by A. G. Riddle
Kate nodded. “They would be massacring the same people who saved us from extinction, maybe the only people that could help us reverse the plague from the Bell.”
Kate sighed. “But it’s theory and speculation. We could be wrong.”
“Let’s stick to what we know. We know bodies were taken from China, and that bodies from the Bell caused a pandemic before.”
“We alert health agencies?”
David shook his head. “You read the journal, they know how to hide outbreaks. And they’re probably a lot better at it now—they’ve been preparing for Toba Protocol for a very long time. We need to find out if your theories are correct, and we need some advantage—a way to contact the Atlanteans or stop the Immari.”
“Gibraltar.”
“It’s our best option. The chamber Patrick Pierce found.”
Kate glanced at the balloon. They were already losing altitude, and they had only a few sandbags left to jettison. “I don’t think we’ll get that far.”
David smiled and looked around the basket, as if searching for something they could use. There was a bundle in the corner. “Did you bring this?”
Kate noticed it for the first time. “No.”
David slid over to it and unwrapped it. Inside the layers of rough woven cloth, he found Indian rupees, a change of clothes for each of them, and a paper foldout map of northern India, which they were no doubt flying over now. David unfolded the map, and a small note fell out. He set the map aside, read the note, and handed it to Kate.
Forgive us our inaction.
War is not in our nature.
~ Qian.
Kate set the note down and studied the balloon. “I don’t think we have much longer up here.”
“I have an idea. It’s risky though.”
97
1.5 Miles outside Drill Site #6
East Antarctica
Robert Hunt had to drive more slowly; the giant umbrella had almost pulled him off the snowmobile twice. He had finally found a comfortable speed where he could hold on, but even at that speed, the noise of the machine, combined with the umbrella’s flapping, was almost deafening. Through the din he heard an unusual noise. He looked back. Had the men followed him? He stopped the snowmobile. It wasn’t an engine. It was a voice.
He tore his jacket open and searched for the radio. The signal indicator was lit—they were calling him. He killed the machine, but the signal was gone. He waited. Far in the distance, a wind gust blew snow dust off the top of a rounded peak.
He pressed the radio button and said, “This is Snow King.”
He took a deep breath. The abrupt response and the operator’s sharp tone startled him. “Snow King—why were you radio silent?”
Robert thought, then pressed the button on the radio and spoke as evenly as he could manage. “We are in transit. The radios are hard to hear.”
“Transit? What’s your location?”
Robert swallowed. They’d never asked for his location or contacted him between sites before. What could he say… Could they see him from the air?
“Snow King! Do you copy?”
He fidgeted in the seat, then lifted the radio back to his face. “Bounty, this is Snow King. Estimate we are three klicks from location seven.” He released the button and lowered it to the snowmobile again. He inhaled. “We have encountered… We have problems with one of the snowmobiles. We are repairing.”
“Stand by, Snow King.”
The seconds ticked by. It was freezing, but all he could feel was his heart beating in his throat.
“Snow King. Do you require assistance?”
He answered instantly. “Negative, Bounty. We can handle it.” He waited for a second and added, “Should we alter our destination?”
“Negative, Snow King. Carry on at best speed and observe standing local blackout protocol.”
“Copy that, Bounty.”
He dropped the radio to the seat. In that moment, it had felt as heavy as an anvil. His adrenaline slowly receded, and as it did, he realized his right arm was aching. Holding the umbrella had taken its toll. He could barely make a fist, and his shoulder throbbed with every micron he moved. He gritted his teeth and shifted the umbrella to the other side of the snowmobile.
Through his cold and pain, his mind screamed: Go back now. He considered why they would have called. There were only two possibilities: A, they were on to him, or B, they wanted to make sure he was clear of the site. If they were on to him, his goose was cooked anyway. If they were doing something at the site they didn’t want him to see, that put him in a tough spot.
When he had set out, he had told himself that if they caught him, he’d simply say he left something at the drill site. Nothing wrong with that. The umbrella? Just observing local blackout protocol.
But the radio conversation had blown that cover story. If they caught him now, he’d be out of a job at best, and if they were criminals engaged in something illegal… things would get a lot worse for him.
So he made a compromise with himself: he would drive to the top of the closest dune, see what he could see, then head back. He had tried.
Robert had to drive slowly now. He held the umbrella with his left elbow and braced it against his torso. It took him almost an hour to reach the peak of the dune. He took his binoculars out and scanned the distant horizon for the site.
He couldn’t believe his eyes.
The machines towering over the site were on a scale he’d never seen—and he had seen some massive machines. They dwarfed the site, which now looked like a tornado had hit it. The drilling platform lay half-buried in snow, like an overturned microscope lying in a child’s sandbox next to construction toys. But this was no sandbox, and the snow tracks on these “toys” must have been at least fifty feet tall. The main vehicle looked like a centipede. It was long, maybe four or five hundred feet, and had a small head, no doubt the “cab” that pulled it. Its body was a series of white, balloon-shaped segments. It curved around the site in a semicircle.
