Sigma Force 10 - The Sixth Extinction Read online

  That nature you love so well.

  “Where?”

  “You know where, Cutter.”

  He nodded, closing his eyes. “Of course . . . Antarctica,” he mumbled. “There must be a particular species from that shadow biosphere, something with a unique genetic code that acts as that key.”

  It still disturbed Kendall how quickly this monster’s mind worked.

  Cutter opened his eyes. “Which species is it?”

  Kendall met that stolid gaze, ready to draw a line in the sand. If Cutter put a mole in his lab, he surely had a person or a team inserted at Harrington’s station. Cutter certainly knew enough details about Hell’s Cape. If that bastard learned the truth, he could obtain the last piece to his horrifying genetic puzzle.

  That must never happen.

  Cutter read the resolution in his face and gave a sad shake of his head. “So be it. Then we’ll have to do it the hard way.”

  Kendall felt his knees shake. He would do his best to hold out against whatever torture would follow.

  Cutter turned to Jenna while waving a hand to Rahei. “We’ll start with her and make Kendall watch, so he’ll better understand what’s to come.”

  1:00 P.M.

  “One hour out!” Suarez called from up front, seated next to the Valor’s pilot.

  Painter looked out the window behind his bandaged shoulder. Before lift-off, he had popped a handful of ibuprofen and abandoned his sling, but even this small movement triggered a dagger-stab of pain. He studied the passing terrain, seeing only the green sea below the droning nacelles of the tiltrotor. Somewhere ahead lay their destination, the tepui where the dead man, Cutter Elwes, might have made his home.

  And hopefully where we’ll find Jenna and Dr. Hess.

  Time was rapidly running out.

  He still had the satellite phone pressed to his ear. “There’s no way to hold Lindahl off?” he asked.

  Lisa answered, “The weather patterns have changed in the last hour. And not for the better. The next storm front is moving in faster than originally projected, expected to hit the mountains by midafternoon. The wind speeds and rainfall estimates suggest this storm will be three to four times as fierce as the prior one. Because of that threat, the timetable for the nuclear option has shifted from sundown to noon.”

  Noon . . .

  He checked his watch and calculated the time difference. That was only two hours from now. And they were still sixty minutes out from reaching the tepui, leaving them almost no time to find Kendall Hess and discover if a non-nuclear option for dealing with the threat existed.

  Painter recognized the impossible task before him. He stared at the Marines around him. He was flanked by Sergeant Suarez’s two men: Abramson and Henckel. Across the cabin, Drake conversed in low tones with Malcolm and Schmitt. He took strength from the rugged team accompanying him.

  Still . . .

  “When are they evacuating the base?” he asked.

  “It’s already under way. The National Guard combed the countryside at daybreak, clearing any recalcitrant locals who hadn’t obeyed the mandatory evacuation order. Base personnel are breaking down the labs, moving Josh as I speak.”

  “And you and Nikko?”

  “I don’t trust Lindahl. I’m going to wait for the last bus out. Sarah . . . Corporal Jessup has prepped a small helicopter to ferry us out of harm’s way.”

  “Don’t wait too long,” he warned, fear for her drying out his mouth.

  “I won’t. Edmund updates me regularly on the status of the nuclear team who are prepping the device. They’re still doing final calculations. The plan is to lift the bomb via a drone helicopter to a specific altitude for maximum effect across the local mountaintops and valleys. The team is still working on those last details.” Lisa’s voice hardened. “So, Painter, you need to find something . . . if not a cure, at least some hope to delay the inevitable.”

  Painter sighed heavily. It was a tall order. Even if he could discover some solution to this threat—some unknown biological counteragent—could it be engineered or employed fast enough to discourage this pending nuclear response?

  “I’ll do all I can,” Painter promised.

  He said his good-byes and ended the call, resting the phone on his lap.

  Drake must have read his face. “Let me guess. The news from home isn’t good.”

  He slowly shook his head.

  Not good at all.

