The Mission

CHAPTER 24

Inside of Qian-Ling, Elek had been in contact with the guardian for the past hour. He stepped back, the golden glow retreating from his head. “I have sent a message,” he said.

“To who?” Che Lu asked.

“To my superior. She will get us the key.”

Four hundred meters down, the crew of the Springfield also waited. The foo fighters had not moved. Admiral Poldan, commanding the USS Washington on the surface, fifty kilometers from Easter Island, spent most of his time imploring his chain of command for permission to attack the island with nuclear weapons. So far, he had not received permission.

Deep inside Rano Kau on Easter Island, the guardian received input from The Mission. The Black Death mission had been aborted because the attempt to seize the mothership had failed.

The news was noted, but it was only a stone thrown in the stream of action the guardian had planned.

The power from the thermal vent had the guardian running at 100 percent. In a corner of the cavern, the microrobots had been working. In a curious assembly line, the production of each successive generation had grown smaller. A circle of half-inch-long microrobots were at work on a new model. When they were done, a quarter-inch-long robot skittered across the floor on six tiny legs. Then it joined the production line.

The Guide Parker pulled the cellular phone connection off his laptop. Wind blew sand into the keyboard, but he didn’t care. He stood up. The Chosen were gathered around him. The time had come and passed. The Prophecy was unfulfilled. He felt a spike of pain in his left temple.

“The time is not now!” His voice was taken by the wind and whipped away. “But it will be soon. We must go back and prepare once more!”

Turcotte made a fist with his right hand and pumped his arm. There was already swelling where the needle had gone in. Next to him, Lisa Duncan did the same. “Will Kenyon be able to stop it?” she asked.

Turcotte nodded. “He thinks so. He’s sending samples of the cure to every disease-control agency on the planet, as well as the World Health Organization. The governments may have their heads buried in the sand, but he’s confident that if the Black Death shows up, the agencies and WHO will deal with it. He’s pretty sure he can contain it in the Amazon and help those already infected.”

“Several thousand are already dead,” Duncan noted.

Turcotte grimaced, whether from the soreness in his arm or the subject, Duncan couldn’t tell. “It’s like when people in the States read about a flood in India or a landslide in Mexico killing a bunch of people. Very few people really care if it’s not happening in their hometown.”

“This came very close to happening in everyone’s town,” Duncan said. “At least we stopped The Mission.”

“The Black Death has been stopped.” Turcotte amended. “The Mission is another matter.”

“Yes, it is,” Yakov said. The Russian had been unusually quiet the past hour, since Kenyon had taken off in the bouncer with the case of vials containing the cure for the Black Death. Yakov had dragged Hemstadt’s body out of the tunnel and thrown the old man into the sea, letting the sharks have him. “We are going to have to find out about The Mission on our own.”

“We’d better find it and take care of it,” Turcotte said, “because we just won a skirmish in a long line of battles here. I’ve got a feeling the war really hasn’t started yet.”