Apocalypse (39 page)

Aubrey was no soldier, but he knew enough about weapons from watching television to figure out what he needed. Only the hand pistols were small enough for him to conceal beneath his clothes. He
reached up and unclipped one of several Sig 9mm pistols from one of the racks, then looked down immediately below the rack to where a fully loaded clip lay.

Aubrey slid the clip into the gun’s handle and slammed it into place with the heel of his hand. It slid into place with a satisfying click. Aubrey checked that the safety catch was on
before he stuffed the weapon into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back, beneath his shirt.

Aubrey turned around and ducked out of the armory, then pushed the hatch shut behind him until he heard the electronic locks engage. With a sigh of relief, he walked back toward the main
dome’s entry hatch.

‘What are you doing here?’

The words snapped like live current through Aubrey’s body as he whirled to see Olaf Jorgenson striding down the corridor toward him, his muscular chest pulsing with each swing of his
blocky arms. The giant glanced suspiciously at the armory door.

‘Checking the locks on all of the hatches,’ Aubrey coughed. He stood his ground as Olaf loomed over him, and conjured more mystifying terms from the vaults of his memory. ‘We
don’t want the longitudinal-mass accelerometer to emit electromagnetic pulses that could fry the locks and blow them open, do we?’

Olaf peered down at him, the long words apparently rolling slowly through his mind like ticker tapes.

‘You said nothing to Mr. Abell about the locks,’ he rumbled.

Aubrey raised his chin.

‘You think that Joaquin has time for a long discussion about the medium-range effects of pulsed acoustic wave signals in confined areas?’ he said. ‘I don’t think that his
guests would care for it. Do you?’

Olaf squinted down at him and then bent forward at the waist, lowering his giant angular head until his icy blue eyes were just inches from Aubrey’s face. One immense and rock-solid
forearm slowly pushed Aubrey inexorably backwards until he bumped against the armory hatch. Olaf’s arm pressed against his chest with enough force to restrict his breathing.

‘It’s Mr. Abell to you,’ he growled. ‘You think that I’m stupid, don’t you?’

Aubrey swallowed.

‘Not at all, Mr. Jorgenson. But it’s my job to look after this facility and if I’m not allowed to do so, we could all die down here. Mr. Abell has a machine of immense power
and it requires delicate control and careful monitoring. That is what I am doing.’

Olaf glared at Aubrey for several long seconds before releasing him.

‘Get back into the control room,’ he ordered.

Aubrey turned without another word and marched back into the main dome, just in time to feel the immense vibrations emanating from the black hole’s chamber, which were now causing the
entire facility to shudder. Governor MacKenzie was backing away from the machine, but Joaquin was laughing and clapping his hands together.

‘You see, gentlemen? This is
real
power!’

Aubrey walked up to Joaquin with Olaf behind him.

‘Sir, the box? We’d best keep it away from the chamber.’

Joaquin glanced over his shoulder and saw Olaf lumber into view. Satisfied, he didn’t even bother to look at Aubrey as he handed him the box.

Aubrey carried it to the control panel and set it down. In one smooth motion, he lifted the lid and slipped Olaf’s access card back inside before shutting the lid and placing the box in
plain view on the panel. Moments later, the satellite phone was back in its cradle.

June 28, 16:25

Lopez twisted the throttle of the battered old scooter as she zipped between two carts of junk hauled by haggard-looking mules, along a dusty, winding track that led toward the
Septentrional mountain range in the north of the province. The summit of Pico Isabel de Torres loomed nearly eight hundred meters above them, lost in wreaths and ribbons of cloud.

She and Bryson had landed half an hour previously at Gregorio Luperón International Airport, hiring a pair of scooters and racing away from the coast toward the interior. A brief stop at
an IRIS-sponsored medical camp had gained them directions to a village in the interior where Katherine Abell had last been seen.

‘It must be out this way somewhere!’ Lopez shouted over her shoulder.

Bryson weaved between the two carts behind her before drawing his scooter alongside, a dressing around the bullet graze on his forearm flapping in the wind. His piratical eye twinkled in the
flickering sunlight that beamed in shafts through the canopy of palms and towering ferns.

