it,” Sam persisted. “The place is the perfect shape for a hidden pyramid, its set on a volcanic plug, and with a height of 1844 feet, the stone tower would have plenty of mass to fill the sacred stone.”

  “How did you plan to get there?” Tom fixed on the more obvious logistical problem. “There are no helicopters on the island.”

  Sam said, “A local dive operator’s going to take us out by boat. I’ve explained what’s going on, and he’s happy to help any way he can.”

  Billie smiled. “You told him about the sacred stones and the extinction of the human race? How did that go?”

  “He took it better than you’d think. All right, so I didn’t quite put it to him that way. I explained it was imperative we reach Ball’s Pyramid and that our ability to solve the problem could have a long-lasting outcome to all life on earth.” Sam took a breath. “He said he knew.”

  Billie looked at him quizzically. “He knew?”

  “Yeah. He said for the past two days, there have been a series of strange currents and the last three dives he made, the entire reef was devoid of any marine life. He said it was the strangest and scariest thing he’s ever seen – making him think of an old Stephen King book.”

  “Great.” Billie shook her head. “So, time’s running out, quickly.”

  “It seems so,” Sam agreed.

  “Back to the logistics,” Tom said. “Where are you planning on entering the temple?”

  “According to our dive operator, there’s a large square opening at the base of Ball’s Pyramid at a depth of forty feet. It’s made of obsidian and goes so deep, no one has ever tried to reach the end.”

  The Gulfstream came to a complete stop next to the small airport. A minivan covered in the words Dive Lord Howe Island pulled up out the front of it.

  Sam said, “Here’s our ride now.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  It took two hours by boat to reach Ball’s Pyramid, which jutted dramatically out of the Pacific Ocean – a giant spire rising 1844 feet into the dark, foreboding sky. It was a monument to the once active volcano that existed seven million years ago.

  On board the dive boat was their skipper, Randy and dive operator, Henry. It was Henry, a blond-haired twenty-something dive instructor, with an easy-going attitude and carefree smile, who Sam was most interested in. The man had drawn a detailed map, including depth and surrounding rock formations as navigation guides, to the entrance of the tunnel into the submerged grotto.

  Sam studied the drawing. It depicted a rectangular entrance, that looked remarkably similar to the descending passage inside the Great Pyramid of Giza with the one exception being that this one was totally submerged.

  He made a couple notes on his dive slate and put the map down. Turning to Henry, he asked, “Will you be joining us on our reconnaissance dive?”

  Henry shook his head. His response, visceral. “No way. You couldn’t pay me enough to go inside. I’m happy to guide you to the main entrance, but once there, you’re on your own.”

  “Thanks, we appreciate your help.” Sam smiled, sympathetically. It was a common enough response. Even very good divers don’t like the idea of being confined in a small tunnel, under water, where there’s no chance of surfacing if there’s a problem with their dive equipment. “I take it you don’t like cave diving?”

  “No. I love cave diving and shipwrecks. I instruct in both diving specialties. But there’s no way I’m going inside that thing.”

  “Do you know of anyone who has?” Sam asked.

  “No way. No one. There’s been a few who have looked at it, even the occasional diver who’s penetrated the first thirty or so feet, before turning around and never going back inside. But, to my knowledge, no one’s dived it to the end, mapping out the length and depth of the grotto.”

  Sam’s lips curled with curiosity at the mystery. “Why?”

  “Why doesn’t anyone go inside?”

  “Yeah,” Sam confirmed.

  Henry swallowed hard. “The place is evil.”

  “Evil, really?” Sam grinned, and raised a curious eyebrow. “How so?”

  “The fish – when we had fish – avoided the place like it was poison. Even the coral that grows throughout the region spurns the entrance, for a distance of twenty-feet. Really, you can see a defined line in the shape of a rectangle, precisely twenty-feet out from the entrance.”

  “That’s interesting.” Sam was intrigued, but without any explanation, he still needed to dive the foreboding grotto. “All right. We still need to go inside it.”

  “I thought you’d say that. I’m just telling you what I know.”

  Sam, Tom, Billie and Genevieve finished setting up for a prolonged cave dive – using Diving Rebreathers. Traditional SCUBA diving required the use of a tank, or multiple tanks of breathable gas, in an open-circuit system where exhaled gas was discharged directly into the environment. But a Rebreather used a closed-circuit system with a scrubber to absorb exhaled carbon dioxide, reusing any of the original oxygen content. Oxygen is then added to replenish the amount metabolized by the diver. The benefit being that only a small amount of oxygen is required, allowing prolonged dives, regularly up to four hours, greater bottom times, and reduced decompression times – because the dive computer can automatically adjust the gas ratios to meet your metabolic needs at varying depths.

