Phobos: Mayan Fear (35 page)

34

God places the heaviest burden on those who can carry its weight.

—REGGIE WHITE,
NFL HALL OF FAME DEFENSIVE LINEMAN
AND ORDAINED MINISTER

A
nd so it is with a heavy heart but unwavering confidence that I relinquish the office of the presidency to Vice President Ennis William Chaney. May God bless our new president, his family, administration, and the people of the United States of America.”

The plastic case containing a Ted Williams autographed baseball smashes the fifty-two-inch HD television with such force it knocks the flat screen off its stand, sending it crashing onto the marble floor.

Pierre Borgia searches his desk top for something else to throw. He reaches for the near-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s, drains the remains of the copper-colored whiskey, then heaves the object at a framed black and white Ansel Adams photograph of Yosemite National Park, denting the wall instead.

The cell phone rings again. Borgia glances at the number. Groans, then answers it. “What?”

“This changes nothing, son. Trust me.”

“Trust you, Uncle Joe? Marion Rallo’s been tapped for VP, Chaney’s already asked for my resignation. As for the war—expect him to announce the complete withdrawal of troops in January’s State of the Union speech.”

“It’ll be handled. The bigger problem is all the loose ends from your little bugaboo in Miami.”

“There are no loose ends. Whoever drove off with Agler probably dumped his corpse in the Everglades. As for the girl, there’s a massive manhunt going on across the state, though she’s most likely dead, too.”

“And the security guard?”

“The sheriff’s office is blaming Raymond’s death on Agler. I made a statement … what else do you want from me?”

“You still haven’t watched the tape, have you?”

“What tape?”

“Pierre, don’t you get my phone messages and e-mail? I sent you an excerpt pulled from the first-floor surveillance camera.”

“I saw the original footage, Uncle Joe. There was nothing to see.”

“There was a blur that appeared on tape a second after the elevator door opened. That blur, slowed down frame by frame, was Samuel Agler.”

Pierre sobers. “My guy swears he injected Agler with the cardiac inhibitor, there’s no way—”

“His eyes were Nordic blue; he was moving through a higher plane of existence when he struck that moron, Raymond. Your guard didn’t just die of internal bleeding, Pierre; his organs burst.”

“Assuming Agler’s still alive, he’ll try to find his wife and daughter.”

“Agreed. I want you back here at Groom Lake. There’s a private jet waiting for you at Dulles.”

“I can’t just up and leave. If something’s going to happen with Chaney, I need to be available.”

“Wrong, for two reasons. First, in your present state of mind I don’t want you anywhere near the television cameras. Two, Agler doesn’t know where his wife and kid are. That means he’ll be coming after you.”

NAZCA, PERU

“Ahhhhhh!”

Immanuel Gabriel shoots up in bed to a roar in his ears and a stabbing pain coming from the left side of his chest cavity.

Mitchell Kurtz yanks the spent hypodermic needle from his heart. “Sorry, pal. My orders were to wake you. A shot of Adrenalin seemed like the best option.”

Manny gasps air, the clamor in his ears reduced to an annoying siren. His extremities are tingling, his throat too parched to speak.

As if reading his mind, Kurtz places a bottle of water to his lips.

He drinks, chokes, and drinks some more—his eyes widening as a youthful Ryan Beck enters the room.

“Man, you ain’t gonna believe the shit that’s happening. He’s awake?”

“He’s still coming out of it. Where’s Dom and Mick?”

“On their way.”

“Get him on his feet. See if you can help him find his legs.” Kurtz turns to Manny. “Someone hired a trained assassin to kill you. He injected you with a very fast-acting agent designed to stop the heart. You’ve been in a coma for four weeks; by all logic, you should be dead. Somehow you were able to slow your heart down to the point that the poison stagnated in your femoral artery. Lucky for you, Mick called me, I’m familiar with the drug that was used and was able to advise the ER physician how to treat you. We got you out of Dodge two hours later. You’re in Nazca, Peru. This morning all hell started breaking loose, and we decided to take a chance and wake you.”

