James Rollins - The 6th Extinction

Kendall felt a flicker of hope, but it died as Cutter shook his head, clearly pushing this new worry behind him.

“No matter. It’s a simple matter to quash.”

“The fool can’t be serious,” Painter said on the phone.

He paced outside a café near the central district of Boa Vista. The others were inside getting coffee and breakfast. He had already called Kat to gather as much intelligence as she could about Dark Eden’s former founder, a dead man named Cutter Elwes. While he waited for her to call back, he placed a call to the Mountain Warfare Training Center to get an update.

“It’s gotten bad here,” Lisa said. “Last night’s storm washed contamination well past many of the barriers. We’ve got pockets blooming miles away from the original site, connected by tendrils of die-offs along the drainage routes we weren’t able to successfully block.”

Painter pictured a cancerous black inkblot seeping in all directions across those mountains.

“They’ve pulled the quarantine zone back another twenty-five miles in all directions. Yosemite has been emptied out. It’s only a little after five in the morning here, but at daybreak a more thorough search will commence. Depending on what they find, a decision will have to be made. To make matters worse, more inclement weather is expected to hit over the next three days. Storm after storm.”

Painter had hoped for some break, but that didn’t appear to be the case. Mother Nature seemed determined to confound his efforts.

Lisa continued. “Fearing that this contagion could get a wider and deeper foothold in California, Lindahl has placed the nuclear option on the table. It’s seriously being considered.”

Painter suddenly regretted coming here.

I should’ve known Lindahl would try something stupid like that .

“How seriously is this option being considered?”

“Very. Lindahl already has the support of the team that’s been looking for a way to kill the organism. Their consensus is that the firestorm and radiation from a medium-yield blast could be the best hope. Models are being worked up, and worst-case scenarios are being calculated.”

“What do you think?”

There was a long hesitation before she responded. “Painter, I don’t know. In some ways, Lindahl is right. Something has to be done, or we’ll reach a critical mass out here and we lose everything. If the blast could be controlled to limit the fallout, it might be worth risking it. If nothing else, such a drastic measure could at least knock this agent back on its heels, buy us more time to come up with a new strategy.”

Painter still could not believe such an option was their only viable recourse.

“Or maybe I’m just tired,” Lisa added. “Not thinking straight. Josh has continued to decline. The doctors put him into a medically induced coma in an attempt to control his seizures. And Nikko isn’t doing much better. Like I said, something has to be done.”

Painter ached to reach through the phone and hold her, reassure her. Instead, he had to put more pressure on her. “Lisa, you have to buy us more time. Keep Lindahl reined in. At least for another twenty-four hours.”

“If we have that long…”

“We’ll find something,” Painter promised, but his words didn’t come out as convincingly as he had hoped. “If not our team, then Gray’s.”

“Has Kat heard anything from the others?”

“No, not yet. But she says the solar storm is dying down, and satellite communications will hopefully resume later today. So let’s at least try to hold back that nuclear option until we regain contact with Gray.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Me, too .

He said his good-byes and stepped back to the café door when a bullet clipped his arm and shattered the restaurant window.

He fell to a knee while more rounds strafed the front of the café. Glass exploded over him as he rolled for cover behind a trash bin.

He caught a brief glimpse of his team inside, ducking for cover — he also saw three men in black camouflage burst from the kitchen behind them, assault weapons blazing into the morning diners. Across the street, another trio of assailants came charging, rifles smoking.

Pinned down, Painter had time for only one thought, recognizing the direness of their situation.

Gray, you’d better be having more luck .

“Everybody get aboard the lift!” Harrington shouted, as he rushed to the gondola that hung from its tracks alongside the observation deck of the beseiged Hell’s Cape station. “Now!”

Gray had a hard time obeying, his gaze fixed to the dark netherworld beyond this glass-enclosed perch. Floodlights along the backside of the steel superstructure illuminated the immediate area below. But even those powerful xenon lamps failed to penetrate very far into that inky, cavernous blackness.

After fifty yards, the rock floor disappeared into a vast lake. The black surface bubbled and belched a yellowish steam, creating a toxic haze over the water. A higher shelf of wet stone hugged the lake’s right bank. Muddy tread tracks ran from the base of the superstructure out to that natural bridge.

Gray pictured those smaller CAATs parked in the hangar. He now understood the necessity for amphibious craft in the frozen arctic.

“Hurry!” Harrington barked.

The professor had opened the double set of doors that allowed access to the gondola and ducked through them. He crossed to a panel inside and hit a large red button. A siren ignited, blaring loudly, echoing from inside the steel superstructure and beyond.

Gray pushed Kowalski toward the waiting cage. “Go!”

Jason followed them with Stella.

Gray cringed at the noise as he climbed inside. As the doors closed, the din of the emergency klaxon died to a muffled ringing, proving how solidly insulated the gondola was.

“What’re you doing, Professor?” Gray asked. “What’s your plan?”

“To get somewhere safe.”

Harrington pulled a lever and the cage began moving. But the gondola didn’t head back through the superstructure toward the battle being waged in the hangar. Instead, it rode forward , out into that vast cavern.

Ducking a bit and craning his neck, Gray saw the black steel tracks continuing along the cavern roof, supported by trestles in places to create a relatively even run.

“Where are we going?” he asked as he straightened.

“To the Back Door.” Harrington waved ahead with one arm; his other hand remained on the long red lever. “It’s a substation about four miles out. It leads back to the surface, just beyond the Fenriskjeften crags.”

Gray pictured that line of jagged peaks near the coast.

“There’s a radio there,” Stella added. “And a garaged CAAT.”

“So we’re just going to run?” Kowalski asked.

“No.” The professor pointed to the red button he had struck. “I just sounded a general evacuation alarm. The British forces will hold off Dylan Wright’s commandos for as long as possible, but after thirty minutes, they know to run. To get clear of this area.”

“Why?” Gray asked.

“The entire backside of this station is packed full of bunker buster bombs, including an American-made thirty-thousand-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator. It will destroy the base and seal up the mouth of the cavern system, bottling up what’s down here.”

“When’s it set to blow?”

Harrington looked worried.

Stella answered, “It can only be deployed from the Back Door. Only my father has the blast code.”

Gray frowned. So the British forces will flee out the front while we sneak out the back door, blowing everything behind us. What the hell required such a level of security?