Beside the centipede, a white crane truck, about ten times the size of your standard industrial construction crane, held its crane arm high in the air. Was it pulling something out? Or more likely, lowering something.
Robert zoomed in. Before he could focus on the crane’s cable, he caught a glimpse of something, or an outline of something, in front of the centipede. He panned left, but at such high zoom, he lost the site completely. He zoomed out, reacquired the site, and zoomed in again, focusing on the middle of the centipede.
Were they people or robots? Whatever they were, they were wearing what looked like white hazmat suits, except these suits were more bulky. They moved in a labored, slow fashion. They looked almost like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters or the Michelin Man. The height was right for people. Robert followed one with the binoculars as the white figure waddled to the drill site. The crane was rotating toward the centipede. It had pulled something from the hole. Another marshmallow man came into view and helped the other man unhook and lower the crane’s bounty to the ground. It looked like a disco ball, but it was black. Behind the men, on the last section of the white centipede, a door opened. It slid from bottom to top, revealing yellow light inside and a bank of computer screens. There was also a large white box, which two suited men inside pushed down a ramp. On the ground, the other two men joined them and began taking the white panels off the side. They came away easily; they must have been flex or some sort of cloth.
Robert focused the binoculars. The box was a cage. It held two monkeys, maybe chimps; they were small enough. They hopped around and clung to each other, avoiding the bars. They must be freezing to death. One of the men quickly dropped to his knees and began punching at what must have been a control panel on the bottom of the cage. At the top of the cage, what had been a faint orange glow became a red ember, and the monkeys settled down a bit.
Another man waved an arm at the crane, and it swung over. They attached it to the top of the cage, then a
ttached the black ball.
The men stood aside as the crane lifted the cage, swung it over to the hole, and lowered it. Two men walked behind the crane and emerged driving crab-like machines. They drove to the drill hole and connected the machines. Joined, the two machines covered the entire hole except for a small slot large enough for the cable to pass through.
All four men hurried into the centipede, and the door slid closed behind them.
Nothing happened for several minutes. Robert’s arm began to tire, and he wondered how much longer he should wait. There was no question now—they weren’t drilling for oil. But what were they doing? And why did they need marshmallow suits to do it? Why didn’t he need one—or the monkeys for that matter?
He might get an answer soon. The marshies were bounding out of the centipede, making for the hole. They backed the cover machines off, and the cage seemed to explode out of the hole. It bounced a few times as the cable snapped back and forth. Finally it settled to hover a few feet off the ground, the men stabilized it, and jerked the door open.
The monkeys were covered in white or gray… snow, maybe? Both lay lifeless in the cage. When the men pulled them out, the white stuck to them—it wasn’t snow. They threw each monkey into a separate white body bag and raced them through the entrance of the second centipede section. As the door opened, Robert got a glimpse of two children, sitting on a bench inside a glass cage, waiting, as if they were next.
98
New Delhi, India
“Wait here. If I don’t come out in fifteen minutes, find a police officer, and tell him a robbery is in progress inside the store,” David said.
Kate scanned the street and the exterior of the store: Timepiece Trading Company. The street was busy, filled with older cars and Indians zooming by on bikes. David had told her that the store was one of a series of Clocktower’s covert outposts, a sort of back-door communication channel where local sources and agents could send messages to Central. His theory was that it may have been activated if Clocktower was still operational. That was a big if. If Clocktower had fallen—fully—then the Immari would be watching, or more likely manning, these outposts, waiting to clean up any rogue agents and loose ends.
Kate nodded, and David was in the street, limping toward the store; in the blink of an eye, he was inside. Kate bit her lip and waited.
The store was crowded. All the clocks seemed to be in glass cases, or at least the ones that weren’t standing on the ground. Every item looked so fragile, so intricately made, so breakable. David felt like the proverbial bull in a china shop as he tried to squeeze between two standing glass cases, forcing his wounded leg to cooperate.
It was dark inside the store and bright outside; he could barely see a thing. He brushed against a case full of antique pocket watches, the kind men with monocles and a shiny vest might wear. The case shook, and the timepieces jingled as their edges touched and tiny pieces rattled. David grabbed the case, trying to steady it as he balanced on his good leg. He felt as if one false move could bring the whole place down.
A voice rang out from deep inside the store. “Welcome, sir. How may I be of service today?”
David searched the room once, then again, finally finding the man behind a tall desk toward the rear of the store. He limped over to him while trying to avoid the standing glass mines. “I’m looking for a special piece.”
“You’ve come to the right place, sir. What sort of piece?”
“A Clocktower.”
The clerk studied him. “An unusual request. But you’re in luck. We’ve located several Clocktowers for customers over the years. May I know more about what you’re looking for? Age, shape, size? Any information is helpful.”
