“Let’s go,” Cutter said, preparing to follow.
Jenna stepped in front of him, placing a palm on his chest. “No. That’s not . . . the way.”
She struggled, shaking her head as if to knock her words loose.
He tried to move past her, but she blocked him, her eyes pleading.
“They didn’t kill him,” she tried again, pointing to the dead man. “Took him. Rahei. Her way—survival of the fittest—will get him killed.”
“Then what do we do?”
She stared at Cutter, showing on her face all the sincerity and earnestness that she struggled to find in her words.
“We must go another way.”
11:14 A.M. PDT
Sierra Nevada Mountains, CA
Lisa stood at the chapel window and stared across to the neighboring airfield. A drone helicopter the size of a tank sat on the tarmac. It was boxy in shape with four propellers, one at each corner. It looked like a giant version of those toy quadcopters sold in hobby shops, but this was no plaything.
In its cargo hold was a nuclear device strapped by thick belts to a metal pallet. A group of technicians still labored alongside it. Others stood on the tarmac clearly debating. She knew one of those men was Dr. Raymond Lindahl. As director of the U.S. Army Developmental Test Command, it was appropriate he was out there, but Lisa wished it was Painter instead, someone less reactionary, more able to think outside the box.
A voice cleared behind her. “You did hear that it’s time to evacuate,” Corporal Sarah Jessup said. “Detonation is set for forty-five minutes from now. We’re already cutting matters close, especially as I heard that they might move that time frame up due to the crosswinds kicking up.”
“Just a few minutes longer,” Lisa said.
Painter has never let me down.
As if summoned by this thought, the phone rang. Only a handful of people had this number. Lisa spun to the receiver and yanked it up. She didn’t bother getting confirmation that it was Painter.
“Tell me good news,” she said.
His voice was full of static, but it was oh-so-welcome. “It’s magnetism.”
She was sure she hadn’t heard that correctly. “Magnetism?”
She listened as Painter explained how he had found Kendall and that the man did have a solution, an answer as strange as the disease itself.
“Any strong magnetic force would likely do,” Painter ended, “but according to some real-world testing, you want—and I’m quoting—to generate a field strength of at least 0.465 Tesla using a static magnetic field.”
She jotted the information down on a sheet of paper.
“The effect should be almost instantaneous as that field shreds the organism at the genetic level, while not harming anything else.”
Oh, my God . . .
She stared out the window, knowing the destructive force about to be unleashed needlessly here.
Painter had additional information. “Hess says that the nuclear blast will have no effect on this organism. It will only succeed in spreading it farther and wider.”
“I have to stop them.”
“Do what you can. Kat is already working up the chains of command to stop this, but you know Washington. We have less than forty-five minutes to move a stone that seldom budges.”
“I’m already gone.” She hung up, not even sparing a good-bye. She turned to Jessup. “We need to move Nikko. He’s our only hope.”
32
April 30, 6:15 P.M. GMT
Queen Maud Land, Antarctica
Dylan Wright cursed his failed shot.
He thumbed the second barrel’s hammer back, wary of the beast before him. The Volitox queen still quested for the body of its offspring, hunching higher out of the water, its glowing lure rolling along the rocky bank.
Whatever that recent volley of gunfire was, it had ended as quickly as it had started. He pushed it out of his mind for the moment, concentrating on the immediate task at hand, at the looming danger before him.
A hunter let nothing distract him from the kill.
He pushed aside the humming backwash coming from the portable LRAD to his right, the dish still pointed toward the neighboring nest. He ignored the brilliantly hypnotic glow of the Volitox’s lure before him. He even dismissed the primitive terror at the base of his brain in the face of this huge monster.
Instead, he lifted his pistol and fixed his aim at the base of that tentacle, to where the buried ganglion offered a kill shot.
And fired.
The large-caliber round blasted slightly to the left of the thick stalk. While it wasn’t a perfect kill shot, it was good enough.
The Volitox queen reared out of the water in a spasm, her flanks jolting with bioluminescent energy. Her mouth peeled open to splay thousands of hooked teeth.
To his left, Riley stumbled back a couple of steps, bumping into Christchurch, who dropped the LRAD dish. It clattered with a spark of electricity against the stone floor.
While the Volitox species might be deaf and blind, they were keenly attuned to electric fields or currents—any currents.
The spatter of sparks triggered a reflexive attack. The tentacle lashed out, finding Christchurch’s neck. It wrapped once around his throat, burning that flaming gelatinous sphere into the side of his face. Flesh smoked as the soldier screamed, choking on a flow of acid down his lungs.
Christchurch was yanked off his feet, his neck snapping, and thrown far into the river.
Riley fled past Dylan and out into the darkness, back toward the distant camp.
Coward.
Dylan held his ground, remaining still, trusting his shot. He waited for death to take its course.
The Volitox queen—her last energies spent on this attack—slumped to the ground, her huge head cracking hard against the rock.
He waited a full minute, then approached cautiously with his dagger. He slipped a screw-top metal water bottle out of his pack.
Cutter Elwes had said he only needed the creature’s blood.
Easy enough.
He stabbed the beast in the side and collected the black flow into the aluminum container. Once filled up, he secured the cap.
Mission accomplished.
Now to get out of here.
The pound of running boots reached him, growing louder. He leaned around the dead bulk of the Volitox to see Riley returning toward him.
Apparently the young soldier had found his spine after all.
Unfortunately he quickly lost his head.
A rifle shot blasted loudly, and the side of Riley’s face exploded into a mist of blood. His body flew forward, crashing headlong across the cavern floor.
Dylan dropped back behind the carcass of the Volitox. His hand found his holstered Howdah, but he had shot his load. He looked across the cavern to where he had set down his assault rifle. If he attempted to reach it, he knew he’d suffer the same fate as Riley.