Exit 9 (27 page)

“How far?” Ash asked.

“At least half a mile.”

A half-mile on its own didn’t sound like much, but across the ice of the Arctic Ocean, in the wind and cold and dark? It sounded like forever.

“Okay, you and Red get the gear out. We’ll also need to make a stretcher.”

He finished up with Gagnon while the other two unloaded the plane. For the stretcher, they worked off a loose piece of sheeting from the wing, and attached ropes to it so they could pull it along the ground. To keep Gagnon from freezing against the metal, they lined it with the carpet from the cabin, and one of the spare jackets.

They headed out.

__________

I
T TOOK THEM
over an hour to reach the cove that had been their initial destination. Ash knew he should feel relieved to have the solid ground of the inlet’s beach underfoot instead of the ocean ice, but they still had to get up the incline that surrounded the small bay, so their work was far from done.

“I think our best bet is right over there,” he said, pointing at a rise along the eastern end of the beach. The slope was slightly less vertical than elsewhere.

Getting Gagnon up the natural ramp was the hardest part. They ended up having to carry him and bring the sled separately.

Once they were finally on top, Ash pulled out the satellite phone and first tried to reach Pax, then the Ranch. As with the few times he’d tried during their journey across the ice, he couldn’t get through.

“Hey, did you see this?” Red called out.

He was back near the slope they’d just taken.

Ash put the phone back in his pack. “What is it?”

“Looks like boot prints. Couldn’t have been made too long ago. They aren’t filled with snow yet.”

Though they’d hit some storms further south in Canada, the weather reports Gagnon had pulled together indicated that Yanok Island, a thousand miles to the north, had not experienced the same. The forecast did predict that was soon to change.

“Which way were they headed?”

“Can’t tell.” Red stopped and leaned down. “What’s this?”

Ash and Chloe moved next to him for a closer look.

There was a five-inch-wide band of puncture marks in the ice that came out from under a pile of snow next to the boot prints and headed north.

“That pile doesn’t look natural to me,” Chloe said.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Ash agreed.

Using the entrenching tool that had been strapped to his pack, Ash broke off some of the looser pieces of the pile and shoved them to the side. The other two joined in. After a few minutes, they stopped.

“What the hell is this doing here?” Chloe asked.

Under the pile of snow was a highly modified motorcycle with metal-studded tires.

“Yellow team’s,” Ash said as way of explanation.

Before leaving the Ranch, he had been fully briefed on all aspects of the missing team’s mission, including what gear they’d brought.

He knelt down and took a closer look at the ground around where the bike had been buried. It was possible that yellow team ditched its cycle and covered it up, but he was sure that wasn’t the case. Yellow team had consisted of only two men. By his count, there were at least five distinct sets of boot prints surrounding the pile.

No, yellow team hadn’t done this. Someone else had. Someone who didn’t want the motorcycle to be seen again.

__________

T
HEY FOLLOWED THE
tire tracks to a rocky overhang that had been walled off with tarps and snow. What they discovered inside left Ash with zero doubt that Bluebird was located on Yanok Island.

It was the yellow team’s camp, and it had been deserted in a hurry.

They put Gagnon into a sleeping bag on one of the cots first, then did a thorough search. Food and weapons and sleeping bags and spare clothes were all still there.

“No radio,” Red said.

Ash scanned the room again. Red was right.

“If I was trying to get out of here fast,” Chloe said, “that’s the only thing I would grab.”

“The question is, why leave in a hurry?” Ash said.

No response was necessary. They were all thinking the same thing.

“See if there’s any kind of journal or notes anywhere,” Ash said.

He stepped back outside and took another look around. Unlike near the buried motorcycle, there weren’t a lot of boot prints. More likely than not, Bluebird hadn’t even looked for the camp. And why would they? They had everything they wanted—the boat, radio, and codes they’d obviously learned from the yellow team that had allowed them to send the false messages to the Ranch.