“What day … is it?”

“Friday.”

“He means the date,” says Beck, who is shouldering Manny, helping him to his feet. “Today’s December 21. By the way, I’m Beck; he’s Kurtz. We work for President Chaney.”

“I know who you are. I’ve known the two of you since the day I hope to be born.”

Kurtz makes the crazy sign to Beck behind Manny’s back.

“Salt and Pepper, that’s what my brother and I used to call you. Mitch, the last time I saw you, your hair was the color of salt and you were telling women you were a movie producer just to get laid. Pep here was a grandfather, still a big man at sixty-five.”

The two bodyguards look at one another, unsure.

The front door of the Gabriel home bursts open; the entering Mick and Dominique find themselves confronted by the barrels of the two bodyguards’ assault weapons.

“Whoa, easy, fellas.”

Kurtz holsters his gun. “I gave you a knock, Mick. You either use it or get shot; it’s your choice.”

“He’s awake?” Dominique rushes over to Manny, looking into his eyes. “They’re black again. Last time I saw them they were Mayan blue. Sam, can you remember anything?”

“I’m not Sam. Sam was never my name, just an alias I used when I was a teen … when I refused to accept who I really am. My name is Immanuel Gabriel. You and Michael are my parents.”

Dominique stares at him, her lower lip quivering. “Mick told me, I didn’t want to believe it.”

Kurtz shakes his head. “I’m living in an episode of
The Twilight Zone
.”

“We don’t have time to rehash this,” Mick says. “Manny, today’s the last day of the fifth cycle. The Yellowstone caldera exploded an hour ago. Volcanoes are erupting everywhere.”

“The same thing happened in 2047. The strangelet’s making its final pass through the Earth’s core.”

“Please tell me you know how to stop this thing.”

“No, but I know who does.”

An ominous brown haze has spread quickly across the distant northern sky by the time the hot air balloon lands on the Nazca plateau. Beck and Kurtz secure the basket to the ground, Mick and Dominique escorting Immanuel to the center of the Nazca Spiral.

“Manny, you sure my father said only One Hunahpu can stop the strangelet?”

“They were Julius’s last words.”

“I don’t understand,” Dominique says. “Who is One Hunahpu?”

“It’s best I don’t say.”

Brown ash falls from the heavens like snow flurries as they reach the center of the Spiral.

Mick pulls his T-shirt over his mouth to speak, his eyes searching the darkening heavens. “You know, Manny, my whole life Julius was in my head, preparing me for this day. I have to confess, I didn’t fully believe it could happen until I saw the video records aboard your shuttle. Even then … But now that it’s here—this is seriously bad.”

“My brother, Jacob, was on me the same way. ‘Gotta train harder, Manny, the Underlords want us dead.’ He drove me crazy. Then the day arrived and the
Balam
appeared out of the heavens and suddenly it was time to go. And I refused. All I wanted was to play pro ball and live in a big mansion and be a star. Instead, I spent the next fourteen years in hiding.”

Dominique rubs his back. “Edie used to tell me, ‘God only gives us the burdens He knows we can handle.’”

“No offense to God, but I think our family’s had more than our share.” Manny’s eyes widen. “Dominique, are your foster parents still living in your high-rise?”

“Yes. What’s wrong?”

“There’s a tsunami headed their way. A big one—higher than your building.”

“Oh my God.” She powers on her cell phone to text Edie, no longer worried about the FBI tracing her location.

Mick’s eyes catch movement overhead—a glimmer of metal descending from the volcanic ash clouds. “Dom, we need to go.”

“I’m not done texting—”

“Text back in the balloon, our friends have arrived.” He turns to Manny. “Julius was right, there are no coincidences. Whatever happens, I’m glad we had a chance to meet.”

Manny pinches away tears. “Me, too.”

Father and son embrace, then Michael Gabriel takes Dominique by her hand and the two of them make a hasty retreat back to the balloon—as a white light bathes Manny in its soothing brilliance, the twinkling aura of energy levitating him away from the Nazca pampa into the awaiting aperture of the bulbous-shaped extraterrestrial ship.

