Dawtry frowned. “The Black Sea. Ukraine and Crimea. A nuke could’ve been loaded aboard in any of those places. Is it still on the ship?”
“Not sure,” Stark said.
O’Malley shook her head. “It won’t be. That nuke’s long gone. Already headed for the fault zone.”
“I’m afraid you’re right,” Stark said. “We’re trying to pick up the trail, but that requires flying a grid search. Maybe you’ve got ideas that could help us narrow it down?”
“I’ll try, Captain. Can I get on the Internet with one of these computers?”
“Sure. What do you need?”
“Professor Boyd created a secure website for the seismometer data. It updates automatically every time there’s a seismic event. I want to look at the latest data.”
The captain led her to a workstation; then he entered a password and offered O’Malley the chair. “Help yourself.”
O’Malley typed a website address, then a password. A screen with dozens of columns of numbers popped open. “That’s a fast connection.”
“If you’re at war,” he said, “a second—a fraction of a second—can make all the difference.”
Dawtry leaned over one of her shoulders, the captain over the other. “As you can see, it’s a spreadsheet. Each column represents a distinct seismic event.”
“That’s a lot of events,” Stark said.
“Unfortunately, they’re happening with increasing frequency. There are three sets of rows, one set for each instrument. The first line in each row is the amplitude. Multiply amplitude by ten, and you’ll get the approximate magnitude of the event.”
The captain put on a pair of glasses and leaned closer, scrutinizing the figures. “So most of these are very small—magnitude less than one. We don’t need to worry about those, right? Just these bigger ones, the threes and fours?”
“The big ones are the scary ones,” she said, “but the tiny ones are the interesting ones. The informative ones.”
“Come again, ma’am?”
“A big one is more likely to trigger the landslide. But if you look at these data cells”—she pointed, in quick succession, at three lines of data—“you can see that the bigger quakes are all over the map. Here a quake, there a quake, everywhere a quake quake. But if you focus on the little ones, which are ripple shots of explosives”—this time she pointed to several of the small, microsecond shocks, like the ones that had interfered with her search for Planet Nine—“what jumps out at you?”
“My God,” said Dawtry. “They point to the same spot every time. Every explosion happens in exactly the same place as the one before.”
“Almost,” O’Malley corrected. “Not quite. Look at the last digit, the last fraction of a degree. It changes very slightly—and very consistently—every time.”
“So the explosions are in multiple locations?” Dawtry said.
“Not just multiple locations. Steadily moving locations.”
“Jacobson,” the captain barked at a sailor a few workstations away.
“Sir?”
“Triangulate these positions. Three compass bearings apiece.”
“Ready, sir.”
Stark rattled off ten sets, ten trios, of compass bearings. “Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
The captain pointed to the large relief map of the island. “Plot those points on the map. Not all at once, though. Sequentially. Add a position every half second, but don’t erase the priors. Can you do that?”
“No problem, sir.” The sailor’s keyboard clattered. The 3-D relief map on the large wall-mounted screen shifted in perspective, to a straight-down view. “Eye altitude 30 mi,” read a scale in the lower-right corner. A red dot flashed onto the screen, in a forested part in the southwest region, midway between the coastal highway and the crater-marked ridgeline. A half second later the dot grew brighter; another half second, brighter still. The process continued by intervals, the dot—only one dot—seeming to brighten and smear slightly, elongating into a small oval.
“Zoom in, Jake,” Stark said. “What does that look like from five miles up?”
A cursor hovered over a slider on the screen, and the terrain rushed closer. For a moment O’Malley felt as if she were skydiving from thirty miles up. Then the dive stopped. “Eye altitude five miles, sir; here comes the sequence.”
This time, the sequence produced not a smear but a string of ten distinct dots, their edges touching.
“Excuse me, uh . . . Jake,” O’Malley said.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Can you show us that from one mile up?”
“Skipper?”
“Whatever Dr. O’Malley wants.”
Another dizzying drop, another five-second animation. This time the dots marched in a precise, steady, clearly separated advance from west to east, a line as straight as an arrow. “Son of a bitch,” said O’Malley. “They must be close to the base of the fault line. How’d they get there so fast?” Something in her subconscious was nagging at her, tugging at the sleeve of her mind. What? she asked herself. What is it? It had something to do with the map. “Jake?”
