Текст книги "Zero Hour"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Graham Brown
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“What about the driver?”

Kurt’s mind drifted back to the scene on the promenade. “He asked me to leave him and help this guy. He called him Panos.”

“That’s it?”

“We didn’t exactly have a long conversation.”

Hayley looked away sadly, and Bradshaw sighed with disappointment. “Well, you’ve been a tremendous help,” he said sarcastically.

“He did save my life,” Hayley pointed out.

“That he did,” Bradshaw agreed, speaking with a note of humility in his voice for the first time. He stepped toward the door. “Sorry to be so nasty, Mr. Austin, but it’s been a damned awful day. Enjoy your vacation.”

“Hold on a second,” Kurt said.

His mind was drifting back to the incident. He couldn’t recall any luggage in the boat or anything else out of the ordinary except that he remembered Panos wincing in pain when he was dragged from the boat. He recalled the odd way the man’s fingers had curled up and how he struggled to walk. There was something strange about his hunched-over appearance as he lumbered away from the boat. Something familiar too. Kurt had seen that gait before.

“That guy was your informant?”

Hayley went to speak, and Bradshaw stopped her.

“Come on,” Kurt snapped, “either you want my help or you don’t.”

“The dead men were couriers,” Bradshaw said reluctantly. “Bringing us something.”

“Do you know where they came from?”

Bradshaw shook his head. “If we knew that, there would be no need for this lovely conversation.”

“I suggest you start looking underwater,” Kurt said, “because that man was suffering from DCS.”

“DCS?”

“Decompression sickness,” Kurt said. “Bubbles of nitrogen in the joints. It causes horrendous pain and a hunched-over appearance – if the patient can even walk, that is. You get it from deep, prolonged diving, then surfacing too quickly. Normal treatment is one hundred percent oxygen and time in a hyperbaric chamber to force the gas back into suspension. But wherever this guy came from, I’m guessing he didn’t have the time to go back down. Kind of hard to do when you’re running for your life.”

Bradshaw all but snickered. “He’d just been in a crash, playing stuntman without a seat belt or a helmet. More likely, he was injured in the wreck.”

“He wasn’t limping,” Kurt noted, “he wasn’t favoring one side. He was bent over like the Hunchback of Notre-Dame and unable to straighten up. Those are the most typical effects of a disease commonly called the bends.”

Bradshaw seemed to be considering Kurt’s guess. He sucked at his teeth and then shook his head. “Not a bad thought,” he said, “but here’s why you’re wrong.”

He pointed to a brownish red smear on the bloodstained papers. It was oddly iridescent under the light.

“He was covered in this,” Bradshaw said, “every pore, every fiber of his clothes. So was the last courier we found dead.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a type of soil, called a palaeosol,” Bradshaw explained. “Common in the outback. Not found underwater. If it tracks with the other guy, it’ll contain a mix of heavy metals and various toxins, including traces of manganese and arsenic. Which tells us these guys are operating in the desert somewhere. Not from a submarine.”

“He could have been in a lake and gotten dirty afterward,” Kurt pointed out.

“Have you ever been to the outback?” Bradshaw asked. “The lakes out there are mostly transient. Even during the rainy season – which it is not right now, by the way – they’re shallow and wide. Like your Great Salt Lake.”

Kurt was stumped. “Don’t know what to tell you,” he said, “but I’d stake my reputation on it. That man came up from a depth where he was exposed to great pressure.”

“Thanks for your opinion,” Bradshaw replied. “We’ll be sure to check into it.”

He waved a hand toward the exit.

“So this is what it means to be shown the door,” Kurt said.

Hayley looked as if she’d have preferred to leave with him. Kurt felt differently about her now. A damsel in distress. He wondered once again what her deal with Bradshaw might be.

“Good-bye,” she whispered sadly. “Thank you.”

Kurt hoped it wasn’t quite final. He guessed that suggesting as much would annoy Bradshaw. A win-win situation.

“Until we meet again,” he said. And then he stepped out through the door and left her and Bradshaw behind.

FIVE

Two hours after the incident, Kurt found himself back in his suite at the Intercontinental Hotel. He’d taken a shower, sent a long e-mail to NUMA headquarters, and finished a tumbler of scotch before climbing into bed.

Forty minutes later, he was still wide awake, staring at the ceiling and listening to the hum of the air conditioner. The events played on an endless loop in his mind. As they did, the questions chased one another in circles.