Back inside, he found Red and Chloe looking at a map of the island spread across one of the open sleeping bags. Though identical to the one they’d brought with them, it had seen considerably more use.

Ash knelt down beside them.

“This mark right here,” Red said, pointing at a blue circle on the map. “That’s where we are. Which puts us about three miles from them.” He moved his finger to the north end of the island, and tapped on the words
BRULE INSTITUTE OUTPOST
.

A gust of wind whipped past the opening, blowing in some snow. Chloe walked quickly over and pulled down on the tarp rigged to fully enclose the shelter. Using two rocks on the ground, she anchored the bottom so the covering wouldn’t flap around.

“Not exactly a pleasure walk,” Ash said to Red.

“Hence the motorcycle.”

“We don’t have that option.” Ash stood up. He could see the weariness in the others’ faces, and knew his looked the same. His initial plan had been to get as close to the outpost as possible after Gagnon dropped them off. The crash and subsequent hike threw a wrench in that. “A few hours’ sleep. No more. Then Chloe, you and I pay our Project Eden friends a visit.”

31

I.D. MINUS 12 HOURS 14 MINUTES

LOCAL TIME 10:46 PM

T
HE MOOD AT
the Ranch was somber. Billy might have been a disagreeable sort at times, but his heart had always been in the right place, and he’d been part of the team trying to stop the Project since early on. In his role as doctor, he had treated nearly everyone there, so in one way or another, he had touched all of their lives.

That, of course, was not to diminish the loss of Karen Pruitt. She had also been a valuable team member, and there were those at the Ranch who had been very close to her.

But for Matt, losing Billy was like losing a brother. It was simply…inconceivable.

If not for the fact the day they had been both fighting against was looming, he would have been sitting alone in his room, numb to everything around him. He couldn’t afford that now. None of them could.

At the moment, there were teams all around the world trying to find ways of stopping, or, at the very least, limiting the damage from the plague the Project was about to unleash. Which was why Matt was in the communications room, monitoring events. But even knowing that automated shipping containers were one way the virus would be spread, his people were having very little luck finding them. Jordan had been able to track down a handful, but it was just a drop in the ocean. The containment, if that was even possible, would only be a moral victory at most.

“What’s the latest on Ash’s team?” Matt asked.

The man assigned to monitor the Arctic mission was Oscar Guerrero. “The last report was that Pax’s group had already been taken to Amund Ringnes Island, and that Ash and his group were about to leave for Yanok. We should be getting another report at any time.”

“Let me know as soon as that happens.”

“Yes, sir.”

Matt doubted Ash would even find Bluebird, let alone get inside and do something to stop Implementation Day, but he hoped, oh God, he hoped. It was, after all, the only way the coming hell could be avoided.

“Matt?”

He turned and found Jordan standing a few feet away, a closed laptop in his hand by his hip. If anyone had taken Billy’s death harder than Matt, it was Jordan. He clearly felt responsible since he was the one who had found the container. Matt had told him he had nothing to do with Billy’s and Karen’s deaths, that finding the container had been vitally important. It didn’t seem to help.

But now, Jordan looked different, almost excited.

“What’s up?”

Jordan took a hesitant step forward. “I think I might have figured it out.”

“Figured what out?”

“How they’re distributing everything.”

“We already know it’s the containers, at least in part.”

“No, no. I mean
who
.”

“Who?”

“The front.”

Matt stared at him.

“Here. Let me show you.”

Jordan set his laptop on Matt’s desk. As soon as it was open, a web browser page appeared for Hidde-Kel, the company whose factory the container that killed Billy had come from.

“We already know Hidde-Kel’s the front,” Matt said.

“Not the front.
A
front. I know how we can identify the others.”

He brought up a new page. It was a map of an area surrounded by four rivers.

“Recognize it?” Jordan asked.

“No.”

“There are hundreds of variations, so that’s understandable. This is Eden.”

“Eden?”

“Yes. These four rivers are the Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates.”

“Okay. So?”

