Genocide of One: A Thriller (55 page)

Once they had all their equipment on, Pierce glanced at his watch. “We’re twenty seconds
late. We can’t make any mistakes. Everything from now on has to be perfect.”

The two mercenaries, parachute containers on their backs, went back to the cockpit.
Meyers looked at the altimeter and checked with Pierce. “Decompression will start
at thirty-four thousand feet, right?”

The reply came from the laptop Akili was holding.
Change to thirty-three thousand feet. Set heading at oh-one-nine.

Yeager entered the figures into the autopilot. “Akili, did you drive away the missile?”

The strange-looking boy didn’t answer and instead flashed him an unearthly, gremlinlike
smile.

When First Lieutenant Murdoch, pilot of the second plane in the formation, saw the
squad leader’s plane explode, he quickly took evasive maneuvers. He climbed and turned
hard left, finally leveling out. The remaining two planes dove to the left and right
and again took up formation.

Had Captain Grimes bailed out? Murdoch scanned the ocean, and when he did, he saw
an unbelievable sight. The ocean below, for as far as the eye could see, had turned
white.

Instinctively sensing danger, Murdoch broke radio silence and told the others to change
course. But the third and fourth planes both exploded, one after the other. They suddenly
fell from the sky, too quickly for the pilots to eject.

Murdoch again climbed steeply, barely avoiding jagged pieces of the other jets scattering
in all directions. The high g-forces thrust him back against his seat, and he nearly
blacked out. And something was damaged in his plane. He was losing control of the
Raptor.

Wreckage from the other planes was being swallowed up by the white sea.
Why?
The question ran with a shudder through Murdoch as he flew above the ocean, the sole
survivor of his squadron. What made the Raptors crash like that, one after another?
Faulty maintenance? Or were they attacked?

“This is Alpha One. Eagle Two, do you copy?”

Murdoch replied to the call from headquarters. “Eagle Two, copy.”

“Report.”

“The other three have crashed. I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Repeat.”

“Eagle One, Three, and Four have crashed!” Fear that he would be the next ran up Murdoch’s
spine.

“Were they shot down?”

“Unclear. Red flames came out of their tailpipes, and they exploded right after. It
appears all the pilots are dead.”

“And the target?”

“Negative. We did not down it.”

“You’re ordered to engage.”

Murdoch shuddered. To lock on his missile he’d have to point his nose at the discolored
sea. He shoved the stick to the left and banked. He’d fly along the edge of the whitish
sea. “Roger that.”

He switched on his radar, and the image of the Boeing plane emerged. Murdoch locked
on to the target, wanting nothing more than to escape this dangerous part of the ocean
as soon as he could.

“Fox three,” he said, and pushed the trigger. Just then the supposedly smooth sea
below him began to turn a cloudy white. His eyes opened in astonishment. The surface
of the sea was covered in bubbles. It was foaming up, as if it were boiling. It was
an imposing, weird sight, as if a submarine as big as a town were rising to the surface.
The missile, a mere one kilometer ahead, turned upward, then down, falling into the
seething foam. The sea around where it fell blazed up.

Murdoch tried desperately to avoid the flaming sea, but his controls weren’t responding.
The uncontrollable Raptor began a rapid descent. Murdoch felt an unseen force taking
hold of his plane, yanking it down toward the sea. “The sea is burning! I’m ejecting!”

This was the final communication from the squad.

The Boeing, tilted at an angle, gradually righted itself and leveled out at thirty-three
thousand feet.

Standing behind the pilot’s seat, Meyers pulled the thrust lever back and lowered
the landing gear, causing the plane’s airspeed to decrease. The stall warning light
came on, making the control stick vibrate.

Yeager checked his helmet strap and lowered his goggles over his eyes. “Put on your
oxygen mask and check the flow!”

Akili was inside the backpack, hanging from Yeager’s chest. Meyers tugged the mask
over Akili’s face, turned the control valve, and checked the flow. The oxygen supply
system, a lifeline in a high-altitude high-opening jump, was working fine.

Once everyone had nodded, indicating that the system worked, Meyers leaned forward
and flipped off the pressurization switch. Oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling,
and a new warning light lit up on the instrument panel. But the red light went unnoticed,
as the panel was already ablaze with warning lights.

