Apocalypse

by Dean Crawford

  ‘We did what we could under extremely difficult circumstances.’ Ethan glanced at Lopez. ‘Sometimes you just can’t keep these things entirely under the radar.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Jarvis murmured. ‘Abraham Mitchell has insisted that in this case I accompany you on your investigation and provide a full report on your methods.’

  Ethan knew Abraham Mitchell, Director of the DIA, as a towering pillar of patriotism and not a man he would cross lightly. But placing Jarvis in the line of fire was an uncharacteristically reckless gesture. Christ, he was in his sixties. Ethan stared at the old man. ‘No offense, but that could slow us down, Doug.’

  ‘Wasn’t my decision,’ Jarvis said with a shrug. ‘I’m too damned old to be charging about, but I can oversee and hopefully justify your work to Command.’ He leaned forward in his seat. ‘Fact is, I gave up a great deal in order to get this department of the DIA sanctioned and provided with both a budget and trust. After what happened in New Mexico, there’s concern that you’re unable to maintain a discreet profile.’

  ‘We get results,’ Lopez challenged.

  ‘You do,’ Jarvis conceded. ‘But if the cost is too high then this whole thing will be over and I’ll be looking at retirement, so let’s just play the game the way the high and mighty want to, and see what comes up. Right now, our priority is getting down to Miami the fastest way possible.’

  A shadow of concern fell across Lopez’s features. ‘Just how fast are you thinking?’

  7

  LOIZA, PUERTO RICO

  June 28, 07:31

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  Joaquin Abell stood on a roof on the outskirts of what was one of the poorest towns, in one of the poorest nations, in the western world, and surveyed the scene of utter devastation lining the shores of the Rio Grande de Loiza river. He smoothed down his glossy black hair and straightened his tie. His expensive suit, a blue so dark it almost seemed black, contrasted sharply with the dust-coated piles of shattered rubble beneath him.

  A handful of television crews from international networks focused their lenses on him as he slowly turned on the spot and took in the entire panorama.

  The magnitude-7 earthquake had hit just twelve hours previously, the mysterious depths of the Puerto Rico Trench that surrounded the island shuddering with a force equivalent to innumerable nuclear explosions as the strain on tectonic plates far beneath the earth’s surface had been released in a spasm of seismic energy. Joaquin knew that the Puerto Rico Trench was a unique geological formation due to plate subduction, and one that geologists had for decades been predicting would produce a major quake. Warnings of increased seismic activity in the Caribbean had gone largely unheeded by the population and the world at large, and now the consequences were writ bare upon the landscape.

  The roof on which he stood was only four feet off the ground, the building having collapsed in a cloud of fractured masonry. Seventy school children and their teachers had been entombed in the debris, none had survived. Beyond, the roads were churned like the desiccated plates of a dry river bed, immense chunks of asphalt split and upturned to expose the raw soil deep beneath them. The palm trees lining the roads had been torn from their roots to block what little access to the town remained. Across the landscape, dotted amongst the handful of standing trees, was a barren wasteland of collapsed houses and apartment blocks, drifting clouds of cement dust churned by countless desperate hands clawing to locate family members suffocating in their macabre tombs.

  But worse even than the collapsed buildings were the now-silent rivers of mud encrusted with lethal shards of splintered wood and debris, and upturned and half-buried vehicles lodged like discarded toys, filled with unmoving bodies that were already beginning to rot in the sweltering heat. The sullen gray sky above seemed to reflect the somber mood in the town, which had been destroyed overnight by the savage power of the tsunami that had engulfed it minutes after the quake.

  Joaquin turned to face the cameras. A silent, motionless throng of local citizens and emergency-response teams, their faces and clothes caked in grime and blood, stared up at him, their faces rigid with the paralysis of shock.

  ‘This, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when people fail to act in the defense and support of their neighbors,’ Joaquin said, his voice sounding muted in the listless, muggy heat. ‘This is what happens when lack of investment, lack of infrastructure and lack of political will strands a population in poverty and exposes them to nature’s wrath. These people could have been helped: instead they were abandoned by our government, by their government, by us all.’

