The Ark

EIGHTEEN

It had taken eight hours for Gavin Dean to return to Washington once the yacht had docked in Halifax. Garrett made sure that the leader of the failed mission on Scotia One had been told only that he was to appear immediately at the Orcas Island compound. Surely, he expected a dressing down for his failure, but he didn’t know how harsh it would be.

Barry Pinter, who had been given the task of eliminating Dilara Kenner as she left the airport, had already arrived at the compound and was helping with the last preparations for the upcoming days. Cutter was bringing them both down now that the observers were ready.

A retinue of Garrett’s top scientists and operatives gathered nervously in the observation room. Other than a few murmurs, they were quiet. They knew something important was about to occur, but they didn’t know the nature of it. Garrett, who stood at the window next to Svetlana Petrova, watched them. Good. They were in just the frame of mind he wanted. He pushed a button on the control board.

“Let’s begin,” he said into the microphone.

A door opened inside the test chamber, silencing the last whispers. Cutter led two men into the steel gray room. The first was Gavin Dean, a compact man with a crew cut and a tight-fitting black t-shirt that showed off a lean physique.

The second man was Barry Pinter, about a foot taller than Dean and at least 50 pounds heavier. He walked with the grace of a cat. Both men were veterans of Army special ops units: Dean with the Rangers, Pinter with the Green Berets.

Garrett looked at both of them dispassionately. He didn’t enjoy what was about to happen. It was simply necessary. It was a shame to part with them, but the project had reached a critical point, and he couldn’t take any chances. He needed to make examples of them.

Cutter left the room and closed the door behind him. A bar slammed down, the unmistakable sound of the door being locked. Dean and Pinter, who knew each other from previous operations, looked at each other, the confusion now turning to alarm. Then they surveyed the room, which they had never seen before.

The test chamber’s floor was made entirely from steel grating. Garrett had it forged from carbon steel that was exceptionally resistant to high temperatures. Above them, the ceiling was another grating that fed into a sophisticated venting system comprising 14 advanced filters. The sides of the room were inch-thick steel, and the observation window was made of a high-tech polymer that allowed it to be extremely thick without distorting the view.

The only object inside the chamber was a full-face gas mask lying on the floor.

Garrett keyed the microphone so that Dean and Pinter could hear what he was about to say to the observers.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. You are obviously wondering why everyone is here today. That’s good. Curiosity is one of the reasons I have recruited you for this epic journey. As you all know, we are very close to embarking on this voyage. Unfortunately, I am aware that some of the people involved with this project may be having second thoughts.”

Everyone in the gathered group was stone-faced. None wanted to betray any thoughts of that kind, especially if they were, indeed, harboring them.

“I understand that feeling. This is a huge undertaking. One that will change the face of this planet. A change that I — that we — believe will ultimately save the human race. But sacrifices will have to be made. From all of us. And I think some of you may be having trouble facing that reality.”

Garrett glanced into the chamber, and he could see fear on the faces of both Dean and Pinter. He casually noted that they were both surreptitiously eyeing the gas mask.

“Therefore, I thought it was important that we reinforce our resolve for the task ahead. That we can brook no wavering, no second thoughts, no betrayal, no failure. We must stay focused on the task at hand. And so, I have brought these two men here today.” Garrett waved his hand at the window. “Two men who have failed us, all of us, and put everything we have worked for at risk.”

He turned to the window. “Gavin. Barry. You are going to show these people why it is so important for each and every one of us to do our jobs with utmost competence. You will show them what’s at stake.”

Pinter ran to the door, prying at it, trying to find purchase to open it, but it was useless. The door was triple bolted and sealed. There was no way to open it from the inside. Dean simply stood there, stoic, waiting to hear what was next.

“There is only one gas mask for a reason,” Garrett continued. “In sixty seconds, the test chamber will be flooded with Arkon-B, a form of the biological agent that will make our New World possible. Whoever is wearing the gas mask will be spared its effects. The other…”

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

Garrett glanced at his watch.

“Fifty seconds,” he said to spur them on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I suppose we might be about to find out.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Seven, six, five…”

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

“Four, three, two…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NINETEEN

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

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

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

“What’s that for?” Dilara asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dilara raised her eyebrows at the security but said nothing.

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

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

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

“You’re a car nut, I see,” Dilara said. She looked more closely at some of the photos. Locke noticed that they were the ones that featured him with one arm around the same woman, a beautiful blonde, in all of them.

“That was my wife, Karen,” he said.

“She’s gorgeous.” Dilara faced Locke, her eyes showing the condolence he’d seen many times. “When did she pass away?”

He always dreaded the inevitable questions, but at least he was now able to talk about it without choking up. “Two years ago. Car accident. Her brakes failed, and she got broadsided at an intersection.”

“I’m very sorry.”

“Me too,” he said. He let the pause go on slightly too long. He cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind waiting here, I’m going to talk with my boss. I may ask you to come in, but I’d like to talk to him first. If the phone rings, it’ll be me, so go ahead and answer it.”

“Sure. I’ll just take in the view.”

Locke left her and walked to the end of the hall, where he knocked on the door of Miles Benson, Gordian’s president and CEO. He heard a gravelly voice yell.

“Locke, get your butt in here!”

The receptionist must have told Miles that Locke was there. He wasn’t even in the room yet, and it sounded like he was off to a great start.

Locke opened the door to Miles’ expansive office. The room was comfortable, but it was all business. In the middle of the room was an eight-person conference table. To the side were a couch and chair, with an empty space where a second chair would have been appropriate. At the far end sat a massive desk. Behind it was a weathered man in a flat-topped crew cut he retained from his days in the Army. Miles Benson waved Locke over but continued typing at his keyboard. When he was done, he looked up at Locke, raised an eyebrow at him, and grabbed a folder from his desk. Then he began to rise, something visitors rarely expected since they almost always knew that Miles Benson was a paraplegic, paralyzed from the waist down in an industrial accident.

Locke had seen him do so many times, but the process still amazed him. He rose, still sitting, courtesy of his IBOT chair, a motorized wheelchair developed by the maker of the Segway. The chair normally moved around on four large wheels, but whenever he felt like being twelve inches higher, Miles would activate the gyroscopic control that pivoted the seat so that it balanced on just two of the wheels. Computers continually adjusted the wheels so that it wouldn’t tip over. The effect was disconcerting at first, but Locke had quickly gotten used to it. He sat on the edge of the conference table so that his eyes were level with Miles’.

Miles fingered the controller, and the IBOT deftly swung around the desk. He shook Locke’s hand with a grip that could crush steel. Locke knew he lifted weights daily and exercised with a racing wheelchair. Miles wasn’t the type to let a little thing like paralysis slow him down.

“How was the marathon?” Locke asked.

“Won my age division,” Miles, who was 62, replied proudly. “I would have come in first for everyone 40 and up if I hadn’t gotten a blister on my left hand in the 23rd mile. Some son of a bitch from the Special Olympics passed me with a mile and a half to go.”

“I think you mean Para-Olympics.”

Miles grunted. “Whatever. All I know is he was twenty years younger than me, and that he was an ass. Looked over his sunglasses while he went by me and winked. I almost ran him off the road.”

“What stopped you?” Locke said with a smile.

“The same thing that’s stopping me from tearing you a new one for abandoning the Norway job — my good-natured heart. That’s a half-million dollar contract you let go.”

Miles was more than Locke’s boss. Miles had been a mentor in his college years, driving him to excel in engineering school when he was Locke’s professor and academic advisor at MIT. When Locke had left the military, it had been Miles who had advised him to start his own engineering consulting firm, which Locke called Gordian Engineering. When the grind of administrative and sales work had gotten to Locke, Miles had convinced him to merge Gordian with Miles’ own company that he had founded when he left MIT. The combined firm took on the Gordian name, and Miles assumed leadership of the combined company. Even though Miles was a stellar engineer, his true expertise was in sales and hiring, and with Locke able to concentrate his engineering skills on fieldwork, the company had doubled in size annually.

So even though Miles’ words would have seemed sharp to anyone else, Locke knew that he didn’t really mean it.

“I know you had a good reason,” Miles continued.

“The job’s not abandoned. Just delayed. We were able to finish up the work on Scotia One.”

“From what Aiden told me, you saved their bacon a couple of times.”

“Unfortunately, the only reason they were in trouble in the first place was because of me. And Dilara Kenner.”

Miles tossed the folder he’d been holding onto the conference table. “That’s for you. I already looked through it. I had Aiden gather up everything he could on Dr. Kenner. She has a pretty impressive background.”

“She’s pretty impressive in person, too.”

As Locke perused the contents of the folder, he explained to Miles the events of the last 36 hours. When he was through, he looked for some response from Miles, who was as inscrutable as ever.

“How do you think this is all related?” Miles finally asked.

“Good question. Coleman and Hayden are linked somehow, and somebody has gone to a lot of trouble to get Dilara Kenner and me out of the way so that we won’t find out how. The next job is to discover what their connection is to Genesis, Dawn, and Oasis. I’m hoping that if we know what they have in common, we’ll know how finding Noah’s Ark can prevent the death of a billion people. In the meantime, I think it’s time we involve the FBI on this.”

“I agree,” Miles said. “It sounds like you’re on to something here. I know the local Special Agent in Charge. I’ll give him a call. What about your father? You said you thought the guy who tried to bomb the rig was ex-military. Maybe General Locke could help us with this.”

Locke stiffened. The thought of running to his dad for help was horrifying. When times had been lean at Gordian, Miles had pushed Locke to get his father to steer some military contracts their way, but Locke had steadfastly refused.

Not if my life depended on it, he thought, but he said, “That’s not a good idea.”

Miles frowned. “You sure? He’s well-connected and could grease the skids for us getting information.”

“We can handle this on our own.”

Sherman Locke was a two-star general in the Air Force, an enlisted man who had worked his way up through Officer Candidate School. When Locke’s mother had left them when he was four, his maternal grandmother had raised Locke and his newborn sister. Their father had been a stern disciplinarian, and nothing Locke did ever seemed to be good enough. He was once grounded for three months for getting a B in high school, the only time it happened.

Locke never considered the Air Force Academy an option because his poor eyesight at the time — since corrected by laser surgery — meant he was ineligible for pilot training. Instead, he wanted to go to West Point. The General, as Locke called his father, wouldn’t support his application. The General never would tell Locke why, but he guessed it was because his father didn’t think he was tough enough for it. In defiance, when Locke matriculated at MIT, he immediately enrolled in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps over his father’s objections.

From that point on, Locke made sure to make his own way, both in the military and in private life. Getting help from his father was anathema. Their relationship had been cool ever since, even when Karen tried to mediate and bring them back together. Then she died, and the wall between them went up again.

Miles obviously didn’t think Locke was making the right call. Locke could see it on his face, but he couldn’t think of anything that would change his mind.

“All right,” Miles said after a pause. “It’s your decision. You’re keeping Dr. Kenner with you at all times? She seems to be critical to this whole thing.”

“She’s in my office now. I don’t plan to let her out of my sight.”

“Ask her in here,” Miles said. After Locke made the call, Miles said, “What’s your next step?”

“After we stop off at the computer shack to talk to Aiden, I’m going to take Dilara over to the Coleman offices and see if we can’t find out the connection there.”

A knock at the door. This time, Miles changed his voice to a pleasant invitation. “Please come in.”

Dilara came in without hesitation. Even though Locke had never told her about Miles’ condition, she didn’t show the slightest amazement at the sight of him sitting in his wheelchair three-feet above the floor. She walked right over to him with her hand outstretched.

“Nice to meet you, Dr. Benson,” she said.

“Your photos don’t do you justice, Dr. Kenner. And please call me Miles.”

“Thank you, Miles. And I’m Dilara. I assume you’ve heard my story.”

“Yes. Tyler says you’ve been through a lot in the last few days.”

“Let’s see. I had an old family friend die in my arms, I was run off the road, I survived a helicopter crash in the open ocean, and I was nearly blown up. So that would be yes. But at least I got some new clothes out of it. Oh, and I’m still alive.” Miles smiled at Locke as if to say he was right. She was impressive.

“Tyler thinks there’s much more to uncover here,” Miles said. “He has Gordian’s full resources to pursue this.”

“Thank you for your help.”

“Well, this isn’t just out of the goodness of my heart. Scotia One has already talked to me about replacing the lifeboat he blew up, so I want to know who to bill. The contract for investigating the Hayden crash will cover part of the expense. But most of all, I’m an old soldier, and I tend to take it personally when someone tries to kill one of my own.”

“I do, too,” Locke said. He stood. “Shall we go see what Aiden can tell us?”

“Keep your eyes open out there,” Miles said.

“Don’t worry,” Locke said. “Dilara can handle herself.”

“I know. She’s not the one I was talking to.”

Howard Olsen stood 50 feet from the Gordian building’s entrance, hovering at a bus stop to avoid suspicion. Since he hadn’t known how Tyler Locke was arriving in Seattle, the best place to intercept his targets was at the company headquarters, and his plan had been correct. He’d seen Locke and Dilara Kenner arrive in a red sports car 30 minutes ago, but the garage gate had prevented him from following them in and finishing the job right then and there.

He’d scouted the building thoroughly, but there was no way for him to get in undetected without more advance work. His next opportunity would be to tail them when they drove out of the building. His partner, Cates, was waiting in a car around the corner. There was no place to park within view of the garage exit, so Olsen would call Cates when he spotted Locke’s car emerging. Then it would be a simple matter of following them and waiting until they stopped at a light. Olsen and Cates would pull up next to them and spray them with the two MP-5 submachine guns that were in the car. They’d be dead before they knew what was happening.

TWENTY

The computer shack, like the rest of Gordian, was not what Dilara had been expecting. She thought it would be some drab box filled with cluttered computer equipment and wires all over the place. Instead, she found a sleek high-tech center that could have served as the bridge of a futuristic starship. Colorful flat panels sat on ergonomically-correct desks spaced at discreet distances around the room. Through a huge window at the opposite end, she could see an entire wall covered with a screen the size of the Jumbotron at a football stadium.

Everything she saw continued to confound what she thought she knew about engineers. Tyler Locke was this swashbuckling adventurer, his company was on the cutting edge of technology, and every person she met defied the nerd stereotype. She had been taken aback seeing Miles Benson’s wheelchair solidly perched on two wheels, but she thought she hid it well.

“That’s our pre-visualization facility,” Locke said, pointing at the Jumbotron. Two men slumped on a couch, wildly swinging controllers and blasting away at life-sized aliens in some videogame. “Before we go to work on a difficult project, we like to storyboard scenarios or display engineering schematics. When the pre-viz isn’t in use, we let our guys blow off steam with it.”

Other than the two game players, only one person was in the computer shack, typing at a computer.

“It’s Monday,” Dilara said. “Where is everyone?”

“Could be a meeting going on, but most of our engineers don’t have regular hours, so work weeks are relative. We’re driven more by deadlines and when the clients need to see us. Sometimes this room will be packed on a Saturday night if we’re finishing up a project.”

The room’s lone occupant, a shaggy-haired man in his twenties, peered intently at a monitor while his hands flew over the keyboard like a virtuoso playing a Beethoven sonata. His back was to them, and he was so focused on the computer that he didn’t seem to notice them.

“He hates to be surprised,” Locke said with a grin. The man at the computer didn’t flinch and kept typing. Locke went over to the man and stood directly behind him. He raised his hands as if he were going to grab the man’s shoulders.

“It won’t work, Tyler,” the man said in an Irish brogue without stopping what he was doing. “I noticed you and that fine lady when you entered. You can’t sneak up on me when there are twenty monitors in the room reflecting your every move.”

He spun around in his chair and popped to his feet. He shook hands with Locke and then began to use sign language. That’s why he hadn’t turned around when they were speaking. The man was deaf.

Locke smirked and replied both in sign language and verbally. “Yes, I will introduce you, and no, she is not interested in that.” The man, who had a handsome face and thick eyebrows that overpowered his wire-framed glasses, smiled at her roguishly. Whatever he had said, she didn’t get the sense that Locke would tell her.

“Dilara,” Locke said still looking at the man, “this is our resident computer data recovery expert, Aiden MacKenna. As you can see, he is deaf, and he has a wicked sense of humor. I’m signing to him as a courtesy, but he can read lips, and his glasses display a tiny text translation of your spoken words.”

Dilara took Aiden’s outstretched hand. “A pleasure,” he said. “And I was simply asking Tyler how long he was in town for.” He spoke with a clarity unusual for a deaf person. If Locke hadn’t told her, she wouldn’t have known about his hearing impairment.

Locke threw him a disapproving look. “You’re lucky that you’re indispensable.”

“That I am. And lucky you are that I chose you over Microsoft or Google.” Aiden turned his attention back to Dilara. “So you’re the archaeologist I’ve been hearing so much about. You don’t look much worse for the wear.”

“Well, Tyler has been taking good care of me.” As soon as she said it, she realized how it sounded.

“Has he now? And what can I do for you both?”

“A couple of things,” Locke said a little too quickly. Dilara thought she saw his cheeks redden slightly. “First of all, what connections have you found between the items I told you about?”

Aiden dropped back into his chair. “Ah yes. Your cryptic phrases.” He plucked a Post-It note from the monitor. “Hayden. Project. Oasis. Genesis. And Dawn.”

“Don’t forget Coleman.”

“Right. And somehow these are related to Noah’s Ark?”

“You tell me.”