With the pressurized air cut off, the pressure inside the plane plummeted. Without
the oxygen masks they would have blacked out in a couple of minutes. As they waited
for the pressure inside to equal the pressure outside, Meyers pointed at the fuel
gauge. They were nearly out of fuel. Behind his mask Pierce called out in a muffled
voice. “T minus thirty seconds!”

They hurried out of the cockpit to the passenger cabin and assembled before the center
exit door. The door was right over the wing. Meyers and Pierce connected their harnesses
and got in tandem-jump position. Yeager flung open the door, and a violent wind swept
the cabin, flinging the hanging oxygen masks around. They’d successfully depressurized
the plane, so the four of them weren’t sucked outside.

Pierce held his hands out and spread his fingers apart. “Ten seconds!”

For a brief instant the men exchanged looks. Their long battle was drawing to an end.
Their eyes reflected gratitude at having survived this far.

“Five seconds!”

Yeager grabbed hold of both sides of the door. In front of him Akili peeked out like
a baby kangaroo in its pouch.

“Four! Three! Two!”

At “Zero,” Yeager leaped out the door. He’d planned to first land on the wing directly
below, but a blast of wind pushed him sideways, rolling him off the wing and tossing
him into the sky ten thousand meters above the earth. A shadow flashed above, the
horizontal stabilizer, as the plane flew by. A floating sensation raced through his
stomach, as if his organs were being sucked upward. Tossed about by air and gravity,
his body began to spin violently, but he was finally able to level out and gain control,
arms and legs extended as he faced straight down.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw Meyers and Pierce directly above. Behind them,
the Boeing was still flying, but its nose suddenly dipped, it lowered one wing, and
lost lift. This graceful aircraft, which had seen them safely out of Africa, had finally
run out of fuel. The roar of its jet engines died, and it fluttered toward the Sargasso
Sea like some gigantic leaf.

Yeager turned back. Far below him lay a blue planet filled with an outrageous amount
of water. As he looked at this beautiful globe, a thought came to him.

I’m coming back to earth.

Mother Earth, which nurtures all life.

Back to that gray world where people love each other and hate each other. A world
caught between good and evil.

The moment contact with Lieutenant Murdoch was lost, the air force general himself
called in the order to deploy pararescue. What had happened to the Raptor squadron?
The whole incident was so inexplicable that the National Security Council members
around the table were mute.

Soon afterward the Boeing plane disappeared from radar over the ocean, two hundred
kilometers from Bermuda.

“What’s going on?” Burns said, breaking the silence. “Why did it vanish from radar?”

“The target has probably crashed,” the air force general replied.

“You mean it was shot down?”

“No. There’s no radar indication of a launched missile. We believe the hijacked plane
ran out of fuel and crashed.”

“Could they have done an emergency landing in the ocean?”

“No. That didn’t happen. It stopped at a certain point and lost altitude, so it had
to have crashed.”

The president looked at his CIA director. “So Operation Nemesis was a success?”

“Yes,” Holland replied, looking half stunned. “The target, Nous, has been eliminated.”

As he watched this exchange on the videoconferencing system, Rubens knew one thing
for sure. Nous was still alive. One of the qualifications for people to join Operation
Guardian was an airborne rating. And besides, there was Nigel Pierce’s background
to consider.

Just then a report came in that ten southern states had lost electricity. Holland
read the memo aloud, then turned to the president. “In order to focus on the present
threat, can we close down all activities related to Nemesis?”

Burns stared at the screen in front of him. The radar image showed nothing. “So ordered.”

“Not just activities under our direct jurisdiction, but can we have the entire intelligence
community back away from what they’re doing?”

Burns nodded. “That operation does not exist anymore.”

“Did you hear that, Eldridge?” Holland asked from the TV screen. “There were some
casualties, but Operation Nemesis was a success. Have all assets stop operations,
and lift the terrorist designation for all those involved. Also, halt plans you made
in Japan. And halt any steps that were being taken for special rendition.”

“Yes, sir,” Eldridge replied, and he ordered his subordinates in the command center
to contact all relevant agencies. Now the CIA, NSA, DIA, and the FBI would be moving
to end operations, and the order came down to assets in the field, in Japan and Africa,
to stand down.

The end of Operation Nemesis was like the death of some enormous monster. And, as
if waiting for the monster to breathe its last, power stations throughout the United
States began to come back online. Even as word came in that, one by one, power was
restored in Alaska, Michigan, Maine, and Wisconsin, the Situation Room was not filled
with joy. Rather, an atmosphere of unease once more hung over the room.

