The Extinction Code Read online

  ‘If he gets to them first he’ll take them all out, no matter what odds he encounters,’ Lopez whispered as she advanced with her pistol pointed out in front of her.

  ‘So we let him,’ Ethan said, following her closely behind.

  ‘I thought you’d agreed that we’d arrest them if possible?’

  ‘I did,’ Ethan replied, ‘but if Mitchell’s going to get to them first then we let him. He’ll provide the distraction we need.’

  ‘I admire your confidence.’

  ‘He won’t kill them outright,’ Ethan said. ‘He’ll want them looking into his eyes, to know the face of their killer before he pulls the trigger. He’s come too far to just blow them to hell.’

  The tunnel that emerged before them descended into the depths of the island, a row of lights leading the way into the darkness beyond. The tunnel itself was only about eight feet wide, but otherwise bore a remarkable similarity to the one they had encountered in Norway, that had led to vaults where the world’s seeds were stored for after doomsday.

  ‘How many of these places are there?’ Lopez wondered out loud, her whisper still echoing back and forth around them.

  ‘Hellerman said there were many vaults, all of them protecting species from extinction,’ Ethan said. ‘Maybe this was one of them that Garrett bought and uses for his own projects?’

  Lopez shivered visibly as she walked, the air much cooler inside the tunnel. Ethan recalled that subterranean structures such as this one maintained much more regular temperatures regardless of the environment outside, one of the reasons why they were so popular as doomsday vaults and nuclear bunkers.

  As they walked, a series of revetments in the walls of the tunnel appeared, and Ethan looked into them and slowed, horror creeping up his spine with a cold chill. Lopez moved alongside him, both of them equally silent as they looked inside the coffin–shaped revetments and their gruesome contents.

  The figures were humanoid, perhaps four feet tall, with large oval heads and thin limbs. Tiny mouths, no nostrils and large, oval eyes filled with an empty blackness stared back at them, the figures evidently long dead.

  ‘These are what the girls in Varginha saw,’ Lopez whispered, morbidly fascinated by the remains. There were almost a dozen, each in its own case like some kind of macabre showroom. ‘You think that he’s been cloning them?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put anything past this guy,’ Ethan replied.

  He retrieved the satellite phone from his satchel and checked the signal. As expected, down here there was no way to contact the outside world, no means to call in support or inform the DIA of whatever they might find.

  ‘Let me guess,’ Lopez whispered as she glanced at the phone, ‘we’re on our own?’

  Ethan nodded and dropped the phone back into his satchel.

  ‘Afraid so.’

  *

  ARIES Watch Room,

  DIA Headquarters,

  ‘Where the hell is Jarvis?’ General Nellis thundered as he stormed into the Watch Room.

  Hellerman flinched as he emerged from his office. ‘I’ve been trying to reach him for hours but he’s not answering. He dropped the GPS tail right after he left the city. We found it attached to a Greyhound bus headed for Canada.’

  Nellis followed Hellerman into his office and shut the door behind them. ‘Did you tip him off?’

  ‘I haven’t said anything,’ Hellerman insisted. ‘If he’s taken off, it’s not because of anything we’ve done down here.’

  Nellis sighed, controlled himself. Jarvis was a professional, a man more than used to the machinations of the intelligence community and the procedures used to track felons. He would have likely searched his car for GPS tags, or perhaps switched to another vehicle the moment he got clear of the DIA. Nellis was angry instead at himself, for not taking greater precautions in tracking the rogue agent, and he wondered at himself and whether somehow, secretly, he’d wanted Jarvis to get the hell out and finish what he’d started on his own terms.

  Nellis reigned his anger in and focused on the task at hand.

  ‘What about Warner and Lopez? Have you located them?’

  ‘I’ve got their last known location based on the satellite phone ping,’ Hellerman replied as he swivelled around in his chair to give the general a better look at one of his three computer monitors. ‘It puts them a quarter mile south of Ilhabela Island, off the coast of Brazil.’