“Well, I think we’re all in agreement that Hayden refers to Rex Hayden and his unfortunate demise. Never really cared for the guy myself. His movies were shite.”

“Any link to Coleman?”

“My research doesn’t show any connection between Hayden and Coleman. Not that I expected to find a link between a movie star and an engineer. And I couldn’t get into Coleman’s files online. The office is still there, but I’m told it went dark after the top engineers were killed. To get anything from their files, you’d have to access their computers on site.”

“What about the other words?”

“Well, in isolation they were too generic to mean anything. For instance, I thought Genesis was simply a reference to the first book of the Bible. But then I put them in the order you gave them. To me they looked like phrases rather than words, so I tossed them together. Project Oasis doesn’t show up anywhere. Maybe it was something Coleman worked on. But I did find something for Genesis Dawn.”

Locke snapped his fingers as if he just figured it out as well. “The cruise ship.”

“You’re kidding,” Dilara said, perplexed yet again at how all this was tied together. “A cruise ship?”

“Not just any cruise ship,” Aiden said, handing them a picture of an enormous vessel. “The largest cruise ship ever built. Of course, every new cruise ship seems to be the largest ever built. Capacity for 6000 passengers and 2000 crew. Makes the Titanic look like a bathtub toy.”

Locke glanced at the printout and then handed it to Dilara. It looked like a promotional photo from the cruise line’s web site. The Genesis Dawn was shown as if it were passing the Statue of Liberty, which was dwarfed by the immense ship.

“And guess what?” Aiden continued. “She makes her official maiden voyage on Friday.”

Locke looked up sharply. “Where?”

“Debarkation port is Miami.”

Dilara thought back to the wreckage of Hayden’s plane and the gruesome discovery of bones. She exchanged glances with Locke. They both realized what the implications were.

“Oh my God!” she said. “We’ve got to stop it!”

“What do you mean?” Aiden said, confused. “Stop what?”

“She’s right,” Locke said. “The Genesis Dawn might be the next target.”

“For what?”

“For the bioweapon that was used on Rex Hayden’s plane.”

“Why would they kill a shipload of people?”

“That’s a good question.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dilara said. “We need to get them to stop the sailing.”

“There’s no way we’re going to convince anyone to stop the maiden voyage of a billion-dollar ship without some pretty strong evidence,” Locke said. “The best we could hope for is tighter security, but with 8000 crew and passengers to search, it’ll be hard to stop the attackers unless we know what we’re looking for.”

“What are we waiting for, then?” Dilara said impatiently. “Let’s get over to this Coleman guy’s office and see what we can find.”

Aiden seemed amused by her eagerness, but Dilara was too fired up to care. She was sick of being on the defensive. She wanted to start getting ahead of whoever was behind all this.

“You heard the lady,” Locke said. “We’re on our way there. But one last thing. What have you gotten on Sam Watson?”

“I haven’t had time to work on that yet. All I know is that he worked for a small pharmaceutical firm.”

“Keep on that. We need to know how he found out about all this.”

“Will do.” Aiden handed Locke an object the size of a pack of chewing gum. “That USB drive is the latest from Samsung. Should be big enough to download anything you find on Coleman’s computers. Just out of curiosity, how do you plan to get in?”

“I have an idea.”

“Well, good hunting.” Without another word, Aiden sat back at his computer and began typing again.

As they left, Dilara said, “Aiden’s enunciation is excellent.”

“He went deaf only five years ago. Viral meningitis.”

“Do you have many disabled people on staff?”

“Over a dozen. Finding Aiden was just a case of serendipity, but Miles is well-known in the disabled community. He’s aggressive about recruiting them.”

When Locke and Dilara were in the elevator, he punched the button for the lobby instead of the parking garage.

“We’re not driving?” Dilara said.

“Coleman’s office building is only three blocks from here. There’ll be plenty of people on the street, so we should be safe. They don’t seem to like witnesses. But if you’d like, we can drive instead.”

“Not at all. It’ll feel good to stretch my legs. I’m used to being outside most of the time anyway.”

They exited past a formidable front security area and into a street scene that bustled with life. The afternoon sun was shadowed by the tall buildings, but the air was still warm. They used the first crosswalk to get to the opposite side of the street and headed north.

She still wore the clothes Locke had provided for her, and if they were going to continue to work together until Friday, she was going to need more. She slowed when she passed a store with a good selection of outdoor wear and the collection of shirts and pants in the window was just her style. She pointed at them.

“Do you mind if we go in there on the way back?” she asked Locke. “I usually travel light, but this is ridiculous.” She waved at her current ensemble.

Locke smiled and glanced at the store’s window. “Absolutely. I’m sorry we couldn’t get you more…” Suddenly, his eyes flew open in alarm, and he yelled, “Get down!”

He shoved Dilara roughly to the ground and covered her body. It happened so fast that she was too shocked to resist. Then she heard a series of quick thuds, like muffled drumbeats, and the storefront window blasted inward, showering her and Locke with stray shards.

It only took a moment for her to comprehend what was going on. The muffled thuds were silenced gunshots. Someone across the street was shooting at them.

TWENTY-ONE

Olsen had been surprised to see Locke and Kenner emerge from the Gordian building’s front door. They crossed at the light and began to walk along the opposite side of the street. He quickly reassessed the situation and realized that this was an even better opportunity to take them out. Fifth Avenue, a one-way street heading south, was only thirty feet across. From this range, he could cut them down and escape before anyone could react.

He radioed Cates to bring the car around. Within seconds, Cates came to a stop in front of him in the generic Chevy they had stolen for this operation. Locke and Kenner were directly across from Olsen. He dove into the car and came back out with the silenced MP-5 cradled in his arm. Normally, he would never attempt an assassination in the open like this with so many witnesses, but he was unrecognizable in a wig and fake mustache. By the time the police got a serious investigation under way, it wouldn’t matter. Olsen would be safely back at the Orcas Island compound, and the Seattle police would be a distant memory.

Locke and Kenner were facing away from him. He raised the MP-5 to his shoulder and aimed. He couldn’t have asked for an easier shot, but just as he had pulled the trigger, Locke and Kenner dove to the ground, disappearing behind a parked car. He unloaded the rest of the clip into the car, hoping the bullets would go right through it and into his targets.

Olsen realized his mistake and swore at himself. Locke had seen him in the window’s reflection. In his eagerness to end the mission quickly, Olsen had stupidly lost his most important advantage: surprise. But now he was committed. He slapped a new magazine into the submachine gun. He could still finish this right here.

“Let’s go,” Olsen said to Cates. “Leave the car. We’ll grab a new one when we need it.” They had been careful to use gloves.

Cates, a bulky fireplug of a man in a skullcap and sunglasses, jumped out of the car with the other MP-5. A bus screeched to a stop in front of them, blocking their view. They ran behind it and sprinted across the street, hoping to catch their targets still on the ground.

When they had a view of the opposite side again, Olsen saw Locke and Kenner throw open the door to the clothing store they were in front of and run inside, past screaming customers who were flat on the ground covering their heads, some on cell phones calling 911. Olsen jumped through the window he’d just shot out and brushed aside the mannequin that remained standing. He took another shot, but the bullets chewed up a few clothing racks and missed. The few people still standing in the store dove to the floor at the sight of the weapon. The targets went through a door at the opposite end of the store into the interior of the Westlake Center mall, and Olsen and Cates took off in pursuit.

Locke and Kenner went around the corner just before Olsen could shoot, and then he saw them take an escalator two steps at a time. The angle was bad, so he followed instead of firing.

The targets led Olsen and Cates up two sets of escalators, brushing past customers who were oblivious to the silenced gunshots that caused the mayhem outside the mall’s interior. Squeals of fright erupted when people saw the submachine guns waving around.

Olsen and Cates were halfway up the second escalator when the targets turned left and ran past a line of people. Olsen saw where they were headed. The monorail station was inside the mall on the third floor just off the food court, and Locke and Kenner had jumped the ticket line. The train was about to depart.

“Do you see them?” he asked Cates.

“I think they got on the monorail!”

“Get on that train!” Olsen yelled as he backtracked down the escalator. “I’ll wait out here in case they get off. Take them out if you can. I’ll meet you at the other station.”

He stopped to make sure Cates got on and scanned the crowd. Then the train’s doors closed, and it quietly rolled out of the station. As it passed, he glimpsed Locke’s face in the window.

Olsen raced down the escalators. The monorail had only one other stop, right next to the Space Needle at the Seattle Center entertainment complex. He ran outside to find the Chevy hemmed in by traffic. A police car had already arrived at the scene. The officer was looking in the other direction, his pistol drawn, trying to find out what was going on. Without waiting for him to turn, Olsen shot the officer in the back. He jumped into the squad car and hit the siren.

The monorail glided on its overhead track two blocks ahead of him, but if he hurried, Olsen could make it to the other station before the train arrived. He made a U-turn over the sidewalk and wove around the traffic in the wrong direction down Fifth Avenue. Within seconds, he’d already closed the gap with monorail. At this rate, he’d be standing in the station by the time Locke and Kenner got there. If Cates failed to kill them, Olsen would be there to finish the job.

Locke planned to give himself a good butt-kicking if he lived through this. He’d been careless to let his guard down, but he never expected his attackers to be so bold, shooting at him and Dilara in broad daylight with crowds of onlookers. Now that he was on his home turf, he had gotten complacent. He had a Washington state permit for a concealed handgun. He should have gone to his house first and retrieved his Glock pistol. A lot of good the permit did him now, unarmed against two professionals carrying automatic weapons.

There was only one reason he and Dilara were still alive. When he and Dilara had been outside, an unusual movement across the street had caught his eye, reflected in the store’s huge glass window: a man raising the distinctive outline of a submachine gun. His instincts took over, and the shots missed them by inches. After the bullets started flying, the only way to run was into Westlake Center, but the monorail loading passengers overhead had given him an idea.

Locke’s impulse had been to get onto the train just as it was leaving and convince the operator to stop before the two-minute trip was over so that the police could arrive and drive off their attackers. Suspended 20 feet above the street, there would have been no way for their pursuers to reach them. When Locke saw one of them dive into the back of the four-car train right before the doors closed, he knew he’d have to change his tactics.

Their sole option was to stay alive for the next 120 seconds and hope the police would be waiting at the other end. The question was how to fend off this guy for those two minutes. He and Dilara were in the lead car, with the driver only 20 feet away. Even on an October Monday, the sunny day meant that the train was filled with tourists, many of whom were loaded down with shopping bags and souvenirs. Kitschy Space Needle models and gimcracks from Pike Place Market were everywhere, but nothing that looked like it would be an effective weapon. Locke would have to take on this guy hand-to-hand.

He and Dilara crouched down behind the maintenance access panel that jutted three feet across the linkage between the first and second cars. He was just as scared as he was in any combat situation he faced in Iraq, but he tamped it down like he always did and focused on what to do next. He heard screams from the back, but no gunfire. The passengers must have seen the gun, but his pursuer was a professional. He wouldn’t waste bullets on someone unless they got in his way. Locke took a peek through a gap in the access panel and didn’t like what he saw.

The gunman, now in the third car, was methodically walking through the train, checking each passenger. The tourists provided some cover, but Locke was afraid of getting innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire. He had to do something before this turned into a bloodbath.

“Dilara, crawl toward the front,” Locke said. “Take my cell phone. Call the police and tell them that there is an armed criminal on board the monorail. Look at me and wait for my signal. When I give the thumbs up, stand. Make sure the gunman sees you.” He knew it was risky, putting Dilara in harm’s way if the attacker was able to take the shot, but it was their only chance.

Her face reflected his own feelings, a mixture of fear and that sense of not again, but she understood immediately what he intended.

“I’m your distraction,” she said.

“Right. We don’t have much time. Go.”

Dilara slithered forward. Locke watched the gunman approach. The man was calm, as if he had hunted down people before and wouldn’t have any trouble with Locke and Dilara. In ten more seconds, the gunman was on the other side of the access panel. Locke gave Dilara the thumbs up.

Dilara stood and pounded on the train’s front window. The gunman, who had been inspecting a passenger, looked up and saw Dilara. He raised his weapon and took a bead on her. The diversion worked perfectly, the gunman totally focused on Dilara. Locke rose up in the gunman’s periphery and lashed out with his leg just as the gunman fired.

The shots went up and wide, shattering the train’s left side window. Screams cleaved the air. Locke followed the blow with an elbow to the head. For a moment, the man was dazed, and Locke reached for the gun, wrestling it from his grip.

Before he could use it, the gunman recovered and grabbed Locke by the throat. They fell to the floor, with the gunman on top of Locke. His hands gripped Locke’s neck like a vise, cutting off the blood flow to his brain. Locke let go of the gun, but he couldn’t force the hands to part. His vision narrowed. He tried to inhale, but got nothing. The grasp was crushing his larynx. He couldn’t breathe. If he couldn’t get this guy off of him, he’d be dead before the train arrived at the next station.

Through his tunnel vision, Locke saw the man turn his head in apparent surprise. He released one hand to defend himself from something, and then Locke saw an object plunge into the man’s eye. More screams from the passengers around him. The man went slack instantly and collapsed on Locke.

Locke pried the hands off his throat. He coughed until he caught his breath and heaved the man off of him. Then he could see what was sticking out of the dead man’s eye. A pewter model of the Space Needle, embedded in his face up to the base. He looked up to see who his savior was and saw Dilara looking down in a mixture of shock and relief.

“I am so sick of these guys,” she said, a sob catching in her throat.

“Are you all right?” Locke asked hoarsely.

She nodded. “I didn’t mean to kill him…I was aiming for his ear, just to knock him off you, but he turned his head and…” Her voice trailed off as she stared at the man, whose other eye stared back at her. She obviously had never killed someone before.

Locke stood and put his arm around her. “You did great. You saved my life. Thank you. Is anyone hurt?” he said loudly. Several people shook their heads. He looked around at the monorail passengers who had retreated in fear from the fight and were now staring in horror at the dead man on the floor. Although some of them were crying, nobody seemed to be injured.

He looked outside. They were entering the station at Seattle Center. Too late to stop. He had to hope the police were already there. He didn’t want to be stuck on the train any longer. There was still another gunman out there, the one he’d seen in the store window. If one guy was brazen enough to go after them on the monorail, then it wasn’t likely the other guy would give up any more easily.

The train came to a halt and the doors slid open. He tugged on Dilara’s hand. “Let’s get out of here.” Not wanting to be mistaken for one of the gunmen and getting shot by the police, Locke left the submachine gun where it was.

They ran down the station’s exit ramp, and Locke saw a squad car screech to a stop on the sidewalk outside 50 yards away where barriers blocked it from coming further. He could breathe a little easier now that the authorities had arrived. More squad cars were surely right behind this one. The driver’s door flew open, but the man emerging wasn’t wearing a policeman’s uniform. He was dressed in black. It was the mustached man from outside the clothing store. He must have hijacked a police car.

Oh, come on! Locke thought. Is one break too hard to get?

He yanked Dilara’s hand and dashed toward the closest cover: Seattle’s famed Space Needle. The 600-foot-tall tower was a concrete spire with a two-story disk on top for the viewing pleasure of the thousands who visited daily. On a clear day like today, Locke knew it would be crowded, and that he would be putting many people in harm’s way, but caught in the open as he was, he didn’t have a choice. He raced up the curving ramp, pulling Dilara with him.

Locke flung open the door and looked back. The gunman was sprinting toward them, snapping off erratic shots as he ran. A carpeted ramp led up and around to the elevators.

Locke and Dilara wound up past a line of sightseers patiently waiting their turn. When they reached the top of the ramp, Locke saw an elevator emptying. It was just what they needed.

They blew past the attendant, who could only yelp, “Hey!” as they passed him. Locke heard screams from the people in line, who must have seen their pursuer brandishing a gun.

“Get out!” Locke yelled at the nonplussed elevator operator who was guiding people to the exits. She stared at him, not sure what to do until shots from the silenced Hechler and Koch tore into the elevator wall. She dove aside, and Locke frantically pushed the elevator’s button for the observation level, while Dilara pressed herself to the opposite side.

The doors were closing, but not fast enough. The gunman dove in before they slid shut. The elevator began to rise, and light flooded through the external windows that looked out on the city. The gunman brought the weapon up and aimed it straight at Locke, who for a fleeting moment realized that he was about to die. The assassin pulled the trigger.

The hammer clicked on an empty chamber. The gunman had made the classic mistake of not counting his rounds. Locke seized the stroke of luck and pounced on the gunman, who still lay on the floor. He knelt on the man’s arms, but the man kneed him, throwing Locke to the side. The man leapt to his feet and reached behind him. He withdrew a Sig Sauer 9mm pistol.

The man shook his head and smiled. Locke wasn’t sure, but it almost looked like the man admired him.

Dilara slammed against his arm as the assassin fired, sending two shots into the window. Locke took advantage of the momentum shift and threw his full weight into the gunman. As the three of them wrestled, more bullets hit the glass. Locke shoved his shoulder into the assassin’s torso, lifting him up and slamming him against the window. The glass, weakened by at least eight shots, shattered outward.

The gunman fell through, but he was able to grab the metal support. He dangled there, looking up at Locke. The elevator would reach the top in seconds, and the man would be crushed against the inside of the observation deck’s elevator shaft.

