Exodus 2022 (36 page)

Beck stepped off the lift and thumped onto the top of the hyperbaric chamber. Gathered the cables hanging limp from the corners and clipped them to the beefy steel hook dangling from the boom.

He dropped into the control seat once more, threw more switches, nudged a joystick with two fingers and hauled in the excess cable. Drew it tight.

The three-ton chamber jerked, then lifted silently off the deck, tilting slightly as the cables tightened further.

Almost at once the chamber began rocking and swaying with the motion of the yacht, with the wind. Like a pendulum weight.

He could hear the prisoners inside the chamber scrabbling furiously, frantically.

Beck focused on the boom controls, aware now of a little voice in his mind sounding an alarm.

But the balance of power had shifted, and, for the moment, at least, the rabid animal was in control.

Beck embraced his new persona with a demented grin and lifted the chamber off the deck, the sick anticipation growing in his belly, sweat slick on his forehead.

He could see his father and sister in the chamber now. The bodyguard, too. They were frantic, scurrying about like trapped rats, trying to break out.

He teased the boom higher, and sent it telescoping out, over the water, timing the chamber’s pendulous swings to avoid the bulwark.

Marauder
dove through a swell, and the swings grew more violent. Light still pouring from the portholes, the chamber bobbed like a lantern at the end of a stick.

Beck waited, concentrating. He had to time the release just so. Release it on the wrong swing and the three-ton tank would glance against the ship, tearing a hole in the side, most likely.

He waited as
Marauder
smashed through two more large swells. The corpse handcuffed to the chamber’s catwalk rolled, so that the body hung by the wrist, dangling from the chamber—a second pendulum weight below the first.

Beck punched the red release button at exactly the right moment.

The hyperbaric chamber hovered for an instant—like an alien spaceship come to take a closer look at
Marauder
—then dropped like a stone.

Beck screamed in a confused frenzy of terror and excitement and remorse as the chamber hit black ocean with a monumental splash.

Leaning from the crane, he watched the chamber sink, watched it plummet like a house with the lights on, vanishing beneath the waves forever.

Beck, mind numb, worked the boom. Drew it carefully back in.

The weather deck looked vast without the chamber, and salt spray settled over the place where it had been, erasing its footprint on the carbon-fiber deck.

Beck climbed off the crane and, following a plan he barely remembered, moved puppet-like toward the aft helipad.

The pad’s LED landing lights were dim now, but they’d brighten as soon as the pilot and passengers exited the ready room.

He only had a minute. He felt along the gleaming steel underbelly of Winston Beck’s sleek Bell 222B, and found the spot he was looking for. He took the heavy square from his pocket and attached it to the metal.

Click
, and it was done. That simple.

He retreated to the solarium at the opposite end of the weather deck and found a chair in the shadows. Dragged it around so that it was facing the helipad and sat down.

Two minutes later Winston Beck’s pilot was moving across the deck, followed by Phelps and Edelstein. The scientists dragged suitcases behind them. Bags hung from their shoulders.

The pad lights were bright now, bright as a Las Vegas stage. The yacht designer had spent a lot of time and money on lighting.

Beck watched the pilot and his passengers but could hear only the wind. The roar of
Marauder
driving hard for the strait.

Now two support crew from inside the ship were unclipping tie-downs, freeing rotors, conferring with the pilot, then stepping clear.

Beck heard the whine of the Bell’s engine and saw the rotors start to turn, slowly at first.

The engine screamed and soon the blades were a blur.

Beck stared as the helicopter lifted off. It ascended a couple hundred feet, then nodded toward the Washington coast, and zoomed forward.

Beck watched.

Two minutes passed.

Three.

He could barely see the chopper now. Just a red blip against the glow of tiny Port Angeles.

And then—a fireball. A brief, intense explosion, orange against the horizon, in the middle of the shipping lanes. Then, nothing. Just dark sky and the stars over the Olympic Mountains to the south.

Beck rose from his chair and headed inside.

