Apocalypse

by Dean Crawford

  ‘Captain Doug Jarvis?’

  ‘The very same,’ Jarvis replied. ‘Been looking for you, Scott.’

  Bryson levered himself up out of the hatch on thickly muscled arms, his chest bare and tanned a deep brown by countless equatorial suns. Ethan guessed him to be at least six-two and 250 pounds, and there didn’t look to be any spare fat hanging from his frame. A Navy SEAL tattoo adorned his right shoulder, and despite his unkempt appearance and piratical eye-patch he looked no older than Ethan.

  From beside him, he heard Lopez whisper under her breath.

  ‘Hello, Captain.’

  ‘Keep it professional,’ Ethan uttered from the corner of his mouth. ‘We don’t know if we can trust this guy yet.’

  ‘Jealous?’ she peered up at him, and then pushed past and followed Jarvis up onto the boat’s quarterdeck.

  Jarvis was already shaking hands with Bryson as Ethan followed Lopez and joined them on the boat. Jarvis introduced them and then gestured to the vessel itself.

  ‘Nice piece, Scott. You been running her long?’

  Scott Bryson opened his arms to encompass the vessel, his barrel chest looking to Ethan like the forested slopes of the Rockies in summer, as he launched automatically into a sales pitch.

  ‘The Free Spirit’s a day-boat design built for hardcore light-tackle fishing,’ he announced. ‘Twin diesels at the stern, modern navigational equipment and fish-finding electronics, four fighting chairs and a four-rod rocket launcher. Four live wells and a thirty-foot tower. The head’s on board, there’s a stereo and comfortable seating. You guys will have a great time. When do you want to book her?’

  Jarvis took a pace closer to him. ‘Today.’

  Bryson laughed out loud.

  ‘I haven’t even had breakfast yet, but okay. When do you want to leave harbor?’

  ‘Right about now.’

  Bryson’s laugh faded away as he leveled Jarvis with a cool stare.

  ‘What are you looking to catch? My tackle ranges from hundred-thirty-pound conventional to six-pound spinning. I can handle live-bait kite fishing, sailfish, shark, golden amberjack, almaco, grouper, and snapper. I’ve even got electric reels for tilefish, black belly rose-fish, sea bass and barracuda.’

  Ethan stepped in.

  ‘We’re not hunting fish, we’re hunting for a criminal,’ he said, ‘or more probably the victims of a crime.’

  Bryson squinted at Jarvis, who produced a card from his jacket pocket and handed it to Bryson. The big man stared at it, winced and shook his head.

  ‘Defense Intelligence Agency, huh?’ he said. ‘Sorry, I’m not for hire.’

  Bryson turned his broad back on them and strode toward the open deck hatch.

  ‘You got a problem with the DIA?’ Jarvis asked after him.

  ‘I got a problem with the government,’ Bryson shot back over his shoulder. ‘Pack of wolves, all of them. I don’t deal with officials. Now get off my boat.’

  Ethan stepped up onto the mid-ship deck and moved to stand in Bryson’s way. The big man looked down at him as though he were examining a small insect.

  ‘You’d best move,’ he rumbled wearily, ‘or I’ll snap you like a twig.’

  Ethan did not reply. Instead, he slipped an envelope from the pocket of his jeans, letting a wad of photographs face out toward Bryson. The image of a young girl with half of her head blasted away was face up. Behind it was the mother’s body beside a blood-splattered wall. Bryson squinted at the images and then his cold blue eye fixed onto Ethan’s gaze.

  ‘Not my business,’ he uttered.

  Lopez moved alongside Bryson and gestured to the photographs.

  ‘Nine years old,’ she said. ‘Last thing she saw was her killer. The father is top of the suspect list but it seems he may be innocent. If we don’t prove it and find the real killer, then they’ll never be caught. We’ve got less than nine hours to do that and nobody to help us.’

  Bryson looked down at her for a moment.

  ‘Why the time limit?’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ Ethan said. ‘We can tell you all about it on the way but we’ve got to move fast. You don’t want to help us, we’ll find somebody who will. But we’d prefer somebody who we know.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Bryson said and glanced at Jarvis. ‘I bet you would. Easier to control, right?’

  ‘What’s your problem, Bryson?’ Ethan asked.