  With a twinge from his shoulder, he turned to the window, finally noting a distant dark mountain rising near the horizon.

  I doubt the situation is any better over there.

  1:05 P.M.

  “This may sting,” Cutter Elwes said.

  Jenna sat on a chair in the lab, pinned in place by the hulking native, Mateo. It was the same man who had ambushed her at that hilltop ghost town. She recognized him from the purplish scar running down his cheek to his chin. It seemed everything had come full circle.

  “Don’t do this,” Kendall said. “Please.”

  Cutter straightened, holding a pistol-shaped tool in his hand. She recognized a modified jet injector used for delivering vaccines. Sticking out the top was an inverted vial, holding an amber liquid.

  She suspected she wasn’t being threatened by a flu shot.

  “Simply tell me the name of the XNA species that is the biological key,” Cutter told Kendall. “And none of this nastiness needs to continue.”

  “Don’t do it,” Jenna said. Fingers dug painfully into her shoulders, warning her to stay silent, but she ignored the threat. “Don’t give him what he wants.”

  Kendall clearly vacillated, but finally he crossed his arms.

  “Very well,” Cutter said.

  The dark woman, Rahei, tugged Jenna’s sleeve higher up her arm.

  Cutter pressed the muzzle of the injector against her shoulder. “Last chance, Kendall.”

  The researcher’s gaze shifted guiltily away from her.

  Cutter gave a small shrug and pulled the trigger. Compressed gas whistled, and a sharp bite penetrated her skin, felt all the way down to the bone.

  She swore under her breath as Mateo released her. She rubbed her arm and gained her feet. “What was that?”

  Cutter lifted the injector, sloshing around the remainder of the vial’s contents. “Non-enveloped viral RNA.”

  Jenna recalled the discussion from earlier. “It’s that genetic code you engineered. The one that affects the brain.”

  “Correct. But in its current form, it’s only mildly infectious and very fragile to environmental stresses. It’s why I need Kendall’s viral shell.”

  She understood. He wanted to engineer a superbug that could knock the human race back to the Stone Age—or even before the Stone Age.

  “But in its raw state,” he added, “the neurological damage will be the same.”

  She took a deep breath, fearful of the answer to her next question. “How long do I have?”

  “You should start feeling the effects within the next thirty minutes. Mild fever, slight headache, neck stiffness . . . then over the following few hours, the degenerative changes will progress at an exponential pace. Language is usually affected first, then complex thoughts, finally the sense of self wears away, leaving only base desires and survival instinct.”

  Horror settled into the pit of her stomach.

  “So . . . so you’ve tested this on people before?” Jenna asked, expecting him to try to justify his heinous acts.

  Instead he answered calmly, “Thoroughly, my dear. Most thoroughly.”

  Kendall touched Jenna’s hand. “I’m sorry.”

  Cutter turned to Rahei. “Take Ms. Beck to one of our test cages. Down on Level Black.”

  Upon hearing this, the native woman’s lips pulled into a smile of dark delight. It was the first strong emotion Rahei had shown.

  That scared Jenna more than anything else.

  Rahei grabbed her upper arm and led her off, collecting another native near the door, who ca
rried a rifle over one shoulder. Jenna noted the weapon was fitted with a U-shaped yellow rod sticking past the muzzle like a bayonet, with exposed copper contact points at the tips.

  She recognized the design.

  Electric cattle prod.

  She kept well away from that weapon as Rahei led her out of the lab. She was marched down a long tunnel that seemed to cross through the stone heart of the mountain. After stepping through a heavily bolted door at the end, she found herself outside again.

  She shaded her eyes against the sun, which blazed directly overhead, shining brightly down the throat of what appeared to be a sinkhole. Someone had converted it into a series of tiered gardens, festooned all around with orchids, bromeliads, and flowering vines. Down at the bottom, the green canopy of a forest reflected the sunlight. Each level from there to here appeared to be broken into fenced-off tiers, connected by a corkscrewing stone ramp carved from the walls.