‘If she’s as much of a goddamned philanthropist as you say she is, we’ll find her in the poorest village around. People like her like to suffer for their work. They’re
not happy unless their clothes are rotting and they’re eating cold gravel for breakfast. Look at Mother Theresa!’

‘She’s dead, Scott,’ Lopez pointed out.

‘That’s what I mean.’

The track climbed away from the long, flat beaches of the coast, the forests ahead cloaked in ethereal veils of humid cloud. The engine in Lopez’s scooter clattered noisily up the
hillside, a faint haze of blue smoke trailing in her wake, and she silently prayed that the ancient motor wouldn’t give out before she reached the villages perched precariously amidst the
prehistoric-looking wilderness.

‘There!’

Bryson pointed ahead to where a few rickety shacks peered from the tropical gloom. The clouds were directly overhead now, the air laden with moisture that clung to Lopez’s skin like a hot,
heavy blanket. The last six months of the year in Puerto Plata were wetter than the first, the seasonal rains regular enough to prevent any real respite from the intense humidity. Lopez slowed her
scooter as it rattled into the center of the village, hordes of young children in brightly colored clothes flocking out to greet her with bright smiles that belied just how little they
possessed.

Lopez killed the engine on her scooter just as Bryson rolled up alongside and did the same. As they stood amidst the children grabbing at them for attention, Katherine Abell stepped out of one
of the shacks that formed a circle around the edge of the village.

Lopez recognized her immediately: the square line of her jaw, the cool green eyes and the long auburn hair; but everything else had changed. Gone was the power suit and the elegant stride.
Instead, she wore khaki shorts and a loosely buttoned shirt with simple sandals, and her long hair was tied up in a loose ponytail. Her clean features were scoured of make-up.

Katherine turned away the moment she saw Lopez. ‘You’re not welcome here.’

Lopez strode forward. ‘We need your help.’

Katherine moved back into the shack without another word.

‘She could be sitting on her husband’s luxury yacht,’ Bryson said as he followed Lopez, ‘sipping a cocktail while servants manicure her nails . . .’

‘It’s called charity,’ Lopez replied. ‘Good will and all that?’

Bryson shrugged as he followed Lopez into the darkness of the shack.

The air within smelt of herbs, dried fruits and ancient soil, a haze of incense smoke struggling to conceal all other odors. Laying on a bed in the center of the shack was a girl whose age Lopez
guessed at fourteen, maybe fifteen. Her belly was distended as though filled with gas, the deeply tanned skin laced with veins.

Katherine Abell knelt alongside the girl and gently drenched her forehead with cool water from a chipped porcelain bowl. Lopez eased closer and saw that the girl’s breathing was erratic,
her eyes rolled up in their sockets.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ Lopez asked. ‘Malnutrition?’

Katherine Abell did not look around as she replied.

‘She’s pregnant, but the baby is breach and I can’t turn it.’ Katherine scooped up some more water and spilled it across the girl’s glistening skin.
‘She’s dying.’

Lopez winced and looked again at the girl’s face.

‘She looks too young.’

‘She was raped,’ Katherine replied without emotion, as though such a tragedy were all too common, a daily occurrence.

A thick loathing stuck in Lopez’s throat as though a ghost had just joined her in the room, and her voice fell to a whisper. ‘Why didn’t she have a termination?’

Katherine Abell peered around at Lopez as though she were crazy.

‘Because the government here outlaws abortions in all cases,’ she shot back, ‘including those resulting from incest and rape, even those that endanger the mother’s life.
They’re bullied into it by Catholic dogma, made to live as though they’re in the Dark Ages, so poor young girls like Isabella here are forced to carry the child or die trying. And all
because of people who call themselves pro-life.’

Lopez stared at the wall of the hut, her eyes glazed.

‘You okay?’ Bryson moved to her side, one big hand resting on her shoulder as his normally arrogant features folded into something that might have been concern. ‘You look like
somebody’s walked over your grave.’

‘I’m fine,’ Lopez uttered.

Bryson’s eye peered at her. ‘You and I both know that’s women’s code for “something’s wrong”
.
’

Lopez ignored him as she looked down at the pregnant girl.

