The Seventh Plague Read online

  It made no sense.

  It was some sort of aurora.

  As if responding to the same strange sign, the elephants began to trumpet across the canyon. Even the old beast here raised her trunk and whistled out a mournful note, full of melancholy and grief.

  Gray stared over at the others.

  What is going on?

  9:55 P.M.

  From the open side door of the Cessna, Valya watched the dance of energies across the skies, great undulating ripples of emerald and blue. She knew what she was witnessing, having viewed the aurora countless nights up in the Arctic.

  A flicker of superstitious unease accompanied the sight now. She imagined it was some warning from Anton, a message meant for her.

  She gave her head a shake, dismissing such thoughts.

  To her side, Kruger and his men were suited up in helmets with base-jump parachutes strapped to their backs. Their faces were staring up, too, but she needed their focus below.

  “Are you ready?” she yelled to Kruger.

  He gave her a thumbs-up.

  They had been tracking their targets all night, easily watching their progress up into the mountains through the infrared eyes of the Raven. The enemy had bottled themselves up into a set of box canyons, where it appeared a herd of elephants made their home. The oddity of it and the fact that they lingered there was enough to warrant dropping down and discovering what the others might have learned or acquired before dispatching them.

  The pilot would swoop low but to the north of those canyons, dropping Kruger and his three men. Each had an AK74M assault rifle mounted with under-barrel grenade launchers strapped across their bellies. They would drop in dark, wearing night-vision gear, landing in the larger canyon. She would follow, sweeping down to cover the cliffside entrance into the canyon system, guarding any escape back into the outer woods. Her weapon was a Heckler & Koch MP7A1 submachine gun with night sight and silencer. She had four extended magazines, each holding forty rounds.

  But her best weapon was strapped to her wrist.

  Its blade would be bloodied this night. She would carve her mark deep, down to the bone, hopefully while her victim still lived.

  The plane dipped, readying to unload its passengers. Under its wings, the two Hellfire missiles waited to be called down from above, to burn everything behind Valya and her team.

  Up in the sky, the blaze of the equatorial aurora flared brighter, whipping energies across the heavens. She no longer took the sign as warning, but as a flaming banner.

  The plane raced lower; Kruger glanced back to her.

  She nodded.

  Let it begin.

  One by one, the five men fell down from the fiery sky.

  26

  June 3, 5:01 P.M. EDT

  Ellesmere Island, Canada

  Painter’s skin crawled with the charge in the air. As he grabbed a strut to lean farther out of the rear cargo hatch of the Globemaster, a snap of static fired through the muscles of his hand, constricting the fibers, clenching his fingers to his grip. He ignored the pain and held tight.

  Beyond the cargo hold, the skies were on fire.

  The air smelled of ozone, sharp, like chlorine mixed with the smell of an amusement park bumper car ride. The hairs on his arms stood on end.

  The sky overhead raged with an aurora that surged and billowed, a storm-swept sea of electrical whitecaps and fiery breakers. It cast out sprites and blue jets of plasma. Thunder boomed in continuous cannon fire. Lightning forked up from the dark clouds below.

  The plane jolted from strikes, its wings shook as if trying to cast off the discharge, and one of the Pratt & Whitney engines trailed black smoke.

  “What can we do?” the loadmaster shouted, hanging from a grip on the other side.

  Painter glanced back into the hold. Past the tumbled blocks of the aluminum crates, the temporary barrier had been ripped down. Scientists worked at their station, braced as best they could, trying to answer the loadmaster’s question. Anton’s two men struggled to anchor the nest of containers within an orange cargo net, clipping its edges to braces along the hull. The two guys splashed through the glowing pools of crimson on the floor, oblivious to the toxic threat.

  What did it matter now?

  As the fireworks worsened outside, everyone had realized one truth.

  We’re all in this together now.

  Painter yelled across the open hatch. “Things are about to get worse!”

  The loadmaster—a young, red-faced man named Willet—looked at him, his horrified expression easy to read. How could this get worse?

