On the Fifth Day (46 page)

"Fifty meters and falling."

"Good," said Parks. "I figure we're still five hundred yards from the cliff. On the beach side there's a coral reef--if the locals haven't dynamited it to get at the tuna and mackerel--

but over here it just drops all the way down to sand. The sonar says we can go down another seventy meters. Don't be sur

prised if the cabin starts making odd noises. She'll hold."

Thomas shifted again and stared out into the shifting dark

ness. He had expected teeming fish, brightly colored and curi

ous, maybe even a shark or two sliding past, but nothing was down here at all. No plants, no coral, no fish, just vague blue light.

What if there's nothing down here after all? What if Ed got
it wrong and the whole thing has been a wild-goose chase?

"I'm slowing us down some more," said Parks. "We're get

ting close. I don't want to spook anything."

"Or run headlong into the rock," suggested Thomas.

"That too."

347

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

He checked the cascading stream of green lines on the sonar monitor.

"Should be entering visual range soon," he said. "Keep your eyes open."

They sat in silence for several minutes, the soft whir of the sub's five hydraulic motors the only sound in the deep. Thomas was getting antsy.

"You sure this sonar system is working?" he said.

"Shh," said Parks. "Keep looking."

"I'm just saying . . ." Thomas began. "Wait. Look there."

The infinite blue expanse in front of them had darkened and hardened in the floodlights.

"That's it," said Parks, cutting their speed to nothing. The craft drifted on, slowing, still diving, till they could see the pale seabed and the foot of the cliff. Thomas looked up and saw the black rock rising up in a wall all the way to the sur

face, well beyond the reach of their lights.

"Now what?" he said.

"Now we get as close as we dare," said Parks, "and we look."

CHAPTER 97

"That's way outside my jurisdiction," said Cerniga. "It's spook territory. CIA. NSA. God knows what else."

"I'm just asking if you can make a few inquiries," said Deborah.

"For old times' sake?"

Deborah held her breath, gauging his tone. Last time they had spoken it had been at the end of a case where she had helped him out, but the way things had wound up hadn't been characteristic of the case itself. Before the end he had spent a good deal of the time thinking she was a pain in the ass, and 348

A. J. Hartley

he had probably been right. But by the end she had earned his respect, and that was what she was banking on now.
Old times' sake.

She couldn't tell if he was smiling, so it was a gamble to answer as she did: "Something like that, yeah."

There was a pause in which he might have blown out a long sigh, and she could tell she had won.

"Congrats on the promotion, by the way," she said.

"Yeah, yeah," said Cerniga, and now she could hear the smile. "I'll call you back."

As the submarine drew closer it was apparent that what had looked to be a sheer wall of rock was actually a corrugated mass of irregular stone outcrops stretching up like the bones of the island, and what had seemed solid was pocked with re

cesses and tubelike caverns made as hot lava belched into the sea. Where the molten rock had been in contact with the cool

ing water it had hardened, but the hot core had continued to flow, creating great stone pipes running down to the seabed.

"No wonder we don't know anything about what lives down here," said Parks. "Combine the intricacy of the cave network with the fact that the only way in is almost a hundred and fifty meters underwater at the ass end of the world, a place populated mainly by terrorists, and it's hardly surprising we never found them before."

Thomas had had plenty of reasons not to like Parks before getting into the submarine, most of which had had to do with their encounters before making this fairly unholy alliance. He had thought that as long as their pact seemed genuine, as long as their goals were the same, he would have no difficulty get

ting past their previous hostility, but this was not the case, and not merely because Thomas hadn't forgiven him for abandon

ing him in the
o-furo.
It was simpler than that. Though he sometimes found him funny and couldn't help admiring his self-possession, Thomas just didn't like Parks, and the more time he spent with him the more the man's brash confidence 349

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

and arrogant dismissal of whatever didn't interest him had be

gun to rankle. Everything he said seemed calculated to irritate or offend, and the fact that it was
not
actually calculated at all because Parks never really considered what anybody else thought somehow made it worse.

