Apocalypse

by Dean Crawford

  ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘Please, Captain. If you want to bring my family’s killer to justice, do as I say. Time is literally everything. Your colleague will tell you where I am, right about now.’

  The line went dead in Sears’ ear just as Rodriquez dashed to his side.

  ‘We’ve got him,’ he announced. ‘He’s at one-one-seven on Sixty-Fourth, Hallandale.’

  Sears stared at Rodriquez. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Absolutely. We’ve got units on their way already.’

  Hallandale was several miles away. Purcell might have installed a camera somewhere close by, but even then, how the hell could he have predicted the accident that twisted LeMark’s ankle?

  Rodriquez gestured to Sears’ cellphone. ‘What did he want?’

  Sears looked blankly at his cell and shook his head. He glanced up at the nearby news crew standing around their vehicle setting up to broadcast a report. Whatever the hell was going on here, Sears wasn’t about to take any chances that Purcell could see what they were doing.

  ‘We need to get to Hallandale, right now, and get that camera crew out of here. I want the media kept out of the loop until we can figure out what the hell’s going on.’

  3

  SOUTH BIMINI ISLAND, BAHAMAS

  June 27, 19:24

  ‘Bimini this is November two-seven-six-four-charlie, airborne and turning two-seven-zero in the climb.’

  Captain James MacDonald clicked off the transmit button on his control column as he pulled back on the Grumman Mallard’s controls. The foamy white spray blasting past the windshield and the rumble of water thundering beneath the fuselage gave way to smooth and subtle gyrations as the aircraft lifted off from the sparkling azure waters of the Florida Straits.

  MacDonald turned and looked out of the cockpit windshield at the distant horizon, where the sun was sinking between soaring cumulonimbus clouds that glowed like the wings of giant angels.

  ‘Always looks good, doesn’t it?’

  The voice of MacDonald’s First Officer, Sarah Gleeson, was followed by a bright smile as she gestured with a nod to the sunset as the Grumman climbed upward, its turboprop engines hauling the vintage airframe ever higher.

  ‘Sure does,’ MacDonald agreed. He scanned the horizon for other aircraft, then checked his instruments and turned onto a new heading, locking his VOR radio-navigation frequency onto Miami International Airport. ‘You’ll never get tired of this job.’

  Sarah Gleeson had joined Bimini Wings just six months before, fresh out of getting her Commercial Pilot’s License and her water-plane qualification on the Grumman Mallard. MacDonald had been tasked with seeing her through her first year of flying with the company, a task that he had undertaken happily. After thirty-four years of service he enjoyed seeing the next generation of pilots coming up through the ranks.

  He settled back into his seat, placed his flight notes in his lap and let Sarah handle the climb out and cruise. Miami was just sixty nautical miles away across the Florida Straits on their westerly heading. Sitting behind them in the passenger cabin were a dozen scientists returning home after some kind of fieldwork exercise out on the coral reefs near Bimini, probably conservationists or some such.

  ‘Last chartered trip of the afternoon,’ Sarah said. ‘You got anything planned?’

  MacDonald shook his head. ‘Back home and a long shower.’

  Sarah leveled the Grumman Mallard off at six thousand feet, MacDonald taking quiet pride in the fact that she ignored the autopilot and flew the aircraft by hand. A real pilot, not some overpaid geek trained to press buttons. He ensured that she trimmed the aircraft perfectly, then looked out over the ocean to watch the scattered clouds floating serenely past below, casting blue shadows on the crystalline ocean. Even after so many years flying in the Bahamas he still reveled in the unparalleled purity of the environment, especially on a day like today, with perfect conditions: CAVU, as they called it. Clear Air, Visibility Unlimited. Damn, even the thermal currents rising off the warm water were gentle, just swaying the wings in a—

  The aircraft lurched to the right with a violent shudder as though something had slammed into the tail. Sarah instinctively kicked hard at the left rudder as MacDonald grabbed the throttles in anticipation of a sudden updraft or downdraft.

  ‘The hell was that?’ Sarah uttered as the aircraft settled again.

  MacDonald scanned the instruments with practiced eyes, but saw nothing amiss.

  ‘Damned if I know.’

