Exit 9 pe-2 Page 10

  Yeah, it was crossing the line a bit, but if Hidde-Kel wasn’t going to help him, then he’d just have to help himself.

  As he reentered his room, he pulled out his cell and gave his friend a call.

  BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA

  “See what I mean?” Patricia said.

  She’d convinced Rodrigo to come back with her to the not-quite-so-abandoned building. He’d been dubious from the start, but she had talked him into it, and now they were standing next to the collapsed portion of the wall, looking in at the blue metal box.

  “You did this?” he asked.

  “The wall? Well, yeah, but that’s not important.”

  “Patricia, you damaged the building. Maybe you even damaged that.” He pointed at the container.

  “That’s what’s important. The wall doesn’t matter.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do know. Look around! This place was already falling apart. I bet that wall was going to collapse soon anyway. All I want to know is what you think about the box. It’s a shipping container, yes?”

  Rodrigo looked at it and shrugged. “Could be, but I’ve never been this close to one before.”

  “Come on, come on,” she said, stepping through the hole into the other room.

  Her brother hesitated for a moment, then followed her. Now that he was within reach of the box, he seemed more interested. He ran his fingers up and down the metal surface as she led him toward the end. Before they got there, he stopped.

  “Over here,” Patricia said. “I want to show you something.”

  He pointed at the upper corner. “See that?”

  She looked. There was a number painted near the top in faded white. She hadn’t noticed it before.

  “That’s how they track this.”

  “So it is a shipping container.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It is.”

  “Well, then, maybe you can figure this out.” She headed around the side.

  When he joined her, she pointed at the odd locks on the doors. “They’re not normal, are they?”

  He bent forward for a closer look. “I’ve never seen anything like these before. Pretty elaborate. It’s almost like you have to be inside to unlock it.”

  She looked at the container anew. “You don’t think someone’s in there, do you?”

  “Did you hear any noise?”

  She shook her head.

  He raised his hand and rapped on the door. “Anyone home?”

  “Don’t!”

  He smiled. “Relax. Nobody’s in there. See? Let’s take a look at the rest.”

  He headed around the far side, and she followed.

  “That’s unusual.” He pointed at the top again, only this time not at a number.

  “What?”

  “There. Right at the top corner. Doesn’t that look like a hinge?”

  It was hard to tell for sure, but yes, it kind of did. “What could it be for?”

  He shrugged. “Why don’t I take a look?”

  He jumped up and grabbed the top lip, then grunted loudly as he tried to pull himself up. When it seemed as if he wasn’t going to make it, Patricia stepped over, put her hands under his butt, and pushed. That seemed to be the extra energy he needed. He flopped onto the top, and rolled onto his back.

  “Well?” she asked, taking a few steps back so she could see him.

  He flipped around. Since there wasn’t enough room to stand, he sat up. “It’s a hinge all right. Runs all the way down the long edge.” He looked away from her. “Well, that’s kind of odd. There’s another hinge on the other side. Same size. You know what? I think the roof’s split in two, so it can open like shutters.”

  “Is that normal for a shipping container?”

  “Not that I know.”

  “Maybe you should get down.”

  “Just a second.”

  He got on his knees and started moving toward the near end. At one point, he reached up, touching the ceiling so he’d know where it was and not bump his head. Only instead of continuing on, he stopped and looked up.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “The roof’s made of metal.”

  “Well, yes. You can see that from outside. So what? Lots of places have metal roofs.”

  “Maybe.” He continued to examine the roof, then crawled quickly toward the other side of the container. “It just seems…hold on.”

  Several seconds passed.

  “Rodrigo?”

  “I said, hold on.”

  Patricia backed up as far as she could to get a better view. Her brother had raised himself up so that his head was only a few inches below the ceiling. He was examining the point where the roof met the far wall.

  “What are you looking at?”

  He waved her question off without turning around. After a moment, he dropped to his hands and crawled several feet to his right. There, he looked at the roof and wall again. He repeated this two more times, ending up above the end where the side doors with the funny locks were. With his finger, he seemed to be tracing a line in the air that first moved across, then down the wall to the floor. He scrabbled to the near edge and lowered himself to the floor. As soon as he was down, he ran out of sight around the end.

  Patricia stared after him. What was he doing? She was the one who brought him here. If he found something, he should tell her.

  With an exasperated grunt, she headed after him, finding him around back kneeling next to the wall of the old building. He was gripping the sides of an old, narrow, wooden cabinet. If Patricia had to guess, she’d say it had probably been attached when the place was constructed. The screws holding it in place would surely put up little resistance. But as Rodrigo pulled, the cabinet didn’t move.

  “I thought so,” he said.

  “You thought what?”

  “This is new.”

  “Are you kidding? Dad’s younger than that.”

