Apocalypse (3 page)

Sarah thought for a moment. MacDonald waited for her to figure the math in her head, and tried to be patient.

‘Twenty-six nautical miles due east of Bimini South.’ MacDonald was making rapid mental calculations when Sarah spoke again. ‘Oh hell, we’re headed into cloud.’

MacDonald looked up out of the windshield to see a mass of cloud ahead of them, materializing as though out of thin air. His brain struggled to resolve what he was seeing, and he realized that
the towering cumulonimbus clouds on the horizon must have concealed the cloud bank directly in their flight path.

‘Altitude!’ he snapped as he reached down to slam the throttles wide open. ‘Get above the clouds and keep the sun in sight!’

Sarah eased back on the control column and the Grumman Mallard climbed upward again. MacDonald looked back at his instruments and saw that the artificial horizon was now spinning crazily. The
most vital of all instruments. Without it they would be doomed if they flew into the cloud.

He stared out of the windshield as a swirling vortex of dense cloud raced past the aircraft, the sunlight that had beamed into the cockpit beginning to flicker and fade.

‘Keep climbing!’ he shouted at Sarah. ‘Keep the sun in front of us!’

‘Maybe we should turn back!’

MacDonald hesitated for a brief moment before shaking his head.

‘We’re more likely to find the Florida coast than Bimini, even though the island’s closer. Keep climbing!’

MacDonald peered forward to search for the orb of the sun and felt his bowels clench as he realized that he could no longer see it. He searched desperately for the horizon as the cloud thickened
around them, tinged with a weird green glow like nothing he’d ever seen before. A blue haze enveloped the wingtips and the nose of the aircraft, shimmering like an electrified sparkler
. St
Elmo’s Fire.
He recognized the bizarre effect once feared by sailors in storms – electromagnetic fields hovering around the aircraft – and a sickening fear lurched through his
guts as he realized that he had absolutely no idea what was happening.

A surge of G-force crushed him into his seat and he heard Sarah cry out as the Mallard plunged from the sky as though being dragged by a giant fist down through the clouds. MacDonald grabbed the
control column and struggled to pull the nose of the aircraft up again.

Then, all at once, he saw the flight notes in his lap shoot upward past his face to land on the cockpit ceiling above his head. For a moment his brain could not understand what he had witnessed,
and then it hit him in a moment of pure terror. They were inverted and already out of control.

‘Altitude! Altitude!’ he shouted to Sarah.

He heard shouts of alarm from their passengers as people and equipment were hurled around the fuselage as the aircraft spiraled down through the sky.

‘I’ve got nothing!’ Sarah screamed back, holding the throttles to the firewall. ‘All primary instruments have failed!’

The turboprop engines wailed as the Grumman Mallard plummeted out of control, the instruments whirling uselessly and the horizon lost in a thick swirling fog that enveloped the entire aircraft
in an electrically charged halo.

MacDonald reached out, his arm fighting against G-forces far greater than the aged aircraft was designed to take, and flipped an intercom switch to hear his own voice trembling in his earphones
as he cried out.

‘
This is your captain speaking! Brace for impact! Brace for imp—
’

A flare of golden sunlight burst through the cockpit as it reflected off a perfect blue sea, and for a brief instant James MacDonald believed that they had a chance. Then he saw that they were
barely a hundred feet above the rolling waves. The glittering surface of the ocean raced toward his screen at two hundred miles per hour and then smashed through the thick glass to greet him.

June 28, 07:15

‘
I’m right behind him, stand by.
’

Ethan Warner sat back casually and watched the nearby freeway from his vantage point in a service alley between a Taco Bell and a hardware store. The breeze from the passing traffic ruffled his
light brown hair as his gray eyes squinted into the early morning sunlight. The disembodied voice of his partner, Nicola Lopez, sounded in the earpiece and microphone he wore.

‘
Turning right onto South Lake Shore, southbound.
’

‘Copy that,’ he replied. ‘Remember not to get too close. You know what happened last time.’

‘
It was just your fender, let it go asshole.
’

Ethan smiled quietly to himself as he spotted Lopez’s sports car, a bright yellow convertible Lotus Seven, zip into view a quarter mile away as it joined the freeway. Ethan glanced ahead
of it and saw a large silver GMC Yukon suddenly swerve out of a line of traffic and accelerate away from her.

