The Ark: A Novel (14 page)

That was all it took. Pinter lunged for the mask, but Dean, who had always been the smarter one, knew the most effective strategy was to disable the other man. He sidestepped Pinter and chopped him on the back as he went by. Pinter fell to the floor and realizing his mistake, popped back up and faced Dean in a fighting stance. Both men were skilled in martial arts, but Pinter had the size advantage. They stood there, assessing each other.

Garrett glanced at his watch.

"Fifty seconds," he said to spur them on.

The words had the intended affect. Dean leapt into the air and spun around, his leg kicking out. Before it could connect with his head, Pinter ducked and threw his arm up to block it. The impact sent them both sprawling. Pinter was the first to recover and ran over to Dean, who was still on his back. Pinter lashed out with his leg, trying to hit Dean in the side. Dean grabbed Pinter's ankle and twisted it around, using Pinter's momentum to propel his body over Dean. While Pinter was in mid-air, Dean slashed at his groin.

Pinter crumpled to the ground, moaning in pain, but he wasn't finished. Dean coiled to strike a killing blow to Pinter's neck. Pinter countered with a punch to Dean's face, sending him reeling. Both of them sat on the floor, regrouping for the last battle.

"Thirty seconds," Garrett said. With two men like that, it would never occur to them to work together and share the mask. It was an unfortunate example of why his New World was even necessary. The basest human selfishness was on display right in front of them. A fitting demonstration given the circumstances. Garrett just hoped that one wouldn't kill the other. Then he would have to send Cutter in to take the mask away from the victor.

Dean and Pinter circled around each other. Pinter had a noticeable limp that he was attempting to hide, while blood flowed freely from Dean's nose.

Cutter, who had now returned to the observation room and stood at Garrett's side, whispered to him, "What would happen if the winner had a cut?"

Garrett hadn't considered the possibility that the winner would have exposed wounds on his body, but it would make an interesting test to see how virulent the Arkon-B was, to see if it could enter the bloodstream in that way.

"I suppose we might be about to find out."

Dean and Pinter went at each other with a furious set of blows that was hard for Garrett to follow. Then Pinter positioned himself so that he could get Dean in a headlock. He squeezed Dean's throat, and this looked like it might be the decisive move.

"Fifteen seconds," Garrett said and nodded at the operator at the control board. The operator's finger hovered over the button that would release the Arkon-B.

Dean's face was now turning a shade of purple. It was almost over. Then with a last bit of effort, Dean angled his body slightly and kicked backwards, striking Pinter at the knee. Pinter howled in pain and released Dean, who immediately struck at the other leg. Pinter screamed and went down holding both legs. From what Garrett could see, it looked like a dislocated right knee and a broken left leg. Pinter wouldn't be walking again.

Dean stood there, staring at Pinter to see if he could finish him off safely, forgetting about the time limit. Garrett started counting down. "Ten, nine, eight..."

Dean looked up at the speaker, then scrambled for the mask.

"Seven, six, five..."

He grabbed it off the floor and slipped it over his head.

"Four, three, two..."

As Garrett said "one," Dean cinched the straps tight and turned his attention back to Pinter who was still crumpled on the floor. He stared at Dean with a look of pure hatred.

Garrett again nodded at the operator, who pressed the button. A whoosh of air could be heard in the test chamber. Dean and Pinter looked down at the floor. A continuous blast of air buffeted their clothing toward the ceiling.

Garrett could sense the others in the room holding their collective breath. He knew they wouldn't have to wait long. The Arkon-B used in Hayden's airplane was exactly the same composition as the agent flooding over Dean and Pinter now, but the concentration had been one-hundredth what it was in the test chamber because the delivery device on the plane had to be small and portable. That's why it had taken so long to take effect and why they had selected an overseas flight. By the time anyone on Hayden's plane knew what was happening, they should have been too far from shore to return in time.

Pinter had pulled himself over to a wall and leaned against it. His face was a rock, but Garrett could see the carefully hidden fear in his eyes. Dean retreated to the opposite side and kept a wary eye on him in case he made a try for the mask. Even if he did, it was too late for Pinter. He'd already been exposed. It was now simply a matter of time.