  Painter pointed down to their starboard. One section of the dark storm churned ominously, a monstrous whirlpool of energy and fire. Across its maw, lightning danced. But worst of all, the blaze of the borealis above dipped toward it, as if being sucked toward the tempest.

  Painter had been watching this build for the past minute. He pictured the ionosphere dimpling, about to be torn by those tidal forces. He could even guess the cause. The heart of the fiery cauldron shone a rich crimson.

  Painter recognized that particular glow.

  It soaked his clothes, smoldered his skin, and ran in shimmering pools across the cargo deck. He had suspected all along that some of the toxin had spilled from the back of the plane, seeding the clouds below.

  Here was the proof.

  He pictured each particle acting like a superconducting speck, unbinding the potential energy trapped in those storm clouds, triggering a chain reaction, the effect cascading outward. It would soon liberate all that power, a thousand nuclear bombs’ worth of energy.

  Painter turned to the loadmaster. “Tell the pilot to keep us away from that!”

  They had to get clear of that fiery whirlpool.

  Now.

  Willet nodded and ran toward the flight deck at the front.

  Painter held his breath—then slowly the plane banked away, heeding his warning.

  He sighed out a breath.

  We’re gonna—

  From out of the clouds to the port side, a new column of fire burst forth, booming as it ripped the air, spiraling to the sky.

  The plane had been turning in that direction. To avoid a collision, the pilot heaved the aircraft around, rolling the massive aircraft onto the tip of a wing. The cargo net ripped from the hull. Crates tumbled across the hold. One of the guards was crushed.

  As the Globemaster fought to avoid the blaze, Painter gaped at this new threat, knowing from where it must have risen.

  Aurora Station.

  He stared down in disbelief.

  What was that bastard thinking?

  5:12 P.M.

  “It’s our only hope,” Simon Hartnell whispered.

  He stood at the helm of the control station, still captain of this ship, refusing to abandon his post. The evacuation Klaxon rang throughout the station. On a monitor, he saw Sno-Cats and snow machines dashing away. Other figures ran on foot, parkas flapping from their panicked forms.

  Only a skeleton crew was here, helping him try to stop what he had started.

  Dr. Kapoor ran up, out of breath, his face shiny with sweat. “It’s too much.” He shook his head. “We have to shut it down. It won’t hold.”

  “It must.”

  Simon felt the floor tremble under his feet. With goggles strapped to his face, he stared up at the giant tower, willing it all to hold. Blue coruscations of fire ran from the spinning superconductor on top down to the bottom of the old mining pit. Its entire floor raged with a sea of burning plasma, surging and lapping around the base of his tower. Through the thick glass, the heat of a blast furnace reached him.

  Still, he knew the fierce energy churning below was only the dregs of the full force he was channeling deep into the earth. After his test firing of the array had such a disastrous outcome, he had sought a way to reverse what he had started, to snuff the fire from the sky. He and Kapoor’s team had run panicked scenarios and hasty calculations and come to one possible solution.
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  Following Tesla’s design, Simon had built his Wardenclyffe not only to transmit power but also to receive it. Tesla’s dream was to build a network of hundreds of towers, each casting energy wirelessly into a huge pool of power that circled the globe—either through the skies above or the earth below. But he also envisioned that each of those same towers could tap into that source, making its energy readily available to all.

  Looking to the future, Simon had done the same.

  And it was what he was attempting to do now.

  He and Kapoor had reversed the polarity of his tower, something untested and untried but they had had no choice but to attempt it. While the fiery beam of plasma looked the same, it was no longer shooting power up, but sapping that energy down from the ionosphere.

  His tower was now a lightning rod, trying to pull the fire from the sky.

  Still, they had needed somewhere to send that energy, and again it was Tesla who offered an answer. When Simon had built his tower, he had to drive footings deep into the bedrock to support its massive structure. It was simply a matter of engineering necessity, but it had amused him how similar it was to the three-hundred-foot pilings that Tesla had designed for his tower, mighty iron rods meant to “grip the earth.”

  Tesla had intended to use that grip and those rods to send energy deep into the earth, to reach the resonance frequency of the planet, a potential bottomless well that could be filled and shared around the world.