What was the ASIO dealing with? Why would a man covered in desert dust also be suffering from decompression sickness? And what part was Hayley Anderson playing in all of it? She seemed to be there by her own choice, but she didn’t seem happy about it.

Despite a little voice that told him to leave it alone, Kurt found he couldn’t let it go.

He glanced over at the nightstand. He’d covered the bright face of the alarm clock with a towel to keep the light out of his eyes, but his Doxa watch was resting beside it. He scooped it up, checked the luminous hands, and realized it was almost two o’clock in the morning.

He threw the covers off, climbed out of bed, and walked over to the desk. If he couldn’t find sleep, maybe he could find some answers.

He opened his laptop and took a drink of water while it booted up. A quick Internet search regarding the ASIO brought up numerous articles. He didn’t expect to find a list of secret operations, but he thought there might be something indicating what they were dealing with. Maybe something obscure enough that he could put two and two together.

With no luck there, he thought about Hayley.

“Who are you, Ms. Anderson?” he muttered. “And what are you mixed up in?”

He ran a Google search on her, and a wealth of links appeared.

To Kurt’s surprise, Hayley was a scholar: a theoretical physicist tenured at the University of Sydney. She’d authored a number of papers with incomprehensible titles. There was a more easily read article about her turning down an invite to Oxford. He found another where she was trying to explain something about gravity and why Einstein was wrong in his understanding of it.

Kurt poured himself a glass of scotch. He found himself more baffled than before. What on earth was a young woman who could prove Einstein wrong doing in the middle of a terrorist investigation?

Finding no answer to that question, or any public link between her and the ASIO, he turned his attention to the dead informant.

Kurt was certain the man had been suffering from decompression sickness. The question was: how did he get it?

DCS had once been called caisson disease, because it was originally noticed in construction workers who were toiling away in the pressurized caissons used to build the foundations of great bridges. But it was most commonly seen in scuba divers.

The dead man Panos had arrived in a boat, racing across Sydney Harbour. That also suggested he might have been diving. But he wore grimy street clothes, not a wet suit, and he smelled like days of perspiration, not the fresh salt of the sea. That, along with the mining connection and the ASIO’s belief that some terrorist group was operating in the outback, weighed against Kurt’s theory.

He found a register of lakes in Australia and painstakingly scanned through them. Just as Bradshaw insisted, most of them appeared to be shallow or even transient, drying up completely in the summertime.

“Not the kind of places one gets the bends,” Kurt said.

He put the list down and began scanning a satellite image of Australia. Moving westward from Sydney and out over more arid territory, it was easy to see how quickly the terrain became barren. Occasionally, he came across a swath of green.

Much like the American Southwest and the Egyptian Nile, wherever a stream or river flowed, vegetation grew up around it. Even if it didn’t flow year-round, there was often underground water to be had. But that water was locked away in permeable sands and aquifers, not hidden lakes that one could swim in. And even if he could find a lake, that didn’t explain the toxins on the man’s skin.

About ready to shut down, Kurt used the touch pad to scan a few more sections of the map. He stopped when a strangely colored spot caught his eye. He tapped the ZOOM IN command a couple of times and waited.

The map blurred and refocused, with the iridescent spot taking up a quarter of the screen.

He was staring at a lake. A lake of brilliant rainbow hues, brighter than anything in nature had a right to be.

Right away, Kurt knew what he was looking at. The pieces came together quickly after that. He knew why the lake was so outrageously colorful, and he also knew why the informant had both DCS and metal toxins all over his body.

It seemed he and Bradshaw were both correct.

He reached for the phone, dialed up a number from memory, and waited for an answer.

“Come on, Joe,” he whispered to himself.

A click on the line followed.

“Hello,” a sleepy American voice said.

Joe Zavala was Kurt’s best friend, his most loyal and trusted ally. Others would use the term partner in crime.

“I hope the women of Cairns haven’t worn you out,” Kurt said, “because I need your help on something.”

A yawn came over the line. “I have to ask: is it dangerous, illegal, or otherwise likely to result in serious bodily injury?”

“Would you believe me if I said no?”

“Probably not,” Joe said. “Especially considering what you’ve been up to down there.”

“You heard?”

“HQ called and left a message. Aside from that, you’re all over the news,” Joe explained. “CNN is reporting that an ‘unnamed American’ brought down the house in Sydney.”

