by Nick Thacker
Erik whispered. “It’s a planetary reaction.”
Austin just stared past them. A soldier ran to Austin and whispered something in his ear.
“It appears as though our final support team has arrived,” he said quietly. “Sylvia, would you mind helping our new guests find their way?”
The blond woman left, a small cadre of soldiers following closely behind.
CHAPTER 46
THIS WASN’T AN ACCIDENT.
AS Detective Larson pulled up to the curb next to the smoldering lot where his friend’s house previously stood, the thought nagged at the back of his mind. As a career detective, he was trained to push these sorts of ideas back until the hard evidence presented itself.
But he’d also learned in his long career to trust his gut.
And now his gut was screaming at him.
This was no accident.
Ken Dawson was dead, and it was being reported currently as an accidental house fire. He knew that was certainly a possibility, but he’d long stopped taking coincidences at face value. More often than not there was something going on below the surface, and he was good—very good—at figuring out what it was.
Most of the time, Detective Larson would start with a motive. Who wanted Dawson dead, and why? Why not focus on Larson himself? Dawson was a good detective, but he was less careful and methodical than Larson would have liked. Maybe he sniffed around too much, and somebody noticed.
These thoughts pushed through the wall in his mind as he walked up the sidewalk to the smoke-blackened foundation of the house. He stopped before stepping onto the concrete porch; both to take a mental picture of the scene and for sentimental reasons. He’d been here many times before, even sharing Thanksgiving with their family.
He sighed.
He felt the nagging sensation again and realized that this was somehow different. Before, when he’d get this feeling, it was out of compassion for humanity. Now, however, there was something more.
He wanted this to be more than an accident. He wanted someone to be responsible for it because then he could blame someone. Someone could be at fault for it, and he could forever know that simple fate wasn’t the cause of his friend’s death.
So he stepped over the threshold and entered the smoking remains of the house. The local police had gotten him clearance onto the scene, and as long as he didn’t interfere with any evidence, he could take a look around. He greeted some of the investigators on the scene, nodding once as he passed.
There were a few officers and medical personnel around one area of the basement, so he wandered toward the ladder that had been lowered from the main floor. Descending, he noticed that the basement floor was covered by the fallen remains of the rest of the house. The ladder’s base was set on some boards that were only about four feet below the main level. Another row of boards stretched from base of the ladder and curved to the left, following a short hallway. The boards were fresh lumber, so Larson assumed the gathered officials had laid out some sort of walkway or platform over the rest of the debris.
“Is there a body?”
Larson’s ears turned toward the sound of the voice. Without looking, he listened to the exchange.
“Yes, the coroner has it now,” a second voice responded.
Larson stole a glance and noticed a young police officer had answered the question. Both men stood near a wall in the basement, apart from the other group that had gathered farther down the small hallway. The man who’d asked the question was tall, lanky, and in his mid-forties. He wore a police uniform, complete with a bulletproof vest over the blue top. The pants, traditional officer attire, were starched and freshly pressed, and ended just above black leather oxfords. They were buffed and polished, and gave off a slight gleam from the overhead lights that had been staged in the basement.
“Ok, I’ll need the name of the office, please,” the first officer said. He reached to the younger man and patted his shoulder. “Thanks.” The man turned and began walking toward the rest of the group, his heels clicking on the wooden platform.
Detective Larson listened as he continued to stare at the shoes. He had a pair that looked just like it, although they were hadn’t been worn in years.
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.
CHAPTER 47
“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 st
anding 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.”
CHAPTER 48
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.
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 the
re 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.
CHAPTER 49
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.