Mark Alpert - Extinction

Jim was still staring at the image when Kirsten braked the scooter. He looked up, but of course he couldn’t see anything in the pitch-black tunnel. “What is it?” he asked. “Another bottleneck?”

“Worse. The tunnel’s blocked.”

Jim disconnected the flash drive and disk from his satellite phone. Then he turned on the phone’s flashlight function, which put a bright white display on the screen. Holding the phone in the air, he saw an earthen wall in front of them. It rose ten feet to the tunnel’s ceiling, where the concrete had buckled.

He dismounted from the scooter and walked toward the wall of packed soil. Raising his prosthetic arm, Jim poked the dirt. Then he slammed his mechanical fist into it. The wall was solid, immovable. The tunnel’s ceiling had probably collapsed years ago and the dirt had been settling ever since. “Shit,” he said, turning to Kirsten. “This isn’t good.”

“We’ll have to go back to Grand Central Station and pick a different tunnel.”

Jim grimaced. It would take at least an hour to return to the maze of tunnels under central Beijing, and by then there was a good chance that Supreme Harmony would know where to look for them. Once the network tracked down Frank Nash, the Modules would find out where he’d hidden Arvin’s flash drive. Then they’d start searching the Underground City.

Kirsten turned around. “Come on, let’s go. We don’t have a choice.”

“Hold on.” Jim extended the knife from his prosthetic hand. He raised it high and sank the blade into the earthen wall. “I want to see if the wall’s solid all the way to the top.”

He lifted himself off the floor, kicking toeholds into the dirt. It was a piece of cake compared with climbing the Great Wall. Soon his head brushed the tunnel’s ceiling. He raised his sat phone again and shone its light on the jagged breach in the concrete. Luckily, it wasn’t as wide as he’d thought. The concrete on the left side of the ceiling was still intact, and the dirt just below it was loose and powdery. Jim retracted his knife and plunged his prosthetic fingers into the uppermost part of the earthen wall, just below the intact section of the ceiling. He was able to sink his whole hand into the powdery dirt and sweep it to the floor.

“Hey!” Kirsten yelled. “What’s going on up there?”

“We might be able to get through. I have to do some digging.”

“What can I do?”

“You can help me keep my balance. Stand behind me and brace my legs.”

Kirsten raised her hands and gripped the back of his thighs. Now he didn’t have to worry about falling backward.

She let out a grunt. “I hate to tell you this, Jim, but you gained some weight.”

“It’s the prosthesis. It’s a little heavier than a normal arm.”

“It’s not your prosthesis. It’s your ass.”

“All right, all right. I’ll start my diet tomorrow.”

He started digging with his prosthetic arm. Its hard fingers clawed the wall like the teeth of a bulldozer, and the motors in his wrist and elbow hummed at a higher pitch as they shoveled out chunks of earth. He tried to sweep the dirt to the side, but some of it sprinkled on Kirsten’s hair. “Hey!” she yelled again. “Watch it!”

“Sorry.”

“Was that payback for the comment about your ass?”

“Not at all. You can talk about my ass as much as you want.”

Soon Jim established a steady rhythm. His tireless prosthesis excavated the dirt, making the hole deeper and wider. He held the phone in his left hand, using the light from the screen to guide his efforts. Kirsten stood behind and below him, supporting his legs. After a while she adjusted her grip, and her fingers dug into his hamstrings.

“You know, I still don’t understand what you’re planning to do,” she said, her voice turning serious. “Tell me again why we’re going to Yunnan Province?”

“That’s where the Supreme Harmony project started. The main servers for the network are in a lab complex there.”

“And you’re aware how far away Yunnan is?”

“About fourteen hundred miles. A little more if we avoid the main highways.”

“That’s a hell of a long drive, Jim. Wouldn’t it make more sense to head for one of the U.S. consulates? There’s one in Shenyang.”

Jim shook his head. “Supreme Harmony is taking over the Chinese government. The network already controls the Guoanbu, and it’s giving orders to the local police forces. They’ll be waiting for us in front of every U.S. consulate in the country, because that’s where the network expects us to go.”

“Maybe we should head for the border then. Mongolia is four hundred miles away. That’s a lot closer than Yunnan.”

“No, that border’s guarded too well. We’d have a better chance of making it across the border between Yunnan and Burma. It’s a smuggler’s paradise down there.”

“But you’re not planning to cross into Burma, are you? You want to go straight to Supreme Harmony’s headquarters, right?”

Jim stopped digging. “I’m scared, Kir,” he admitted. “It’s not just about Layla now. We don’t have much time.” He looked down into the darkness where Kirsten stood, bracing his legs. “Let’s say we cross the border and make it back to the States. What’s gonna happen then? We’ll hand over our evidence to the NSA and their experts will start analyzing it. After a few days they’ll pass the ball to the White House, and then their experts will have a go at it. And by that time, Supreme Harmony will control the People’s Republic. It’ll have an army of three million men under its command, and a hundred long-range missiles armed with nuclear warheads.”

Kirsten didn’t respond. Jim waited a few seconds, then resumed his shoveling. By now he’d carved out a hole the size of a desk drawer, penetrating almost three feet into the wall. He stretched his left arm into the hole, shining the sat phone screen inside, and spied a gap extending all the way to the other side of the earthen barrier. He’d done it. He’d broken through. Now he just had to widen the gap. “Hey, hey!” he shouted. “This is gonna work!”

He expected Kirsten to let out a whoop or at least make a joke, but she remained silent. Jim shrugged, then continued digging. He scraped at the edges of the hole, steadily widening it.

After five more minutes, Jim leaned into the gap to inspect his progress. It was nearly wide enough for them to wriggle through. Another minute of digging should do it, he thought. Then Kirsten broke her silence. “You’re making a mistake,” she said.

Jim pulled his head out of the hole. “What did you say?”

“You’re letting your fears about your daughter cloud your judgment. You can’t single-handedly attack a Chinese government facility. That’s insane. It’s suicide.”

He peered into the darkness where Kirsten stood, still bracing his legs. He wasn’t surprised by the content of her remark. She was right—his plan was impractical, maybe even insane. He was pursuing it only because he couldn’t see an alternative. But what did surprise him was the tone of her voice. It was thick with anguish.

“Kir, I…” He didn’t know what to say. “I can do this. I have a plan.”

“Really? Well, lay it out for me.”

Again he heard the anguish, unmistakable. Kirsten wasn’t worried about herself, he realized. She was worried about him. She was heartsick with worry. Until that moment Jim hadn’t realized how much she cared for him. He felt like an idiot for not seeing it before.

He took a deep breath. He had his own hidden feelings, but this wasn’t the time to talk about it. Instead, he said, “I’m coming down,” and descended from his perch on the earthen wall. He stood in front of Kirsten and held the sat phone between them so he could see her face in the glow from its screen. “Supreme Harmony has a weakness,” he said. “Arvin told me about it just before he died. You’ve heard the term ‘Trojan horse,’ right?”