Apocalypse (45 page)

‘Only one way in,’ Lopez observed. ‘Convenient for an ambush.’

Ethan looked at the vast construction, big enough that in the darkness he could not see across its entire circumference.

Katherine Abell watched as Ethan guided the
Intrepid
beneath the outer dome toward the docking station. Her face was haunted as she surveyed the complex, clearly stunned that in all of
the years that she had been married to Joaquin she had never laid eyes on the site.

‘Joaquin’s father was involved with all manner of secret government experiments after the Second World War,’ Katherine said. ‘Joaquin may have acquired and improved or
extended them. And anybody else who was involved in the construction . . .’

‘. . . Suffered unfortunate accidents later on,’ Ethan finished, when Katherine trailed off. ‘Joaquin is willing to do anything to cover his tracks.’

Ethan aimed the
Intrepid
carefully toward the opening, and as they passed underneath the dome so the glowing veil of yellow light from the interior of the docking station above filled the
vessel. Ethan leaned forward and peered up through the porthole above his head. He moved the vessel into position and then reached down and flicked a pair of switches, closing the ballast vents.
Ensuring that the compressed air tanks were set to ‘Cross Feed’ he turned the dials open for a brief moment.

A hiss of released gas filled the hull, vibrating gently through the floor panels as the seawater was expelled and the
Intrepid
rose up and broke the surface of the water into a docking
bay. Light filled the cockpit as Ethan looked at the dock through the sheets of water draining across the acrylic porthole.

‘Nobody here to meet us,’ he said.

Lopez unbuckled herself from her seat. ‘They know we’re here all right.’

Ethan unstrapped, and shut down the engines and batteries to conserve power. He drew his pistol from its holster and hurried to the main hatch of the submersible with Katherine Abell just behind
him. Lopez stood ready, one hand on the hatch and the other holding her own weapon.

‘Ready?’ she asked.

‘I’ve got your back,’ Ethan said. ‘The dock exit is to our left,’ he added and pulled a flash-bang grenade out, handing it to her.

‘You set that off, they’ll hear you coming!’ Katherine said in alarm.

‘We’re way past that,’ Lopez replied without looking at her. She holstered her pistol, grabbed the hatch and span the wheel. Moments later she shoved the hatch open and leapt
up the ladder, pulling the pin on the flash-bang as she hurled it toward the dock’s exit corridor.

The grenade arced across the dock and clattered against the deck panels as it vanished into the adjoining corridor. A terrific blast of noise and light flared outside and Lopez
hauled herself up and out of the submersible. Ethan followed her with his pistol drawn as they tumbled down the
Intrepid
’s hull and leapt onto the dock.

Ethan ducked down behind one of the steel mooring bollards and aimed down the corridor through the faint wisps of smoke writhing from the flash-bang. He saw no movement, no soldiers, no gunfire.
Nothing.

‘That was too easy,’ Lopez said from where she squatted behind a similar bollard.

‘Much too easy,’ Ethan agreed, and called back to Katherine. ‘Clear.’

Katherine Abell popped her head out of the
Intrepid
’s hatch before climbing out and watching as Ethan grabbed a mooring line and secured the submersible.

‘Tie her loosely,’ he said to Lopez. ‘We don’t know if we’ll have to leave in a hurry.’

‘I won’t be hanging around,’ she replied, and looked up at the dome above her, clearly imagining the near half-mile of water pressing down upon it. ‘Trust me.’

The adjoining corridor was lit by overhead panels, and narrow portholes on either side looked out into the darkness; but nothing cluttered their path as they walked into the complex.

‘The other submersible must be docked off one of the other arms,’ Lopez said.

‘The
Event Horizon
is normally anchored to the northeast of the coral-research station,’ Katherine confirmed, ‘because of the strong currents in the Florida Straits. It
means that although Joaquin’s submersibles have to use more battery power to get here against the current, you can float out easily enough on minimum power and get back up to the yacht in the
event of an emergency. My guess is that the other submersible will be docked on the southwest side.’

Ethan made a mental note.

‘What’s the time?’ Lopez asked, as they neared the end of the corridor where an open hatch awaited, mindful of the deadline that Charles Purcell had set them.

