The Extinction Code Read online

  He turned from the window and poured himself a drink, his mind filling with other more pressing concerns. The meeting had not gone well, at least he did not feel that it had. Garrett’s claims had unnerved him, and did not sit well with the cabal’s preferred method of probationary membership before a newcomer was welcomed into the fold. Then again, he had not enjoyed watching Gordon LeMay die earlier in the year either, but it was not his place to dictate Majestic Twelve’s choice of actions, only to advise.

  Felix sipped the single malt he’d poured and then felt his cell phone buzz in his pocket. He answered it, set it onto speaker phone on a coffee table nearby.

  ‘Felix,’ Kruger’s voice greeted him, ‘your thoughts on our potential new member?’

  ‘I don’t like him,’ Felix replied. ‘He’s too confident in what he’s doing when we all know that he’s dabbling in something we cannot control. We’ve been fighting the threat of a new extinction age for decades and if there’s one thing we’ve learned it’s that no volume of technical wizardry is going to stop seven billion people from ultimately self–destructing. There are just too many of us.’

  A long silence filled the suite until Samuel Kruger finally answered.

  ‘You know that we’re losing influence, Felix. We need a man like Garrett to bolster our position, perhaps in the face of an extinction level event. The FBI no longer represents a valuable asset to us, despite our links to the agency remaining strong despite the loss of LeMay.’

  Felix let a bitter little smile flicker across his features.

  ‘Loss,’ he echoed. ‘Waste, is a word I would have used. As for Wilms, I take it that you believe that Mitchell was behind the attack?’

  ‘It would appear so,’ came the reply. ‘It was only a matter of time before this happened Felix, you and I both know that. Wilms would have talked eventually, and it’s only convenient that Mitchell struck before somebody in our own employ was able to make Wilms a historical irritation.’

  ‘Wilms was a servant of our organisation for many long decades and you hung him out to dry,’ Felix snapped back. ‘One of the pillars of loyalty is that said loyalty is shown to those who work for us. The walls start falling when people come to believe that loyalty is a one way street; that it only applies to those at the top. I predicted this would happen if either LeMay or another of our assets was compromised.’

  ‘I don’t appreciate the lecture.’

  ‘Which is why we’re in the state we’re in,’ Felix shot back. ‘Garrett is dangerous, more so than I think any of us realize. He’s not here to join us; he’s here to take control. He says he has the cure for a disease so powerful that nobody on earth can stop it, and yet he won’t allow us access to that cure? Since when do we allow ourselves to be blackmailed?’

  ‘Since we started becoming the hunted,’ Kruger growled back. ‘Mitchell rightly has every reason to believe that we will kill him the first chance we get, therefore he is now making the first move. It is only a matter of time before he reaches one of us, before he finds out who we are and is able to target us directly.’

  Felix shook his head.

  ‘The Defense Intelligence Agency already knows who we are,’ he corrected, ‘but they cannot use the imagery they obtained in New York against us. It would be inadmissible in court without letting the world know that the President of the United States is merely a cipher for power in our country. No self–respecting Congressman or Senator is going to say that they’re a powerless pawn in our geo–political games.’

  ‘We can’t be sure of that.’

  ‘No?’ Felix challenged. ‘So, what’s the news saying about Wilms? Are they suddenly now reporting that he’s been shot by an assassin?’

  Another long silence before the reply came. ‘No, there was a brief report an hour ago that a prisoner in Florence ADX facility had died of a self–inflicted chest wound.’

  Felix nodded and smiled. ‘And the coroner’s report will reflect that and no mention will ever be made of Mitchell’s kill, the weakened security of Florence ADX or the fact that Mitchell escaped from the damned place! The government still fear us, are still unable to admit to the people of the world just who really pulls the strings for the greater good. If they find out that people like us control nations and remain unaccountable there would be riots on the streets of every capital city on earth!’

