The Ark

ONE

Dilara Kenner wound her way through the international concourse of LAX, a well-worn canvas backpack her only luggage. It was a Thursday afternoon, and travelers crowded the vast terminal. Her plane from Peru had arrived at 1:30, but it had taken her 45 minutes to get through immigration and customs. The wait had seemed ten times that long. She was impatient to meet with Sam Watson, who had begged her to come back to the US two days early.

Sam was an old friend of her father’s and had become a surrogate uncle to her. Dilara had been surprised to get his call. She had stayed in touch with him in the years since her father had gone missing, but in the last six months she had spoken to him only once. When he had reached her on her cell phone in Peru, she had been in the Andes supervising the excavation of an Incan ruin. Sam had sounded unnerved, even scared, but he wouldn’t elaborate about what the trouble was no matter how much Dilara prodded him. He insisted that he had to meet with her in person as soon as possible. His urgent pleas finally convinced her to turn the dig over to a subordinate and return before the job had been completed.

Sam also made one more request that Dilara found puzzling. She had to promise him that she wouldn’t tell anyone why she was leaving Peru.

Sam was so eager to meet with her that he asked to rendezvous with her in the airport. Their planned meeting spot was the terminal’s second-level food court. She got onto the escalator behind a obese vacationer wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a bad sunburn. He was trailing a roller carry-on and stood blocking her path. His eyes settled on her, then looked her up and down slowly.

Dilara was still in the shorts and tank top she wore at the dig, and she became intensely aware of his attention. She had raven hair down to her shoulders, an olive tan that she didn’t have to work for, and an athletic, long-legged frame that caused less discreet men to ogle her inappropriately like this creep was now.

She threw the sunburned guy a look that said you’ve got to be kidding me, then said, “Excuse me,” and muscled her way past him. When she reached the top of the escalator, she scanned the massive food court until she spotted Sam sitting at a small table at the balcony railing.

The last time she had seen him, he was 71. Now a year later, he looked more like 82 than 72. Frosty white tufts of hair still clung to his head, but the lines on his face seemed to be etched much more deeply, and he had a pallor that made him look like he hadn’t slept in days.

When Sam saw Dilara, he stood and waved to her, a smile temporarily making his face look ten years younger. She returned his smile and made her way to him. Sam clasped her tightly to him.

“You don’t know how glad I am to see you,” Sam said. He held her at arm’s length. “You’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. Except perhaps for your mother.”

Dilara fingered the locket around her neck, the one with the photo of her mother that her father had always carried. For a moment, her grin faltered and her eyes drifted away, lost in the memory of her parents. They quickly cleared and returned to Sam.

“You should see me caked with dirt and knee deep in mud,” Dilara said in her flat mid-western cadence. “It might change your mind.”

“A dusty jewel is still a jewel. How is the world of archaeology?”

They sat. Sam drank from a coffee cup. He had thoughtfully provided a cup for Dilara as well, and she took a sip before speaking.

“Busy as usual,” she said. “I’m off to Mexico next. Some interesting disease vectors predating the European colonization.”

“That sounds fascinating. Aztec?”

Dilara didn’t answer. Her specialty was bio-archaeology, the study of the biological remains of ancient civilizations. Sam was a biochemist, so he had a passing interest in her field, but that wasn’t why he was asking. He was stalling.

She leaned forward, took his hand, and gave it a comforting squeeze. “Come on, Sam. What’s with the small talk? You didn’t ask me to cut my trip short to talk about archaeology, did you?”

Sam glanced nervously at the people around him, his eyes flicking from one to the next as if checking to see whether they were paying undue attention to him.

She followed his gaze. A Japanese family smiled and laughed as they munched on hamburgers. A lone businesswoman to her right typed on a PDA between bites of a salad. Even though it was early October, the summer vacation season long over, a group of teenagers who were dressed in identical t-shirts that said, “TEENS 4 JESUS,” sat at a table behind her, texting on their cell phones.

“Actually,” Sam said, “archaeology is precisely what I want to talk to you about.”

“You do? When you called, I’d never heard you so upset.”

“It’s because I have something very important to tell you.”

Then his deteriorated condition made sense. Cancer, the same disease that took her mother a decade ago. A breath caught in her throat. “Oh my God! You’re not dying, are you?”

“No, no, dear. I shouldn’t have worried you. Except for a little bursitis, I’ve never been fitter.” Dilara felt herself sigh with relief.

“No,” Sam continued, “I called you here because you’re the only one I can trust. I need your counsel.”

The businesswoman next to Sam rose to leave, and her purse slipped off her lap to the floor near his feet. Then as she went to pick it up, she knocked her salad plate to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said with a light Slavic inflection. “I’m so clumsy.” While she grabbed the plate and plastic fork, Sam bent to pick up the purse for her. He held it out to her, switching it to his right hand and flicking the fingers of his left.

“Watch your sleeve,” Sam said. “I think you got some dressing on your purse.”

“Oh, thank you so much.” She took the purse and gingerly cradled the bottom of it using a handkerchief. Sam wiped his hand on a napkin, and the woman motioned for him to dump it on her salad plate so she could get rid of it for him. She smiled at Sam and Dilara and headed for the napkins on the condiment stand.

“You’re as gallant as ever, Sam,” Dilara said. “Now why do you need my counsel?”

Sam looked around again before speaking. He flexed his fingers like he was working out a cramp. His eyes returned to Dilara. They were creased with worry. He hesitated before the words came out in a rush. “Three days ago, I made a startling discovery at work. It has to do with Hasad.”

Dilara’s heart jumped at the mention of her father, Hasad Arvadi, and she dug her fingers into her thighs to control the familiar surge of anxiety. He had been missing for three years, during which she had spent every spare moment in a fruitless attempt to find out what had happened to him. As far as she knew, he had never set foot in the pharmaceutical company where Sam worked. What the connection between them was, she couldn’t guess.

“Sam, what are you talking about? You found something at your work about what happened to my father? I don’t understand.”

“I spent an entire day trying to decide whether to tell you about this. Whether to get you involved, I mean. I wanted to go to the police, but I don’t have the proof yet. They might not believe me before it’s too late. But I knew you would, and I need your advice. It’s all starting next Friday.”

“Eight days from now?”

Sam nodded and massaged his forehead.

“Headache?” she asked. “Do you want some aspirin?”

“I’ll be okay. Dilara, what they’re planning will kill millions, maybe billions.”

“Kill billions?” she said, smiling. Sam was pulling her leg. “You’re joking.”

He shook his head solemnly. “I wish I were.” Dilara searched his face for some hint of a prank, but all she could see was concern. After a moment, her smile vanished. He was serious.

“Okay,” she said slowly. “You’re not joking. But I’m confused. Proof of what? Who’s ‘they’? And what does this have to do with my father?”

“He found it, Dilara,” Sam said in a lowered voice. “He actually found it.”

She knew immediately what ‘it’ was by the way Sam said it. Noah’s Ark. The quest her father had dedicated his whole life to. She shook her head in disbelief.

“You mean, the actual boat that…” Dilara paused. The remaining color had drained from Sam’s face. “Sam, are you sure you’re all right? You look a little pale.”

Sam clutched his chest, and his face twisted into a mask of agony. He doubled over in his seat and fell to the floor.

“My God! Sam!” Dilara threw her chair back and rushed over to him. She helped him lie flat and yelled at the teenagers with the cell phones. “Call 911!” After a paralyzed moment, one of them frantically started dialing.

“Dilara, go!” Watson croaked.

“Sam, don’t talk” she said, trying to keep her composure. “You’re having a heart attack.”

“Not heart attack… woman who dropped purse…salad dressing was contact poison…”

Poison? He was already delirious. “Sam…”

“No!” he yelled feebly. “You have to go…or they’ll kill you, too. They murdered your father.”

She stared at him in shock. Her deepest fear had always been that her father was dead, but she could never allow herself to give up hope. But now—Sam knew. He knew what had happened to her father! That’s why he had called her here.

She started to speak, but Sam gripped her arm.

“Listen! Tyler Locke. Gordian Engineering. Get…his help. He knows…Coleman.” He swallowed hard every few words. “Your father’s research…started everything. You must…find the Ark.” He started rambling. “Hayden…Project…Oasis…Genesis…Dawn…”

“Sam, please.” This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Not when she might finally get some answers.

“I’m sorry, Dilara.”

“Who are ‘they’, Sam?” She saw him fading and grasped his arms. “Who murdered my father?”

He mouthed words, but only air came out. He took one more breath, then went still.

She started CPR and continued the chest compressions until the paramedics arrived and pushed her back. Dilara stood to the side, crying silently. They worked to revive Sam, but it was a futile effort. They pronounced him dead at the scene. She made the obligatory statement to the airport police, including his baffling allegations, but for such an obvious heart attack, they shrugged it off as incoherent babbling. Dilara collected her backpack and walked in a daze toward the shuttle that would drop her off at her car in the long-term parking lot. Sam had been like an uncle to her, the only family she had left, and now he was gone.

As she sat in the shuttle bus, his words continued to ring in her ears. Whether they were the ravings of a demented elderly man or a warning from a close friend, she couldn’t be sure. But she could think of only one way to check whether Sam’s story had any truth to it.

She had to find Tyler Locke.

TWO

As his Hummer limo glided up to a bright blue jet parked at the ramp of the Bob Hope Burbank Airport’s executive terminal, Rex Hayden took another swig of Bloody Mary in an attempt to take the edge off his pounding hangover. He’d been up all night partying after the Friday night premiere of his new movie. Now he was paying the price for two girls and three bottles of Cristal. Even with his shades, the morning sun made him wince. Thank God Burbank allowed celebrities like him to bypass all that crap at the security checkpoints.

Sydney would be the first stop on a grand tour of Asia to promote his latest action blockbuster. His customized Boeing Business Jet didn’t have enough fuel to make it all the way to Australia in one shot, so they would have to go out of their way to refuel in Honolulu. But spending more time on the plane wasn’t a hardship. He had purchased the modified 737 because it was the most luxurious thing with wings. A private bedroom, full galley, gold fixtures, enough room for his buddies to come along, and two smoking hot flight attendants that he’d selected himself. The plane was a flying hotel. It cost $50 million, but so what? He deserved it. At the age of 30, he was already one of the biggest actors in the world. His last film had made more than a billion dollars worldwide.

Hayden tossed back the last of his drink and staggered out of the limo, his entourage following. Billy and J-man were on their cell phones, and Fitz handled the luggage. Three more cars pulled up behind carrying the gaggle of people that managed his career: agent, manager, PR person, personal trainer, nutritionist, and a dozen others. Traveling with such a large group made the plane a necessity, and the best part was that his contract required the studio to reimburse him for the operating costs during the trip.

“Which bags do you want with you on the plane, Rex?” Fitz asked. “Or should they all go in the cargo hold?”

Hayden didn’t need Fitz’s stupid questions right now. His hangover threatened to make him sick. He couldn’t do that out on the tarmac. Not in front of everyone. Man, he needed some caffeine.

“Dammit, Fitz, what do I have you around for?” he said. “Maybe my brother was right about you. I’m sick of making every little decision for you. Just get it all on board.”

Fitz nodded quickly, and Hayden saw the fear in his face. Good. Maybe next time he’d grow a pair and do his job.

“Okay, you heard him,” Fitz said to the driver. “And make sure they all get on. Miss one, and you couldn’t get a job driving a hearse.”

“Yes, sir,” the driver said meekly and started handing suitcases to the airport’s baggage handler.

Hayden climbed the stairs and ordered Mandy, one of the flight attendants, to pour him a coffee. Billy, J-man, and Fitz quietly sat around him while the rest of the passengers took seats in the front section. Hayden sank into one of the lambskin recliners and watched the limo pull away. He pushed the button linking him to the cockpit.

“George, let’s go.”

“Aloha, Mr. Hayden,” the pilot said. “Looking forward to the islands?”

“I’m not getting off the plane in Honolulu,” Hayden said, “so just cut that crap. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mandy closed the door. The jet’s engines spooled up, and the 737 began to taxi toward the runway.

The caffeine did the trick, and Hayden’s headache began to ease. Now that he was feeling better, he let his eyes settle on Mandy. He knew how he was going to use his private bedroom over the next 15 hours.

After exiting the executive terminal parking lot, Dan Cutter stopped the Hummer limo along the side of Sherman Way and threw the driver’s hat onto the passenger seat. He got out and popped the hood to make it look like he had engine problems. Then he sat in the driver’s seat and flipped on the radio scanner to listen to the control tower communicating with the taxiing 737.

Getting the bag onto the plane had been even easier than he thought it was going to be. Cutter knew that Crestwood Limos was Hayden’s preferred company, so he had simply called to cancel the reservation and showed up himself.

He knew those celebrity types. They didn’t pay any attention to the staff, never even asked for his name. They simply assumed he was their assigned driver and that all the bags would get on, so they didn’t see him put an extra one on with the others. When that little chump named Fitz had threatened him, Cutter had momentarily entertained the notion of snapping the pissant’s neck, just to show him how unimportant he really was. But then he remembered his mission. The faithful leader’s vision. Everything they had worked for the past three years. Getting the bag on the plane was far more important.

It had been Cutter’s suggestion to test the device on Hayden’s plane. A long distance flight over water was exactly what they needed. The wreckage would be three miles deep, so the plane wouldn’t be recovered even if it were found. Plus, it had the added bonus of Hayden. He had been a thorn in their sides for months, bringing undue attention to the cause. And the press would go into a feeding frenzy when the plane of one of the world’s biggest stars crashed, providing the perfect distraction.

Bringing the device onto a commercial airliner for the test would have been much riskier. As checked baggage, it would have been out of his control for most of the time, during which too many things could go wrong. The device could be discovered, or it could simply be left off the plane for some reason and put onto another plane. Not to mention that whoever traveled with the bag would have to go with it; for security reasons, airlines regularly removed bags when the passenger was not on board. With Hayden’s plane, Cutter had seen the bag go into the cargo hold himself, and now he could watch it take off, with him standing safely to the side.

The tower gave permission for Hayden’s 737 to taxi to the runway. Right on time, as Cutter knew it would be. If it hadn’t, Hayden would have gone berserk. Guys like that thought the world revolved around them.

Now was the time. He opened his cell phone and navigated the address book until he found the entry he had programmed in: New World. He pressed the green call button. After three rings, a click of the other phone answering. Then a series of three beeps told him the device in the belly of Hayden’s jet was activated. He hung up the phone and replaced it in his pocket.

The 737 came to a stop at the end of the runway. On the scanner, Cutter listened for the tower to give permission to take off.

“Flight N-348 Zulu, this is Burbank tower. Hold short of the active and await further clearance.”

“Acknowledged, tower. What’s the problem?”

“We’ve got a fuel spill on the runway. Leaking truck.”

“How long? My boss isn’t going to like a long wait.”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Should I head back to the ramp?”

“Not yet. I’ll keep you informed.”

“Gotcha.”

Cutter stared at the idling 737 in horrified disbelief, kicking himself for activating the device before permission to take off was given. A lengthy delay could be a disaster. The weather was perfect, so he hadn’t anticipated a delay. Now that the device was active, there was no way to turn it off. It was already working. If the plane returned to the ramp, he would have to get the device back somehow. That would be extremely problematic, not to mention dangerous. It was already too lethal to interact with. As the plane sat there, he was helpless. So he did the only thing he could. He prayed.

Cutter leaned on the wheel, his eyes shut tight, his hands clasped together, praying with all his heart that his mission would go on. God would not forsake him. His faith would overcome.

His entire life, Cutter knew he was destined to serve a greater purpose, and he was willing to lay down his life to attain it, as all his brethren were. It was only after he left the Army, where he had gained the skills necessary to carry out God’s plan, that he learned what that greater purpose was, and he had pledged himself to it without reservation. The acts he had committed to ensure a better future might be seen as barbaric to those who did not believe, but his soul was pure. The end goal was all that mattered.

Now that goal seemed as if it were in danger, but Cutter had no doubts. He was a fervent believer. His prayers would be answered.

After 40 minutes of waiting, the miracle arrived. The radio squawked to life.

“Flight N-348 Zulu, this is the tower. The fuel spill has been cleaned up. You are cleared for takeoff.”

“Thank you, tower. You just saved my job.”

“No problem, George. Enjoy Sydney.”

Within two minutes, the jet roared down the runway. As he watched the 737 soar over the mountains and turn westward, Cutter closed the hood and got back in the Hummer. For the first time that day, he smiled.

God was with him.

THREE

Wind whipped over the landing pad of the Scotia One oil platform, blowing the windsock steadily toward the east. Located 200 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, the Grand Banks were known for some of the world’s nastiest weather, but the 30 mile-per-hour winds and 15-foot seas hardly qualified as gale force. Just a typical day. Tyler Locke was curious to find out who was willing to brave the trip to meet with him.

He leaned against the railing, searching for the Sikorsky transport helicopter due to arrive any minute. No sign of it. Locke zipped up his bomber jacket against the cold and inhaled the smell of salt spray and crude oil that permeated the rig.

He’d had almost no downtime since he arrived on the platform six days ago, so the brief moment staring out at the vast Atlantic Ocean was a welcome rest. A few minutes were all he needed, and then he’d be recharged. He wasn’t the type who could lie in front of the TV all day watching movies. He loved immersing himself in a project, working nonstop until the problem was solved. His need to stay busy was a product of the work ethic his father had drilled into him. It was the one thing his wife, Karen, never could change about him. Next year, he always told her. Next year is the big vacation.

He was lost in thought, the old regret rearing its ugly head, and he absently reached to fiddle with his wedding ring. Only when he felt bare skin did he glance down and remember that it was no longer there. He quickly pulled his hands apart and looked back up to see one of the landing control crewmen, a short, wiry man named Al Dietz, walking toward him. At six feet two inches tall and a solid build somewhere north of 200 pounds last time he checked, Locke towered over the diminutive rig worker.

“Afternoon, Tyler,” Dietz said over the wind. “Come to see the chopper land?”

“Hi, Al,” Locke said. “I’m expecting someone. Do you know if Dilara Kenner is aboard?”

Dietz shook his head. “Sorry. All I know is that they have five passengers today. If you want, you can go wait inside, and I’ll bring her down to you when they get here.”

“That’s okay. My last job was on a mine collapse in West Virginia. After a week of breathing coal dust, it could be forty below and I wouldn’t mind being out here. Besides, she was kind enough to make the flight to see me, so I’m returning the favor by meeting her here.”