As Garrett expected, the first effects were evident in only two minutes. Pinter began to cough, just one or two at first, then almost constantly. His lungs had been the first organs to be attacked, and the Arkon-B would now be coursing through his bloodstream.

The cough turned into a hoarse hacking, and a trickle of blood started to drip from his mouth. Pinter felt the wetness and wiped at it. He saw the blood and was suddenly gripped with terror.

"Please! I'm sorry!" he screamed between coughs. "Please! Help me!" His eyes fell on Dean, who watched him with wide eyes.

The trickle of blood from Pinter's mouth became a torrent, and gasps of horror and muffled cries erupted from the observers. Pinter's skin began to slough off, in flakes at first, then entire pieces. Pinter was dissolving in front of them.

He could only moan in agony now. Then his hand flew to his throat, and he gasped for air. No doubt his lungs were filled with fluid. He was drowning in his own blood.

Death took only another 30 seconds. With a final gurgle, Pinter succumbed, his eyes staring at Dean. His head fell backward against the wall, removing a large patch of skin, and the back of his head left a smear of blood as his body pitched over onto the floor.

Some of the observers cried out or even wept in disgust and fear, but Garrett raised his hand, silencing them. They weren't done.

As they watched, Pinter's body continued to deteriorate, as if they were watching a time-lapse video of a rotting corpse decaying. The sores all over his body expanded to holes, and gore oozed out over the mesh floor, the liquid dripping through the gaps in the grating. The blood on the wall quickly disappeared, as if it were water evaporating on a hot skittle.

Garrett took a look around the room, and everyone's eyes were riveted in terror on Pinter's disintegrating body. A few of them looked like they were about to faint. One woman vomited into a wastebasket. The demonstration was having its intended effect. Anyone in this room that was even thinking about following in Sam Watson's traitorous footsteps wouldn't consider it now.

Every cell of Pinter's flesh was attacked, and within another three minutes, nothing was left of him except his bones, picked clean as if he'd been consumed by a ravenous school of piranhas. His skull, which had been a human face a mere five minutes before, grinned at the observation window in a perverse leer.

The operator pressed the button again, and the whoosh of air stopped.

"And that concludes today's demonstration," Garrett said. "I'm sure everyone found it instructive. If you don't want to be part of the masses that will be exposed to Arkon in five days, you will do nothing to jeopardize our carefully-laid plans. Am I understood?"

A few of them said "yes" immediately, while the rest nodded eagerly.

Satisfied, Garrett said, "You may go." He nodded at the woman who had vomited. "Take the wastebasket with you."

They filed out quietly, still dumbfounded by what they had witnessed. Inside the test chamber, Dean yelled through his mask and pounded on the door.

Garrett let the last of the observers exit and closed the door behind them. The only ones left were the operator, Cutter, Petrova, and Garrett.

"What about Dean?" Cutter asked. "Should I let him out?"

The operator, who knew how Arkon-B worked, raised an eyebrow at Cutter. Cutter was aware of many of the biological agent's properties, but he didn't realize how virulent it was.

Garrett shook his head solemnly. "I'm afraid we can't. Although Gavin is wearing the mask, he has been exposed as well. Arkon-B can be absorbed through the skin, albeit much more slowly than through the lungs. We can't allow him to leave the chamber now that he's been infected. He'd be the death of us all. There's only one thing we can do for him now."

Garrett glanced at the operator, who muttered something under his breath, maybe a prayer. He flipped up a safety panel and positioned his finger against a red switch marked "Sterilize."

"This will spare Gavin from what Barry went through," Garrett said. He nodded at the operator. "Go ahead." The operator flicked the switch.

Flames shot up through the grating, leaping all the way to the ceiling. Dean screamed as the fire bathed him, and he danced around in agony for only a few seconds before he fell to the floor, his body quickly vaporizing. Garrett saw that the temperature in the chamber had already shot up to 1000 degrees and was rising. Soon nothing organic would be left in the chamber, with even the bones being sucked up into the ventilation shafts as ash to be filtered out and disposed of safely.

"Another two minutes," Garrett said to the operator. They needed to be sure that all the Arkon-B was destroyed. How ironic, Garrett thought, that just a few feet away was the deadliest substance in existence, and yet in five days, where he was standing would be the safest place on earth.

