Plague Ship (45 page)

Entering the Op Center always gave Cabrillo a charge. It was the sleek design, the quiet hum of the computers, and the thought of all the power that could be controlled from this room, not just the
Oregon
’s revolutionary engines but also the awesome fire-power the vessel could unleash at a moment’s notice.

Hali had a steaming mug of coffee ready for him.

Cabrillo grunted his thanks and took a sip. “Better,” he said, setting the cup next to Kasim’s monitor. “Tell me what you’ve got.”

“As you know, the computer automatically scans every frequency in the radio spectrum. When it detected something transmitting at the ELF level, it paused to record the signal, and when it recognized the beginning of the word it alerted me. When I got here, this is what has been sent so far.” He tilted his flat panel so Cabrillo could see what was on the screen: OREGON.

“That’s it?” Juan didn’t try to hide his disappointment.

“ELF waves are incredibly long, upward of twenty-two hundred miles. It’s their length that lets them circle the globe and penetrate deep into the ocean. Basically, an ELF transmitter turns the earth into a giant antenna. The downside is, it takes a long time to send anything, and submarines can’t reply because they can’t carry a transmitter of their own. That’s why the Navy abandoned the whole system. It was just too inefficient.”

“Remind me why a sub can’t carry an ELF system.”

“The antenna alone is roughly thirty miles long. And even though it’s only an eight-watt signal, it would use more electricity than a sub’s reactor has the surplus capacity for. But the biggest reason is, a transmitter has to be located in an area with extremely low ground conductivity in order to avoid the absorption of the radio waves. There are only a handful of places in the world where you can send in the ELF band and a submarine definitely isn’t one of them.

“Going back through the logs,” Hali continued, “I found that there was another ELF transmission on this same frequency at ten o’clock last night. It consisted of only a random jumble of ones and zeros. I have the mainframe trying to crack it, if it is a code, but I’m not optimistic.”

The letter I appeared on Hali’s screen, followed sixty seconds later by the letter T.

“This is worse than pulling teeth,” Juan remarked. “Besides us, who else has built ELF antennas?”

“Just the Soviets. Their only use is to contact submarines in deep water and over great distances. There’s no other reason to set one up.”

“So if ours were dismantled, then it has to be the Russians. I wonder if this has something to do with us spying on Kerikov.”

“We’ll know in a minute.” Hali then amended: “Well, ten or fifteen.”

And so they waited, as a letter a minute appeared on the computer. So far, they had OREGON ITSMA. When the next letter came through, Juan stared at it for a second before letting out a triumphant whoop. It was the letter x.

“What is it?” Hali asked.

"It’s Max. That crafty SOB. He’s found a way to contact us on the ELF band.”

Hali suddenly cursed. He opened another window on his computer and retrieved the archive of the wiretap they had installed in Gil Martell’s office. “Why didn’t I see this right away,” he mused aloud, angry at himself. On his screen popped:

I DON’T . . . (1:13) YES . . . (3:57) ’BOUT DAWN AND SKY ... (1:17) (ACT)IVATE THE EEL LEF . . . (:24) KEY . . . (1:12) TOMORR(OW) . . . (3:38) THAT WON’T BE . . . (:43) A MIN(UTE) . . . (6:50) . . . BYE.(1:12)

“What am I not seeing?” Juan asked.

“The fourth word cluster. Activate the ‘eel lef.’ It’s not ‘eel lef,’ it’s ELF. Activate the ELF. The Responsivists have their own ELF transmitter.”

“What the heck for?” Juan asked before giving the answer. “If they’re releasing toxins on cruise ships, an ELF transmitter would allow you to synchronize an attack all over the planet.”

Cabrillo was burning with impatience at how slowly Max’s message was coming through, but he was still fighting a sleep debt he could barely pay the interest on. “Hali, this is taking forever. I’m going back to my cabin. Wake me when you have everything, and I want you to pinpoint their transmission site. This takes precedence over everything else. Get Eric to help with whatever you need.” He turned to the computer, as if Max Hanley could hear him. “I don’t know how you’re pulling this off, but you, my friend, are a piece of work.”