  Nellis peered at the island for a moment.

  ‘Connection to their case? Jarvis didn't inform me about any island?’

  ‘It’s owned by the Brazilian government, but has been leased for the last eight years to a shell corporation in the Cayman Islands. Garrett is the owner of the leasehold.’

  ‘Some kind of hideaway, maybe?’ the director ventured.

  ‘Garrett owns a couple of islands in the Bahamas,’ Hellerman said, ‘both of which are tropical paradises filled with luxury villas and private docks. Ilhabela, in contrast, is a nature reserve and filled mostly by impenetrable jungle and mosquito swarms. I can’t imagine what the hell he would be leasing it for.’

  Nellis thought for a moment.

  ‘It’s not likely to be anything good,’ he said. ‘Why not do a check of local shipping companies based in Brazil, or even here in the United States, that might have done supply runs of any kind down there. If Garrett’s got something on that island, it would have required building materials, manpower, everything. That stuff doesn’t get spirited into existence out of thin air.’

  Hellerman complied immediately, his fingers rattling across the keys as he sought answers to questions that were forming rapidly in his own mind. Moments later, a series of shipping manifests appeared on the screen.

  ‘Daeyong Industrial,’ he said, ‘a Korean shipping firm, delivered multiple consignments of building materials to a dock on the Brazilian coast eight years ago, all of which were subject to import taxes and are on the record. Those consignments were then privately shipped off–coast, but the work was done without any official paperwork other than that signing the goods over to the owner. The company doesn’t appear on any US records, so it’s probably another shell.’

  Nellis drew a hand down his jaw.

  ‘Okay, pull up satellite images from before the dates of the materials being signed away, and then images from two years’ later.’

  Hellerman accessed the National Reconnaissance Office archives and pulled up the respective images before placing them side–by–side on his screen. The general leaned in close for a moment, and then pointed at a small patch on the island.

  ‘There,’ he said, ‘that area’s been cleared in the intervening period.’

  Hellerman nodded and zoomed in on the area. ‘Looks like a small track was cleared also, leading in from the west coast, but there are no docks or jetties.’

  Nellis stared at the screen for a long moment.

  ‘We’re sure that Garrett is behind all of this?’ he asked. ‘He’s controlling the creation of this plague?’

  Hellerman nodded. ‘Garrett is the only person on earth right now who has the technical skill, the independent financial power and a suitably psychopathic determination to follow his plan through. If that facility on his island really is a bunker of some kind, then you can bet your life that it’s the only safe place on earth right now, and he’s hiding there with the entire cabal of Majestic Twelve. What are the chances they’re just visiting for tea and cakes?’

  Nellis drew in a deep breath that inflated his broad chest as he stood up and considered the only likely reason for the cabal retreating to what was in effect a nuclear bunker.

  ‘They’re hiding from the coming extinction,’ he said finally, ‘and Garrett’s about to launch his pandemic.’

  ‘We need to cut him off, now,’ Hellerman said, ‘blast him to hell if we have to. There is no defense on earth for the disease that was spreading in Madagascar, and it was only the limited area of the infection that allowed it to be napalmed out of existence. If it gets out
completely, everything dies.’

  Nellis knew that he had absolutely no choice in the matter now, and that he had sufficient evidence to connect Garrett to the outbreak on Madagascar. If he didn’t take what he had to the administration now, while MJ–12 were within reach, it could take decades to arrest and imprison each of them.

  Likewise, he could not stand by and hope that somehow Ethan and Nicola would get inside the facility, defeat the armed guards there, overpower and apprehend Majestic Twelve while also preventing the spread of a sickness that would likely kill them within hours on infection anyway. Nellis would have sent in the Army, Navy and Marines all at once but he knew that there was no time left for a major invasion of the island that would only alert Majestic Twelve and perhaps force them to release the contagion immediately. If it were capable of airborne transmission, then the mission would fail and humanity might not survive the consequences.