  Rahei pushed her toward a ladder that led off the steel apron and down to that winding road. An enclosed golf cart waited below. She was forced to sit in the back with Rahei while her armed guard joined the driver up front.

  Once everyone was seated, the golf cart rolled down the ramp, its electric motor purring. It passed through a series of gates, which magically opened in front of them, possibly responding to some RFID chip embedded in the cart.

  At first nothing seemed out of the ordinary about these gardens, but after passing through a few levels, she started to notice oddities. While she wasn’t intimately familiar with all rain forest life, some of the plants and animals appeared otherworldly. At first the signs were subtle: bees the size of walnuts, a wall of black orchids whose petals opened and closed on their own, a dwarf boa that slithered into a clear pond, revealing a series of gills along its flanks.

  But the deeper they traversed, larger creatures appeared, more boldly abnormal. From a slim branch over the road, a row of zebra-striped rats hung from prehensile tails, similar to those found on an opossum. While they waited for a gate to fully open, a thick vine shot thorns at them, peppering the sides of the cart. Around another turn, a flock of oversized Amazon parrots took flight at their passage, revealing a riot of plumage in every shade, a kaleidoscope of feathers that dazzled the eye.

  One of these last flew too high—then suddenly seized up and tumbled several yards before regaining its senses and winging away to join its flock.

  Jenna stared upward. Was Cutter utilizing electronic tags or chips to keep each creature restricted to its own tier? She pondered this possibility—anything to occupy her mind and stave off the terror inside her.

  All the while, the cart continued to wind down through the levels, the air growing ever warmer and more humid. Sweat beaded on her forehead and rolled down the small of her back.

  She searched longingly up at the distant mouth of the sinkhole, estimating they were a mile down by now.

  I’ll never get out of here.

  Despair dampened her attention—until finally they reached forest growing at the bottom of the sinkhole. She estimated it was over twenty acres in size.

  Crossing a final gate, they dropped through the canopy.

  Welcome to Level Black, she thought grimly.

  But what was down here?

  Their descent along the ramp grew progressively darker. The blaze of sunlight filtered down to a dull green glow. As her eyes adjusted, she spotted shelves of fungi, softly aglow, sprouting along the trunks of trees. Across the floor, tiny ponds and thin streams reflected that meager light, while stands of heavy-leafed ferns towered all around, densely packed along the lone gravel road into the forest.

  The cart reached that road and headed off into the jungle.

  Their head lamps finally clicked on.

  Using that brighter light, Jenna tried to peer through the thick walls of undergrowth, but she could not see very far. Occasionally the cart’s bumper would brush a fern and its leaves and rubbery stems would retract and curl up, opening a wider view into the jungle.

  But it was only more of the same.

  Giving up, she turned her attention forward, wondering where she was being taken. Gnats buzzed thickly in the beams of their headlamps. Everywhere, water dripped from leaves, and flower petals gently drifted down.

  The chatter between the driver and guard had died away upon reaching this level. Their fear was palpable, which set her heart to pounding harder.

  Then thirty yards ahead, something large dropped from above and splattered onto the road. When they reached the site, the cart edged past what lay broken in the gravel.

  Jenna stared down at the bloody skeleton of a goat or deer. Some flesh still clung to the carcass, including one eye that stared forlornly back at her as the cart passed by.

  Leaning against the window, she searched the tangle of thick branches overhead and the leafy bower of the dark canopy.

  She spotted nothing.

  Who or what had—

  A tremendous roar shattered the heavy silence, full of territorial anger and hunger. It was answered by cries deeper in the forest, echoing all around.

  Horrified, Jenna turned toward Rahei.

  The woman was smiling again.

  26

  April 30, 5:00 P.M. GMT

  Queen Maud Land, Antarctica

  “Is everyone okay?” Gray hollered. “Call out!”

  He climbed off the floor of the snow cruiser’s cab and took personal inventory, fingering a scalp wound where his head had clipped a stanchion. A glance forward showed the river flowing past the vehicle’s cracked windshield. A moment ago, the cruiser had toppled off the blasted bridge, crashed through the trestles below, and struck the river flat-bellied.