CHAPTER 28

IT HAD BEEN THE OLDEST TRICK IN THE BOOK AND IT had worked flawlessly.

Max had discovered the cliff only moments after escaping the underground bunker. He’d hopped off the ATV and gunned the throttle, sending it over the edge. It had been too dark to see how it landed, but he knew Kovac would scour the countryside, looking for his escaped prisoner, and the little machine would be found.

He had then returned to the bunker’s entrance and, amid the confusion of search teams heading out and medical staff attending to the injured mechanics, Max had brazenly walked right back in. Returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak, was the last thing Kovac would ever expect, and the facility was the last place he would think to search.

There were more than enough hiding places within the subterranean complex. He felt more confident exploring dressed as a mechanic, so he opened some of the doors he’d passed during his earlier exit. Many of the rooms he found were laid out like dormitories, with countless bunks with cloth curtains for privacy and large locker-room-style showers. Max estimated they could house several hundred people here, although only a fraction of that number were in residence at the time. One room was a massive cafeteria. Checking the stoves’ burners, he could tell nothing had ever been used. The walk-in freezers were packed with food, and he found a storage area that was stacked from floor to ceiling with pallets of bottled water and canned goods.

He figured that the facility was like a Cold War-era fallout shelter. It appeared to be fully self-sufficient, with enough food, water, electricity, and space for people to ride out a disaster in comfort, if not style. The fact that it was new, and built by the Responsivists, led him to believe that they would be causing the disaster. He thought back to the horror Juan and his team had discovered aboard the
Golden Dawn
and shuddered.

He helped himself to two bottles of water and a large can of pears, eating with his hand, so that the sweet syrup dripped down his battered chin. He also wound cling wrap around his torso, even though he knew modern medical practice was to leave cracked ribs unbound. The pressure of the plastic wrap eased a great deal of the pain, and the food and water gave him a modicum of strength.

Max stuffed a couple more waters into the deep pockets of his overalls and continued his exploration. He passed a few people in the meandering corridors. They looked askance at his injuries, then nodded with sympathy when he explained he had been attacked by the escaped prisoner.

He was one level above where they had held him in the cell when he discovered that not all the Responsivists would ride out Armageddon in a concrete maze. There was a set of double doors with a security keypad. The electronics were in the process of being dismantled, and tools lay on the floor next to a small stool. It looked like the repairman had dashed off to retrieve something he’d forgotten.

Max wasted no time in entering the secured area. The floors were covered in a thick green carpet and the walls were covered in sheetrock and wainscoting. The paint gave off a slightly acrid smell that told him it had been recently applied. The lighting was still fluorescent, but the fixtures were of a better quality, and there were even occasional sconces. The framed artwork hanging on the walls was gaily colored but bland. For some reason, it reminded him of the law office of one of his divorce attorneys. It was institutional, but a higher quality of institutional. The dining facility was more like an upscale restaurant, with flat-panel monitors on the walls in place of real windows. The chairs were heavy and covered in soft leather, and the top of the bar was a plank of solid mahogany.

He found a cubicle farm for a small army of secretaries outside a suite of offices and a communications center that would have made Hali Kasim drool. He entered the center and started looking for a phone or radio, but the system was unlike anything he had ever seen. Feeling exposed in the small room, he decided he would try again later and continued his exploration.

Set away from the functional side of what Max had dubbed “the executive wing” were bedrooms appointed like a five-star hotel, right down to the minibars. There weren’t any Gideon Bibles in the bedside tables but rather copies of Lydell Cooper’s book,
We’re Breeding Ourselves to Death.
There were enough rooms for forty people or couples, depending on the sleeping arrangements. Max guessed that this would be for the very cream of the Responsivist movement, the leaders, board of directors, and wealthiest believers. At the very farthest reaches of the executive wing was a suite of rooms that had to belong to Thom Severance and his wife. They were, by far, the most luxurious. The bathroom alone was the size of a studio apartment, and the tub looked big enough to need a lifeguard.