  They both looked instinctively out of the windows. With Bimini far behind and Miami just over the horizon in the glowing golden haze ahead, they may as well have been a thousand miles from anywhere.

  MacDonald held the controls with a light touch and felt the tension slip from his body as he relaxed again.

  ‘Probably just a hole in the air, happens from time to time.’

  MacDonald knew that aircraft had been known to plummet hundreds or even thousands of feet without warning when the lift beneath their wings was snatched away by invisible pockets of low pressure. Even the giant Boeing 747s weren’t immune to such volatile events . . .

  MacDonald’s train of thought slowed as he glanced at the magnetic compass on the instrument panel before him. Moments before it had been pointing rock steady at two-seven-zero degrees, dead west. Now, it was swinging gently between two-five-zero and three-zero-zero, as though unsure of itself.

  ‘You got a heading?’ he asked Sarah.

  She glanced at her own instruments and shook her head. ‘Damn, no. Gyro’s out.’

  ‘Mine too.’

  MacDonald glanced at the GPS screen used by pilots as a backup to traditional compasses, useful when dealing with multiple issues and in need of a quick position fix. But this time there was nothing to see. The screen was blank but for the No Signal message blinking urgently at them.

  ‘The hell’s going on?’ Sarah muttered, tapping the screen and pressing the reset button. The screen remained blank.

  MacDonald keyed his radio-transmit button.

  ‘Bimini, November two-seven-six-four-charlie, radio check.’

  A dull hiss of static hummed in their earphones as they exchanged a glance.

  ‘Switch to Miami Approach,’ MacDonald instructed Sarah, who dialed in the international airport’s radio frequency.

  MacDonald tried again, twice, but heard only static in response.

  ‘This isn’t good,’ Sarah murmured, looking at her instruments.

  ‘We’re not in trouble yet,’ MacDonald soothed her. He gestured ahead out of the windscreen toward the sun hovering low over the horizon. ‘Keep the sun on the nose. That way we’ll still be heading due west and should pick up the coast soon enough.’

  Sarah offered him an embarrassed smile.

  ‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘I should have thought of that.’

  MacDonald didn’t reply, instead watching as his magnetic compass began spinning ever more wildly. The secondary instruments were also beginning to lose cohesion as though tugged by unseen forces. A dread began to settle on his shoulders.

  ‘What was our last known position fix?’ he asked.

  Sarah thought for a moment. MacDonald waited for her to figure the math in her head, and tried to be patient.

  ‘Twenty-six nautical miles due east of Bimini South.’ MacDonald was making rapid mental calculations when Sarah spoke again. ‘Oh hell, we’re headed into cloud.’

  MacDonald looked up out of the windshield to see a mass of cloud ahead of them, materializing as though out of thin air. His brain struggled to resolve what he was seeing, and he realized that the towering cumulonimbus clouds on the horizon must have concealed the cloud bank directly in their flight path.

  ‘Altitude!’ he snapped as he reached down to slam the throttles wide open. ‘Get above the clouds and keep the sun in sight!’

  Sarah eased back on the control column and the Grumman Mallard climbed upward again. MacDonald looked back at his instruments a
nd saw that the artificial horizon was now spinning crazily. The most vital of all instruments. Without it they would be doomed if they flew into the cloud.

  He stared out of the windshield as a swirling vortex of dense cloud raced past the aircraft, the sunlight that had beamed into the cockpit beginning to flicker and fade.

  ‘Keep climbing!’ he shouted at Sarah. ‘Keep the sun in front of us!’

  ‘Maybe we should turn back!’

  MacDonald hesitated for a brief moment before shaking his head.

  ‘We’re more likely to find the Florida coast than Bimini, even though the island’s closer. Keep climbing!’

  MacDonald peered forward to search for the orb of the sun and felt his bowels clench as he realized that he could no longer see it. He searched desperately for the horizon as the cloud thickened around them, tinged with a weird green glow like nothing he’d ever seen before. A blue haze enveloped the wingtips and the nose of the aircraft, shimmering like an electrified sparkler. St Elmo’s Fire. He recognized the bizarre effect once feared by sailors in storms – electromagnetic fields hovering around the aircraft – and a sickening fear lurched through his guts as he realized that he had absolutely no idea what was happening.