  Abell, his flawlessly tanned skin sheened by the heat, gestured to a brilliant white helicopter that had landed nearby on what had once been the school playground. The craft was emblazoned with a bright blue logo: IRIS.

  ‘It is for just this reason that International Rescue and Infrastructure Support was founded, the legacy of my father’s success, to go where our hallowed leaders fear to tread, to provide the kind of support that politicians have proven themselves too conservative, too greedy, to give. It will take the United Nations weeks to even begin to organize the humanitarian effort necessary to lift the people of this island nation out of their tragedy.’ Joaquin directed a stern gaze at the cameras and pointed down at the churned earth beneath their feet. ‘I’ll put four hundred trained experts on the ground here and ten million dollars into the rebuilding of this country before the sun goes down tonight!’

  From behind the camera crews a meager crowd of locals gave a muted cheer, their ragged clothes and weary faces blossoming with new hope as translators gave them Joaquin Abell’s good news.

  ‘There are some thirty-five million people living here in Puerto Rico and the surrounding islands,’ Abell went on, ‘all low-lying territories vulnerable to both earthquakes and tsunamis. Despite all of the natural disasters that have occurred around the world in recent years, from Aceh to Haiti, despite all of the warnings, still world governments wait until tens of thousands of people are maimed and killed before they even begin to act. Already there are reports that this disaster alone, when disease and starvation from lack of resources are taken into account, will result in the loss of up to one hundred thousand lives.’

  A voice called out from among the reporters.

  ‘What makes you think that you can make a difference? IRIS is a powerful company, but you can’t change the world in one stroke.’

  A lance of irritation pierced Abell’s studied calm. It was followed by a vision of the late, great Isaac Abell: upstanding, proud, his jacket buttoned tight along with his collar, a pipe jutting from beneath his neatly trimmed moustache. His words echoed through Joaquin’s mind. No man can do everything son, but all men can make a difference.

  Isaac Abell had been a product of a generation more noble than that which had inherited the earth, a man of rigid principles and immaculate morals. Born just early enough to witness the unspeakable horror of the rise of the Kaiser and the First World War, when millions of young lives had been lost in senseless slaughter amidst trenches of freezing French mud, Isaac Abell had returned home from those bitter killing fields aged just twenty-one. As he had related to his son a thousand times, he had sworn that he would devote his life to the task of learning, not killing. Within a few years he had become a physicist and a brilliant star in the dawning of the atomic age.

  And then his worst fears had been realized, as once again Europe was torn apart in the wake of the Third Reich’s rise to power. When the United States dropped the world’s first atomic weapon on Hiroshima, Isaac Abell was transformed from a valiant champion of scientific endeavor into an embittered recluse consumed by the conviction that mankind was incapable of saving itself from an endless abyss of self-destruction.

  ‘You’re not the Pope,’ another reporter pointed out, breaking Joaquin’s somber reverie.

  Abell smiled as the images of his father vanished, whipped away by an uncaring wind sweeping in from the nearby ocean.
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  ‘Thankfully, no, I am not,’ Joaquin replied. ‘Because I deal in reality, not fantasy. The difference that IRIS can make is to show the world, to show those who govern our world, that it is beneficial to help our fellow human beings without reserve, without thought to the consequences, because if we help each other then we become greater than the sum of our parts. Why wait? Why debate whether or not we can afford to help? Why debate anything at all when people are dying, right now, right here? Would you prefer that we delay, sir?’

  The reporter said nothing in reply and Joaquin Abell surveyed the watching, growing crowds.

  ‘It’s just as my rocket-scientist father once said: it’s not rocket science,’ Joaquin continued, and was rewarded with faint chuckles from the news crews. ‘Either we move without hesitation, without compromise, without condition, to the aid of our fellow human beings, or we leave these people to rot whilst we in the wealthiest countries worry ourselves over which restaurant we’re going to dine in tonight. I’m going to provide the funds that these people need to save themselves, so if you’ll excuse me ladies and gentlemen . . .’