  Tom finished checking Sam’s set up. “We’re all checked. Good to go.”

  Sam glanced at the dark clouds approaching. He wasn’t sure what to believe about the grotto, but the sky certainly appeared evil. Looking at the rest of his team, he said, “Remember, we’re on the clock with this one.”

  He then pulled his full-face dive mask over his head, checked that it formed a perfect seal, and stepped into the water.

  The warm water rushed over his body. According to his dive-computer, it was 78 degrees Fahrenheit. There was minimum chop on the surface, as he signaled, all okay.

  Sam confirmed that the rest of the team was good, and then followed Henry to the entrance of the rectangular grotto. The visibility was excellent – more than a hundred feet and his line of sight reached the rocky seafloor.

  It was a short dive to reach the entrance. They descended quickly and Sam made the almost imperceptible adjustment of his jaw and slight swallowing movements to equalize the pressure in his ears.

  They leveled out at a depth of forty feet.

  He followed Henry around two large, submerged boulders and under a ten-foot high swim through – or covered opening between two rocks deemed not-quite a cave dive – and into another calm pool of crystal clear water.

  Henry pointed to the opening up ahead.

  Sam’s eyes followed where Henry had pointed. There, carved into the side of the submerged section of Balls Pyramid was a rectangular, descending tunnel. At a glance, there was no doubt in his mind that the opening wasn’t the natural result of erosion – it had been manmade.

  Henry, who was the only one in their group who wasn’t wearing a full-face dive mask and therefore couldn’t speak, handed Sam his dive slate.

  Sam glanced at the slate.

  On it, Henry had written, THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU. GOOD LUCK.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Tom led the remaining group of four divers into the descending passage. The idea was that, being the biggest and the most experienced cave-diver, he would be in the best position to determine if they reached an unpassable tunnel.

  The descending passage was the same size and shape as those found in the Great Pyramid of Giza and the pyramid buried in the Kalahari Desert, which were designed to have adult men and women walk inside. So, they offered plenty of room for diving. Even so, he wasn’t taking chances. Every thirty feet he stopped and drew an arrow with chalk and wrote, THIS WAY OUT.

  In the descending tunnel with identical walls it was impossible to tell how far they’d traveled by the time they reached the bottom, but his depth gauge now showed a depth of 104 feet. Unlike other pyramids that they’d searched,
this one didn’t have any secondary passages, like the ascending tunnel found in the Egyptian pyramids. At the bottom, the tunnel opened up to a large hypogeum, very similar to the one found in the Orvieto Underground. Tom shined his flashlight across the walls. Large and small rectangular-shaped stones lined the floor, walls and ceilings.

  Sam said, “It’s nothing more than a dead-end!”

  “It looks very similar to the hypogeum we explored in the Orvieto Underground,” Genevieve said.

  Tom grinned. “It’s not just closely resembling, but exactly the same.”

  “So what are you saying we do?” Sam asked.

  Tom sighed. “We need to bring the black light wand down here.”

  It took close to an hour to reach the dive boat.

  Tom removed his fins, passing them to Henry, and then climbed the boarding ladder. He took three steps and sat down, removing his face-mask and rebreather. Billie and Genevieve were the next to climb up and Sam the last.

  Henry helped remove Sam’s oxygen tank. “Did you find what you were after?”

  Sam smiled. “Yes. We’ll need to make a second dive, using a black light to identify what we’re after, but we’re confident we’ve found the right place, thanks to you.”

  “That’s great news.” Henry said, “You just missed a message from Elise on the radio by about half an hour.”

  Sam wiped the saltwater from his face with a towel. “What was the message?”

  “She has the fourth sacred stone and has chartered a flight to Indonesia to deliver it. Says for you to catch up with her once you’re done here. Said she couldn’t wait for you to complete your work here.”

  “Elise has left?” Tom asked, puzzled. “Did she say why?”

  Henry sighed. “She said it couldn’t wait any longer.”

  Randy joined the conversation. “Whatever the heck all of you are involved in, the world is really copping a beating now.”

  Tom tried to swallow the fear that rose in his throat. “What’s happened?”

  “A whole bunch of stuff that shouldn’t have,” Randy said. “I’m starting to really believe we’re about to witness the end of the world, don’t you think?”