Day of Doom

by David Baldacci

  Evan and Ian took turns telling Phoenix all that had happened while he had been a hostage.

  Evan said, “We haven’t heard back from Amy and the others yet. But I e-mailed them about hearing from you. They know we’re out here. I’m sure they’ll be here soon.”

  Ian studied Phoenix. “You’re sure that the hostages are okay? And Natalie?”

  “Everyone is sort of like me. Hungry, dirty, dinged up, but okay. Well, Nellie got shot. But she’s okay, too.”

  Evan’s phone buzzed. He looked at the long text, his eyes widening as he did so.

  “Amy and the others were attacked in DC by Isabel and her goons. They barely got out alive.”

  Ian groaned. “God, I hate my mother. What happened?”

  Evan read over the text once more and explained why the others were in DC.

  “They went there when we told them Isabel was on her way to Washington,” he added.

  “But Lewis and Clark’s compass?” Ian said curiously. “My mother was interested in that? Why?”

  “Amy doesn’t say. She also says that they think Riley McGrath is Vesper One, but that’s not his real name.”

  “Well, we know that,” said Ian. “We found out about him when we hacked Sinead’s e-mails. Riley McGrath was a park ranger. And he’s dead. Vesper One just assumed his identity. Doesn’t really help us much. He probably has lots of identities.”

  “She also said that Hamilton and Jonah are on their way here. We’re to wait and meet them.”

  “Jonah is coming?” said Phoenix. He idolized his famous cousin, though he didn’t think much of his songwriting abilities. In that, he wasn’t alone. Many people, while acknowledging that Jonah had a great voice, didn’t like his songs. But millions of others did, so he was a superstar. It was just how the world worked.

  “Yes. And they might get here faster than we did. Jonah has his own plane.”

  “We have to hurry,” said Phoenix. “Right now all the hostages are okay, but that might change.”

  They both looked at him.

  Evan said slowly, “Uh, Phoenix, I guess you don’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  Evan looked at Ian, who said quietly, “Alistair is dead, Phoenix. I’m sorry.”

  Phoenix looked at both of them, small clusters of tears gathering in his eyes. “Alistair’s dead?” He looked like he might start sobbing. “But he was okay the last time I saw him.”

  “I’m sure he was,” said Ian. “I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you.”

  “He might have just given up,” said Evan quietly. “Sometimes people do.”

  Phoenix covered his face with his hands and wept softly. Evan looked nervously around the restaurant to see if anyone was watching, but luckily no one was. He dipped a napkin in his glass of water and gave it to Phoenix to wipe his face.

  “I know it’s hard, Phoenix. But we have to keep moving on, to help the other hostages.”

  Ian was about to say something else when he looked up and said, “That was extraordinarily fast.”

  The others turned and saw Hamilton and Jonah rush in, spot them, and head their way.

  They all hugged one another and shook hands. Phoenix gave Jonah a particularly hard squeeze and the international superstar hugged him back just as tightly.

  “Good to see you, big guy,” said Jonah.

  “Yeah,” said Phoenix happily, the tears still shiny on his face.

  “How’d you get here so fast?” asked Ian.

  “Private wings,” said Hamilton. “It’s definitely something I could get used to.”

  “Was it really bumpy?” asked Evan.

  Jonah said, “Yeah. I thought we were going to crash a couple of times. I asked the pilot about it. He said his instruments went nuts. He finally had to fly and then land the plane manually, and even then he said it was a nightmare.”

  They all sat and Evan filled them in on what they knew.

  “Aren’t you Jonah Wizard?”

  They all looked up at the tall, plump, middle-aged waitress who stood in front of them.

  Jonah inwardly groaned as she gazed at him in adoration. But he smiled and said convincingly, “Actually, I get that a lot. But I’m not Jonah Wizard. Can’t even carry a tune.”

  “Really?” she said, though her tone was not disappointed. “I think you are Jonah Wizard.” She turned to the others. “And you’re Evan and Ian and Hamilton and of course poor little Phoenix.”