  A surge of G-force crushed him into his seat and he heard Sarah cry out as the Mallard plunged from the sky as though being dragged by a giant fist down through the clouds. MacDonald grabbed the control column and struggled to pull the nose of the aircraft up again.

  Then, all at once, he saw the flight notes in his lap shoot upward past his face to land on the cockpit ceiling above his head. For a moment his brain could not understand what he had witnessed, and then it hit him in a moment of pure terror. They were inverted and already out of control.

  ‘Altitude! Altitude!’ he shouted to Sarah.

  He heard shouts of alarm from their passengers as people and equipment were hurled around the fuselage as the aircraft spiraled down through the sky.

  ‘I’ve got nothing!’ Sarah screamed back, holding the throttles to the firewall. ‘All primary instruments have failed!’

  The turboprop engines wailed as the Grumman Mallard plummeted out of control, the instruments whirling uselessly and the horizon lost in a thick swirling fog that enveloped the entire aircraft in an electrically charged halo.

  MacDonald reached out, his arm fighting against G-forces far greater than the aged aircraft was designed to take, and flipped an intercom switch to hear his own voice trembling in his earphones as he cried out.

  ‘This is your captain speaking! Brace for impact! Brace for imp—’

  A flare of golden sunlight burst through the cockpit as it reflected off a perfect blue sea, and for a brief instant James MacDonald believed that they had a chance. Then he saw that they were barely a hundred feet above the rolling waves. The glittering surface of the ocean raced toward his screen at two hundred miles per hour and then smashed through the thick glass to greet him.

  4

  CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

  June 28, 07:15

  ‘I’m right behind him, stand by.’

  Ethan Warner sat back casually and watched the nearby freeway from his vantage point in a service alley between a Taco Bell and a hardware store. The breeze from the passing traffic ruffled his light brown hair as his gray eyes squinted into the early morning sunlight. The disembodied voice of his partner, Nicola Lopez, sounded in the earpiece and microphone he wore.

  ‘Turning right onto South Lake Shore, southbound.’

  ‘Copy that,’ he replied. ‘Remember not to get too close. You know what happened last time.’

  ‘It was just your fender, let it go asshole.’

  Ethan smiled quietly to himself as he spotted Lopez’s sports car, a bright yellow convertible Lotus Seven, zip into view a quarter mile away as it joined the freeway. Ethan glanced ahead of it and saw a large silver GMC Yukon suddenly swerve out of a line of traffic and accelerate away from her.

  ‘He’s made me!’

  Ethan sighed. Nicola Lopez was a 29-year-old Latino with long black hair who looked hot no matter what she was doing. She caught attention from most all guys, and unfortunately the driver of the GMC knew them both well enough to have recognized her the moment she let her enthusiasm and desire for money get in the way of her professionalism.

  ‘I can see you. I’m on my way.’

  Ethan reached out and flicked a switch. An engine growled into life beneath him as he kicked the Erik Buell 1190RS superbike into gear, the twin-cylinder symphony echoing down the narrow alley like rolling drums. The Yukon and the Lotus raced past in front of him as Ethan slipped the clutch and the superbike surged out of the alleyway and turned in pursuit. Frantic acceleration yanked on Ethan’s arms as he twisted the throttle and the motorcycle raced up through sixty, seventy, eighty, the front wheel leaving the ground.

  Ethan eased the bike around Lopez’s accelerating Lotus, just able to hear the roar of her car’s engine above his own as he raced past and crossed the lane in front of her.

  He focused on the Yukon ahead as it swerved past traffic in an effort to escape the yellow car behind. The driver’s attention was all on Lopez as she whipped the Lotus left and right in an effort to pass.

  Ethan aimed for a gap between the Yukon and the central reservation and wound the superbike’s throttle open as he screamed through the narrow space, the howl of the engine vibrating through his chest. He glanced left as he came alongside the Yukon and saw the bulky shaven head of Hayden Decker glaring at him from the driver’s seat. Two-time bail jumper, $18,000 bond, manslaughter charges. Decker was worth a lot of cash to Lopez and Ethan.