Locke instinctively began to reach out to help the man back in, then hesitated. Did Locke really want to save him? This guy had just tried to kill him. Locke considered leaving the man where he was, but he grudgingly realized he needed to question him. His arm shot out to grab the assailant, but to Locke’s astonishment, the man just smiled again, making no move to grab Locke’s hand.

“Why?” Locke yelled over the rushing wind.

“All flesh has corrupted his way upon the earth,” the assassin yelled back. Then to Locke’s surprise, the man released his grip and plunged out of sight.

TWENTY-TWO

Locke leaned against a squad car as he gave his statement to a Seattle police detective, going through every detail from the time he saw the gunman in the window reflection to the time that the man fell to a suicidal death. Dilara sat in a cruiser 15 feet away talking to his partner. Dilara still looked shaken up by the experience and sipped a cup of coffee. Ambulances and police cars surrounded the base of the Space Needle, and police were gathering eyewitness accounts from dozens of other people.

Locke had no doubt that the latest attempt on their lives was another link in the chain of events, and it only reinforced his belief that more deaths would be coming, particularly on the Genesis Dawn. Even though he had no proof, these assassins must have been involved with the same group as the man who had tried to blow up Scotia One.

Luckily, no one had been killed in the cross town battle except for the gunmen. The only person injured was the policeman the mustached man had shot in the back. Initial reports said the injury wasn’t life-threatening.

Locke was just wrapping up his account with the detective when a dark-haired man in a crisp gray suit approached them. He was accompanied by an attractive blonde in a similarly well-fitted suit. The man flipped open his wallet and showed the detective an ID.

“Special Agent Thomas Perez, FBI,” the man said. “This is Special Agent Trina Harris. Dr. Locke is working with the agency on the Rex Hayden plane crash, and we have reason to believe this attack is not only related to that disaster, but that the attempted assassination is part of a broader terrorist plot.”

That caught the police detective off guard.

“This is a homicide investigation…” he sputtered.

“No one other than the perpetrators was killed.”

“A Seattle police officer was shot. We want to find out why.”

“As you are no doubt aware,” Agent Perez said, “the FBI has authority under the US PATRIOT Act to take over any investigation that may involve terrorist activity. Please ask your partner to bring Dr. Kenner over here.”

“This is bullshit.”

“We’re setting up a task force, and I’m sure your department will be involved, but for now, we need to question Dr. Locke and Dr. Kenner privately. I have full cooperation from your chief of police if you’d like to check with him.”

Miles worked fast, Locke thought, if he had already convinced the FBI to take over the investigation.

The police detective grumbled and walked over to his partner. He jerked his thumb at the FBI agents. After a few more choice words from his partner, they nodded at Dilara, and she came over to Locke, who introduced her to the agents.

“We know about your involvement in the Scotia One incidents,” Perez said. “Although that’s out of US jurisdiction, we’ve been asked by the Canadian government to lend any assistance we can in identifying the assailant. We’ve also been briefed by Miles Benson about your situation, Dr. Kenner. He was persuasive in convincing my superiors that there is some kind of link between these events. Dr. Locke, did you receive any verbal threats before the attack downtown?”

“I think whoever was behind this made their intentions known when they crashed the helicopter and tried to blow up a billion-dollar oil rig.”

“We don’t know the helicopter crash was anything other than a mechanical failure.”

“A couple of days ago, I thought the same thing,” Locke said and looked at Dilara. “Now I’m going under the assumption that it was crashed on purpose.”

“Have you ever seen either of the men before?”

“No,” Locke said. Dilara shook her head in agreement. “All I know is that they’re completely fanatical. One of them committed suicide rather than let himself be caught, just like the intruder on Scotia One.”

“Do you know why they would want to kill you?”

“I have to assume it’s because of the incident with Sam Watson at LAX that Dr. Kenner witnessed and the downing of Rex Hayden’s plane.”

“How?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“These assailants were definitely targeting you. The other witnesses on the monorail and inside the Space Needle said they didn’t care about anyone but you and Dr. Kenner.”

Perez took a digital camera from his pocket and showed the screen to Locke. He cycled between two shots. Each showed a close up of the perpetrators’ faces. One was of the man with the miniature Space Needle still embedded in his eye, but with the skull cap removed. The second was the man who fell to his death from the elevator. The back of his head was misshapen from the impact with the ground. His mustache was gone, and his hair was now short-cropped brown instead the shaggy black it had been. Obviously a disguise.

“Now do you recognize them?” Perez asked.

Locke hadn’t seen either man before. He shook his head.

“This guy,” Perez said, pointing at the second man, “had pictures of both you and Dr. Kenner in his pocket.”

“Did they have any ID?”

“No. They were pros. We’re checking their fingerprints now. But using the fingerprints Miles Benson said you obtained on Scotia One, we do have an ID on the oil rig bomber. He was a former US Army Ranger. Dishonorably discharged. Went into private contracting, but we can’t identify his employer. All of the C-4 was destroyed, so we can’t trace it. For now, that trail is a dead end.”

“Maybe you’ll get luckier with these guys.”

“I’m not counting on it. I’m sure they’ve covered their tracks. What I’m curious about is why they would try to take you out in broad daylight in front of dozens of witnesses. That’s pretty risky.”

“Because they only have five days left,” Dilara said. “They think we know something that would harm their plans.”

“Do you?”

“Not really,” Locke said. “It’s still a big puzzle to us. But we think the Genesis Dawn is the next target.”

“Why?”

“Because of something Sam Watson told Dilara.”

Agent Harris spoke for the first time. “We’ll have the autopsy rechecked, but preliminary reports showed no trace of poison in Watson’s system. The coroner concluded it was a heart attack.”

“That’s what they wanted it to look like. Sam worked in a pharmaceutical company. Maybe it was them. They might have access to untraceable poisons.”

“That sounds pretty farfetched to me,” Perez said. “Why would they attack you in broad daylight with guns but kill an old man with an untraceable poison?”

“They’re getting desperate,” Locke said. “They thought it could be contained if they killed Sam Watson and Dilara in seemingly natural or accidental ways.”

“What’s ‘it’? Who’s ‘they’?”

“It all has to be related to the bioweapon on Hayden’s plane,” Dilara said.

“Hold on,” Perez said. “We’re still not sure it was a bioweapon. It could be some natural phenomenon.”

“Oh come on, Agent Perez!” Locke said. “Did you read what happened to those people?”

“We’re working under the assumption that it was a terrorist attack, although no one has claimed responsibility, but we also don’t want to jump to conclusions and panic anyone. That investigation is still ongoing.”

“Yes,” Locke said, “and Dilara and I are returning to Phoenix tomorrow to help with it. A lot of the wreckage has already been trucked back to our TEC facility, and our technicians are sifting through it all. We’re hoping to find some kind of clue in it. We have to work fast, though. The Genesis Dawn sails Friday morning.”

“We can have security beefed up at the Genesis Dawn gala and sailing,” Agent Harris said, “but you’re not giving us much to go on.”

“What gala?” Locke asked.

“There’s a huge party for big wigs the night before the maiden voyage. Lots of big names will be there.”

That sounded like a tempting target to Locke, but he thought the real attack wouldn’t occur until the ship was at sea. It fit the MO of the airplane disaster better.

“We have to stop the sailing,” Locke said. “Or at least postpone it.”

“Impossible,” Perez said. “Unless I have a concrete threat to the ship, there’s nothing more we can do.”

“We have one more lead,” Locke said.

“Let’s hear it.”

“Coleman Engineering and Consulting. We have reason to believe they may be involved.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. John Coleman and his top engineers were killed in an accident. I’m guessing the answers might still be in his records.”

“What makes you think Coleman is involved?”

“Sam Watson said his name to me before he died,” Dilara said.

“Can you get us a search warrant?” Locke asked Perez.

“With what? The accusations of dead man? The judge would laugh me out of his office.”

“You don’t think this shooting spree is enough?” Locke asked.

“But how is it related? You’ll have to come up with a more tangible link than Sam Watson’s dying words before I can get into Coleman’s firm. I think our time will be more productive spent looking for the identity of the two dead assassins and seeing if they are linked to the man on Scotia One.”

“So we’re just forgetting about Coleman?” Dilara protested.

“Unless you have evidence to justify a warrant, yes,” Perez said, “I suggest Dr. Locke focus on Hayden’s airplane crash.”

“But…” Dilara began, but Locke held up his hand.

“We’ll head back down there tomorrow,” he said.

“While you’re in Seattle,” Perez said, “I want the police to provide protection for you.”

“That’s okay,” Locke said. “Miles Benson has hired a private firm for our security. They’re on the way to pick us up now.”

Perez raised an eyebrow. “Fine, then. When I know anything about your attackers, I’ll let you know.” He and Agent Harris walked away together.

Dilara turned on Locke.

“How could you give up so easily?” she demanded. “Coleman could be the key to this whole thing! We need to know about Oasis.”

Locke looked directly at Dilara. “I don’t give up. We’re going to get into Coleman’s office tonight.”

“How? Without a warrant…”

“We don’t need one,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t think John Coleman died in an accident. I knew him. He was a great engineer, very careful. Which means somebody murdered him. And anyone who could plan an oil platform disaster could have staged an accident that killed John. He may not have even known he was in danger. He wouldn’t have been involved in something criminal, at least not wittingly.”

“How does that help us?” Dilara pressed, sounding frustrated. “How can we get into his office?”

“You said Sam Watson told you they killed your father. Would you let someone search his office if you thought that person could find his murderer?”

“Of course. In a second.”

“Well, let’s hope your reaction is universal. John Coleman has a daughter.”

TWENTY-THREE

Pharmacologist David Deal awoke drenched in sweat. His eyes fluttered open and took in the sparsely decorated room he had been confined to as part of his final initiation as a Level Ten. Other than the single bed with its thin blanket and sheet, the only objects in the room were a metal desk, a cane-backed chair, and the coveted Final Chapter of the Holy Hydronastic Church. An alcove held a sink and toilet. The thick door was the lone exit from the 10-foot-square room.

Human contact occurred only when meals were brought in three times a day during the last six days of the initiation that all Hydronasts aspired to. As a faithful Level Nine, he had been deemed worthy just two days ago and had been flown out to Orcas Island for the Ritual, as it was known. There were only 300 Level Tens in the entire church, and he felt blessed to be asked to achieve his ultimate goal.

He’d been through a process much like this for each level, but this one had been the most intense, the most spiritual. He had read and reread the Final Chapter until he had memorized it verbatim. Suddenly everything he had learned in the Bible made sense. It was as if his soul had been mired in quicksand, and the teachings of the faithful leader, Sebastian Garrett, had plucked it from its thrashing and soothed it with his wise and beautiful words.

He knew the isolation was an important part of the Ritual, and it didn’t bother him at all. Dressed only in a pure, white robe, he was able to explore the visions he saw with rapt attention.

Since he didn’t have a clock, Deal didn’t know how long it had been since he finished dinner, but he had had enough time to read the Final Chapter halfway through again. The mind-expanding power of the words filled his head until he could feel his soul transcending its normal boundaries. The light weightlessness was the first sign of the impending vision, and he fervently waited for its arrival.

Then a firework of light exploded in his brain, causing Deal to fall backward into the bed. He opened his eyes, and the brilliant starbursts faded away. He had been told that the Final Chapter wasn’t the whole Truth, that the visions were his personal insights into what the Final Chapter actually meant, and each individual Level Ten was the recipient of his own Truth. That was why he desperately wanted to see another vision, to reveal the last bits of Truth.

Then it came. The sounds, the lights, the words. They told of a new beginning for the earth, a beginning that he was to be an instrumental part of. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever experienced.

As he caressed the back of Svetlana Petrova, Sebastian Garrett watched David Deal on the three monitors, and the ecstasy on the man’s face told him everything he needed to know. Another sheep had entered the fold.

“I love watching this,” Petrova said in a Slavic purr from her perch on Garrett’s desk. “It’s so sexy. The power. The control.” She ran her hand through Garrett’s hair, sending a tingle down his spine.

“I thought the indoctrinations were complete,” she said. “The target number was 300, no? We’re almost evenly split between men and women. Why do we need this man?”

“He has special skills, ones that I thought Watson would bring to the project. With Watson gone, I thought it was prudent to bring in someone else to replace him.”

“You are truly a wise man. That’s only one of the reasons I love you.”

Since he had his own vision for the Holy Hydronastic Church ten years before, Garrett had scoured the universities for the best and brightest scientists, engineers, and thinkers. It had been a lengthy and arduous process to recruit the men and women he felt would be amenable to the church’s teachings. He had to find the right combination of intelligence and receptiveness to his philosophy.

The indoctrination process was finely honed through years of development. At the beginning, initiates didn’t even know a church was involved. It was more about a common goal for a better planet, one rid of both human suffering and contempt for the earth’s natural treasures.

Then they were wined and dined and brought to one of the church’s facilities in a resort destination: Maui, the Bahamas, Acapulco. There they were treated not only to a fine vacation, but also to spirited discussions about how to improve humanity’s lot. If they continued to show a willingness to further the same goals Garrett’s church had, the next step was a trip to Orcas Island.

When they arrived, they were asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement so iron-clad that breaking it would bring penalties severe enough to make the signatory a pauper for the rest of his life. The NDA was intended to keep malcontents from revealing the church’s practices. There were no exceptions, and those who wouldn’t sign were immediately escorted off the property. Garrett didn’t care about them; they weren’t the types who would be useful to his cause anyway.

Then came the real test — the Leveling. David Deal was in his last Leveling to Level Ten, the most mind-altering of them. Each person progressed in Leveling at a different rate, but only the ones who showed the most promise were promoted to anything above Level Five. Garrett needed a pharmacologist in his New World. He thought it would be Watson, but he’d been disappointed when he found that Watson had betrayed him. Deal was his next choice, which was why the scientist was now staring in rapture at the hologram projected into his room.

It was a state-of-the-art setup, with hidden projectors in multiple corners of the room. The air was suffused with a light smoke, barely visible until laser light was played over it. The drugs that had been developed by Garrett’s company and laced into Deal’s food made him more susceptible to the suggestion that the images were a product of his imagination rather than technology.

All of these procedures were necessary to ensure that each person received the most deeply-felt religious experience of his life. Of course, there were risks associated with such an intense process. It was during one of these sessions that Rex Hayden’s brother had a seizure and subsequently died. The autopsy had shown a genetic defect in his heart, and Garrett had been grateful that the man hadn’t survived to become a flawed member of his New World.

Ever since the death, Rex Hayden had been relentless in trying to expose the inner workings of the church, which he felt was responsible for his brother’s death. Cutter’s idea to test the Arkon on Hayden’s plane had been a just method for punishing Hayden’s interference.

For the rest of Garrett’s adherents, the effect of the leveling was profound. Few coming out of these rooms doubted that what they had seen was a spirit guiding them to a better life. The ones who still questioned what had happened were either excommunicated from the church, or they were disposed of in more permanent ways in the case of the most persistent troublemakers.

Somehow, Sam Watson had slipped through their carefully crafted vetting procedures. That’s why Garrett had been forced to buttress his flock’s loyalty with the lab demonstration. One way or the other, they would obey when the time came.

A knock came at his office door. He casually flicked off the feed from Deal’s room with the knowledge that his indoctrination team was almost finished.

“Come!”

Dan Cutter entered and came to a rigid halt in front of Garrett’s desk. He was careful not to glance at Svetlana, who was now lounging in a chair to the side of the desk.

“Sir, Olsen was unsuccessful,” Cutter said.

“What happened?” Garrett asked without inflection. No need to betray his fury.

“There was a shootout at the Space Needle. Both he and Cates are dead, and the Seattle police and the FBI are now involved.”

Garrett didn’t bother to ask if his men had been captured and interrogated before they died. Neither of them would have let that happen.

“Was either of our targets killed or injured?”

“No, sir. Locke and Kenner are still alive. Should I have another team sent to take them out?”

Just like Cutter. Always a man of action. But sometimes inaction was the best course.

“No, it’s too late now. They’ll be protected. At this point, any future assassination attempts would be counterproductive. Besides, we have our contingency plan in place.”

Locke was more resourceful than Garrett gave him credit for, already surviving two attempts on his life. Still, he shouldn’t have been surprised. Locke was also a man of action.

“What about Friday?” Cutter asked. “Maybe we should change…”

“Nothing will be changed!” Garrett said, sharper than he intended. He calmed his voice. “We will not allow some errors in execution to alter our long-developed and well-conceived plan. And we won’t let Tyler Locke dictate how we proceed. However, we can’t allow him to find the device used in Hayden’s plane and decipher its contents. Is your operation ready?”

“Yes, sir. I will be conducting the mission myself along with my top man. Our intelligence suggests that a large number of pieces have already been transferred from the wreckage site to Gordian’s TEC facility in Phoenix. We should be able to find the device there. We’ll begin the search tomorrow morning.”

“Good. Once we have it back in our possession, destroy it. Then, they will have nothing to suggest what our ultimate plans are.”

Cutter nodded, again studiously avoiding Svetlana’s stare, and exited.

“I like him,” she said. “He’s a tough guy. Like a Rambo. So is it really true what I’ve heard about him?”

“About his injury?” Even though Cutter had been his security chief for years, this was the first time she’d asked.

She nodded.

“It is,” Garrett said. “That’s one reason he’s such a valued asset. Why do you ask?”