  ‘And arrests,’ Kruger pointed out.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Felix agreed, ‘but I trust in politicians’ shared desire for the illusion of power, their propensity to lie and their spineless nature to ensure that none of them would ever upset the status quo. No matter how strong the DIA’s agents become, or how deeply ingrained Mitchell’s hatred of us grows, they won’t be able to bring us down.’

  ‘Unless somebody at the DIA is feeding Mitchell information.’

  Felix stopped pacing again. ‘That’s unlikely, they want him brought down as much as we do.’

  ‘Our people have so far failed to derail General Nellis’s effort to expose and arrest us,’ Kruger reminded him. ‘The longer they have, the greater the chance that they will succeed, and there is always the chance that one of our weaker members might decide to turncoat if things get too tough.’

  Felix nodded again to himself, a concern of his own that some of the cabal’s other members might not entirely share Majestic Twelve’s vision of the New World Order.

  ‘We must talk more on this, in person,’ he agreed.

  ‘Garrett’s invited us to his island,’ the director said. ‘Most of us have accepted.’

  ‘That’s dangerous.’

  ‘It’s necessary,’ the director insisted. ‘We need a way forward and a means to maintain a hold on the United States Government. Without that, we’re as vulnerable as we’ve ever been. And if Garrett’s threat of a global pandemic is real, we need to be with him when that unfortunate event occurs. We’re no longer safe, Felix, we have little choice.’

  Felix sighed. ‘When?’

  ‘Forty eight hours from now,’ the director said. ‘I’ll send you the details. Delete them as soon as you’ve memorized them and then destroy the cell entirely.’

  ‘Understood.’

  The line went dead, and seconds later the cell phone beeped as Felix received a message.

  Ilhabela, BRAZIL. BE CAREFUL.

  Felix smiled. ‘I don’t think Mitchell will come after me first, old man,’ he said as he moved his thumb across the screen to delete the message.

  ‘Don’t be so sure.’

  Felix froze, his eyes staring into space as the hairs on the back of his neck went up. He turned slowly and saw the huge man standing in the suite, a pistol aimed between Felix’s eyes.

  Felix knew of Mitchell only by reputation and a brief description once given him by a former member of Majestic Twelve who had since passed away. Still he was not prepared for the man’s immense presence in the room, something more than just his considerable physical size. The light seemed to have dimmed, as though Mitchell projected an aura of darkness around him. Felix managed not to swallow or show any fear.

  ‘You’re after the wrong man,’ he said simply.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘We’re not all hell–bent on world domination, Mitchell. Some of us have other plans.’

  ‘So I heard,’ Mitchell replied as he glanced at Felix’s cell phone. ‘Toss it on the couch.’

  Felix obeyed, let the cell phone fall onto the soft leather as Mitchell moved around him and picked it up.

  ‘How did you get in here?’ Felix asked.

  ‘The balcony was open,’ Mitchell replied without looking at him, ‘via the roof next door. Why are you going to Brazil, and who is Garrett?’

  ‘You know I can’t tell you that,’ Felix said, ‘won’t tell you that.’

  Mitchell turned to face Felix, seemed to appraise him for a moment, and then he put the pistol away in its shoulder holster. Felix sighed in relief.

  ‘You’re doing the right thing,’ he began. ‘I know who you sh
ould be…’

  ‘In two minutes you will be dead,’ Mitchell said in a soft but threatening growl. ‘I would choose your words with care as they’ll be your last.’

  Felix swallowed now, glanced at the suite door.

  ‘You won’t make it,’ Mitchell promised.

  ‘I’ll just scream at the top of my lungs,’ Felix replied.

  ‘You won’t finish that scream,’ Mitchell said. ‘You have a choice: die on your knees or on your feet like a man. But whatever you choose, it’s all over for you.’

  Felix felt desperation swell like poison inside him and his legs felt weak. He considered sprinting for the balcony and hurling himself out of the apartment but somehow he figured that Mitchell would overpower him.

  ‘That’s right,’ Mitchell said as though reading his mind, ‘there’s no escape.’

  ‘Why me?’ Felix asked finally.

  ‘You were the closest.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It bloody well matters to me!’

