Apocalypse Page 29

  Governor MacKenzie turned and stared at Joaquin in horror.

  ‘My God,’ he uttered. ‘You’re no philanthropist. You’re nothing but a mass murderer.’

  ‘A revolutionary,’ Joaquin corrected him. ‘There is no gain without loss, no enlightenment without sacrifice. Mankind only moves forward through catastrophe: better one that is controlled, than one that is entirely unpredictable, I say.’

  Aubrey felt snakes of disgust slither through his belly as he considered the scope of Joaquin Abell’s insanity. But at the center of his thoughts was Katherine Abell. As he caught Joaquin’s eye, he saw a man committed to his cause and yet quite aware of the crimes he was committing.

  ‘I’ll head for the comms hub,’ Aubrey said.

  Joaquin flicked his head dismissively toward the exit hatch before turning away from Aubrey, who strode from the chamber toward the exit. He didn’t see Joaquin glance across at Olaf before he left.

  48

  CAPE CANAVERAL

  June 28, 16:17

  Ethan leapt from the helicopter that deposited them near the bunker, with Jarvis close behind, running low as the wash from the blades flattened the grass around him with rippling waves of down-force.

  The guards inside the bunker had once again been forewarned of their arrival and opened the elevator doors without fuss. Moments later they were descending in the elevator shaft.

  ‘You really think that Joaquin can cause an earthquake?’ Jarvis asked as he glanced at his watch.

  ‘Given everything else we’ve seen so far today, I wouldn’t put anything past him,’ Ethan replied. ‘What really maddens me is that he’s doing all of this on the back of men he has killed, the scientists who built the device that he’s been using. He’s a small man standing on the shoulders of giants.’

  ‘Including his father,’ Jarvis pointed out. ‘A man who had some kind of genuine desire to benefit humanity, but whose work Joaquin has twisted to gain power.’

  ‘What’s his motivation?’ Ethan wondered out loud. ‘There must be more to this than just gaining power, or money, or even creating disasters into which IRIS can heroically sail and save lives, increasing his popularity. He must have some purpose – political, maybe. Purcell said that Joaquin was flirting with high-level figures in government and congress.’

  Jarvis nodded.

  ‘It’s an angle we haven’t checked out. You think maybe he knows people, has friends on the inside who want to see him reach the senate, maybe even the White House?’

  The elevator slowed as it reached the bottom and Ethan opened the gates.

  ‘Men of power and influence – they’re exactly the kind of people who move in his circle,’ he said as they walked down the corridor and into the Project Watchman facility. They hurried toward the main control panels where scientists were already programming the virtual-reality feeds.

  A man was wearing a virtual-reality suit and headgear up on the platform as Michael Ottaway turned to them.

  ‘You got the coordinates?’ Ethan asked.

  Ottaway nodded and gestured to a large plasma screen.

  ‘Yes. Our man’s in position. You can view his perspective on this screen,’ he said, and gestured to a nearby monitor.

  Ethan and Jarvis looked at the screen and saw the feed from the VR headset. They watched as the viewer zoomed in on Bryson sitting on his airboat, swigging from a bottle. Behind him, a second airboat drifted silently toward him.

  ‘Damn it, I told you Bryson was a waster,’ Ethan said.

  ‘Speed it forward,’ Jarvis muttered to the scientist. ‘About five minutes.’

  The scientist obeyed and the scene changed to the two airboats racing away from the spit of land. The viewer changed his position, catching them up as the airboats raced between the reed banks. Ethan saw the assassin firing bullets from his rifle, saw himself, Lopez and Bryson ducking to avoid the bullets and then the assassin broad-siding his airboat in front of theirs and shooting up their engine. Ethan watched himself leap up, sprint across the deck and hurl himself across the void between the two craft to land on the metal cage on the back of the assassin’s airboat.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Ottaway muttered at Ethan. ‘The hell you think you are, James Bond?’

  ‘Don’t encourage him,’ Jarvis said. ‘Keep moving forward, another couple of minutes.’

  They watched as the viewer caught up with Ethan and the assassin fighting on the shore, black smoke smoldering from the crashed airboat, and then the assassin taking off into the woods with the camera.

  ‘There,’ Ethan said, ‘track him from there, as fast as you can.’