“Who’s starting to turn the power stations back on?” Secretary of Defense Lattimer
asked.

No one replied.

“Is it Nous?” Burns asked.

After a pause, Holland voiced a third question. “You want to take him on again?”

The president thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No.”

Still in free fall at eight thousand meters, Yeager yanked the rip cord and opened
his chute. The square sail opened above him, quickly slowing his rate of descent.
Now he could use the toggles on both sides to steer them to their rendezvous point.
In HAHO jumps the parachute is opened at high altitude, and then the jumper glides
down, so it is possible to cover up to thirty kilometers in horizontal distance. The
square parachute was too small to be picked up by radar.

After they had glided through the sky for an hour, their rendezvous point finally
loomed into view in the middle of the ocean—a huge cargo ship owned by Pierce Shipping,
floating in the ocean like a solitary island.

Our adventure’s drawing to an end, Yeager told himself as he aimed for the tops of
the containers that filled the deck. It’s amazing I ever survived. He was astounded
by how well their whole escape from Cape Town had been planned. This person Ema must
be pretty damn smart.

An image appeared to him, of a man who was like the spirit of the jungle. Esimo. When
he’d told them about his pregnant wife leaving him forever, he’d used the word
mzungu
, pointing at Mick. After his pregnant wife had been taken away by
mzungu
—white—doctors, she never returned to the Ituri jungle.

If the name—Ema—is any indication, she must be a woman. So Akili has an older sister.

The container was rushing up at them. Yeager waited for the right moment, then yanked
the toggles down to below his waist to break their descent. His legs hit the top of
the container, and the impact jolted through his whole body.

Akili was fine. Meyers and Pierce landed a few seconds later on another container
on the deck. Their parachutes, reluctant to part with the wind, billowed out behind
them. Yeager and Meyers gave each other a thumbs-up.

The two mercenaries, along with this new species of human, had finally made it out
of Africa.

The Air France
flight arrived at the Lisbon Portela Airport right on schedule.

Jeong-hoon, in the third row from the front, was the first passenger to deplane. He
knew someone was waiting anxiously for his arrival, and he didn’t want to waste a
minute. He had gone through immigration control already in Paris, so he headed straight
for baggage claim.

His bag took a long time to come. Bringing the liquid drug into the cabin wasn’t allowed,
so he had to check it at the last minute.

Finally his backpack emerged on the conveyor belt, and Jeong-hoon quickly checked
inside. None of the capsules inside the plastic case had broken, and none of the liquid
had spilled.

Now came customs, the final hurdle. He’d left Japan in such a hurry all he had was
the one bag, and he was afraid that would look suspicious, but those in the duty-free
line passed through without being checked.

Jeong-hoon hurried out to the arrivals lobby. The smells of a different country enveloped
him. Portela airport was small for an international airport, but the glass walls and
cathedral ceilings kept it from feeling cramped.

He looked around and spotted her. A blond woman holding a large sign with
JUSTIN YEAGER
written on it. Jeong-hoon went over to her.

“Are you Mr. Lee?” Lydia Yeager asked him.

She was only in her thirties, but she looked hurt and desperate. She must have been
battling death for years with her son, Jeong-hoon imagined. “Yes. Are you Mrs. Yeager?”

“I’m very happy to meet you,” Lydia said with a forced smile that was painful to see.
At this very moment her son was on the verge of death.

With not a moment to lose, Jeong-hoon pulled out the plastic case. “There’s a new
kind of drug inside,” he explained quickly. “Give Justin one dose per day. That’s
all you need to do. Refrigerate the rest. There’s a half year’s supply here, and we’ll
send more as soon as we can.”

“Thank you.” Lydia’s voice trembled. “But I should pay your airfare. Or give you something
for what you’ve done.”

“No. I’m fine. This is—a
gift
. For your son.”

Lydia wiped away the tears about to flow down her cheeks.

“You’d better go give the medicine to Justin.”

Lydia nodded and ran out to the taxi stand. But she stopped and turned around, allowing
herself a precious moment. “You’ve saved my family.”

Jeong-hoon felt as if his life was, for the very first time, headed in the right direction.
Studying pharmacology had finally paid off, rewarding him for all the time and effort
he’d devoted to this field. A warmth welled up inside him, and he smiled.

“My friend and I made it. My good friend, Kento Koga.”