“You should see them in a minute. You know, if she didn’t make this flight, she’s in for a delay. We’re supposed to be socked in for at least 24 hours.” Dietz waved as he left to make preparations for the landing.

Locke had heard the weather forecast, so he knew what Dietz meant. In the next hour, the wind was expected to die down and fog would roll in, making a landing impossible until it cleared. He saw the cloud formation approaching from the west, and just beneath it about five miles away, a yacht slowly motored past. White, at least 80 feet long. A beauty. Probably a Lurssen or a Westport. Why it would be in the middle of the Grand Banks, Locke couldn’t guess, but it wasn’t in any hurry.

He also had no idea why an archaeologist was so impatient to meet with him that she was willing to fly out here. She’d repeatedly called Gordian’s headquarters over the last few days, and when Locke took a break from his work on the platform, he’d returned her call. All he could get out of her was that she was a professor at UCLA, and she had to see him right away.

When he told her that he was going straight from Scotia One to a job in Norway, she’d insisted on seeing him before he left. The only way that would happen, he told her jokingly, would be if she took the two-hour flight out to the rig. To his surprise, she jumped at the chance and agreed to the trip, even willing to pay the exorbitant fee for the helicopter ride. When he asked why, all she would say over the phone was that it was a matter of life and death. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was just the kind of mysterious distraction that could spice up an otherwise routine assignment, so he finally relented and arranged for the rig’s manager to clear her for a visit.

To be sure Dilara wasn’t yanking his chain, Locke checked her credentials out on UCLA’s web site and found the picture of a beautiful ebony-haired woman in her mid-thirties. She had high cheekbones, striking brown eyes, and an easy smile. Her photo gave Locke the impression of intelligence and competence. He made the mistake of showing it to Grant Westfield, his best friend and his current project’s electrical engineering expert. Grant had immediately made some less-than-gentlemanly suggestions as to why Locke should meet with her. Locke didn’t reply, but he had to admit her looks added to the intrigue.

Dietz, who was now holding two flashlights equipped with glowing red traffic wands, moved to the edge of the landing pad near Locke. He pointed into the sky above the other side of the pad.

“There it is,” Dietz said. “Right on time.”

Against the gray backdrop of clouds, Locke saw a dot quickly growing in the distance. A moment later, he could hear the low throb of helicopter blades occasionally burst through the wind. The dot grew until it was recognizable as a 19-passenger Sikorsky, a workhorse of the Newfoundland oil fields.

He was sure Dilara Kenner was on board. She had made it clear in their phone conversation that there was no way she was missing the flight, and he believed her. Something about the certainty and toughness in her voice. She’d sounded like a woman to be reckoned with.

Less than a mile away, the helicopter was slowing to make its descent to the landing pad when a small puff of smoke billowed from the right turbine engine on the helicopter’s roof.

Locke’s jaw dropped open, and he said, “What the hell?” Then he realized with horror what was about to happen. An electric shiver shot up his spine.

“Did you see that?” Dietz said, his voice ratcheting up an octave.

Before Locke could reply, an explosion tore through the engine, causing chunks of metal to rip backward through the tail rotor.

“Holy shit!” Dietz yelled.

Locke was already in motion. “They’re going down!” he shouted. “Come on!”

He leaped onto the landing pad and dashed toward the opposite side. Dietz chased after him. Like a thunderclap after a distant lightning strike, the sound of the blast boomed seconds after the actual explosion. As he pounded across the center of the pad’s huge H, Locke watched the shocking destruction of the Sikorsky.

Two blades of the tail rotor were torn off, and the remaining blades beat themselves to death against the tail section of the helicopter. The powerful centrifugal force of the still-intact main rotor began to spin the helicopter in a tight spiral.

Locke’s brain was screaming at him to do something, but there was no way for him to help them. He skidded to a halt at the edge of the platform, where he had a full view of the chopper. Dietz stopped next to him, panting with exertion.

The Sikorsky didn’t immediately dive into the ocean. Instead, the tail swung around in a circle as the helicopter plunged downward. Only an expert pilot could control such a mortally crippled helicopter.

There was a flicker of hope. If the Sikorsky didn’t hit too hard, the passengers might have a chance of getting out alive.

“Those guys are dead,” Dietz said.

“No, they’re going to make it,” Locke said, but he sounded less convinced than he wanted to.

By the time it had dropped several hundred feet, the helicopter’s forward motion had stopped. Just before it splashed into the water, it tilted, and the main rotor blades churned the water like a egg beater until they were ripped apart. The Sikorsky came to rest on the ocean surface starboard side up.

“They’re trapped inside!” Dietz cried.

“Come on,” Locke said to himself, picturing Dilara Kenner’s smiling face. His jaw were clenched so tightly, he thought his teeth might crack. “Come on! Get out of there!”

As if in reply, the door of the rapidly sinking helicopter slid open. Four people in bright yellow survival suits jumped out into the water. Only four.

Dietz pointed his flashlights at the floundering chopper and asked, “Where are the rest of them?”

Locke was shouting now. “Get out of there!”

The nose of the Sikorsky dipped below the water level, where it was bashed by the waves. Water flooded through the open door. The tail pointed straight up unto the air and then disappeared beneath the waves.

Locke kept staring at the place where the chopper went under. Each passing second without seeing the other passengers stretched for an eternity.

Then when it seemed like they couldn’t possibly make it to the surface alive, three more survival suits popped up and bobbed on the waves. Seven survivors. With five passengers and two pilots, that meant seven for seven. They all made it.

Locke clapped his hands together, and yelled, “Yes!” He slapped palms with Dietz, who was grinning from ear to ear.

“Those lucky sons of bitches!” Al yelled, staring at the people floating in the water.

Locke shook his head at their good fortune. He’d seen the results of a couple of helicopter crashes in Iraq. No survivors in either of them. But for the Sikorsky passengers, it wasn’t over yet.

“That water must be freezing,” he said. “They won’t last long, even with the survival suits.”

Dietz’s grin disappeared. “I’m sure Finn’s on the phone with the Coast Guard by now…”

Locke cut him off. He could feel the time pressure already. “They’re too far away. Remember the fog?”

“Then how do we get them out?” he asked. “You mean they lived through the crash, but they’re going to die in the water?”

“Not if I can help it.”

Locke knew he was the only one on board Scotia One with expertise in aviation disasters. He had to convince the rig manager, Roger Finn, that they couldn’t wait for the Coast Guard to send a rescue chopper. That might be tough since Locke had been hired by the platform’s parent company and Finn barely tolerated his presence on the rig.

“Keep an eye on them,” Locke said to Dietz and sprinted back across the landing pad in the direction of the stairs.

“Where are you going?” Dietz yelled after him.

“To the control room!” Locke yelled back.

Hurtling down the stairs, Locke had just the slightest moment when he thought maybe he shouldn’t get involved. It was his instinct to swoop in and insert himself into the situation, but no one was depending on him for help. It wasn’t his responsibility. The oil rig crew and the Coast Guard would handle it. They would save the passengers.

But Locke thought about what would happen if he was wrong. There were seven people struggling to stay alive out there, including Dilara Kenner, who he had personally invited to the rig. If those passengers died and he hadn’t done everything he could, their deaths would be on his head even if nobody else knew it. Then he would be plunged back into more months without sleep for days at a time, his mind needling him with all of the things he should have done. The thought of those sleepless nights was what kept his feet moving.

FOUR

Captain Mike “Hammer” Hamilton leveled his F-16 at 35,000 feet, and his wingman Lt. Fred “Fuzzy” Newman matched his course. After scrambling from March Air Force Base just east of LA, they had both lit their afterburners to get out over the ocean before the airplane they were intercepting crossed the coast. Now the private 737 designated N-348Z was clearly visible on Hammer’s radar. They were closing at a relative speed of 2000 miles per hour.

“Two minutes to intercept,” Fuzzy said.

“Copy that,” Hammer said. “LA Control, this is CALIF 32. Any more comm traffic from the target?”

“Negative, CALIF 32. Still nothing.” During the briefing on route, Hammer was told that all communication had been lost with an airplane that had turned back on a course to Honolulu. When it had turned around, it was to get medical attention for some passengers who had gotten sick. Then the pilot’s communications had become increasingly distressed. Apparently, everyone on board, including the flight crew, had come down with the mysterious illness.

The communications became increasingly erratic and strange, as if the pilot was succumbing to some kind of madness. His last communication had been so odd that LA control had played it back for Hammer. It was the eeriest radio call he had ever heard.

“Flight N-348 Zulu, this is LA Control. Your last message was garbled. Say again.”

“I can’t see!” the panicking pilot said. “I’m blind! I can’t see! Oh, Jesus!” Hammer had never heard a pilot lose it like that.

“Are you on autopilot?”

“Yes, on autopilot. Oh God! I can feel it!”

“Feel what? N-348 Zulu? Feel what? What is happening?”

“I’m melting! We’re all melting! Make it stop!” The pilot screamed in obvious pain, and then the communication abruptly terminated. That was an hour and 20 minutes ago.

“Have they made any move to descend?” Hammer asked. Since 9/11, the primary mission of his Air National Guard wing was homeland defense. Standard operating procedure was to intercept all aircraft that had lost communication. If there was any indication that the aircraft was in the control of terrorists and suspected of being used as a weapon, there would be no choice but to take it out. But from what he’d heard, Hammer didn’t think that’s what they were dealing with. No way a terrorist could make a pilot act like that.

“Negative,” the controller said. “They haven’t deviated course or altitude.”

“Copy that. Intercept in one minute. You heard him, Fuzz. When we get there, we’ll circle around and pull alongside, see what we can see.”

Hammer spotted the bright blue 737 in the distance, and it quickly filled his windscreen. He and Fuzzy shot by and banked around, reducing their throttles to half what they were. They nudged forward until they were flying even with the 737, Hammer on the port wingtip and Fuzzy on the starboard wing.

“LA control,” Hammer said, “We have intercepted the target. It is flying straight and level at flight level 350. Air speed 550 knots on course 075.” If it stayed on that course, it would fly directly over Los Angeles.

“Copy that, CALIF 32. Describe what you’re seeing.”

“The plane seems to be in good shape. No damage on my side.”

“None on mine, either,” said Fuzzy.

“I can’t see any movement inside. I’ll move a little a closer to get a better look.”

Hammer nudged the F-16 forward and starboard until his wingtip was in front of the 737’s. Anybody on board would surely see him. Those still conscious would be pressing their faces against the windows, but none did.

“Any signs of life, CALIF 32?”

“Negative.” The bright sunlight streaming through the starboard windows was visible through the port windows, allowing Hammer a clear view of the seatbacks. According to the briefing, the plane had the movie star Rex Hayden and his entourage on board. He expected to see heads lolling backward in some of the seats, but he couldn’t see a single person. Strange.

“Fuzzy, you see anything from your side?”

“Negative, Hammer. It’s as quiet as a…” The next intended word must have been “cemetery” because Fuzzy stopped himself abruptly. “Nobody on the starboard side as far as I can see.”

“LA Control,” Hammer said, “You got your info wrong. This is an empty flight. Must be a ferry.”

After a pause, the controller came back. “Uh, that’s a negative, CALIF 32. Manifest shows 21 passengers and six crew.”

“Then where the hell are they?”

“What about the pilots?”

Hammer pulled farther ahead until he had a view straight into the cockpit. The windows were clear. Large-jet pilots wear a four-point belt. Even if the pilots were unconscious, the seat belts would keep them upright.

Instead, Hammer saw a disturbing sight. The belts were connected, but slack. The cockpit was empty. If what they were telling him was correct, 27 people had simply vanished over the Pacific.

“LA Control,” he said, hardly believing his own words, “there is no one on board the target.”

“CALIF 32, can you repeat that?”

“I repeat, N-348 Zulu is completely deserted. We’ve intercepted a ghost plane.”

FIVE

Locke’s heart was pounding by the time he reached the Scotia One control room, a state-of-the-art facility that allowed control of every aspect of the rig’s operations, including all the pumps and valves on the platform. It also served as the rig’s communications station.

Three men sat at terminals, busily going through their emergency checklists while Finn barked into the phone. He was a squat man with hair the color and consistency of steel wool, and his voice boomed with the authority of a drill sergeant. Locke listened while he caught his breath.

“We’ve got seven in the water…Yes, an explosion…No, our standby ship left yesterday to help with a spill at Scotia Two. They have survival suits on…When?…Okay, we’ll sit tight until then.” He hung up the phone.

Locke made a beeline for Finn. He heard the urgency in his own voice. “We can’t sit tight.”

Finn nodded at the clock on the wall. “Coast Guard is going to get a rescue chopper into the air in five minutes. At top speed, they’ll be here in another ninety. So we wait until then.”

“The fog is rolling in,” Locke said, shaking his head. “By the time the Coast Guard chopper gets here, visibility will be zero. In those kinds of conditions, the helicopter could fly right over them and never see them.”

“If you have any suggestions,” Finn said with undisguised annoyance, “I’ll be glad to hear them, but I don’t know what else we can do.”

Locke rested his chin on his fist as he thought. He knew that few survivors were found more than an hour after a crash at sea.

“How about the standby ship?” he said.

Finn snorted. “Don’t you think I thought of that? It’ll take over six hours for it to get back from Scotia Two. It’s our only ship.”

Locke thought back to when he was leaning on the landing pad railing. He snapped his fingers. “When I was up on deck, I saw a yacht about five miles away. They should be able to mount a rescue.”

Finn shot an angry look at one of the men. “Why didn’t I know that?”

The man shrugged meekly, and Finn spat into a wastebasket in response. “Send out the distress call,” he said.

The SOS went out on the radio. Seconds passed. Locke listened intently for a voice to respond on the control room speakers, but all he heard was dead air. No reply from the yacht.

“Try again,” Finn said after few more ticks of the wall clock. Still nothing.

“They must have seen the helicopter go down,” Locke said, frustrated by the silence. The yacht was the survivors’ best chance. “Why aren’t they answering?”

Finn threw his hands up in disgust and sat. “Their radio might be out. Doesn’t matter. They aren’t answering. We’ll have to wait for the Coast Guard chopper and hope it can find them in the fog.”

Locke remembered wearing the same survival suit on his flight to the platform. They were Mark VII suits. Capable safety gear, but not the newest. Not good enough.

Locke shook his head again. “The beacons on those suits are only accurate to within a mile,” he said. “That’s not precise enough in pea soup fog. What’s the water temp today?”

“About 43 degrees Fahrenheit,” Finn said. “The suits are rated for up to six hours in the water at that temperature.”

“The suit ratings are for ideal conditions in calm weather,” Locke said, losing his patience. “Those people are probably injured, and they’re being battered by waves out there. If we wait, that chopper won’t find anything but dead bodies.”

Finn raised his eyebrows and gave Locke a look that said, And what do you want me to do about it?

Locke paused while his mind went into overdrive. He mentally checked off Scotia One’s facilities and capabilities one by one, his head nodding imperceptibly as he thought. He churned through the multiple possibilities but returned over and over to the only choice. He fixed his eyes on Finn.

“You have an idea,” Finn said.

Locke nodded. “You’re not going to like it.”

“Why?”

“We have to go get them ourselves.”

“How? We don’t have any boats.”

“Yes, we do. The freefall lifeboats.”

For a moment, Finn was speechless at the suggestion. Then he shook his head. “No. It’s too risky. They’re only a last resort if we have to abandon the rig. I can’t authorize them to be used that way.”

Scotia One was equipped with six 50-person lifeboats suspended 75 feet above the water. Locke had consulted on their installation on another oil rig and had even seen one launched.

The unique feature of the lifeboats was that they were aimed at a thirty-degree angle facing toward the water. There were no rope davits to lower the lifeboats slowly to the surface of the water. When the lifeboat was full and watertight, the operators pulled two levers, and the lifeboat slid down a ramp and into space, falling all the way to the water below. It was the only way to evacuate a burning oil platform quickly.

Locke bent down and gripped the arms of Finn’s chair, looming over the rig manager. Locke’s build was the product of good genes and a regular regimen of pushups, sit ups, and running, which he could do anywhere in the world he was working. He knew he couldn’t intimidate a hardened guy like Finn, no matter how small the man was compared to him, but he could use his size for emphasis.

With a low growl, Locke said, “Come on, Finn. You know it’s their only shot. If we wait, those people are going to die.”

Finn stood and got in Locke’s face as much as a man six inches shorter could. “I know what’s at stake, damn it!” Finn yelled. “But no one on board has ever launched one of those lifeboats before.”

This argument is taking way too long, Locke thought. It was time the crash survivors didn’t have. Finn wasn’t going to approve this without someone pushing him. Locke couldn’t stand here and wait for seven people to drown, so he lied.

“I’ve made a drop in one,” Locke said steadily. “That’s what made me think of it.”

Finn looked dubious. “You have? Where?”

“Gordian tested one two years ago. They needed volunteers to try it out.” It was true Gordian had done an open-water evaluation, which Locke had supervised, but he hadn’t actually ridden in the lifeboat. It had been deemed too dangerous at the time.

Finn raised an eyebrow. “Are you volunteering?”

Locke didn’t blink, but his heart was racing. “If that’s what it takes. I signed the waiver just like everyone else, and I saw where they went down.”

Finn looked around the control room at the three operators who stared back at him, then out the window toward the rapidly approaching fog. Finally, he turned back to Locke.

“Okay, you’ve convinced me,” Finn said, putting his hands up in defeat. “We’ll use a lifeboat. How many men do you need?”

Locke fought to keep his heart rate down as he thought about the mission and remembered the saying about the duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like hell underneath.

“Three men total,” Locke said. “One to pilot the boat and two to pull people out of the water. Grant should be one of them. He’d never forgive me if I left him behind.”

Grant Westfield was not only the best electrical engineer Locke had ever worked with, he was also an adrenaline junkie — rock climbing, sky diving, wreck diving, spelunking, anything that got the blood pumping. Locke enjoyed joining him sometimes, but Grant was fanatical. He’d jump at the chance to launch a freefall lifeboat, something few others have ever done. And if Locke was going to do this, he wanted the person on this rig he trusted most going along with him.

“All right, Grant goes,” Finn said. “I’ll send Jimmy Markson with you. We can’t pull the boat back up again, you know. Not in this weather. Our crane might snap.”

This is getting better by the minute, Locke thought. “We’ll use the personnel basket,” he said. The basket was a six-person rig used to lift people from ships to the platform.

“I’ll tell the other two to meet you down at the lifeboats. Get a survival suit along the way, just in case. I don’t want to lose anyone if one of you guys goes in the water.”