Max spent the night on Severance’s bed, and, in the morning, brushed his teeth with what would be Severance’s toothbrush, once he arrived. To Hanley’s utter shock, he heard voices from the living room while he was rinsing. He recognized Zelimir Kovac’s thick accent and precise diction, and heard a second, smoother voice he assumed to be that of Thom Severance and a third voice that gave his heart another jolt. It was Dr. Adam Jenner, the deprogrammer.

Max listened to their conversation in stunned horror. Each revelation seemed more shocking than the next. Jenner was really Lydell Cooper. There was a simple genius to the ruse, one that Max couldn’t help but grudgingly admire. Their dedication to their cause was deeper than anyone had ever believed. This really was a religion, with prophets and martyrs, and a body of faithful willing to do anything for their beliefs.

Severance said something about Gil Martell’s suicide that Max took to mean Kovac had killed him. And then Max heard the terrifying truth about their plans to release an engineered virus on the world and sterilize half of humanity.

There was no admiration this time, but Max understood the genius of this plan as well. Civilization would never survive a coordinated global bioattack that killed half its victims, but what they intended was survivable. Mankind would be set back a generation but would emerge more prosperous in the end. He had read up on Cooper’s movement when his ex had told him their son had joined. Cooper had written that the Dark Ages never would have ended if not for the plague that wiped out half of Europe and ushered in a new era of prosperity.

He was pretty sure it wasn’t as simple as that, but he wondered how today’s world of twenty-four-hour information and high-speed travel would react. Fifty years after the pandemic, populations would have shifted to fill the gaps left by the reduced number of people, and the world very well might be a better place.

But it was no place Max wanted to be a part of. In his mind, Cooper, Severance, and Kovac had no more right to decide what was best for humanity than Larry, Moe, and Curly.

He wanted to rush from the bathroom and take them on single-handedly. He thought he might get five, maybe six, paces before Kovac gunned him down. By force of will alone, Max made his body relax. There would be another opportunity. He would just need to be patient.

After the three men had left, Max slunk out of the suite and holed up in the closet of one of the unused hotel-style rooms, reasonably confident that he was safe for the time being. As much as his brain wanted to focus on the hell Severance and his band were about to unleash, Max concentrated on how they were going to pull it off.

They had mentioned a transmitter. They were going to coordinate the release of the virus by transmitting some sort of activation code. Max saw the flaw immediately. An aerial broadcast, even on shortwave, couldn’t encompass the entire world with any measure of reliability. There were too many variables, from atmospheric conditions to sunspot activity, that could cause a signal failure.

Not shortwave, he thought.

He recalled the tunnel at the subbasement level and the coils of thick copper wire, as well as the excess power-generating capacity, the Responsivists had installed.

“It’s a bloody ELF antenna,” he whispered, and knew exactly how he was going to warn Juan.

He waited until after Kovac had run their test before sneaking into what he had first thought was the communications room. It took him nearly twenty nerve-racking minutes to figure out how to operate the ELF transmitter. He fine-tuned the frequency and sent his message:

OREGON ITS MAX BUG ATTACK 50 CRUISE SHIPS NOT KILL WORSE ELF IS KEY NUKE IT >72 HRS

He would have loved to add the location of the transmitter, but he had no idea where he was. He would just have to trust that Hali would be able to trace back the source of the signal. He had also used the word
nuke
deliberately because he felt this was an impregnable bunker and could only hope Juan would figure out a way to destroy it.

He returned to his hidey-hole in the closet, after helping himself to a couple of protein bars and a beer from the minibar. He was certain that with the day of their attack fast approaching, Severance would have Kovac station guards near the exit, so Max knew he wouldn’t be leaving that way. Wth no intention of sacrificing himself, he had less than three days to find another way out.

THOM SEVERANCE WAS in his office, chatting with Lydell Cooper, when someone knocked. He looked up from his desk and hastily whipped off the glasses he had been recently forced to use. Zelimir Kovac stood just inside his door. The normally dour Serb looked downright morose. Whatever had happened, Severance knew it couldn’t be good.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“It was just on the news, a death on a cruise ship in Istanbul. It was one of our people on the
Golden Sky
, Zach Raymond.”