Ethan glanced at his watch. ‘Twenty eighteen hours,’ he replied, ‘only thirty minutes until Charles Purcell said everything would end. So there’s not long left
to—’ He broke off and stopped in mid-pace to stare at the face of his watch.

‘What?’ Lopez asked.

Ethan watched in disbelief as the second hand on his watch ticked its way around the dial. He counted several ticks, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.

‘My watch is ticking too slowly,’ he uttered.

‘Battery’s running out,’ Lopez suggested.

Katherine looked at her own watch, a digital one, and her jaw dropped.

‘No, he’s right, look.’

Ethan looked at the digital seconds counting up on the display. Even the digital watch was being distorted by something.

‘It’s like time has slowed down,’ he said.

‘It wasn’t like it on the way down here,’ Katherine said.

Ethan struggled to comprehend how it could happen.

‘The guys at Cape Canaveral told us that black holes wrap time and space around them,’ he said. ‘But if that’s the case, surely if Joaquin Abell really has one here, and
it’s exposed, then it should be consuming the entire facility around it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lopez said. ‘Maybe he’s got it contained, but somehow some of its effects are still getting out, like a leak?’

‘Hell of a thing to spring a leak from,’ Ethan pointed out.

‘You say we’ve only got until 8:48 to finish this,’ Katherine said to him.

‘Yeah, barely half an hour until the time Charles Purcell said everything would end. He wrote a message on the wall of an apartment in Miami, then confirmed to us later that this would all
end at 8:48 this evening.’

‘Well then you’ve actually got longer, isn’t that right? If time runs slower here because of Joaquin’s black hole, maybe you’ve got forty minutes
instead.’

‘No,’ Lopez replied. ‘Purcell wrote that time on the apartment wall from his point of reference outside of the black hole’s influence. This will be over in normal time on
the surface or in Miami, no matter what happens to our watches down here.’

Ethan looked ahead to where another open hatch vanished into the unknown. The two other hatches to either side of it were closed and locked.

‘Whatever he’s got down here, it’s powerful enough to slow down time for us the closer we get to it. Come on.’

Ethan led the way up to the open hatch and he and Lopez took position either side of it.

‘Ready?’

Lopez nodded, and then with one swift motion they plunged through the hatch, weapons trained on the broad open hangar before them. And then they stopped, jaws agape. Ethan lowered his pistol,
words piling up in his mind but unable to break through the seal of disbelief that tied his lips.

‘That’s impossible,’ Lopez stammered. ‘How could they be down here?’

Ethan shook his head, his mind devoid of an adequate explanation for what they were looking at.

Parked in what clearly was being used as a storage space, their hulls and wings sagging with age, were the remains of countless boats and aircraft.

June 28, 19:59

‘They’re inside the hangar. Shall I intercept them?’

Dennis Aubrey watched as a bank of remote cameras followed Warner, Lopez and Katherine Abell as they advanced through the complex. Olaf stood by Joaquin’s side, one hand already moving
toward the pistol in his shoulder holster.

‘No, let them come,’ Joaquin replied. ‘We are ready.’ Joaquin stood with his hands behind his back and his chin held high, comfortable in his conviction that he was now
entirely unassailable. Surrounding him were ten highly trained, highly disciplined soldiers. Aubrey knew that all of them were mercenaries and former members of the United States’ finest
regiments, who had been plucked from desolate warzones around the world to serve IRIS. Money – more even than they had been paid by various foreign governments – secured their absolute
allegiance.

‘We will engage them just before they reach us, in the hangar,’ he decided. ‘No sense in risking a wild shot breaching the black-hole chamber and dragging us all to
oblivion.’

He pointed ahead and the troops jogged away in a neat phalanx toward an exit hatch that led through a bulkhead into the next sphere. As soon as the rumble of their combat boots had faded,
Joaquin turned to Aubrey.

‘Contact the
Event Horizon
,’ he ordered the physicist, as he donned a slim microphone and earpiece. ‘Have them prepare to sail. I’ll need to be ashore by this
evening or there’ll be no spokesperson to coordinate the media response to IRIS’s intervention in the earthquake crisis.’

Aubrey keyed a communication channel, opened it and selected the yacht’s frequency. Almost immediately a burst of high-pitched static howled through amplifiers on the control panel.