‘
He’s made me!
’

Ethan sighed. Nicola Lopez was a 29-year-old Latino with long black hair who looked hot no matter what she was doing. She caught attention from most all guys, and unfortunately the driver of the
GMC knew them both well enough to have recognized her the moment she let her enthusiasm and desire for money get in the way of her professionalism.

‘I can see you. I’m on my way.’

Ethan reached out and flicked a switch. An engine growled into life beneath him as he kicked the Erik Buell 1190RS superbike into gear, the twin-cylinder symphony echoing down the narrow alley
like rolling drums. The Yukon and the Lotus raced past in front of him as Ethan slipped the clutch and the superbike surged out of the alleyway and turned in pursuit. Frantic acceleration yanked on
Ethan’s arms as he twisted the throttle and the motorcycle raced up through sixty, seventy, eighty, the front wheel leaving the ground.

Ethan eased the bike around Lopez’s accelerating Lotus, just able to hear the roar of her car’s engine above his own as he raced past and crossed the lane in front of her.

He focused on the Yukon ahead as it swerved past traffic in an effort to escape the yellow car behind. The driver’s attention was all on Lopez as she whipped the Lotus left and right in an
effort to pass.

Ethan aimed for a gap between the Yukon and the central reservation and wound the superbike’s throttle open as he screamed through the narrow space, the howl of the engine vibrating
through his chest. He glanced left as he came alongside the Yukon and saw the bulky shaven head of Hayden Decker glaring at him from the driver’s seat. Two-time bail jumper, $18,000 bond,
manslaughter charges. Decker was worth a lot of cash to Lopez and Ethan.

Decker, one side of his face smeared with a huge purple spider-web tattoo, shot Ethan a savage grin. His mouth sparkled with gold as he span the Yukon’s wheel toward the motorbike.

Ethan twisted the Buell’s throttle and thundered clear as the Yukon narrowly missed his rear wheel and slammed into the central reservation to spray a blossoming fireball of sparks into
the air. Ethan peered into his rear-view mirror and saw Decker wrestle the vehicle back under control. Lopez’s voice chortled in his ear.

‘
Very James Bond, but I can’t get by him and if you brake he’ll plough straight through you.
’

Ethan scanned the traffic around him, judged the distance to the next vehicle as 100 yards, and made his decision. He stamped the Buell down a gear and reveled in the wail of the engine as he
raced away from the Yukon until the big vehicle was a small black spot in the center of his mirror.

‘
Where the hell are you going?
’ Lopez asked in confusion.

Ethan grinned as the wind howled like a banshee past his face. The past few years of his life had been almost entirely loathsome, the months and years grinding past beneath a crushing burden of
repressed grief. The disappearance of his journalist fiancée Joanna Defoe from the Gaza Strip years before had left in its wake a chilling vacuum in his soul, devoid of passion, scoured of
hope. Learning that she had not died in Gaza had somehow been both a blessing and a curse, for the mystery of her disappearance had only deepened further. It had been whilst hunting for her that he
had encountered former Washington Police Detective Nicola Lopez, and if nothing else had happened since, his work with her had brought him back from the abyss. He hadn’t felt so alive since
he’d rappelled out of a US Marines CH-47 over Afghanistan, straight into a Taliban ambush.

Ethan closed the throttle and squeezed the brakes hard. The Buell’s forks dove toward the ground as the rear wheel soared into the air behind him. Ethan leaned back to keep the weight
central as the superbike shuddered to a halt in the center of the freeway. He kicked the side-stand down and climbed from the saddle, then turned and faced the Yukon bearing down on him from sixty
yards away.

Ethan strolled forward, the sound of the big engine roaring closer with Lopez’s Lotus just behind it. He stood in the center of the freeway and watched Hayden Decker’s craggy
features rush toward him behind the screen.

‘
Ethan?
’

Ethan grinned as he saw Decker’s face screw up in confusion.

‘Drop your anchor, Nicola, now!’

The Lotus’s wheels locked up in a cloud of blue smoke as Lopez stamped on the brakes. Ethan reached beneath his leather jacket and whipped out a Beretta M9 9mm pistol. The weapon had been
the standard-issue sidearm of the Marine Corps in Ethan’s day, and he had liked the weapon despite concerns about its stopping power. Compact, light and easy to use, he kept one for what he
liked to call ‘special occasions’. Ethan dropped onto one knee and aimed double-handed. He squeezed once and a single shot recoiled the pistol with a sharp crack.