“Ma’am?”
“Zoom back out, please. But slowly.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Why? she thought. What am I looking for? It was driving her crazy. As the view slowly widened, Santa Cruz appeared on the east coast, Los Llanos on the west, linked by the highway that squiggled partway up the island’s flanks, then burrowed through the central ridge in a pair of tunnels.
“Oh, and Jake,” she added, surprising herself. “Can you hide the man-made features? The roads and towns? Show only the terrain?”
“Sure.” A moment later, the roads and towns vanished, as if they’d never been there. The island looked pristine, the way it might have looked a thousand years before.
Slowly, steadily, the image continued zooming out. “Stop,” she said excitedly. “Stop—that’s it!” Dawtry and the captain looked at her, puzzled. “I just remembered something. An old map I saw. In the 1800s, they decided to run a pipeline across the island. Through the island, actually.”
Dawtry looked puzzled. “A pipeline? For oil?”
“No, for water. There’s loads of water in the east, not much in the west. So they started tunneling through the mountains, working from both ends, aiming to meet in the middle. But they abandoned the project. The western end got too hot, and workers started dying from toxic fumes. Volcanic gas.” She pointed at the line of dots on the map. “The tunnel was right here.” She paused, giving them a moment to absorb the information. “These bastards are smart. That abandoned tunnel gave them a mile-long head start toward Armageddon. That’s where they’ll put the nuke.”
The captain scrutinized the map. “And how close are they to the finish line—the fault line—by now?”
O’Malley picked up a laser pointer from the console. She pressed the button on the side, and a bright-green dot appeared on the screen, hovering and squiggling between two reddish-brown craters near the center of the island. “The fault line starts right around here,” she said, “and runs due south along the ridgeline.” Slowly she traced the ridge, then stopped, the pinpoint of light trembling where it intersected the most recent blasting site. It was directly beneath the ridge. “They’re already there. With those injection wells putting pressure on the fault, that nuke is sure to break off the fault block. If the weapon’s in place, they could hit the button any minute now.”
“But they won’t,” Dawtry said. “Not yet.” O’Malley and Stark both looked at him. “They want maximum casualties, and maximum media. Today’s Sunday. They’ll wait till tomorrow—a weekday—when Manhattan’s full of workers, the media’s searching for stories, and Wall Street’s riding for one hell of a fall.”
The captain glanced from Dawtry and O’Malley to the map, then excused himself. He stepped to the secure phone on the wall and placed a call. As they watched him confer, Dawtry leaned close to O’Malley. “One thing we haven’t ta
lked about,” he said. “If the bad guys realize we’re coming, what do you think they’ll do?”
“They’ll push the button, if they can. It might not be their dream scenario—might not be the ideal time on the ideal day to kill the maximum number of people in front of the most possible viewers, but still . . .”
“Agreed,” he said. “Alternatively, if they’re not ready to push the button, you think they might make a preemptive media strike? Announce that millions of Americans on the East Coast are about to die?” She cocked her head, puzzled, so he elaborated. “Even if we manage to prevent the disaster, they could still create mass hysteria and chaos.”
“You mean like that Martian-invasion panic in the 1930s? War of the Worlds, right?”
“Right,” he said. “That was a radio drama masquerading as news. If these guys did something similar with video, they’d scare the crap out of America. Gridlock up and down the whole East Coast. Maybe cause the stock market to crash, costing us trillions. No small accomplishment. How do we stop that?”
“We find the guy in charge,” O’Malley said. “Or at least the guy the Russians are hiding behind. Who’s that al-Qaeda mastermind you mentioned?”
“Al-Zawahiri?”
“Him. We find him and we keep him from making that broadcast.”
“Find him where, Megan? In the caves of Tora Bora? In Yemen? In Moscow? He could be anywhere.”
“But he’s not.” She was surprised to hear herself add, “He’s here—on La Palma! I bet he came in on the ship that brought the nuke.”