  So why hadn’t they plunged fully underwater?

  Kowalski helped Harrington out of the footwell in front of the passenger seat. The professor had a wicked knot on his forehead, and his eyes looked glassy and dazed.

  Jason called up from the main cabin in back. “Need help down here!”

  Gray responded to the panic in his voice and shoved over to the ladder that led down from the cab. He found the lower level roiling with water, the river flowing in through the open back hatch. A huge black spike pierced up from the floor to the roof. Gray remembered spotting the fang-like stalagmites rising from the river. The cruiser must have impaled itself onto one of them as it fell, piercing its underbelly.

  The stone stake was likely all that was holding them from being dragged away by the strong currents and rolled into the depths.

  Jason struggled with Stella. He clung white-knuckled to a pipe near the roof; his other arm clutched Stella to his chest. Her head lolled drunkenly, half her face bloody. The riptide inside the cabin threatened to tear Jason away at any moment.

  And it wasn’t only the kid at risk.

  The entire cruiser lurched under the pressure of the current, spinning a few degrees upon that spike. Neighboring wooden trestles snapped free, bringing more of the bridge raining down into the river. Their precarious perch would not hold out much longer.

  He prepared to dive into that black maelstrom—until Jason yelled.

  “Something’s in the water with us!”

  Gray pulled his night-vision goggles back into place and swung his DSR rifle from his shoulder and flicked on its IR illuminator. The beam penetrated the water enough for him to search its depths, reflecting off the steel bottom of the cruiser. He scanned the cabin until he discovered a clutch of tentacles reaching through the back hatch and probing into the cruiser. Unlike an octopus, these appendages bore sharp pincers in place of suckers. An unwary fish brushed too close and was sliced in half in a lightning-fast attack. Smaller limbs snatched up the pieces and reeled them away.

  Gray didn’t want to know what creature belonged to those tentacles.

  “Try not to move!” he called to Jason.

  Unfortunately, Stella began to regain her senses, flailing in surprise in Jason’s grip. A few of the black tentacles snaked toward them.


  Gray considered firing a sonic bullet, but he doubted the weapon would have much effect against the tentacles, when the main adversary still hid outside. But that thought gave him an idea. For the most part, life down here was sensitive to vibrations and sounds. A single bullet might not do much to discourage the hidden predator, but if he could amplify the effect, he could turn the entire rig into the equivalent of a hot foot.

  “Jason, on my signal, you haul ass toward me.”

  He looked terrified, but he gave a firm nod.

  Gray shifted his rifle away from the water and pointed it at the roof. He hoped the noise in the confined space didn’t knock Jason out, but he had to take the chance. He pulled the trigger. The sonic pulse struck the steel roof and reverberated through the entire carriage of the cruiser, setting it to ringing like a bell.

  Jason flinched under the assault, losing his grip and plunging into the water. Gray dove in after the pair, noting the tentacles spasm and flail back out of the cabin. The current carried Jason partly in Gray’s direction. Thankfully the kid kept hold of Stella.

  Gray caught them both, and together he and Jason swam with Stella back to the ladder. The plunge had woken her enough so she was able to climb the rungs. Kowalski pulled her the rest of the way up, where Harrington hugged his daughter tightly.

  “I’m okay,” she mumbled into her father’s chest.

  But none of them would be for long.

  Gray followed Jason back into the front cab and pointed to a hatch in the roof. “Everyone topside!”

  The cruiser’s bulk lurched again in the current.

  “We’re still wedged in the remains of the bridge,” he explained. “We can try to climb up what’s left of the trestles to reach the top, then cross back to shore.”

  Kowalski went first, hardly needing the ladder to pop the hatch and haul himself out, even while burdened with his machine gun. Once topside, he helped Harrington and his daughter up. Jason and Gray hurried behind them.

  Gray straightened, relieved to see that the broken trestles should be easy enough to climb to reach the top of the bridge.