The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (36 page)

“Five hundred pounds of the most potent plastic explosives known to man that if properly placed could take out a large chunk of the city.”

“Lord.”

“I wasn’t finished yet. This plastic explosive can be melted into a liquid, heated into an explosive gas, formed into virtually any shape—the possibilities are endless.”

“And the perpetrators plan to use it during the parade?”

“Not just during your parade, Mr. Burns,
on
it. No one will be safe. Not the people watching or the ones participating. You understand my point about cancellation now.”

“Yes, but it’s impossible for us to cancel at so late a time. I haven’t got the authority, and I’m not sure any other individual does either. The number of people involved in this event is tremendous. And there’s television coverage to consider as well. If we cancel without showing just cause, meaning absolute proof, we could be sued.”

“Five hundred pounds of C-12
plastique
should be plenty of ‘just cause’ for you.”

“Unfortunately, on your word alone, it can’t. Please understand me, Mr. Kimberlain. I sympathize with everything you’ve said, and I don’t doubt your word. But it remains
your
word—one man’s word. If we were to call the parade off based on that, then we would be submitting ourselves to a different form of terrorism, wouldn’t we? And in another perspective the terrorists would have won.”

“These aren’t terrorists!” Kimberlain caught his voice rising in time to lower it. “They’re not out to score points for their hopeless Third World revolution. They’re here to punish society, starting with your parade. I don’t know how closely you read my file, but you might have gotten the idea I know a lot about vengeance, getting even, what I like to call paybacks. This whole incident is Jason Benbasset’s version of a payback.”

Burns shook his head, confused and anxious. “I’m a PR man, Mr. Kimberlain, not a decision-maker. But I know how they function, and I can promise you that the parade will not be canceled on such short notice without absolute proof.”

“If I knew where the C-12 was, this conversation would never have had to take place.”

Burns’s tone turned conciliatory. “Please, we’re both after the same thing here. Neither of us wants a disaster while the country is getting ready to sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, but we must face the fact that the parade is going to go on. With that in mind, what’s our next best option?”

“Security. Lots of it.”

“That much I
can
arrange. I’ll talk to the New York police myself; the FBI, too. I’ll put every one of our security people on duty and arrange twenty-four-hour guards on all sites where parade equipment is being assembled or stored.”

“Where’s your chief of security?”

“In Philadelphia until late this evening. I can set up a meeting for you first thing tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll want to know everything there is to know about your parade, Mr. Burns. The route, the props, the floats, those famous balloons, the works.”

Burns jotted it all down. “Anything else?”

“Sure,” said Kimberlain. “Pray for a blizzard.”

“There’ll be over twenty-five hundred Macy’s employees walking the route, Mr. Kimberlain. No one will be praying any harder than I.”

The Eighth Trumpet
Outpost 10

Wednesday, November 25; 7:00
A.M.

Chapter 31

FOR DANIELLE THE LAST
forty-eight hours had been a living hell. She had slipped reluctantly from Kimberlain’s embrace Monday afternoon sadly aware that it was unlikely they would ever see each other again. He was the only person she would ever meet who knew her for what she was and thought no less of her as a result. Her life had been so filled with secrecy and deception that her very name had been forgotten, and reaching for the truth was a difficult task. The Ferryman accepted her because he too had lived such a life, and now he was gone. By her own choosing. By necessity.

So she could find the only truth left that mattered at Outpost 10.

She had fled Malta with the Hashi close on her heels and had begun a long journey laced with frustration and a feeling of utter helplessness. Her route took her to Sydney, Australia, by way of Paris and then on to Christchurch, New Zealand, through which most planes in and out of Antarctica were channeled. Her cover for at least reaching the continent, specifically the American research station at McMurdo, was in place. From there she had no idea of how she would make her way the additional eight hundred miles to Outpost 10—over the Transantarctic Mountains to boot. And even if she did manage to reach it, she held little hope the weaponry would be available to thwart the takeover attempt by a well-trained force of Hashi commandos from the captive submarine. All she could do was reach McMurdo and take things from there.