  Mitchell looked at him without interest, as though he had no soul, and then he reached into his pocket and produced a small polythene bag filled with a clear fluid, attached to which was something that looked like a fishing hook.

  ‘Your kind will never know true justice,’ Mitchell replied finally, ‘at the mercy of your peers, devoid of political help, so there are those at the DIA who have decided that there is only one kind of justice that we can subject you to.’

  ‘Nellis?’ Felix asked, and was rewarded with a shake of the head.

  ‘Nobody that you would know,’ Mitchell replied.

  ‘I want to know the name of the man who ordered my death,’ Felix insisted.

  ‘So would many thousands of people who have died because of what Majestic Twelve has done, what I have done for them. Families who will never know what happened to their loved ones so that people like you could get rich.’

  ‘I’ve never killed anybody, nor ordered any such thing!’

  ‘You know well what you’re into,’ Mitchell said as he loomed before Felix. ‘This can either be easy or it can be hard. Decide.’

  Felix felt his courage finally abandon him and his voice cracked as he spoke.

  ‘There must be some other way…’

  ‘The hard way, then,’ Mitchell said.

  Mitchell’s fist flashed across Felix’s face and struck him with a blow that seemed to echo around the room. Felix opened his mouth to scream for help, then realized just too late that the blow was merely a distraction. Mitchell’s knee slammed into Felix’s solar plexus like a wrecking ball and the air blasted from his lungs in a rush as he folded over the blow and sank to his knees.

  Mitchell bowed over him and in his silent, rasping pain Felix felt a tiny prick of pain in the side of his neck, felt the polythene bag against his skin as Mitchell’s iron hands pinned him in place and squeezed the bag. Something cold leeched into Felix’s body, Mitchell’s weight and the terrible pain surging through his guts rendering Felix unable to move.

  Then, suddenly, the cold was gone and Mitchell stood up and backed away from him. Felix looked up through blurred eyes and saw Mitchell quietly lock the apartment door and then move silently back across the suite to pick up Felix’s cell.

  Felix opened his mouth to ask what Mitchell had done to him, and then he realized that his voice no longer worked and that a pain was building in his neck and across his chest. As soon as he noticed it, the pain intensified and then soared. For a brief moment while he was still capable of coherent thought, Felix believed that Mitchell had set his body aflame as white pain seared his every pore, deep inside his body and even across the surface of his eyes. He opened his mouth to scream in agony but even his lungs burned as his vision faded to black and he heard Mitchell’s voice reach him as though from afar.

  ‘It’s the venom from a snake known as the western taipan, an Australian species,’ he said matter–of–factly. ‘It’s a specialist mammal hunter and the most venomous snake on earth, much worse even than sea snakes, its toxicity specifically designed to efficiently kill warm blooded species. One bite contains enough venom to kill at least a hundred grown men, and you’ve received the equivalent of around thirty bites.’

  Felix’s mind disintegrated into a swirling maelstrom of unimaginable agony as he collapsed onto his side, his lungs seared with naked flames and his eyes wide and unseeing as his body went into complete and total organ failure.

  ‘I keep a couple of them on stand–by back in America,’ Mitchell said as he stood over Felix and looked down at him, ‘for special occasions. They’re a surprisingly docile snake that likes to avoid confrontation, but are utterly lethal if provoked or handled incorrectly. I like to think that’s a trait I share with them, Felix. I’ll let myself out.’

  Felix saw a halo of light, something shadowy receding into the distance before him as his brain was overwhelmed by the volume of toxins flooding through his veins and poisoning his every fibre. His last thought was that he was glad to die, such was the unimaginable pain blazing through every cell in his body.

  ***

  XXI

  DIA Headquarters,

  Anacostia–Bolling Airbase,

  Washington DC

  ‘Lucy.’

  Doug Jarvis stood up as a young woman entered the room in which he was waiting with Hellerman. His granddaughter was tall, with blonde hair and intelligent green eyes who none the less flung her arms over his shoulders as though she were still the child he remembered her as.

