The Extinction Code (11 page)

‘You realize that, effectively, you’re asking me to protect MJ–12, right?’

‘I’m asking you to protect our right to see them rot in security max prisons for the rest of their lives, Doug. A painless bullet between the eyes isn’t good enough for these people, we both know that, after all that they’ve done and all that they no doubt plan to do. Your job is to bring them to face justice Doug, our country’s justice, not Mitchell’s. You need to make a choice right here and now about which side of the law you’re standing on: theirs, or ours.’

Jarvis stood up, and without another word he strode from the General’s office and closed the door behind him. He turned down the corridor and kept walking, then pulled out his cell phone as he dialled a number from memory.

***

XII

Svalbard Global Seed Vault,

Spitsbergen, Arctic Circle

‘Damn me it’s cold!’

Lopez looked at Ethan as they stepped out of the warm cab of an Arctic track vehicle, puffs of warm vapor spilling out into the frigid air.

‘Do you ever stop complaining?’ she asked. ‘Too hot one day, too cold the next.’

‘C’mon,’ Ethan protested, ‘just take a look around at this place!’

The estuary of a nearby river spilled into the bitter black water of the Greenland Sea, which was littered with a silent armada of icebergs visible through the dense mist cloaking the island and its soaring mountains. The frigid air and midnight–sun location was hardly somewhere that Lopez felt at home despite the thick Arctic jacket she wore, her face barely visible within her fur–lined hood.

‘Agreed,’ she capitulated, and turned with Ethan toward a large rectangular building built directly into the side of a nearby mountain.

Spitsbergen was the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norway and bordered the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea. After landing on an ice strip and checking in with the local authorities at Longyearbyen, Ethan had travelled with Lopez to this, one of the most remote scientific establishments in the world. Only the Russian mining community of Barentsburg, the research community of Ny–Alesund and the mining outpost settlement of Sveagruva accompanied the vault on the archipelago.

‘What the hell do you think that somebody like Schofield would be doing out here?’ Lopez asked as they crunched through thick snow coating the path to the seed bank.

‘He’s a scientist,’ Ethan pointed out, ‘they do this sort of thing all the time.’

‘He’s a long way from home,’ she said in reply. ‘I’d want my job to be well worth it to be stuck out here for any longer than one day.’

As they neared the building’s entrance a small, stocky looking man wrapped up in dense layers of protective clothing and flanked by two armed soldiers approached them.

‘Eric Schofield?’ Ethan asked and introduced Lopez.

Schofield looked far older than he had in the picture that they had been given from his days in Montana.

‘Welcome to Spitsbergen,’ Schofield greeted them. ‘Let’s get inside, shall we?’

Schofield led the way at an impressive pace to the building’s entrance, where they were required to undergo a number of security checks by a pair of armed guards, who confiscated Ethan’s and Nicola’s weapons before they entered the building proper. A blessed wave of warmth washed over them as they walked into a bizarre tunnel carved into the living rock, which extended into another tunnel lined with blue lights that encircled the tunnel walls.

‘What is this place, exactly?’ Lopez asked.

‘This is the world’s premier Doomsday Vault,’ Schofield explained. ‘It was built in 2006 into this sandstone mountain and is designed to withstand a direct nuclear attack and even a meteorite impact on our planet, an Extinction Level Event. Spitsbergen was considered the perfect location for this vault because it has no tectonic activity, has permafrost which aids preservation of materials and is over four hundred feet above sea level, meaning it will remain dry even if all the world’s ice caps melted.’

‘The Norwegians built this place in case of a mass extinction?’ Ethan asked.

‘No,’ Schofield replied. ‘They built it
because
of a mass extinction, which has already begun. This facility is designed to protect the diversity of life on earth after mankind has gone.’

‘You sound like you think that’s a certainty,’ Lopez pointed out.

‘That’s because it is,’ Schofield replied. ‘That’s why it’s here. There are no permanent staff based here, and even if all the power was lost the contents of the vaults would remain safe for many weeks afterward, time for us to rectify the problem. It’s been estimated that many of the seeds and grains held here could survive for thousands of years without human intervention.’

Schofield slowed as he reached a set of vaults arrayed before them, all behind air–locked doors.