  Tesla had failed, but his reasoning was sound.

  So Simon sought to fill that same well now with the fires from the sky. His hope was to balance the two visions of his mentor, two possible sources of global wireless energy: the ionosphere enclosing the planet and the dark well at its core.

  He intended for his tower to act as a massive Tesla coil, connecting sky to the earth, a conduit for the fires above to flow deep underground. With luck, a point of equilibrium might be reached, allowing order to be restored.

  Unfortunately, luck wasn’t with them.

  The ground jolted under his feet, tossing him across his console. He heard a boom of shattering glass. He cringed, believing it was the curve of window overlooking the tower. Instead, giant jagged panes crashed off to his right, near the back of the station. He knew what the window had once sealed. He pictured that dark lake.

  “Sir!” Kapoor yelled, drawing him back to the more immediate threat. “We need to shut this down. We’re getting massive voltage spikes. Plasma currents are surging wildly both ways.”

  As the floor continued to rattle and bump, he pictured waves crashing back and forth, traveling between the earth and sky.

  “But isn’t that what we want?” Simon said. “Didn’t we anticipate that as equilibrium neared we’d get this effect? A sloshing back and forth as the two forces tried to stabilize?”

  Kapoor shook his head. “You don’t understand.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “The two sloshing waves . . .” he sputtered, struggling to explain, using his hands. “One traveling up, the other down. Their amplitudes and wavelengths are the same. They’re beginning to superimpose as they cross each other.”

  Simon sucked in air, understanding the danger. “They could build to a standing wave.”

  He imagined a taut vibrating string of energy connecting sky to earth, stable and permanent.

  Kapoor stared out at the tower in horror. “It would form a massive circuit.”

  Simon lunged forward, knowing such a circuit would not hold for long, not with the herculean forces at play. It would all short-circuit. If that happened, it could shred the sky and shatter the globe.

  He twisted the key to cut the power, to shut everything down.

  Nothing happened.

  He tried a few more times.

  “It’s already powering itself.” Kapoor backed a step. “The circuit’s complete.”

  Simon straightened.

  We’re too late.

  5:18 P.M.

  “Hold on!”

  At breakneck speeds, Kat drove the Sno-Cat down the far side of Johns Island. The long sliver of black rock jutted from the ice of Lake Hazen, looking like a submarine cracking through an arctic sea—only this sub was four miles long and half a mile wide. A scatter of smaller islands clustered close by, offering places to hide.

  Tagak braced himself in the passenger seat, while his father, John, was sprawled in back. Both men had rifles in hand.

  For the past forty-five minutes, Kat had engaged in a game of cat-and-mouse across the islands of Lake Hazen, hunted by Anton’s men. When John had first alerted her of their approach, she had intended to take the Sno-Cat by herself and lure the enemy away from Safia and the others. Instead, the two Inuit had insisted on coming. She had tried to discourage them, warning them off with the threat of contagion, but John had eyed the number of snow machines sweeping down out of the mountains and climbed into the Sno-Cat with his son.

  Kat was lucky they had.

  While the storm had worsened, offering some shelter, it was their local knowledge of the lake and islands that had kept her alive. Using the lights of her Sno-Cat as a beacon in the storm, she had successfully drawn the enemy to the south. The trio of hide tents, covered in snow, had never even been spotted.

  Once she reached the islands, she had turned her headlights off and became both the hunted and the hunter. The ensuing guerrilla war kept both sides at an impasse. The Sno-Cat had two new bullet holes in its windshield, but Kat knew she had taken out three snow machines.

  Then everything changed.

  “Go, go, go!” Tagak urged as the vehicle’s treads hit the lake ice.

  To either side, tiny glowing motes sped through the blowing snow, marking the enemy’s swifter vehicles. But they weren’t the danger any longer.

  Lightning shattered across the low sky. Bolts crashed down all around, striking the ice with explosive force. Huge cracks skittered outward. Overhead, the entire cloud bank above the lake had begun to churn, forming a maelstrom of impossible magnitude.