  ‘Please, take a seat,’ Jarvis said to her as he closed the door behind her and they sat down.

  ‘I’m not sure what I can do for you,’ she said as she looked at them.

  ‘We figured you owed us a favor or two, over the years,’ Jarvis replied with an easy smile. ‘Do you know much about Aubrey Channing?’

  ‘Aubrey died so many years ago now, and I only know of him by name. He’s something of a legend in the field.’

  ‘You say that he died,’ Hellerman pointed out, ‘but isn’t he still just missing?’

  ‘Officially, yes,’ Lucy agreed, ‘but in most minds he died many years ago. Aubrey was just the sort to just wander off for weeks in the wilderness, you see. To be gone for so long, he must have died somehow.’

  ‘What do you know about what he was working on when he vanished?’ Jarvis asked.

  ‘Just rumors mostly,’ Lucy said, ‘but he spent most of his time in Montana so I would have to assume that he was studying Tyrannosaur remains. They were his passion, one that was vastly inflamed by the movie Jurassic Park, which he said was the first time in history that mankind got to see what a real Tyrannosaur would have looked like in the flesh.’ She smiled. ‘I heard that he often showed the T–Rex scenes from the movie to his students, and I think he did the same at a lecture I once saw him give in Chicago.’

  ‘And you now also work in science?’ Hellerman asked.

  ‘Anthropology,’ Lucy confirmed. ‘My latest research is in the field of novel medicine and ancient diseases, specifically seeking drugs to combat what is known as the antibiotic apocalypse.’

  ‘The what?’ Jarvis asked.

  Hellerman replied for Lucy.

  ‘The antibiotic apocalypse is the rising inability of medicine to effectively combat even basic illnesses, due to the growing resistance of bacteria to all known medicines. It has been suggested that by 2050 we could be seeing a mass extinction of humanity as it falls prey to diseases that were eradicated generations ago.’

  Lucy inclined her head at Hellerman in respect of his knowledge.

  ‘Precisely,’ she said. ‘It is considered to be one of the greatest threats to human existence that we have ever faced, and there has been a concerted effort to play down the impending crisis in the media for fear of the panic that it will cause.’

  ‘You’re saying that people can die of colds now?’ Jarvis asked.

  Lucy nodded.

  �
�Potentially, yes,’ she said. ‘Antibiotics have been used as a wonder–drug for half a century, prescribed by physicians for the mildest of ailments. Most are broad–spectrum, which means that they simply attack all and every bacteria in the body. This destroys the sickness but also harms other bacteria within us that protect us, which can make us vulnerable to other illnesses. The problem that has developed has its cause in two issues; one, the over–reliance of medicine on antibiotics to fight infections that could otherwise have been defeated by the human body’s own immune system, and two; the fact that despite doctors always telling patients to complete the entire dose of antibiotics, they often do not.’

  ‘What difference does that make?’ Jarvis asked.

  ‘It leaves some of the infection present,’ Hellerman explained, ‘if the dose is not completed. People take the anti–Bs, start to feel better, and then stop taking the medicine. This gives the infection within them, and more specifically the bacteria that caused the infection, the chance to evolve. Some of them will develop a resistance to the antibiotics, and are then spread to other people, whereas if the dose had been completed by the patient the infectious bacteria would have been totally destroyed and would not have been given the chance to develop resistance or pass on to other hosts.’

  ‘Again,’ Lucy said, ‘very precise. ‘Bacteria able to resist the drug of last resort, colistin, have been identified in patients and livestock in China. That resistance will spread around the world and is already raising the spectre of untreatable infections. If the antibiotic apocalypse should occur, medicine could be plunged back into the dark ages within years. Common infections will kill again, while surgery and cancer therapies reliant on antibiotics will be under threat. The resistance we’re seeing has already spread between a range of bacterial strains and species, including E. coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, with strains seen in Laos and Malaysia. When the gene responsible, MRC–1, goes global, and I promise you that it will, then there will no longer be an effective medicine against the majority of human ailments.’