That sounded like a fine idea to Locke. “I know where the locker is.”

Finn snatched up a phone, but Locke didn’t stay to hear the call. After grabbing a survival suit from an emergency station, he followed the lifeboat evacuation signs, bounding down the stairs two at a time.

On the lowest deck, where the lifeboats were perched, Locke dropped his bomber jacket onto the grating and donned his suit while he waited for Grant and Markson. Each of the five boats was painted a bright orange so they could be spotted easily at sea. They were streamlined like bullets, and the only windows were rectangular portholes in a cupola at the rear where the helmsman sat. The portholes were made of super-strong polycarbonate — the same material used to make bulletproof windows — instead of glass so that they would withstand the impact of the fall. The sole opening was an aluminum hatch at the aft end.

The boats pointed down at the ocean and rested on rails that would guide them when released. At the end of the rails, it was a 75-foot plunge to the water where the boat would dive under and then surface 300 feet away, propelled to 10 knots by the momentum from the fall. A powerful diesel could drive the boat at up to 20 knots once it resurfaced.

With his suit secured, Locke flung open the hatch of the first lifeboat and peered inside. Instead of a flat aisle down the center of the boat, stairs led down past seats that faced backward. The only seat facing forward was for the helmsman, and that wouldn’t be occupied until after the drop was complete. Two levers on either side of the boat’s interior had to be pulled simultaneously to initiate the drop, so that a panicked crewman couldn’t single-handedly launch the boat before it was filled with evacuees. Safety devices ensured that the rear hatch was closed before it could drop. If the hatch were left open, when the lifeboat went under after the initial drop, water would flood in, and the boat might never resurface.

Locke heard a clatter behind him. Two men hurried down the stairs. Both were black, but that’s where the similarities ended. The one in the lead had an ebony complexion and was a couple of inches taller than Locke, but he was lanky and the survival suit hung from him like a coat hanger. That must have been Markson. He was in his forties, and his face was smudged with oil that did nothing to cover his apprehension.

The second man, who had a shaved head and mocha skin, struggled with the zipper on his survival suit. Grant Westfield was four inches shorter and 15 years younger than Markson, but he still had the muscular 240-pound frame of the wrestler he used to be. He must have picked a size too small. Locke smiled in spite of himself.

“Need some help there, tiger?” Locke said, not bothering to hide his amusement. “Maybe you need to lose a few.”

Grant zipped the suit to the top and scoffed. “These things weren’t built for someone with my impressive physique.”

“Just don’t flex too hard and rip it. Wouldn’t make a great fashion statement.”

Grant pursed his lips. “I’ll have you know that torn survival suits are the latest rage in Milan.”

Locke heard Markson chuckle uneasily. The joking probably sounded out of place to him, but Locke liked it. It had been the way he and Grant lightened the mood in hairy situations ever since their Army days.

“Glad you could join the party,” Locke said.

“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss one of your crazy stunts. They tell me you’re raring to launch one of these babies.” Grant seemed a lot more enthusiastic about this than Locke was.

“‘Raring’ may be too strong a word, but somebody’s got to do it. Might as well be us.”

“You got that right,” Grant said, eagerly eyeing the massive lifeboats. “I haven’t ridden a rollercoaster in months.”

Locke turned to the other man and held out his hand. “And you’re Markson?”

“That’s right, Dr. Locke.”

“Call me Tyler.”

They shook hands. “I’m a diver and welder. I’m fully qualified on the lifeboats.” He was a tough guy, but there was a slight quaver in his voice.

“Glad to have you along,” Locke said. He gestured at the open hatch. “Shall we?”

Grant got in first and belted himself into one of the seats. The four-point seat belts barely stretched over his huge frame. Locke followed him in, and then Markson closed and dogged the hatch behind him. Locke chose the seat next to the port release lever and cinched his own belts tight.

“We’re set for launch,” Markson said. “Are you guys ready?”

“Ready,” Locke said.

“Oh yeah!” Grant shouted, pumping himself up just like he did in his wrestling days. “Let’s see what this baby can do!”

Markson gripped the lever in his hand and Locke did the same. Then he yelled, “Three…two…one…launch!” Locke yanked his lever down. A red light glowed, indicating that the release mechanism had been activated, and he felt a clunk as the hydraulic clamps sprang open. There was no turning back now, so Locke forced himself into mission mode, just like when he was in the Army. Precision, decisiveness, and calm were his watchwords from now on.

The boat began its slide down the rails. The movement was anticlimactic. It was as if the boat was being lowered at a lakeside boat ramp off its trailer. Then the lifeboat bow dipped downward, and Locke’s stomach leapt into his mouth.

With some goading from Grant, Locke had gone bungee-jumping one time, so the feeling was familiar. His entire body floated out of the contoured seat. The weightlessness seemed to last forever. Then the impact came.

The crash of fiberglass splashing into the water boomed from all directions. It felt like the lifeboat hit concrete. Locke’s head slammed backward against the cushioned headrest. The sense of weightlessness was replaced by the crush of deceleration. The angle of his seat changed drastically as he saw water wash over the helmsman’s portholes.

Locke was thrown against his seatbelt and rocked side to side as the lifeboat made for the surface. Water streamed down the cupola window, and he could see the gray sky out of the window. The lifeboat leveled out. Grant whooped in delight from behind him, but Locke was just glad they had made it down in one piece.

“Woohoo!” Grant yelled, laughing. “Can we do that again?”

“Not with me, you’re not,” Locke said, unbuckling himself.

“Oh, you know you loved it.”

“Tell that to my stomach. It’s still back on the oil rig.”

Markson took the helmsman’s seat. Although the waves pummeled them, the lifeboat was as seaworthy as a cork. But anyone swimming in that would be fighting for their lives. Locke flashed again to the memory of Dilara’s photo and pictured her struggling to stay afloat. Markson fired up the diesel, and Locke pointed him in the direction of the crash. With the fog getting thicker by the minute, they had to hurry. Their chances of rescuing the survivors were quickly dropping toward zero.

SIX

Dilara Kenner struggled to keep the unconscious helicopter pilot’s head completely out of the water, but the waves crashing over them made that impossible. At least the survival suits were buoyant. The best she could hope to do was make sure that he didn’t float away. The copilot, a baby-faced blond named Logan, tried to help, but his arm was broken, so it was all he could do to keep from inhaling seawater.

She had lost sight of the other passengers, four men who looked like they were oil workers on their way out for a three-week stint on the rig. They had been swept away by the waves, so she wouldn’t be getting aid from them, either. Before she and Logan stopped talking to conserve their energy and to avoid swallowing more seawater, the copilot had told her that the oil platform had no helicopter. The nearest one was two hours away in St John’s.

It seemed hopeless, but Dilara had thought the same thing when she ran the Los Angeles marathon. The idea of running 26 miles without stopping was too daunting, an apparently impossible task. But if she focused on putting that next foot down, she eventually reached the end.

So she focused her mind not on waiting for the helicopter to arrive in two hours, but instead on keeping herself alive for the next minute. The most pressing problem distracting her was the water that was seeping into her survival suit, which had snagged on a jagged piece of metal as she escaped the sinking helicopter. She could feel her limbs starting to numb.

“I’m getting tired,” Logan said after ten minutes of being pummeled by the waves. “I think my suit’s losing flotation.”

Dilara was on the ragged edge herself, but she knew that giving up was death. “You’re going to make it, Logan. Don’t waste your breath talking. Just keep your head up.”

“Fog’s coming in. Won’t see us.”

“I don’t care. They’ll find us.”

“My legs are cramping.”

“Logan, I’m holding up your pilot and me,” she said, trying a different tactic. “Are you saying you can’t keep up with a girl?”

Logan saw what she was doing and smiled weakly.

“Good,” Dilara said, seeing that her little pep talk worked. “You’re not wimping out. I like that.”

“I’ll be here as long as you are.”

“That’s good to hear. I didn’t come all this way to give up now.”

The terrible irony of the crash was that she thought her entire ordeal was almost over when the crash had happened. Sam and his cryptic words had just been the start of it.

Hayden. Oasis. Genesis. They didn’t mean anything to her. And his claim that her father had actually succeeded in his life’s pursuit…it was mind-boggling.

The idea that Sam had been poisoned seemed ridiculous to her. The thing that nagged at Dilara was that Sam was an expert in pharmaceuticals, so if anyone would know he was being poisoned, it would be him. But why would someone want to poison him? She wanted to believe him, but the whole story was incredible.

What convinced her was an incident that happened on the way back to her apartment.

She had noticed a hulking man in a black trench coat on the shuttle bus. He had looked at her several times, and Sam’s words echoed in her mind.

You have to go…or they’ll kill you, too.

She thought she was just being paranoid but nevertheless asked the bus driver to stay by her car until she safely drove away. She drove out of the lot onto Sepulveda, a six-lane boulevard leading from LAX to her studio in Santa Monica. The traffic was relatively light going north, so she had the left lane all to herself.

A large black SUV pulled even with her tiny Toyota hatchback. The SUV suddenly swung over and bashed into her car, pushing it into the oncoming lanes.

The SUV had deliberately waited until the other direction was full of traffic. Dilara slammed on the brakes and tried to resist the SUV’s push, but it was twice as heavy as her own vehicle. A pickup truck was heading right at her, and instead of continuing to resist, she hit the accelerator and swung the Toyota as far to left as she could. Screeching tires and honking horns erupted around her. It was only through luck that she merely grazed the pickup and weaved her way through the rest of the traffic before skidding to a halt in a strip mall parking lot.

The SUV sped off, leaving a tangle of vehicles and rubber smoke behind it. Dilara guessed that the SUV had followed her from the airport. The windows had been tinted, so she couldn’t see if it was the man in the trench coat, but the occupants must have been cohorts of the businesswoman who had poisoned Sam.

The possibility that people were trying to kill her had rattled her. She quickly drove away, her hands trembling on the wheel. She kept it together long enough to make sure she wasn’t being followed before she found an empty parking lot where she could sit and let the shakes run their course.

You have to go…or they’ll kill you, too.

She could just blow it off and return to her normal life as if Sam were loony, but her gut was telling her that what Sam told her was not the rambling of an old person with dementia. People were trying to kill her. She had no proof, but she was sure of it. If she went on as usual, she’d be dead within a day.

Eventually, her tremors subsided enough for her to drive. She tried going to the police, but that had been a dead end. The detective she spoke with took her statement, an extended version of the one she’d given at the airport, but she could tell he thought her story was ludicrous. Her friend, Sam Watson, hadn’t really died of a heart attack, but had been poisoned? Billions of people’s lives were at risk, and someone had deliberately run her off the road to get her out of the way? Even to her, it sounded crazy. But all she could think of was the SUV deliberately ramming her and Sam’s words.

You have to go…or they’ll kill you, too.

Dilara couldn’t go back to her apartment. It was the logical place for her pursuers to wait for her. If she couldn’t go home, she was on the run, and she always would be until she could figure who was after her and why.

Dilara went to the closest branch of her bank and withdrew every penny in her account. Credit cards were too easy to track, and finding Tyler Locke would require travel.

Gordian Engineering hadn’t been hard to track down. She went to a library and looked them up on the Internet. The company’s named derived from the Gordian Knot, the impossibly complex tangle cut by Alexander the Great. Apparently, Gordian was the largest privately-owned engineering firm in the world, one that provided consulting services to everyone from Fortune 500 corporations to the US military. Each of its senior engineers were partners, reminding Dilara of a law firm. The company’s specialty was failure analysis and prevention, and the web site cited dozens of areas of expertise — vehicle and airline crashes, fires and explosions, structural failures — the list went on and on.

She used the site’s search engine to find Tyler Locke. His title was Chief of Special Operations, and his experience was impressive. Majored in mechanical engineering at MIT. PhD from Stanford. Former captain in the US Army commanding a combat engineering company. Expert in demolition, bomb disposal, mechanical systems, accident reconstruction, and prototype testing. Impressive credentials.

Dilara had never heard of the term “combat engineer.” A military web site told her that they were the soldiers who build bridges and fortifications, clear landmines, and defuse bombs, all while under enemy fire. She looked for a more comprehensive service history for Locke, but she couldn’t find out how long he had served or in what war, just that he’d been decorated with multiple medals, including the Silver Star and Purple Heart. With his background and experience, it sounded like he’d been in the business for 35 years. There was no photo, but she imagined a bald, paunchy man in his fifties wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and pocket protector.

It would be too easy for Locke to dismiss her story over the phone. She had to see him in person.

When she found out he was on an oil rig in Newfoundland, she thought it was a great place to meet — thousands of miles from LA, no easy access for the people after her. She’d had to reserve her seat on the helicopter ahead of time — a requirement to fly out to the rig; she couldn’t just walk up to the counter and buy a ticket to a private oil platform — but otherwise she was as careful as she could be not to leave a trail. She flew into the airport in Gander — a 150-mile bus trip from St. John’s — just in case they were waiting for her at the St. John’s airport. Then she got to the heliport only in time to don her survival suit and board the helicopter.

When she got into the air, she finally relaxed. Maybe she would have some answers soon. She had been looking at the enormous oil platform out the side window when the thud of an explosion came overhead. Wild screams erupted from all the passengers, including herself. The pilot had calmly compensated for the loss of control on the way down, keeping the helicopter upright all the way until they slammed into the sea.

It took a few seconds for Dilara to shake off the cobwebs after they hit the water. One of the other passengers threw open the sliding door. The pilot was slumped in his seat, unconscious. Dilara could see that the copilot’s arm was pointing at an awkward angle. Before she could ask the others for help, they all jumped out of the helicopter. She sloshed through the water pouring in through the open door. They would only be afloat for a few more seconds.

She yanked the seatbelt off the pilot. By that time, the water was over her waist, and the pilot floated out of his seat. The copilot, wailing in agony every time his arm hit something, staggered to the door. She wrestled the pilot to the exit just as the helicopter sank beneath the surface. With one last kick, she propelled both of them out, and the three of them rose to the surface.

Now, as she struggled to keep the pilot’s face up, she resolved to find the people responsible for this, the same people who had murdered her father. Something that Sam had told her was so important to them that they were willing to kill at the slightest provocation. She had to find out what it was, and this Tyler Locke guy was going to help her. They didn’t realize it yet, but they would find out they had messed with the wrong woman.

A new noise penetrated the growing gloom. An engine. She whipped her head around. The wind made the direction of the sound hard to pinpoint. Then she saw it. An odd orange vessel of some kind, shaped like a bullet. It came to a stop and bobbed on the water about 600 feet away. A hatch opened on the back, and she could see a figure step through and begin hauling people on board. The other helicopter passengers.

She lifted the arm she wasn’t using to support the pilot and waved it madly, kicking to keep herself upright.

“Over here!” she yelled. A sense of relief swept over her, and she let out a cry of joy. They were going to make it.

Logan tried to join her shouting, but he was too weak. His head dipped under the water every few seconds, and each time he came up sputtering. If they didn’t get here quickly, Logan would go under and wouldn’t come back up.

She yelled more loudly, but she couldn’t see any response. The boat bobbed in and out of her view, the hatch on the back no longer towards her. For a second, she feared they were leaving, but then the boat grew larger. It was approaching. They had seen her.

The boat pulled alongside and stopped when the aft end was even with them. She had been paying so much attention to the lifeboat that she’d forgotten about Logan. The hatch flew open, and a tall man with tousled brown hair looked around for a moment before diving into the water right about where she’d last seen Logan.

He stayed under for what seemed like hours but must have been only a few seconds. He surfaced, holding Logan under the chin. He handed Logan to a massive black man standing in the hatch who hauled Logan up like he was a doll.

Next, the swimming rescuer took the pilot from her and passed him up into the boat.

He turned to Dilara and, in defiance of the cold weather lashing at them, smiled. “Your turn, young lady.” He didn’t seem bothered at all by the cold water, simply focusing his blue eyes and perfect teeth at her. She found the effect oddly charming considering their circumstances, and it put her at ease.

Dilara reached up to the black man, who hoisted her up with one motion. Instead of taking the closest seat, she went back to see if Logan and the pilot were okay. Logan breathed raggedly between bouts of vomiting seawater, while a third rescuer bent over the unconscious pilot.

“Is he going to be all right?” she asked through chattering teeth.

The third rescuer nodded. “He’s got a pretty nasty bump, but he’s still alive.”

“Thanks to you,” said a voice behind her. She turned to see the man from the water dogging the hatch closed. She sank into a seat, exhausted and shivering uncontrollably. The man took a wool blanket from a storage bin and draped it over her. The warmth of the blanket felt wonderful.

“How are you doing?” he asked. In the better light of the boat, Dilara could see a thin white scar trailing down the crease of his neck. His eyes seemed to be boring into her own. He took her hands and rubbed them with his own.

“You don’t have an espresso machine on this boat, do you?” she replied. Her teeth snapping together made her sound like she had a stutter. “Because I could use a double-shot about now.”

The man showed that bright smile again, but Dilara could see he was just as cold as she was.

“Our barista is out right now, but we’ll get some nice hot java in you soon,” the man said. “You must be Dilara Kenner.”

She cocked her head in surprise. “That’s right. I didn’t expect a personal welcome. And the tall, dark, and rugged stranger who saved me is?”

“Well, I don’t know which one of us you’re referring to, but the he-man over there is Grant Westfield, the man you saved is being attended to by Jimmy Markson, and I’m Tyler Locke.”

For a moment, she was too shocked to speak. The very man she’d come to talk to was right in front of her. Instead of the 55-year-old geek she’d been expecting, he was a man in his mid-thirties, not much older than she was, and looked more like a brawny fireman than a nerdy engineer. She coughed and said, “Dr. Tyler Locke?”

“I don’t think there’s a need to get formal. I prefer Tyler, but Ty works, too.”

“What are you doing out here?”

“I might ask you the same thing. You’ve gone through a lot of trouble just to meet with me. What’s so important that you’d risk death to find me?”

The shock and exhaustion must have taken its toll. Before she could stop herself, the words tumbled out of her mouth.

“I want you to help me find Noah’s Ark.”

SEVEN

For an hour, Captain Hammer Hamilton had been trying to raise someone on the radio of the private jet, but it was useless. All he got was static. Not that he expected anyone to answer. The only radio was in the cockpit, which he’d been staring at since he rendezvoused with the 737. The plane simply cruised along on its course with Hammer and Fuzzy shadowing it, passing over LA without incident. A mile away, the KC-10 tanker that had already refueled them once stood by in case they needed a refill, which would depend on how far the 737 made it.