  The scientist relayed the command to the viewer, before trebling the frame rate of the satellite’s feed. The viewer flew up to a height of a hundred feet, watching below as the assassin rushed through the forests at comical speed. The image brightened and darkened every few seconds as cloud shadows raced across the landscape. The assassin reached a crumbling old jetty perhaps two miles from the crash site, where a second airboat awaited with two men aboard.

  ‘He had back-up,’ Jarvis said. ‘But why didn’t he bring them along?’

  ‘To prevent any connection with IRIS in case we overpowered any of them,’ Ethan guessed. ‘They’re probably employees of the company, whereas the assassin likely stays off the official company books. No paper trail, total deniability.’

  They watched for the next few minutes as the airboat made the long journey back to civilization. The three men exited the boat and took a Lincoln from the local lot. The vehicle zipped through the fast-flowing traffic, the viewer doing a skillful job of tracking the car despite the accelerated speed of the footage.

  ‘He’s heading for the marina,’ Jarvis said.

  Ethan watched as the men got out of the Lincoln and boarded a small powerboat moored at Deering Bay Marina, south of Miami. Moments later the vessel raced out to sea.

  Ethan checked his watch.

  ‘Sixteen fifteen hours,’ he said, and turned to the scientist. ‘You got any way of tracking electromagnetic fields out of the Bermuda Triangle?’

  Ottaway nodded and gestured to another screen.

  ‘NASA’s already on it. All satellites monitor or transmit as part of the electromagnetic spectrum, but they’re using a few satellites in geostationary orbit right now to monitor specifically for spikes in the region of the Florida Straits.’

  Ethan turned back and watched as the powerboat soared into deep water, toward the Miami Terrace shelf. It almost looked as though it were heading out for the true ocean when suddenly a large vessel appeared on the horizon as the viewer looked up briefly to check his direction.

  The powerboat slowed and pulled alongside the huge yacht. Ethan didn’t need to see the name on the back of the vessel to know which one she was.

  ‘The Event Horizon,’ he said. ‘Joaquin Abell’s personal yacht.’

  ‘You sure?’ Ottaway asked.

  ‘We’ve been aboard,’ Jarvis said. ‘Slow the frames back down and zoom in.’

  Ottaway obeyed and they watched as the viewer dropped down to the deck of the powerboat, walking amongst the assassin and his two accomplices. A large access door opened vertically from the side of the yacht’s hull, the door coming to rest just above the surface of the water. The powerboat was lifted via a small crane into a hangar within the yacht.

  The interior of the yacht was a pixilated black mass, but as the assassin stepped from the powerboat to the very edge of the hangar, still in the sunlight, he held in his hand the camera that he had stolen from Charles Purcell.

  A hand reached out from the pixilated blackness and took the camera, while another, which clearly belonged to the same man, vigorously shook the assassin’s giant hand.

  ‘Come on, you bastard,’ Ethan hissed at the screen, ‘show yourself.’ The big assassin was smiling broadly, his face demonically half-shadowed where the satellite camera had failed to image his face. ‘Come on,’ Ethan urged.

  ‘He’s not going to b
e imaged,’ Jarvis said.

  Ethan raised a hand to indicate that the old man should wait before abandoning hope.

  Suddenly, the big assassin laughed out loud and reached out, one huge arm wrapping around the shoulders of the hidden man and pulling him into a hug. With a flourish, Joaquin Abell was pulled out into the sunlight against his powerful friend as he returned the embrace.

  ‘Freeze frame!’ Ethan shouted.

  The image became static, a moment of time frozen, and Ethan thumped a fist down on the table.

  ‘Now we’ve got you,’ he said in delight.

  ‘Not quite, I’m afraid,’ Jarvis replied. ‘This is where our advantage ends.’

  49

  ‘The hell do you mean?’ Ethan snapped and jabbed a thumb toward the screen. ‘He’s busted, totally.’

  ‘Busted he is,’ Jarvis confirmed, ‘but nobody will ever be able to see the footage outside of this room.’

  Ethan massaged his temples with one hand.

  ‘Let me guess, national security?’