She arched an eyebrow and rose from the chair. She slinked over to Garrett and settled on his lap. “You don’t have to worry about the competition.” She kissed him lightly on the cheek, then the forehead. “Now, tell me about your plans for this evening.” She kissed him on the lips.

Garrett knew he had perfectly chosen the woman to accompany him into the New World.

TWENTY-FOUR

Julia Coleman sat in the Starbucks at the base of the building where Coleman Engineering’s offices were located. Her shift at Harborview Medical Center had just ended, and she still wore scrubs. Locke knew she was a medical resident, but little else. As he entered the store, he could see her bloodshot eyes behind her tortoise-shell glasses, and her hair was tied back in a pony tail. Her expressionless face told him everything he needed to know about the long hours she’d just pulled.

When Locke called her, she had agreed to meet with them, but she wanted to hear why they wanted access to her father’s records before she gave permission to go through them. Locke suggested they discuss it over coffee near Coleman’s office so he could get into the files as soon as he had her agreement.

The two guards from the security firm observed Locke and Dilara from a car parked outside. Locke felt sure that another attack wouldn’t be coming tonight, but their presence calmed Dilara.

Locke introduced himself and Dilara to Julia Coleman, but the doctor didn’t stand as she wearily shook their hands. They took seats opposite her.

“Thank you for meeting us,” Locke said. “I know you must be exhausted.”

“You got my attention when you said this was about my father.”

“Yes, I’m very sorry for your loss. We have come across some information that may shed new light on your father’s death.”

“Are you with the ATF?”

“No, I’m an engineer with Gordian Engineering. I knew your father, but I never worked with him.”

“That’s right. I remember now. My father spoke highly of you, even though you were a competitor.” That surprised Locke. Gordian and Coleman had always had a friendly competition for contracts, but he didn’t know Coleman had talked about him to Julia. “Are you with Gordian, too?” she asked Dilara.

“No, I’m an archaeologist.”

“Why would an archaeologist know anything about my father’s death? Did you know him?”

“No,” Dilara said, “but I may have known someone who did. Do you know a man named Sam Watson?”

Julia shook her head. “Doesn’t sound familiar. Did he have something to do with the accident?”

“We don’t think it was an accident,” Locke said.

“But the ATF investigation said that they had improperly connected the wiring for the explosives. It was triggered prematurely. Are you saying it was done deliberately?”

“Was your father the kind of man who would make that kind of mistake?” Locke knew that working with explosives was not something you played around with. If you got careless, you got killed. John Coleman had been in the business for a long time.

“He was a perfectionist,” Julia said. “That’s why I always assumed it was one of the other engineers who made the mistake.”

“Do you know what sort of project he was working on at the time?”

“It was a new tunnel in the Cascades. They were going through the placement of the explosives the night before the first blast was to be made. Then the accident…It was horrible. All of the top engineers in his firm were killed.”

“Who’s operating the company now?”

“No one. I’m not an engineer, and I certainly don’t have time to run a business. It was a consulting firm, so nobody wanted to buy it. I didn’t want to go through years of litigation from the other engineers’ families, so I just settled wrongful death suits with all of them and shut it down. I haven’t had time to figure out what to do with everything in the office. It’s still there, but I was going to close it down next month.”

“What was he working on before the tunnel?”

“Some huge project for the government. Top secret. Worked on it for three years. He couldn’t tell me anything about it.” Julia looked at both of them. “Are you saying my father was murdered?”

“That’s a possibility.”

“Why? Who would want to kill him?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out, and we need your help.”

Julia sat back and stared into space as the idea that her father had been murdered sunk in.

“My mother died when I was 20,” she finally said. “He was the only family I had left. I’ll let you have anything in his office if you can tell me who killed him.”

They threw away their coffees and followed Julia into the building. The offices were on the third floor. Julia unlocked the door and took them inside. A typical cubical farm greeted them.

“My dad’s cube is in the corner,” Julia said.

“Would it be all right if I turned on your server so that my computer staff can download your company data and analyze it for any clues?” Locke asked. “I know his company probably had contracts prohibiting disclosure of information…”

“I’ll consider you a subcontractor. If some company wants to sue later, they can take it up with the firm’s lawyers.”

Locke fired up the computers and called Aiden MacKenna, who walked him through opening a port in the security system to allow remote access to the files. He told Aiden to look for any files about Project Oasis. While Aiden began his search, Locke went through John Coleman’s desk and file cabinet.

As he expected, the majority of Coleman’s files were electronic. Most engineering firms drew up their project plans on computers and communicated by phone and email, but there was always a need to print out blueprints, schematics, and presentations. There should be some paper trail for Oasis if he really worked on it. Coleman’s file folders were meticulously labeled by date.

Two cabinets were stuffed until there was almost no room in them, and Dilara went through each of the files looking for a reference to Oasis. A third, the one closest to his desk, was also full in the bottom drawer, but the top drawer was almost completely empty. Locke looked at the dates on the folders more carefully. There was a steady stream of projects up until three years ago, and then suddenly only a smattering of projects were listed in the files.

“Dr. Coleman,” Locke said, “have any files been removed from the office?”

“Not that I’m aware of. Why?”

“Some files seem to be missing. Do you know what the name of the project your father was working on for the past three years?”

“He wasn’t supposed to tell me anything, but once when he was very tired, he let the project name slip out by mistake. He actually seemed scared when he realized what he’d done and told me not to say a word about it to anyone. The project was called Oasis.”

Locke exchanged glances with Dilara. “Dr. Coleman, can you recall anything else about Oasis?”

“All I know is that he was traveling to the San Juan Islands constantly during that time. He must have made a lot of money on the project. After his death, I found out his firm had deposited more than thirty million dollars recently. That’s what allowed me to settle the lawsuits and keep the office open while I decided what to do with it.” She registered the look of surprise on Locke’s face and went on. “My father would have been disappointed if I abandoned my medical career.”

Locke nodded, but he couldn’t get over the contract size. Coleman’s firm was talented, but small. Thirty million dollars would be a huge amount of money for them.

“Dr. Locke,” Julia Coleman said, “I need to go home and get some sleep.” She held out the office key. “Just lock the door on your way out.”

“That’s very generous of you,” Locke said, taking the key from her.

“I just want to know one thing. Are you going to catch the person who did this to my father?”

“We’ll do our best.”

“Good. I may be a doctor, but I would happily see the person responsible for his death fry.”

She let herself out, leaving Dilara and Locke alone in the office.

“I know how she feels,” Dilara said. “So you think someone took the files on Oasis?”

“This stinks of a cover-up,” Locke said. “First, all of the top engineers in the firm who worked on Oasis are killed in a tragic mishap that someone as skilled as Coleman should never have let happen. Then all of the files mysteriously disappear. And to top it off, his firm was paid an exorbitant fee, probably in the hopes that the survivors would be mollified by the money. Someone came in here and stole every single piece of paper about Oasis, and I’m guessing the only reason they didn’t torch the place to cover their tracks is because it would have raised questions they didn’t want asked.”

“What about the computer files?”

“If there’s anything left, Aiden will find it.”

They looked through the paper files for another hour, but found nothing about Oasis. Whoever had cleansed the files was thorough. Their only hope now was something overlooked in the electronic databases. Locke was disheartened when Aiden called with his results.

“These guys were good, Tyler. Absolutely no references to Oasis in any of the files. Powerpoint, Word, email. All wiped clean of any traces. And yet they left a lot of other stuff. Probably because a straight wipe of the files would have been too obvious.”

Locke felt like Aiden told him that last bit for a reason.

“But you found something anyway,” Locke said, suddenly hopeful.

“I said they were good. But I’m better. I decided to do some peripheral searches. Since this Watson guy mentioned you by name, I used it as one of the search parameters. I found a few general emails between you and Coleman. A couple of requests for references, things like that. But there was one email that particularly intrigued me.”

“From me or to me?”

“Neither. It was about you.”

“Read it to me.”

“It’s from Coleman to one of his other engineers. Quote, ‘Jim, this new project is going to make us all rich. I can’t believe Locke turned it down. Sounds right up his alley. His loss is our gain. Project was called Whirlwind. Goofy, huh? These military types love their code words. The client is changing the project name, but hasn’t sent it yet. I’ll let you know when I get it, and then we can crank it up. Give me your picks for our team to work on this. Remember, this is a black project. No one else can know about it. John.’ End quote. Am I right? Does that have anything to do with all this?”

For a moment, Locke was speechless. Whirlwind. He hadn’t heard that word in the three years since he’d signed up for the project and then been dropped by the client two months later.

“Tyler? You still there?”

Locke swallowed. “Yeah, Aiden. See if you can find any more references to Whirlwind, and I’ll get back to you.”

Locke hung up. The shock on his face must have been apparent because Dilara asked him, “What’s wrong?”

He told her about the email.

“So you think Whirlwind was the same project as Oasis?” she said.

“I hope to God it isn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because whoever is behind Whirlwind is preparing for the end of the world.”

TWENTY-FIVE

After Locke’s pronouncement about the end of the world, all Dilara could get out of him was that he needed to think. She got the sense that it was how he puzzled through problems, drawing into himself. She went back to searching through the files in silence. As they expected, there was nothing about Oasis or Whirlwind.

Dilara agreed with the email from John Coleman. Why did projects — particularly military operations — always have to have some mysterious name? Must be something about control and power. Men who were into that liked secret clubs, and what better way to be exclusive than to have a code name?

But something about Whirlwind had spooked Locke. He wasn’t the sort who made such bold statements without reason. The thought of the way he said it sent a shiver down her back, as if she were privy to some clairvoyance of a seer peering into a crystal ball. If he was a psychic, whatever was coming was too horrible to contemplate.

With Coleman’s files exhausted, they silently turned to the files of the other engineers who had been killed. They were equally unsuccessful with those. The organization that had cleansed the files knew exactly what they were looking for.

By the time she and Locke realized that nothing would be gained by further searching, it was 9:45.

“Are you hungry?” Locke asked.

Dilara had been so caught up in the search that she hadn’t even thought of food. But as soon as he mentioned it, hunger pangs thudded in her stomach.

“Starving.”

“We’re done here. Do you like seafood?”

“Anything cooked. Sushi makes me gag.”

“And I’m allergic to shellfish, but we’ll figure something out.” They locked up the office and found one of the bodyguards waiting in the lobby. The three of them got in the car with the other one.

After a stop at the grocery store, it only took ten minutes to reach his home in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle. She had been expecting a bachelor pad apartment in a high rise. Instead, they stopped outside a Mediterranean-style mansion that was perched on a cliff overlooking Puget Sound.

The bodyguards took up a post on the street outside. After Locke disabled the alarm and made sure no one had tampered with it, he let Dilara inside. The lights inside the house were off, but moonlight flooded through floor-to-ceiling windows at the back of the house. Then he switched on the lights, and she saw a home that looked like it could have been featured in Architectural Digest.

Bamboo flooring extended as far as she could see. The living and dining rooms featured highly polished antiques, and an immense kitchen showed off shiny granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. The effect was sleek without being sterile, the decorations and wall hangings chosen to give the house a comfortable feeling. It certainly didn’t look like the home of a single guy who was never home. The only thing that marred the effect was one white living room wall that was painted with five two-foot by two-foot squares, all various shades of yellow. Then it hit her. His deceased wife must be responsible for the interior décor, and the unfinished wall had been her project.

Suddenly, the house didn’t seem so perfect. It felt more like a mausoleum, as if it was preserved in the state it was the day she died.

Locke noticed her eyeing the color swatches.

“Karen’s work,” he said, confirming her suspicion. His voice was tinged with regret. “She liked the sunny feeling of the yellow on a cloudy day. She never told me which one she preferred. I keep thinking I’ll paint it, but I can never choose one of them.”

Locke picked up a remote, and a Vivaldi concerto wafted from hidden speakers. Dilara wandered over to the windows. A patio door led onto a deck that thrust to the edge of the cliff. The twinkling lights of downtown Seattle provided the perfect backdrop for the Space Needle. She could see a ferry plying the waters of Elliott Bay.

“On clear days,” Locke said as he unloaded the groceries, “Mt. Rainier is right behind the skyline.”

“It’s an amazing view.”

“It’s the main reason Karen and I bought the house.”

Again, she could hear the sadness in his tone. He went back to preparing dinner. Dilara sensed the awkwardness.

“Can I help?” she asked.

“Here,” he said, showing her where the knives and cutting board were stored. “You can cut the ends off the green beans.”

Dilara watched him work. He handled himself deftly in the kitchen, smoothly choreographing his every move. A couple of times, she saw him unselfconsciously nodding his head to the music. This was a man who enjoyed life, even with the grief that weighed on him at times. She couldn’t deny that his attitude and competence were attractive, but those thoughts were ridiculous considering their current situation. She caught herself looking at him more than she should and focused again on the green beans.

Other than a couple of questions about where things were, they were silent. Her mind drifted back to what they had found in the email message. Finally, curiosity got the better of Dilara.

“What’s Whirlwind?” she asked. He stopped chopping the potatoes and looked at her. His expression was unreadable, but she got the feeling that the word itself bothered him.

“Sorry,” she said. “That came out more bluntly than I planned.”

He went back to chopping. “It’s a top secret Pentagon project I worked on briefly.”

“You mean the Defense Department is behind all this?”

“The people who hired me said it was a Pentagon project. It’s the reason I was initially hesitant to tell you. But now that I think about it, I’m not so sure it was the military.”

“I don’t understand. How can you be unsure?”

“When you work on a black project, everything runs through dummy corporations. You can’t just call up the Pentagon and ask to speak to the project manager. They’d deny its existence, so there’s no way to confirm that it’s really a government operation. But the way these guys were throwing money around, I had to assume they were with the government.”

“What kind of money are we talking about?”

“The project was budgeted at $400 million.”

Dilara whistled at the figure. “What was the project? A space flight to Mars?”

“A bunker. The reasoning was that the old nuclear fallout shelters for the government were outdated and susceptible to new types of biological and chemical attack. Instead of retrofitting the old bunkers with the latest hardware and computer systems, they wanted to build in a new, undisclosed location with everything up to date and upgradeable. It was going to be the most advanced bunker ever designed. It’s the kind of challenge that makes any engineer salivate.”

“But they fired you?”

“I was going to be the chief engineer on the project,” Locke said while he grilled the salmon. “We had just begun to get a handle on the specs and schematics. Then two months after they awarded the contract to Gordian, they pulled out. Said Pentagon budgets had been revised and there was no money to fund the project. It seemed fishy to me at the time. You don’t just cancel a project worth almost half a billion dollars out of the blue. But they paid our hefty cancellation fee, and we moved on. I assumed it bit the dust and didn’t think about it again until today.”

“But they didn’t cancel it. They just hired Coleman’s firm and changed the name to Oasis.”

“Apparently. We’re talking about a bunker big enough to sustain over 300 people for at least four months. Self-contained power, water desalination plant, air filtration, extensive food stores, and every amenity you’d expect at a five-star resort. All built underground. It was even supposed to have room for animals and hydroponic gardens.”

The mention of the animals made Dilara flash back to the man who’d dropped from the Space Needle.

“All flesh has corrupted his way upon the earth,” she said.

Locke stared at her. “That’s what the gunman said just before he let go. I asked him why. Why he was after us.”

“They’re building a new ark. But instead of a boat, this ark is subterranean.”

“What?”

“That phrase,” Dilara said. “It’s from the Bible. Genesis chapter eight.”

“The Flood story?”

“It’s what God told Noah just before he decided to wash away the sins of man and beast.”

“I’m not a biblical scholar,” Locke said, “but as I recall, God said he wouldn’t do that again. It was a one-time deal.”

“You’re talking about his covenant with Noah. ‘And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.’”

“Sounds ironclad to me. Of course, this group may not believe in God.”

“Do you?”

“As I told you, I’m a skeptic.” He stopped there and waited. He obviously wasn’t going to say more.

“On the other hand, they could very well believe in God,” Dilara said. “Many people take the Bible literally, and it specifically said that God would never again cleanse the earth.”

“So if you want to get technical, somebody else could take care of the dirty work this time around?”

“I’m just saying that somebody could look at it that way.”

“I’ve known a few people who might,” Locke said.

“But they’d have to be insane to carry it out.”

“You don’t think that’s possible? After everything that’s happened to us?”

“How could they create a flood that would destroy the world?”

“Oasis was designed to protect the occupants from radiation, biological contagion, and chemical agents. In Noah’s era, a flood may have been what wiped out humanity, but I think they are planning to repeat the job this time with whatever killed the people on Rex Hayden’s plane. Maybe the link to Noah’s Ark is an allegory.”

Dilara paused. “The connection can’t be simply symbolic. Sam said my father found it. The real Noah’s Ark. There’s more to this. I know it.”

“Maybe we’ll find out more from the wreckage of Hayden’s plane. We can begin looking through it tomorrow when we fly down to Phoenix. In the meantime, we need a rest.”

“It’s just frustrating. It seems like we should be doing something.”

“You should,” Locke said. “Crack open that bottle of chardonnay.” He pointed to a bottle lying in the built-in wine chiller and slid the steaming salmon steaks onto a couple of plates. “Dinner is served.”

Locke poured the last of the wine into Dilara’s glass. His mind felt fuzzy. He hadn’t had a drink since his project on Scotia One started, so the wine had more of an effect on him than it normally would. He was glad to have the excuse to cook. Because he traveled so often, he didn’t get to do it much, but when he did, he enjoyed it.