Hammer had never seen anything like it. The closest thing he could recall was the private jet of Payne Stewart, the golfer. It was a Lear 35 that had leaked its cabin air soon after takeoff from Florida. Everyone on board had died of hypoxia, but the jet kept going on autopilot. It didn’t stop until it ran out of fuel over South Dakota and crashed into a field.

Fighters had been sent to intercept Stewart’s jet, but the windows had frosted over, so they couldn’t see the plane’s interior. Frosted windows suggested a loss of pressure. The poor bastards on board probably never knew what happened, and the NTSB never got to hear the pilot’s last words. The cockpit voice recorder only tapes the last 30 minutes of flight, which in the case of Stewart’s plane was long after they had succumbed.

The difference today was that the pilots had vanished. The windows weren’t frosted, which made an oxygen leak unlikely. Hammer could clearly see that no one was in the cockpit. He didn’t care what kind of emergency happened on the plane, no way would both pilots leave their seats.

Of course, it could all be an elaborate ruse. Another possibility was that there were hijackers on board, and they had done something with the crew and passengers. But what? Herded everybody into the back of the plane where there were no windows? The hijackers would still need to fly the plane, and Hammer had seen no one in the cockpit.

He supposed the passengers could be dead. Shot, or maybe gassed. But still, most of the passengers would be visible slumped over in their seats, maybe even some blood on the windows. Hammer had seen the plane from both sides. All the window shades were wide open. Nothing. Not one person.

If hijackers had taken over, what was all that business from the pilot? They were melting? He was blind? Why would hijackers make him say something like that?

If there was anybody on the plane, even hijackers, Hammer was sure he would have heard from them or seen them by now. Something else was happening, but he couldn’t guess what it was. And with no one on board, the airliner would simply do what Stewart’s private jet did: fly in a straight line until it ran out of gas.

“LA Control,” he said, “what’s the latest on that fuel estimate for N-348 Zulu?

“CALIF 32, it got about 1500 miles out when the pilot decided to head back. Flights were reporting a pretty strong easterly headwind, so they probably burned more fuel going out than coming back. They also sat on the runway for forty minutes, so we’re guessing they should be on fumes in about ten minutes.”

Hammer checked his flight map. The airliner would be over northwestern Arizona when it went dry.

“CALIF 32, you’re sure no one is on board?”

“As sure as I can get without going over there myself. It’s a derelict.”

He knew why they were asking. His standing orders, revised after 9/11, were to use his judgment on whether the aircraft posed a risk to populated areas. If it did, he was authorized to shoot it down. He just thought he’d never be in that situation.

“CALIF 32, let us know if N-348 Zulu makes any course corrections or altitude changes.”

“Copy.”

All Hammer could do now was follow the airliner and keep trying the radio. Fifteen minutes passed and then he saw what he feared. Seventy miles southeast of Las Vegas, when they were just passing over Lake Mohave into Arizona, the exhaust from the port engine abruptly stopped.

“LA Control, I’ve got a flameout on the target’s port engine,” he radioed. “How about you, Fuzz?”

“Starboard engine is still running,” Fuzzy replied. “Starboard tank must have a few extra gallons in it.”

By increasing power to the starboard engine, the autopilot would be able to maintain airspeed and altitude, but it would gulp the remaining fuel quickly. Two minutes later, Fuzzy radioed.

“Hammer, the starboard engine just cut out.”

With the thrust gone, the 737 lost speed rapidly. It had become a 150,000-pound glider. A moment later, LA Control came on the line.

“CALIF 32, we’re showing a decrease in speed for N-348 Zulu. Can you confirm?”

“Affirmative. She’s flying silent. Fuel must be gone.”

“Be advised, the trajectory will take N-348 Zulu over uninhabited land.”

Hammer breathed a sigh of relief. He wouldn’t have to make the decision between shooting down the airliner and letting it hit a residential area. “Acknowledged.”

All he could do now was watch the plane’s final few minutes.

Modern airliners were built with huge wing spans that allowed them to glide for long distances, even without power. Using the hydraulic flight systems, a human pilot could keep the plane on an optimum glide path.

Hammer remembered a 747 that lost power after it flew through the ash from a volcanic eruption over Indonesia. All four engines were snuffed out by the dense ash cloud, and it took the pilot 15 minutes to get them restarted. When they finally did, the airliner was at an altitude of less than 2000 feet, but with a wing area the size of a football field, they were able to glide during their frantic efforts.

Without a human pilot to take over, the powerless 737 wouldn’t glide for long. The autopilot did what it was designed to do: maintain altitude and heading, sacrificing speed to stay at 35,000 feet. Hammer could see the elevators in the tail lower as the autopilot compensated for the loss of velocity. He had to throttle back to keep pace with the slowing airliner. When he neared 200 knots, he was close to the F-16’s stall speed.

“Fuzz, we can’t fly alongside any more. Stay on me.”

Hammer increased his speed and went into a wide circle around the 737, Fuzzy on his wing.

A minute later, with the autopilot no longer able to compensate for the loss of speed, the 737 began to porpoise up and down. The nose would pitch down to gain speed, then pitch back up in an attempt to regain altitude. The third time the nose pitched up, the airliner reached its stall speed of 160 knots.

“This is it,” Fuzzy said.

Hammer and Fuzzy banked away to give the airliner more room. Abruptly, the 737 flipped over as if it were starting a Split S maneuver and then began to spin wildly, its nose pointed straight at the ground.

Hammer tried to keep his voice professional, but he had never seen the death of an airplane before. He felt frustrated that all he could do was be a witness.

“LA Control,” he said, “the target just went into a dive. It’s in a severe descending spiral and will soon impact the ground. Fuzzy and I will follow the target in emergency descent.”

“Copy, CALIF 32. Keep us advised.”

“Keep your distance, Fuzz,” Hammer said. He was afraid the plane would break apart.

“Roger that.”

Hammer narrated for LA Control as they descended. When the 737 plunged below five thousand feet, the ground seemed close enough to touch. Hammer struggled to keep his voice calm, but the adrenaline was making it impossible.

“The target is still spinning…still intact,” he said. “Below three thousand feet now…Two thousand. Damn, they build strong planes. Approaching the ground…My God!”

Hammer pulled up on the stick, but he kept looking at the stricken airliner as it finally met its doom.

One second, it was a 737 just like any other he had flown in on countless trips, then it plowed into the desert floor and became a churning mass of metal and dust. The 737 was torn apart by the impact, flinging pieces high into the air, its two massive engines tumbling away from the rest of the wreckage. No fuel was left to ignite any fires or explosions. The debris simply ran out of momentum and came to a stop, obscured by the cloud of desert sand thrown into the air by the impact.

There were no structures of any kind in sight, but in the distance, Hammer could see a lone ribbon of concrete plied by a few vehicles. According to his map, it was US 93, northwest of Chloride, Arizona.

Hammer circled the crash site with Fuzzy on his wing.

“That was a hell of a thing to watch,” Fuzzy said.

Hammer didn’t reply. What could he say? He’d just watched a plane with 27 souls on board auger into the ground.

He relayed the exact coordinates to LA Control.

“Copy that,” LA Control replied. “We’ve already got emergency vehicles en route.”

Not that it would do any good. No one could have survived that crash.

“CALIF 32 returning to base,” Hammer said. He dreaded the debriefing. It would be a long and dismal one.

As he turned his F-16 back home, Hammer took one last look at the wreckage of flight N-348 Zulu, soon to be pored over by accident investigators. He didn’t envy them because this investigation would be like nothing they’d seen before. For once, the question wouldn’t be why the plane crashed. That was obvious. The question would be, what could make a planeload of people disappear?

EIGHT

By the time the lifeboat got back to Scotia One, night had fallen and fog shrouded the rig. Because seas in the north Atlantic are so dangerous, the rig’s lowest level was 70 feet above the water to minimize the chance that waves would damage the platform. In the reduced visibility and rough seas, it was difficult to keep the lifeboat directly under the personnel basket, and it took more than 30 minutes to lift everyone up safely.

Locke was looking forward to stripping out of the wet survival suit, but he couldn’t let anyone else be the last one out of the lifeboat. It was partly his military training and partly his innate sense of responsibility again. It just wouldn’t sit well with him to ride up to safety while others were still on the boat. Before he climbed into the basket, he closed the hatch so that the lifeboat could be salvaged at a later time. There was no way to tie it up to the rig, so it floated out into the open ocean.

The pilot had regained consciousness and was carried to the platform’s infirmary accompanied by the copilot. After an examination, the rig’s doctor found that the pilot had suffered only a concussion that could wait for treatment on the mainland, so the Coast Guard chopper, which had been cruising in the vicinity on standby, returned to St. John’s instead of attempting a risky landing in the fog. The doctor also treated the copilot’s broken arm, and the rest of the passengers suffered only mild hypothermia. Locke was amazed that no one was seriously injured. He’d only been in the water for a minute, but he was still shaking off the chill.

Dilara Kenner declined to see the doctor and seemed to regard everyone warily. Other than insisting on talking with Locke, she had been tight-lipped since mentioning Noah’s Ark. He offered to meet her for breakfast the next morning, but she said she had to talk to him right away. All she wanted was a shower and some fresh clothes.

Locke and Grant escorted her to a guest cabin where Locke supplied her with a jumpsuit and boots. While she refreshed herself, Locke retrieved his bomber jacket, then went back to his own room and got into a dry shirt and jeans. He met Grant outside Dilara’s cabin and told him what Dilara had said on the lifeboat.

“Noah’s Ark, huh?” Grant said. “Now that’s out of left field. Is there something you haven’t told me about your past? Doing a little archaeology on the side?”

“Not unless you count that time I was looking for something to eat in your refrigerator.”

“That moo shu pork was disgusting. Or was it General Tso’s chicken?”

“I think it was an entirely new life form. I was scarred for life. Some of that stuff was old enough for your fridge to be considered an historic landmark.”

“So if she isn’t here to pick your brain about archaeology, what’s her angle?”

“Hell if I know,” Locke said. “She doesn’t seem like a nut to me, and her credentials check out.”

“She’s nervous about something. Wouldn’t say squat to me.”

“You better let me talk to her alone. I’ll fill you in later.”

Grant and Locke had been friends since they served in the Army together, Locke as a captain, and Grant as his first sergeant before leaving to join the Rangers. A few years after Locke was honorably discharged and had started his engineering consulting firm, he convinced Grant to leave as well and become a partner in the firm, which had since been merged with another company. They been working together for two years now, and Locke trusted him with his life, but he sensed Dilara was on edge for some reason beyond the helicopter crash itself. She might not be as open with both of them listening to her.

“No problem,” Grant said. “I’ve still got work on that ballast problem. Should be able to solve it by tomorrow. That’ll give you two time to get acquainted.”

Dilara stepped out of the guest room, and despite the dark circles under her eyes, she wasn’t the bedraggled form Locke had rescued. Her hair was tied in a ponytail, and although her cheeks were still ruddy from the cold and wind, she had a golden tan that suggested long periods of time spent in the sun or a Mediterranean background, possibly both.

Locke could tell she was hiding her weariness just below the surface and wouldn’t be surprised to see her collapse right in front of them. Treading water while holding up a man twice her weight must have been exhausting.

He had picked out her clothes and had guessed her height well — about 5’10”—but the jumpsuit was baggy. Her survival suit had been so bulky, he hadn’t realized how slender she was. The belt was cinched to its limit.

“If you want,” Locke said, “I can find you something that fits a little better.” Grant, who was standing behind Dilara, raised his eyebrows and nodded as if he’d like to see her in something tighter. Locke tilted his head, and Grant got the hint.

“I’ve got some things to take care of,” Grant said. “Nice to meet you, Dilara.” He winked at Locke as he left.

“How about that coffee you promised?” she said.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to rest first? You look dead on your feet.”

Dilara straightened up and took a deep breath. “Believe me, I’ve been through worse plenty of times. Once, I hiked through the Sahara for two days with no water after my truck broke down. I can stay awake a little longer. But I wouldn’t say no to a cheeseburger to go with that coffee.”

“You got it.” He pointed her in the direction of the mess hall. Dilara strode ahead of him with the purpose of someone who didn’t like to waste time. Locke didn’t know what was going on with this woman, but he liked her toughness.

A few stragglers from dinner lingered in the mess hall, a cafeteria-style facility with a made-to-order grill and a carpeted eating area with long laminated tables. It reminded Locke of a corporate dining hall. He poured two steaming cups of coffee and ordered burgers for both of them. They found an empty table in the far corner of the room. Dilara settled into a chair across from Locke and eyed the people around her. Satisfied that no one was listening, she turned back to Locke.

“I appreciate your friend letting us talk alone.”

“I trust Grant with my life. He saved me when I got this.” Locke pointed at the scar on his neck. “But I asked him to give us some space. I got the feeling you’d want some privacy.”

Dilara squinted, apparently searching for a memory. “He looked familiar to me. Where have I seen him before?”

“When he was at the University of Washington, Grant was a three-time NCAA freestyle wrestling champion. After that, he went pro for three years.”

The light went on in her eyes. “He’s The Burn! The guy who left it all behind to join the Army after 9/11.”

“The same. Doesn’t bring it up much, and most people don’t recognize him without the dreadlocks.”

“That’s amazing! I don’t know anything about wrestling, but even I’ve heard of him. I even knew his catchphrase.” She switched to a gravelly voice. “‘You’re going to feel The Burn!’”

Locke laughed. “Great impression, but it works even better if you grimace.”

“What’s he doing here? Didn’t he want to go back into wrestling?”

“No, it was too much punishment on his body after years in the Army, so he’s out of the scene now. But next time you see him, ask him about his signature moves. He loves talking about them.”

She seemed to be stalling with the small talk, and she paused when Locke didn’t go on. He let the silence grow.

“You want to know why I’m here,” she finally said.

“You’ve certainly piqued my curiosity.”

“Look, I’m not some kook.”

“I don’t think you are.”

“I made a mistake earlier mentioning Noah’s Ark so quickly. When I was drifting in that ocean, all I could do was think about why I came out here. So when I heard your name, I just blurted it out.”

“So your original plan was to butter me up first and then ask me to help you find Noah’s Ark?”

“It sounds even goofier when you say it. Look, I didn’t want you to think I was some kind of crazy person.”

“You seem sane enough to me.”

“The problem is that I’m not even sure you can help me. All I have are a few words that a family friend, Sam Watson, told me.” She said the name as if Locke might recognize it. “Do you know Sam?”

Locke shook his head. “Should I?”

“I thought you might. He said to find you.”

“Why?”

“Sam said, ‘Tyler Locke. Gordian Engineering. Get his help. He knows Coleman.’”

“The only Coleman I know,” Locke said, bewildered, “is John Coleman at Coleman Consulting. He’s another engineer. We compete for work occasionally, but I haven’t talked to him in over a year.”

“So you don’t know what the connection between you and Coleman is?”

“Not a clue. Did your friend mention anything else?”

“A few random words. Hayden. Project. Oasis. Genesis. Dawn. Do they mean anything to you?”

Locke thought about them, but nothing was familiar. “Beyond the obvious, none of them are jogging my memory. But you’re saying all of this has something to do with Noah’s Ark?”

“Right.”

“And me?”

“Yes.”

Locke had to admit this all sounded weird to him. What could Noah’s Ark possibly have to do with him?

“Why didn’t this Sam Watson contact me himself?”

“He wanted to talk to me first. You see, my father was an archaeologist, too. Hasad Arvadi. Do you know him?” She looked at him expectantly.

Locke shook his head, and she sat back in disappointment.

“Turkish?” Locke said.

“Very good. I’m impressed.”

“I spent some time at Incirlik Air Base.” Incirlik was the United States’ main base in Turkey and was a staging area for many flights into Iraq. “Your first name sounds Turkish, too. Does it mean anything?”

She blushed. “It means lover.” She quickly went on. “He was one of the few Turkish Christians. He emigrated to America long ago, but he used his connections in Turkey to get access to Mt. Ararat. In the past, it was very difficult to get permission to explore the region. His life’s work was to find any remaining evidence of Noah’s Ark. Most of the archaeological community thought he was a nut, obsessed with unproven theories, but Sam said he found it.”

Locke had to stifle a laugh. “He found Noah’s Ark? The actual Noah’s Ark?”

“I know. It sounds ridiculous, but that’s what Sam said. He said to me, ‘Your father’s research started everything. You must find the Ark.’”

“If someone had found Noah’s Ark, I think I might have heard that little bit of news.”

“You wouldn’t have if the discovery was never made public. My father’s been missing for three years. Sam said someone murdered my father because of Noah’s Ark. I believe him.”

“Why?”

“Because of this.” Dilara showed him a locket that hung around her neck. She opened it to reveal a beautiful woman with dark brown hair. Except for the lighter skin and hair, it could have been a picture of Dilara. Locke nodded in appreciation.

“That’s my mother,” Dilara said. “She died when I was six. My father was from Ankara, and my mother was an Italian-American from Brooklyn. He met her when he moved to New York for a teaching position at Cornell. They were an unusual pair, but they were very much in love.”

That explained Dilara’s exotic looks. “What’s the significance of the locket?” Locke asked.

“My father never took this off. But I received it in the mail as a birthday present during the time he went missing. I think he knew he was in trouble. I think he wanted me to have it before he was killed.”

Locke shook his head. “Look, I’m sorry about your father, but I still don’t see what this has to do with me. Where is Sam now?”

“He’s dead. They killed him right in front of me.”

“They?”

“The people who are trying to kill me.”

“There are people trying to kill you,” Locke said dubiously, as if he were responding to a mental patient who’d just told him she was abducted by aliens.

“Yes, there are people trying to kill me,” Dilara said, obviously exasperated by his tone. “That’s why the helicopter crashed. That was no accident. Someone brought it down on purpose.”

NINE

With the press of a button, Sebastian Garrett turned off the bank of TVs showing every news channel’s coverage of the Rex Hayden plane crash. He stood and walked out onto the aft deck of his 250-foot luxury yacht, Mako. Fifteen miles away, the hills of Palos Verde stood out from the smog clinging to Los Angeles and Long Beach. A slight breeze ruffled his blond hair, but that was the only thing out of place on an appearance blessed with attributes that he used to charm his followers: intense green eyes, a tanned, muscular frame, and a strong jaw line that echoed his strength and determination. Garrett knew he cut the figure of a natural born leader, and these latest events forced him to assume that role yet again. He closed his eyes and reached out with his mind, hoping to find guidance for his next step.