  Bryson turned and loomed over Ethan. He tapped his eye-patch with one finger.

  ‘Afghanistan,’ he growled. ‘Lost my eye to shrapnel and damned near lost my life. And what did I get for my troubles? Forcibly retired from my unit and a lousy payoff. This boat was all I could afford to make a living from. And you wonder why I don’t want to work for the goddamned DIA?’

  ‘You signed up,’ Ethan challenged him. ‘What did you expect, a nice cozy desk job in DC? You knew what you were getting yourself into when you joined the SEALs. Standing here crying out of your remaining eye won’t change anything. You aren’t the only soldier who served out there and you weren’t the last.’

  ‘We went in first,’ Bryson snapped back.

  ‘Sure you did,’ Ethan rolled his eyes. ‘You guys did all the hard work and we all came in behind you clapping our hands and singing happy songs.’ Ethan’s features hardened. ‘Wake up.’

  ‘Take a walk,’ Bryson snarled as he turned his back on Ethan, his fists clenched.

  ‘What’s up?’ Ethan uttered. ‘Want another medal? Not getting enough sympathy?’

  ‘It ain’t sympathy I’m looking for,’ Bryson snapped back.

  ‘Then what?’ Lopez chimed in as she leaned on the deck railing nearby.

  Bryson scowled at them both but said nothing. Ethan guessed that Bryson’s physical size and history with Special Forces meant that he wasn’t used to people standing up to him, much less challenging him. The injuries he’d sustained in Afghanistan had laden his broad shoulders with a gigantic chip and he felt the world owed him a favor. Like hell.

  ‘I get it,’ Ethan said. ‘You don’t like authority. So what? Do this for the kid who got shot in cold blood.’

  Bryson glowered at Ethan for a moment, then turned his good eye on Jarvis. ‘What’s in it for me?’

  Jarvis pulled his cellphone from his pocket.

  ‘I’ll call it in, but I’m sure that the agency will compensate you for your services.’

  ‘Ten thousand dollars,’ Bryson snapped.

  ‘Ten thousand?’ Ethan’s jaw dropped open. ‘Jesus Christ, we could hire an aircraft carrier for less!’

  ‘Then go ahead,’ Bryson smiled without warmth.

  Lopez leveled Bryson with an appealing gaze.

  ‘This is about finding a cold-blooded murderer, Scott,’ she said. ‘A child killer.’

  Bryson nodded.

  ‘That’s why my fee is ten thousand. You want me to risk my neck looking for somebody who’s psychotic enough to kill entire families then don’t expect me to do it for goddamn charity. Take it or leave it.’

  Jarvis, his cell to his ear, mouthed across at Bryson. ‘Five thousand.’

  ‘Eight.’

  ‘Six.’

  Bryson shook his head. ‘Seven, not a cent less and up front.’

  Jarvis sighed and relayed the price down the line. Moments later, he tossed the cellphone to Bryson who caught it in one giant, calloused palm.

  ‘Done, seven thousand, but half now and half when we return to port,’ Jarvis said. ‘Give them your account details then get this boat out to sea.’

  Bryson gave his details across the line and tossed the cell back to Jarvis. As the old man caught the phone, Bryson jabbed a finger in his direction.

  ‘Just so we get one thing straight, that’s the last time you tell me what to do on my boat. I’m the captain and I’ll give the goddamned orders until . . .’

  In perfect unison, Ethan and Lopez moved to stand between Bryson and Jarvis, cutting the big man off in mid-sentence. Ethan spoke quietly.

  ‘
Since you just got paid, this is our boat. You do what we say, right up until we’re done here.’ Bryson opened his mouth to argue but Ethan cut him off again. ‘And you forgot to ask how long this would take. As far as I’m concerned this boat’s ours for at least seven thousand dollars’ worth of our time, whether you like it or not, understood?’

  Bryson’s thick arm moved to grab Ethan’s throat, but Lopez stepped in and caught his wrist with just enough force to stop it as she folded her hand over his fingers and pinned Bryson’s thumb back. She held it just on the threshold of real pain and looked up at him.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you. You’ll get hurt.’

  Bryson sneered at Ethan. ‘He’s nothing.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about him.’

  Bryson looked down at Lopez for a long moment and then a broad smile broke across his face and he laughed out loud.

