“What the Sam Hill is that?” he asked.
“I hope you took your Dramamine,” the pilot said. “Things are about to get dicey.”
THREE
I
Diomede Village
Little Diomede Island
Fifteen Miles Northwest of Wales, Alaska
65°45′15″ N, 168°55′15″ W
The Bering Sea broke against the rocky shoreline with a sound that reminded Thyssen of his pulse pounding inside his head. Never in his life had he experienced stillness of this nature.
The majority of the residents had been relocated to the mainland following the disaster. At last count, only 18 of the original 120 year-round residents remained.
Thyssen followed his man around the four hundred thousand–gallon water storage tank and into what passed for the center of town. The generators that had provided the town’s electricity were silent and cold beneath the snow. Drifts had swept over the sides of diesel fuel storage drums the size of interstate tankers. The only tracks on the footpaths between buildings were so fresh that the wind had yet to smooth them over. He stopped and surveyed the village through the blowing snow.
Clouds clung to the invisible crown of the island, the slopes of which were buried beneath boulders of varying sizes and shapes, as though an avalanche had started and then simply stopped. The houses were built right on top of the rocks and balanced on stilts that hardly appeared capable of supporting their weight. They were packed so closely together that were it not for the fading paint and disparate roofing, it would have been impossible to tell one from the next. Wooden stairways wended uphill between them and connected them to what looked like a school and the only building with an actual sign, the Diomede Native Store, which had definitely seen better days.
There was a line of boats to his right, old aluminum numbers with outboard motors, now trapped fifty feet up the rocky shore from sea level. A pair of shoulders and the back of a man’s head protruded from the snow. Feathers blew from the rips in his down jacket. It looked as though he’d been attempting to shove one of the boats down toward the water when he was overcome from behind.
“Walk me through it,” Thyssen said.
“They came up through the vent,” Desmond Martin said. He wore a full snow-camouflage jumpsuit and an M4A1 carbine set to three-round bursts on a sling over his shoulder. “Our best guess is maybe sixteen hours ago. Not long before what passes for dawn. Most of them were still in their beds. Never knew what hit them.”
“Not all of them.”
There was another body under the stairs leading up to the general store. The man had attempted to hide after crawling through the maze of stilts. At least Thyssen thought it was a man. The condition of the remains required a little imagination.
He followed Martin to an aluminum building that was by far the newest structure on the island, if not in the best of repair. The force of the water erupting from the tunnel had blown half of the roof clean off. The walls still stood, although the structure leaned at a fairly severe angle. The warped door was propped beside the slanted doorway against the siding from which a half dozen massive fans protruded. The ductwork inside had been destroyed by the accident, and the emergency pumps sat idly beneath a blanket of snow. The hole in the ground was five feet in diameter and reinforced with concrete rings, much like the ruined tunnel below. Water pipes and ductwork dominated the opening, leaving just enough room for someone to climb down the iron rungs. The grate they’d used to temporarily seal it had been bent upward with enough force to break the brackets and crack the concrete.
Two of his men had taken up post, one on either side of it, their weapons trained down into the darkness from which the sound of sloshing fluid originated. Thyssen leaned over the edge. He could barely make out the black water at the very edge of sight. The rungs leading down to it were crusted with what looked like rust at first glance. It didn’t take long to recognize it for what it truly was.
“How many of them were there?”
“It’s hard to tell. The snow covered whatever tracks they might have left outside and those inside the houses don’t betray their numbers. It could be anywhere from one to a dozen for all we know. You have to bear in mind that we still don’t have any idea what we’re dealing with.”
“Regardless, surely one couldn’t have wiped them out by itself. Especially not before someone raised the alarm.”
“You’ve seen what these things can do.”
Thyssen grunted and headed back out of the station.
“Are we certain no one contacted the mainland?”
“We’d have heard about it by now if they had. Besides, Wiley’s been monitoring all communications to and from the island since we arrived. He’d have been the first to know.”
They couldn’t afford to take any chances, though. Controlling the dissemination of information regarding the disaster in the tunnel had been a nightmare, but something like this was on an entirely different level, probably beyond even his considerable skills. The workers down below had known the risks when they signed on. Their families had been compensated, and for more than just their loss. So far they’d been able to maintain a full media blackout of the aftermath. As far as anyone knew, seismic activity in the Aleutian Trench was responsible for the flooding they’d experienced as far south as New Zealand and the record low tides that had so-called experts baffled, although the steady rise would get the whole subject off the front page soon enough.
All of the shipping had been diverted and consolidated into the deepest channels between the new landmasses, which, for all intents and purposes, appeared to be ordinary icebergs. If anyone looked too hard, Thyssen could just pay some climatologist to put forth the theorem that global warming caused enormous sections to calve from the polar ice caps, float across the Arctic, and lodge in the shallow channel. It was in no one’s best interest for the general public to learn about the new chain of islands that nearly connected the United States and Russia. The thought of the Russian Army simply driving across the ocean and sweeping down to the mainland would cause a panic of historic proportions, but not nearly to the same extent as news of what they’d discovered down there, if it should ever come out.