The flight from Las Vegas to Seattle hadn't taken much longer than the road trip back from the crash site to the airport, so it was only two in the afternoon when Locke and Dilara landed. He led her from the Gulfstream to Gordian's facility at Seattle's Boeing Field. With three jets, Gordian rated a designated ramp at the airport just south of the city's downtown.

The early October day was unseasonably warm and uncharacteristically bright. The clouds that seemed ever present in the winter hadn't yet arrived, revealing a great view of the Olympics and Mt. Rainier sparkling in the distance.

Locke stopped at a sleek red sports car and popped the hood to reveal a tiny trunk. He tossed his bag inside, then unhooked a cord from the wall and retracted it into the car.

"What's that for?" Dilara asked.

"The battery charger," Locke said, climbing into the drivers' seat. Dilara got in the passenger side. "This is a Tesla. Completely electric. Fully charges in six hours."

He pushed a button to start the car. A polite ping announced that the Tesla was operating, but otherwise the car was silent. Locke dropped it into gear and eased it out of the lot. When he was on Highway 99, he floored it. The Tesla leapt forward like it was launched from a catapult. Within seconds, they were cruising at 80.

"So you
do
get to try out your toys," Dilara said.

"Not a bad perk, is it? We're testing a second one down at the TEC. They let me borrow this one for everyday driving. I get to keep it for a while as long as I give them feedback on how to improve it for the next version."

One of Locke's side hobbies was testing and reviewing cars on a freelance basis. His personal vehicles--the ones he actually paid for himself--were a Dodge Viper, a Porsche Cayenne SUV, and a Ducati motorcycle, but he loved driving the newest thing on wheels. The Tesla was his for a few more weeks. Then he'd move on to something else. Maybe the new Ferrari coming out next month.

The Seattle skyline approached quickly. Dilara watched a ferry coming into Elliot Bay as Locke sped along the Alaskan Way Viaduct. He said little, letting her take in the sights as he tried to make sense of what he had learned in the Mojave.

They had stayed two hours at the site, speaking with the head of the Army's biohazard crew, but Locke hadn't been able to get much more out of them about the possible cause of the disintegrated bodies. The Army scientist speculated that it was some kind of biological agent, but he couldn't find any of it in the bones or wreckage. Given that none of the LA ground crew had suffered a similar fate, the scientist assumed that the flesh-eating bug had been dispersed mid-flight. That meant they might be able to find the source of it amongst the wreckage.

Locke had told Judy to send everything they found back to the TEC, and Grant would start going through every piece of luggage and onboard equipment as quickly as possible. Locke didn't know what they should be looking for, but he wanted to see anything that looked unusual. When he was done in Seattle, he'd head back down to Phoenix to monitor their progress.

Locke took the Seneca exit and wound through downtown Seattle until he reached Gordian's building across from Westlake Center, a shopping mall and tourist spot for the city's many visitors. The famed monorail, which shuttled between Westlake and the Space Needle, cruised to a stop overhead just as Locke turned into the Gordian parking garage.

He stuck his ID into the card reader to open the garage's steel door. A sensor in the floor made sure only one car went through for each ID. Locke parked in his reserved space and led Dilara to the elevator. He placed his hand on a biometric scanner. It beeped its acceptance of his ID, and the elevator doors whisked open.

Dilara raised her eyebrows at the security but said nothing.

"We do a lot of government work," Locke said and left it at that. Gordian's highly secret military contracts dictated the extra levels of security. The tourists who swarmed outside had no idea they were walking past one of the most secure facilities in the entire state of Washington.

A few seconds later, the elevator opened at the 20th floor to reveal a lobby reminiscent of an upscale law office. Muted paint complemented dark woods and plush chairs in the waiting area. A receptionist sat at a fine mahogany desk that stood in front of a glass door. Dilara signed a form to get an ID badge and clipped it to her collar.

Locke walked her to his office. The floor-to-ceiling windows showed off the view of Puget Sound to great effect. The room was sparsely decorated because he spent so little time there. A pile of his non-critical mail and a phone were the only things on his desk. No need for a desktop computer because he kept his laptop with him. A bookshelf held a collection of engineering texts and car magazines, and the wall was covered with pictures of race cars and photos of Locke standing next to men in racing uniforms.