  “I think it’s only supposed to look old, but I have a feeling it was put in here the same time the container was moved in. Think back to when we used to explore this place. Do you remember this being here? I don’t.”

  She frowned, her mind searching through her memories, sure that the old cabinet must have been there, but her brother was right. She didn’t remember it. In fact, she was positive now it hadn’t been there.

  “What’s it doing here, then?” she asked.

  “Hiding what’s underneath.”

  Could he not just give her a full answer? “And what would that be?”

  He shrugged. “Power, for sure. Probably some sort of controller unit.”

  “For what?”

  “That,” he said, looking at the container. He moved his gaze to the roof. “And that.”

  “Rodrigo, what are you talking about?”

  He smiled at her. “There are motorized clamps along the high end of the roof.” He pointed to where he’d been looking earlier. “And along the side walls I think there are rollers. You want my guess?”

  She looked to the heavens. “Por Dios. Yes!”

  He tapped the not-so-old cabinet beside him. “I think when this gets a signal, the clamps release, the roof rolls off, and the top of the container opens.”

  It took a second to process what he was saying. It was so far off from anything she expected. “Why?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Drugs?” she suggested.

  Rodrigo suddenly grew wary. It was obvious he hadn’t considered that possibility. “I’m not sure why they would set things up like this, but I guess, maybe.”

  She frowned. “We should tell Uncle Hector.”

  Uncle Hector was a member of the Buenos Aires police, and if this was some kind of illegal operation, he’d know what to do.

  Rodrigo looked back at the container. “Yeah. I think you’re right.”

  15

  The Director of Preparation-the DOP-was now in full charge of Project Eden. Until it came time for the Director of Recovery to take ove
r, no one, not even the Principal Director, could overrule any order given by the DOP. This change of command had been worked out long ago, and had been written into the procedures of the Project. Each part was critical, and the appropriate Director for that segment of the plan would take charge for the duration of that particular phase.

  The vote on moving forward had taken place two months earlier. Per protocol, all the Directors and the Principal Director had to vote in the affirmative if implementation was to occur.

  Going in, the DOP had not been one hundred percent sure they had the votes. There were a couple of Directors he was just unable to get a read on. Turned out he needn’t have worried. Everyone, without hesitation, voted yes, and from that moment until one month after Implementation Day, he was in charge.

  The command center at Bluebird-known unofficially as the Cradle-was two levels below ground. Befitting its importance, the Cradle was large and impressive. It had five semicircular rows of desks, each home to over a dozen manned computer stations. They all faced the curved wall at the front of the room that was covered by over fifty monitors of varying sizes. The center monitor was, naturally, the largest, its high-definition screen providing a level of resolution few other monitors on the planet could match.

  Any time the DOP was needed in the Cradle, he used a station in the center of the back row, raised slightly above the others. Ostensibly, this was so he could see everyone, but also, he knew, it reminded the others who was in charge.

  He was sitting at the desk, his gaze on the main monitor, which currently was displaying a satellite shot of Australia. Overlaying this was a graphic containing over two hundred Xs representating locations where Implementation Delivery Modules had already been placed. If need be, he could push in on the image until he was looking at an overhead view of one of the IDMs.

  Every region of the world had to be looked at on an individual basis. What would work one place might not work somewhere else. But they had known that from the beginning. That’s why it had taken decades from when the plan was conceived to the point where they were only nine days away from actually making it happen. No, Project Eden was definitely no rush job. In the intervening years, extensive research had been done, hundreds of methods had been considered and tested, and best chosen for each need. All so that they could avoid any mistakes when the time to act came.

  What they knew from the beginning was that covering every square inch of the planet was out of the question. Whatever virus they developed would have to be potent enough that they need only focus on dense population centers and a few outlining areas, and humanity itself could do the rest of the work, carrying the disease to other areas. If areas where the virus was unable to reach popped up, those could be targeted. KV-27a had turned out to be just that and more. There was no question in anyone’s mind of its potential for success.

  The same careful, detailed work had also gone into all other aspects of the Project-the selecting of candidates for survival, the long-range targeting and control of influential officials worldwide to ensure the Project would remain hidden and unhindered, the planning and preparation for after, and the development of the virus itself and its vaccine for those chosen.

  With the start of the implementation phase, they had reached a point where everything was just logistics and coordination.

  “What’s the problem?” the DOP asked, his voice traveling straight from the microphone in front of him into the ear of the man at the Australia desk, four rows away.

  “A ship with fifty IDM packages and one with thirty were delayed by a storm in the Indian Ocean. They’re scheduled to arrive in the next two days. Our contractors in Sydney and Perth have added extra manpower to make sure they get to their destinations within twenty-four hours after offloading.”

  The time frame was still well within implementation parameters.

  “All right,” the DOP said. “Next.”