“That’s witty of them,” Kurt said. “Too bad they weren’t performing the 1812 Overture, it would have been a showstopper of an ending.”

“And you said the conference was boring.”

“Seems I was wrong,” Kurt said. “So do you want to join in the fun or not?”

“Well,” Joe said, “I’m supposed to show off our new diving speeders to a group of reporters and a fifth-grade honors class from Cairns tomorrow as part of the Great Barrier Reef Project, but considering how repetitive their questions are, I think I’d rather throw my lot in with you. What do you need me to do?”

“Have the speeders been tested?”

“We checked them out today.”

“Perfect,” Kurt said. “Pack them up and bring them to the airport. I’ll have a plane chartered for you.”

“You got it. So what are we doing with them?”

“Just following up on a hunch,” Kurt said.

“You know you could phone it in,” Joe suggested. “Let the Aussies handle it.”

“If I had any brains, I would,” Kurt replied, “but my last conversation with them didn’t go so well. I figure I’ll have to show them instead of telling.”

“Sounds about par for the course,” Joe said. “So where are we going anyway?”

“Not entirely sure yet,” Kurt said. “But you’ll find out when you get to the airport. I’ll meet you at our destination.”

“You know you can count on me,” Joe said. “Hasta mañana, amigo.”

Before Joe could hang up, Kurt spoke again. “One more thing,” he said. “Keep this under your sombrero. It’s not exactly an approved NUMA operation.”

SIX

Janko Minkosovic stood in the center of the octagonal room. The lighting was dim and subdued, the air around him chilled below fifty degrees. Despite that, Janko was sweating. That the room was kept near one hundred percent humidity didn’t help, but fear and anxiety were the real causes.

He tried to control it, but the longer he stood in silence, the more his mind wandered.

All those who’d been called to this room felt great trepidation. Their master resided here. He ruled from here like a dictator, gave pronouncements from here like a judge.

No one knew that better than Janko. He’d brought many here against their will and dragged them out of the room afterward, either sentenced to some awful punishment or dead.

Two members of the guard stood behind him. Short-barreled versions of the American M16 rifle were clutched in their hands.

In a way, they were Janko’s men. After all, he was Captain of the Guard. He chose not to look at them. They were not here to support him, they’d received an order to bring him in.

Across from the group, staring out a window into utter darkness, their master waited. “What’s your main function, Janko?”

The imposing figure spoke without turning. There was a strange hushed quality to the voice. It came from scorched and damaged vocal cords.

“I am chief of security, as you well know,” Janko replied.

“And how do you judge your performance in light of recent events?”

Maxmillian Thero turned around. Janko saw familiar burn scars that ran up the man’s neck and onto his face. Only Thero’s mouth was visible, twisted into a scarred cut by what must have been a horrible fire. The nose, eyes, the right ear, and the rest of the face lay beneath a black latex mask. The mask hid features too hideous to show, but it also put a sense of fear into those who looked upon it. It separated him from them. It made him seem less, or perhaps more, than human.

Janko had the impression he was looking upon a demigod of some type, a being that should have been dead several times over – from fire, from gunshots, from radiation – and yet he still lived. Janko did not want to disappoint this demigod, but he could not bring himself to lie. He summoned all his courage.

“We have been endangered,” Janko admitted. “Our purpose may have been compromised. Despite great effort, I’ve failed to find the one who puts our goals at risk. The failure is mine. And mine alone.”

“You speak the truth,” Thero said. “How did it occur?”

“The dive master is in possession of all keys. He cannot explain how Panos was able to gain access to the airlock. Either the dive master is lying or there is a conspiracy. One that goes beyond Panos and the other traitors. But there is no way to account for all the strange things that have occurred. No one single person has access to all areas that have been breached. You know how tightly things are watched.”

Thero nodded, the soft latex of the mask catching the small amount of light that was present. The reflections danced up and down the mask, as if it was sending and receiving signals.

“Panos was driven from here,” Thero said. “That can mean only one thing: the help comes from the outside. From one of those we have trusted to do our business in the secular world.”

Janko did not agree, but he kept that to himself.

Thero shifted his weight. “You see the difficulty of my position, don’t you, Janko? I no longer know who to trust. Either here or on the island. Particularly because the next diamond shipment is ready to be sent. This one is the largest yet. But I can’t count on the other men to carry out the transactions.”

“Postpone it,” Janko suggested.