  A ripple of applause clattered amongst the Puerto Ricans, many of whom crowded around Joaquin as his last words were translated, their skeletal hands patting his back and clouding his suit in dust as he climbed carefully down off the collapsed roof of the school.

  Joaquin reached up and brushed the dust from his shoulders as a swarm of his personal staff huddled protectively around him. One, a striking red-haired woman called Sandra, who had been his personal assistant for the past ten years, strode to his side and held out a thick wad of papers.

  ‘Court orders from Mexico, blocking our donations to the rebuilding of wells in the southern territories. They’re citing unspecified health-and-safety concerns.’

  ‘Build them anyway,’ Abell replied briskly as they walked. ‘What can they do, sue us?’

  Sandra flipped the page over and selected another.

  ‘We’re also getting obstruction from landowners in Aceh, who want to build hotels on the land destroyed by the tsunami in 2004. What should we do?’

  ‘Tell them that if they don’t back off, I’ll buy the controlling share of their hotel chains and then raze them to the ground. They don’t own the land, the people do. Get our people in Singapore onto it – they know the legal terrain out there.’

  Sandra produced another file.

  ‘And New Orleans? We’re still bogged down by the new wave of building regulations being enforced by the mayor. If we’re pushed out, you know that they’ll build malls rather than replace the homes destroyed by the hurricane.’

  Joaquin considered for a moment.

  ‘Get the people to rally, in their thousands. Organize something really visual and let IRIS pick up the bill for it. If the mayor doesn’t fold he’ll probably lose office over it. People-power, Sandra, is sometimes more effective than lobbying Congress.’

  Sandra was about to answer when her cell trilled. She picked it up immediately, and Joaquin turned away as two noisy children bounded toward him, delight on their faces. Joaquin knelt down on the debris-strewn road as Jacob and Merriel leapt into his arms. At four and six years respectively, they seemed oblivious to the tragedy around them.

  ‘How are my two firecrackers?’ Joaquin asked, holding them tightly.

  Behind them, Joaquin saw his wife glide up the road, dressed in a smart charcoal suit and with her long auburn hair flowing like liquid velvet across her shoulders. Katherine smiled at him as she picked her way through the debris, and as he picked up the two children she leaned in and kissed him on his cheek.

  ‘How did it go?’ she asked.

  ‘As well as can be expected,’ Joaquin replied. ‘Let’s hope that when the government sees the news tonight, they’ll be provoked to get off their asses and start doing something about what’s happened down here. We need investment, not debate.’

  Katherine smiled.

  ‘I know you’ll get it.’

  Before he could reply Sandra tapped him on the shoulder, a phone to her ear and a concerned expression on her face. Joaquin set his children down beside their mother and joined Sandra as she beckoned him discreetly to one side.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Joaquin asked.

  ‘There’s been an accident,’ Sandra whispered. ‘One of our planes crashed in the Bahamas yesterday evening. I’m afraid there were no survivors.’

  8

  SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, ST CLAIRE COUNTY, ILLINOIS

  June 28, 07:48

  ‘You’re not serious.’

  Lopez stared at the drab olive overalls as she pulled them on, along with the heavy black boots and the over-suit festooned with tubes and cables.

  Ethan yanked on his flight suit and was handed a helmet with a glossy black mirrored visor, oxygen mask and a pair of fire-retardant gloves. He watched as Lopez struggled into her own flight suit and then followed as an ensign directed them out of the building in which they stood and into the bright sunshine. The sound of countless jet engines whined, and Ethan saw a giant KC-135 re-fuelling tanker slip off the runway and soar into the clear blue sky. But it was not the big aircraft lining the servicing area that caught his attention.

  Two sleek, angular fighter jets sat on the tarmac awaiting them, technicians swarming around the craft as they approached. Jarvis gestured to them.

  ‘F-15E Eagles from the 85th Test and Evaluation Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida,’ he said. ‘Requisitioned by me to ensure a swift arrival on site. I’ll follow you down on an Air Force transport and brief you when you’re airborne on a secure channel.’

