Protocol 7 (49 page)

“I’m suited up,” said Simon. “Even the damn boots fit.”

“Come on,” Max said as he shut down the DITV for the last time. They left the vehicle together, exiting the rear hatch to the base of the elevator. There was little room to maneuver around the massive DITV, but out was better than in—it would provide for some cover as soon as the elevator doors opened.

Moments later, the elevator slowed. The AI voice said, “Approaching 10,022 feet,” as the entire shaft started to vibrate. All three could clearly feel the motion on the perforated floor beneath them.

Simon pulled down the mask of the Vector5 Black Ops suit that he’d taken from the dead pilot. Max did the same as the elevator slowed to a halt. “Hatch doors opening, please prepare to exit,” said the AI unit. Simon looked over at the display one more time, remembering the exact coordinates that Leon had written on that piece of paper in Malta, so long ago. Nastasia stood behind them in terror of being discovered.

The massive hatch doors hissed open and blew a draft of freezing air into the elevator chamber. The space beyond the elevator doors was pitch black. Simon’s eyes focused straight through the lenses of the Vector5 mask, peering into the dark tunnel ahead. The voice of the AI module startled them as it spoke: “You have reached your destination at ground zero. Please exit.”

It was time to go. Max gestured with his head and they cautiously stepped out into the blackness. The embedded lights in the Vector5 suits automatically activated, creating an eerie glow that was nearly swallowed in the void; Simon sensed an astringent mineral odor in the dense frozen air.

They had reached the deepest point of the network where the density of the ice was equivalent to glass. Max took the lead; Simon followed. Nastasia took up the rear, a few yards behind.

We are standing in ice that hardened thousands of years ago, Max thought. He could feel all ten thousand feet of compressed ice above them.

Dad, Simon told himself. Dad. If you’re down here, I’m coming for you.

Simon saw Max put a finger to his mouth, motioning them to be careful and absolutely silent. The tunnel had narrowed; it wasn’t smooth and finished like the walls a thousand feet above them, but unfinished and roughly hewn. There were mounds of wire scattered along the ground, snaking along the sides of the tunnel, and small crevices in the tunnel walls themselves.

Simon realized he was squeezing the rifle so hard his knuckles were throbbing. His body was tense, ready to react on a second’s notice. They crept forward, still blind, Simon’s attention fixed on Max’s silhouette, where it moved in and out of sight like a shadow cast by a candle. It was difficult to breathe. The air was thin and filled with a strange mineral odor—an odor that seemed to intensify the farther they moved into the dark cavern.

They had not moved more than a hundred yards before Max held up his left hand, pointing the rifle upward close to his shoulder. Without hesitation, Simon repeated the gesture for Nastasia, telling her to slow behind him. Seconds later, Simon realized why Max had stopped.

The tunnel had started to vibrate ever so slightly.

Max turned instantly to Simon and saw the intensity in his eyes. He made a quick downward motion. The elevator, Simon realized. He motioned Max with his head, indicating a narrow opening in the tunnel, darker than pitch. As Max began to move, he turned back to engage Nastasia.

She was gone.

He froze for an instant; dread shot through him like cold lightning. Something has happened, he told himself. They got her. He turned back to Max, who had already noticed that she was gone.

“Leave her,” said Max.

“But—”

“Leave her Simon,” Max repeated through clenched teeth.

Simon shook his head and grabbed at Max’s shoulder as he tried to slide into the alcove. Max snapped back to him. “I said leave her, Simon. I don’t fucking care.”

The massive elevator doors that were next to their own suddenly chunked and shuddered. Instantly, Max doused the lights on his suit and plunged them into total darkness.

Subtle, shifting sounds escaped from the opening doors, and years of training helped Max analyze the voices and footsteps inside. He brought up five fingers and held them inches away from Simon’s face, then closed his fist and held up one more.

Six, Simon realized instantly.

They both heard footsteps approaching—louder and louder, coming toward them. It sounded like the men who had left the elevator were in a hurry. They shuffled and panted as they approached. Max and Simon stood like stones, pistols in hand, pressing against the icy wall.