And here lay the basis for her initial frustrations: all traffic in and out of McMurdo from Christchurch was being restricted due to airfield problems. Her arrival in New Zealand Tuesday night was met with the news that the C-130 cargo plane scheduled to take her across would not be leaving until six-thirty
A.M.,
which left her an additional seven hours to wallow in her anxiety. Two journalists were scheduled to make the trip along with a half-dozen researchers who’d been away on leave and were now returning.

The weather in Christchurch was chilly, and she knew Antarctica itself would be much worse. Even though November was the beginning of summer on the continent and the sun never set, killer storms could whip up quickly and last for days. The temperature was tolerable but still frigid to one not used to the climate.

It was sunny and bright in Christchurch Wednesday morning, and after breakfast the small group of passengers was escorted from the barracks straight onto the airfield. At the foot of the stairs leading up to the C-130, a panting German Shepherd sniffed each passenger before he or she was allowed to make his way up. At the rear of the party, Denielle felt the grasp of fear, thinking of the pistol concealed in the thick padding of her down parka. As she drew closer, though, she saw the dog was concerned solely with sniffing for drugs. She petted him when he was finished and smiled at his disapproving handler.

McMurdo was 2,200 miles away. At top speed, the C-130 would make it there by mid-afternoon. Danielle finally managed to steal some sleep during the flight, content at least with the fact that the last leg of her journey and of her mission was upon her. The Ferryman’s assurances in Malta had meant nothing. Brother Valette had said all along it would be left to the Knights to stop the Hashi’s ultimate try for chaos in the end, meaning it was left to her. There would be no help coming from Kimberlain in the States. She felt sure of that.

She awoke just as the C-130 was going into its descent. The aircraft was equipped with ski bottoms to maintain control during the landing. The airfields of McMurdo were paved, but workers were helpless to fight off the onslaught of the blowing winds, which sent snow squalling over the tarmac to freeze quickly into ice. Accordingly, the runways were built on a slight upward grade, so the C-130’s brakes would bring it to a gradual stop.

Danielle tried to look out the window, but the brightness blinded her, a great white blur for as far as she could see. Her eyes ached. She longed for sunglasses as she watched the other passengers donning theirs. Nothing but white—rolling, sloping, hilly white. The C-130 grazed the runway with its skis. It was like flying while on the ground, and it seemed as though it would never stop. But the plane did stop, and rather precisely at that, not more than forty yards beyond a green mini-bus that would take them the five-mile stretch from the airfield to McMurdo Station.

Outside, the Antarctic cold was like none she had experienced before. It pierced the thickness of her jacket and clasped her flesh in its icy grip. It was raw, wet, and made breathing difficult. Her exhaled breath turned white, and she longed for her exposed face to grow numb to spare her the feeling of needles prickling with each gust of the wind.

The air inside the mini-bus was warmer but hardly comfortable. She could hear the heaters struggling against the dwindling temperatures and losing the fight. The door had been opened long enough for the passengers and their gear to be packed in—and also long enough for all the hot air to rush out so the heater had to start anew.

“All buckled in?” the driver called back to his seated passengers. And without waiting for an answer, he tucked his goggles over his eyes and the van set off.

Danielle knew enough about the Antarctic climate to fear such cold temperatures, for in the summer season they could only mean a treacherous storm was about to descend on the area. If that happened before she found her way to Outpost 10, she might well end up stuck at McMurdo while the hijacked submarine brought its deadly crew and cargo to a comfortable distance from the base. She fought the thoughts back; there was no sense in considering them.

The road the mini-bus took was formed of chunks of ice so worn that it had lost much of its slipperiness. Lines of red and green flags wedged into the ground on bamboo stakes rimmed the road on both sides in order to help drivers keep their vehicles on the path in far worse conditions. The road was winding, and the van did not take the curves especially well. The most it had going for it was the fact that it had the route all to itself, and at last it swung around a large high mound known as Observation Hill, beneath which lay McMurdo Station.