It was Thyssen’s job to make sure that never happened. There was far more at stake than merely owning the transcontinental flow of natural resources. Their accidental discovery was the ticket to wealth and power beyond any the world had ever known.
He walked around the opposite side of the building and back toward the helipad on the narrow finger of land extending out over the Bering Sea. The back windows of the houses on the other side of the path were shattered. Snow blew into rooms, where it was only now beginning to accumulate on floors sparkling with broken glass. He saw a bed heaped with shredded linens and a tangle of lacerated limbs. The wall above the headboard was spattered with arterial spurts. The footprints leading from the bedroom to the hallway were smeared and impossible to differentiate.
“Most of the houses are like this,” Martin said from behind him. “They came through the windows and were on them before they could even get out of bed. We think the people living higher up must have heard something, but none of them made it very far.”
Thyssen passed a mound of fur that would soon vanish beneath the accumulation. Even the dog hadn’t been able to outrun them.
Once he was within sight of the chopper, he twirled his finger over his head. The rotor whined and slowly started to spin.
“How do you want us to handle this?” Martin asked.
Thyssen turned and looked back at the lifeless island. His stare settled upon the eighty thousand–gallon tank that fueled the generators.
“Make it look like an accident.”
“Fire or brimstone?”
“Give me a crater you can see from space.”
“Brimstone it is.”
Thyssen ducked his head and charged through the blowing snow toward the chopper, which lifted off the moment he closed the door behi
nd him. He put on his headset and spoke into the microphone.
“Patch me through.”
He watched the island fall farther away through the storm and wondered how many people actually knew of its existence here at the edge of the world.
A subtle change in the intonation of the static signaled he was connected to the line he did his best never to call.
“An inconvenience,” he said into the dead air. “That’s all.”
The voice on the other end sounded robotic thanks to the voice modulator.
“Are you certain?”
There was a blinding flash from the distant island. Smoke and debris billowed up into the sky. The helicopter bucked and he felt the reverberation of the explosion in his chest.
“Trust me. This is the last you’ll hear of it.”
II
Speranza Station
Ten Miles Northwest of Wales, Alaska
65°47′ N, 169°01′ W
The chopper lurched and juddered as it dropped through the storm. The snowflakes attacked the windshield with such ferocity that Calder barely saw the ground before the runners struck it nearly hard enough to knock the wind out of her. She’d never experienced turbulence like that before and wanted nothing more than to leap from the helicopter and throw herself to the ground, despite what looked like two feet of snow beneath a seamless crust of ice. The rotors whipped the snowflakes into a seemingly impenetrable cloud.
“This is your stop,” the pilot said.
Calder glanced at the man strapped into the back seat beside her. His dark skin had paled considerably. She recognized the expression on his face. It was the same one so many of her newly assigned graduate students wore moments before sprinting toward the gunwale and sharing their lunch with the fish.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“That’s a question I can’t rightly answer, ma’am,” the pilot said.
“Confidentiality?”
“Nope. It’s because we’re sitting on an island that doesn’t exist.”
The door beside her opened and a freezing gust of wind buffeted her with snow. A man in a blue parka offered his gloved hand. His hood was cinched so tightly around his face that all she could clearly see was his nose.
“Dr. Calder. Mr. Nabahe,” he said. “Allow me to be the first to welcome you to Speranza Station.”
Calder took his hand and hopped down into the accumulation. Behind her, the Bering Sea crashed against the breakers. She could barely see the rugged peak of the island through the clouds.
Another man lowered his head against the rotor wash and unloaded their bags. In one motion, he hefted them from the cargo hold and charged toward a row of Quonset huts so covered with snow they were nearly invisible.
“I think it’s about time someone told us where we are.”
“I’ll be more than happy to explain once we’re inside and out of this infernal storm,” the man who welcomed them said. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind following me . . .”
They’d barely started walking when the chopper lifted from the makeshift helipad. The wind from the blades shoved them forward and filled the air with so much snow that Calder couldn’t see. By the time they reached the leftmost building, the sound of the chopper was lost to the screaming wind.
The man struggled to open the door against the gale and the snow that had drifted across it since he last opened it mere minutes ago. She brushed past him and into the domed interior. There were no windows or interior walls. The corrugated aluminum had been hurriedly framed, blown full of insulation, and sealed behind silver reflective sheeting. A large table dominated the center of the room. There had to be a dozen computer monitors on top of it and a radio from which bursts of static crackled. At the back was an industrial gas furnace, which fed the maze of ductwork overhead. The air blowing from it felt positively divine.
“Let me start by introducing myself. My name is Chase Butler. Mr. Thyssen had planned to personally greet you when you arrived, but he’s regrettably been detained. He asked that I pass along his most sincere apologies and his gratitude for dropping everything in your busy lives to join us here. With any luck, he’ll catch up with us soon enough.”