“The longer those diamonds sit, the bigger men’s eyes get,” Thero said. “I won’t delay the cargo any further. You will return to the island and take it personally.”

Janko’s eyes lit up. “Me?”

“First, you will kill the others, all those who have done our business before,” Thero explained. “Then you will take possession of the shipment and travel to Jakarta, where a buyer awaits us.”

Janko could hardly believe what he was hearing. He’d come to Thero’s chambers expecting to be tortured or even killed. Instead, he was being offered a great honor.

He knew to grasp it immediately. Thero’s mercurial personality ran hot and cold, munificent at one moment, cruel and murderous the next. All those around him had learned to fear the strange pauses he was prone to, the odd looks he gave, as if searching the mist for something only he could see. Paranoia and power were a dangerous combination.

“I will do as you require,” Janko said firmly.

“Take these guards and go to your task. I will meet you on the island. I expect to see the bodies of the traitors when I get there.”

Janko stood taller and glanced at the men behind him. They snapped to attention. “The traitors will talk and then die,” he said, doubting the other men were traitors at all but far happier to put them to death than to die himself.

Janko turned and strode out the door with the two guards following close behind.

Thero remained where he was, watching as the rusted steel door slammed shut behind them. In the muted silence, he considered the situation. Janko could be trusted, he thought. He’d been with them for so long.

The sound of footsteps emerged from the darkened room behind him. Thero turned in time to see a young man coming forth from the shadows. He had cropped blond hair, a slight build, and a sad and weary look about his eyes. He wore a lab coat.

“It won’t take long for the Australians to find us here,” the young man said. “Not now. Not after this.”

“True,” Thero said.

The young man was Thero’s son, George. He was also the chief designer of the latest version of Thero’s system, a weapon that would literally shake the Earth to its core.

“You’re quite right, my son,” Thero said. “What would you have me do?”

“There’s no reason to keep this station around,” George said. “We should leave. Have Janko stay behind and scuttle the station. Then he can join us and complete his other task.”

“But this station will help us inflict the pain we seek,” Thero countered.

“The main system on the island will soon be operational,” George said. “Once it is, we will be invulnerable. We should move everything of value there.”

“When will it be up and running?”

“Within days.”

“Excellent,” Thero said, beaming with pride. “You’ve succeeded where so many others have failed. Soon, we’ll show the world how they’ve lived in ignorance. We’ll make the nations that shunned us pay.”

The young man looked downcast.

“You disagree?”

“Proving the system works, proving that we can draw unlimited energy from the void around us, surely that’s vindication enough? That and the wealth that will follow.”

“No,” Thero said sharply. “It’s not even close. Look what they’ve done to us. To me. To you. They’ve stolen everything. Mocked us and murdered your sister. They sent us away like we carried the plague, abandoned us to certain death. All the nations of the world are complicit in this. All the nations we could have helped.”

Thero’s tone softened. George had always been the merciful one. George’s sister had been more like her father. “You’re too forgiving,” Thero said. “I can’t afford to be that way. I won’t hand them the gift we’ve created. Not without extracting my pound of flesh first.”

Thero’s son looked up at him. He nodded grudgingly.

“The system must be tested,” he reminded his father. “If we can’t fine-tune it, then neither dream will come to fruition.”

“Only the most minor tests,” Thero said. “The world must remain in the dark until the zero hour arrives.”

SEVEN

Joe Zavala stood on the ramp at the Cairns airport as the speeders he’d brought with him were secured on a pallet and towed toward a waiting aircraft.

Five foot ten, with the dark smoldering eyes of his mother and the solid build of a middleweight boxer like his father, Joe was an engineer and a connoisseur of living to the fullest.

Life was good, Joe felt, especially his. He traveled the world having adventures, met interesting people, and worked on the most fantastic machines imaginable: high-speed boats, experimental submarines, and the occasional aircraft or car. It was like getting paid to play with one’s favorite toys in fantastic, exotic locations.

Unlike most who had their dream jobs, Joe knew it. It kept a smile on his face and a spring in his step that usually rubbed off on those around him. So far, it was doing nothing for the burly loadmaster of the small aircraft Kurt had chartered.

“This just can’t be correct,” the man said, repeating himself for the third time and flipping through a detailed bill of lading.

Joe was wearing a dark suit with a white shirt and a pink tie, a disguise of sorts he’d decided to don after Kurt told him this mission was not to have any official NUMA involvement.