“This is only a minor setback, sir.” Dan Cutter had followed him outside. Always the servant, Cutter. Always wanting to please. He was a tactical genius, but he could never see the big picture.

Garrett turned and smiled at Cutter. The Army veteran was a giant of a man with a forehead that bulged like those on the Beluga whales at SeaWorld. He had the physique of an alligator wrestler and a craggy face that betrayed years on dusty battlefields. Yet, he now had the down-trodden appearance of a mutt that had disappointed his master.

“You think I’m upset?” Garrett said. “On the contrary. I’m elated.”

“Elated, sir?”

“Of course. Look out there and tell me what you see.”

Cutter paused as if it were a trick question. “LA, sir,” he said firmly.

“Right. You see a city. But it’s a city rife with crime, misery, greed, unhappiness, debauchery, wickedness. All the sin the world holds can be found in that city. And this is one of the richest cities in one of the richest countries on earth. Now take its woes and multiply them a million-fold. That microcosm of sin is magnified beyond belief. Beyond reckoning. It staggers the mind that for all the great things that we have accomplished as a species, we have done even more to debase ourselves to such a low level. Do you know what I see?”

“No, sir.”

“When I look at that city, I see a blank slate. I see a new beginning for human kind. It’s just one of the thousands of places we will be able to reclaim for the righteous among us once the New World is upon us. And now I know my vision will be a reality. Our demonstration was a success. Our people will believe. They will see that it can be done, that I have delivered on my promise to them.”

“What about the airplane? It was supposed to crash into the ocean when it over-flew Honolulu. Now that it’s lying in the desert, they’ll have recovery teams combing through the wreckage.”

“As you said, a minor setback.”

“But the device may have survived the crash. We expected it would be lost at sea. If the device is recovered, the evidence could lead back to us.”

Garret had to admit the remains of the device could be a problem. He was the chairman and chief technology officer of Garrett Pharmaceuticals, whose revolutionary methods for vaccine production had taken the market by storm, lifting its stock and Garrett’s net worth into the stratosphere. Of course, taking a few shortcuts on FDA approvals and greasing the right palms made things go more smoothly. His combination of money and connections in the medical industry had made construction of the device possible, but some of the components had been highly specialized. There was a slim possibility they could lead the investigators back to Garrett Pharmaceuticals.

The carefully orchestrated planning for Garrett’s New World operation was three years in the making, and Friday was a critical date. There was no way to shorten the timeline, and Garrett couldn’t take the chance that they might be compromised at this critical juncture. They had to get the device back.

“Can you retrieve it?” Garrett asked.

“Yes, but it’ll take some time to infiltrate the crash site. By that time, they’ll have taken all of the luggage to a central facility for sorting and analysis. It will be easier and cleaner to find it there. That is, if the device wasn’t destroyed.”

“We can pray that it was.”

“Of course.”

“And the other matter?”

“We have a problem there as well.”

“Oh?” Garrett hadn’t heard about this. He assumed it had been settled.

When he’d been informed that Sam Watson, one of his star scientists, had discovered their plans, the first priority had been to make sure he didn’t pass on his information to anyone else. Watson had been a faithful member of the church, but he hadn’t been in Garrett’s innermost circle, the only ones who knew the entire plan. He must have grown suspicious about the true nature of his work and broke into some key files that contained details of the operation. Security discovered the leak, but Watson fled. He didn’t escape with any hard evidence, but he knew enough to be a danger. Since his work was essentially finished, Garrett had no more use for him and ordered his termination.

Before Garrett’s security team could carry out the order, Watson phoned someone. What was said, they didn’t know, but Garrett was sure it wasn’t the police, or Watson would have been in their custody within hours. Still, he could have mentioned something critical. They couldn’t take him out until they knew who he had spoken to, so they kept him under surveillance and waited until the meeting.

Watson’s assassination went off as planned, but he managed to convey something to the woman, Dilara Kenner, who had escaped after she narrowly avoided being killed by the SUV. They lost her trail until a search of airline databases showed her reservation with Wolverine Helicopters in St. John’s, Newfoundland. At first, her trip to an oil platform in the middle of the Atlantic was puzzling. Searching the names of the people on the rig registered with the Canadian Coast Guard, they discovered who was on board that she might be meeting with. Tyler Locke, a one-time contract employee of Garrett’s who had been more trouble than his reputation had been worth.

Once Garrett knew Locke was involved, it made sense. They had to stop her before she could talk to him. Killing her outright would have raised too many questions, especially by Locke, so they’d had to make it look like an accident.

“She’s not dead?” Garrett asked.

Cutter shook his head.

“What happened?”

“The explosive on the chopper wasn’t powerful enough. My men on the yacht set it off, but it only damaged the engine. The passengers got out before it sank. The standby ship was gone, but according to radio broadcasts we intercepted, Tyler Locke used one of the freefall lifeboats to save them. No way they would have survived until a Coast Guard chopper made it out there.”

“Tyler Locke. Still can’t keep himself out of trouble. Well, now we have a much bigger problem. We have to assume she’s told him what she knows. Is the yacht still in place?”

“They’re waiting for my orders.”

“What are our options?” Cutter always had a backup plan, and he didn’t disappoint.

“We already have a plan in place. My men are prepared to take out the entire rig.”

“It has to look like an accident,” Garrett said. “Locke’s murder would open up even more questions.”

“It’ll look like negligence on the part of the oil company. With over 200 deaths, a billion dollar oil platform destroyed, and oil flowing into the north Atlantic, they’ll have their hands full. A full-scale investigation will take weeks.”

Garrett smiled and looked out at the smog that would soon be a distant memory.

“Excellent,” he said. “By the time they find out what really happened, it will be far too late to stop us.”

TEN

While they waited for their food, Locke listened intently to Dilara’s story about Sam Watson’s death and her subsequent car crash, only stopping her to clarify. She wasn’t lying, that much he was sure of. Which left him with what? That either she was the victim of a bizarre set of coincidences or that he was somehow connected to some vast conspiracy bent on killing this lone woman. Neither option seemed likely, so he withheld his opinion.

The cheeseburgers arrived still steaming hot from the mess grill. Dilara and Locke interrupted their discussion to dig into them.

“This is amazing,” Dilara said after one bite. “Am I delusional from the cold, or is this the best burger I’ve ever had?”

“Gotta keep the workers out here happy, so the ingredients are top-notch. They’re out here three weeks at a time. The company would have a riot on their hands if they served crummy food.”

Dilara chewed in silence. The food and coffee brought a brightness back to her eyes.

“You didn’t take the bait about me being delusional,” she said. “You think I am, don’t you?”

“Honestly, I don’t know what to think” Locke said. “You don’t seem delusional to me, but then again, I haven’t known you that long.”

“Are you going to help me?”

“I’m not sure what you’re asking me to do.”

“I’m not either, but I know people are trying to kill me and that the secret to this whole thing will be revealed if we can find Noah’s Ark. You’re involved somehow. Sam was sure of it.”

Locke put up his right hand. “I swear I don’t know where Noah’s Ark is. Scout’s honor.” He couldn’t help but be slightly sarcastic. Or maybe excessively sarcastic. He wasn’t a good judge of his own level of sarcasm.

“Believe me, I get that. But whoever tried to kill me doesn’t want me to talk to you. There must be a reason.”

Locke sighed. She wouldn’t give up until he gave her something. “I’ll have my guys look into Coleman Consulting, but I have a job to finish here, and then I have to be in Europe in two days for another job.”

“You have to cancel it.”

“Listen, I’d like to help you…”

“What about the helicopter? You said yourself that the crash seemed odd.”

Locke shrugged. “It could have been some kind of explosive device, but it also could have been a fractured turbine blade or some other mechanical problem. The water here is over 1000 feet deep. It’ll take weeks, if not months, to recover the helicopter.”

“We don’t have that kind of time! It’s already Saturday night. Whatever is going to kill billions will be set in motion this coming Friday.”

“Look, you’re welcome to stay on board as long as you need. I’ve already okayed it with the rig manager. But if there’s no connection with Coleman, there’s nothing else I can do. You’ll have to take it up with the police.”

For this first time, discouragement crept into Dilara’s voice. “I already tried that in LA. They said Sam died of a heart attack, and they said the SUV that slammed into me was probably just a drunk driver.”

“Maybe he was.”

It was her turn to be sarcastic. About medium level. “So I see a man die in front of me, I get into a car accident that could have killed me, and then I barely escape a helicopter crash with my life, all in the span of three days? Come on. I can see you don’t believe that.”

Locke had to admit: this woman was tenacious. “I’ve never been a fan of coincidences, but I’ve seen them before. Still, that’s a nasty run of bad luck.”

“I’m not planning to play blackjack any time soon. I just need some help.”

Locke popped the last bite of his burger into his mouth and waited to speak until he finished it.

“Okay, I’ll check it out myself, but I can’t promise anything,” he said. “I’ll talk to John Coleman myself tomorrow. Maybe he knows something about this.”

“Thank you,” Dilara said, obviously relieved to have someone else on her side. Locke was interested to hear what Coleman had to say, but he didn’t expect much. His guess was that Sam Watson had been wrong about Locke. Perhaps it was John Coleman that was involved in all of this.

Dilara finished her burger, and the fatigue finally overtook her. Locke escorted her back to her cabin and told her he’d let her know the minute he heard anything, but since it was a Saturday, he didn’t expect any information until at least the next morning. Then he retired to his own cabin. Locke wanted to get some information about Coleman before he contacted him, so he sent an email back to Aiden MacKenna at Gordian’s Seattle headquarters, which was four and a half hours behind Newfoundland Time. After it went out over the rig’s wi-fi system, Locke passed out on his bunk, exhausted from the day’s events.

At 1:15 in the morning, a chime from his laptop woke him. Feeling rested from a few hours of sleep, he turned the computer towards him and saw that he had an instant message. It was from Aiden, Gordian’s top expert in information retrieval. Locke often used his services to salvage electronic data from disaster sites, but Aiden was a renaissance computer whiz and could tackle almost anything Locke threw his way. Locke wasn’t surprised to see that he was checking his email at 8:45 on a Saturday night.

Tyler, my man, I’ve got your answer. You awake? the message said.

I am now. Where are you? Locke replied.

At home, playing Halo and shooting Red Bull with some nerds from the office. I’m kicking ass, BTW. I would have answered you sooner, but I just saw your message.

What did you find out?

You haven’t heard from John Coleman in a while, have you?

Not for six months. Why?

He’s dead. Freak accident.

Dead? John Coleman was only in his fifties and seemed to be in perfect health.

What happened to him? Locke typed.

Instead of a reply, the computer window said, Connection lost. Great timing. Just when they were getting to the good part.

Locke checked his connection to Scotia One’s wi-fi network, but it was showing 100 %. He tried to pull up Google, but all he got was an error page. That meant the rig’s connection to the Internet was down.

Scotia One was equipped with a satellite antenna that served as its connection to the outside world. The workers on board could use it to surf the web and send emails when they weren’t working. It also served as a backup to the platform’s radio. There could be only two explanations for the connection to be down. Either there was some kind of internal glitch, or the antenna itself was disabled.

Locke looked out the window. The fog was still heavy, and the sea was relatively calm. The conditions made a mechanical failure unlikely. With no storm to damage the equipment, the antenna should be intact. It must have been some kind of electrical or software problem.

He picked up the phone and called the control room. It was answered by Frank Hobson. Locke remembered him as timid man with black horn-rimmed glasses who always worked the graveyard shift alone.

“Hi, Tyler,” he said in a reedy voice. “What can I do for you?”

“Frank, I’m having some trouble with the Internet. When will it be back up?”

“I didn’t even know it was down. You’re probably the only one up at this hour using it. Let me check.” Locke heard tapping on a keyboard. “Yup, it’s out here, too.”

“Can you isolate the problem? I was messaging someone and got cut off.”

Hobson paused. More tapping. “The software checks out. Maybe it’s a mechanical problem. Might be the satellite dish. I’ll have to call someone to look at it.”

“I can do that for you.” Locke was awake now and eager to get the rest of the story from Aiden, so he thought he might as well get some air.

“You know where it is?”

“Yeah, Grant and I were working on it a couple of days ago when we were trying to diagnose that electrical problem. If it looks like an electrical glitch, I’ll haul Grant out of bed.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Locke hung up, stood, and stretched. He threw on his jeans and jacket and headed outside.

The night air was crisp, and the ever-present smell of oil flowed over him with the breeze. Even this late, workers roamed the rig, oil production being a 24-hour job. Visibility was limited to 30 feet. The screech of some sort of grinding tool pierced his ears every few seconds.

Locke stepped onto the catwalk that led to the top of the habitat module, where the satellite dish was located. Ahead of him, barely visible through the haze, Locke could make out the figure of a man dressed in a black jumpsuit disappearing into the mist toward the lifeboat evacuation stairs. He had something slung over his shoulder, but Locke couldn’t make out what it was before he was gone. Maybe he had already fixed the dish. Locke called out twice, but the man didn’t respond. Must not have heard him over the grinding noise.

Locke reached the stairs and climbed up to the antenna cluster that formed Scotia One’s communications link. The satellite dish was about six-feet across, pointed at a geosynchronous satellite, and the radio antenna was 30-feet tall, with plenty of power to reach St. John’s 200 miles away. Neither was damaged.

He trailed the wires leading from the dish, and an iciness knotted his stomach when he saw the problem. The wires had been cut and a section removed. Whoever had done it was skilled. Locke followed the wires from the radio mast and found the same thing. The wires ended in a control box, which had been smashed. Someone didn’t want them in touch with the outside world.

Locke could think of a few reasons why someone would go to that trouble, and none of them had a happy ending. He rushed down to the control room and burst through the door, startling Hobson, the only man inside it. His thick glasses magnified his eyes to a cartoonish size.

“We have an emergency,” Locke said curtly. “Someone cut the wires to the antennas and destroyed the control junction.”

Hobson leaped out of his chair. “What? Who would do that?”

“Get Finn and tell him there’s an intruder on the platform.”

“An intruder?” Hobson said, recoiling at the thought.

“I saw him a few minutes ago. At the time I just thought he was just a rig worker wearing an outfit I hadn’t seen before, a black jumpsuit.” The intruder must have known it wouldn’t take much time for the crew to discover the destroyed equipment, which meant he wasn’t going to be on board much longer. Locke had to catch him before he got away, and for that he needed Grant’s help. For all Locke knew, there were multiple intruders, and they were heavily armed. That notion disturbed Locke, but it would terrify Hobson, so he didn’t mention it.

“How could anyone get on board?” Hobson asked.

“Maybe he climbed up. Doesn’t matter. Before you call Finn, get Grant Westfield and tell him to meet me at the lifeboats. Quietly. You know his cabin number?”

Hobson nodded. “Should I activate the alarm?”

“No. That’ll tip off the intruder that we know he’s here.” Locke needed to find out why this guy would want to cut off their communications. He wished he could get his hands on a gun, but an oil platform was the last place that they would let him bring his trusty 9mm Glock, and they certainly didn’t stock shotguns on board.

He had to hope he and Grant would be able to handle the situation. In a battle, Locke preferred staggering force against an overmatched opponent. If there were two armed intruders, he and Grant could handle it. They had been up against worse odds than that before. But if there were three or more, they could have real problems, so some kind of weapon might make a difference.

Hobson snatched up the phone and dialed. Locke went to the door, but before leaving, he said, “Frank, tell Grant to stop at the tool room and pick up two big, fat wrenches.”

ELEVEN

Locke crept down the stairs until the lifeboats were in view. He felt naked. No gun. No situational intelligence. No plan. Although he could improvise with the best of them, he’d rather put together a well-thought-out plan of attack that — like all Army operations — went to hell after the mission started. Instead, he’d already skipped to the second part, which made the hair on the back of his neck stand at attention.

Through the fog, he saw the man in the black jumpsuit hunched over the hatch of the rightmost lifeboat, attaching to something to it. He was in his thirties, dirty blond, medium build, no visible tattoos. A silenced Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine gun hung from his shoulder by a strap. He seemed to be alone. Visibility was now over 30 feet, and lot of open space separated him from Locke. It would be almost impossible to sneak up on him.

Locke felt a tap on his shoulder. Fists up, he whirled around to find Grant crouching behind him. For a big man, he was as light on his feet as Fred Astaire. Locke was glad Grant was on his side.

Grant was carrying two heavy pipe wrenches, both two feet long. Big enough to be good weapons, but not so large that they’d be unwieldy. Good man. Grant handed one to Locke, who rested it on his shoulder.

Bad guy, Locke signed to Grant using American Sign Language. We need a distraction.

What did you have in mind? Grant signed back.

Locke’s grandmother was deaf and had taught him ASL soon after he learned to talk. When he joined his combat engineering unit, Locke saw how useful it could be in situations requiring stealth and added it to their normal repertoire of tactical hand gestures. Grant had picked it up quickly.

I just need a few seconds, Locke signed. Get around to the other staircase and act like you’re talking to someone. At least he now had a plan. Not the most elegant plan, but the intruder wouldn’t expect that he’d been discovered, so it should work.

Give me 30 seconds, Grant signed and went back upstairs. Locke got a firm grip on the wrench.

The intruder finished his task at the lifeboats and moved to the railing, where Locke for the first time saw a claw hooked to the side of the rig. The intruder started to climb over the railing, then stopped. Locke heard Grant stomp down the stairs, his voice animatedly raised in some nonexistent argument. So did the intruder, who turned to see who was coming.

He looked at the railing again as if considering whether he could make a quick getaway. Then he looked back at the staircase and seemed to decide against it. The submachine gun came off his shoulder and pointed in Grant’s direction. He raised the weapon to his eye and waited. With the intruder’s attention distracted, Locke saw his chance.

He padded down the stairs, careful not to make a sound, and tiptoed up to the intruder. When he was still six feet behind the intruder, Locke raised the wrench over his head, but he hadn’t thought to tighten its jaw. The loose mechanism rattled with an audible clink. Locke froze, but it was too late. His plan had already gone to hell.

The intruder spun around. Locke, his surprise attack up in smoke, rushed him. The intruder pulled the trigger as he swung the gun toward Locke, intending to cut him down in a scythe of bullets. Nine-millimeter ammunition ricocheted off the surrounding metal. Shell casings rattled off the grating. Locke was close enough to smell the gunpowder puffing through the silencer’s baffles.