  Ethan stared at the fearsome-looking aircraft and then at the two female pilots awaiting them. Ethan raised a surprised eyebrow.

  ‘You got a problem with women drivers?’ Lopez challenged. ‘Man up.’

  A woman almost a foot shorter than Ethan, who looked no more than twenty-five, her blonde hair tied in a neat ponytail, extended a hand to him.

  ‘Captain Emma Rawlings,’ she said, smiling brightly. ‘I’ll be your pilot for today. If you’d like to get aboard?’

  Ethan nodded, lost for words as he climbed the ladder beside the cockpit and clambered in. A bewildering array of dials, switches, television screens and lights faced him on the control panel as a crewman strapped him into the ejection seat. He looked across at Lopez, who was being strapped into the other aircraft, and saw her make the sign of a crucifix across her chest as her pilot closed the canopy and began starting the Eagle’s engines.

  Ethan wasn’t afraid of flying. Throughout his time with the Marines, both in training and on deployment in Afghanistan and Iraq, he had flown in various types of aircraft – CH-47 Chinooks, Black Hawks, Hercules and Super Stallions, to name but a few. But they were all helicopters. This was a fighter jet, the real deal, the kind he’d seen screaming overhead in battle zones, dropping ordnance powerful enough to vaporize small villages.

  The canopy on Ethan’s F-15 closed and he heard a distant whining sound as the turbofan engines started. Captain Rawlings fired off a quick broadside of radio commands to the control tower, and within minutes they were priority taxiing to the active runway right behind Lopez’s aircraft. The two jets lined up on the runway in a tight formation and then, with another barked command, Captain Rawlings eased the throttles forward. A distant roar erupted from somewhere behind Ethan and he saw bright jets of flame blast from the nearby Eagle’s exhausts as it thundered down the runway, its wingtip mere feet from that of his own aircraft. A terrific acceleration pinned Ethan into his ejection seat as the jets roared along the dark asphalt, and then suddenly both aircraft lifted off the runway, undercarriages rolling up as they climbed steeply away from the airfield in close formation. A scattering of cumulus cloud shot past them as Ethan saw the altimeter spin through five thousand feet.

  ‘Jesus,’ he uttered, his voice distorted by both the aircraft’s intercom system and his tightly fitting oxygen mask, ‘that would have taken two hours in an a
irliner.’

  Captain Rawlings’ voice chortled back to him over the radio.

  ‘We were being gentle,’ she replied. ‘We only use minimum afterburner when we take off in formation.’

  Ethan watched as Lopez’s aircraft led them up through the cloud layers to twenty thousand feet, the long teardrop canopy of the F-15 affording him a vertiginous view of the world below, hazy fields and glittering towns beneath a scattered patchwork of small clouds trailing shadows. The other F-15 was so close he felt as though he could reach out and touch it as it bobbed and weaved on the wind currents as the east coast passed by beneath them.

  Ethan saw Lopez’s F-15 drift away out of formation until it was a silvery speck on the hazy band of the horizon.

  ‘Where are they going?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re moving to battle flight,’ Captain Rawlings explained, ‘to avoid the shockwaves.’

  ‘What shockwaves?’

  Captain Rawlings didn’t reply to Ethan, instead broadcasting to her fellow pilot in the other jet.

  ‘Scorcher flight, buster-buster!’

  A moment later Ethan felt the F-15 surge forward as the throttles hit the firewall. Full afterburner launched the aircraft toward the horizon as though it had been fired from a cannon, and suddenly he realized what she had meant. They were going supersonic. The airspeed indicator shot through Mach 1 as Captain Rawlings hauled the F-15 up into a steep climb. G-force slammed Ethan down into his seat, straining his neck as the aircraft soared up into the atmosphere. Rawlings slowly rolled the F-15 upside down, and the sun flashed through the sky around Ethan before the cockpit was plunged into shadow. The straps from his harnesses dangled before his eyes, the upside-down world and the curve of the earth easily visible some fifty thousand feet beneath them.