Calder recognized the SMOS satellite feed on one of the monitors, only the color scale had been modified to highlight dozens of different areas in red. At a glance she could see they corresponded to the zones of decreased salinity she’d already identified.
“I hope you’ll forgive me for breezing through the grand tour, but we have a limited window of opportunity and we can’t afford to waste any time. I have a hunch you didn’t come all this way to see our little home away from home, anyway.”
“Why the rush?” Nabahe asked.
“You’ll understand soon enough.”
The man who’d taken their bags emerged from the narrow corridor connecting the huts and assumed his position at the table without so much as a sideways glance.
“This chatterbox here is Kellen Wiley. It’s his job to maintain contact with the outside world and keep this facility running, neither of which is an especially easy task on this rock. He’s the one holding your metaphorical lifeline to the surface.”
“And what do you do, Mr. Butler?” Calder asked.
“Please. Call me Chase. I’m the senior project engineer. Geoengineer, actually. I’m in charge of everything down below.”
“Down below?” Nabahe said.
“In due time.”
Nabahe opened his mouth to protest, but Butler cut him off.
“Trust me. Nothing I say can prepare you for what you’re about to see.”
Butler gestured for everyone to follow him. He had to duck to pass through the corridor between buildings. The adjacent Quonset hut had the same heater and ductwork, but those were the only similarities. It reminded Calder of a military barracks, only with the illusion of privacy. The space had been curtained off into stalls, each of which housed a bunk bed with a standing bureau at either end. Most of the bunks appeared occupied. Some were made and others weren’t. Her bag was on the bottom bunk of the second partition to her right.
“I’d love to let you unpack your belongings and settle in, but I’m afraid we simply don’t have that kind of time.”
“How many people are stationed here?” Nabahe asked.
“Including the two of you, there are fifteen of us in all.”
“Where is everyone?” Calder asked.
In response, Butler guided them through another short corridor and into a third building.
“In here you’ll find the kitchen and rec room, although it would surprise me if you saw this place again anytime soon. We have a TV and a Blu-ray player over there by the couches and a foosball table in the corner. The Wi-Fi is spotty at best, but it’s the best you’re going to find out here, so if you need to contact anyone, now’s the time to do it. There’s no signal at all where we’re going.”
On the opposite side of the hut was an open-style kitchen that looked like it had been borrowed from a restaurant. It had a walk-in freezer and refrigerator and dry storage on wire racks. Sacks of flour, grains, and beans were stacked nearly to the ceiling. The stove had a dozen burners and a carbon-scored griddle. There was an eating bar with stainless steel warming units and three ordinary foldout cafeteria tables with benches on either side. Two men and a woman drinking coffee from mismatched mugs sat at the table farthest from them. They couldn’t have been there very long, judging by the puddles around their boots.
“All of our specialists in one place at the same time,” Butler said. “Trust me when I say that making this happen was a logistical nightmare.”
He laughed in the easy, confident manner of a man accustomed to doing so for an audience.
“Where are my manners? In my excitement I nearly blew right past the introductions. Dr. Brooke Calder, marine biologist for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and Ahiga Nabahe, the sociocultural anthropologist responsible for discovering the first of what we like to c
all around here The Watchers.”
From the corner of her eye, Calder caught Nabahe look curiously at Butler.
“And over here we have our old-timers.” Butler smiled. “You guys have been here what? Half an hour now?”
“Almost.” The woman at the other table wore a red parka, cargo pants, and her long blonde hair in a ponytail. The expression on her face was more carefully guarded than the tone of her voice. “And you still haven’t shown us what we flew halfway around the world to see.”
Butler chuckled.
Calder understood the woman’s frustration; she’d only been here for a few minutes and already she was running low on patience.
“This is Dr. Emily Hart, one of the foremost primatologists in the field; Dr. Trey Payton, an evolutionary anthropologist from the Johann Brandt Institute in Chicago; and Dr. Minh Duan, a world-renowned speleologist whose addition to our expedition was a fortunate stroke of serendipity.”
Calder looked from one face to the next in an effort to piece together the logic behind assembling a team composed of experts with such narrow and disparate areas of expertise.
“I see you’ve all been formally introduced,” a voice she recognized immediately said from behind her. “Shall we get right down to it then?”
III
A fourth Quonset hut had been erected lengthwise behind the first three. They had to pass through a sealed door and walk the length of a corridor lined with security cameras to reach it. The ground vibrated from the masses of equipment running inside, the racket from which was positively deafening. Thyssen had to shout to be heard over it.
“These pumps run day and night. There’s still a significant amount of water down there and we see more and more returning every day as the water table attempts to reestablish a state of equilibrium.” He continued deeper into the dim room, past panels with digital readouts and pressure gauges. “There’s a higher concentration of carbon dioxide down there, so we have to use compressors to force surface air through these tubes and into the cavern. Even then, safety protocol dictates you carry a personal breathing apparatus at all times. Those gasses can build up in toxic levels before you know it.”
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