Before the intruder could get the barrel of the gun all the way around, Locke parried with the wrench. The muzzle was so close to his head that he could feel the hot gases singe his hair. Even silenced, the gun was roaring like a jackhammer in his ear; without the silencer, Locke would have been deaf for a week.

Locke knocked the gun aside. The intruder lost his grip, and it dangled from his shoulder. Locke tried to grab it, but it dropped to the grating. The intruder kicked it, and it fell over the side to the sea below.

So far, the encounter had lasted all of three seconds. Grant by now had raced to help Locke. With the wrench, he swung at the intruder from behind, but the man saw Grant at the last second and ducked to take the impact with his left shoulder. That move alone told Locke the intruder was something special, probably ex-military, but it didn’t keep the bone from cracking. The intruder howled with pain.

The force of Grant’s hit threw both the intruder and Locke to the railing. The intruder’s right hand dropped to his side and retrieved something from his pocket. Locke expected a knife or a pistol, but the intruder held a cylinder with a button on the end. A detonator.

Before Locke or Grant could wrestle it from him, the intruder pushed the button. Bright flames gushed on the hatches of the four remaining lifeboats. Locke and Grant tackled him to the catwalk grating and wrapped their arms over their heads to shield themselves from the heat. The intruder struggled, but Grant put an end to that with an elbow to the gut. After a few seconds, the flames died down.

They pinned down the intruder’s arms and legs, but he no longer resisted.

“Who are you?” Locke demanded. “What are you doing here?”

Despite the pain, the intruder smiled. “God only knows.” Then he bit down hard.

“Poison!” Grant yelled. He jerked the intruder’s mouth open and pulled out the capsule, but it was too late. In seconds, the man was dead. Cyanide.

In the sudden silence, Locke heard a motor revving below them. He went to the railing but couldn’t see the boat, which sounded like a Zodiac, speed away. Locke noted that it was in the direction of the yacht he had seen earlier.

Grant wasn’t breathing hard like Locke was, but he could see the fire in Grant’s eyes. His friend was juiced.

“What the hell is going on?” Grant said.

Locke shook his head. “Don’t know. But whatever it is, we better find out quick. I don’t think what he came here to do is finished yet. You search him. I’ll take a look at the lifeboats.”

Locke kept his distance as he inspected the damage. The hinges and latches on all of the lifeboats were still glowing, melted shut by an incendiary, probably Thermate-TH3. There was no way to get into them now. From a professional standpoint, Locke admired the guy’s work. Fast, efficient, effective. On a personal level, Locke wanted to wring his neck, not only for wrecking the lifeboats, but for killing himself before answering Locke’s questions.

“Why go to all this trouble to disable the lifeboats?” Locke said.

“I think I know why,” Grant said. “Quick. You need to look at this.”

Locke turned and saw Grant holding a large plastic case.

“What is it?” Locke said.

Grant opened it. The inside of the case was lined with foam. There were three slots in the foam. All three were empty.

“Smell,” Grant said, holding it up. Locke sniffed the foam insert. He recognized the smell immediately. The chemical DMNB and a hint of motor oil. The odor reminded him of his Army days. His stomach did a somersault. Suddenly the cheeseburger wasn’t sitting so well any more.

“At least now we know,” he said.

“Think they used timers?” Grant asked, his customary humor gone. So was Locke’s.

He nodded. “Got to. Remote detonators would be too unreliable and might be set off by equipment on board the rig.”

If the intruder had used timers, he would want to make sure he was off the platform before…

Locke reached down and picked up the dead man’s wrist. As he feared, the intruder’s digital watch was counting down.

“We’ve got exactly thirteen minutes left to find them,” Locke said, synchronizing his own watch.

DMNB and motor oil were the volatile components of composition C-4, a plastic explosive manufactured in the US and used by the military. Somewhere on the oil platform, the dead intruder had planted three bombs.

TWELVE

Leaving the dead intruder behind, Locke and Grant bolted for the control room. Locke couldn’t help sneaking a few peeks at the timer ticking inexorably down on his watch. He almost tripped during one glance, which reminded him that he hadn’t disarmed a bomb since his Army service. When they did find the bombs, one stupid little mistake like that, one moment’s distraction, and he’d be wouldn’t have time to say “oops” before he was blown into tiny pieces. He had to stay focused.

In the control room, they found Finn badgering Hobson, who had his head turned to avoid the spittle showering his face. When Finn saw them enter, he let up on Hobson and shouted at Locke.

“What’s all this about the antenna wires being cut, Locke? And what’s going on with the lifeboats?”

“The lifeboats are crippled,” Locke said. He looked at the watch again. “We’ve now got exactly 12 minutes and 25 seconds to find three bombs somewhere on this rig.”

Finn nearly tore his hair out. “Bombs? Are you serious?” Locke could sympathize. First a helicopter crash, now this, all in one day. It was a ridiculous coincidence. Then it hit him. It wasn’t a coincidence at all. This was about Dilara. Someone wanted her dead, just like she’d claimed, and now Locke felt like an idiot for not believing her.

“There’s a corpse on the lifeboat deck,” Grant said. “That serious enough for you?” He showed Finn the backpack he’d taken from the intruder and pointed to the three empty slots in the case.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Finn said, his face drained of color. He turned to Locke. “Okay. You’re the bomb expert. What do we do?”

The weight of responsibility came crashing down on Locke’s shoulders, but the Army didn’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars training him to be a Captain for nothing. They got their money’s worth. He took a deep breath. Precision, calm, decisiveness.

“First,” he said, “muster everyone to the safety block.” The safety block, located under the helicopter pad, was the last-ditch safe haven for those who couldn’t make it to the lifeboats. It had blast resistant walls and a separate air feed.

“Done,” Finn said and slammed his hand on a huge red button. Three short horn blasts blared across the rig, followed by the sound of a woman’s voice.

“This is not a drill. Proceed to the safety block on deck seven. This is not a drill.”

“Second,” Locke said, “close the sea line valves.”

“I’m not authorized to do that unless there’s a fire,” Finn said.

“In a few minutes, there will be unless we find those bombs.”

Locke could see Finn mentally weighing the consequences of taking that action. Closing the valves that controlled the flow of oil from all of the rig’s well heads to the ocean-floor pipeline was a major decision. It would take days to start production again once they were closed.

“You’re sure there are bombs?” Finn asked.

“Positive,” Locke said. He had detonated and defused so many explosives in his life that the smell of C-4 was as recognizable to him as antiseptic was to a doctor. “And you don’t want to find out the hard way that I’m good at my job.” Another glance at his watch. “We’re at 11 minutes and 45 seconds.”

Finn reluctantly nodded at Hobson. Hobson punched the emergency stop button, which shut off the sea line valves.

“They’re shut down,” Hobson said, “but we’re still getting gas from Scotia Two. With the radio down, we can’t reach them to tell them to shut it off.” Scotia Two was One’s sister platform 20 miles to the north. Natural gas from Two was fed through One and then on to the pipeline to the coast.

Now Locke understood why the intruder had first put communications out of action. It would not only make any rescue calls impossible to send, but it would also make them unable to notify Scotia Two to shut off the gas supply. Any fires that were started by the explosions would be fed by three tons of natural gas per minute, reducing the entire rig to slag.

The disabled lifeboats were the crucial part of the intruder’s plan. He wanted to make sure no one would survive. Anyone who didn’t die in the initial blasts or resulting fires would be killed by the fall overboard or of hypothermia in the cold North Atlantic. It would look like an accident to investigators when it was all over.

The intruder knew exactly how to destroy the oil platform so that every single person on board would die, and Locke realized he might have stumbled into some luck. Knowing the intruder’s goal might be the key to finding the bombs before they detonated.

“This platform is huge,” Finn said. “How can we possibly find three bombs in less than twelve minutes?”

Locke didn’t respond. Time slowed as he tried to put himself in the head of someone wanting to destroy Scotia One. It was something he had done many times in the Army when he was looking for improvised explosive devices in Iraq. Try to think like the enemy. Where would Locke put the bombs if this were his demolition mission?

Another glance. 11 minutes and 10 seconds.

“Okay,” Locke said. “All we have time for is a targeted search. We’ll take walkie-talkies. Grant, you check the Scotia Two gas line, starting with the main valve. If that guy knew that we couldn’t shut down Two’s feed, that would be the best place to start a fire. Finn, the second one is probably at the pumping machinery for the firefighting system. He’d want to disable that at the same time.”

“What about the third bomb?” Grant said.

“I’ll take the safety block. If I wanted to kill everyone on board, that’s where I’d put it.”

“But I just sent everyone there!” Finn yelled.

“If the third bomb isn’t there, that’s the safest place on the rig. If it is there, it won’t matter where people go.”

Finn shook his head as he distributed the walkie-talkies.

“Let me know when you find it,” Locke said to Finn, “but don’t touch it. It may be booby trapped.” He took off his watch and tossed it to Hobson, who bobbled it like it was white hot.

“What’s this for?” he said.

“Call out on the walkie-talkie at every minute mark,” Locke said. It would keep them all informed about the time left, but in reality, Locke just didn’t want the distraction of looking at his watch any more. “And when you get down to four minutes, head to the safety block. You don’t want to be here if the bombs go off.”

“All…all right,” Hobson stuttered.

Locke followed Grant and Finn out of the control room and then sprinted toward the safety block. Masses of people were already herding in that direction, slowing him down.

“Coming through!” he yelled. “Make a hole!”

He pushed past one woman and saw that it was Dilara. She looked bone-tired and terrified.

“What’s happening?” she said, trying to keep up with him.

“We have a situation,” Locke said, deliberately not using the word “bomb” for fear of panicking those around him. But Dilara was persistent and latched onto his arm.

“What kind of situation?”

“Can’t say.”

“It’s them, isn’t it? They’ve sabotaged the rig.” A few passersby murmured in response.

Locke pulled her aside and put his lips next to her ear. “Look, I believe you now,” he whispered. “There are people trying to kill you. And now it looks like they’re trying to kill the rest of us with you.”

“Oh my God!” she said loudly, drawing more stares. “I’m right?”

“Keep quiet! The last thing we need is a panic. There are bombs on the platform.”

“Bo…” Dilara began to shout before Locke clamped his hand over her mouth.

“Just stay with me. I might need an extra pair of eyes to find it.” She still looked scared, but she nodded and Locke released her.

Hobson’s trembling voice came over the walkie-talkie. “Ten minutes.”

Locke led her past the others streaming toward the safety block. The block’s ordinary purpose was as a massive storage room underneath the helicopter deck, but it doubled as a safe haven in emergencies. Blast walls surrounded the room, and the door was heavy-gauge steel. The safety block was fed by an air system that would protect those inside from smoke emanating from fires on the rig. The room was so well protected, Locke was sure the bomb would be inside it.

Over 100 people already crammed the safety block. The room was big enough to fit every worker on the platform. If the C-4 went off inside here, the effects would be catastrophic.

“Start on that side and work around to me,” Locke said to Dilara. “I’ll take the other side.”

“What am I looking for?”

“It’ll be about the size and shape of brick. Check inside any drawers or lockers.”

“What if I find it?”

“Just call me over. And for God’s sake, don’t touch it.”

“I’m not insane,” Dilara said and began throwing open locker doors.

Locke quickly ran his eyes from floor to ceiling and over every piece of stacked equipment. The intruder wouldn’t have moved anything to set it. He’d simply choose an out-of-sight location because he didn’t expect a thorough search. Storage lockers abounded, containing all kinds of survival suits and other safety equipment, and Locke felt sure that was where the intruder would have hidden the bomb. He rooted through each one, tearing everything out.

His walkie-talkie squawked.

“Ty, this is Grant. I found one, right next to the main gas line.”

“What does it look like?” Locke said into the walkie-talkie as he continued to search.

“Black, rectangular, 12 by 4 by 4 inches. LED readout matching our dead man’s timer. The detonator casing is wrapped around the C-4.”

That wasn’t good. It would make the bomb trickier to disarm.

“Mercury switch?” Locke said. Some bombs were activated by a motion sensor.

“Uh…nine minutes, guys,” Hobson said.

“Thanks, Frank,” Locke said. “You’re doing great.”

“Negative on the mercury switch,” Grant said. “He couldn’t have placed it where it is and then armed it. Guess he thought vibrations might set it off prematurely. It’s just laying there, hidden under a pipe. No attachment to the rig.”

That was good. Meant it could be moved. But they couldn’t simply dump it over the side of the platform. The wave action might land it on a feed pipe, causing a gas explosion underneath the platform, or the bomb might fall next to one of the support pillars. If one of those gave way, the entire rig might topple into the ocean. Neither was a pleasant thought.

“Disposal?” Grant said.

“I’m thinking about it. Go help Finn find the second one.”

“On my way.”

Locke continued searching as fast as he could. He was halfway along the wall when Hobson called out, “Eight minutes.” Locke cursed under his breath and kept going. Maybe giving Hobson the watch was a bad idea. Then he heard Dilara yell to him from across the room.

“Tyler, come here!”

He rushed over, drawing attention to the area. By this time, people had already seen Dilara’s find and started speculating about what it was, but Locke didn’t have time to calm them down.

“I think I found it,” Dilara said, pointing at the object.

It was just as Grant described. The C-4 was hidden behind some gas masks on the top shelf of a storage locker. After a cursory inspection, he couldn’t see any sign of a mercury switch. He pulled the bomb out to examine it.

“Seven minutes left,” Hobson said. The calls seemed to be coming faster, but Locke tried to ignore it and focus on the bomb.

He hadn’t seen anything so sophisticated since he left the Army. The brick of C-4 was enough to destroy the entire safety block. The detonator was clamped to the top of the brick. The detonator was wrapped around the explosive. If he tried to remove it, the bomb might explode. By prying open the case, Locke might be able to disarm it, but not all three bombs in less than seven minutes.

He got another call on the walkie-talkie from Grant.

“Ty, I’m with Finn. We found the second one. It was under the main diesel generator for the firefighting system right where you thought it would be.”

“Good. I’ve got the third one.”

“Disarm them?”

“Oh my God!” Hobson said. “Only six minutes now!”

“Not enough time,” Locke said.

The only other choice was to get rid of the bombs. He had to figure out a way to get them far away from the rig. Then he realized the means had been staring him in the face.

“Grant,” Locke said into the walkie-talkie, “you’ve still got the case?”

“The first two are already in it. They won’t rattle around in there.”

“Good. I’ve got an idea.”

THIRTEEN

Locke told Grant to meet him at the lifeboat station with the two bombs. Then he searched for a heavy metal bar, preferably an ax, something that he could use as an impact tool.

“An ax!” he yelled to the crowd. “A crowbar! Anything heavy!”

A man in a blue jumpsuit and tool belt answered him. “How about a hammer?” he said. He raised a handheld sledge and handed it to Locke.

“Perfect,” Locke said. He turned to Dilara. “Stay here.”

“But…”

He leaned over and whispered. “If this bomb blows up, the safest place on the rig is right where you’re standing.”

She wasn’t comforted. Her face was etched with fear.

Locke smiled. “Don’t worry. I’ve got a plan.”

That seemed to help. She didn’t protest further.

With the sledge in one hand and the bomb in the other, Locke flew through the exit and down the stairs. One flight down, he heard Hobson’s voice bleat from the walkie-talkie on his belt. “Five minutes!”

Locke reached his target, the chemical storage room. He threw open the door to see shelves lined with chemical bottles. Glass, plastic, and metal containers were haphazardly stacked in no discernable order. He ran his fingers over the labels searching for a bottle of acetone, the chemical in fingernail polish remover. On the rig, it was used as a heavy-duty degreaser.

“Four minutes!” Hobson said. “I’m heading to the safety block!”

Locke was beginning to think his plan might be screwed. He saw bottles of ammonia, benzene, hydrochloric acid, ethylene glycol, but no acetone. One of those other chemicals might work, but the only one he was sure of was acetone, and he couldn’t find it in this mess. He’d seen plane crash sites that were neater.

If he heard Hobson call out “three minutes” before he found the acetone, he’d have to take a chance with the benzene or ammonia.

Locke started shoving containers aside, looking in the back rows. He knew it was here. Then he saw a capital A on a plastic 16-ounce bottle. He twisted it around and saw the word, “Acetone.” He breathed easier now that it was in his hand.

“Three minutes left!”

Locke stuffed the acetone into his pocket and took off for the stairs, the grating clanging under his feet.

The lifeboat station was five levels below the safety block. He made it there just as Hobson said, “Two minutes.” Grant and Finn were waiting for him.

“Glad you could make it,” Grant said cheerily, but Locke could see the faint lines of tension around his eyes.

Although Finn’s face was white, he still had some of his bluster. “Where the hell have you been?”

“In your moronically-organized chemical storage room,” Locke said as he placed the third bomb in the case. Grant snapped it shut.

“Now what?” Grant asked.

“We’re going to put the bombs in one of the lifeboats and launch it.” The boats could be launched from the outside as well as inside. He handed the sledge to Grant and removed the acetone bottle from his pocket.

“In one of the lifeboats?” Finn protested. “But the doors are welded shut. How do we get the case inside?”

“Through the cupola window.”

“One minute!” Hobson shouted. This was getting a lot closer than Locke wanted.

“The windows are made of polycarbonate, genius,” Finn said. “They’re unbreakable.”

From his belt, Locke plucked his Leatherman tool — a sort of Swiss Army knife on steroids — and opened the saw blade, which he dragged across the window to score the surface.

“Normally, it is unbreakable,” Locke said as he unscrewed the top of the acetone bottle and carefully poured the contents along the top of the small port cupola window. “But when you treat it with acetone, polycarbonate crystallizes.”

He dropped the bottle and smeared the acetone over the entire window with his hand to make sure it was covered with the liquid. Locke took the hammer from Grant and counted to ten, giving the acetone time to be absorbed through the scoring marks he’d made.

“What are you waiting for?” Finn shouted.

Locke ignored him and kept counting down. On one, Locke raised the hammer and swung it with all his strength at the window. The pane of polycarbonate shattered like glass into the lifeboat.

“Voila,” Locke said more calmly than he felt. He tossed the case through the window.

“Thirty seconds!”

Locke took hold of one of the two launch levers on the outside of the lifeboat. Grant grabbed the other.

He nodded at Grant. “Ready…Now!”

They both yanked simultaneously. The clamps released, and the lifeboat began its slide down the rails. It accelerated and then dropped into space. After falling gracefully for two seconds, it hit the water with a tremendous splash.