At the age of fourteen, Nicola Lopez had become pregnant to a 16-year-old farm boy from Coroneo, the tiny municipality in which they lived, in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, deep within the
Vedeer Mountains. Lopez had always been a child willing to take chances, to run where other children would not, to disobey and to confront. Armed with a ferocious temper, high intelligence and a
mischievous sense of humor, she had inevitably sought the company of older friends. What she could not have understood was the difference between their motives and her own.

In a tiny, musty-smelling stall on a ramshackle farm, Javier Ruben, a tall and strikingly handsome boy who had taken an interest in her, overpowered her while they were fooling around and hurt
her in a way that she could neither comprehend or resolve. While she had not exactly fought her amorous companion off, nor had she realized the consequences of his actions. She had been unable to
sleep for days, had wandered Coroneo in a state of shock, and had frequently found herself crying unexpectedly.

And then her
menstruación
had abruptly ended, along with her childhood. In an instant, the sleepy cobbled streets, soaring mountains and quaint churches of her homeland had become
the features of an implacable, ferocious enemy.

At the time, Guanajuato, a conservative state whose leaders were held in grim and bigoted thrall to Catholic dogma, had denied every petition by a pregnant rape victim for abortion services, and
over a hundred of its residents had been arrested for seeking or providing illegal abortion. Worse, more than a dozen women had been sentenced to up to thirty years in prison for the same
‘crime’. Faced with prison if her pregnancy was terminated, Lopez had no choice but to throw herself upon the mercy of her family. None had abandoned her. Her terrible secret remained
exactly that, until four months later she suffered a natural miscarriage and lost the child.

Lopez knew what
pro-life
meant, and it was sure as hell nothing to do with compassion.

‘Really,’ Lopez said, leveling Bryson with a steady gaze. ‘I’m fine.’ She turned to Katherine. ‘We have to leave right now.’

‘I’m not going anywhere. I have work to do.’

Scott Bryson’s voice cut in from behind Lopez.

‘You don’t move right now, you won’t have anywhere to
do
your work.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘This area is about to be hit by an earthquake,’ Lopez said.

Katherine’s eyes narrowed. ‘How can you know that?’

‘Because your husband has built a device that can cause earthquakes,’ Lopez said. ‘If we don’t leave in the next few minutes we might not be leaving at all. Do you
understand?’

Katherine shook her head slowly.

‘No, he couldn’t have. He wouldn’t – he knows that I’m here.’

‘We wouldn’t have come all of this way if we weren’t pretty damned sure,’ Lopez cut across her. ‘We have to move, now!’

Katherine stared down at the girl.

‘But Isabella . . .’

‘We’ll take her with us,’ Lopez said.

‘She can’t travel, and I can’t leave her here alone.’

Lopez was about to answer, when Bryson suddenly shouldered his way past and knelt down alongside Isabella’s prostrate form. Lopez watched as Bryson ignored Katherine’s protests, his
thick and calloused hands gently probing Isabella’s belly as he looked up at the ceiling, seeing with his hands.

‘She’s got plenty of amniotic fluid,’ Bryson said, still looking up at the ceiling as he felt around. ‘Baby feels fine. Do you have any anesthetics?’

Katherine blinked away her confusion.

‘She’s on painkillers right now, but they’re making her pretty drowsy. I don’t want to think what they might be doing to her baby.’

‘It might help,’ Bryson said. ‘I’m going to try external cephalic version.’

Lopez stared at Bryson. ‘The hell you think you are now, Dr. Kildare?’

Bryson grinned and winked at her. ‘Watch and learn, honey.’

Bryson turned back to Isabella and leaned in, gently massaging her belly. Lopez realized that Bryson was skillfully pushing the baby back up from the girl’s pelvis, then easing its head
around from the top of the womb to the bottom.

Bryson ministered to the girl for several minutes, gently working his way around her body as Katherine watched, just as enthralled as Lopez. Finally, he leaned back and looked down at Isabella.
The girl was no longer writhing, and some of the sweat on her skin had disappeared. Lopez realized that the girl’s fluttering breath was now more even and regular.

Katherine Abell stared at Bryson. ‘Thank you.’

Lopez watched wide-eyed as Bryson stood. He glanced down at her. ‘What?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ Lopez uttered. ‘I’m just amazed, is all.’

‘You think they only taught us to kill in the SEALs?’ he guessed. ‘Hearts and minds, honey. We were also trained to help locals in foreign countries, to win their support and
friendship.’