  ‘Afraid so,’ Jarvis replied. ‘Release this footage as evidence in any court case and the defense will demand to know how it was acquired and from whom. Before we know it one of our greatest intelligence assets will become common knowledge and before you can say conspiracy theory or human rights we’ll be sued by half the population for breaching privacy laws.’

  ‘This guy’s a mass murderer!’ Ethan shot back. ‘Who knows what havoc he’ll create if we don’t present this evidence?’

  ‘And if we go public,’ Jarvis countered, ‘the detectives heading virtually every unsolved criminal case will demand access to Watchman. We’ll be inundated with requests to prove that so-and-so didn’t murder victim X, that accused Y didn’t rob bank Z, and that naughty-little-goddamned Bobby from down the street didn’t shove a stick up his neighbor’s cat’s ass!’

  Ethan sighed as he realized the scope of what Watchman was capable of achieving. It had the potential to solve countless criminal cases, and yet could not provide evidence that was admissible in court without exposing its existence and capabilities. For the first time, Ethan gained a sense of the limitations enforced upon such technologies by the vagaries of national security; of why Jarvis could not just let him use the device to locate Joanna. The paranoia of nations, the disease of mistrust that infected all governments, ensured that rather than be used to enforce world peace and uphold justice, Project Watchman would forever remain in the shadows.

  ‘Give us the coordinates of the yacht,’ Jarvis said to Ottaway. ‘It will help us to trace its current location.’

  Ethan turned away and waited as the viewer on the screen zoomed out and away from Joaquin’s frozen, smiling face and took in the whole of the yacht. The scientist spoke into his microphone as he reached out for a series of power buttons.

  ‘Okay, let’s shut down.’

  Ethan stared at the screen and then grabbed the scientist’s arm. ‘Wait! Send your man down there, to the rear of the deck.’

  ‘What do you see, Ethan?’ Jarvis asked.

  Ethan squinted as the viewer zoomed down toward a small knot of men, their dark suits conspicuous against the yacht’s pristine white deck. As the camera zoomed in on them, Ethan realized that Jarvis had been right about Joaquin’s political connections.

  ‘I’ll be damned,’ the old man said beside him. ‘He’s not on his own.’

  Although Ethan could not name all of the men now imaged so clearly by Watchman, he recognized enough of them to be sure that Joaquin was playing ball with the big boys.

  ‘Robert Murtaugh,’ Jarvis said, identifying the elderly media tycoon, ‘and that’s Congressman Goldberg.’

  ‘Harrison Reed,’ Ethan pointed to the man whose face was partially obscured by a broad Stetson. ‘Big oil guy from down Texas way, if I remember rightly.’

  ‘Looks like him,’ Ottaway agreed, ‘and the man on the end there is the governor of Florida. What’s his name? MacGuire?’

  ‘MacKenzie,’ Jarvis corrected.

  ‘Evidence of Joaquin being connected to our assassin,’ Ethan said. ‘Same boat, same time. Get any one of those men to turn on Joaquin Abell and we can nail him with probable cause and get the courts involved.’

  ‘I’d better make a call,’ Jarvis said, ‘get this in front of the department heads before we decide what we’re going to do.’

  He was about to turn aside when Ethan stopped him, his eyes transfixed on another plasma screen nearby. The screen relayed information from an orbiting satellite monitoring seismometers around the globe. In the center of the screen an enormous spike had appeared.

  ‘I think it’s already gotten too big,’ he said. ‘Where is that coming from?’ Ethan asked.

  Ottaway looked up at the screen.

  ‘Dominican Republic, on the northeast coast,’ he said. ‘Looks like a big one.’

  Ethan looked at his watch. Sixteen seventeen hours.

  ‘Right on time,’ Ethan said to Jarvis, ‘just like Charles Purcell predicted.’

  Jarvis looked at another screen, this one showing the electromagnetic spectrum being emitted by the planet in the region of the Florida Straits.

  ‘You got anything on GOCE yet?’

  ‘What’s GOCE?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘It’s the Gravity field and Ocean Circulation Explorer satellite,’ Michael Ottaway replied, as he squinted at a computer monitor filled with rolling data streams. ‘It uses the concept of gradiometry, the measurement of acceleration differences over short distances. Three pairs of accelerometers respond to tiny variations in the gravitational field of the earth. Because of their different positions in the gravitational field they all experience unique conditions, and thus can provide an accurate picture of earth’s gravitational field.’