  They all stared up at her in astonishment.

  She pulled aside her apron, revealing a gun in her right hand.

  “And that’s a Cobra .45 semiautomatic chambered with wicked Silvertip ordnance that will blow very large holes in all of you. So unless you want extra perforations in your heads, I suggest you quietly follow me outside. Now!”

  The boys stood and walked outside with the waitress trailing them.

  There was a van parked there. In the driver’s seat was Casper Wyoming. Sandy was in the passenger seat.

  “Excellent work, Cheyenne,” he said.

  “Cheyenne!” exclaimed Ian as he glanced back at her.

  She whipped off her wig, popped out colored contact lenses, and spit out cotton balls from her mouth. “A little body padding to add twenty pounds, face putty to make wrinkles, and voilà, even someone beautiful can be made to look ugly,” she said.

  “You are ugly,” shot back Phoenix. “On the inside.”

  She grabbed his collar and threw him in the van.

  She pointed her gun at the others. “Get in. Now!”

  They all climbed in and Cheyenne shut the door. The van’s windows were tinted so no one could see them. Casper drove off, while Sandy covered the others with his gun. Cheyenne used zip cuffs to bind the guys’ hands. Then she put hoods over their heads so they couldn’t see where they were going.

  “Excellent,” said Sandy. “I’m impressed with how well our little operation went. But then again, the opposition was particularly amateurish and thus underwhelming.” He looked at Ian. “You know, Ian, your mother would be so disappointed that you turned against the Kabra family.”

  “She’s not part of our family. Not anymore,” snapped Ian.

  “Excellent,” said Sandy again. “It’s so much easier to kill non–family members.”

  By prearrangement Amy and Dan met up with Jake and Atticus at the hotel in DC where they were staying. When Amy told Jake and Atticus how she had nearly died, Jake paled, rose from his seat, and put his arms around her.

  “Ames, that was way too close.”

  “I’d be dead if it weren’t for my supersmart little brother,” said Amy, gazing at Dan, but hugging Jake.

  Jake released Amy and shook Dan’s hand. “We all owe you big for that one, Dan.”

  “Hey, she’s my sister. She doesn’t get to leave me by myself. I’ve got years left to make her life miserable.”

  Amy could tell that Dan was saying this just to lighten the moment, to put firmly in the past how close he’d come to losing her. Well, she thought, he was mostly doing it for that. Little brothers were little brothers, after all. And at times he certainly did make her life miserable. But he had also just saved it. So he could make her as miserable as he wanted.

  Amy looked at Jake. “How did you guys get away?”

  “Those dudes were big but slow,” said Jake. “They ran out of gas after half a mile. Some bad guys. Isabel needs to hire fitter criminals.”

  Amy sat down. “Okay, I texted Evan what happened to us in DC and about Riley McGrath possibly being Vesper One. Hopefully, they’ve reached Phoenix by now. But we need to move on fast. Jake, let’s see the pictures you took of the compass again.”

  Jake pulled out his phone and brought the photos up.

  “Can you enlarge them?” asked Amy.

  “Coming up,” replied Jake. He hit some keys and the pictures swelled.

  Dan eyed one photo and said, “I don’t see anything remarkable. It just looks like an old compass.”

 
He brought up the photos he’d taken and stared at them one after another. “Nothing.”

  “Isabel would not have come all this way just to look at an old compass,” said Amy. “There has to be something. Let’s see the back.”

  Jake hit another key and the next photo came up on the screen. It was the back of the compass box.

  Amy said, “Okay, there are the numbers. The ones that Dr. Gwinn said no one had figured out.”

  “Right,” said Atticus. “Maybe there’s something there. My mother obviously wanted us to find out about this compass.”

  “Can you make them larger?” Amy asked Jake.

  He made the numbers as big as possible.

  They all stared at them.

  Amy said, “Okay, that looks to be a four and a seven.”

  “And the letter M or N,” added Dan.

  Atticus squinted. “That’s a twelve,” he said, pointing to a number just below the four and seven. “At least I think so.”

