Apocalypse

by Dean Crawford

  ‘Fast forward,’ Joaquin snapped. ‘One hundred and twenty times faster.’

  Aubrey obeyed, a swift mental calculation informing him that an hour on the camera’s accelerated timeline would now pass every fifteen seconds. The rolling sea wobbled and bobbed crazily and the clouds above raced past as the sun arced through the sky. Day turned to night and then the sun returned again. Several minutes had passed before suddenly a white boat zipped into view and quivered on the waves in the center of the viewfinder.

  Joaquin hit the ‘Play’ button. Aubrey watched as a small fishing vessel, maybe forty feet long, sat on the surface of the ocean with its anchor chain taut. He realized that the images were still moving at double speed, the same rate at which the camera recorded time passing outside of the chamber. Several figures milled rapidly about on the deck, and then quite suddenly two of them dropped overboard into the rolling blue waves.

  They were wearing diving gear, Aubrey realized.

  ‘Damn!’

  Joaquin slammed a fist against the console and whirled to look at Aubrey.

  ‘When will this happen?’ he demanded.

  Aubrey blinked, caught completely off guard by Joaquin’s sudden agitation. ‘When was the camera inserted into the chamber?’

  ‘Twenty-four hours ago!’ Joaquin raged. ‘You’re the physicist, do the math! Shall I fetch you a fucking abacus?’

  Aubrey flushed red, as a sickening mixture of fear and anger swilled through his guts. His earlier ominous instinct about Joaquin’s intentions now flared grotesquely. Joaquin had brought him down here along with ten armed guards. There was no escape except via the submersible. He was trapped. Aubrey’s sense of self-preservation barged its way into his thoughts. Humor the guy, keep yourself out of trouble, and then get the hell out of here as soon as you can.

  He looked at the camera image, his mind racing with numbers. The camera had been installed twenty-four hours earlier. The Schwarschild Radius of the object in the chamber and its attendant time dilation of one hour for every hour that passed meant that the camera had therefore seen a total of twenty-four hours into the future. They had then sped forward the first few hours before seeing the boat appear on the screen.

  ‘It’ll happen within an hour,’ Aubrey said, before looking at Joaquin. ‘Where is the camera that took this film?’

  Joaquin did not respond. Instead, he turned to his security team.

  ‘Get out there. I want those people gone before they can find anything, understood?’

  The security guards dashed away, un-slinging their rifles as they ran. Aubrey watched them go and then turned to Joaquin. He mastered his revulsion and fear, his vocal cords tight as he spoke.

  ‘Joaquin, if you want me to control this device of yours and do an effective job, then you need to tell me what the hell’s going on here.’

  ‘You’re on a need-to-know basis,’ Joaquin retorted as he walked away.

  ‘You’re looking into the future but you don’t know what you’re seeing!’ Aubrey shot back, and for a brief instant was surprised at the force of his own outburst.

  Joaquin turned slowly back to face Aubrey. ‘What do you mean?’

  For a moment, Aubrey wondered whether he should tell Joaquin anything. The arrogant fool was playing a dangerous game that could have far greater consequences than his narcissistic little mind could ever imagine. But then an image of Katherine and the two children popped into Aubrey’s mind and he realized that he had no choice. Somehow, he had to get word out about what was happening.

  ‘Time,’ he said slowly, ‘is not fixed. It can change.’

  Joaquin’s face twisted into a scowl of outrage and he leapt forward, grabbed Aubrey by the throat and pinned him against the console. Aubrey smelled a waft of expensive cologne as Joaquin’s soft hands squeezed tightly around his throat and he leaned in close, a madman cloaked in the finery of a king.

  ‘You think I have time for this? I know that time isn’t fixed! Purcell explained it all to me!’

  Aubrey, his skin sheened with sweat, decided not to tell Joaquin what Charles Purcell had clearly omitted. Instead, a plan began to form in his mind as he struggled to speak.

  ‘I need more access to what these cameras are seeing!’ he gargled. ‘One image of the future means nothing. What if those people on that screen are just holidaymakers? You send your people in there with guns they’ll do nothing but expose your operation!’

  Joaquin, his grip still fixed on Aubrey’s neck, peered sideways at the screen showing the boat on the ocean.