  Decker, one side of his face smeared with a huge purple spider-web tattoo, shot Ethan a savage grin. His mouth sparkled with gold as he span the Yukon’s wheel toward the motorbike.

  Ethan twisted the Buell’s throttle and thundered clear as the Yukon narrowly missed his rear wheel and slammed into the central reservation to spray a blossoming fireball of sparks into the air. Ethan peered into his rear-view mirror and saw Decker wrestle the vehicle back under control. Lopez’s voice chortled in his ear.

  ‘Very James Bond, but I can’t get by him and if you brake he’ll plough straight through you.’

  Ethan scanned the traffic around him, judged the distance to the next vehicle as 100 yards, and made his decision. He stamped the Buell down a gear and reveled in the wail of the engine as he raced away from the Yukon until the big vehicle was a small black spot in the center of his mirror.

  ‘Where the hell are you going?’ Lopez asked in confusion.

  Ethan grinned as the wind howled like a banshee past his face. The past few years of his life had been almost entirely loathsome, the months and years grinding past beneath a crushing burden of repressed grief. The disappearance of his journalist fiancée Joanna Defoe from the Gaza Strip years before had left in its wake a chilling vacuum in his soul, devoid of passion, scoured of hope. Learning that she had not died in Gaza had somehow been both a blessing and a curse, for the mystery of her disappearance had only deepened further. It had been whilst hunting for her that he had encountered former Washington Police Detective Nicola Lopez, and if nothing else had happened since, his work with her had brought him back from the abyss. He hadn’t felt so alive since he’d rappelled out of a US Marines CH-47 over Afghanistan, straight into a Taliban ambush.

  Ethan closed the throttle and squeezed the brakes hard. The Buell’s forks dove toward the ground as the rear wheel soared into the air behind him. Ethan leaned back to keep the weight central as the superbike shuddered to a halt in the center of the freeway. He kicked the side-stand down and climbed from the saddle, then turned and faced the Yukon bearing down on him from sixty yards away.

  Ethan strolled forward, the sound of the big engine roaring closer with Lopez’s Lotus just behind it. He stood in the center of the freeway and watched Hayden Decker’s craggy features rush toward him behind the screen.

  ‘Ethan?’

  Ethan grinned
as he saw Decker’s face screw up in confusion.

  ‘Drop your anchor, Nicola, now!’

  The Lotus’s wheels locked up in a cloud of blue smoke as Lopez stamped on the brakes. Ethan reached beneath his leather jacket and whipped out a Beretta M9 9mm pistol. The weapon had been the standard-issue sidearm of the Marine Corps in Ethan’s day, and he had liked the weapon despite concerns about its stopping power. Compact, light and easy to use, he kept one for what he liked to call ‘special occasions’. Ethan dropped onto one knee and aimed double-handed. He squeezed once and a single shot recoiled the pistol with a sharp crack.

  The Yukon’s front nearside tire folded upon itself as the big truck swerved violently to one side and slammed again into the reservation, grinding metal against metal in a screeching cacophony. Ethan stood his ground as the Yukon shuddered along the reservation and came to rest ten yards away, Decker’s door pinned against the metal railings. Ethan saw him scramble across to the passenger door and kick it open before tumbling from the vehicle as Lopez screeched to a halt somewhere behind the Yukon.

  Ethan dashed forward and aimed the pistol at Decker.

  ‘Get down, stay still!’

  Decker ignored him and stood upright, over six feet tall and 250 pounds of muscle bursting from a white vest. He glared at Ethan without concern.

  ‘What, you goin’ down for homicide too? You can shoot a tire, Warner, but you can’t shoot me.’

  Ethan lowered the pistol.

  ‘Got that right,’ he agreed. Decker squinted at him and then turned to run.

  He made a single pace before Lopez’s elbow ploughed into his solar plexus with a dull thump that made Ethan wince. Decker doubled over with a strangled gasp as Lopez span gracefully on one heel, ducked down and stabbed a boot across the inside of the big man’s knee. Decker quivered and toppled like a fallen tree before slamming down onto the asphalt. Lopez whipped her cuffs out and thrust one knee deep into Decker’s back as she forced the restraints around his thick wrists. She looked up at Ethan’s Beretta.