‘We can go no further,’ he told them. ‘In the vaults are contained around one and a half million agricultural seeds and other flora considered either endangered or crucial to human survival in an apocalyptic event.’

Ethan folded his arms for a moment as he looked at the vault.

‘But if there’s nobody left to eat them, what’s the point?’

Schofield smiled, as though pitying Ethan.

‘Not exactly the pioneering spirit of optimism are you, Mister Warner?’

‘You’re the one working in a Doomsday Vault,’ Lopez said.

‘Truth be told,’ Schofield replied, ‘even a major apocalyptic event such as a meteorite impact with our planet would be unlikely to eradicate every last human being from existence. Our species, despite becoming rapidly unable to survive in the wild as our ancestors once did, possesses the means to make a rapid technological comeback in the aftermath of such a crisis. Petrochemicals, solar plants, bacterial energy generation, the growing use of insects for food in many countries, nuclear bunkers and so on all lend weight to the theory that even something as cataclysmic as a ten mile wide bolide impactor such as the one that forced the dinosaurs into extinction would not necessarily render humanity likewise extinct. The survivors would be aware of these vaults and use would no doubt be made of their contents.’

‘What made you come all the way out here from Montana?’ Lopez asked.

‘I’ve worked here and for other conservation projects for almost twenty years. How did you know that I worked in Montana?’

Ethan took a pace closer.

‘You worked for the Montana state University, and we’re chasing a lead on a man named Aubrey Channing.’

Ethan noted that Schofield’s eyes widened slightly and his skin paled at the mention of the name.

‘I don’t recall that name,’ he said, and made to move past them. ‘I have work to do.’

‘You wrote a letter to a reporter named Weisler describing a find you made in Montana’s Badlands,’ Ethan said, and moved to his right to cut Schofield off. The smaller man came up short before Ethan and squinted up at him. ‘Aubrey Channing was never seen again, Eric.’

Schofield raised his chin.

‘I was cleared of any involvement in whatever happened to Channing,’ he snapped back. ‘That’s all far in my past now, if you’ll excuse me?’

Ethan didn’t move. ‘Channing found something, didn’t he, out there in the wilderness? He was directed by your letter. We would very much like to know what you found.’

‘I don’t know,’ Eric insisted. ‘Even Channing did not know or couldn’t figure it out.’

‘He disappeared before he had the chance,’ Lopez said, ‘and you wouldn’t have gone to those lengths if you hadn’t known what it was buried in those rocks.’

‘A young scientist,’ Ethan said, ‘somebody who could not risk their career by unveiling a truly world–changing discovery, wrote that letter. You were young at the time.’

‘Yes,’ Schofield agreed. ‘That much is true.’

‘And then he disappeared,’ Ethan went on. ‘When did you last see him?’

‘I told this all to the police at the time,’ Schofield protested. ‘I worked the site and found remains that contradicted the theory that the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid impact. I couldn’t write a paper on it, or even attempt to describe what I’d found, because the university would never have dared to employ me again, such would have been the fallout from such an announcement. So, instead I wrote an anonymous letter to a reporter and directed him to Channing. That was the last I ever heard of him.’

‘And what you and he found, in the rocks?’ Lopez asked. ‘What happened to that?’

‘It was gone,’ Schofield replied, ‘just like I said at the time. When I went back, there was a cavity in the rocks where the remains had been.’

‘Remains,’ Ethan echoed. ‘Remains of what?’

Schofield faltered and then tried again to push past Ethan. ‘I don’t recall.’

Ethan’s hand stopped Eric in his tracks. ‘Try harder.’

‘You don’t understand,’ he hissed angrily.

‘Then help us out,’ Lopez suggested.

Schofield gritted his teeth and almost spat his response. ‘They’ll kill me.’

‘Who will kill you?’

‘Them,’ Schofield insisted. ‘They came to see me the day after Channing disappeared, after I’d spoken to the police.’

‘Who?’ Ethan demanded.

‘I don’t know! Guys in suits, serious men, angry men. They questioned me for over two hours like I was under arrest in my own home, wanted to know everything that Channing had told me. When they were done they said that if I breathed a word of what I’d witnessed to anybody they’d make sure I paid for it with my life. I believed them!’