  ‘They’re not day-trippers,’ he uttered. ‘They’re diving on a barren sandbar miles out to sea. There’s nothing there.’

  Aubrey managed to speak.

  ‘Yes there is, and whatever it is you don’t want it found, do you?’

  Joaquin’s gaze moved back to Aubrey. The anger in his eyes mutated into something new, a look of bemusement. Aubrey felt the vice around his neck slacken and he coughed to clear his throat. He heard Joaquin’s voice above his own labored breathing.

  ‘You surprise me, Dennis. For a while I believed that you were entirely spineless.’

  Aubrey slid off the console onto his feet and staggered as he put one hand out to balance himself. With the other, he massaged his neck. Joaquin’s grip had been tight, but not that tight. Aubrey faked another cough and stared at the deck as he considered what was on the screen. Joaquin’s mention of Charles Purcell had sparked a flood of revelations in Aubrey’s mind, none of them good. Purcell had been the previous chief scientist at IRIS’s supposed coral-reef conservation project, and as a former NASA physicist with a history of studies into time itself, it didn’t take much application of Aubrey’s prodigious intellect for him to realize that Purcell had in fact been stationed here at Deep Blue. The fact that Purcell had recently vanished and that his family were dead suggested that his fate was less to do with a tragic mental breakdown and more to do with Joaquin Abell.

  Aubrey recalled the loss of the chartered Bimini Wings aircraft, along with IRIS’s entire scientific team, and a chill ran down his spine and sat, icy and cold, in the pit of his belly. That was probably what was below the water in the camera footage: Joaquin was planning to hide the wreckage. Joaquin Abell took a pace closer to him and pressed a finger hard into his chest.

  ‘If you reveal anything, to anybody, ever, of what you’ve seen here, I’ll make sure that you get a far closer look at that chamber than you’ll be comfortable with.’

  Aubrey nodded, finally getting his breath back, and glanced down at the control panel. If Joaquin Abell was responsible for multiple murders, then Aubrey had to get word to the outside world. He thought of Katherine, defending IRIS at trial in court, and of the costs associated with building something like Deep Blue. It’s all a lie. IRIS is guilty, and my new employer is a mass murderer.

  Aubrey looked again at the boat bobbing on the ocean. The stern of the little fishing vessel was pointing toward the camera, and he could read her name clearly.

  Free Spirit.

  23

  FLORIDA STRAITS, 14 MILES WEST OF SOUTH BIMINI

  June 28, 11:14

  ‘Now we’re moving!’

  Scott Bryson hauled on a loose rigging line and secured it before ducking back into the wheelhouse. His voice was snatched away by the wind as the Free Spirit crashed through the rolling waves, thick clouds of white spray bursting over the bows to sparkle in the bright sunshine.

  Ethan reveled in the fresh air as the little ship chugged her way busily out into deep water, her two diesel engines humming below decks. Most all people assumed that he and Lopez spent their time chasing down fugitives and bail runners on foot or in Lopez’s Lotus, in the manner of Miami Vice or similar. In fact, most of Ethan’s days were spent hunkered down behind a computer screen in their cramped office, or with a phone pressed to his ear as he called the fifteenth family member of a vanished convict, hoping for a break in the case.

  When they did get out, it was most often to
apprehend violent and dangerous criminals, many of whom had nothing to look forward to but decades of incarceration if caught. Needless to say they didn’t go quietly. By comparison this was a vacation.

  ‘What’s our speed?’ he called out to Bryson.

  ‘Fifteen knots!’ Bryson yelled back. ‘Fastest you’ve been over water for a while, country boy!’

  ‘We came down here at fifteen hundred knots,’ Ethan replied. ‘But hey, who’s counting?’

  Bryson shot him an uncertain look and turned his back as he guided the ship toward their destination. Ethan turned and watched as Lopez leaned over the port rail, her black hair rippling in the wind.

  ‘How you feeling?’ Jarvis asked her as he swayed unsteadily across the rolling deck and placed a hand on her back.

  Lopez peered round at the old man, her face puffy and her eyes narrow.