  Worse yet, it glowed a dark crimson, as if a fire were stoked inside.

  Which Kat suspected was true.

  She raced that storm, as did Anton’s men, who scattered in all directions, heedless now of their prior targets, fleeing the hellfire above.

  Kat had to reach Safia and Rory, grab them, and get out of this valley.

  The back window suddenly shattered. John gasped, his palm flying to his ear, blood flowing immediately through his fingers.

  “Down!” Kat yelled as she hunched lower.

  Tagak rolled over the seat to join his father in back. He pointed his rifle out the fist-sized hole in the rear window and blindly shot into the storm pall behind them.

  Kat raced faster as thunder boomed and lightning bolts seared her retinas. The Sno-Cat suddenly tilted as a section of ice proved to be a broken floe. It shifted under the vehicle’s weight. She didn’t slow, using the momentum to escape and get back to solid ice.

  Tagak continued to take potshots at the storm, but Anton had to be running dark. Kat knew it was the Russian back there. Who else would still be doggedly continuing this chase?

  To her right, something ripped through the swirling snow and struck the ice. It exploded with such force that it shook the Sno-Cat. Her first thought was a mortar attack. Then the skies opened up and unleashed its full fury.

  Giant chunks of ice crashed to the lake, shattering into splinters or bouncing across the surface. Pumpkin-sized hail pelted all around. The roof of the Cat rang with their impacts, denting toward them. The bombardment worsened, pounding the landscape, the view lit by flashes of lightning.

  Kat dared not slow down.

  Finally, she outraced the worst of the hailstorm, clearing its deadly salvo, but the cannonade of ice and lightning continued to pursue them. She ran from its onslaught, struggling to keep ahead of it.

  In her rearview mirror, she noted a change in the storm. As if partially spent by the barrage, the churning clouds h
ad shredded, revealing streaks of the skies above. Flaming plasma raged across the blue vault, while chains of lightning ripped apart the heavens. It was as if the barriers between worlds had parted, and she was peering into the burning heart of hell itself.

  And maybe I am.

  She remembered descriptions of the biblical seventh plague: Moses stretched out his staff toward heaven, and the Lord sent thunder and hail, and fire ran down to the earth.

  She stared at the shattering forks of lightning, the explosive barrage of ice, the fires burning across the skies. Thunderclaps boomed all around, shaking the ice and rattling the windows.

  Is that what I’m witnessing?

  Slowly, the maelstrom closed again, hiding what it had briefly revealed. It looked even stronger and darker now, yet still retaining that dread glow.

  “Watch out!” Tagak hollered from the back.

  She twitched her gaze from the mirror to the lake.

  Across the ice ran a familiar sight, more ethereal than ever. Small shapes flew silently before her, their panicked hoofbeats covered by the storm, their bodies fading into and out of the swirls of snow. It was the ghostly herd of caribou.

  But these were no apparitions.

  A big buck suddenly burst directly across the bumper of the Sno-Cat. She swerved to miss it, sending the vehicle into a skid on the slick ice. The animal bounded safely past, as the Sno-Cat spun full circle.

  Kat fought them back around, her heart pounding.

  Then in the distance, she spotted humps on the ice.

  The hide tents.

  Thank god . . .

  With their goal in sight, she got them moving again. But with her focus fixed ahead, she missed the cracks in the ice. The shelf under the Cat canted to the side. With her momentum bled away by the near collision, she didn’t have the speed to get clear. As the center of gravity inexorably shifted, the floe tipped faster and faster.

  Kat pointed to the high-side doors. “Out!”

  They all scrambled up the slanting cabin. Doors were shoved and flung open. Bodies jettisoned. By the time Kat was out, the Sno-Cat was nearly upended to one side. Its bulk slid down the slanted shelf, hastening its demise. She planted her feet on the door sill and leaped away, abandoning ship. As Kat flew over open blue water, the Cat slowly toppled into the lake behind her. She hit the solid ice headlong and rolled across its frozen surface. She caught glimpses of Tagak doing the same, cradling his wounded father.