Last Gasp (53 page)

“You have no self, no ego, no identity, and therefore death has no sting. It is the gateway to everlasting life.”

A gateway they were about to enter.

These twelve knew what was expected of them. They had been specially chosen to undertake the final sacred ritual, a ritual unknown to the thousands above in the chambers and galleries and cells who went on with their lives in blissful ignorance.

Bhumi Bhap gave the instruction, with his blessing, and each of the twelve took hold of one of the cast-iron wheels that controlled the stopcocks. The greased wheels moved easily. Fumes began to seep into the chamber, forced upward by the immense pressure of oil below. The candles guttered in the heavy, dense, choking vapor. Two went out. A third died. Then the vapor ignited and a fire storm billowed upward through the shafts of the mountain like a gigantic blowtorch.

Fed by the lake, the fire raced along passageways devouring everything in its path. It burst through doors into the tiny cells where people were sleeping, talking, meditating, and consumed every living thing in a single scorching blast.

Within a few minutes the temperature inside the mountain had reached several hundred degrees. Iron girders supporting the tunnels and chambers turned white and writhed in the heat. The hewn walls ran with molten threads of silver and copper. And still the fire raged on, ever more fiercely, feeding greedily on the reservoir of oil.

The temperature continued to rise. Rocks became incandescent. Cracks appeared and split into jagged fissures. The fire surged onward and upward and broke through the mountain’s crust, blasting the rocky mantle high into the storm-darkened sky and spouting angry flames and smoke from a hundred pores.

Two miles away, in the leading truck laboring up the crooked trail, it seemed to Major Coogan that a volcano was erupting. The ground shook and rocks showered down from out of the sky. He stared blankeyed through the windshield at the mountain with its halo of orange fire and curling black smoke outlined against the massing storm clouds.

It was an image of the end of the world, an image he would never forget till his dying day.

In the opinion of Col. Gavril Burdovsky, the woman was perfect.

He had chosen her himself and therefore had cause to feel smug and self-congratulatory. He was also aroused by her—one of the reasons he thought her ideally suited for the assignment. Unfortunately this left him with a gnawing ache that could only be assuaged by Natassya Pavlovitch’s smooth firm body. The fact that he was an obese, balding man of fifty-seven and she a beautiful young woman of twenty-four seemed to him a trivial incompatibility.

“I trust you have everything you require, comrade,” said the colonel, sitting on the corner of the desk and swinging a short bulbous leg in an attempt to make this final briefing casual, friendly—and dare he hope?—intimate. “The black silk underwear is satisfactory?” There was a slight tremor in his voice at the mention of this item.

“Yes. Thank you, sir.” Natassya Pavlovitch was brisk, impersonal. She had been too well trained to display emotion in front of a superior.

Colonel Burdovsky nodded and stroked his pencil-thin moustache. The moustache was real and yet looked artificial, as if a strip of black paper had been stuck to his broad waxlike face with its hanging jowls.

“Good. Excellent,” murmured Burdovsky, for a moment lost in wistful contemplation of the pale curve of her neck at the point where it disappeared into the enticing shadow beneath the collar of her dark-gray woolen suit. That the rest of her should be so soft and warm and pliable ...

He cleared his throat and said gruffly, “You have all you need. Excellent.”

“I do have a question, if the colonel will permit.”

“Yes, of course.” Burdovsky slid down awkwardly from the desk, straightened the tail flap of his uniform with an abrupt tug, and strolled behind her chair, hands clasped over his plump buttocks.

Natassya looked straight ahead, speaking to the desk. “Do we have no intelligence at all, Colonel, regarding Zone Four? The reports give no indication whatsoever of the research being carried out there.”

“There are a number of speculations but nothing definite. The Americans thought they were being very clever in allowing our scientific people to inspect their facilities at Starbuck Island. Of course it was to satisfy us that the research was solely in connection with the Final Solution program.”

He came to stand close behind her, breathing in her perfume.

“We are not that stupid, Comrade Pavlovitch. It was noted that parts of the island were off-limits to our inspection teams, and therefore it was necessary to instigate this series of operations.” Burdovsky unclasped his hands and placed them lightly on her shoulders, experiencing a sensation that was at once stimulating and extremely uncomfortable in his tight uniform. “From the reports we know that the operatives who preceded you met with considerable difficulty in obtaining intelligence on Zone Four, which has led, as you know, to this new type of approach...” His stubby fingers touched her neck. Her skin felt cool and yet his fingertips burned. “And to you, comrade, being personally selected by me to undertake the assignment.”

“I understand that, Colonel.” Her voice was totally without expression. She might have been carved out of soap. His fingers roamed lower, feeling for the hollows formed by her collarbones. Natassya said crisply, “The reports are quite explicit in having discovered nothing at all about the activities in Zone Four.”

Explicit they were, thought Burdovsky, with one crucial omission: that of the three operatives sent to Starbuck as members of the scientific inspection teams, two had failed to return. Their reports had been culled from notes and tapes left with their colleagues. As for the third operative, who had returned, he had no information to add to the sketchy findings thus far.