  Nellis rested a firm hand on Hellerman’s shoulder and squeezed it briefly before he turned away for the door. He got only a couple of paces before Hellerman got out of his chair.

  ‘Sir? Lopez? And Ethan?’

  Nellis hesitated at the door, but he did not look back at the scientist as he replied.

  ‘We did everything that we could,’ he said. ‘Keep trying to reach them, but we have to ensure that Garrett cannot release that disease and I can’t sideline the White House on this. It’s the President’s call now. Fire destroyed it on Madagascar – it’ll do the same on Ilhabela.’

  ***

  XXXIX

  Samuel Kruger followed the two armed escorts down the long steel tunnel, which was lit with overhead strips that cast a harsh white light around them as they walked, their polished shoes clicking on the metallic plating that lined the floor.

  Kruger had installed his own apocalypse bunker back in the states many years before, concerned about the rise of the Kremlin and its power–hungry former KGB leader. Although nuclear conflict was still considered an unlikely outcome in any new confrontation between east and west, Kruger had learned through long experience that it was best to be prudent when you had no control over the larger forces of the world. It was why people built hurricane proof houses in Florida, homes on stilts on flood plains; you prepared for the worst, and hoped for the best.

  That life policy had served him well for decades, but now he felt exposed and uncomfortable. The rush to get here to this facility, buried on a remote and to all intents and purposes useless island off the Brazilian coast had distinctly lacked the care and professionalism normally attributed to any of the cabal’s gatherings. Garrett’s warnings of the coming apocalypse, however, combined with the loss of yet another member of the cabal to Aaron Mitchell’s enraged revenge attacks had convinced some of the cabal that they should step cautiously and accept Garrett’s offer of shelter. The trouble was, in being cautious about their own safety they had then travelled here, together, with only the scantest protection and with no back–up plan or means of escape should things go wrong. In short, Garrett held all the cards over Majestic Twelve, and that was something that no individual had ever achieved since the cabal was first formed in 1947. Nobody on earth had held power over Majestic Twelve, until now.

  The guards led them through a series of steel doors that had been propped open, each of them ringed with inflatable seals. Kruger could see air ducts with filters in place, designed to clean air of pollutants and whatever horrific contagion Garrett had cooked up in this awful place. Kruger’s nuclear bunker, and those possessed by his companions, contained many rooms all with plush furnishings, stately grandeur designed to make their confinement as comfortable as possible for many years, decades even. In contrast, Garrett’s bunker was stark metal and bare rock, power cables hanging in long loops from the walls between the lights, and the air was cool, cold even.

  The guards reached a set of double doors, and opened them to reveal an interior of control panels and seats, much like the command center of a warship or similar, but there were no staff, no bustle of people. Kruger walked in and was strangely relieved to see Garrett standing there waiting for them: relieved, because if he was here then it was far more likely that he intended to go through with precisely the plan he had outlined to the cabal in Dubai.

  The nine men behind Kruger followed him in, and the guards behind them pushed the doors closed and sealed them in with a deep boom and a hiss of pressurized air.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Garrett greeted them with an open–armed gesture and a bright smile. ‘I’m so glad that you could make it.’

  ‘We’ve travelled a long way, Garrett,’ Kruger replied as he looked around the command center. ‘Why are we here? What is this place for?’

  Garrett gestured around them to the screens and the terminals.

  ‘This, my friends, is a place where for the last five years great work has been done,’ he announced grandly. ‘It is here that computers, technology, the Big Brother of all mankind has rooted out the most awful, brutal and dangerous infection the world has ever known and decoded its veils of security and protection. It is here that the cure has been found, the most sacred details of the scourge of mankind finally exposed for all to see.’

  Kruger frowned as he looked at the screens and saw images of different areas of the world. He recognized famous landmarks; Machu Picchu in Peru; the CERN nuclear fusion generator in Caradache, France; the US Consulate General building in Hong Kong; and then a final image that sent a lance of concern bolting through his spine.