For a long moment the Fastwalker simply remains poised above the desert carving. Then it shoots into the heavens at the speed of light, joined in space by hundreds more, their designs representing dozens of different subspecies—all emerging from the far side of the moon to escort their long-lost prophet to the destiny that awaits.

35

It looks like the White House has chosen the nuclear option.

—FORMER NASA MANAGER,
COMMENTING ON AN OBAMA ADMINISTRATION
PLAN TO CANCEL PROJECT CONSTELLATION,
A 2005 ENDEAVOR TO RETURN
ASTRONAUTS TO THE MOON,
NEW YORK TIMES,
JUNE 11, 2010

T
he white haze filters into a cool mist that dissipates across the garden’s azure lagoon.

Immanuel Gabriel opens his eyes. He walks along the pink sand past the pristine waterfall to the mountain-size inverted tree, its upper three limbs beyond his scope of view, the cluster of six branches that follow spread out majestically overhead as far and wide as his consciousness can perceive. Ahead, the trunk melds into the naked man and woman standing back to back—hundred-foot giants fused at the vertebrae.

Manny approaches the illusion projected across the cosmos by the unified thoughts of his parents. “The last time I was here was because you willed it. This time the choice is mine. Tell me what I must do to save the Earth.”

His father’s voice speaks to him telepathically.
You think yourself worthy of such a task?

Manny stands before the tree of life, his being trembling. “Am I worthy? I’ve suffered the loss of two soul mates. I’ve spent an eternity tortured by Seven Macaw. I haven’t seen my wife and daughter for eleven years. What more do you want?”

Transformation. You continue to see yourself as a victim of existence. Salvation requires a connection with the higher realms, a connection with the Creator’s light. Victims cannot access this energy, they remain consumed by the ego.

“I’m not here as a victim. Give me the opportunity and I’ll prove to you I’m worthy. Let me rid your garden of its serpent.”

What you fail to see, Immanuel, is that you are the serpent.

“What? How am I—”

The hero twins were conceived with a symbiotic relationship. Your brother, Jacob, cleaved to the tree of life that you see before you, which is why his soul remained pure. You were bound to the tree of knowledge, a dark side that cleaves to the human ego. Lacking restriction, you consumed the tree’s forbidden fruit until you became a slave to it. As Chilam Balam, your soul sought the dark gift to become a powerful sorcerer and seer, yet you never challenged the Maya to end its savage violence, fearful of angering the Council and losing your power. As Immanuel Gabriel, you refused to accompany Jacob to Xibalba, seeking only to live out your days for yourself alone.

“I was afraid. And yes, it’s true, I was selfish. I didn’t want to lose everything I had worked so hard for just to appease Jacob. It was his mission, not mine. He was more advanced than I, far stronger.”

And yet, as powerful as Jacob was, he could not succeed in the eleventh dimension of Hell without your ability to adapt to the dark side. You were the yin to his yang. Through cause and effect, you lost everything. Through cause and effect, it was you who brought the singularity to the winter solstice of 2012.

“I brought it? That’s insane! Jacob instructed me to return to this time.”

And because you lacked a connection with the light, your journey through the wormhole served as a conduit for the strangelet. Now it is too late. Earth, and humanity with it, shall perish.

“That’s it? I don’t believe you! Where is the Fastwalker taking me? To Xibalba?”

The white haze rises from the soil, concealing his parents and the tree of life. When the mist clears, Immanuel finds himself in the extraterrestrial craft, staring out a vast portal into deep space.

The ship is orbiting Mars, soaring just above another object in space—an immense eighteen-mile-long, twelve-mile-wide mouse-gray spherical object, its surface identified by an enormous crater.

Immanuel Gabriel’s pulse quickens as he stares at the moonlike mass racing along the starboard portal.

Phobos
…

SITUATION ROOM, WHITE HOUSE

The chamber has gone quiet, every man and woman focused on the nearest flat-screen television as the images from Camp Borneo display on-screen.