  Dan said, “And a number one after it. So one twenty-one.”

  Amy said, “I think so. And there’s a letter behind the one twenty-one. Looks to be a W.”

  Atticus said, “Okay, to recap we have forty-seven and the letter M or N. And a one-two-one with a minus sign. And the letter W. What does that tell us?”

  He looked at the others. Jake shrugged. Amy looked uncertain.

  Dan, however, was on his laptop. “When in doubt, let’s go to the web,” he muttered.

  He put in the information they had and hit the SEARCH key.

  He looked up, smiling sarcastically. “Only one billion, nine hundred and sixty-three million, four hundred and seventy-nine thousand, eight hundred and sixteen possibilities. I should be able to get through them in the next seven thousand, eight hundred and fourteen years. Just sit tight and call up lots of room service.”

  Atticus suddenly looked excited. “Dan, search for the map coordinates of the Cascade Mountain Range.”

  Amy said, “Why the —” She blinked. “Right, I get it; Dan, quick, do it.”

  Dan was already punching the keys on his laptop. It took only a few seconds.

  He looked up this time in genuine triumph. “Forty-seven degrees north latitude and one hundred twenty-one degrees west longitude is the exact location of the Cascade Mountain Range. So the letter was an N for north, and not an M!”

  Atticus added, “That confirms what we learned from Phoenix. That must be where the hostages are.”

  “And the Cascades have a massive subduction zone,” added Jake. “We already knew that. Perfect for the Vespers’ Doomsday device.”

  Dan said, “See, Amy, we should’ve just gone directly there without wasting time in DC.”

  Amy replied, “No, we’ve now confirmed what Phoenix told us. And even though I nearly died, it was worth it to see the look on Isabel’s face when I told her she would never be Vesper One.”

  “You must have really made her mad,” said Dan.

  “Oh, I did. But that’s not the only reason I did it. But forget her. We need to get to the West Coast as fast as possible. We’ll hook up with the others, save the hostages, and destroy the Doomsday device.”

  “And nail the Vespers,” Dan reminded her.

  “Never fear, little brother, I would never forget that important detail.”

  Atticus looked confused. “But why would Isabel have gone to DC to figure out where the hostages and the Doomsday device are? Wouldn’t she already know?”

  “Not if Vesper One is keeping things from her,” said Amy with a smile. “And that might just work out to our advantage.” She looked at Dan. “Call the airline and get us tickets on the next flight out to Washington State.”

  Dan got on the phone with his credit card ready. But the lines were jammed. He couldn’t get through. He tried ten times with five different airlines. He slammed the phone down in frustration.

  Meanwhile, Jake had turned on the TV in the room. After a minute of watching a late-breaking news story he said, “Amy, I think I know why we can’t get through to the airlines. Look.”

  Amy turned to stare at the screen. After a few seconds seeing what was unfolding all over the country, her spirits sank. They weren’t going to be able to get to the West Coast after all.

  At least not via plane.

  Staring at the TV screen, Amy learned that all air traffic in the world had been grounded because of a number of near-crashes. The mishaps had been because of failure of the planes’ avionics systems. Since it was inconceivable that all of the planes’ avionics would fail on the same day, the authorities had checked for other causes. They had quickly determined that changes in the magnetic fields of the Earth had taken place. And those changes were causing potentially catastrophic interference with pilots’ ability to control their aircraft, which depended on stable magnetic fields.

  Dan looked at Amy. Amy looked at Dan. Atticus and Jake stared at them both.

  Dan said, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Amy slowly nodded. “A change in the Earth’s magnetic fields. That means there must have been some significant disruption in the magnetic poles. That could only mean . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Dan swallowed with difficulty. “Either aliens are about to eat us, or the Vespers have already begun to activate their Doomsday device.”

  Atticus said calmly, “Since the Earth is still here I think the key phrase is ‘begun to activate.’ If they had triggered it fully, we would see far more catastrophic results.”

  “Oh, goody,” snapped Dan. “I can’t wait for the far more catastrophic results.”