Where the fuck did Nastasia go? Simon caught himself thinking. He pushed the thought away and brought himself back as the first of the men passed by less than ten feet away, backs to them, moving even deeper into the darkness. They were dressed in black military gear and moving quickly. Only seconds passed before they disappeared into the tunnel to their left.

Max made a serpentine gesture with his hand. Follow in the shadows, Simon knew. He had seen the gesture before when they played hide and seek as kids.

Simon hesitated, if only for a split second. It was all the indication Max needed. He turned back to Simon and shook his head. Let it go, he was saying. Let it go.

Simon nodded. Oliver was more important than anything else, but Nastasia’s sudden disappearance, before the other elevator even opened was strange. Very strange. He was both concerned for her safety and baffled. But his own safety and that of Max’s was just as important now, and he needed to stay focused.

Max turned away, moving like a ghost, following the men in the shadows of the tunnel. Simon followed, but he couldn’t forget her.

* * *

Nika couldn’t stand the sound of her alias—not anymore. She had hated it from the moment she had chosen to call herself “Nastasia,” on the day she had arranged for the note to be left in Simon’s passport back in Malta.

She didn’t need it any longer. Now she was finally close to realizing her destiny, and Simon had been pivotal for her mission.

She was close—very close.

She was grateful in an odd way. Without the Spector and the assistance of the team, she would have never been able to reach Antarctica, much less to the Nest itself.

And she knew that was where she was; she could smell the minerals.

“Pathetic,” she whispered, only to herself.

There was no way to stop them. She knew she was at the right place. Now it was only a matter of time, and very little of it, before she would change history once more. No one could stop what the universe had destined for mankind—not even Oliver Fitzpatrick.

She looked at her wristwatch: 19:33. She closed her eyes for an instant, remembering the team inside the Spector.

She was not a cold-blooded killer. She cared for those people. But she also knew, in her heart, that it was better for them to die in the explosion than face what was to come.

She slipped into the shadows, like a vampire instinctively guided to its victim.

* * *

“Can’t walk anymore,” Hayden said. His legs were like boiled noodles; he couldn’t take another step.

It didn’t matter. His life’s work had disappeared. His close friend and student was dead.

There was no hope.

“Please, Hayden,” Samantha said for the thousandth time. “We need to reach the encampment before we freeze to death.” Samantha had to pull every ounce of strength she had to push her exhausted body toward the camp. She was mentally and physically drained, but she knew that it was moments like this that tested a human’s will to survive. She remembered the many expeditions she’d been part of in the past; she thought about how many times she had faced death. I have to be their strength, she told herself. Simon needs me.

She trailed fifteen yards behind Ryan, who trudged forward, head slouched, focusing on every step. She could visibly notice the exhaustion and desperation in his walk. He had started to slow his forward steps as the sheer magnitude of their reality consumed him.

“Guys, we’ve got to keep moving,” she said. “We need each other. Simon needs us…” I am their strength now, she told herself again.

“Please,” Hayden begged, barely able to speak. “Tell me how much longer.” He forced the words out through uneven gasps of oxygen.

“Fifteen minutes,” Ryan said, though he knew that felt like eternity to Hayden. As he focused on the icy floor, he remembered how they had escaped to the encampment with the MC-7s, just hours ago.

The tunnel seemed much, much longer on foot.

* * *

Lucas and the rest of the scientists hunched inside the burning Spector as it sank down a shaft of its own making, falling toward the Gorge, melting the surrounding ice. They could not feel the vertical drop. It was too slow—slower, in fact, than Lucas would have liked. At any moment, he knew the hydrogen fuel that heated the vessels exterior could deplete itself. The exterior would cool and they could be stuck permanently in ice forever. I can’t think about that, he reminded himself. He sat impatiently at the virtual command console, but none of the monitor screens were activated—they would show nothing but endless walls of ice. He felt as if he was in a capsule dropping endlessly into the depths of an infinite white ocean. Outside, the ice turned into liquid as the burning Spector cut into the frozen water toward the network of tunnels now barely 250 feet under the submersible.

“How much longer?” Lucas asked.

