The Eden Prophecy

CHAPTER 49

Having given the order, Arnold Moore waited. With his eyes closed, and his tie long gone, he tried to relax. News would come eventually. Whether good or bad, it would come. He didn’t have to go looking for it now.

He opened his eyes and glanced at the clock. Fourteen minutes remained until the air strike. In the silence and the dark, each second seemed like an eternity.

The phone rang, startling him. He focused on the small glowing numerals above the keypad and recognized Danielle’s coding.

He hit the speaker button.

“We’re a mile from the island,” she said, before he could utter a word. “We see no activity.”

Moore leaned forward. “What the hell are you doing, Danielle?”

“I’m sorry, Arnold,” she said. “But we’re going in.”

He could hardly believe what he was hearing. Then again he almost expected it.

“We’ll be on the island in less than a minute,” she said. “I just wanted you to know.”

“Goddamn it!” he shouted. “Don’t do this, Danielle! It’s suicide. It’s a violation of—”

She cut him off. “Once upon a time, you violated every rule, order, and directive you’d been given to come get me. You turned to Hawker when no one else would help. I’m not letting him down now that it’s our turn.”

She spoke calmly, with certainty, and Moore felt his throat tighten. He had no response that could stand the light of scrutiny. He’d done exactly what she’d said. He also knew there was no way for this to end well.

“We have some weapons,” she said. “We’ll do what we can to take them by surprise. But …”

“But what?”

“We’ve been one step behind this whole time and if this goes sideways and we disappear … then by all means, please obliterate that island as planned.”

Moore’s heart churned inside him. He was proud of her resolve and filled with fear for the outcome. The simple fact was he couldn’t stop her. The truth was, he didn’t know if he wanted to.

“You have fourteen minutes,” he said finally. “Don’t waste time talking to me.”

The call dropped and Moore sat alone listening only to the static over the speaker. Reluctantly he reached forward and pressed the button, cutting the line.

He took a breath. He had no choice but to contact the president and update him on the situation, but before he could do so a knock sounded at his door.

Too tired to stand or even call out, Moore flipped the switch that controlled the wall’s opacity. For the first time in months they turned instantly clear. Walter Yang stood on the other side of the door.

“Now’s not a good time, Walter.”

“I have information,” Yang said. “It’s about the virus.”

In the Persian Gulf, the small powerboat moved through the darkness half a mile from the northern tip of the island. A bit of luck in their favor had the wind out of the south, which would help mask the low rumbling of their engine. In addition, the night was black as ink, though the moon would be up in ten minutes.

Until then the darkly colored boat with its low profile would be difficult to spot unless someone was looking directly for them. A fate that was a distinct possibility.

Crouched in the aft section of the boat, dressed in a black wetsuit, Danielle stared through a thermal scope looking for signs of trouble. She saw no sign of men or machinery operating on this side of the island. Only small dots here, there, and everywhere that she took to be cormorants in their nests. The species was known to claim the island at this time of year.

Beside her Hawker was busy securing their weapons and strapping their body armor to dive harnesses.

“How close you want me to get?” Keegan whispered.

They were cruising slowly now, making almost no wake at all. Danielle wasn’t sure at what point the need to conserve time would be trumped by their desire to maintain the element of surprise.

She glanced at Hawker.

He’d grown tremendously quiet, his demeanor changing and darkening. She sensed a fire of grim determination in his heart. He had to expect the worst when he stepped on that island. In all likelihood, whatever they found there would bring him pain.

If Sonia had held out against the cult’s demands, she was probably in a horrendous state by now, alive because they needed her, almost certainly beaten and tortured. Savi and Nadia would have fared worse.

And if Sonia had given the cult what they needed, she might be dead already.

“See any lookouts?” he asked.

She shook her head. Hawker turned to Keegan.

“Kill the engine,” he said. “Take us in as far as we can coast,” he said.

“You sure you want to get that close?”

“If they’re watching we’re dead anyway,” he said. “I’d much rather have them start taking potshots at us while we’re still in the boat.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then we save five minutes swimming.”

Keegan goosed the throttle a touch, picking up some more speed, and then feathered it back and cut it. The narrow boat knifed through the calm water toward the rugged, tawny-colored rocks.

Danielle swept the coast with the thermal scope as Hawker did the same with a night-vision scope mounted to the barrel of one of the rifles. No one shot at them, no one challenged them.

“Too good to be true,” Hawker whispered.

A minute later she and Hawker slipped off the back of the boat a mere hundred yards from the beach. Keegan turned the boat away and coasted north, drifting with the wind and the current. He would drift for a while and then circle the island and come in near the freighter to pick them up. If they had any hope of surviving, they would need his help to get off the island before those missiles hit.

When Danielle emerged from the water, she was a few yards from the shore. Ten feet ahead, Hawker crouched by a VW-sized boulder on the beach. She moved up beside him.

“See anything?” she asked.

“Not yet,” he said.

They pulled on their flak jackets and began to move, traveling up over a ridge before pausing again. Another round of scanning revealed nothing to trouble them.

In a crevice to the right a pair of bird nests sat empty, prodigious droppings marring the ground all around them.

“Let’s not disturb the flock,” Hawker said.

Danielle agreed. A hundred cormorants suddenly launching into the air would probably give them away.

She covered Hawker as he began to move, navigating across the weatherbeaten island before coming to a sudden stop. He dropped to the ground and then signaled her to stay put. She held her position.

He moved to the right, stepped around a large boulder with his weapon raised and ready, and then he stopped again. For several seconds he stood there, appearing from a distance to be confused. He poked at something on the ground with his rifle and began looking around.

What the hell was he doing?

Wearing black in the darkness he was nearly invisible, but even so, standing in the open was foolish.

Finally he crouched and waved her up.

She dashed forward, pressing against a boulder as she reached him.

“What the hell was that all about?”

“Something’s wrong,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

He motioned to the other side of the boulder and she moved forward to see what he’d been inspecting.

There, lying across a bundle of pipes and hoses that seemed to spread across the island like vines, she saw two men. Armed men. Dead men.

“Look at this,” Hawker said.

With the tip of his rifle, he opened one of their shirts. Danielle could see the branding on the man’s chest. GEN 2:17, just like what they’d found on Ranga and Yousef.

“Members of the cult,” she whispered.

“Shot in the head,” he told her.

She bent closer, examining the wound and realizing it was from a small-caliber weapon, just like on the bodies of Lavril’s men in Paris. She noticed something else.

“They’re still warm,” she said.

“Not dead long,” Hawker replied, looking at her. “What the hell is going on here?”

She wasn’t sure but a thought sprang to her mind. “Endgame,” she said. “Jonestown, Waco, Aum Shinrikyo.”

“But these bastards didn’t kill themselves.”

“Neither did all those people,” she assured him. “Plenty who didn’t want to go were helped along.”

Hawker seemed to understand what she was saying, but he also seemed to have doubts. “Yeah, but those groups were about to lose. These people are in their moment of victory.”

She agreed that was a difference, but they were still dealing with an apocalyptic cult.

“I’m telling you something’s wrong here,” he said. “I don’t know what it is, but we’re misreading something. I feel it in my bones.”

She felt differently. “Endgame,” she repeated, looking at her watch. “And we have eight minutes.”