Aubrey scrambled to turn the volume down as Joaquin whirled, his face twisted with outrage as he tore off his microphone.

‘What the fuck are you doing, Dennis?!’

Aubrey shut the channel off and stared at the panel before him.

‘Nothing. We’re being jammed,’ he said. ‘Static interference from the surface.’

Joaquin looked at Aubrey for a moment, then at Olaf.

‘The three of them came down here alone, correct?’ he asked the big man.

‘We tracked them here in one vehicle, the
Intrepid
,’ Olaf confirmed. ‘They are only three.’

Joaquin looked at Aubrey, the first mild tremor of apprehension in his expression.

‘They must have had help, on the surface,’ Joaquin surmised, realizing the extent of his sudden and unexpected isolation. ‘The yacht must have been compromised.’

Olaf understood immediately and unclipped his pistol from his shoulder holster.

‘We will bring Warner and his friend here,’ he promised Joaquin. ‘Then we will go to the surface and retake the yacht.’

Joaquin nodded, but his features had paled slightly.

‘Do it, and feel free to use whatever force you deem necessary.’

Olaf’s broad jaw creased with a cold grin of satisfaction as he turned and strode purposefully toward the bulkhead where the soldiers had dispersed, ducking through the hatch and shutting
it behind him.

Dennis Aubrey stood still behind the control panel and looked down at Joaquin as the tycoon stared vacantly into space for a moment, no doubt considering his next move. There would be no other
chance to do this, Aubrey realized. For the first time since he had been transported down into this godforsaken prison beneath the waves, he was both alone with Joaquin and had the element of
surprise on his side.

He reached into the back of his jeans and felt the pistol nestled there. If he waited until Olaf and his goons returned, he wouldn’t stand a chance. They would gun him down within seconds.
He reminded himself that he would probably be gunned down soon enough anyway, so there was little to lose by procrastinating over—

‘Dennis!’ Joaquin’s voice smashed through the scientist’s thoughts. ‘I said play that fucking camera right now, or I swear I’ll have Olaf send you to the
surface the slow and horrible way!’

Aubrey looked at the arrogant, self-serving, manipulative little prick of a man who, in so little time, had caused Aubrey so much grief and despair, and the possibility of vengeance sparked
flames of rage within him. Aubrey felt a hot rush of anger tingle up his spine and shudder through his synapses as he stepped down off the control deck, elation and fear coursing through his
veins.

Joaquin glared at him.

‘What the hell are you doing, you insolent little—’

Aubrey reached around beneath his shirt, yanked the pistol from his jeans and aimed it at Joaquin the way he had seen it done in the movies a thousand times. He saw the flare of alarm in
Joaquin’s eyes, anger quashed by fear as the younger man threw his hands up in surrender.

‘Now, Dennis, take it easy. I just need to see the—’

‘Shut up!’ Dennis snapped.

Joaquin’s jaw clamped shut as he backed away from the gun. A flood of elation rushed through Aubrey, a heady elixir of power and control borne of the complete command of another human
being. He aimed at Joaquin’s chest, not making the mistake of trying to shoot the tycoon somewhere difficult like the head, where the pistol might miss and give Joaquin the chance to
counterattack. And he kept well out of arm’s reach, preventing Joaquin from grabbing the pistol. Aubrey knew his cop shows all right.

‘This is what you really are, Joaquin,’ Aubrey growled, as Joaquin backed up another pace and hit the side of the control panel. ‘A coward, a bully who gets others to do his
dirty work for him.’

Joaquin’s jaw worked to free itself from his fear as he coughed his response.

‘Dennis, there’s no need for this, we can work this out together.’

‘Shut it, you creep,’ Aubrey snarled. ‘All these years you’ve had it all, but you didn’t earn a damned bit of it: you inherited your father’s money, inherited
his looks, inherited his decency, but then turned it into greed because you’ve never had to work for anything in your pathetic little life.’ Aubrey took another pace toward Joaquin,
towering over him for the first time in his life, and a confidence he had rarely felt soared through him as he shouted, ‘And you took Katherine away from me! She thought you were worthy,
thought you were a good man.
I
was the good man! And then you tried to murder her, like you murdered everybody else!’