  The image switched to Southeast Asia, where a combination of several methods would be used throughout the area. Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam would be dealt with using IDMs. Since Singapore itself was so small, four of the five containers assigned to it would remain right at the harbor, while the other would be on the back of a truck driven to Sembawang on the far side of the island.

  Other areas, in places like Phnom Penh in Cambodia and Vientiane in Laos, would mostly be handled by teams of locals using handheld sprayers they’d been told were targeting the malaria-carrying mosquito population.

  Which brought them to Burma.

  Though the country had started to open back up to the world, its leaders were still highly suspicious. Chances were, at the first sign of a worldwide infection, they would seal the borders. A few carriers might sneak in, and some people might get sick, but the government would undoubtedly terminate them before more could be infected. Getting IDMs into the country wasn’t going to be possible. They had tried to get permission for their anti-malaria spray, even offering to pay for everything themselves, but the Burmese generals who ran things wanted nothing to do with it.

  So a third method would be employed. It was the same method that would be used in other troublesome areas like North Korea, Iran, several of the former Soviet Republics in the south, and much of the Middle East: modified passenger planes, painted to look like a local airliner, complete with correct transponder codes. Only instead of passengers, the planes would be carrying more than enough of the virus to drop a fine mist down over the targeted areas.

  No nation would be immune.

  “Any issues?” he asked.

  “Nothing major, sir,” the Southeast Asian supervisor said. “A few local labor problems, money mainly, but we’re taking care of it.”

  “And Burma?”

  “Planes are in position and ready to be loaded.”

  “Good.” The actual loading of the virus would not occur until a few hours before the final Go signal was transmitted.

  They worked their way through Southern Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe without any major problems. In the North American report, the DOP was pleased to hear that one of his pet methods of distribution was prepped and ready to go. One of the Project’s front companies had purchased a produce company that created, among other things, specialized produce misters for grocery stores. These misters included cartridges that enhanced the spray so that fruits and vegetables would stay fresh longer. Come Implementation Day, the cartridges-now all ready to go-would replace the standard cartridges the stores were currently using.

  Central America went quickly with a no-problem report.

  The next satellite image up was South America.

  The DOP asked his standard question. “Anything?”

  “Not…really, sir.”

  The DOP turned from the screen to the desk where the South American rep was sitting. “That sounded like something to me.”

  “Just a little issue we’re dealing with.”

  “What?”

  A pause. “We received a sensor fault on an IDM in Buenos Aires. It’s probably nothing.”

  “What kind of fault?”

  “The top hatch. One of the sensors was registering a downward stress. But on the next check, everything was fine.”

  “Is this the first time?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Explanation?”

  “Like I said, sir. I think it was just a fault.”

  “But…”

  “But I’m sending someone to check.”

  “Good.”

  Another hesitation. “The closest person with clearance is in Caracas. I’ve told him to get down to Buenos Aires as soon as he can.”

  It probably was just an electronic glitch. There’d been a few others. Frankly, the DOP was surprised there weren’t more. With a massive global operation, technical issues were bound to happen. “Keep me posted.”

  “Yes, sir. I will.”

  “Next.”

  The image was replaced by one of the Pacific Islands.


  16

  I.D. MINUS 8 DAYS

  Eight people. That was it.

  It seemed so insignificant, microscopic even, especially when compared with the billions they were trying to save. But after going over everything again and again, it was decided that was all the resistance could spare for the mission to Bluebird. The argument was also made that with every additional team member, the risk of discovery would increase exponentially. If that happened, it was extremely possible the Project would order the immediate release of the virus into the world.

  Though Ash had understood both positions, he didn’t have to like them. As way of compensation, Matt let Ash choose all but three of the team. The first of the exceptions was-as Ash had already known-Pax. Ash would have chosen him anyway. The other two were members of one of the Arctic search teams-the same duo who had discovered the highly suspect wreckage of yellow team’s boat.

  That left four positions for Ash to fill. Tom Browne and Pat Solomon had shown their worth at the Bluff, though Tom really hadn’t needed to prove anything after what he did for Ash earlier that year. On Tom’s recommendation, Ash also included a man named Casey Nolan, known apparently to most people as Red.

  “That’s seven,” Matt said when Ash gave him the names.

  “You know who I want for number eight.”

  Matt smiled. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

  “And where will I-”

  “Just outside San Diego. Pax will have the info.”

  It took three full days to get all their equipment together and compile as much intelligence as possible. It could have easily taken three more, but they all knew they couldn’t afford any more time. Ash spent that final night in the room his kids were sharing. He lay on the floor listening to them sleep before finally nodding off himself.

  At three a.m., his phone vibrated with the alarm he had reluctantly set. He slipped out from under his blanket, pushed himself up, and walked quietly toward the door.

  “Be careful,” Josie said.