The conversation at dinner stayed away from their current predicament. Locke told Dilara about some of his more interesting engineering jobs, and she regaled him with some of her more colorful dig anecdotes. When she got to the part about her department head and the flatulent camel, he found himself laughing out loud.

“It sounds like you’re not home much,” Locke said. “I’m guessing you don’t have kids.”

Dilara shook her head. “No time or inclination. You?”

“No. Karen wanted kids, and I did, too — eventually — but I kept putting it off.” He didn’t know why he volunteered that. Must be the wine.

“I don’t have the space, either,” Dilara said quickly. “I just live in a crummy apartment. But your house is beautiful.”

“That was mostly Karen’s doing. I put in a TV room down in the basement, and she took care of the rest. Ironically, the TV room is the one I use the least. I’ve watched a few races on it, and that’s about it.”

“Well, she had a wonderful eye. What did she do?”

“She was a therapist who worked with disabled children. She couldn’t get enough of it. Always taking the extra time to help them out. That’s why she was driving home so late the night she died.” What was he doing? He never talked about Karen with people he’d just met. He barely talked to anyone about her. It was too hard.

“When was that?” Dilara asked.

“Two years ago next month. It was a rainy night. Her anti-lock braking system failed approaching an intersection. She’d mentioned a few times that her brakes felt sluggish, but I was busy on a project at the time. I didn’t think it was serious, so I promised her I’d look at them when I returned from my business trip. It didn’t cross my mind again until that night. She slid right through a red light, and an SUV hit her at 50 mph.”

“How awful.”

His breath caught as he relived getting that terrible phone call. “I was in Russia working on a pipeline installation when I got the news about the accident. Took me two days to get home on commercial flights. Weather and connection problems. She hung on for a day. Died while I was in the Hong Kong airport.” His throat had gone suddenly dry. He swallowed and looked at the unpainted wall. “I missed saying goodbye to her by 12 hours. That’s one reason we have corporate jets now.”

Dilara was silent, but something about the concern in her face made Locke go on.

“I didn’t sleep well for almost a year,” he said. “I combed through the accident data. Ran through it over and over in my head, trying to convince myself there was no way I could have known.” He chuckled ruefully. “I mean, here I am, an expert in system failures and accidents, an engineer with three degrees, and she dies from exactly the kind of thing I’m hired to prevent.”

“And could you have?”

Locke shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. The car was too badly damaged. The possibility kept me awake for a long time. I can sleep now, but her face is what I see every night when I turn out the lights.”

Everyone at Gordian that he worked with knew the story, but he’d told it to only a handful of others. He supposed the death-defying he and Dilara had done together made him feel like he owed it to Dilara to tell her. He also realized that she would be the first woman to sleep in the house since Karen’s death. Somehow it didn’t seem right for Dilara to stay if she didn’t know the history, like he would be betraying Karen.

“Well,” Locke said, “now that I’ve brought conversation to a screeching halt, I suppose it’s time for bed.”

Dilara gave him a sympathetic look but let it go.

“Where’s my room?” she asked.

“Down the hall. Third door on the right. Just a minute.” He popped into his bedroom and retrieved a T-shirt he’d never worn. “Brand new. Let me know if it’s not warm enough.” Dilara’s body type was very similar to Karen’s, but he’d donated all of her clothes to charity shortly after her death. Even if he still had them, it would have been creepy to lend them to Dilara.

“Thanks for dinner,” she said. “And for everything else you’ve done. I didn’t mean for you to get dragged into such a huge mess.”

“Not at all,” was the only thing he could think to say.

Then to his surprise, Dilara gave him a kiss on the cheek and exited to her room. The expression of affection caught him off guard, and he didn’t know what to make of it. It lingered just long enough that it seemed more than just for sympathy. When he put the last dish in the washer and turned off the kitchen lights, he was still thinking about the kiss.

TWENTY-SIX

The gate at Gordian’s Test and Engineering facility on the north edge of Phoenix looked like it was built to withstand a tank. A concrete guard shack stood between two huge steel grates that rode on tracks to let cars in and out. A ten-foot-tall hurricane fence topped with razor wire extended from each side of the gate and surrounded the property. Dan Cutter hadn’t seen this kind of security outside of a nuclear power plant. But he didn’t have to blow through these formidable obstacles. They were going to let him in.

He pulled up to the guard shack and unrolled his window, letting in the stifling heat that even at nine in the morning was already billowing from the asphalt. The man in the passenger seat, Bert Simkins, had removed his sunglasses so that he would be easily recognized from his fake ID.

“Identification, please,” the guard said. He was armed only with a nine-millimeter Glock in his hip holster, but Cutter knew the shack held automatic weapons.

Cutter smiled and handed him the IDs they had put together the day before. The two NTSB investigators they were impersonating were expected at the TEC, but not until later in the day.

The guard looked at each ID carefully and compared them to a pre-printed list. Anticipating that, Cutter had gone to the trouble of appropriating the IDs of two people they knew would be allowed into the facility. Once the guard checked the names on the list, he looked closely at each man. This guy wasn’t your average rent-a-cop. He was well-trained. Cutter was impressed. But no one would be able to detect that the IDs were not genuine.

Satisfied, the guard handed them back, and the gate slid open. “Third hangar. Park on the south side.”

Cutter drove through and followed the road to a tunnel that went under the seven-mile banked oval track. The track was so long that it looped around all of the buildings and test facilities, including the runway and airplane hangars. The 30-foot-high tunnel was built so that large test materials and vehicles could be brought into the facility without interrupting track testing.

They emerged from the tunnel to see three massive buildings with multiple garage doors in each of them. Cutter had studied the layout of the TEC carefully using Gordian’s own web site. These were the vehicle testing labs, with indoor crash test sleds, environmental chambers, and inverted drop facilities, whatever those were. Next to it was the outdoor impact sled, wet and dry skid pads, and a 100-acre dirt track and obstacle course for off-road testing.

In the distance, Cutter could just make out a red car racing around the oval at over 100 mph. Outside the last vehicle test building, workers were talking next to the biggest dump truck he’d ever seen. On the side of the truck was the word, “Liebherr.”

Cutter kept driving along the service road until 500 feet later he approached a row of five hangars that each looked large enough to hold a 747. He parked at the third just as an eighteen-wheeler pulled past him, followed by a flat-bed truck equipped with a crane. The flat-bed was loaded down with a mangled aircraft engine. They must have been shipments from the crash site. These guys were working fast, which was to Cutter’s advantage. The media uproar about Hayden’s death had been bigger than anything since Princess Diana’s. Rex Hayden not only was a huge star, but he had cleverly parlayed his celebrity into business deals that had pushed his net worth close to a billion dollars. That had made him a formidable enemy of the Holy Hydronastic Church. Cutter relished the thought of the actor dissolving in agony.

The trucks drove around the corner and out of sight.

Dozens of official-looking cars were parked in a line next to the building, meaning that Cutter and Simkins would be just two more worker bees and would go unnoticed amidst the hubbub.

They got out and headed toward a door guarded by two men in police uniforms. The shirts were emblazoned with the logo of the Maricopa County sheriff’s department. Each of the them had an AR-15 automatic weapon at his side.

The only aspect of the mission that Cutter didn’t like was that they’d had to leave their own weapons behind. If anyone spotted NTSB investigators carrying pistols, inconvenient questions would be raised. And in this heat, heavy coats would have been out of place. The light jackets they wore would have bulged from any kind of gun. Therefore, he and Simkins were unarmed.

He didn’t expect the need for weapons. The mission was to find the suitcase and smuggle it out before it could be identified as the source of the bioweapon used on Hayden’s plane. His plan was to use his authority as a temporary NTSB investigator on loan from the Justice Department specifically for this case to remove the luggage from the site for further analysis.

He sized up the deputies, who looked bored with the guard duty. If he did end up needing weapons, he knew exactly where to get them.

Cutter and Simkins flashed their IDs again, and the deputies let them pass. Cutter took off his sunglasses and let his eyes adjust to the dark interior.

The massive doors at the opposite end of the hangar were just closing, having already let the two trucks through. The semis idled at the far end as they awaited instructions about where to unload.

At least 75 people clustered at various points around the vast space. A pre-fabricated frame the size of an airplane fuselage was being assembled in the center of the hangar. Several pieces of the 737 wreckage were already hanging from it. The other pieces were carefully laid on the floor next to it, waiting for inspection.

The contents of the plane — seats, luggage, clothing, furniture — were all neatly placed in rows along the opposite wall. Cutter had accessed the G-Tag system through the NTSB’s computer system, courtesy of the two NTSB investigators that were now lying dead in a Phoenix motel room. After a search of the G-Tag inventory, he’d found a digital photo of the steel-lined suitcase containing the device. It was still intact and on a truck bound for the TEC, scheduled to be delivered this morning. It would be found in this area.

“You take the opposite end,” Cutter said to Simkins, “and work your way towards me. Try not to talk to anyone. If you spot the suitcase, don’t touch it. Come find me, and then we’ll look for an opportunity to remove it.”

“What if it’s not here?” Simkins asked.

“Then we wait for the next truck.” He silently congratulated himself. This was going to be much easier than combing the desert looking for a single piece of luggage. Let the feds do the hard work, and he would simply take it off their hands here.

Cutter turned when he heard the beep of the semi backing up. At the end of the row of plane contents a hundred feet away, a black man in a tight-fitting T-shirt that was stretched over a muscular torso held up his hand. The truck stopped, and the man, who was clearly the leader, instructed two others to open the rear doors. A group of workers got in a line and began to gingerly hand out the pieces in bucket-brigade fashion, while the leader yelled instructions to them.

The suitcase might have been in that shipment, but the truck’s contents weren’t what Cutter was paying attention to. Instead, he peered at the black man more intently. The voice. It was unmistakable. Of course, he had heard it on TV, when he was a wrestler, but that wasn’t the reason Cutter tuned out all the other noises coming from the building and focused on him.

The man turned around, and Cutter felt the old hatred flow through him. He had served with the man in the Rangers. Grant Westfield — electrical engineer, ex-pro wrestler The Burn, and former Special Forces soldier — was the reason Cutter no longer served the military with distinction, why he was reduced to what he was now.

Cutter turned away to avoid being noticed. There was no way Westfield would be expecting to see him here, but with him in charge of this operation, the new development would significantly alter Cutter’s plans.

All of sudden, his mission wasn’t going to be as easy as he had thought it would be.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Locke watched the gray Seattle skyline as he padded through his fifth mile on the treadmill. He had set up the exercise room so that he could either catch up on his reading or simply enjoy the view while he worked out. The clouds had rolled back over Puget Sound during the night, foreshadowing the storm to come, but the Cascades were still visible. If there weren’t the threat that someone was still trying to kill him, he would have gone out for a jog to Discovery Park.

His internal clock had woken him up by seven AM, so he had already finished some paperwork and lifted weights before starting his run. Much of his field work was rigorous, so staying in shape was important to his job. Plus it gave him a respite to think. He’d had a dream about Dilara Kenner, and although he couldn’t remember it clearly, he knew it wasn’t entirely wholesome. That kiss on the cheek hadn’t been much, but he could tell there was a spark that passed between them.

“Nice view,” said a sleepy voice from behind him.

Locke didn’t startle easily, but he wasn’t used to having someone in his house. His head whipped around, and he saw Dilara leaning in the doorway. He struggled to keep his eyes from bugging out at the sight of her still dressed in his T-shirt. It clung to her in all the right places and ended mid-thigh, revealing toned legs. He let his eyes linger for a moment and then turned back to the window. He didn’t sense that she was making a double entendre on purpose, so he suppressed a smile.

“It certainly is.” He tapped on the treadmill’s control panel, and it ground to a halt. He used the towel hanging on the bar to wipe his forehead, and he suddenly realized that his tank top and shorts were soaked.

“Coffee?” Dilara said.

“On the counter. Breakfast?”

“I’m not a breakfast person. I’m also usually up a lot earlier than this. All the time zone changes must have caught up with me.”

“I already ate. You have your coffee while I shower. When you’re ready, we’ll head to the airport. Oh, and I had someone from my office stop by that store you liked to get you a few things. They’re by the front door in a new bag for you.”

Dilara retrieved the bag and said, “That was very thoughtful of you.”

“I try to take care of my guests,” he said and retreated to the shower.

Once they were both dressed, they threw their bags in the Porsche SUV, and Locke backed out of the garage. Two new bodyguards, who had called in earlier to confirm that they were legitimate, waved to Locke and paced the Porsche from behind.

“Mind if I put on some music?” Locke asked.

He switched on the satellite radio, already tuned to a classic rock station. AC/DC’s Back in Black thumped from the speakers.

“Let me know if it’s too loud.”

“A little different from the Vivaldi.”

“You have to listen to rock when you drive a Porsche.”

The trip to Boeing Field took 20 minutes, and Locke waved off the bodyguards once they were through the airport gates and safely at Gordian’s ramp.

The Gulfstream was already fueled and ready to go for their three-hour hop down to Phoenix. Locke took their bags and strode toward the plane.

He threw their bags in the back. Then he went outside and did a thorough pre-flight check of every system. He didn’t think they’d try another bomb on the plane, but he wanted to check anyway.

Satisfied that the jet was in perfect operating condition, he reboarded. After he closed the cabin door, he headed for the cockpit.

“You want to sit with me?” he asked Dilara, who had already taken a seat in the passenger cabin.

He saw the surprised look he expected.

“You’re the pilot?” she asked.

“I’ve taken a couple of lessons.” Her look deepened into concern, and he laughed. “I have 300 hours in this model and over 2000 hours total. We’ll be fine.”

She shook her head and took a seat in the right-hand chair. “You’re a busy guy.”

“I get bored easily. Sitting around ain’t my thing. I’m a doer — working, playing with my cars, racing, flying. Anything that gets me out of the house.”

“Is there anything you can’t do?”

“I’ve got a lousy singing voice. Just ask Grant when we get down to the TEC. One time he took me to a karaoke bar, and since then he hasn’t been able to listen to My Way without laughing uncontrollably. Said I made Bob Dylan sound like Pavarotti.”

“And what does Grant think of you as a pilot?”

“Oh, he thinks I’m a way better pilot than Pavarotti,” Locke said with a grin.

He spooled up the engines, and within minutes they had lifted off and were winging their way to Phoenix.

Cutter and Simkins had been at the hangar for almost three hours now, and trucks had been steadily arriving with wreckage, but they still hadn’t seen the suitcase. Cutter maintained a discreet distance from Grant Westfield, and whenever he saw Westfield heading in his direction, he casually walked out of his way.

Simkins had been able to check the areas nearer to Westfield, but no luck yet. Still, Cutter had to assume the suitcase would eventually turn up. If the investigators opened it and saw the device inside, they would immediately know it was something that didn’t belong on the plane, and it would be taken to even tighter security. Cutter would never be able to retrieve it after that. He needed to get it back before that happened.

Another truck pulled in, and the bucket brigade repeated. Cutter watched from behind a frame piece that hadn’t been installed yet. Then he saw it. The green case he had put on the plane three days ago. It had survived, and it looked intact. Good. That would make it easier to remove.

His worry now was that bluffing his way out of the hangar with the suitcase wouldn’t work if removal of anything required Westfield’s approval. And there was no way Cutter could bluff past him. He’d recognize Cutter instantly and know something was wrong. Simkins could try it, but if anything seemed suspicious, the deputies would remember that he and Cutter had come in together and would search out Cutter.

He needed a diversion. Something inside the hangar that would distract everyone long enough for him to snatch the suitcase and leave.

Then he realized what he needed was right in front of him. As he was working through the logistics in his mind, he could hear a landing jet roar past on the runway outside.

The flight to the TEC had gone smoothly. Locke taxied over to hangar two and left the Gulfstream in the hands of Gordian’s maintenance crew.

The TEC looked like it was experiencing a typically busy day. In addition to the airplane reconstruction going on in hangar three, at the track pit area he could see several people hunched over a duplicate of the all-electric Tesla roadster that he had driven with Dilara the day before. A hundred yards from it was its exact opposite: the Liebherr dump truck. It looked like they were in the final preparations before putting it through its paces.

Locke called Grant’s cell phone and found out he was still organizing the enormous pile of wreckage being delivered to hangar three. Locke and Dilara walked over to the building to join him.

Locke flashed his ID card at the guards and vouched for Dilara. He was one of only a handful of people who could get someone in when that person didn’t have an ID.

When they got inside, he could see that they’d been making good progress. With the unprecedented manpower Gordian had mobilized, they had been able to gather at least 40 percent of the wreckage already.

He picked out Grant supervising the unloading of a semi. Grant waved them over and continued barking at the crew. Dozens of people pored over the wreckage, looking for anything unusual. Another truck was already waiting to be unloaded. Locke hoped the fast pace would yield some clues soon.

“I love what you’ve done with the place,” he said to Grant.

“I’m going for that jigsaw puzzle feel that’s so contemporary,” Grant said.

“With a bit of a Lego vibe.”

“It’s the latest fad at all the accident reconstructions.”

“Frank Gehry would be proud. I take it that it’s going well?”

“Not bad considering I have the NTSB all over my butt for moving this stuff so quickly. But everything is tagged and photographed properly. It just meant paying overtime for 300 people to do it.”

“It’s worth it, given the stakes.” He told Grant about the connection with Project Whirlwind, and Dilara’s theory that it might represent a second ark.