Dawtry blinked, processing the idea. “You think? So he can go out in a blaze of glory—a wave of glory? Martyr himself in style, so he gets seventy-two million virgins in heaven?”
“No. Not so he can die. So he can watch. If he’s playing God, he’ll want to see his handiwork unfold firsthand. But he’s a survivor, right?” She snapped her fingers. “He’ll be up at the observatory. A ringside seat.” Dawtry looked unconvinced. “It’s perfect,” she insisted. “Like Moses on Mount Sinai. The observatory’s way above the danger zone, and it’s got video and uplink capabilities galore. He can film a message and broadcast it from there. If the mountainside breaks off and the ocean rears up, he’s got Nat Geo–worthy video to show the world. If it doesn’t break off, he can still scare the bejesus out of every American east of the Mississippi.”
He nodded, tentatively at first, then with conviction. “For an academic egghead, you make a lot of sense.” He borrowed the laser pointer from O’Malley. “Yo, Jake?”
The technician looked up. “Sir?”
Dawtry used the pointer to sketch the rim of the caldera. “You see these buildings? They’re telescope domes. Can you zoom in on that complex and give us a high-res printout? Big as you can make it?”
O’Malley gave him a puzzled look. “What do you want that for?”
“To help us find our way around.”
“We don’t need that. I know that place inside out.”
“That’s great, but you’re not going.”
“Like hell I’m not going!”
“Megan, this is a military assault. You can’t go.”
“Bullshit. Reporters go with troops into battle all the time.”
“You’re not a reporter. You’re an astronomer.”
“I’m the astronomer who figured this shit out. Or did you forget that, Special Chauvinist Dawtry?”
Dawtry looked up at the ceiling, running his hands through his hair in frustration. “Of course I didn’t forget it. I just chewed out the vice president, the joint chiefs, and the entire National Security Council for not taking you seriously. You’re brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. But you’re not a soldier, and you’re not invulnerable. You could get hurt or killed.”
“I’ve almost gotten killed a bunch of times already. What’s one more?”
“This is different, Megan.”
“How is it different?”
“There might be a lot of shooting, by a lot of people. There might be explosions. It’s hugely dangerous.”
“I have to be there, Chip. Our guy’s gonna be at the observatory, and I’m the only one here who knows the observatory firsthand.”
“The risk is too high.”
“Screw the risk, Chip. If I don’t go, and millions of Americans die because the troops don’t know exactly where they’re going? That’s the risk I’m not willing to accept.”
“Dammit, Megan . . .”
“Dammit, Chip. You heard what the captain said—when you’re at war, a fraction of a second can make the difference between victory and defeat. I could provide that fraction of a second.”
“Excuse me, folks.” It was Stark. They hadn’t noticed him approaching. He laid one hand on Dawtry’s shoulder and the other on O’Malley’s. “I couldn’t help hearing some of that. I have to say, Chip, I think Dr. O’Malley’s right.” Dawtry glared, but the captain went on. “Ma’am, if you’re sure about this, I think you could be a real asset to a team at the observatory.”
“Thank you, Captain. I’d be proud to help any way I can.”
Dawtry looked away, his jaw muscles clenching.
The captain studied him for a moment. “Chip, you’ve spent time on the island recently. And you’re obviously good in a crisis. Can we enlist you, too?”
Dawtry sighed, conceding defeat, then gave a tight smile. “Abso-damn-lutely.”
“Great.” The captain cocked his head slightly. “No offense, but can you keep your head in the game? Focused on the mission?” His eyes darted briefly toward O’Malley, then back to Dawtry. She felt herself flush, and she saw Dawtry redden as well.
“Fair enough, Captain,” he said. “But, yes, I can.”
“Excellent. Glad to have you both. You’ll need to see the armorer for gear. We launch in one hour.”
CHAPTER 22
O’Malley waddled toward the Osprey, encumbered by the tactical vest. She was strong and fit, so the vest’s thirty pounds wasn’t the issue; the issue was its bulk. The protective plates along her sides created a Michelin Man effect, forcing her arms to angle outward, and the groin guard—a triangular pocket and protective plate dangling in front of her crotch like some primitive tribal adornment—swung and flapped and threatened to wedge itself between her thighs at every step. She tapped Dawtry’s arm, and he turned toward her, peering from beneath the brow of the combat helmet. “The groin guard,” she shouted over the whine of turbine engines and the thud of rotors. “I might have to add it to my life list of partners. I just hope it’ll respect me in the morning.”