"Finding the fishapod here is going to be so huge," he said,

"that everyone will forget that what this jungle backwater was previously famous for was the Muslim and Christian idiots throwing coconuts at each other."

"You look forward to that, don't you?" said Thomas. "Be

ing the one to enlighten the world. So what's it all about, this quest of yours?"

"What do you mean?"

"There must be some reason for your Captain Ahab routine."

"Some personal tragedy, you mean? Some unbearable loss that turned me against God?" said Parks. "Yeah, my puppy died when I was three. Never got over it. How could Jesus let that cute little guy . . ."

"Okay, okay," said Thomas. "I get it."

"You don't need to lose a baby to see that the universe has no controlling intelligence," said Parks, "that the world is run by the greedy, the cruel, and the stupid. If there's a God, He fell asleep at the wheel right after humans showed up."

"Is that what you taught the kids at Berkeley?" said Thomas. The man had a knack for pushing his buttons. Parks gave him a sharp look. "Found out about that, did you?" he said, the flicker of irritation turning into a sneering amusement. "If you don't want to be in a science class you shouldn't register for one."

"But they didn't dismiss you for preaching evolution at a university," said Thomas, connecting the dots as he spoke.

"There's no way."

"So, you
don't
know," said Parks, pleased with himself. Thomas waited. "Preaching evolution is what it amounted to,"

said Parks. "Well within what I thought was protected by aca

demic freedom."

"They didn't?"

350

A. J. Hartley

"There was this one kid," said Parks. "Jessica Bane.
Bane
of my life,
I called her. Cute, though. Smiled and said 'please'

and 'thank you, professor,' started coming by my office talk

ing intelligent design. I told her what I thought, and made it something of a theme in my lectures for a couple of weeks. Next thing I know I'm being dragged in on charges of reli

gious intolerance."

Thomas felt himself withdraw a little, wary.

"Surely you could have appealed?"

"And spend the rest of my life walking on the eggshells of political correctness and cultural sensitivity?" he snapped back. "Please. I have a real career to make. I can't do that in classes stuffed with morons who want their science teachers to stand at the podium with a Bible in their hands."

"Has anyone ever told you," said Thomas, "that for some

one who has nothing but contempt for religion, you have one hell of a God complex?"

"Hey, at least I use my powers for good," he said, grinning and joining his hands, mock angelic.

"You remind me of Watanabe," said Thomas.

"That hack? He's not a scientist. He's a wannabe movie star who figured he could make up the rules as he went."

"That's the thing about God complexes, though, isn't it,"

said Thomas. "Eventually you figure you're above the law."

"Oh, that's rich," said Parks, "coming from Mr. Fox News."

Thomas opened his mouth to respond but had nothing to say, and was fractionally relieved when Parks snapped, "You want to shut up now? This has to be done delicately."

He was maneuvering the sub into the mouth of a cave only a couple of meters broader than the vessel itself. Their lights shone into the cavern but revealed nothing, because the stone pipe turned up and to the left.

"No way can we get in there," said Thomas. "It's too nar

row."

"We're not going to see anything sitting out here," said Parks.

"So look for a wider cave."

351

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

Parks sighed, but he pulled the sub back. They adjusted, moved right, and then floated up a few meters, ignoring two other caverns that were no larger than the first. The third was broader, but not by much.

"I say we go in," said Parks. "The tunnels probably get wider inside, at least for a ways. Where the molten rock hit the water it will have cooled faster, so the opening will be the nar

rowest part."

"But if some of the rock turned solid inside the tube the passage will be blocked."

"Then we'll have to make sure we have room to turn around and get out," said Parks, adjusting the sub's attitude so that its bulbous translucent nose pointed straight into the rock passage. "You think we should have bought her dinner first?"

said Parks, leering.

"Just go slowly," said Thomas.