“We are satisfied that the Americans have cooperated fully in their research into various techniques of mass extermination.” Burdovsky’s fingers strayed down inside the woolen collar. “But Starbuck Island is being used for some other purpose, which Advanced Strategic Projects do not wish to reveal.” He could feel the gentle slopes of her breasts, rising and falling with each steady breath. “And it is vital that we learn what that is. Absolutely vital.” His voice sank to a throaty whisper. “I know you will not fail me, comrade.”

In a calm, unhurried movement Natassya Pavlovitch removed his chubby paws and rose to her feet, towering statuesquely above him like an Amazon confronting a Pygmy. “You may have every confidence that I will do my duty, Colonel Burdovsky. I thank you for this opportunity to be of service.”

With trembling and regret, he watched her leave, the fleshy palms of his hands damp. What compounded his frustration was that this slender, narrow-hipped, desirable young woman was to employ her charms in the service of the state and that some cretin of an American scientist or security officer would be the fortunate recipient. While he, Burdovsky, lusted secretly and impotently from afar.

And what if she didn’t return? Supposing she went the way of the others? But she must, had to,
had
to, Burdovsky fumed, giddy with visions of her body sheathed in black silk underwear.

The lip of the sun crept over the straight edge of the horizon: a sharply defined and perfectly symmetrical arc of vivid orange that widened and deepened until the entire glowing orb stood precariously balanced on the rim of the world. At this hour it was possible to stare it full in the face. But not for long; for in minutes the first faint rays lanced through the cool air, bathing the onlooker in a benign radiance of gathering warmth.

For Chase, unable to sleep, it was balm to the spirit.

He was reminded of that other sunrise, nearly a quarter of a century ago on a bitterly cold, inhospitable continent, when as a young man he had been filled with unbounded optimism and the promise of all the years stretching ahead into the golden future. Then it had seemed as if nothing would be denied him, that anything and everything was possible.

But the possibilities had dwindled one by one, the options had been annulled—until he was left with only the bleak reality of the inescapable present.

Below the desert scrub, secure beneath thick slabs of concrete and steel, another day was beginning. Not for the first time, nor probably the last, Chase wondered at the purpose of this ceaseless activity. Every day for the past four years, ever since the scientists and technical staff had assembled here in the refurbished silo complex, work had gone ahead to solve a problem so vast that it numbed the imagination. Was it all just a grand illusion? Or more aptly, delusion? What folly to think that their puny efforts could achieve anything—what arrogance! Cheryl had been right; maybe for the wrong reasons, but she had been right all the same.

Now he could feel the heat of the sun on his face, feel it gaining in strength by the minute.

High above, yet invisible, the layers of carbon dioxide formed a barrier, blocking off the escaping heat. Temperature medians had gone haywire. While some parts of the globe had increased by ten degrees and more, others had drastically cooled. Parts of Africa that had never seen a snowflake now had blizzards. Siberia was turning into jungle. The equatorial belt was a steamy, airless no-man’s-land, mimicking the conditions of five million years ago.

Mexico City had been the first of the world’s great cities to become uninhabitable. In the early years of the twenty-first century it had a population of thirty-two million, making it the largest city on earth. Chase remembered seeing documentary film of conditions there that reminded him of the Nazi death camps in World War II. The film showed rotting bodies in the streets, the city dumps piled hundreds deep. Public utilities and services had collapsed completely and untreated sewage ran in the gutters and formed huge stinking lakes in the plazas and marketplaces. Plague had swept through the city and there were packs of rats roaming through the shops and department stores.

From the faces of those who managed to survive it was apparent that they were suffering from the early stages of anoxia. Pinched, their lips blue-black, they slumped in total exhaustion, mouths sucking in the depleted air. Oxygen content was nearly forty percent lower than normal, equivalent to an altitude of fifteen thousand feet.

Chase recalled the profound shock felt by the scientific community. It had always been assumed that such a decline would take decades, yet Mexico City had slid into ecological nightmare in just a few years. It became a poisonous and decaying wasteland, a memorial as well as a dreadful warning of things to come.

At the entrance to the Tomb he was met by one of the guard corps, a tall loose-limbed boy with a drawling southern accent whose breast patch identified him as “Buchan.” Although Chase had been loath to employ armed guards, the threat of attack left little choice.

“Morning, sir.” Buchan touched the steel rim of his camouflaged helmet. “How’s it look topside?”

His concrete cubbyhole contained a chair, table, a few tattered magazines, and on the crude walls an even cruder patchwork of naked women in bizarre contortions. From the ceiling extended the polished tube of a periscope, through which Buchan surveyed the surrounding terrain. Aboveground had been left completely undisturbed, so that the site, even from fifty yards away, was virtually undetectable. This was their greatest defense.

“All quiet on the western front,” Chase reported. He nodded toward the periscope. “Don’t you get eye strain peering through that all day?”

“Naw, ain’t too bad.” Buchan gave him a gap-toothed grin. “Standing orders say you gotta do a sweep every fifteen minutes. Reckon nothing could get near inside of that without being spotted.”

“Except a helicopter.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Buchan conceded with a shrug. “But we’d pick ’em up on radar, wouldn’t we? I think we’re pretty safe from a sneak attack,” he said confidently.

Chase went down in one of the freight elevators to the mess hall. Seventy feet underground he passed the large board listing the various departments on the different levels.