  ‘Don’t tease me, honey.’

  Jarvis stepped up to join them.

  ‘Let him go Nicola,’ he said, ‘you don’t know where he’s been.’

  Lopez stepped back and released Bryson’s huge fist, the captain still grinning down at her. Ethan, feeling strangely excluded, jabbed a thumb at the mooring lines as he turned to Bryson.

  ‘Jump to it, Captain Sparrow, we’ve got work to do.’

  Bryson pretended not to hear, keeping his gaze on Lopez.

  ‘So where are we sailing to, sweetheart?’

  Lopez pulled out the scrawled notes Ethan had made back at Cape Canaveral and handed them to Bryson. He looked down at the coordinates.

  ‘Barely an hour away,’ he said. ‘Any idea on the catch, exactly?’

  Ethan unwound a mooring line from the jetty and replied over his shoulder.

  ‘An aircraft.’

  20

  IRIS, DEEP BLUE RESEARCH STATION, FLORIDA STRAITS

  June 28, 11:01

  Joaquin Abell strode up the steps to the metal chamber and rested his hand on Aubrey’s shoulder. The smaller man turned to look up at Joaquin, his features frozen with horror.

  ‘It can’t be,’ he uttered.

  Joaquin smiled. ‘It is.’

  Aubrey looked again into the chamber, at the terrible black sphere and the clock with the slowly ticking second hand.

  ‘It’s producing time-dilation,’ he whispered.

  ‘Congratulations Aubrey,’ Joaquin said, ‘you are one of only a handful of human beings to have ever gazed with their own eyes into the past.’

  Aubrey turned from the window.

  ‘It’s impossible,’ he uttered. ‘You can’t possibly have achieved such energies. It would take a particle accelerator the size of our solar system to generate enough pressure to produce this. Human technology doesn’t even come close to what would be required to . . .’

  ‘I have not used a particle accelerator,’ Joaquin assured him. ‘There are other ways to create a device like this, if you know where to look.’

  ‘But you’re not a scientist,’ Aubrey protested, ‘so how could you have . . . ?’

  ‘I have people,’ Joaquin cut him off again. ‘People who know how to achieve the impossible.’ He gestured to the chamber before them. ‘Have you even thought about where we are, right now?’

  Aubrey stared around him at the huge dome. As he focused on his surroundings and took in the immense superstructure around them, he began to realize that it looked old.

  ‘We’re in the Florida Straits,’ he replied, ‘maybe halfway between the coast of Florida and South Bimini.’

  Joaquin nodded, his hands behind his back as he spoke.

  ‘We are in a facility that has been here for a very long time, that was once responsible for the disappearance of dozens of vessels and aircraft from the region.’

  Aubrey gasped as he realized the connection between Joaquin’s immense undersea facility and the sinister device hidden there.

  ‘The Bermuda Triangle,’ he said finally. ‘We’re on the southern tip of it.’

  ‘On the contrary, this is the Bermuda Triangle,’ Joaquin corrected him. ‘This dome is the source of the modern legend, Dennis.’

  ‘Who built this place?’ Aubrey asked.

  Joaquin looked up at the dome around them.

  ‘My father was responsible for building this central dome to conduct experiments designed to harness the power of nuclear fusion to build power plants. His official plan was to search for neutrinos, so called ghost particles emitted by supernovas. He felt that if he could detect them then he could use what he learned to search for new physics, and acquire the ability to produce nuclear fusion – to generate a star on earth and use the resulting immense power to fuel our civilizations for a near-zero cost. He was shut down in 1964 because he couldn’t generate enough energy to start fusion.’ Joaquin stared into the distance. ‘He never got over that. He took his own life a few years later.’

  Aubrey looked up at the girders supporting the dome, marked with military-style lettering and US Army motifs. Faded radiation-warning signs plastered the walls, and many of the heavy cables and ventilation ducts were dusty with age.

  ‘You added to his central dome,’ Aubrey surmised. ‘The military must have left it down here still pressurized.’