“Then I’m glad I twisted some arms,” Grant said. “We’ve got four more trucks coming in, and then I’ll shift to sorting through this junk.”

“What can we do to help?” Dilara asked. She was obviously antsy and looking to contribute.

“If you don’t mind getting your hands dirty, you can get some gloves on and give us a hand getting these trucks unloaded.”

She and Locke got into line in the bucket brigade and handed debris out to workers who placed them into distinct piles.

They were in a rhythm and had the truck half-unloaded, when it abruptly lurched forward. It looked like someone had popped the clutch. Then it lurched again and took off in gear. Locke, who was standing behind the trailer, watched as the people standing in the back, including Dilara, were thrown to the floor.

“What the hell!” Grant yelled. “Stop!”

Whoever was in the cab couldn’t hear him, and the semi slowly gained speed, heading for the trailer of the idling truck in front of it. If it gathered enough speed, it would rip right through, destroying potential evidence.

Locke and Grant sprinted around to the driver’s side of the cab. Locke jumped up on the sideboard, just before the truck was going too fast to reach it. He tried the handle, but it was locked and the window rolled up. The cab was empty.

He looked through the window and saw why the truck was moving. Something was jammed into the accelerator.

The semi was fast approaching the trailer. Locke reached into his pocket and retrieved his Leatherman. He looked away and swung the heavy steel tool at the window.

It exploded inward. Locke unlocked the door and pulled it open. He kicked the object away from the accelerator and stomped on the brake. The semi stopped just two feet short of the other truck’s trailer.

Grant came to a stop next to the cab.

“What in God’s name is going on? Whoever is in there is fired!”

“The cab’s empty,” Locke said.

He picked up the object that had been mashed against the pedal. A length of wing strut from the crashed 737.

“Someone did this on purpose,” Locke said, waving the wreckage at Grant and leaping to the ground. He looked back and saw Dilara round the corner.

“You okay?” Locke yelled. Then he added, “Everyone okay?”

She nodded. “We’re fine!”

Grant’s voice boomed. “I want to know who did this, and I want to know right now!” The hangar became dead quiet.

His walkie-talkie interrupted the silence. “Mr. Westfield?”

Grant yanked the walkie-talkie from his belt. “What?”

“This is Deputy Williams. I know you said nothing should be removed from the hangar, but these guys from the NTSB…” The voice abruptly cut off.

“Who was that?” Locke asked.

“One of the deputies guarding the front entrance to the hangar.”

They looked at each other and suddenly realized what was happening. Someone had deliberately caused a distraction so they could smuggle something out of the building.

“Come on,” Locke said and ran toward the far entrance. He and Grant arrived to find both deputies lying on the ground. Locke bent down to take their pulses, but they were dead. Their necks were expertly broken. The men had been ambushed. They were also missing their automatic weapons. Locke was furious. These men were killed on his territory.

Grant was just as mad as Locke was. He got on the radio as he threw the keys to his car to Locke. “This is Grant Westfield. Put the TEC on immediate lock down. No one goes in or out. Is that understood? We have subjects on the move who are armed and dangerous. Gamma protocols are in effect.” That meant if anyone tried to ram the gates, the guards were authorized to shoot first and ask questions later.

They jumped into the Jeep, and Locke shifted it into drive. Whoever had killed the deputies was speeding away in a sedan about 200 yards ahead. Two security vehicles were heading toward them, so the sedan veered off and skidded to a stop next to the Liebherr dump truck. They must have realized that getting back through Gordian’s massive gates would have been futile and were making a last stand at the truck.

The Gordian workers around the truck scattered when they saw the two men jump out with the machine guns spraying bullets into the air.

The gunmen climbed the left-side stairs of the truck, and when they reached the top, they sent two Gordian workers in the cab tumbling down those same stairs. Locke suddenly understood what the intruders’ plan was.

For such a huge machine, the Liebherr was surprisingly easy to drive. Anyone who could start a normal truck and get it into gear would be able to drive the Liebherr. And that’s just what they did. The massive truck’s two 16-cylinder diesels roared to life as the two security vehicles came to a stop in front of it and their occupants jumped out, aiming pistols from behind the open car doors.

“What are they doing?” Grant said.

“Making a mistake,” Locke said.

The dump truck rolled forward, crushing the hoods of both vehicles into an origami of steel. The men beside the cars dove out of the way.

Locke pulled even with the 200-ton behemoth, trying to find a way on board, when he heard the clatter of an AR-15. Bullets tore into the hood, and steam and oil spurted up, coating the windshield. The engine sounded like it was grinding itself to pieces.

Locke pounded his fist on the dashboard and pulled to a stop. The Jeep was destroyed. No way could they follow in it. He watched the gigantic truck as it rolled toward the hurricane security fence, which it would rip through like a damp Kleenex.

Locke threw open the door and got out. They needed a vehicle, but the nearest ones were back at the hangar more than a quarter mile away. By the time they ran back there to get another car, the truck would be long gone.

Grant, who was on the other side of the punctured hood, pointed at something past Locke’s head. “Tyler, behind you.”

Locke whirled to see the wide-eyed stares of five people who had been testing the Tesla sports car. Next to them was a trailer, but he didn’t see their service vehicle. He recognized one of the men, who stood there slack-jawed.

“Del, where’s your Jeep?” Locke said.

“Fred used it to go get us some lunch,” Del said.

Then Locke’s eyes settled on the Tesla.

“Del, Grant and I are going to borrow your car.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

“You drive,” Locke said to Grant. “Let’s toss the targa.”

The Tesla had a removable targa roof, and Locke knew the only way to catch the men in the Liebherr was to get aboard it too, which would be easier if he didn’t have to climb through the Tesla’s window. He flipped a couple of latches, and Grant did the same. Then they picked up the roof section and pitched it backwards where it clattered to the ground.

Grant squeezed himself into the driver’s seat and punched the accelerator even before Locke had his door closed. Except for the squealing of tires and high-pitched whine of the electric motors, the car was eerily silent, which made the roar of the lumbering dump truck even louder.

Locke hated to see the truck damaging his beloved TEC. The Liebherr plowed its way across the dirt obstacle course, mowing down everything in its path. Even concrete and steel was no match for the huge truck. Once it got out of the TEC, no one would be safe, and there would be virtually no way to stop it.

Locke remembered a few years back in San Diego when a psychotic had stolen a tank from a National Guard armory. Although the tank’s gun was disabled, the impregnable vehicle rampaged through city streets at a stately 20 miles per hour, dozens of police cars following. There was nothing anyone could do. It destroyed homes, cars, RVs, telephone poles. The police had been reduced to watching the destruction, hoping the tank would run out of gas. The only reason the rampage stopped was because the driver stranded the tank on a concrete median. It was only then that police could assault the tank and kill the driver.

This was worse. That tank was a slow, Vietnam-era M60. Maybe 50 tons. The Liebherr 282 B weighed four times that, was 25 feet tall, and could reach a top speed of 40 mph. Nothing short of a precision-guided bomb would be able to stop it.

This escape couldn’t be the hijackers’ original plan. It was too noisy and dangerous. They wanted something from the Hayden wreckage, but for some reason they weren’t able to sneak it through the TEC front gate. The intruders had seen the Liebherr, and going through the gate would be unnecessary if they could steal the dump truck.

Whatever the hijackers had was worth an awful risk to obtain. That meant Locke needed to get it back.

The local police would already be on their way to track the truck by helicopter. There was no possibility the truck would be able to slip away. But Locke thought the hijackers would know that and have some kind of escape plan. In the meantime, there was a 200-ton truck under Gordian’s responsibility that was about to blast through suburban Phoenix.

Because the Tesla was a low-slung sports car, it wasn’t able to take the direct path that the Liebherr had taken. It made up for the difference with speed and handling. Grant steered it onto the smoother parts of the dirt course, careful to avoid the rubble the truck was creating.

Up ahead, the Liebherr had reach the oval track and ran across it. It bounced up a twenty-foot-high berm — built so that curious photographers couldn’t spy on track testing — and then dropped over the other side. The truck was so tall that he could still see part of it above the top of the berm. Then it reached the outer fence. Thirty yards of hardened steel mesh were torn apart and flew up and over the truck.

They had at best two minutes before the truck reached a populated area. They couldn’t follow over the berm, so Grant sped through the tunnel.

Locke got on the walkie-talkie.

“Open the gate immediately! Grant Westfield and I are in the red car. Do not shoot! Acknowledge!”

“Who is this?” came the response.

“This is Tyler Locke! Repeat, do not shoot at the red car! That’s an order!”

“Yes, sir!”

The Tesla shot out of the tunnel, and the gate was ahead, still sliding open. Grant didn’t let up on the accelerator. Locke grimaced as they whizzed through the gate, missing it by inches.

Grant wrenched the wheel around and aimed for the bright yellow dump truck, which was now a half mile ahead. There was no chance they would lose it. It was like watching a McDonald’s restaurant suddenly take off and barrel down the road.

The Tesla quickly reached 100 mph. Within 30 seconds, they caught up with the Liebherr. Looming ahead was the first sign of civilization, a warehouse district outside of Deer Valley. The truck showed no signs of slowing down.

Police cars were now following, their sirens blaring, and the few cars in front of them scattered at the sight of the approaching behemoth. Locke used his cell phone to tell the police to stay back. He didn’t want any more crushed cars, and there was nothing the police could do. Armed with pistols and shotguns, they couldn’t damage the truck in any significant way. It would take a bazooka to make a dent in the truck’s 12-foot-diameter tires. And the engine itself weighed 20,000 pounds. Bullets would just bounce off. It would take a miracle to hit anything vital.

Grant pulled up behind the truck.

“We need to stop it,” Locke said.

“You do realize that it outweighs us by about 398,000 pounds,” Grant said. “I can’t exactly run it off the road.”

“That’s why I need to get on it.”

Locke would rather just hold back and follow safely behind, but the thought of innocent bystanders getting killed by a truck that was in Gordian’s hands made him sick. If it crashed through a mall, the casualties would be horrendous.

He wouldn’t have to take out the driver. The Liebherr’s engine bay was exposed on both sides for ease of maintenance. Halfway up the right-side stairway, he could access the engine and shut the truck down. Then when it came to a halt, he’d let the police take over.

The driver’s accomplice was the biggest problem. Locke would have to disable the gunman so that he wouldn’t be shot while tinkering with the engine.

Locke told Grant his plan.

“You are nuts,” Grant said.

“Can’t argue with that,” Locke said.

“But that’s what I like about you. No fear.”

Locke glanced at Grant and gave him a wry grin. “None whatsoever. Now let’s do this before I come to my senses.”

Grant accelerated until he was next to the rear wheels. There was little chance that the Liebherr would be able to swing over and crush the nimble Tesla, especially with Grant driving, but Locke braced himself for that possibility anyway.

Instead, the second gunman leaned over the platform that surrounded the cab and looked out over both sides of the truck. He aimed the AR-15 and let loose a volley. Bullets pinged off the ground around the Tesla, and Grant fell back behind the truck out of the gunman’s sight.

“Now what?” Grant said. “With those huge rear-view mirrors, they can see which side we’re coming up on.”

“Then let’s take care of those mirrors.”

On each side of the Liebherr, there was a mirror the size of an end table. It allowed the driver, who sat in the cab in the middle of the truck, to back up to the massive loaders that fill the bed with ore. With one man driving, the other hijacker would have to cover both sides with the AR-15. The driver must be directing him as to which side the Tesla was approaching.

Locke took the Glock out of its holster, glad that he’d brought it with him on this trip. When he nodded, Grant gunned the engine and pulled around to the left side. The gunman was out of sight, and before he could move to their side, Locke popped up and squeezed off six rounds at the mirror. Two bullets hit, disintegrating it.

The gunman appeared and trained his weapon on them, but Grant was already pulling around the back of the truck to the right side. Locke put another six shots into the right mirror.

“Nice shootin’, Tex,” Grant said.

The driver was now blind to what was behind him. They’d have a 50/50 shot at getting to the stairways at the front of the truck without being seen. At least it was better than no chance at all.

Grant whipped the Tesla around the left side and raced to the front of the truck, which crushed the rear ends of two cars crossing through an intersection as if the vehicles were made of balsa. Locke instinctively ducked under the debris flying over his head, and Grant barely missed colliding with one of the destroyed vehicles.

Locke loaded his only reserve magazine and replaced the pistol on his hip, readying himself for the jump to the stairs.

There were three stairways: one each on the left and right sides of the engine bay, and a third stairway that crossed the radiator diagonally from the right side at the top to the left just above the ground. The left-side and radiator stairways met at the bottom left corner of the engine block at a small platform.

The Tesla pulled even with the platform. If he were Catholic, this is when Locke would cross himself. Instead, he just muttered, “What am I doing?”

He leaped across the four-foot gap onto the platform and clanged onto the steel, grasping the railing so that he wouldn’t slip off. Not only would a fall at 40 mph result in a spectacular case of road rash, but he’d most likely be flattened by one of the truck’s tires.

He steadied himself and gave the thumbs up to Grant. He pulled out the Glock again and crept up the radiator stairway, air whistling past him into the howling engine. As planned, Grant wheeled the Tesla away to draw attention away from Locke.

It worked. The gunman sprayed another round of shots in Grant’s direction. When Locke reached the top, he saw the man leaning over the railing, looking toward the rear of the truck. He took aim to shoot the guy in the back. Not very sporting, Locke thought, but screw him. He made his choice when he killed those two deputies.

Before Locke could pull the trigger, the glass of the cab shattered, and bullets ricocheted off the metal around Locke, sending him ducking down the stairway. The driver was using his weapon to defend the cab.

The second gunman appeared at the top of the staircase. Locke got off a shot with his Glock, but the gunman knocked it out of his hand and over the side using the rifle’s muzzle. Locke grabbed hold of the man’s shirt, and they both tumbled down the stairs. In an effort to catch himself, the man let go of the AR-15, which fell over the railing.

As they rolled down the stairs, Locke desperately tried to slow himself, the image of those massive tires in his mind. He came to rest at the ground level landing and found himself on top of the gunman, who thrashed underneath him. Locke held him down, trying to get leverage either to knock the man unconscious or toss him off the truck. He didn’t care which.

Locke heard the beep of a car horn tooting. He looked up and saw Grant in the Tesla next to him yelling and pointing straight in front of him.

With his knees on the gunman’s chest, Locke twisted his head around and felt every muscle in his body tighten like guitar strings when he saw what Grant was pointing at. Locke was about to slam into a brick wall.

TWENTY-NINE

As soon as Locke’s head had appeared over the front of the cab platform, Cutter realized what had happened. Driving the Liebherr had been as easy as he thought it might be, and he had tasked Simkins with patrolling the perimeter of the platform to make sure no one got close enough to take pot shots at him in the cab.

The suitcase sat on the floor next to Cutter. He couldn’t destroy it back at the Gordian compound, which meant he’d had to steal it. The Liebherr had presented a unique possibility, and the plan had worked perfectly. He just needed to make sure he could get to his impromptu escape point before they could figure out a way to stop the truck. Once there, he could flee along with the crowds. If he was stopped before that, there would be no way off the truck without being spotted. He would be surrounded easily. He couldn’t let that happen.

With the mirrors, he had kept his pursuers at bay, using Simkins as his sniper. Locke had figured out how to thwart that tactic. Cutter had guessed it was only a matter of time before Locke tried something else.

Then he’d seen Locke’s face pop up. Simkins had rushed over without checking over the side and got surprised by Locke, who pulled Simkins down. Cutter had lost sight of them both. But he knew the stairs in front of the radiator went almost to the ground. If they were still on it, Cutter had an excellent way to take care of the problem.

Ahead was some kind of outdoor storage facility for a building supplier. Piles of bricks were stacked for shipping, each pile taller than the last and at least six feet thick.

All Cutter had to do was run into them. The truck would absorb the impact without even slowing down. Even if the stairs weren’t completely crushed, being hit by a ton of bricks would take care of Locke.

Too bad about Simkins, though. He was a good soldier, and he would die like one.

Grant, who kept the Tesla parallel to the dump truck, watched in horror as the Liebherr purposely approached the piles of bricks, spaced out at 50 foot intervals to allow forklifts to carry the brick pallets out. The first was 10 feet high, the one behind that 15 feet, and the third one twenty feet. He was certain the driver knew Locke was on the stairs.

He saw Locke get his warning. Locke kneed the man who had fallen down the stairs with him and scrambled up the radiator stairway. The gunman, still holding his midsection, was at the bottom of the stairs when the truck hit the first pile.

The hijacker was pulverized by the bricks, which also ripped apart the stairs just below Locke’s feet. He lost his footing for a moment, and Grant held his breath. Locke recovered and pulled himself up five more feet, out of the way of a second pile of bricks that exploded against the front of the truck, its hardened-steel radiator grill merely dented by the mass of bricks. Grant had seen him cheat death too many times to think Locke would fail now, but he still couldn’t believe his friend’s luck.

Locke leaped up to the top of the stairs just as the third pile wrenched the stairs loose from the top, and Grant was sure Locke was going to fall.

He blinked and saw that one bolt still held. Locke dangled from a piece of railing that jutted out in front of the engine. He was too far from the right side staircase to swing himself over. If he fell, it was twenty feet to the ground at 40 mph. Grant didn’t care how lucky Locke was, there would be no surviving that.

Grant had to help him somehow.