David tried to remember the exact words. He never thought he’d have to use them. “A piece that tells more than time. Forged from steel that can’t be broken.”
“I may know of such a piece. I’ll need to make a phone call.” His voice changed. “Stay here,” he said in a flat tone. Before David could answer, the man disappeared behind a cloth that hung over a doorway.
David strained to see and hear, but nothing emanated from beyond the cloth. He glanced at the clock on the wall. He had been inside for almost ten minutes. Would Kate keep her promise?
The clerk returned. He wore a blank, unreadable expression. “The seller would like to speak with you.” He waited.
What David wouldn’t have given for a gun at that moment. He simply nodded and stepped behind the desk. The clerk pulled the cloth back and pushed David into the darkness. He could sense the clerk reaching over his back, toward his head, but before David could turn, the clerk’s arm was coming down toward his chest, fast.
99
David turned just as the clerk’s hand came down.
Light flashed all around him. Above, a single light bulb swayed back and forth. The clerk held the string cord in his hand. “The phone is just there,” he said, motioning toward a table in the corner. The phone receiver was made of molded thick plastic, like the ones in phone booths in the eighties. The type that could bludgeon someone to death. The phone was just as old. A rotary dial.
David walked to the table and picked up the handset. He pivoted his body to face the clerk. The man had taken a step toward him.
The line sounded dead. “Central?” David said.
“Identify,” a voice said.
“Vale, David Patrick.”
“Station?”
“Jakarta,” David said. He couldn’t quite remember, but he knew it didn’t go this way.
“Stand by.” The line went dead again. “Access code?”
Access code? There was no access code. This wasn’t a Boy Scout’s secret hideout. They should have voice-print identified him the second he’d said his name. Unless they were playing for time. Surrounding the building. David tried to get a read on the clerk as he held the phone. How long had he been inside? Almost fifteen minutes by now?
“I… don’t have an access code…”
“Hold the line.” The voice returned. More nervous? “Given name?”
David considered the request. What did he have to lose? “Reed. Andrew Michael.”
The response was quick. “Hold for the director.”
Two seconds passed, and then Howard Keegan’s grandfatherly voice was on the line. “David, my God, we’ve been looking everywhere for you. Are you all right? What’s your status?”
“Is the line secure?”
“No. But frankly my boy, we’ve got bigger problems at the moment.”
“Clocktower?”
“Fallen. But not broken. I’m organizing a counterstrike. There’s another problem. A plague is sweeping the globe. We’re racing the clock here.”
“I think I have a piece of the puzzle.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure yet. I need transport.”
“Destination?”
“Gibraltar.”
“Gibraltar?” Keegan sounded confused.
“Is that a problem?”
“No. It’s the best news I’ve heard. I’m actually in Gibraltar now—the last of the agents and I are planning a counterstrike on the Immari headquarters here. The clerk can arrange transport for you, but before you go, there’s… something else I need to tell you, David. Something I want you to know, just in case you don’t make it here or… if I’m not here when you arrive. You weren’t the only one investigating Immari. Unraveling their conspiracy has been my life’s work, but when I ran out of time… I knew you were my best shot at stopping them. I was your source. I used all my contacts within Immari to help you, but it wasn’t enough. The tactical mistakes are mine alone—”
“And are in the past. We have new information, possibly something we can use. This is not over. I’ll see you in Gibraltar.”
100
Immari Research Base Prism
East Antarctica
Dorian had to hand it to Martin Grey: the man was technically competent. The research site in Antarcti
ca was breathtaking. For the last thirty minutes, Martin had walked Dorian through each section of the giant centipede-esque mobile laboratory: the primate lab, with its two dead carcasses, the drill control center, the staff barracks, the conference rooms, and the main control center, where they sat now.
“We’re out in the open here, Dorian. We should take precautions. There are several research stations here in Antarctica. Any one of them could stumble across us—”
“And do what?” Dorian said. “Who are they going to call?”
“The nations that fund them, for one—”
“Those nations will soon be consumed with the outbreak. Unauthorized research on some ice cube at the end of the world won’t be on their radar, trust me. Let’s stop wasting time and get down to business. Tell me what you found at the sub site.”
“About what we expected.”
“Him?”
“No. General Kane,” Martin seemed to wince as he said the word, “wasn’t among the bodies we iden—”
“Then he’s inside.” Dorian’s hope betrayed his usually stoic exterior.
“Not necessarily. There are other possibilities.”
“Doubtful—”
Martin pressed on. “He could have been killed during the raid in Tibet. Or en route. It was a long journey. Or—”
“He’s inside. I know it.”
“If so, it raises several questions. Specifically, why he hasn’t exited. And why we haven’t heard from him. And there’s the reality of the timeline. Kane left for Antarctica in 1938. Seventy-five years ago. If he is inside, he would be over one hundred and twenty years old. Long dead.”