FIFTEEN MINUTES AFTER
Beck departed the weather deck, the Bell 412 carrying Joe and Ella settled onto the same helipad.

Even before the rotors had stopped spinning, Collins and his men were out, stepping low, reaching back into the passenger compartment and grabbing Joe and Ella.

Joe and Ella stayed as close to one another as they could.

Collins hustled them along, and the group split at the doors leading inside. Drucker and Knox stayed with Ella, took her to an elevator. Collins shoved Joe toward a different door.

“Where are you taking him?” Ella screamed.

Drucker and Knox stood impassive at the elevator. They looked tired. Like they wanted to finish their work—whatever that meant—and then retire to their cabins.

Ella wept as Joe disappeared into the ship, toward a spiral staircase.

Joe twisted away from Collins. Found Ella. Locked eyes with her.

“I love you, Ella!” he screamed. “I love you!”

Ella, tears flooding down her face, yelled back. “I love you, Joe!”

Collins pushed Joe downstairs.

Joe’s hands were shaking, though they were bound behind his back, and his vision was cloudy, as if he were peering through gauze.

They hustled off the stairs and through a maze of passageways, past crew quarters and a small galley.

They came at last to the end of a long hall. An area bright and sterile and cold.

Joe saw a familiar face, and his spine chilled. Turned to ice.

It was Heintzel. Coming toward him. Unsmiling, not making eye contact. She wore a surgical mask and scrubs. Latex gloves. Glasses with magnifiers. Nurses and technicians were arrayed behind her, and a strong antiseptic smell stung Joe’s nostrils.

Heintzel raised her hand, and Joe saw that she was holding a syringe.

ADMIRAL HOUGHTON WOKE
to a sound. A sudden, painful tone that rang from the four walls of his cabin. His eyes snapped open and he waited for the next blast. The next shriek of the alarm.

Nothing.

He breathed. Listened.

He’d believed, upon waking, that he was at sea. That the ship had come under attack.

Now that he was fully conscious, he realized the “sound” was in his head. Part of a dream. Another dream.

The cabin was quiet. Dark.

Houghton sat up and put his feet on the floor. Sat in the darkness in his boxer shorts and T-shirt and ran his hands through his hair, wondering at the sweat pouring from his scalp—
Am I running a fever?
—and the tingling in his arm.

He stood, steadying himself—one hand on his dresser—and flipped on a light. He dressed then—going through the motions without knowing why. Donning his uniform slowly, methodically, but feeling detached. Removed somehow from his own actions.

Houghton rarely drank—not like in his younger years—but it felt now as if he’d slammed a couple of gin-and-tonics or taken a Percocet. Or both.

Why am I getting dressed at eleven thirty at night?
he asked. But the question seemed immaterial. Like a question whispered by an audience member at a play.

He buttoned his shirt. Put on his belt. Opened his round hearing aid box and installed his hearing aid in his right ear, adjusting the volume as he did so. He donned his jacket. Checked himself in the mirror.

The audience member asked, “Where are we going?”

Admiral Houghton stared into the mirror and ignored the question. He took a hand towel from the rack next to the basin and dabbed the moisture from his forehead. He observed, with the same odd detachment, that his breathing was noisy. That his heart was thumping. As if he’d just climbed a bunch of stairs.

He squared his hat on his head and checked the mirror one final time.

Admiral Houghton stepped from the elevator onto the flag bridge and strolled into the center of the quiet, dimly lit room. The quartermaster of the watch and two lookouts turned at the same moment and reacted with surprise, hopping off their chairs and coming to attention.

“Attention on deck!” barked the quartermaster. Then, “Admiral Houghton. Good evening, sir.”

Houghton stepped to the center window and stood staring at the flight deck and the Seattle waterfront stretching north and west beyond the ship. He could see the glow of Magnolia across Elliott Bay. The fireworks had long since ended.

“Get Commander Ferguson on the line for me. USNS
Impeccable
.”

“Sir. Yes, sir.”

The crew exchanged glances, but the quartermaster was already on the phone, speaking softly, relaying the order. After a couple of minutes, he handed the phone to Admiral Houghton.