The Tesla started pinging. Grant looked at the instrument panel and saw the issue. The batteries of the all-electric car were almost out of juice. He could already feel it starting to slow down, which meant he had one chance to help Locke.

The Liebherr driver, probably thinking he’d killed Locke, had swung back onto the main road, trailed by a gaggle of police cars, headed toward some unknown destination. He obviously felt impervious high up in that cab.

Grant forced the Tesla over in front of the truck, his foot jammed to the floor to keep the sports car from slowing down. He lined himself up under Locke, who was straining to keep hold.

The back of the Tesla was mere feet in front of the enormous truck. Locke’s feet swung high above Grant’s left shoulder. Grant couldn’t get close enough for Locke to land in the car’s passenger cabin. If Locke hit the trunk, he’d most likely bounce off and under the truck’s undercarriage. Grant would have to try something else, something even he thought was crazy.

He swung the Tesla so that it was alongside with the right-side stairway that went straight down to the bottom front of the truck. It had survived the battering by the brick piles. He hit the cruise control and took one final look ahead to make sure he had enough straight road. The adrenaline was flooding through him just like he was about to jump out of an airplane, except this was about 100 times more dangerous. He shouted at the top of his lungs to pump himself up.

He stood on the seat, stabilizing the steering wheel. Then in one fluid motion, Grant jumped up and leaped onto the Liebherr’s right-side stairway. He gave another shout for making it.

With the steering wheel uncontrolled, the Tesla swung left and disappeared under the truck’s massive wheels. Grant heard the crunch of smashed metal. The Tesla was gone.

He turned and saw Locke still hanging by two hands, but his grip seemed to be fading. Grant braced himself against the railing of the steeper right-side staircase and leaned out as far as he could stretch. Locke let go with one hand. They could just barely grab each other’s hands.

“On three!” Grant yelled. “One! Two! Three!”

He yanked Locke’s hand as Locke released his grip on the railing. He plunged down, and Grant reeled him in like a prize tuna. For a second, Locke’s feet bounced against the asphalt. Grant heaved and pulled him up.

When they were both secure on the staircase, they fell to the stairs, panting for air.

Locke wiped his brow with his sleeve, then pushed himself up slowly. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.

“And you think I’m nuts?” he said, his voice shakier than Grant had ever heard it before.

“Bat-shit cuckoo,” Grant replied.

Locke held out his hand, and Grant shook it.

“Thanks,” Locke said. “I owe you several for that maneuver.”

“And we owe Tesla a new car.”

“We’ve got bigger problems.” Locke pointed at an approaching sign. It said Splash World parking lot next right. “That’s how he’s planning to get away.”

Made sense, Grant thought, in a sick sort of way. Splash World was the biggest and most popular water park in the city. Hot day like this, there’d be thousands of people there. The truck driver would just crash through the park and get out in the confusion.

“Let’s get him then,” Grant said climbing toward the top of the staircase. He felt Locke grab his ankle.

“Guy’s got the AR-15 trained on us. He’ll take us out before we get halfway to the cab.” Locke took out his Leatherman tool. “Here. You’re the electrical engineer. Since you’re on board now, you can do it.”

The truck swerved around and into the Splash World parking lot. It began mowing through cars like Bigfoot’s gigantic brother.

“And hurry,” Locke added.

The engine bay was open on the side for easy access and maintenance. Like most modern engines, the Liebherr’s was computer controlled. If Grant could disable the computer, the truck’s safeguards would kick in, cut off the fuel supply, and the brakes would automatically engage.

“If I had known you’d go to all this trouble to get me on the truck,” Grant yelled as he climbed into the roaring engine bay, “I would have made you drive.”

He could see a checkered view of the park fence through the front grill. It was swiftly approaching. He unfolded the Leatherman and opened the wire cutters carefully. If he dropped it, they’d be royally screwed.

Grant could make out screams in the distance, but he didn’t see anyone getting run over by the truck. At least that was something. Up ahead, he saw what the driver was aiming for. A collection of waterslides. If the driver could demolish them, the panic in the park would be complete.

Grant found the wires leading to the on-board computer. He began snipping them one by one.

The truck burst through the outer fence.

Two wires to go.

Grant could see the huge wave pool pass to their left.

One wire left. With the last snip, the engine abruptly cut off. The sudden silence was deafening. The truck started to slow, but they were still rolling toward the water slides. The screams of those who were stuck on the staircase waiting area got louder as the truck closed the distance.

Then the emergency brakes kicked in. The truck lurched as if a giant had grabbed its rear. The truck crashed through two slides and ground to a halt just as it reached the teeming staircase, gently tapping it but nothing more. Grant whistled. Close call.

Now dripping with sweat from the heat, Grant climbed out of the engine bay.

Locke was above him standing at the top of the staircase, looking at the cab. Since he wasn’t being shot at, that meant only one thing.

“Don’t tell me,” Grant said. “He’s gone.”

Locke nodded, his frustration apparent. “And he took whatever he had with him. Must have jumped into the wave pool when we passed it. Probably lost in the crowd by now.”

“Lucky bastard,” Grant said, mopping his brow. “At least he got to go for a swim.”

THIRTY

The Tuesday evening news had been wall-to-wall coverage of the truck chase, and on Wednesday morning, the finger pointing had begun. The damage done to the Deer Valley portion of Phoenix had been extensive, but not as catastrophic as it could have been. Except for the construction warehouse, most of the destruction was contained at Splash World. At least 65 cars in the parking lot were totally destroyed, and another 50 damaged. The total bill for the damage would undoubtedly run into the millions. It was a miracle that the only deaths had been the one hijacker and the two deputies. Several people at Splash World were injured, but none seriously. Still, Gordian would now have to brace for the inevitable lawsuits.

Miles Benson had made the flight down Wednesday morning to survey the destruction first hand. Gordian was going to be blamed for not securing the Liebherr and allowing it to be used as a battering ram, and he had the ultimate responsibility. Using cranes, Gordian workers under Grant’s supervision were already stabilizing the water slide it had come to rest against and disassembling the truck for shipment back to the TEC.

“And you didn’t even get the guy?” Miles said, watching the bed being lifted from the Liebherr. “How the hell did this happen?”

Locke had returned to the TEC after the crash to assess the damage and investigate how someone had infiltrated the facility. Now he had an even tougher job: answering his boss’s questions. The work was stirring up dust. Locke coughed as if he was hacking up some of the dirt, but he was actually embarrassed by the slip-up.

“Here’s what we know so far,” Locke said. “We accounted for all of the people who entered the TEC yesterday except for two NTSB investigators. Maricopa County sheriff’s department raided their hotel room. The real investigators were both dead. Shot and put on ice in the bathtub. Do not disturb sign on the door. A quick job that would have passed for a day or two at most.”

“What did they get?”

“We matched the hangar’s remaining contents to the G-Tag inventory. They got away with a hard-side suitcase, green, the size of a carry-on. It hadn’t been opened yet by our team, so there’s no way to know what was inside.”

“Why bring so much attention to themselves?”

“I don’t think that plane was meant to make it back to the US. They expected it to go down at sea. That’s the only reason I can guess as to why they made such a risky and hasty plan to get at something in that wreckage. They never thought we’d find it if it crashed in the ocean.”

“Any leads?”

““The medical examiner is still pulling brick chunks out of one of the hijackers. Witnesses at the wave pool saw a man jump into the deep end as the truck passed, but he got away in the confusion. We’re checking to see if any vehicle in the lot was stolen, but that will take a while with all of the flattened cars out there. We’ve got the video from the camera at the TEC front gate. I’m having Aiden MacKenna run it to see if he can make an ID.”

“They went to a lot of trouble to make sure we didn’t open that suitcase,” Miles said. “And now it’s going to cost us a pretty penny.”

With a clunk, the dump truck’s enormous bed settled onto a flat bed trailer. Locke could still see part of the hurricane fence clinging to the lip.

“I’d worry more about their ultimate plans,” he said. “Miles, I know they built a bunker somewhere. They’re planning to use it as an ark. This is all a prelude to something big, and the Genesis Dawn has some part in this.”

“A field test for the bioweapon?” Miles was as sharp as ever.

Locke nodded. “Could be. Maybe they were through with lab testing and wanted to see if it actually worked in an uncontrolled environment. The Genesis Dawn will either be another test or their end game. Whoever they are.”

“The end of the world is at hand,” Miles said in an airy manner. “I just thought that was what crazies printed on pieces of cardboard.”

“Nobody spends $400 million dollars building a bunker unless they think they might need it someday. In this case, I think they knew they would need it.”

“Has your new companion, Dr. Kenner, figured out the link with Noah’s Ark yet?”

“She’s back at the TEC working on it. She’s convinced that her father found the actual Noah’s Ark. That it’s not just a metaphor for the Oasis bunker. She thinks that if we can find it, we might be able to tie all this together. To say the least, I’m not confident.”

“You don’t believe.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Come on, Miles. A 400-foot-long wooden ship that survived six millennia and now is part of some madman’s scheme to kill billions of people. You know me. I’m an empiricist. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“I have to say I’m skeptical as well, but something about Dilara Kenner’s surety in her father…Well, I tend to listen to my gut. Her belief eases my doubts.”

“And the big wooden ship that should have been rotted to dust by now?”

“Maybe your skeptical mind is latching on to the wrong thing. You should be asking yourself, how would Noah’s Ark last 6000 years? If you answer that, you might actually find it. And find the perpetrators of this god-awful mess. Now I’ve got a real stake in solving this problem. Gordian’s going to be on the hook for the damage from the Liebherr unless we find someone else to blame.”

“What about the Genesis Dawn? It sails on its inaugural cruise in two days.”

“From now on, that’s your responsibility. I’m counting on you to make sure the world is still here next week. Grant will finish up here. I’ll give you a lift back to the TEC. I’ve got a dozen lawyers and insurance adjusters to meet with.”

As he followed Miles back to the specially-equipped van he could roll into with his IBOT and drive, Locke for once wished his problems were as mundane as talking with attorneys about settling lawsuits. Instead, all he had to do in the next day was come up with a way to find Noah’s Ark, an archaeological treasure that had been hidden since the beginning of recorded history, while preventing the deaths of virtually every person on earth.

No pressure.

THIRTY-ONE

Cutter started explaining to Garrett how, sopping wet, he had eluded the mass of police who had converged on the water park the day before and stole a car that he drove to Tuscon. There, under an assumed name and using falsified documents, he boarded a plane that took him back to Seattle. As they walked back from the Orcas compound’s helipad, Garrett held up his hand to say that was enough. The details of Cutter’s escape were unimportant to him. The fact that he had the suitcase was all that mattered.

Although the test aboard Hayden’s plane had potentially compromised the whole operation when it turned back to the mainland unexpectedly, he had to consider it a success. It proved that the Arkon-B could be administered in a non-laboratory environment. Now he was assured that the delivery method for Arkon-C for the Genesis Dawn would be equally effective.

He had considered going ahead with the plan for the cruise ship without testing it first, but that course of action would have been risky. If it hadn’t worked, and the device was discovered prematurely, it would have been difficult to mount a second attempt. Possible, because of his backup facility in Switzerland. The bunker under his castle near Bern was functional, but not nearly as comfortable as Oasis. Once Garrett had realized it would be more efficient to have all of his scientists and followers in one location, he had consolidated everything at Orcas Island and put the Swiss laboratory into hibernation. He could revive it at a later time, but only if necessary.

“Of course,” Garrett said to Cutter, “this means you can’t accompany me to the Genesis Dawn to activate the device.”

“I could wear a disguise…” Cutter protested. Garrett understood. Cutter was as eager to be a part of the final operation as Garrett was. But Garrett couldn’t allow anything to jeopardize their plans now.

“No, you’ll stay. Take care of the preparations here. When I return, we should be ready to button up. Everyone is due to arrive in the next two days. It’s just a matter of double-checking our stores and procedures.”

“Yes, sir. But what about Locke? Our contact said that he went to Coleman’s office.”

“That avenue was thoroughly sealed off, both from Coleman’s death, and the subsequent scrubbing of his files. No, without the device, he won’t be able to make a connection to us. I thought Watson might have implicated me directly, which is why I wanted Tyler killed. Now it’s obviously not necessary. Believe me, I know Tyler. If he knew anything remotely close to the truth, he would have come after me by now. He might have a few clues, but nothing that he’ll put together before it’s too late.”

“And you completely trust our contact?”

Garrett nodded. “Absolutely. In fact, after I heard about your misadventures in Phoenix, I told him to meet me in Miami. He’ll ensure that the device is activated after I leave.”

When he had first heard about the Genesis Dawn’s inaugural sailing, Garrett knew it was the perfect way to launch the New World. The official maiden voyage of the world’s largest and most luxurious cruise ship had been booked solid for years, but Garrett used the considerable clout that his billions gave him to rent the biggest suite on the ship. As part of the deal, he had promised to attend the inaugural gala. Going to the party was an annoyance, but the cabin was perfect for his needs, so he had readily agreed.

The ship would cruise to New York and then on to the major seaports of Europe, where thousands of dignitaries and passengers from around the globe would board to tour the immense vessel or even travel for a few days before disembarking, carrying their tales of the ship back to their home countries.

The entire itinerary was 40 days exactly. The same 40 days as Noah’s Flood. When Garrett had seen the itinerary, he knew it was a sign. How apt.

When the passengers left the ship, they would travel through the busiest airports in the world. It was a perfect way to transmit the Arkon-C worldwide in a matter of weeks. By the time anyone realized the true source of the disease, it would be too late. It would have been unwittingly communicated around the world.

Garrett had been disappointed when he and his scientists had developed Arkon-B, the type he had used for the test on Hayden’s plane. Although it produced the effect he wanted, it worked much too fast. The infected would be quarantined. A few thousand might have been killed. But that wasn’t his plan. He needed a variant that would work more slowly.

It had taken another year to develop Arkon-C, but it finally allowed him to put his plan for the New World in motion. There was, of course, no cure, so once the Arkon-C was communicated worldwide, nothing would stop it. A few isolated groups might live through the outbreak, but it would be by sheer luck. Garrett’s computer models estimated less than a million survivors worldwide. All he and his followers would have to do was wait it out and emerge as the leaders of the New World.

Which was why he had put so much of his fortune into building Oasis. His own underground ark. It would forever be known as Garrett’s Ark.

How ironic, he thought, that finding Noah’s Ark had made his own vision possible. For a brief moment, he had considered releasing news of his discovery to the world, his lifelong dream realized. But the discovery had enabled a new dream, one grander and even more profound. God had seen fit to make him the conduit for rebuilding the earth in his vision.

He would be the Noah of a new generation. The father of all that would come in the New World. It was a heavy burden, but he knew that God saw something in him that generations would come to venerate.

The birth of the New World would be painful, as birth often is. Yet he was confident he would be seen as the hero he was, as God’s representative who would usher in a golden era of mankind.

His companion for the New World, his beloved Svetlana, walked over to him followed by a servant carrying her luggage. She would be there at the gala to toast the beginning of the New World with him.

“You look happy,” she said. “Are you ready?”

“Do you realize,” he said, “that we’re about to embark on the greatest journey in history? One even greater than Noah’s.”

“I do,” she replied. “I’m so excited. But this is the last time I’ll be able to wear an Armani original, so let’s hope it doesn’t rain.”

THIRTY-TWO

Locke returned to the TEC Wednesday afternoon. Aiden hadn’t found the identity of the hijackers in the FBI or military databases yet, so Locke had been running the video of the car going through the TEC’s front gate, trying to find some clue about their identities. Grant Westfield, having finished dismantling the Liebherr, joined him in the screening room, and a disturbing look crossed his face as soon as he saw the video.

“Son of a bitch,” Grant said.

“What’s wrong?”

“I know him.”

“Which one?”

“The driver. The one that got away. His name is Dan Cutter.”

“How do you know him?”

“I served with him in Iraq.”

“Rangers?”

Grant sat heavily, the chair creaking under the load. “For about four months. Just long enough to get to know how dirty he played it.”

This was the first Locke had heard any details about Grant’s troubles in the Army’s special forces detachment. Locke had served in the Army before 9/11 and had returned to his unit as a reservist. In Afghanistan and then Iraq where Locke was a company commander, he had developed a close friendship and rapport with Grant, his first sergeant. Over Locke’s strenuous objections, Grant had been transferred to the Ranger Orientation Program because of his reputation as an electronics whiz, which they desperately needed for special forces. Combined with his combat skills, he was a formidable team member.

For all Locke knew, everything in Grant’s detachment was going well until two years later, near the time when Grant reached his in-service date. Locke was already out at that point. He thought Grant was going to re-enlist, but something happened that made Grant ask him about getting a job in the real world, so Locke gladly made him a partner at Gordian. Grant had never talked about his Ranger service except for vague references to an incident in Iraq.

“Is this about Ramadi?” Locke asked.

Grant nodded slowly. It was one of the few times Locke had seen him deadly serious. It made him nervous.

“This guy was the best,” Grant said. “My superior NCO. Since I wasn’t company top hat any more, I was back to being a master sergeant then. Cutter was first sergeant, but he went by his nickname, Chainsaw, because of the way he cut the enemy to pieces. I refused to call him that, mostly to piss him off. He could sniff out insurgent hiding places no one else could find. He was a legend in the Rangers. Everyone knew him. Cutter had a better score than anyone else in the team.” Score, Locke knew, meant number of enemy kills.