“The Tigris and Euphrates had different names when the story was written. The Euphrates was called the Phrath, and the Tigris the Hiddekel. Hidde. Kel.”

Matt felt the skin on his face tighten. Project Eden had taken its name from the Christian version of the origins of man, when people were few and resources plentiful. Had they used the reference beyond that?

“I found several other companies around the world utilizing the name Hiddekel or Hidde-Kel, and one even using Hid-de-kel. Not all of them are involved, but some definitely are. And that’s not all. I broadened the search and found suspect companies using Gihon, Phrath, and Pishon as part of their name.”

He brought up another web page. The header read
PISHON CHEM
.

“This company has supposedly developed a spray that it says will eradicate mosquitoes carrying malaria. It’s hired thousands of locals and is going to do a trial in dozens of major cities throughout Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa.” Jordan looked over at Matt. “It’s scheduled for Friday.”

It was as if every centimeter of Matt’s skin had gone numb. Not only had Jordan potentially discovered how to ID those distributing the virus, he had also turned up a date.

Friday was the day after tomorrow.

Then Matt realized something else—it was also the day before Christmas Eve. In the predominantly Christian countries, the streets would be full of shoppers, easy targets for the virus.

“We’ve only got two days?” Matt said. It wasn’t nearly enough.

“No,” Jordan said. “Not two days. Friday starts in some of these countries in less than six hours.”

32

I.D. MINUS 10 HOURS 6 MINUTES

LOCAL TIME 12:24 PM

S
ANJAY DIDN’T RETURN
to the dormitory after he found Ayush. Instead, he fled to the slum where he grew up and hid in the small, single room that belonged to Ayush. He stayed there all the next day, then through another night, scared out of his mind.

Sage Flu. Ayush. The spray. Kusum.

Sleep came in fits and starts—an hour here, another there—only occurring when his exhaustion momentarily won out over his fear. But it never lasted long.

The last thing he’d eaten was the
pani puri
he had in front of the building on Gamdevi Road. That was over thirty-sixty hours earlier, and though he still wasn’t hungry, he knew he should eat something. He began rummaging through Ayush’s things, and had just discovered a warm bottle of cola when a rumble of voices and shouts began moving in his direction.

He moved to the doorway and sneaked a look outside. The narrow passageway that ran in front of Ayush’s home was lined on either side by the huts that had been built with whatever material could be found—metal, wood, rubber, plastic, paper. It snaked off both ways so that Sanjay could see only thirty or forty feet in either direction.

The noise seemed to be coming from the right. He leaned farther out until he was able to see a sliver of the alley another seventy feet down. Everything looked normal—a few people passing by, and the back of a woman who seemed to be talking to someone. Then suddenly the woman jerked around and pressed against one of the homes as three men walked by. The two in front were big and angry-looking. But it was the one behind them, the European man, who made Sanjay race out of Ayush’s room and down the passageway in the other direction. It was the mean, older man from the Pishon Chem compound. The senior manager.

They had to be looking for him. They must have figured out he was the one who’d discovered his cousin. Of course, he’d made it easy, not showing up at work. That was all the admission of guilt they needed.

Staying under the shelter of the slum, Sanjay cut back and forth through several alleys, trying to get as far away from the men as possible. When he finally reached an opening to the street, he paused, checking the road to make sure no one was out there waiting for him.

It appeared to be clear, so he sprinted across, and into another warren of huts on the other side.

When he emerged again twenty minutes later, he knew his only choice was to get out of the city. Subconsciously he touched the top of the pouch that he’d stuffed in his pocket. Inside were the syringes the woman had filled from the same vial of vaccine he’d made her take a shot from. He hadn’t been sure at first whether to believe her story, that the contents of the barrels he and the others were going to spray around the city was not intended to kill mosquitoes but the residents themselves. It seemed too crazy to even consider. But there, on the other side of the plastic wall, had been his cousin and the men who had been working with him, all suffering from a severe flu. And now, the people from Pishon had come after
him
.