“Twelve minutes or so,” said Rolfe. He had been sweating like a condemned man since they had entered the Sphere, suddenly struggling with a case of claustrophobia for the first time in his life.

“I know. I’m concerned if the fuel will last as well,” he said to Lucas looking for words of encouragement.

None could be given. With each passing moment, Lucas found himself deeper and deeper in a state of panic. “Twelve fucking minutes is a lifetime in this vessel,” he thought.

“What’s going to happen if we don’t make it?” asked one of the scientists in the co-pilot seat.

“I have no fucking clue,” Lucas responded. He did not want to imagine the alternative.

* * *

Nastasia’s black med-pack sat comfortably on one of the bunk beds. Stuffed inside were the lethal gas and the explosive. It was waiting patiently for the proper springing of the timing mechanism to trigger its activation. The tiny digital clock wrapped in a series of anti-detection materials changed its numeric sequence seconds at a time in reverse order.

17:27, 17:26, 17:25…

* * *

Simon choked at the mineral smell that filled the frozen tunnel. He readjusted the Black Ops mask and tried to breathe past it, ignore it, as he followed close behind Max, pressing tight against the icy wall of the dark tunnel. The dim shadows of the men from the elevator were a hundred yards ahead of them, illuminated only by their own suit lights.

They were moving deeper into the labyrinth.

Once again, Max noticed just how different these tunnels were. Here there were cables twisting along the floors and walls, dangling in lazy arcs from the craggy ceiling. Piles of random machinery, rimmed in ice, lay along the walls like the discarded toys of giant children. Some looked damaged; some simply looked abandoned. What is all this for? he asked himself as he bobbed and turned to stay in the shadows, moving closer and closer to the six men and their leader.

He stopped abruptly and motioned Simon to do the same. One of the men ahead of them had turned around. He was walking back toward them.

Max stood flat against one side of the wall, Simon against the other. Simon’s heart pounded in his chest as he buried himself in shadow.

He was past the point of fear. Nothing mattered but finding his father, and if that meant taking lives, then so be it. It was all about life and death now. Everything under the ice was life and death. And he was sure of one thing above all others: I will not be taken captive, he told himself. I am no one’s captive.

The footsteps grew louder as the point lights on the man’s suit approached them. They could hear his mumbled conversation but couldn’t see him until the man stepped out of the darkness barely ten feet away.

He still hadn’t seen them; they were completely hidden by the darkness. His head was down, gazing blindly at the pulverized ice as he concentrated on the voice that was whispering in his helmet.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he said quietly, as if he did not want to be heard by the others deeper in the tunnel. “How can the NAV-beacon on the SO team be at Dragger Pass when the Griffin is down here at the Nest? No one but Drago has a NAV-beacon,” he continued in a frustrated tone, “he would never leave his team.”

Simon and Max exchanged looks, but didn’t dare move as the man listened more to the voice in his ear.

“Because I saw it, you idiot! I just walked past it!”

The voice interrupted him and he shook his head. “Hold on,” he said and started walking again, even closer to them, retracing his steps to the elevator. “How am I supposed to explain this?” he grunted.

Simon saw Max’s shadow detach itself from the tunnel wall to stay close behind the man. Then things happened very quickly.

Somehow the man detected something as Max moved—a subtle sound, a grinding footstep, a shift in the air. He turned suddenly, just as Max lunged forward and drove the butt of his rifle into the man’s rib cage. In the same instant Max seized the man’s neck and broke it. The soldier’s head spun under Max’s hands, and Simon heard a faint sound, like wet wood snapping. The man collapsed in an instant, dead before he hit the ice, and Max fell with him. His rifle whacked against the ice, producing a sound that was louder and sharper than the falling bodies.

What the hell? Simon thought, but he knew Max too well. He knew what he was capable of. And he knew the worst was yet to come.

One of the men farther down the tunnel shouted to the dead soldier, “Colin! What the hell is going on back there?”

It was as if time stood still. Simon felt every millisecond as if it were tangible. He heard more than one pair of footsteps running toward them. For an instant he turned to them, trying to gauge the distance. Then he turned back, Max and the soldier’s body were gone.