  A buried facility deep in the Antarctic ice, built by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, that only a handful of people in the world even knew about.

  ‘What is this, Garrett?’ Kruger demanded.

  Garrett stepped down off the central podium on the command center and walked to face Majestic Twelve, his smile never slipping.

  ‘This, Samuel? This is about what it’s always been about. This is about the Extinction Code. This is about eradicating the scourge of humanity from the face of the earth. This is about saving the best of people while eliminating the worst of mankind’s many, many scum.’ Garrett’s features turned angry, his eyes cold and hard. ‘This is about eradicating those that would bring humanity to its demise.’

  A loud crack echoed through the facility and Kruger turned to see mechanical bolts on the double doors twist and hiss as they turned automatically, sealing them inside the room.

  ‘What is this, Garrett?!” demanded one of the men behind Kruger. ‘What are you doing?!’

  ‘Saving humanity!’ Garrett replied joyously as he stepped away again and strode up onto the platform.

  With a swish of a remote control Garrett changed the screens above them, and Kruger saw images of men replace those of the sites around the world. Among them he saw his own likeness, a long range shot taken in Frankfurt years before when he had attended one of the Bilderberg Meetings just outside the city.

  Garrett turned to face them and now the smile was completely gone. His features reminded Kruger briefly of a bird of prey, staring with black eyes at its victim, knowing that in moments the predator would have killed it, an emotionless expression of utter ruthlessness that chilled the blood in his veins.

  ‘You lured us here,’ Kruger spat.

  ‘At last!’ Garrett chirped in delight, the scowl returning again with frightening speed. ‘The most powerful men on earth, duped by a mere chemist. Not feeling quite so majestic now I take it?’

  Kruger stepped forward. ‘What do you want?’

  Garrett smiled without warmth, his eyes strangely black in the harsh light.

  ‘It’s not what I want, because there is nothing that I could want from an animal like you, Kruger. It’s what I know, and I know that like rats in a barrel none of you will ever leave this room alive.’

  *

  Ethan eased his way down the tunnel with Lopez close behind. The harsh lighting created deep shadows as black as night, and the chilly atmosphere suggested that whatever this place had been designed for, it
wasn’t for a cabal like Majestic Twelve to be luxuriating as the rest of the world died in a horrific plague.

  ‘What the hell is this place?’ Lopez whispered, her breath condensing in the darkness and glowing in the faint light. ‘It’s damned cold!’

  Ethan had no answer for her, and so instead he pushed on into the facility toward a pair of sealed double doors that marked the end of the corridor. As they approached he could see closed–circuit cameras mounted on the walls, monitoring the approach and the adjoining corridors that presumably travelled further into the facility.

  There was no way that they could avoid being seen by anybody monitoring the feeds, so Ethan abruptly dropped the covert act and began walking quickly toward the double doors. Lopez followed without question, seeing the cameras at the same time as he had done.

  A sudden, low growl stopped them in their tracks and Ethan felt a primal fear ripple like a cold lance up his spine.

  ‘I didn’t hear that,’ Lopez whispered. A rumbling, rattling growl followed, immensely deep and terrifying. ‘I didn’t hear that either.’

  In the dim light Ethan sensed rather than saw something move in the shadows, and that something was frighteningly large and quite some distance away despite the volume of the growl. A hefty thump, muscle glinting in the pale glow from the distant lights, the fall of a foot with hundreds, perhaps thousands of pounds of weight behind it. Ethan involuntarily backed up a pace, Lopez mirroring his movement, and then before them a huge shape lumbered into view.

  Ethan was no expert on extinct species, but he knew a carnivorous dinosaur when he saw one. It stood perhaps three meters at the hip, cold yellow eyes like those of a tiger staring it seemed directly at him, ranks of fangs overhanging the lower jaw from a head as long as half Ethan’s body. The leathery skin was covered in tiny, fine feathers that were colored with elaborate stripes, its small forearms flexing as it inhaled a rush of air, sniffing at them.