Danielle saw the development at first glance for just what it was: a speck of civilization where it plainly didn’t belong. McMurdo had grown from a simple American research outpost into a small town, much of it built on a slope in a cluttered composite of streets and buildings that battled for her eye with enormous storage tanks. There were dormitories, workshops, a huge mess hall, a chapel, laboratories, garages, an administration building, a bar—all linked together by dirt roads that were either frozen or hopelessly muddy. Sewer and water pipes ran above-ground from building to building, encased in corrugated tin.

The first thing Danielle heard after climbing out of the van was the sound of a helicopter. She squinted her eyes to see a huge red Navy chopper lifting off from a pad next to a sprawling structure, the depth of which told her it must be the McMurdo gym. Helicopters were crucial here, since they were the only means of conveniently traveling beyond the immediate vicinity. She could see that the red monsters manned by the Navy were fitted with extracapacity fuel tanks, and she wondered if that rendered them capable of taking her all the way to Outpost 10. Even if so, she had no idea how to fly one, which meant any plan to seize a chopper had to include coercing a pilot as well.

Moving toward the processing center, she noticed the conglomeration of antennae and dishes that watched over McMurdo from positions on the surrounding ridges. Perhaps she could find a way to make contact with the outpost, but what exactly could she tell them? She was considering precisely that question when the station commander greeted her and the other new arrivals curiously and abruptly.

“What’s eating him?” one journalist asked another.

“There’s a big storm coming up, and he’s got a pair of research teams in the field. Chopper just lifted off to pick them up. But it’s gonna be close if the storm’s as big and as close as they say.”

Danielle swallowed hard. Unknowingly, the journalist might have just spoken an epitaph for all of civilization. The coldness racing through her now was from far more than simply the temperature. A storm sweeping in from the area of the South Pole would render any possible route to Outpost 10 out of the question. In a word, she was grounded, as was all other traffic in and out of McMurdo, including the C-130 that had brought her here.

Unless …

She found the pilot of the C-130 in the McMurdo bar, starting to drink away the hours he knew he’d be stuck here. She sat down close enough to him to make him notice her, and in case he hadn’t she prolonged the motion of tossing her hair free of her parka’s hood. Like everyone else in the bar, she wouldn’t take the parka off until her body temperature had a chance to regulate itself.

“You were on the plane this morning,” the pilot said to her from his spot two stools over.

She nodded, waiting for the bartender. “Nice flight. Meal service could have been better, though.”

“Let me make up for that now,” he said, sliding over next to her.

Beyond the frost-encrusted window she could see the sky already clouding with the first signs of the coming storm.

“What are you drinking?” the pilot asked her. He relayed her answer to the bartender, adding, “If you don’t mind, that is.”

“Not at all.”

The pilot smiled then and eased himself even closer. “Name’s Bob Padrone.”

“Maria King, Captain Padrone.”

“Bob,
please
. Last name’s easy to remember ’cause if you change the ‘d’ and the ‘r’ you’ve got the word pardon, except for the ‘e’ of course.”

“Pardon me, Bob.”

The pilot forced a laugh.

The rest was easy, barely an hour’s investment of time. She maneuvered the man shamelessly, each smile or dart of her eyes bringing her further into control. The pilot kept drinking, not overdoing it but not watching himself either. Danielle lingered over a second beer, with the warm bitter taste of her first one stuck in her mouth. He touched her; she let him. He drew still closer, she let him. Not forcing it, never forcing it. Finally his arm slid around her and they kissed, exchanged whispers, Padrone unable to hide his surprise at her request.

“You wanna go
where
?”

Even at the bottom of the world, money plays an important role. A crumpled twenty-dollar bill pulled from his pocket gained the pilot use of a four-wheel-drive jeep, albeit with a lousy heater, to take them back to the airfield, specifically the cockpit of his C-130, and if that wasn’t a fitting name for it on this day he didn’t know what was. First time for everything, he figured.

They stepped out of the jeep and Padrone eyed the darkening horizon before moving to the ladder that would take them up.