“What can I tell you?” Joe said, taking on the air of a harried middle manager. “It’s got to go on board. Those are my instructions. Accompany the item to the delivery point.”

The loadmaster’s face scrunched up, and he squinted in the sunlight. “But you’re shipping diving gear and a pair of one-man submarines?”

“Apparently.”

“To the middle of the desert?”

“Really?” Joe said, feigning ignorance.

The big Aussie nodded. “Alice Springs is out in the red center, mate. You might as well fly these things to the Sahara.”

Joe hemmed and hawed. “Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if we did that next. This company of mine. We get a little crazy.”

The guy sighed and handed the paperwork back to Joe. “Well, they’re too heavy with the rest of the cargo anyway,” he said. “And I’m not off-loading half my shipment to put a mistake on board.”

He turned away to halt the offending pallet’s approach, but before he could say a word Joe put his arm around the big man’s shoulders, leaning in close, all friendly-like.

“Now, listen,” Joe said. “I know this is a mistake. And youknow it’s a mistake. But if I don’t take these tubs out there in person, there’s going to be hell to pay.”

Joe stuffed a wad of Australian cash into the man’s hand, five hundred dollars in total. “For the inconvenience,” he said, patting his newfound friend on the shoulder.

The loadmaster thumbed through the money, keeping it low and out of sight like a man hiding his cards at the poker table. A smile crept over his face. It was a big payday.

“This is really a waste of time,” he muttered, far more subdued than he’d been before. “But, then again, who are we to question why?”

“My thoughts exactly,” Joe said.

The loadmaster turned and whistled to his crew. “Pull the other pallets off and load her up with this one. And make it quick,” he grumbled. “We’re not getting paid by the hour.”

As the ground crew went to work, a young woman from inside the charter company’s office brought Joe an ice-cold bottle of water. She smiled at him, all dimples and sparkling eyes.

“Thank you,” he said.

“My pleasure, sir.”

She winked and turned with a swish, and Joe had to fight hard to keep himself from following.

He stood and considered the situation. He was accustomed to being covered in grease and neck-deep in the hands-on work. He’d certainly never considered himself the supervisor type. But as he sipped the cool drink and watched from the shade while the heavy cargo pallets were pulled off and rearranged in the strong morning sun, he began to consider it an option.

He straightened his tie and glanced once more at the smiling customer service rep.

“A guy could get used to this.”

* * *

A few hours later and a thousand miles away, Kurt Austin waited in the cab of a boxy-looking flatbed. He watched as the CASA-212 landed on the centerline of the tiny Alice Springs Regional Airport and taxied toward him.

As the aircraft eased to a stop, Kurt put the truck in gear and drove up. While the ground crew went to work on the plane, Kurt climbed out of the cab and onto the flatbed. He activated the truck’s hydraulics and tilted the flatbed down until its far edge touched the ground like a ramp. By the time he locked it in place, the ground crew had begun wheeling the pallet with the speeders on it toward him.

Kurt attached a cable to the front of the pallet and used the flatbed’s winch to haul it up on board. After locking it in place, he leveled the flatbed once again and jumped down.

Joe Zavala sauntered out of the aircraft cabin a moment later, wearing a tailored suit and sunglasses.

“Looking sharper than I remember,” Kurt said.

“I’m in management now,” Joe said. “We have to dress for success.”

Kurt chuckled. He and Joe had been friends for years. They’d met at NUMA, finding themselves to be kindred spirits who’d rather be doing anythingthan sitting around bored. They’d been called troublemakers, undesirables, and been thrown out of at least twenty bars in their lifetimes, though none in the past year or so. But in the often tense and dangerous world that NUMA worked in, there were none better at keeping their cool and getting the job done.

“By the way,” Joe said, “you owe me five hundred dollars.”

Kurt paused at the door. “For what?”

“I had to grease the skids to get these things here.”

Kurt pulled the door open and climbed in. “You’re in management now. Put it on your expense account.”

Joe got in on the other side. “You are my expense account,” he said. “Now, how about telling me what we’re doing out here in the driest of the dry with a truckload of diving equipment.”

“I’ll explain on the road,” Kurt said, starting the engine. “We’re burning daylight.”

They drove off the airport grounds and were soon rumbling west, out of Alice Springs and into the desert.

As they drove, Joe changed his clothes, and Kurt explained the situation, starting with the events in Sydney and his odd meeting with Hayley Anderson and Cecil Bradshaw of the ASIO.