“Sir. Commander Ferguson.”

Houghton took the phone and the Quartermaster stepped out of the way.

The crew on the bridge heard Admiral Houghton’s side of the call. It was a short conversation.

“Commander. Good evening. Fine, thank you. Commander, I want you to shut down your multistatic onboard source for twenty-four hours. That’s correct. One hundred percent shut down on the Kanaga array until twenty three hundred hours, five July. Thank you, commander. That is all.”

Houghton exited the flag bridge without another word, leaving a buzz of puzzled conversation in his wake.

He returned to his cabin. Went straight there, barely acknowledging the sailors he encountered as he walked.

The sense that he was observing someone else, standing off to the side, removed and remote from his physical body, was more potent than ever now.

Alone, inside his room, Houghton undressed, as carefully and methodically as he had gotten dressed. He hung up his uniform. Smoothed the pants over the hanger. Took off his dog tags and his hearing aid. Squared everything away. He brushed his teeth, poured himself a glass of water, and turned out the light.

He lay down on his bed and closed his eyes. Listened to the ship.

And then he was dreaming. Or maybe not. He couldn’t tell.

The line.

The line is on fire.

He was back in his childhood church once more, watching in anticipation, watching the line cut through the sanctuary like a laser knife.

His heart thumped in his chest, and his mouth went dry—not out of fear or alarm, but out of anticipation.

If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up.

The line was growing brighter and the walls were crumbling. Falling away.

I’m almost there
, he thought, feeling a flood of relief.

The horrible, tormenting sound was gone—no longer blocking the music.

He smiled in his dream, letting the music envelop him utterly and watching as the walls at the back of the church gave way, at last.

Houghton moaned softly as a massive clot settled in his brain, blocking an artery and causing a stroke. His right hand slid from his chest to the side of the bed. The hand he had used to greet Joe Stanton. His arm went cold, and ten minutes later he was dead.

MIA AND HER FAMILY
swam steadily through the darkness, 622 million cubic kilometers of Pacific Ocean before them.

They swam, and listened, communicating little.

The time for discussion, for contemplation and planning, had long since passed. The time for action was upon them.

Almost.

They listened, and swam, and listened some more. Listened to the restless sea and its cacophony. Sounds they knew in their bones. Sounds they had heard every day of their lives: water moving beneath them, around them, water moving in streams and columns and great rushing rivers, all within the larger whole. Mammals and fish, and ships—all manner of craft—muddying and confusing the natural soundscape. Magma boiling up from the Earth’s core, bubbling from cracks and vents and into the frigid darkness. The plates of the planet’s crust shifting, settling, moving endlessly. The bones of the Earth itself grinding under pressures unimaginable.

The whales of Mia’s family knew all of these sounds as they knew their own heartbeats, and registered them now as a city dweller registers the noise of traffic, which is to say, not at all.

The whales were focused on two other sounds: one that filled them with hope—with almost indescribable joy. And one that engendered dread. Despair.

The hopeful sound was the melody of the tunnels—the passageways to another world—turning on. Lighting up.

It was happening everywhere now, the sound—the music—of the tunnels. Spreading like a rumor in a crowded hall.

The sound that filled them with despair was the sonar. The
ping…ping…ping.
Sharp and painful and relentless.

The whales of Mia’s family understood her role in the Exodus. She was the leader. The instigator and architect and champion. She had not made the tunnels, but she had tapped into the power that animated them and brought them to life. She was the catalyst at the heart of the reaction.

The whales of Mia’s pod knew this. Mia was like others they had met—and yet unlike anyone or anything they had ever encountered. Mia was a singularity. A force of nature. And they swam with her now, poised between hope and despair, escape and imprisonment, life and death, with unspoken love and respect.

If the sonar stayed on, the Exodus would fail. The tunnels would wither and desiccate, never to be renewed.

If the sonar went quiet, Mia would make her call. Send a message that would reverberate around the planet. A message cousins north and south, east and west were waiting to receive and pass on.