“I could see that Cutter was on the edge of going too far,” Grant continued. “He enjoyed the kills too much. Started notching his weapon. He had so many notches the damned thing looked like my mother’s sofa after our cat got his claws on it. Then it all came to a head in Ramadi.”

Grant paused for a moment. Locke didn’t interrupt. This obviously wasn’t something Grant found pleasant to talk about.

“We were on an incursion looking for a suspected insurgent cell in a neighborhood in the north side of the city. We went in on foot for stealth, but we had chopper evac ready. Cutter had the cell zeroed in one of the few undamaged houses. We were approaching when a guy popped up out of nowhere with an RPG. Cutter got the rocket man in one shot, but not before the blast took out our lieutenant. That set Cutter off.

“We infiltrated the house, but we were only supposed to nab the suspects. Cutter wasn’t having it. He ordered us to terminate them. So we did as ordered.” Grant said it flatly, but Locke could make out the underlying pain in his voice. “But it didn’t stop there. Cutter went outside and herded all the families hiding in the nearby houses out into the street.”

Locke could sense what was coming.

“Said he wanted to question them,” Grant said. “Then Cutter opened fire. Men, women, children. Maybe all of them innocent. Didn’t matter to Cutter. As soon as I realized what was happening, I tackled him. The families scattered, or what was left of them. Cutter and I got into a fight right there in the street, and that’s when a sniper opened up. He hit Cutter twice, in the shoulder and the groin.

“With Cutter down, I was the ranking sergeant. I called in our helo evac and got us out, including our dead. Cutter went to Ramstein. Word was that his shoulder was fine, but they had to lop off his private parts. I got out two months later. Never saw him again. But I know he remembers me.”

“You think he saw you today?”

“If he did, it must have been killing him not to take me out right there. I’m sorry, Tyler. With so many people in the hangar, I didn’t notice him. If I’d seen him, maybe those deputies would still be alive.”

Locke thought back to Grant jumping onto the truck to save him.

“It could have been a lot worse,” he said.

“It’s already pretty bad if Cutter’s involved. Whoever hired him wanted the best nut he could find. And if they got Cutter, they probably got a bunch of other top-notch vets along with him. He’d know who to recruit, who’d be loyal to him, and who was willing to do the wet work. Maybe we should get the General involved.”

Locke rolled his eyes at the mention of his father. “Did Miles put you up to this?”

Grant put his hand on Locke’s shoulder. “Look, I know how you feel about your dad, but he’s a pretty powerful guy, and he’s got a lot of resources.”

Locke sighed. “Believe me, Grant, if I thought he could do something that we couldn’t do on our own, I would go to him.”

Grant looked doubtful. “Really?”

“I would be swallowing a bucketful of pride, but I’d do it.”

“I’m sure he’d be willing to help.”

“I’m sure he would, too. That’s the problem. Then I’d owe him big.” Locke stood. “Now, I’d better call Agent Perez and let the FBI know what we’re up against. Maybe they have more on the two who came at us in Seattle.”

“Any more on the connection between Coleman and Whirlwind?” Grant asked.

“Not yet,” Locke said. “Things have been so busy I haven’t had a chance to get back with Aiden. He’s supposed to call me when he gets anything.”

“I’m going back to the hangar to see if we have any other clues. Maybe Cutter left something behind, although I wouldn’t bet on it.”

Grant left the viewing room with Locke, and they parted ways when Locke turned to head towards the room he’d set up for Dilara in the main office building. He dialed Perez while he walked. The FBI agent answered on the second ring.

“Dr. Locke, you’re just the person I wanted to talk to.”

“You have the identities of the men in Seattle?”

“I do.”

“Ex-Army special forces?”

“How did you know that?”

Locke told him about Chainsaw Dan Cutter and the stolen suitcase.

“I’ll get him on our most wanted list right away. But he may have gone to ground.”

“Have you had any threats to the Genesis Dawn?” Locke asked.

“No, but I’ve beefed up security as much as I could. Without a direct terrorist threat, there’s not much more I can do.”

“Agent Perez, something is going down on the Genesis Dawn. It might be at the gala or it might be at sea. Either way, you’re talking about 8000 lives at risk. Don’t you take Dr. Kenner’s story seriously?”

“Of course we do. But we’re also focused on the Hayden crash right now. Washington doesn’t want to cause a nationwide panic that bioweapons might be loose on American soil. They are, however, giving me a lot of leeway and manpower just in case this leads to something.”

“What about the suitcase that was taken from our TEC?” Locke asked. “It was probably how the bioweapon was smuggled on board Hayden’s airplane.”

“We’ll be examining every suitcase that goes on board the Genesis Dawn, but I don’t even know what I’m supposed to find inside.”

“You’re going to be there yourself?”

“I told you. I’m taking you seriously. But all you’ve told me is that the Genesis Dawn is a possible target. How am I supposed to protect the world’s largest cruise ship from an attack if I don’t know what to look for?”

Locke thought about that, lamenting that he’d let a possible link to hard evidence get away. If he had stopped Cutter, he’d have a much better rationale for stopping the cruise.

Locke hadn’t yet told Perez about Whirlwind and the link to Project Oasis that he’d found at Coleman’s. It was another unsubstantiated rumor, just a hunch that Coleman’s death wasn’t an accident. He didn’t have any proof. But he needed to impress upon Perez the need for vigilance.

“Agent Perez, I have reason to believe this all may be connected with something called Project Oasis.”

“What’s that?”

“A bunker, constructed underground to house hundreds of people for months at a time. I believe that whoever killed Hayden has a functional bunker ready to go.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because I worked on the project for two months. It had a different name, but it was the same project.”

“And that’s why Coleman was killed,” Perez said, catching on quickly. “They were covering their tracks.”

“Exactly.”

“Do you have evidence about Oasis?”

“No. Someone purged all of Coleman’s files about the project. I was lucky to find the little I did.”

Perez sighed and spoke mechanically. “I’ll let my superiors know what you’ve found, but without evidence, it’s going to be hard to convince them to do anything else. How big was the suitcase?”

“The size of a carry-on. The one on the Genesis Dawn may be bigger, but it would still be something portable.”

“If there’s anything suspicious, Dr. Locke,” Perez said, “we’ll find it. Don’t worry.” The tone was condescending, as if the FBI agent were soothing a doting mother sending her child off to kindergarten. Locke didn’t like being talked down to, and despite what Perez had said, Locke didn’t think he really was taking the threat seriously.

“That’s good to hear, Agent Perez,” Locke said, “because if you don’t, someone’s going to get on that ship with a device that will kill every single person on board.”

THIRTY-THREE

Locke walked into the office he’d set a aside for Dilara to find her surrounded by books that overflowed the desk she sat at.

“A little light reading?” he asked.

“Your company was kind enough to retrieve my father’s notes and research that I put in storage. They arrived by FedEx this morning. After I heard the news that he was missing, I looked through them for clues, but I didn’t find anything useful, so they’ve just moldered since then. I thought this would be a good time to go back through them.”

“His research on Noah’s Ark?”

Dilara nodded. “It was his obsession. He believed in the historical relevance of the Bible, that there was a basis in fact for the Flood story. If he could find Noah’s Ark, it would show that the Flood had actually occurred.”

“It might also piss off a lot of people if it showed it didn’t happen exactly as the Bible told.”

“My father didn’t care about that. He cared about truth. He was curious. He loved the thrill of discovery, no matter what the discovery contradicted. And he didn’t believe that the Bible was an infallible document delivered directly from God’s mouth. He thought that the Bible was fallible precisely because humans had manipulated it throughout the centuries.”

“You mean the translations?”

“Exactly. The Bible has been translated from the original Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English. He knew it was possible that, along the way, errors were introduced in the text. The multiple English translations alone show that it can be interpreted in different ways.”

She pulled out a sheaf of notes.

“These are his handwritten transcriptions from the Douay-Rheims version of the Bible, which most scholars view as the most accurate English translation. Specifically, Genesis seven through ten. Look at this line here.”

Genesis 7:17: And the flood was forty days upon the earth: and the waters increased, and lifted up the ark on high from the earth. The words “lifted up the ark on high from” were crossed out. In its place, Arvadi had written a new phrase.

Now the line read, And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and the ark was high up above the earth.

“Doesn’t seem that different to me,” Locke said. “Is there anything else?”

Dilara pointed to the next line.

Genesis 7:18: For they overflowed exceedingly: and filled all on the face of the earth; and the ark was carried upon the waters. Arvadi changed “was carried upon” to “hung above.”

For they overflowed exceedingly: and filled all on the face of the earth; and the ark hung above the waters.

“Still seems like splitting hairs,” Locke said.

“I agree. But there’s one more that’s even stranger.”

On the next page, he saw, Genesis 8:4: And the ark rested in the seventh month, the seven and twentieth day of the month, upon the mountains of Armenia. This time, he had replaced only one word. Instead of “upon,” it said, “within.”

“‘And the ark rested in the seventh month,’” Locke read, “‘the seven and twentieth day of the month, within the mountains of Armenia.’ What’s the significance?”

“Armenia is generally interpreted to mean Ararat. But why he would change that ‘upon’ to ‘within,’ I’m not sure. There are two peaks of Ararat: Mt. Ararat and Little Ararat. Perhaps he thought the ark rested between the summits.”

Locke looked through the pages and found one more line underlined several times.

Genesis 9:15: And I will remember my covenant with you, and with every living soul that beareth flesh: and there shall no more be waters of a flood to destroy all flesh.

Destroy all flesh. Exactly what happened on Hayden’s airplane. Locke shuddered at the coincidence.

“God’s covenant with Noah after the flood,” Dilara said, and then began reciting from memory. “‘And the bow shall be in the clouds, and I shall see it, and shall remember the everlasting covenant, that was made between God and every living soul of all flesh which is upon the earth.’”

“What do you think all these notes mean?” Locke asked.

“He told me his pet theory a number of times, but he never had the historical data to back it up, so I dismissed it. Now I feel so stupid.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. For decades, the best scientists in the world discounted Wegener’s theory of continental drift. Now any geologist who disputed it would be considered a crackpot. What was his pet theory?”

“That a mysterious scroll called the Book of the Cave of Treasures was the key to finding Noah’s Ark. It contained a secret so explosive that no one would believe it unless the actual Ark was found.”

“Let me guess. He never told you the secret.”

Dilara shook her head. “He said he was very close to finding it. In the days before he went missing, he had a breakthrough. The last time I spoke with him, he told me it was only a matter of weeks before he would stun the world with his pronouncement, and that I would be able to hold my head up and be proud of him. I thought it was another of his wild goose chases until Sam Watson came along and turned my world upside down.”

Dilara leaned back and ran her fingers through her hair. The silver locket on her neck reflected the desk lamp and caught Locke’s eye. The locket that Dilara’s father had sent her just before going missing…

“So you think the breakthrough was finding the Book of the Cave of Treasures?” he asked.

“That’s as good a guess as any, but I’ve looked through all of these files. There’s nothing like that here.”

“He would have wanted you to find it, right? In case he couldn’t complete his quest?”

“I suppose so. But he never told me where the scroll was.”

“Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe whoever killed him would have taken it if they had known about it.”

“Then where is it?”

“You said that your father never took that locket off, that you were surprised to receive it. May I see it?”

She unclasped the necklace and handed it to Locke. He opened it and saw the picture of her mother.

“Sam said my father wanted me to have it because he thought he might be killed.”

“Do you know why he sent it to you?”

“He said it was a birthday present.”

Locke looked at the photo again. In the quick look he’d gotten at the oil platform after the helicopter crash, he hadn’t noticed that it had suffered water damage from Dilara’s time in the ocean. The photo was bowed out, as if something had expanded behind it. He took out his Leatherman and unfolded the knife.

“Do you mind? I won’t harm the photo.”

Dilara looked confused, but she nodded her assent. Locke pried at the photo until the plastic covering came loose. The covering and photo fell to the table, along with a tiny piece of paper.

Dilara looked stunned.

“I think there was another reason he wanted you to have this,” Locke said. He carefully unfolded the paper until it was a flat square no more than an inch on each side. A fine pen had written precise lettering, but the ink had run.

“That’s my father’s handwriting,” she said quietly. “Even with the smudges, I recognize it.”

Locke compared it to the notes and saw that she was right. He could make out three letters. B C T. Then a 1 followed by what looked like more numbers that had been rendered illegible by the smeared ink.

“B C T,” Locke said. “The Book of the Cave of Treasures?”

Dilara leaped to her feet with excitement. “This note is telling me where it’s stored! He must have hidden it before he died!”

“And if we can find it, it will lead us to Noah’s Ark.”

“But the note’s ruined,” she said. “We’ll never find it now.”

“Not necessarily. We’ve got some highly sensitive instruments here at the TEC. I’ll have our lab see if they can pick up what it says. In the meantime…”

His cell rang. The display said it was Aiden MacKenna. Locke answered it.

“Aiden, give me good news.”

“Well, I might have something for you,” Aiden said in his Irish burr. “I finally had some time to delve in Sam Watson’s background. He worked for a small drug company named PicoMed Pharmaceuticals. Some kind of think tank. They’ve never produced an FDA-approved drug. I tried to hack into their servers, but it’s completely inaccessible. It smells like a military cover, but the odor is a little off.”

“Why?”

“I backtracked through our military and government databases. No mention of them at all. If they were getting funding from the government, they’ve covered it up well.”

“How does that help us?”

“Their CEO is someone named Charles Folsom. Ever heard of him?”

“No. Should I have?”

“Not really. Just a shot in the dark. Let’s move on to Project Whirlwind. Since we don’t have any idea who funded Oasis, I thought I’d start there. You remember the company behind it?”

“Sure. Juneau Earthworks. So?”

“They folded three months ago.”

“That’s pretty convenient.”

“I thought so too, so I checked their business registration. They were a Delaware S Corporation. The CEO listed: Henry Joseph.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Henry Joseph and Charles Folsom have one interesting thing in common with Rex Hayden’s brother. All of them were heavily involved with the Holy Hydronastic Church.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I did a little digging and found that most of the church’s funding comes from one source. A private corporation called Garrett Pharmaceuticals.”

“As in Sebastian Garrett?”

“You’ve got it. He’s the leader of the church. I saw that Gordian once worked on a contract for Garrett Pharmaceuticals. Did you meet him?”

Locke gritted his teeth. “Unfortunately.”

Several years back, Garrett had hired Gordian on the development of a biological laboratory for his main campus in Seattle. The lab was to be state-of-the-art, and Garrett wanted Gordian’s expertise to vet the containment facilities. It was an important project, so Garrett himself had been heavily involved, and Locke had to work with him closely. The project went well, and Garrett seemed to be impressed with Locke and Gordian.

After the design phase was complete, Gordian’s involvement from that point on was simply to monitor progress during construction, so Locke had moved on to the Whirlwind project. But he still did some work on Garrett’s project, and that’s when the problems started.

Garrett began to bring up the Hydronastic Church to Locke in friendly conversation, talking about how he had conceived of the church while he was at Yale. At first, in the interest of maintaining the contract, Locke politely rebuffed what he saw as recruitment efforts. Garrett invited Locke out to Hawaii, ostensibly to talk about the lab project, but when he got there, Locke was given the hard sell about the church. Garrett railed about how the condition of the environment was appalling and that humanity was a pockmark on the beauty of the earth. His church was the only answer, to bring in the brightest minds in the world who understood the need for a better tomorrow.

Garrett thought Locke was just the type of man they were looking for, and even though he found Garrett charming, Locke also thought the man was a certifiable loon. His disdain for those whom he considered beneath his intellectual capability, including Locke, was apparent, and although Locke agreed with much of what he lamented about the state of the world, Garrett’s rants about the need for profound change bordered on the fanatical. Locke made it very clear that he wanted nothing further to do with what he considered a wacky cult and flew back to Seattle on his own dime.

When he got back and reviewed Garrett’s project, Locke noticed that the construction process was shortcutting permits and flouting the environmental safeguards that Gordian had specified in the design. When Locke brought it up to Garrett, he was immediately fired from the project and told in no uncertain terms that Garrett’s team of lawyers would take Gordian apart if he pursued it further.

Two weeks later, the Whirlwind contract was abruptly canceled. The one-two punch had been a severe blow to Gordian, but at the time, Locke didn’t see any connection. Now it looked like Garrett was behind Whirlwind, which would explain why it was ripped out from under him.

“So Sebastian Garrett is involved in this?” Locke said, dreading what that meant.

“He’s certainly got the billions to pay for Project Whirlwind. And there’s one more interesting tidbit.” It sounded like Aiden was saving the best for last.

“Spill it, Aiden.”

“Sebastian Garrett himself has reserved the biggest suite on the Genesis Dawn for the maiden voyage. He’s supposed to make an appearance at the gala Thursday night.”

“That’s way too many coincidences for me.”

“I thought so too. And I think I know what you’re going to say next. You want to go to the gala.”

“Yes. Get me two tickets. I want to talk to Sebastian myself.”

“And Aiden is right again! Gordian did some key work for the cruise line two years ago, so Miles was able to swing a cabin for you. The tickets are waiting for you at the ship in Miami. Bon voyage!”

Locke flipped the phone closed and looked at Dilara, who glanced up when she heard him finish.

“What?” she asked.

“I think we need to go shopping again. The only problem is, I have no idea where to find an evening gown for you.”

“An evening gown?”

Locke nodded. “Want to go to a party?”