“The courier had red dust on him. It was packed into the mesh of his clothing. Bradshaw called it a palaeosol. It’s very old and infertile and commonly found here in the outback. Half the reason this place is so barren. The dead guy also had a mix of toxic metals on his skin. The kind usually found in mining operations.”

“Again pointing in this direction,” Joe said.

“Exactly,” Kurt said. “The problem was the decompression sickness. I’m certain the guy had the bends, but most of the lakes out here are transient. Even the year-round ones are shallow.”

He motioned to the surroundings. There was nothing but desert and dust in every direction, right out to the horizon.

“And yet, you’ve found a place out here where the water is both deep and poisonous.”

Kurt nodded. “Ever hear of the Berkeley Pit?”

Joe shook his head.

“It’s an open-pit copper mine in Montana. It flooded when the miners went too deep and water began seeping in from aquifers in the surrounding rock. Took years to fill up, but at last check the water was nine hundred feet deep and rising. The minerals give the water an odd color, reddish orange. It’s so toxic that a flock of geese landed there a few years ago and never took off again, promptly dying from exposure to the poisons.”

“Interesting,” Joe said. “But we’re not in Montana anymore, Toto.”

“No, we’re not, Dorothy. But as it turns out, here in Oz the Aussies have a few open-pit mines of their own. The outback is full of them. And some of them appear to be filled with water.”

Joe nodded, he seemed impressed. “I’ll buy that,” he said. “Are they deep enough to cause the bends?”

“Some are deeper than the Berkeley Pit.”

“Maybe you’re onto something,” Joe said. “But even if you are, why on earth would someone be diving in a poisoned lake?”

“Not sure,” Kurt said. “But Bradshaw told me these guys were a threat to Australian national security. And a flooded, toxic mine like this has two attributes that might make it interesting to such conspirators.”

“And those are?”

“For one thing,” Kurt said, “people stay away from toxic lakes that may or may not leak poisonous gas. And for another, they’re hard to see through.”

“You think they’re hiding something in the lake,” Joe said.

“Hiding it very effectively from a world filled with satellites.”

Joe nodded. “Technically, it’s a world surrounded by satellites. But I get your drift.”

Kurt almost laughed. “Thanks for that dose of editorial genius. I’m sure it’ll come in handy when the bullets start flying.”

After two hours on an empty highway, they were a hundred miles from Alice Springs and cruising a secondary dirt road. They hadn’t seen another soul for the last ninety minutes.

Kurt glanced in the mirror. A thick cloud of dust trailed out behind them, enough that they might have been followed from space. But if someone was tailing them, their engine would have choked out long ago.

He slowed the truck. They’d come to a gap in the barbwire fence that ran along the side of the road. An even more primitive trail led through it and off toward a low rise.

“This should be it.”

Turning the wheel to its stops, Kurt maneuvered the big truck through the opening.

“Just so I’m clear,” Joe said, “we have no idea what’s going on. No idea what we’re getting ourselves into. But we’re doing all this because some snotty bureaucrat didn’t like your theory.”

Kurt nodded. “Yep.”

“You have issues, amigo. Starting with a pathological need to prove yourself right.”

“The least of my flaws,” Kurt insisted as they neared the top of the ridge, “but it’s not that they didn’t believe me. They didn’t even take me seriously.”

The big flatbed crested the ridgeline. Ahead of them was a massive depression filled with crimson water. It had once been known as the Tasman Mine, but a thousand feet down the miners had cracked into a pressurized section of the water table. Just like the Berkeley Pit in Montana, the Tasman Mine had slowly filled with poisoned water. By now, it had risen to within a hundred feet of the rim.

Kurt eased the truck onto a sloping ramp that snaked its way around the walls of the pit and down toward the water’s edge. To his surprise, a group of vehicles were already parked there. Four dust-covered SUVs and a pair of Jeep Wranglers. They appeared to be new builds. The tinted windows and the matching colors just screamed government motor pool.

“Looks like they took you more seriously than you thought,” Joe said.

Kurt put his foot on the brake, slowing the truck until it lurched to a stop. There was something odd about the scene. It took a moment to notice.

“Where are they?” Kurt asked.

Joe shook his head.

There were six vehicles parked at strange angles, two of them with open doors, a third had its tailgate up. There were piles of equipment strewn about on the poisoned beach as if some type of activity were in the works. But there was not a single human being anywhere in sight.