The dense clouds poised over the North Pole are engaged in a powerful clockwise dance, the swirling vortex drawing the toxic blanket of volcanic ash into space as if inhaled by a heavenly maelstrom.

“Sir, NASA is receiving images from the Hubble. They confirm the funnel cloud is jettisoning the atmospheric debris into space.”

“It’s a miracle,” an aide cries out, her outburst effecting an avalanche of applause.

“Quiet!” A harried President Chaney stares at the rushing gray-brown river of atmospheric debris, as baffled as the dozen scientists in the room. “You say it’s jettisoning the debris into space—where exactly is it going? Is it orbiting our planet?”

“No, sir. NASA says it’s streaming into space and dissipating, at least as far as they can tell. There’s a lot of atmospheric interference. Maybe it really is a miracle?”

Nods of agreement.

“Now listen up,” Chaney bellows. “I don’t want to hear about miracles or Second Comings or any such nonsense. I want answers, and I want them fast. Where the hell’s that damn megawave?”

“It just struck Jacksonville, now it’s bearing down on the coast of Miami.”

SOUTH FLORIDA EVALUATION AND TREATMENT CENTER

MIAMI, FLORIDA

Anthony Foletta continues moving down the empty seventh-floor corridor, hounded by his new head of security.

“Sir, the bus is loaded and waiting,” Paul Jones pleads. “All that’s left is the Level 7 patients—”

“—who will remain incarcerated, Mr. Jones. Why I allowed you to talk me into this course of action in the first place … I should have my head examined. No wave is going to reach this far inland, I don’t care how big it is.”

“Sir—”

“Get on the bus and leave. Now, Mr. Jones, before I change my mind and order all inmates returned to their cells.”

Jones shakes his head and races to the elevator.

Foletta sits in the security lounge, returning to his laptop and his application for the directorship vacancy in Ontario, Canada. The salary is far less than he’s earning in Miami, but the cost of living in Ontario is lower, and severing his ties with Pierre Borgia is necessary for his own mental health.

He continues working on the application another fifteen minutes, when he hears the rumble.

Foletta saves the file, then walks to the alcove and the fire ladder leading up to the roof. He contemplates the climb, then pulls himself up one rung at a time as the rumbling grows louder.

The painful impact of his right shoulder against the metal hatch forces open the exit. He climbs onto the roof, gazing east.

The seven-story building is far too low and inland to view the Atlantic Ocean, but something large is definitely approaching. His eyes lock onto a high-rise blocking his sightline, his pulse pounding, the reverberations registering in his bones.

He winces as the high-rise collapses surreally before him, revealing a horizon of surging ocean. He refuses to move, not even when the first concrete-laced droplets of sea strike him in the face, nor when the megatsunami bashes through the streets, foaming as it reaches the asylum, searching for a way in.

It finds nothing.

Foletta smiles as the five-story surge makes an island of his rooftop sanctuary, affording him the best view in Miami.

And then, like a slowly bursting dam, the aged cinder-block structure crumbles along its eastern face and the rooftop fragments, the Atlantic Ocean swallowing the facility beneath him.

NAZCA, PERU

The dense brown volcanic cloud blanketing the once-cobalt-blue sky has turned into a raging river of mud, sweeping the hot air balloon and its four frightened occupants to the northeast at a terrifying 125 knots.

“It’s the Rapture,” Beck yells, crossing himself.

“It’s the caldera,” Kurtz counters. “No trumpets, no Jesus riding on a white steed, just a lot of snow and ice and mass starvation.”

“Ain’t no caldera causing this wind! This is Revelation!”

The Pacific Ocean beckons beyond the plateau, offering certain death. Spotting the mountaintop, Mick shuts off the flame, collapsing the envelope. Dominique cries out as the balloon drops into a steep descent. The basket skims the mountain’s western face, bounces across the summit, then abruptly smashes into the side of a boulder with a bone-jarring jolt, flinging its startled occupants across the jagged crest.