  ‘It was used as a storage facility for highly classified military and intelligence materials and artifacts until the 1980s,’ Joaquin explained, ‘when private enterprise began building submersibles capable of reaching these depths. With the advantage of total security lost, the military mothballed the site. I bought it seventeen years ago and made damned sure that all Pentagon files came with the sale.’ He smiled. ‘Very few people who worked at this facility are still alive, and those who are have no idea that it’s once again occupied and active. I opened the conservation project on the coral reefs nearby in order to place an exclusion zone around the site under the pretence of protecting the rare reefs.’

  Aubrey shook his head in wonder.

  ‘You’re far enough off the coral reefs that nobody would come out here on the abyssal plain – there’s nothing to see at this depth. My God, the Coastguard probably doesn’t even know that it’s inadvertently protecting this site from discovery.’

  Joaquin nodded but did not respond, lost in his thoughts.

  Aubrey guessed that it would have taken at least fifteen years to build the underwater facility, under the guise of an IRIS charter to create a wildlife refuge and deep-sea coral-research outpost. The original central dome in which they stood was dominated by the revolutionary spherical tokamak chamber built by Joaquin’s father during the Cold War, a device used to contain immense plasma energy and generate intense pressures and temperatures.

  Aubrey turned on his heel and looked out at the huge television screens mounted on the interior walls of the dome. The news feeds showed anchors from a dozen different networks revealing the latest events from around the world.

  ‘This is how you did it,’ he realized, and turned to the metallic sphere behind him, wherein the slow-running clock ticked. ‘This is how you look into the future. Your father built this facility to generate nuclear fusion, but you’ve taken his work far further than he ever intended. You realize that what you have in there is not a star, Joaquin, and it is not of this earth?’

  ‘This is the only place on earth where the present and the future coexist in perfect harmony,’ Joaquin confirmed. ‘This single device is worth more than all of the money on earth, and were it known that I possessed such a machine, every government on the planet would send its armies here to take it away from me.’

  Aubrey looked at Joaquin and saw the radical glitter back in his eyes. The younger man was not a scientist, and would almost certainly be unaware of the immense power caged just a few yards from where they stood. Like a wayward god idly toying with lightning bolts, Joaquin was unwittingly treading a fine line between power and oblivion. All at once Aubrey realized that the tycoon was telling him something more than just the monetary value of his elaborate contraption.

  ‘
What are you going to do?’ he asked.

  ‘Ensure that no government, and nobody else, ever dares challenge me,’ Joaquin replied.

  Aubrey glanced at the nearby sphere and shook his head.

  ‘This is dangerous, Joaquin. Do you know what you’ve actually got in there, the kind of power you’re trying to wield? Nobody can control that kind of—’

  ‘It’s under control, Dennis,’ Joaquin growled. ‘Everything, and everyone, is under control. Do you understand?’

  Aubrey stood his ground. ‘If you detonated all of the weapons in the United States nuclear arsenal, it would not generate as much energy as you have contained in that one single chamber. You need help with this, Joaquin.’

  ‘Indeed I do,’ Joaquin replied. ‘And you are my help. Agreed?’

  Aubrey’s features sagged as he realized that he no longer had any choice.

  ‘Why have you done this?’ he asked.

  ‘Because, my friend, if you know the future then you can command the present. This is the key to my success, to our success. Trust me, Dennis, there’s no news like tomorrow’s news, and we’re going to know all of it.’

  Aubrey’s face grew a shade paler.

  ‘Do you have any idea just how much power that device can generate?’

  ‘I do indeed,’ Joaquin replied. ‘And we’re going to unleash some of that power into the world around us.’

  Aubrey suddenly felt cold as he digested what Joaquin was suggesting.

  ‘You’re going to use it as a weapon,’ he uttered, his throat dry.

  ‘Soon,’ Joaquin replied. ‘But right now, we’re going to take a look into the future.’

  21

  RICHARD E. GERSTEIN JUSTICE BUILDING, MIAMI, FLORIDA

  June 28, 11:03

  The cameras started flashing the moment Katherine Abell stepped from the chauffeur-driven car, surrounded by four heavyweight minders and her husband’s security chief, Olaf Jorgenson. The towering court building was opposite the Dade County Pretrial Detention Center, both of them large and imposing buildings connected by an overhead walkway that spanned the entire street and was used to transport inmates from the cells to the courthouse. Hordes of television cameras jostled for position around Katherine as a barrage of questions washed over her.