The engines whirred and the yellow submersible eased carefully into the stone tube.

CHAPTER 98

Deborah had been surprised to hear back from Cerniga so quickly, doubly so because he sounded so uncharacteristically tense. Her surprise had changed to alarm when he had told her he was coming to the museum and would be there in less than a half hour.

It was strange to see him again, particularly back here in her office, but there was no time for reminiscence or catching up. He looked serious, even agitated.

"On March thirteenth there was a counterterrorist air strike on two sets of coordinates in the southwestern islands of the Philippines," he said. "It was orchestrated not by the military 352

A. J. Hartley

but by the CIA. One location was a known Abu Sayyaf base and training facility. The other, the beach in your satellite im

ages, was a fishing village with, so far as I can tell, no terror

ist links whatsoever prior to the strike."

"You think they had special intelligence about the vil

lage?" said Deborah.

"No," said Cerniga, his voice hushed. "That's why I came over. I think something went wrong."

"What do you mean?"

He laid out some hastily copied documents, much of which had been blacked out.

"The Abu Sayyaf strike had been scheduled a week in ad

vance, but nothing had been said about the other location prior to takeoff. After launch, two of the aircraft separated from the formation to make an attack run on this island."

"So?"

"So," he said pointedly, "I can see no evidence of actual or

ders directing them to do so, and when they came back, all hell broke loose. The base was shut down and emergency crews were dispatched to the island to collect survivors and, it seems, to throw a media blanket over the area. The target zone is really out in the wilds, so I doubt that was so hard to do."

"What about the pilots of the aircraft?" said Deborah. "If you are suggesting that they acted on their own, they must have been interrogated or something, no?"

Cerniga smiled and produced another sheet showing a table of technical specifications and a photograph of an oddlooking plane: long, slim, bulbous-nosed, with one downward and two upward-slanting fins at the tail.

"Meet the MQ-9A Predator B," said Cerniga. "A drone spy plane."

"Drone?"

"Pilotless," said Cerniga. "It's controlled remotely from the ground."

Deborah gave a low whistle.

"Exactly," said Cerniga. "It can carry up to fourteen Hell

fire missiles or other stores including GBU-12 laser-guided 353

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

bombs. It's got a Lynx II SAR and an MTS twenty-inch gimbal . . ."

"English, please," said Deborah.

"Right. Sorry," said Cerniga. "It can find, track, fix, and target by itself in real time. It's a descendant of the RQ Preda

tor 1, which has been used as a strike aircraft since 2002. In 2003 one of them flown by the CIA accidentally killed a man and nine children in Afghanistan while hunting Taliban sup

porters, and that was with a payload of only two Hellfire mis

siles. What we are dealing with is bigger, faster, and a hell of a lot scarier in terms of punch."

"So how the hell do two of these go off course and hit the wrong place?" she said.

"They don't," said Cerniga. "That Afghan strike wasn't an accident in the sense of it hitting the wrong target. It hit the right target but the intel was bad. This is a very sophisticated weapon system, and when it goes wrong, that's usually be

cause someone did something dumb."

"Or malicious," said Deborah.

Cerniga frowned, reluctant to go there.

"Come on, Chris," she said. "You said so yourself."

"Someone could have made a mistake with the coordi

nates," he said, without conviction.

"Has there been an internal investigation?" she asked.

"Of course," said Cerniga, "but those findings are kept un

der wraps."

"But no one has been fired for incompetence, right?"

"Not yet."

"So someone has covered their tracks," said Deborah.

"Which means . . ."

"They could do it again," said Cerniga, unwillingly com

pleting her thought.

CHAPTER 99

The sub swam slowly into the tubular cavern, two, five, ten meters in. There the passage ballooned for a moment, and they were able to rotate and look around. Parks shot video from a built-in camera of the environment and the mollusks that clung to the walls in bunches. There was almost no cur

rent down here and the still, dark waters were unnervingly lifeless.