He gave a bulked-up shrug, which caused a twitch in the rifle slung across his chest—a stubby, menacing weapon that O’Malley instinctively feared. “Way I see it, better to have the groin guard and not need it than need it and not have it.”
“Good point.” They waddled up the ramp and into the cargo bay, threading their way between two rows of marines—O’Malley counted twenty-two of them—already strapped into their seats along either side. As they passed, the marines gave them looks ranging from blank neutrality to outright scorn.
Their seats, the last two on the aircraft, were directly behind the cockpit. “Hey, we’ve been upgraded to first class,” Dawtry shouted, but neither O’Malley nor the marines within earshot cracked a smile, because they all knew that the she and Dawtry were the wild cards and the weak links. Unknown and unproven, they were more likely to be a liability than an asset—contributing little and requiring extra protection. Despite her loathing of guns, O’Malley couldn’t help envying Dawtry the weapon; it helped him fit in, look less weak. Unarmed and a woman, she was doubly suspect. It was only as she was wiggling into the seat harness that she noticed the marine sitting directly across from her: a young woman, virtually indistinguishable, except by her smaller size, from the male warrior beside her. The woman’s eyes—frank and confident—met O’Malley’s, and she flashed a thumbs-up and a smile of solidarity as the rotors dug in and the Osprey took flight.
The
aircraft flew low, skimming fifty feet above the waves. Eleven other Ospreys were in flight at the same time, O’Malley knew from the briefing—one flying alongside them, the other ten deploying to targets farther south. Two were headed for the opening of the abandoned water tunnel, which O’Malley and the seismometers had identified as the likely placement of the loose nuke. The other eight would fan out to the sites where high-resolution satellite photos showed massive pumps—US-made pumps, ironically—injecting seawater into the fault zone under intense pressure.
By loosening her shoulder straps and leaning forward, O’Malley discovered that she could see through the opening into the cockpit and out through the front windshield. At first, she saw nothing but sea and sky, but ten minutes into the flight, she caught sight of a familiar mountain surfacing from the sea, or so it seemed: an instant replay of the volcanic island’s birth eons before, this time unfolding in minutes rather than millennia.
The Osprey aimed for an opening in the coastal cliffs, one that became a deep, jagged valley—the immense, canyonlike fissure piercing the caldera’s western flank. O’Malley gasped as walls of rock reared above them, filling the windshield ahead and as far to either side as she could see. Reaching down and to the side, she felt for Dawtry’s hand, which took hold of hers and held it tight as the aircraft hurtled toward the cliffs. O’Malley noticed that her lips seemed to be moving of their own accord, and after a moment she realized that she was murmuring a prayer she hadn’t said in many years: “Hail Mary, full of grace . . .”
She closed her eyes, waiting for the Osprey’s crash into the cliffs. It did not come, and when she looked again, in response to a squeeze from Dawtry, she saw that they had ascended into heaven—or at least sufficiently heavenward to clear the cliffs and emerge above the rim of the caldera.
The radio in her helmet clicked, and she heard a dispassionate voice announce, “Rifle rifle rifle. Missile away. Time of flight, thirty seconds.” This, she knew from the briefing, was a Hellfire missile, fired from the unmanned drone. The missile’s target was the nuke that was tucked—they thought—deep in the old water tunnel. If the Hellfire succeeded in destroying the warhead, some quantity of radioactive material would be released, true, but there would be no nuclear explosion—only a conventional explosion, with a tiny fraction of the nuke’s force. A moment later, she heard a different voice say, “Tomahawks in three, two, one, impact.” The Tomahawks—cruise missiles from the submarine—had a different target: the high-pressure injection pumps that were forcing water into the fault zone. O’Malley pictured the flashes as the missiles hit; pictured the injection pumps fragmenting, pictured geysers shooting from the mountainside as pressurized water gushed from the rock.
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