When Kento woke from a long sleep, his body still smelled like disinfectant. The clock
showed six, but he had no idea if it was morning or night. Still wrapped in his sleeping
bag, he checked the date and realized he had slept for sixteen hours straight.

Not long after he hid in the janitor’s closet at the university hospital, a call came
in on his cell phone. The screen said
Poppy,
but he was surprised to hear a normal woman’s voice, not the usual low, artificial
tone.

“Kento?” It had to be Yuri Sakai. He knew it right away. But with a detective prowling
around nearby he couldn’t reply. Yuri told him that everything was finished and he
didn’t need to hide anymore.

Kento was half doubtful, but being curled up in the constricted space was making his
muscles scream in pain. He knew he couldn’t stay like this any longer, and he tumbled
out of the locker.

The hospital hallway was deserted. No doctors or nurses, and no detective, either.
Kento hurried down the stairs, but at the sixth floor he stopped, opened the door
a crack, and peered in. Yoshihara and Maika Kobayashi’s attending physician were rushing
toward the ICU. Her parents back in the hallway were staring fixedly at what was going
on. A momentary smile flashed across her father’s face and Kento knew what had happened.
Yoshihara had given her the drug. He’d administered GIFT to this patient on the verge
of death.

Kento beamed.

Maika was saved.

He quietly shut the door, walked down to the first floor, and left the hospital through
the service entrance. Starving, he bought two box lunches at a nearby convenience
store and wolfed them down next to the road. Now where to? His apartment near the
university or the lab in Machida?

For some reason he was drawn back to the lab his father had left him, as if this was
where he belonged. Kento flagged down a taxi and headed to the opposite end of Tokyo,
back to that old, run-down building.

At the front door the detective’s vomit and the overpowering stink of the chemical
reagent remained. He held his breath, slipped inside, and found everything unchanged.
There was no sign that the police had searched his room, and nothing was missing.
He finally felt like the danger had passed.

He gazed at the mice who had recovered and felt a wave of joy. He gave the drug to
the remaining nine mice, then curled up in his sleeping bag and, overwhelmed by exhaustion,
had barely closed his eyes before he was fast asleep.

When he finally woke up he felt like a new person. He crawled out of his sleeping
bag, washed his face at the kitchen sink, and was thinking about going to a sauna
to take a bath when he looked at his cell phone screen. There were two voice messages.
The first was from Jeong-hoon, in his usual cheerful voice.

“Kento? This is Jeong-hoon. I’m in Lisbon. Mission accomplished. I just gave GIFT
to Lydia.”

Kento smiled broadly as he listened to the rest of the message from his friend.

“I’m taking off for Japan now. I’ll call you when I get back.”

Jeong-hoon had played such a critical role in the success of their mission, and now
he was going to circle the globe in forty hours. Kento was again amazed by his friend’s
vitality.

The second message was from Yuri Sakai. I’m going to send you an important message,
she said, so boot up the black laptop. The password isn’t the difficult ones I gave
you before, but just the number 1, typed in twice.

Praying it wouldn’t be bad news, Kento powered up the machine. He typed in 1 twice
on the blue screen, and the mail program came up automatically.

He moved the cursor, clicked open the in box, and cried out. The message was from
Seiji Koga, Tama Polytechnic University
. The subject heading was
To Kento from Dad
.

As he did with the message that had set everything in motion, his father had prepared
this one for Kento while he was still alive. Kento was about to read it but stopped.
These would be the last words his father would ever have for him. He should take his
time.

Kento took his hand off the mouse, took a deep breath, then clicked the screen. As
before, a message appeared in a small font.

And that’s exactly what happened, Kento thought. I’ll never see my father again. Never
see his tired-looking face or listen to his litany of complaints. Never talk with
him or share that knowing smile that only another researcher could understand.

But I need more, Kento thought. If I could just have ten minutes with him again. What
would he tell me? What life lessons would he pass on?

His father’s farewell note ended here.

Kento felt the tears streaming down his cheeks and realized how long he’d been holding
back this sadness. He and Jeong-hoon were, with a single drop of medicine, going to
save lives, lives that otherwise were hopeless.

I did it, Dad, he said to his father’s spirit. I was blessed with a wonderful partner,
and somehow we managed to finish. Continue to watch over me. We’re going to find a
legitimate research-and-development channel and save the lives of one hundred thousand
children.

Kento’s adventure had only just begun.