  ‘Glad I asked.’ Ethan blinked laconically. ‘Can you use it to pinpoint the location of Abell’s facility?’

  The scientist nodded, glancing back and forth from several different monitors and screens as data spilled from them in a torrent of figures, waves and charts.

  ‘There was a massive spike in seismic levels here,’ he said, pointing to one screen where a map of the Caribbean was overlaid against a chart of known geological fault lines deep beneath the seabed. ‘That’s the site of the earthquake now underway.’

  Ethan looked at the screen and baulked.

  ‘Magnitude 6.8,’ he said. ‘That’s a big one.’

  ‘It is,’ the scientist agreed, ‘and it’s off the coast. There’ll be localized structural damage, but the real threat will come from the sea when the tsunami hits.’

  Ethan found himself picturing the colossal destruction wrought by giant waves strong enough to flatten hotels and bury entire cities. Nobody had forgotten what had happened to places like Aceh years before. Ethan had flown there with Joanna within hours of the event, covering the humanitarian disaster that followed, tens of thousands of people made homeless and without access to food or water. But what had angered them both the most was the speed with which major corporations swept in and claimed the prime coastal land for themselves, displacing local fishing families whose descendants had lived there for centuries, and building hotels just as fast as they could. He thought of Joaquin’s plans to ‘rebuild’ disaster zones, and saw the same callous industrialism. Then he recalled the sheer force of the damage caused by the disaster.

  ‘Lopez is out there,’ he murmured to himself.

  ‘She knows what’s coming,’ Jarvis said. ‘She can look after herself.’

  ‘Ah, here.’ The scientist pointed to a screen, and tapped it with the tip of his pen. ‘Very impressive indeed.’

  ‘What?’ Ethan asked, peering at a series of narrow, tall spikes, like a row of hundreds of thin razor-sharp teeth.

  ‘These pulses,’ the scientist explained, ‘they’re not seismic, they’re gravitational. It’s the signature of an object of extreme mass vibrating at high frequencies, perhaps millions of times per second. If what you’ve all been saying i
s true, and Joaquin Abell has somehow captured a black hole, then he must have deliberately destabilized it, causing it to vibrate, and then directed the resulting gravitational waves using whatever structure he’s built to contain the black hole. I’d guess he’ll be using a negatively charged field, so he could lower the charge in one area of the field to direct the waves. And he could control the frequency of the vibrations and therefore their range by manipulating the strength of the rest of the field, giving the gravitational pulses a sort of polarity. One set of waves goes into the earth, causing the earthquake; the other goes up into the sky, affecting nothing.’

  ‘Except any unfortunate aircraft or boats passing overhead,’ Ethan said. ‘It would pull them straight down or shake them to pieces.’

  Doug Jarvis considered this for a moment.

  ‘He could point it anywhere, flatten cities, if he wanted to.’

  ‘It would have its limits,’ Ottaway said, ‘but yes, he could use this as a weapon and it would be extremely difficult to stop him.’

  ‘Do you have its location?’ Ethan asked. ‘The origin of these waves?’

  ‘I do,’ the scientist said, ‘and it’s close to where IRIS is supposed to be running a coral-conservation area.’

  Ethan felt a vengeful grin spread across his features as he turned to Doug.

  ‘Great. Send in the Navy and flatten that damned place. If we can’t use this as proof to convict him of his crimes, let’s just remove the bastard from play.’

  Jarvis was already nodding and reaching for a nearby phone when Ottaway shook his head.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’

  ‘Why not?’ Ethan asked. ‘The man’s a menace, he needs to be dealt with.’

  ‘I agree, believe me,’ the scientist said. ‘But he’s got a black hole down there, suspended in a delicate balance. You drop a bomb or something on it and one of two possible things will happen, neither of which is good.’

  ‘Okay,’ Ethan said as Jarvis lowered the phone from his ear. ‘Spill it.’

  ‘The black hole becomes exposed to its surroundings and begins dragging material into its singularity and doesn’t stop until our entire planet has been consumed.’ Ottaway looked at Ethan. ‘Once you get too close to a black hole’s event horizon, too deep inside the gravity well, nothing can escape, not even light.’