The Yukon’s front nearside tire folded upon itself as the big truck swerved violently to one side and slammed again into the reservation, grinding metal against metal in a screeching
cacophony. Ethan stood his ground as the Yukon shuddered along the reservation and came to rest ten yards away, Decker’s door pinned against the metal railings. Ethan saw him scramble across
to the passenger door and kick it open before tumbling from the vehicle as Lopez screeched to a halt somewhere behind the Yukon.

Ethan dashed forward and aimed the pistol at Decker.

‘Get down, stay still!’

Decker ignored him and stood upright, over six feet tall and 250 pounds of muscle bursting from a white vest. He glared at Ethan without concern.

‘What, you goin’ down for homicide too? You can shoot a tire, Warner, but you can’t shoot me.’

Ethan lowered the pistol.

‘Got that right,’ he agreed. Decker squinted at him and then turned to run.

He made a single pace before Lopez’s elbow ploughed into his solar plexus with a dull thump that made Ethan wince. Decker doubled over with a strangled gasp as Lopez span gracefully on one
heel, ducked down and stabbed a boot across the inside of the big man’s knee. Decker quivered and toppled like a fallen tree before slamming down onto the asphalt. Lopez whipped her cuffs out
and thrust one knee deep into Decker’s back as she forced the restraints around his thick wrists. She looked up at Ethan’s Beretta.

‘We’re not supposed to be carrying.’

The state of Illinois had a strict No-Issue policy over concealed weapons, meaning that no permit could be obtained from the courts or local law enforcement. Only Illinois and the District of
Columbia had such policies in place. Ethan shrugged as he slipped the weapon into a shoulder holster beneath his jacket.

‘I got tired of chasing dudes like Decker here with nothing more than pepper spray.’

Lopez hauled Decker to his feet. The shaven-headed, tattooed criminal towered over her.

‘I got my rights!’ he shouted at Ethan. ‘You’re carrying and you shot at me!’

Ethan was about to answer when the sound of roaring engines cut him off. He turned to see a pair of Police Interceptors screech alongside them, blocking off the lane as four officers tumbled out
of the vehicles with their weapons drawn.

‘Drop the piece!’

Ethan winced in disbelief as he raised one hand while carefully laying his pistol down on the asphalt at his feet. From the corner of his eye he saw Decker flash a spiteful grin. Ethan reached
to the badge dangling from his neck and showed it to the officers as they advanced, their weapons aiming unwaveringly at his chest.

‘Bail Bondsmen, custody’s ours, guys.’

The larger of the two officers reached out and grabbed the badge with thick fingers before ripping it from Ethan’s neck. As his partner covered him he grabbed Ethan’s shoulders and
span him around before ramming him up against the Yukon’s crumbled hood.

‘You
had
custody, right up to illegally discharging a weapon on a public highway.’

‘Give us a break, guys,’ Lopez called, holding Decker by his cuffs like a dog on a leash. ‘We spent over a week chasing this walking trash down.’

The second pair of officers yanked Decker away from her and prodded him toward their patrol vehicle.

‘You’ll be more careful next time then, won’t you,’ one of them shot back at her.

Ethan felt the cold steel of handcuffs wrap around his wrists, and then he was hauled upright and twisted around to face his arresting officer. The podgy man’s pallid face shone with the
satisfaction of mindless spite.

‘You ever been to Cook County Jail before?’ he uttered.

Ethan was about to answer when a black Dodge Durango SUV pulled in alongside the reservation. Ethan watched as two men in gray suits and sunglasses climbed out, moving to flank an elderly man in
a dark blue suit who hurried toward them.

Ethan watched as the old man surveyed the crashed Yukon, the cops, Ethan’s cuffs and the blown-out tire.

‘Release him immediately,’ he ordered the cops and pointed at Ethan. ‘He’s on government time.’

‘Who the hell are you?’ the podgy officer uttered, his face now twisted with indignation.

‘Douglas Jarvis,’ the old man replied. ‘Defense Intelligence Agency.’

‘He’s under arrest for illegal discharge of a firearm,’ the cop protested. ‘He’s going nowhere but jail.’