Ethan and Lopez exchanged a silent glance and then Ethan reached into a pocket and retrieved his cell phone. He quickly thumbed through a series of images and showed one of them to Schofield.

‘Guys like this?’

Schofield’s eyes almost popped out of his head as he nodded frantically. ‘Yes, that’s one of them! How did you…?’

‘Long story,’ Ethan replied as he closed the image of Aaron Mitchell on his phone and looked at Lopez. ‘Mitchell’s likely to be following the same threads that we are.’

‘Which means that he might come here,’ she agreed.

Schofield’s eyes widened further and filled with fear. ‘Here?’

‘You didn’t tell us why you’re here,’ Lopez said to him.

‘You’re a scientist,’ Ethan pressed also, not willing to let Schofield go just yet. ‘You wouldn’t have just walked away from a discovery like that to come out here and babysit barley.’

Schofield seemed sobered by the image of Aaron Mitchell, and spoke freely.

‘I looked into Channing’s disappearance again after I heard that his son Robert had committed suicide, started to make links to people, powerful people,’ he said. ‘That’s when the heavy mob showed up. They made it real clear I should back off or else, so I did. But I didn’t stop looking into what I’d already found.’

‘Which was what?’ Lopez asked.

‘Channing wasn’t just a specialist in Tyrannosaurs. He also worked extensively on alternative theories for why the dinosaurs died out. His work on Tyrannosaurs coincided with the asteroid impact period, because creatures like T–Rex were some of the last of the dinosaurs to walk the earth before they went extinct, so the two subjects kind of went hand–in–hand. When I did a little digging into other people working in the same field, I started to see a pattern. They were coming to the conclusion that the dinosaurs were already dying out
before
the asteroid impact that sent them extinct.’

‘Before it?’

‘Yes, quite some time before it,’ Schofield confirmed. ‘There were lots of things going on geologically at the time that could have contributed to their demise, but Channing and a few others seemed to have realized that there was more to it than our own Earth.’

Ethan frowned, uncertain of where Schofield was going.

‘What, you think they were really onto some other reason for why the dinosaurs died out?’

‘Oh they absolutely were,’ Schofield nodded. ‘They were working on something so unbelievable that I couldn’t really begin to accept it myself at the time, but when I finally did and I realized what it meant for us as a species, I decided to work instead in conservation.’

Ethan felt a chill down his spine as Lopez questioned Schofield further.

‘What did you learn?’

Schofield sighed and shrugged.

‘That we’re doomed,’ he said finally. ‘Few terrestrial species last more than a couple of million years before they go extinct, which is about how long modern man,
Homo sapiens
, has existed. Humanity will not survive for more than a few decades at the most. Our extinction event is already here.’

***

XIII

‘We know,’ Ethan said. ‘We were briefed before we left on the Sixth Extinction.’

‘We really need to know what you found in Montana,’ Lopez insisted. ‘What convinced you to leave and go into conservation?’

Schofield seemed to hesitate for a moment longer, and then he sighed and looked around him at the rocky walls and the vaults beyond.

‘I guess if I’m not safe speaking a hundred forty meters inside a secure mountain facility, I’m safe nowhere,’ he said finally. ‘Aubrey Channing had discovered a…’

Ethan did not hear Schofield’s last as a clatter of machine gun fire echoed down the corridor from outside. He whirled, one hand instinctively reaching for the pistol at his side and finding it not there. Ethan cursed as he hurried across to one side of the tunnel, Lopez following and dragging Schofield with her.

‘What’s happening?’ Schofield gasped in terror. ‘Could they have heard me speaking even down here?’

Ethan shook his head as he heard the guards returning fire. From somewhere ahead in the facility he could see the distant flashes of muzzle fire as rifles were aimed out into the bitter wastelands outside.

‘I’m afraid we’re not the only ones interested in what happened to Aubrey Channing,’ he shouted above the noise as he looked at Lopez. ‘Our weapons are inside the office.’

‘Sounds like multiple targets outside,’ she replied. ‘We’re gonna be sitting ducks.’

‘Any other way out of here?’ Ethan asked Schofield.

The scientist shook his head. ‘Kind of the point of the place.’