  ‘You telling me you couldn’t have got us out to Bimini any other way?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Jarvis shrugged. ‘Besides, how the hell was I supposed to know you get seasick?’

  Lopez glared across at Ethan. ‘He knew.’

  Ethan shrugged as Jarvis shot him a dirty look.

  ‘We chased a bail runner out across Lake Michigan a couple of months ago,’ he said. ‘Lopez got sick – I just figured it was nerves as our mark was armed.’

  Lopez winced.

  ‘I got sick before the shooting started.’

  Bryson vaulted down onto the quarterdeck alongside them, and in one swift move gathered Lopez up in his arms and carried her toward the center of the deck beside the entrance to the wheelhouse. He set her down gently beside the scuba-tank racks, then squatted down in front of her and handed her a bottle of chilled water as he looked at her with one twinkling blue eye.

  ‘Seasickness is just your inner ear playing up because it can’t detect the roll and swell of the boat. Sit here, keep yourself hydrated and keep your eye on the horizon. The longer you do it, the quicker your brain will figure out the movement and the quicker the nausea will pass. Got it?’

  Lopez managed a weak smile and nodded as she opened the bottle of water. Ethan hurried over.

  ‘How long until we reach the spot?’ he asked.

  ‘Twenty minutes or so,’ Bryson replied. ‘You good to dive?’

  Ethan nodded as he glanced at the scuba gear. ‘What’s the depth?’

  ‘You’re lucky,’ Bryson informed him. ‘The location is just off the Bimini coast on a sandbar near Gun Cay, so you’ll be in no more than forty feet with good visibility.’

  ‘I’m coming down too,’ Lopez said between sips of water.

  ‘Like hell,’ Ethan said. ‘You stay up on deck with Long John Silver here until you’re back in shape.’

  Lopez shook her head.

  ‘It’ll give me a break from feeling like crap,’ she pointed out. ‘Best thing for me right now is to stay busy, right, Scott?’

  Bryson shrugged.

  ‘I’d rather have you in sight because I like to look at you, honey,’ he murmured. ‘But if you want to dive it won’t hurt you.’

  ‘Fine,’ Ethan said, having decided he’d rather have Lopez where he could see her. ‘Let’s get suited up. At this supposedly breakneck speed, we’ll be there soon.’

  Bryson turned to the scuba racks and unhooked the diving suits as he spoke.

  ‘You’re quite the comedian, Warner. Guess you must have been the joker in the pack in the Marine Corps. Could have done with a wit like yours in the SEALs, but I guess you were never gonna get that far . . .’

  Ethan checked his diving equipment.

  ‘I had my hands full,’ he replied. ‘I was a platoon officer during Iraqi Freedom and didn’t get the chance to join Special Forces. We let the grunts do that.’

  ‘That’s what they all say.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ Ethan said. ‘They all say they got an injury or some crap and were medically discharged from the course. Those that do get through the training develop an inability to stop talking about it, until they no longer need to shoot their enemies. They just bore them the hell to death.’

  Bryson burst out laughing, a deep roar from his chest that made Lopez flinch as she was putting on her gear. He settled back down as he checked the oxygen cylinders, looking at Lopez as he worked.

  ‘How’d you end up with this loser?’ he asked her.

  Lopez zipped up her suit. ‘Met him in DC, hasn’t left me alone since.’

  ‘Can’t blame him.’

  Ethan saw that Lopez smiled back, her debilitating sickness apparently now forgotten. He grabbed a set of goggles and tossed them to her before turning to Bryson.

  ‘I take it we’re in the Bermuda Triangle here?’ he said.

  ‘Just inside it,’ Bryson confirmed. ‘The generally accepted borders of the Triangle run from Miami to the island of Bermuda and down to San Juan in Puerto Rico.’

  ‘You don’t honestly believe in all that crap, do you?’ Jarvis asked the captain. ‘I’ve read that this area is one of the busiest shipping and commercial air-traffic lanes in the world.’

  ‘It is,’ Bryson replied. ‘Statistically there’s nothing unusual about the number of aircraft and ships lost in this region. It’s considered entirely safe by insurers and suchlike, and most of the supposedly mysterious disappearances over the years were not mysterious at all. Various authors simply omitted facts in order to maintain the legend and sell their books.’