  “Att means we still have a shot at stopping things,” said Jake. “Remember Vesper One got the gear and other stuff in New York. He had to get out to the West Coast and put it together in the device. That takes time.”

  “Time we’re obviously running out of,” said Amy. “Like Atticus said, the activation process has begun. Planes were flying just fine earlier. I saw them in the sky.”

  “But we still might have a shot,” said Jake.

  “Oh, really?” said Amy. “How? How do we get out to the West Coast and stop them if we can’t fly? You want us to ride a bike? Take a cab? Board a FREAKING bus? It’ll take forever. Vesper One already sent us that link with the hostages. He’s planning to kill them. He probably already has killed them. What’s to stop him?”

  Atticus pushed his glasses farther up his nose from where they had slid down and said, “I think he wants us to be there when it happens.”

  “What?” said Amy.

  “I THINK HE WANTS US TO BE THERE WHEN IT HAPPENS,” shouted Atticus.

  “I heard you,” said Amy. “I just don’t understand you.”

  “Vesper One is highly intelligent, determined, and forceful,” stated Atticus.

  “He’s also ruthless, murderous, and he probably has really bad BO,” shot back Dan.

  “Granted,” said Atticus. “But he’s also highly competitive, even megalomaniacal, like most of the Vespers. He’s been giving us clues and hints and tidbits of his plans throughout this whole ordeal. He’s been using us, essentially, to get what he needed to build the Doomsday device.”

  “And he succeeded,” snapped Dan. “We got him everything he needed. He built it. He’s pulled the trigger on it. He doesn’t need us or the hostages anymore.”

  “But now, right as he’s about to perform the final act on his little world-destruction plan, the only thing missing is us. His opponents in all this. He needs us as part of the final act. So he can not only rub our noses in it but kill us at the same time. It’s just what the Vespers do.”

  “I still don’t think —” began Amy.

  “He didn’t need to send us that link with the hostages, Amy,” interrupted Atticus. “He’d already won, or so he thinks. So why did he?”

  “Just his way of, like you said, rubbing our noses in it.”

  “It was a link, Amy. It wasn’t a real-time transmission. Which means that Vesper One had time to
look at it before it went out to us. Now, I recognized pretty much right away that Ted was using his blinking as Morse code to convey information to us. Do you really think Vesper One, as smart as he is, failed to see that, too? But he still let the link go out. So I’m thinking that the initial activation of the device was done to alert us that time was running out. Of course Vesper One’s ego won’t let him even consider the possibility that if we do get there, we’ll be smart enough to beat him. But make no mistake, he wants us there.”

  They all stood there looking stunned by this theory.

  Atticus added, “And also keep in mind that no one alive has actually seen what the Doomsday device Archimedes designed can do. Vesper One thinks he’s figured it out, but even he will have to exercise some degree of caution. It will take him some time to test it.”

  Dan said, “You know, Amy, what Atticus is saying actually makes sense.”

  Amy slowly nodded. “I’m starting to think the same thing. So if he’s waiting for us to appear —”

  Jake finished for her, “— then that might give us the one chance we need to beat him.”

  “But how do we get to the West Coast?” said Amy.

  Dan had continued working on his laptop while they were discussing things. “The train,” he announced.

  “The train?” exclaimed Amy. “You can take a train across the country?”

  “Actually, it requires two trains. The Capitol Limited from right here in DC. It goes to Chicago. Leaves this afternoon at five and gets into Chicago tomorrow morning. Then we take a second train from Chicago to Seattle. That takes forty-six hours.”

  “Forty-six hours!” cried out Amy.

  “In the interest of full disclosure it’s actually forty-six hours and ten minutes,” amended Dan.

  “I can fly around the world in forty-six hours and ten minutes,” barked Amy.

  “The operative word being fly,” said Atticus.

  Dan looked at his sister. “What other option do we have?”

  Her face took on a resolute look. “Buy the tickets, Dan.” She looked at her watch. “We’ll have just enough time to catch this Capitol Limited train thingy.”