The entire boat disappeared beneath the water. For a moment, Locke couldn’t see it. Then it resurfaced again 100 yards from where it had gone under, and Locke breathed easier. He had specifically chosen that window because it was the smallest. No doubt the lifeboat had taken on water, but it wasn’t enough to sink it. The forward momentum from its slide down the rails continued to push it away from the rig at ten knots.

“Behind the lifeboats!” Locke yelled. They had no sooner retreated to the safety of the huge lifeboat when a tremendous roar ripped the air. The rig was briefly lit by a flame shooting hundreds of feet into the air. Bits of orange debris rained down around them.

When the hail of lifeboat hull abated, Locke got up and peered around the side. Bits of burning fiberglass and metal littered the sea, but no large pieces of the lifeboat were left. The intruder hadn’t been playing around. Any one of those bombs would have been strong enough to blow up half the platform and ignite a blaze that would have been impossible to put out.

“Well,” Locke said as the adrenaline drained from his system. “That was interesting.” He leaned back against the railing, suddenly exhausted.

“That may be the biggest understatement I’ve ever heard,” Finn said. “You must have ice in your veins. I nearly crapped my pants.” He pointed at the dead man still sprawled on the catwalk. “Who is that guy? A terrorist?”

Locke stared at the body. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Someone seems to want Dr. Kenner dead. And I’m guessing they want me dead now, too.”

“Why?” Grant said.

“That’s what we’re going to find out.”

“That was a hell of close thing. That guy sure knew what he was doing.”

“True, but he made two mistakes.”

“Which were?”

“First,” Locke said, “he shouldn’t have tried to kill me. Gives me a personal stake in Dr. Kenner’s problem. It also just pisses me off.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” Grant said, “he didn’t finish the job. You’re still alive.”

“That, my friend, was his second mistake.”

FOURTEEN

It took two hours for one of the rig’s electricians to rewire the radio antenna, but because of the destroyed junction box, the satellite link-up wouldn’t be fixed until Sunday evening when the fog was supposed to lift. With Grant’s help, Locke used the time to complete Gordian’s consulting work on the platform. The job kept his mind occupied since he couldn’t continue the conversation with Aiden MacKenna and find out more about Coleman until the Internet hookup was back online. Dilara could only wait in her cabin and stew.

At 10 PM the satellite connection was finally repaired, allowing Locke to rearrange his travel plans. At the same time, the fog dispersed, and a helicopter left from St. John’s, bound for Scotia One. When it took off from the oil platform, Locke planned to be on it with Grant and Dilara for the return to Newfoundland. Gordian’s private jet was en route from New York and would meet them at St. John’s to take them back to company headquarters in Seattle where he could investigate the incidents of the last few hours. Since the rig was in international waters, the oil company would be doing its own investigation. In the meantime, they were having new hatches rushed from the manufacturer to make the lifeboats functional again.

His work on the rig done, Locke turned his focus back to the bizarre incidents of the past day while he, Grant, and Dilara waited in his cabin for the helicopter to arrive. He had to find out why mild-mannered archaeologist Dilara Kenner had drawn two attempts on her life in the span of 12 hours.

As Locke expected, the intruder had carried no identification. The body was taken to cold storage after Locke had taken digital photos of the man’s face and close-ups of his thumb and index finger prints. The wi-fi system was now up and running, as were the telephones. He loaded the photos onto his laptop and emailed them to Aiden MacKenna so that he could start tracking down who this guy was. Locke spoke with Aiden while Dilara, who was now convinced that Grant could be trusted, filled him in on the story she had told Locke the previous day.

“I sent you a photo and some prints,” Locke said into the phone. “Let’s get an ID on this guy.”

There was a slight pause before Aiden’s answer. Aiden had gone deaf five years ago from meningitis. Aiden had seen Locke signing at an engineering conference and introduced himself, and Locke ended up recruiting the Irishman to Gordian. One of the toys Aiden had, courtesy of another Gordian contract, was a speech-to-text translator. Since his deafness hadn’t affected his ability to speak, it allowed him to talk on the phone with anybody. The only drawback was the milliseconds required for the software to convert the spoken words on the phone to printed words on his computer.

“Opening the photo now,” Aiden replied in a thick brogue. “Good lord! He looks like he’s had a few pints too many.”

“He’s dead. Tried to turn us into flambé.” Locke gave him the quick summary of the day’s events.

“Sounds dreadfully boring,” Aiden deadpanned.

“Yeah, it’s been a real yawner here.”

“I don’t suppose your dead ninja wannabe had a wallet on him.”

“No, but he had an ex-military vibe. I’d start there.”

Because of the work Gordian did with the FBI and the military — investigating plane crashes, evaluating new weaponry, assessing terrorist threats on infrastructure targets — the company had access to confidential databases not available to many other companies. Like Locke, Aiden had a top military clearance.

“And see if you can find out whether there was a Lurssen or Westport yacht in the area today. Eighty-footer. It’s got to be connected.”

“Can’t be too many of those cruising the North Atlantic.”

“Now what’s this about Coleman?” Locke asked. “You left me hanging.”

“Right. I was all ready to blow your mind, but you took the air out of my plan.”

“You said he was dead. When?”

“Three weeks ago.”

“How?” Like Gordian, Coleman’s company was based in Seattle. Locke was sure it had been front-page news there, but he had been on the road for the past month and hadn’t read any newspapers.

“You’re going to love this,” Aiden said. “An explosion. Seems he and three of his top engineers were consulting on a demolition project. An electrical short detonated the dynamite early. All four were turned into hamburger.”

Another coincidence. Locke didn’t like it.

“Have Jenny set up an appointment for me tomorrow afternoon with whoever is left at Coleman’s company. I want to get more details about this supposed ‘accident’ when I get back to Seattle.”

“So you’re not going to be working on the Rex Hayden crash?”

Locke frowned at the mention of Hayden’s name. “What crash?”

“Forgot you were out of the loop out there. Hayden’s plane took a dirt bath outside Vegas. No survivors.”

“When?”

“Yesterday afternoon. Weird stuff. Plane turned back from a flight to Hawaii, overshot LA, and ran out of fuel over the Mojave. It’s been all over the news. You’d think the president’s plane went down. Then again, Hayden’s probably more famous than the president.”

It couldn’t be a fluke that Hayden was the name Sam Watson said to Dilara before he died.

“Gordian won the NTSB investigation contract,” Aiden said. “Judy Hodge got there yesterday with her team, but I figured Miles would want you on the case because it’s so high profile.”

It didn’t surprise Locke that Miles Benson, the president of Gordian and the smartest man Locke had ever met, had already been contacted to help with the investigation. Gordian had consulted with the National Transportation Safety Board on many of the highest-profile plane crashes of the past ten years — TWA flight 800, the American Airlines crash over Brooklyn a year after 9/11, and NY Yankees pitcher Curt Moline’s flight into a Manhattan high rise. Gordian was the most capable company to assist in the probe of crash involving a star as big as Rex Hayden.

The dead bodies were piling up fast. First Coleman, now Hayden. Both mentioned by Sam and both pushing daisies. Locke didn’t like the pattern because his name was in there, too. The evidence was fresher on Hayden’s death, so that was Locke’s first priority.

“Tell Judy we’re joining them at the crash site,” he said to Aiden. “We’ll make a stop in Vegas before we come back to Seattle.”

“If you pop into a casino, put a hundred on Ireland to beat Germany in what you call soccer.”

“Sorry, Aiden. You know I never gamble. Might use up all my luck.”

Locke hung up and stared at Dilara with curiosity. What a beautiful archaeologist and Noah’s Ark had to do with the deaths of an engineer and a world-famous movie star was a question he never expected to be asking himself. The answer had to be even stranger than the question.

“You, Dr. Kenner,” he said with a smile, “are a trouble magnet.” He winked at her.

She smiled back at both of them. “Then it seems like I’m in good company.”

“Speak for yourselves,” Grant said. “I consider myself more of a troublemaker.”

“I can vouch for that,” Locke said.

The muffled roar of helicopter blades penetrated the walls. Locke glanced out the window and saw the Super Puma heading for the landing pad. He waited breathlessly for a puff of smoke from the chopper’s turbine, but it glided in safely. He didn’t think they’d try blowing up another helicopter, but he’d feel better once they reached Newfoundland safely.

“Our ride is here,” he said. “Time for a change of scenery.”

As they walked to the helicopter pad, Locke made one last phone call to arrange for the jet to divert to Las Vegas and have a Jeep waiting for them at the airport. He wanted to see the Hayden crash site for himself.

FIFTEEN

The news about the failed assassination of Dilara Kenner and Tyler Locke didn’t reach Sebastian Garrett’s ears until the next evening. He had spent his Sunday flying back from LA to make an inspection of his facility on Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington state. The 57-square-mile island was home to 4500 people and a bustling tourist trade, which meant visitors to Garrett’s facility could come and go without attracting undue attention.

He ate dinner with Svetlana Petrova on the veranda of the facility’s mansion and enjoyed the cool October breeze, a luxury he would be able to enjoy for only one more week. She was dressed in a sheer top and miniskirt, showing off her assets to full advantage. She looked faintly like the businesswoman she had pretended to be when she lured Sam Watson into touching the poison that would end his life in a matter of seconds. Garrett only wished she had been part of the mission to follow Dilara Kenner out of LAX and kill her before she had caused all this trouble. Svetlana certainly wouldn’t have left the job unfinished.

The building where they were eating was one of five on the 400-acre property. Huge old-growth pine trees ringed the densely-wooded property.

Dan Cutter sat stiffly in a chair at the opposite end of the table. He didn’t eat, only sipping from a glass of water. Petrova listened to the conversation in silence. Garrett had met her when she had been trafficking black market pharmaceuticals into Moscow for the Russian Mafia. He saved her from that lifestyle and brought her to the US. Her parents had been nuclear scientists who were killed in the Chernobyl disaster, so she shared a kindred spirit with Garrett’s vision for a better world.

“Why did it take so long to notify me?” Garrett asked.

Cutter shifted in his seat, the discomfort apparent. “The operative in charge didn’t want to call with the bad news until it was confirmed that they had both survived.”

“His name?”

“Gavin Dean. He claims that our man on the platform was overpowered when he was installing the thermite on the lifeboats. Locke must have discovered the bombs we planted and put them on a lifeboat.”

“Good old Tyler. Resourceful as ever. Your operative should have sent more than one person on board.”

“He felt stealth was more important than numbers.”

“Did you warn him how intelligent Tyler is?”

“Yes, but he had operational authority. It was his call.”

“Then he is an idiot and careless. Those are two characteristics we don’t want to carry over into the New World.”

“I agree.”

“First, Barry Pinter loses a prime opportunity to kill Dilara Kenner when she left the airport, now this. Two major mistakes in three days. I’m not used to that kind of failure rate. Especially not this close to the end. Have there been any more leaks besides Sam Watson?”

“No. He appears to be the only one who was in on it.”

“Still, we can’t have the rest of our people getting it into their heads that they can back out now. Not all of them may have the nerve to follow through. Not without a little reinforcement.”

“What do you have in mind?”

Garrett had just the method. He stood abruptly and whispered to Petrova, who smiled her agreement at his plan and nodded. She gave him a long kiss, then stood and walked into the house.

“Come with me,” he said to Cutter. “And have Olsen meet us in the observation room.”

Garrett walked down the stairs from the veranda and out under the cloudy skies typical of the Pacific Northwest. The house was a massive Tudor-style mansion, used to host the new disciples of his religious organization. Next to it stood a hotel housing the estate’s 250 workers. The three other buildings were identical square structures 300 feet on each side and 50 feet tall. The unassuming buildings looked like airplane hangars, but the only aircraft on the property were three helicopters lined up on landing pads outside the hotel. A dock stretched into the small harbor on Massacre Bay, long and wide enough to handle any large equipment he wanted to bring in.

He strode toward one of the hangar-style buildings and walked through a door where he was met by a guard in a small antechamber. He sat at a desk behind two-inch thick bulletproof windows. Garrett placed his hand on the biometric scanner.

When it showed green, the guard nodded and waited for Garrett to utter the password, which was changed weekly. Nobody — not even Garrett — was allowed in without the proper password. There were two passwords, both randomly generated: a safe word and a warning word. If Garrett gave the warning password, the guard would know the person with him was coercing him. The guard would let Garrett in, then shoot his companion in the head as he walked through the door.

The warning word this week was, “Heaven.”

Garrett said the correct password: “Searchlight.”

The steel door slid open. Garrett and Cutter passed the guard’s desk to a four-way intersection. At the ends of 80-foot halls to the right and left were doors that led to emergency stairwells. Ahead of them was a door that led to the main part of the warehouse. Garrett turned right and stopped at the call button for the two elevators. He pushed it, and the left door opened immediately. He and Cutter got on.

The elevator’s control panel listed seven floors, all underground, plus the ground level. Garrett inserted a key into the panel and turned it. An LCD panel lit up, and he typed a pass code into the touch screen. The elevator doors slid closed, and they glided silently toward the fifth level, which was accessible to only a few select people. The doors opened a few seconds later to reveal a clean white hallway 100-feet long directly in front of him, plus two 80-foot hallways to either side identical to the ones on the ground level. All seven floors of the underground facility were designed in the same T-pattern, with a stairwell at each of the three ends, east, west, and north.

Two technicians in lab coats saw Garrett exit the elevator and quickly ended their conversation. They nodded at Garrett and walked through one of the many doors lining the hall.

Garrett walked forward down the long hallway and stopped at a set of double doors halfway down. He walked through the doors into a vestibule and then opened another set of doors to reveal a chamber with a 15-foot long window on the opposite side. An operating panel lined the bottom of the window. The chamber was used for observing the effects of their experiments in safety.

Howard Olsen, one of Cutter’s security operatives and a fellow Army vet, stood at attention when Garrett entered. He was typical of Cutter’s recruits, a religious idealist who had joined one of the Army’s more fanatical underground faith groups. Like the other soldiers Cutter had found for Garrett, Olsen had little hope for the future of the human race after what he’d seen in Iraq and Afghanistan and had gladly joined Garrett’s Holy Hydronastic Church when he had been dishonorably discharged for going too far in battle, killing two supposedly innocent civilians. Garrett knew there was no such thing as innocent in this world.

“Olsen,” Garrett said. “You need to hear this.”

Olsen didn’t respond. Like a good soldier, he only answered when asked a question.

“How many do you think we can fit in here?” Garrett asked Cutter.

Cutter looked around the observation room. “At least 25.”

“That’s enough. We’ve had too many mistakes and too much compromised loyalty. We’re going to have a demonstration.”

“Of what?”

Garrett glanced at the window, and Cutter followed his gaze. A look of understanding crossed his face when he realized what Garrett was planning.

“Sam Watson is already dead,” Garrett said, “but we still have Gavin Dean and Barry Pinter. They were careless and will be a liability in our future plans. Bring them here. Immediately.”

“Who should observe it?” Cutter asked.

“Bring everyone who knows the full extent of the plan. They need to see what will happen to them and their spouses if they try to back out now.”

Every one of his followers was ready to die for the cause, but most knew only that a wonderful New World would begin in five days and that they were chosen to be a part of it. For security purposes, only a select few knew what the New World really meant. Sam Watson proved that security might have been put at risk.

Garrett turned back to Olsen, who seemed confused. He was not one of the select few.

“Pinter and Dean,” Garrett said, “are going to die in the room right behind that window because they did not accomplish their missions. Now I have a mission for you. I have discovered that Tyler Locke is going to Seattle. He rearranged his travel plans, so he obviously suspects something. I don’t know what it is, but at this point, it can’t be much. However, he is a very resourceful man, and with time, he will find out more. Your mission is to kill him.”

“Yes, sir,” Olsen said. “Understood, sir.”

“I want to make sure it is perfectly clear. I don’t want to see you back here until Locke is dead. Because if I do, you’ll be the next one going into that room. And what happens in there is far worse than you can possibly imagine. Either Locke dies, or you do. Understood?”

For the first time, Olsen’s steely demeanor wavered. He took a quick glance at the sterile room and licked his lips.

“It’s clear, sir. Locke is a dead man walking.”

SIXTEEN

Gordian’s Gulfstream jet left St. John’s at one in the morning, Newfoundland Time, 30 minutes after the helicopter arrived from Scotia One. There was room for up to twelve people, but Locke, Dilara, and Grant were the only passengers. Because of all the out-of-the-way locations Gordian’s staff worked, Gordian kept three of the Gulfstreams in its fleet. The fees Gordian charged more than covered their use, and the firm had been able to buy them for a song in a government sale of confiscated drug smugglers’ property.

Grant was already asleep in the back, and despite a nap in the helicopter, Locke felt his own eyes drooping. Dilara, on the other hand, seemed wide awake. She had just returned from the plane’s lavatory, where she had changed into a jacket, blouse, jeans, and boots Locke had arranged to be waiting for them on the tarmac. He wanted to ask her some more questions before he snoozed.

“Thanks for the clothes,” she said. “I felt like a prison inmate in that jumpsuit.”

“I don’t think anyone would mistake you for an escaped convict, but I do think your new duds suit you better.”

“And I never thanked you for rescuing us in the lifeboat. From what I heard, it was all your idea.”

“Yeah, my crazy ideas sometimes actually work.”

She looked back at Grant and shook her head. “How can he sleep like that after everything that’s happened?”

“An old Army axiom,” Locke said. “Sleep when you can because you never know when the next chance will be. He’s just sleeping ahead.”

“Sleeping ahead. I wish I could do that.”

“You should try. We’ve got an eight hour flight ahead of us. But first, how about we chat?”

“Okay. Tell me something about yourself.”

Locke grinned. “Like what?”

“Who was your boyhood hero?”

“Easy. Scotty from Star Trek.”

“The engineer?” She laughed, a rich, throaty sound that Locke found infectious.

“What can I say? I’m a true geek at heart. Kirk was the hero, but Scotty was always the one saving his butt. And you? Don’t tell me it was Indiana Jones.”

Dilara shook her head. “Princess Diana. When I was young, I was a girly girl. I loved the dresses. But my father kept dragging me around the world, and archaeology became my passion.”

“And Noah’s Ark?”

“My father’s passion.”

“Sam Watson said your father actually found it.”

“You don’t believe him.”

“I’m a natural-born skeptic. So no, I don’t.”

“Which part? That the Ark existed or that my father found it?”

“That a 450-foot-long ship carried all of the world’s animals two-by-two upon waters that flooded the Earth.”

“Many people believe the literal story in the Bible.”