  ‘Such as?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘Well, they’d tell of ships that had genuinely been reported missing, but not the fact that they turned up in port later. Or they’d write that a vessel vanished in clear weather when in fact it was caught in a storm. Some ships were reported as having been swallowed by the Bermuda Triangle when in fact they’d accidentally slipped their moorings in harbor and drifted out to sea.’

  ‘There must be more to it than that,’ Ethan argued. ‘You’ve been sailing out here for a few years – you must have heard or seen things. I can’t believe that the whole legend is just a charade.’

  Bryson leaned against the bulwarks and squinted out across the ocean.

  ‘You sail around these waters long enough, you see a lot of things you can’t explain, but that doesn’t mean that what’s happening can’t be explained. The Gulf Stream runs through here and its currents can quickly remove debris from accidents; the weather is unpredictable, with storms arriving and vanishing so quickly that they don’t show up on satellite images, and the islands and ocean floor have both shallows and deep marine trenches that produce strong reef currents and a constant flux of moving water, producing regular navigation hazards to all shipping.’ Bryson grinned. ‘These waters might look pretty, but they’re dangerous and unpredictable. It’s no wonder that people go missing out here.’

  ‘But . . . ?’ Lopez teased him, and Bryson shrugged.

  ‘Fact is, the Bermuda Triangle is one of only two places on earth where a magnetic compass actually points toward true north. If you don’t compensate for this lack of magnetic variation, you can end up going off course. The other place where this happens, a region called the Devil’s Triangle in the Pacific, is also a place where vessels and aircraft have gone missing, so there’s definitely something odd going on out here, even if it’s just navigational error.’

  Ethan narrowed his eyes.

  ‘But . . . there’s something you’re not telling, right?’

  The captain sighed as he fiddled with an oxygen cylinder.

  ‘There’s weird shit happening out here, okay?’ he muttered. ‘People say that the Triangle’s a recent phenomenon, but Columbus himself recorded problems with magnetic readings in his logs back in 1493. There may not be a statistically large number of vanishings out here, but some of those that do occur are real weird.’

  ‘Do tell,’ Lopez said, intrigued, as she sipped her water.

  ‘There’s a few,’ Bryson said. ‘A Tudor IV airplane vanished in 1948 with thirty-one people aboard; the freighter SS Sandra disappeared wit
hout trace in 1952; an English York plane vanished with thirty-three people in 1952; the Navy lost a Lockheed Constellation in 1954 and a seaplane in 1956; that’s over fifty people vanished without trace, plus several large freighters from various countries.’

  ‘It’s odd that both ships and aircraft disappear,’ Ethan said thoughtfully.

  ‘And big ones, too,’ Bryson noted. ‘A DC-3 with twenty-seven passengers in 1948 and a C-124 Globemaster with fifty-three passengers in 1951. No apparent catastrophes, no radio warnings or distress beacons. They just disappear.’

  ‘What about that Flight 19?’ Jarvis asked. ‘The Navy bombers that went down back in World War Two?’

  ‘They were supposedly lost due to the formation leader’s faulty compass and a storm that prevented them from navigating by eye over the islands,’ Bryson explained. ‘But the thing is, even if the leader’s compass did fail, there were a lot of other airplanes in the flight and they all were in radio contact with Fort Lauderdale until they disappeared without trace. So either a whole bunch of military pilots let their leader fly them into oblivion in a faulty airplane, or something else got them all turned around.’

  ‘Well, whatever happened to this airplane it’s now a lot closer to Bimini Island than when it must have gone into the water, probably due to the currents,’ Ethan said. ‘The pilots would have been able to see land from here.’ He looked at Lopez. ‘Charles Purcell’s coordinates must have taken that into account, which means . . .’

  ‘He saw the future,’ Jarvis replied. ‘He can’t have known how far and in what direction it would have moved without having seen it do so. But that still leaves us with the small question of how?’

  ‘Nobody can predict currents in the Straits,’ Bryson murmured, ‘it’s why the search-and-rescue teams never found your missing plane. Who knows how many other ships have disappeared from history out here?’

  Ethan looked at Bryson, who was still standing by the bulwarks and staring out to sea.