Within seconds, hurricane winds sweep the partially deflated balloon high into the air. For several minutes it spirals out of control, until the wind shear snatches it, driving it into the raging Pacific whitecaps.

Dominique is on her knees. She is battered and bruised, but her attention is focused on a monolithic carving etched into the western face of the mountain.

Mick crawls over, shouting to be heard over the gale. “You okay?”

“What is that?”

“Trident of Paracas. Traces back to Viracocha. Come on, I saw a cave to the east, we can take shelter!” He drags her to her feet, leading Dominique and the two guards to the dark void, partially concealed behind boulders.

Kurtz shakes his head. “You three go on in, I’m a bit claustrophobic.”

Beck nods. “I’ll stay out here with the little guy.”

Kurtz waits until Dominique and Mick are inside the cave before conversing. “I was able to reach the Situation Room,” he yells above the atmospheric roar. “There’s some kind of vortex poised over the North Pole, drawing all this ash into space.”

“You think it’s HAARP?”

“Let’s hope so. I sent POTUS a photo I took of that alien spacecraft.”

“Think he’ll believe it?”

“Hell, I don’t believe it and I saw the damn thing. But he needs to be aware, just in case the object sucking up the atmosphere isn’t one of ours.”

Mick and Dominique enter the cave—a seven-foot-high tunnel of rock that twists and disappears into darkness.

“Mick, that trident … I’ve seen it before. Sam drew it on his cell wall. What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know, but as my father used to say, there are no coincidences. Let’s see where this cave leads.”

They follow the tunnel of rock into the darkness, the cave becoming a twisting, rapidly descending cavern, its geology lit by a soft blue hue coming from somewhere below.

“Mick, where’s that light coming from?”

“Let’s find out. Take my hand, it gets pretty steep.”

He takes the lead, the thirty-degree slope forcing him to crouch into deep side-steps, the rock beneath his boots offering a natural traction.

“Dom, listen! Do you hear that?”

“The rush of air?”

“No. Something deeper … like a generator switching on.”

The cavern continues spiraling downward, funneling them deeper into the mountain until the path abruptly levels out and they are standing before an immense object—a twelve-foot-high rectangular frame of highly polished metal.

Centering the object, glowing in neon-blue light, is the symbol of the Trident of Paracas.

“Mick?”

“I can’t be sure, but I think … it’s the
Balam
.”

“How can that be? You told me Jacob and I left on the
Balam
back in 2032.”

“Manny looped time, maybe the
Balam
did, too?”

“How do we get inside?”

“We possess the twins’ genetics; let’s try telepathy. Hold my hand, then close your eyes. On three, imagine the passage opening. One … two—”

The portal slides open, beckoning them inside.

Dominique shrugs. “Sorry. Jumped the gun.”

They enter a dimly lit corridor, the floor, walls, and thirty-foot arched ceiling composed of a highly polished, translucent-black polymer. The confines are warm, the only light coming from the obsidian panels’ luminescent blue glow.

Mick pauses to press his face against the dark glass, attempting to peer inside. “I think something is behind these walls, but the glass is so tinted, I can’t see a damn thing.” He turns to Dominique, who gives him a terrified look. “You okay?”

“Okay?” She grins nervously, her lower lip quivering. “No, I don’t think I’ve been
okay
since the day I met you.”

He takes her hand. “Don’t be scared. This vessel belongs to our son.”

“Mick, we don’t have a son. Another Michael and Dominique in another lifetime had twin sons. You and me? Never happened. Nor will it ever happen. Not because I don’t like you,” she wipes back tears, “but because I don’t think we’re going to survive the day.”

He moves in close, hugging her to his chest. “We’ll survive.”

“How do you know?”

“I know because I’m standing in a starship that’s probably more powerful than anything else in the galaxy. I know because the bloodlines of a superior race of humans run through our veins. Most of all, I know because I have faith.”

She holds him tightly. Then she looks up into his ebony eyes, leans in, and kisses him.