“And I’m sure you know that,” Locke said, “for many reasons, it’s simply not possible. At least, not without miracle after miracle. The story of the Ark took place 6000 years ago. At that time, wood was the only construction material used in boat making. The largest wooden ship ever made, a Civil War frigate called the Dunderberg, was 377 feet long.”

Dilara looked dubious. “You just know that? What, are you a walking encyclopedia?”

“As the risk of bursting my aura of omnipotence, I’ll admit I did a little research once we had the Internet connection back up.”

“So you’re saying Noah’s Ark couldn’t have been bigger than 377 feet long?”

“From an engineering standpoint, a purely wooden ship bigger than that is untenable. Without the iron frames and internal bracing that 19th-century ships had, a ship the size of Noah’s Ark would flex like a rubber band. It would have sprung leaks in a thousand places. Not to mention that in a raging storm like the Flood, wave oscillations would have snapped the frame like a twig. The Ark would have sunk in minutes. Goodbye, human race.”

“Maybe it was smaller than the Bible claimed.”

“The size is only the first problem,” Locke said. “Do you know how long it takes for wood to rot completely away?”

“In a desert climate like Egypt, thousands of years. We find wooden artifacts in Egyptian tombs all the time.”

“And in a rainy climate?”

“Several hundred years if the wood isn’t maintained,” Dilara said. “Certainly less than a thousand years, even in alpine conditions.”

“Exactly. Noah’s Ark was supposed to have landed on Mt. Ararat, which gets substantial amounts of precipitation. Just look at all the collapsing barns from a hundred years ago. If those barns are already rotting, any traces of the Ark would have disappeared thousands of years ago.”

“Believe me, I know all the arguments against it. My father believed in the Ark, but he didn’t subscribe to the literal interpretation because of the logical problems with the story as it’s given in the Bible. For example, there are 30 million species in the world, meaning Noah would have had to load 50 pairs of animals per second to do it in seven days, even if he could fit them all in a boat that size.”

“Which he couldn’t have, even if the Ark had been ten times bigger.” They were getting on a roll now, each of them feeding off the other.

“Then there’s the problem of the amount of food and water the Ark would have to carry,” Dilara said. “This is one of my personal favorites. One elephant alone eats 150 pounds of food a day. So if you have four elephants, two Asian and two African, for just 40 days that’s 24,000 pounds of food, which also comes out the other end. Now add in rhinos, hippos, horses, cows, and thousands of other animals. Eight people feeding all those animals and cleaning up after them would have been impossible.”

“Not to mention smelly. And let’s not forget the fact that it would take five times the amount of water there is on Earth to cover all of the continents. Melting the polar ice caps might put Florida under water, but no way would the oceans cover mountains.”

Dilara looked impressed. “So you know some of the arguments against literal interpretation.”

“Not really,” Locke said. “But I know science.”

“Not everyone takes the Bible literally. Some people see the story as an allegory. But even allegories usually have their bases in fact, so alternative theories have been proposed to explain the Flood story. Did you know that the Bible’s story was the not the first?”

“I know that Flood stories are common themes across many cultures.”

“But the Bible’s story specifically seems to come from a tale told 1000 years before the Bible was even written. In 1847, archaeologists discovered cuneiform tablets that told the epic of Gilgamesh. Its story of the Deluge is remarkably similar to the one in the Bible, so some historians think the Jewish scholars who wrote the Old Testament based the story of Noah on Gilgamesh.”

“You still have the problem that, scientifically, it ain’t possible.”

“Not literally, as written in the Bible. But in 1961, Bill Ryan, an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, discovered that the Mediterranean burst through a dam in the Bosporus Strait sometime around 5600 BC. Until that time, the Black Sea was a freshwater lake 400 feet below sea level. When the dam burst, a waterfall 50 times greater than Niagara Falls filled in the entire Black Sea in a matter of months. Now imagine being a farmer living on the shores of the Black Sea at that time.”

“I guess you’d have to take all of your family, animals, and belongings, and hightail it out of there.”

“Possibly by boat,” Dilara said. “With embellishment and a few added miracles, it could have turned into the story of Noah.”

“I’ll buy that. But it still doesn’t explain how your father found the Ark, how he would even know it was the Ark, how it survived all those millennia, or most importantly, what it has to do with the impending death of billions of people, as your friend Sam Watson claimed.”

Dilara sat back in her seat and looked out the window. She unconsciously stroked her hair as she thought. Locke caught himself staring at her, and he looked away just before she turned back.

“You’re a real optimist,” Dilara said. “Is the glass always half empty with you?”

“With me, the glass is too big. I’m just trying to zero in on the answer. It’s the way I work.”

“So how do we get those answers?”

“Sam said the name Hayden. It must have something to do with Rex Hayden’s plane crash. I’ve arranged for us to get a first-hand look at the crash site. I’m guessing the plane was somehow brought down intentionally.”

“Another bomb?” Dilara’s eyes looked as wide as they did when she found the bomb on the rig.

“No, it ran out of fuel and crashed. I don’t have many details yet, but I always like to see the crash site itself before we listen to the flight recorder and start the laboratory analyses. Then we’re going to Seattle.”

“Why?”

“That’s where Coleman’s company is based. There might be something at his office that can shed light on everything that’s happened. We’ll also swing by Gordian headquarters. I’ve got to talk to my boss and let him know what’s going on. We also have a computer data recovery guru who’s the best I’ve ever met. He should be able to help us with our research.”

“You seem pretty gung ho about this now.”

“A near-death experience will do that for you.”

“Now that I survived the attempt to blow up the oil platform, do you think they’ll stop trying to kill me?” Dilara’s voice sounded more frustrated than anything, maybe because she and Locke still had no idea who “they” were.

Locke shook his head. “Sorry, but they seem like the persistent types. That’s why you’re staying with me from now on.”

“You don’t think I can take care of myself?”

“Oh, I have no doubt you can. But if we’re going to solve this thing, we need to stick together. Remember, they want to kill me now, too. Maybe even Grant, but they better not even think of going after him.”

“Why?”

“They’d be on the wrong end of a whupping if they tangled with Grant. He’s the real deal. He’s a black belt in Krav Maga and an expert in any weapon you can think of.”

“Not to mention that he’s huge. What’s Krav Maga?”

“An Israeli form of martial arts. With his wrestling moves, it’s a lethal combination.”

“He was in Army Special Forces, I bet. What branch? Delta?”

“I could tell you, but he’d have to kill me.”

“I remember seeing him on TV one time. He was intense. In person, he’s got such a friendly face.”

“Normally. But he’s the scariest son of a bitch I’ve ever seen when he’s mad.”

She leaned over to him. “And what about you? You know Krav Maga?”

“Grant’s taught me few moves. I can handle myself.”

“I’ve noticed.” She held his eyes a few more seconds then sat back. “Then I better stick with you.”

“While we’re trying to figure all this out, is there someone we should keep informed? That you’re safe, I mean?”

She shook her head. “No one.”

“What about Mr. Kenner?” Locke glanced at her ring finger. It was bare, no tan line.

She followed his gaze and splayed her fingers. “Right. You know my maiden name is Arvadi.”

“Didn’t seem relevant until now.”

“I got divorced two years ago,” she said. “Another archaeologist. You know how it goes when two people don’t see each other much, traveling all over the world separately. Not enough time together. I decided to keep the name since I’d already established my credentials with it.” She paused. “How about you? Any family?”

“A younger sister. We were Air Force brats. My father’s still in active service, a general. Runs the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. I don’t see him much now. He didn’t care for my choice of career. Sounds like you and your dad were a lot closer than I am with mine.”

“Married?” Dilara asked. Her tone was curious, but neutral.

He shook his head. “Widower.” He didn’t elaborate. The silence grew heavy.

“Well,” Dilara said, taking the hint, “I think I will get some sleep.”

“You can have my seat,” a deep voice said from behind Locke. He turned to see Grant standing behind him. “It’s already nice and warm. And Locke told me you wanted to know about some of The Burn’s signature wrestling moves. When you wake up, I’ll tell you about the Detonator. I used that one to win my first match.”

“I can’t wait to hear about it,” she said with a laugh and moved to the back of the plane.

Grant took her seat.

“I like her.” He lowered his voice. “So…it sounded like you two were hitting it off.” He winked. Sometimes Grant went overboard pushing Locke to find someone after his wife died.

“Just making conversation,” Locke said. He glanced back at Dilara. She was already curled up in the seat, her eyes closed, a blanket wrapped around her. It was the first time Locke had really seen her vulnerable, and Locke felt a overwhelming surge of protectiveness flow through him. He turned back to see that Grant had a silly grin on his face.

“You know about my girlfriend?”

“The woman you met two weeks ago in Seattle is now your girlfriend?”

“Tiffany,” Grant said. “She’s perfect.”

“You’ve been on what, two dates?”

“I know it’s early, but she has the all the qualities of the future Mrs. Westfield. Know how we met?”

Locke smiled. “At the strip club?”

“At the athletic club. She just works at a strip club.”

“Bouncer?”

“Waitress,” Grant said, feigning annoyance. “Putting herself through nursing school. She’s strong but petite.”

“I hope she’s not too petite. You could crush her.”

“You should see her on the bench press. Wow! I noticed her. She noticed me. For a few days, no talking, just looking. But we finally made a connection one day. Know how?”

“How?”

“Just making conversation.”

Locke looked at Dilara again. She was fast asleep.

“There’s nothing going on,” he said.

“All right.” Grant didn’t sound convinced.

“You’re going to be a pain in the ass about this, aren’t you?” Locke said.

“Oh yeah,” Grant replied.

Locke sighed. It was going to be a long flight.

SEVENTEEN

After landing at McCarren International in Las Vegas, Locke, refreshed from four-hour’s sleep, took the keys to a rental Jeep that was delivered to the Gordian jet and got into the driver’s seat. A GPS navigational unit sat on the dashboard in front of Grant. In a few minutes, they were on Highway 93, which would take them all the way to the crash site.

“How far away are we?” Dilara asked from the back seat.

“Judy Hodge, the lead Gordian engineer on site, said it was about eighty miles,” Grant replied. “Smack dab in the middle of nothing. Luckily, it’s only about a mile off 93 on flat ground. If it had been in a canyon or on a mountain, the recovery would take ten times as long.”

“How long will it take? To figure out what happened, I mean.”

“Usually, months for the initial findings, and years for the final report.”

“Years? Sam said we had until Friday, and it’s already Monday morning!”

“Because this doesn’t look like an accident,” Locke said, “I’ll convince the NTSB to put a rush on the investigation. Grant, I want you take over here.”

“Oh, you are mean,” Grant said. “To Tiffany, that is.”

“She’ll live without you for a few more days. We’ll ship all of the wreckage back to the TEC. Put it all in hangar three.”

“What’s the TEC?” Dilara asked, pronouncing it as a word like Locke did.

“Gordian’s Test and Engineering Center. It’s in Phoenix, so it won’t take long to move the wreckage there. It’s a 500-acre facility built way out in the desert twenty years ago. Phoenix grew so much in that time that it’s now right outside the suburbs. We have a seven-mile oval test track, a dirt obstacle course, a skid pad, both an indoor and an outdoor crash test sled, and extensive laboratory facilities. There’s also a mile-long runway and five hangars for flight testing.”

Locke knew he rhapsodized like a proud father when he described the place, but he couldn’t help it. It was Gordian’s crown jewel.

“So you test for the car companies?” Dilara said. “I thought they had their own tracks and pads and everything.”

“They do, but a lot of companies want independent testing. Insurance companies, lawyers, tire companies. Our biggest client is the US government. We can test virtually anything on wheels. Everything from bicycles to heavy trucks. In fact, they’re going to be putting a mining truck through its paces day after tomorrow.”

“Sounds like you enjoy that kind of stuff. Do you get to drive it?”

“Sometimes, if I get the chance. This truck would be especially fun.”

“A truck? You’re kidding. Why?”

“It’s a Liebherr T 282B, a German truck that’s 25-feet tall and an empty weight of 200 tons.”

“That’s 400,000 pounds,” Dilara said. “I can’t imagine something that size.”

“It’s the biggest truck in the world. Essentially a three-story building on wheels. When fully loaded, it weighs twice as much as a 747 at takeoff. The tires alone are 12-feet in diameter and weigh more than any car you’ve ever driven. A Wyoming coal mine asked us to test it for them to see if they want to buy it. Our fee is worth it when you’re thinking of buying 20 of them at $4 million a pop.”

“Sounds incredible.”

“Unfortunately, since we’re going back to Seattle, I’ll have to wait to take it for a spin.”

The rest of the ride passed silently. They crossed over Hoover Dam and into Arizona. The harsh desert terrain was dotted with only a smattering of trees. The air shimmered from the heat, the temperature already into the 90s.

Twenty-six miles north of Kingman, the GPS unit indicated they were at the turnoff, and Locke wheeled the Jeep onto a dirt access road. In another minute, they approached a cluster of vehicles. Thirty vans topped with satellite dishes dotted the sparse landscape. Reporters stood in front of cameras, broadcasting what they knew about the crash that had taken the life of one of the world’s best-known celebrities.

They drove past the vans to a road block of three Arizona State Police cars. A trooper waved them to a stop.

“No press past this point,” the trooper said.

“We’re not journalists,” Locke said. “We’re with Gordian Engineering.” He handed the trooper his ID.

The trooper took a quick look at it, then handed it back. “They’re expecting you, Dr. Locke. You’ll find them about a half mile ahead.”

“Thanks.”

Locke continued on until he reached another set of vehicles. This group was dominated by police cars, fire engines, and coroners’ hearses for evacuating the bodies, but they were also accompanied by three Army Humvees and a hazardous materials tractor-trailer. Next to it, two people in biohazard suits bent over a grim row of black bags that must have contained the remains they had recovered so far. Locke couldn’t guess what the hazmat unit was there for. The plane shouldn’t have been carrying any dangerous chemicals, and any fuel would have burned up long ago.

A van sat apart from the other vehicles. On its side was the Gordian logo, a mechanical gear surrounding four icons that represented the firm’s areas of expertise: a shooting flame, a lightning bolt of electricity, an airplane superimposed over a car, and a stylized human figure.

A trim woman in her 30s stood next to the van and spoke into a walkie-talkie. Judy Hodge looked up when she heard the Jeep approaching. She wore a Gordian baseball cap, tank-top, jeans, and latex gloves. When she saw that it was Locke, she put the walkie-talkie on her belt and came over to the Jeep.

Locke hopped out and shook her hand. She nodded at Grant, and Locke introduced her to Dilara.

“Good to see you, Judy,” he said. “Looks like a real circus back there.”

“The police have already caught two reporters who snuck past the barricade,” Judy said. “Plus, we’ve had to fend off souvenir hunters. I’m glad we have G-Tag. We need to get this stuff off site as soon as we can. I never knew how crazy Hayden’s fans could be.”

G-Tag was a method for processing airplane wreckage that had been developed by Gordian. Each piece of wreckage was photographed with a digital camera, and its exact GPS location was recorded. Then a bar code was printed with a unique ID number and attached to the wreckage. The data was automatically sent to Gordian’s central computers, providing a detailed map of every piece of wreckage as it had been found. The G-Tag system reduced the amount of time needed to document the wreckage by a factor of ten from the previous manual method and meant they could start removing wreckage from the site within hours, preserving the debris from the elements.

“Have you started shipping wreckage to the TEC yet?” Locke asked.

“The first tractor-trailer will arrive in an hour. We’ll have 20 of them running back and forth to the TEC. The main concentration of wreckage is over there.” She pointed at a spot where workers were massed. Locke could only see a few large pieces, including what looked like an engine.

“When I’m done here, I’m heading back to Seattle with Dr. Kenner. We’ve got to rush this investigation. Judy, you’ll stay here on site until it’s cleared. Grant’s going to take care of processing the wreckage back at the TEC. Now tell me about the crash.”

They followed Judy into the desert. Locke saw dozens of pieces of metal, luggage, and assorted unidentifiable detritus already tagged with flags for removal. While they walked, Judy told them about the plane’s ghost flight back to the mainland. She’d received an electronic copy of the fighter pilots’ report and related its contents to them.

Locke stopped at a three-foot-square section of fuselage centered around a blown-out window. He knelt down to look at it as they talked.

“Any signs of explosive decompression?”

“None. The plane was completely intact until it hit the ground.”

Through the empty window frame, Locke saw something white underneath the fuselage catch the sunlight.

“Do you have any more gloves on you?” Locke asked. They might have missed a separate piece of wreckage under the fuselage section, which was tagged and flagged, meaning it had already been photographed.

“Sure,” Judy said and handed him a pair of gloves.

“So we might be looking at a slow oxygen leak?” Locke said as he donned them.

Judy gave him a quizzical look. “No. Wait, I thought you knew…”

“Knew what?” Locke said as he turned over the fuselage piece. He stood up in surprise when he saw what was under it. A gleaming white human femur, probably male.

It wasn’t unusual to find body parts strewn about with the wreckage, but it was strange to find a bone. Especially one that looked like it had been picked clean by scavengers, even though there was no possibility that coyotes had gotten to it under that piece of fuselage.

Judy spoke into her walkie-talkie. “We’ve got another one over here,” she said.

Locke heard someone reply that he was on his way.

“This isn’t the first bone you’ve found?” He bent over for a closer look.

Judy shook her head and started to speak. “We…”

Before she could say more, a voice behind Locke said, “Don’t touch that!”

He turned to see a man fully garbed in a biohazard suit approach. He took a photo of the bone, then gingerly picked it up and placed in a plastic bag. After he marked it, he left without saying another word.

“I’m sorry,” Judy said. “I thought you’d been briefed.”

“We just got the basics from Aiden MacKenna before we headed out here,” Locke said. “What the hell is going on, Judy?”

“That bone is why the hazmat team is here. Because of the condition of the remains, the FBI was worried about biological or chemical residues. The closest team was an Army unit from Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah. Didn’t find anything. They gave us the all-clear to start our processing yesterday afternoon.”

“How many bodies have you recovered so far?”

“None.”

“What?” Locke said, incredulous. “You must have found some by now. According to the manifest I saw, there were 27 people on board.”

“We’ve found remains from at least twenty people, but no bodies.”

“By remains, you mean hands, torsos, things like that?”

“No. That row of bags you saw before contains nothing but bones.”

Locke was speechless. Grant looked like he felt — completely shocked.

“How is that possible?” Locke finally said.

“We have no idea,” Judy said. “All we know is that before the plane crashed, something reduced every single person on board to skeletons.”