The Ark tl-1 Read online

  “You’re going to love this,” Aiden said. “An explosion. Seems he and three of his top engineers were consulting on a demolition project. An electrical short detonated the dynamite early. All four were turned into hamburger.”

  Another coincidence. Locke didn’t like it.

  “Have Jenny set up an appointment for me tomorrow afternoon with whoever is left at Coleman’s company. I want to get more details about this supposed ‘accident’ when I get back to Seattle.”

  “So you’re not going to be working on the Rex Hayden crash?”

  Locke frowned at the mention of Hayden’s name. “What crash?”

  “Forgot you were out of the loop out there. Hayden’s plane took a dirt bath outside Vegas. No survivors.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday afternoon. Weird stuff. Plane turned back from a flight to Hawaii, overshot LA, and ran out of fuel over the Mojave. It’s been all over the news. You’d think the president’s plane went down. Then again, Hayden’s probably more famous than the president.”

  It couldn’t be a fluke that Hayden was the name Sam Watson said to Dilara before he died.

  “Gordian won the NTSB investigation contract,” Aiden said. “Judy Hodge got there yesterday with her team, but I figured Miles would want you on the case because it’s so high profile.”

  It didn’t surprise Locke that Miles Benson, the president of Gordian and the smartest man Locke had ever met, had already been contacted to help with the investigation. Gordian had consulted with the National Transportation Safety Board on many of the highest-profile plane crashes of the past ten years — TWA flight 800, the American Airlines crash over Brooklyn a year after 9/11, and NY Yankees pitcher Curt Moline’s flight into a Manhattan high rise. Gordian was the most capable company to assist in the probe of crash involving a star as big as Rex Hayden.

  The dead bodies were piling up fast. First Coleman, now Hayden. Both mentioned by Sam and both pushing daisies. Locke didn’t like the pattern because his name was in there, too. The evidence was fresher on Hayden’s death, so that was Locke’s first priority.

  “Tell Judy we’re joining them at the crash site,” he said to Aiden. “We’ll make a stop in Vegas before we come back to Seattle.”

  “If you pop into a casino, put a hundred on Ireland to beat Germany in what you call soccer.”

  “Sorry, Aiden. You know I never gamble. Might use up all my luck.”

  Locke hung up and stared at Dilara with curiosity. What a beautiful archaeologist and Noah’s Ark had to do with the deaths of an engineer and a world-famous movie star was a question he never expected to be asking himself. The answer had to be even stranger than the question.

  “You, Dr. Kenner,” he said with a smile, “are a trouble magnet.” He winked at her.

  She smiled back at both of them. “Then it seems like I’m in good company.”

  “Speak for yourselves,” Grant said. “I consider myself more of a troublemaker.”

  “I can vouch for that,” Locke said.

  The muffled roar of helicopter blades penetrated the walls. Locke glanced out the window and saw the Super Puma heading for the landing pad. He waited breathlessly for a puff of smoke from the chopper’s turbine, but it glided in safely. He didn’t think they’d try blowing up another helicopter, but he’d feel better once they reached Newfoundland safely.

  “Our ride is here,” he said. “Time for a change of scenery.”

  As they walked to the helicopter pad, Locke made one last phone call to arrange for the jet to divert to Las Vegas and have a Jeep waiting for them at the airport. He wanted to see the Hayden crash site for himself.

  FIFTEEN

  The news about the failed assassination of Dilara Kenner and Tyler Locke didn’t reach Sebastian Garrett’s ears until the next evening. He had spent his Sunday flying back from LA to make an inspection of his facility on Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington state. The 57-square-mile island was home to 4500 people and a bustling tourist trade, which meant visitors to Garrett’s facility could come and go without attracting undue attention.

  He ate dinner with Svetlana Petrova on the veranda of the facility’s mansion and enjoyed the cool October breeze, a luxury he would be able to enjoy for only one more week. She was dressed in a sheer top and miniskirt, showing off her assets to full advantage. She looked faintly like the businesswoman she had pretended to be when she lured Sam Watson into touching the poison that would end his life in a matter of seconds. Garrett only wished she had been part of the mission to follow Dilara Kenner out of LAX and kill her before she had caused all this trouble. Svetlana certainly wouldn’t have left the job unfinished.

  The building where they were eating was one of five on the 400-acre property. Huge old-growth pine trees ringed the densely-wooded property.

  Dan Cutter sat stiffly in a chair at the opposite end of the table. He didn’t eat, only sipping from a glass of water. Petrova listened to the conversation in silence. Garrett had met her when she had been trafficking black market pharmaceuticals into Moscow for the Russian Mafia. He saved her from that lifestyle and brought her to the US. Her parents had been nuclear scientists who were killed in the Chernobyl disaster, so she shared a kindred spirit with Garrett’s vision for a better world.

  “Why did it take so long to notify me?” Garrett asked.

  Cutter shifted in his seat, the discomfort apparent. “The operative in charge didn’t want to call with the bad news until it was confirmed that they had both survived.”

  “His name?”

  “Gavin Dean. He claims that our man on the platform was overpowered when he was installing the thermite on the lifeboats. Locke must have discovered the bombs we planted and put them on a lifeboat.”

  “Good old Tyler. Resourceful as ever. Your operative should have sent more than one person on board.”

  “He felt stealth was more important than numbers.”

  “Did you warn him how intelligent Tyler is?”

  “Yes, but he had operational authority. It was his call.”

  “Then he is an idiot and careless. Those are two characteristics we don’t want to carry over into the New World.”

  “I agree.”

  “First, Barry Pinter loses a prime opportunity to kill Dilara Kenner when she left the airport, now this. Two major mistakes in three days. I’m not used to that kind of failure rate. Especially not this close to the end. Have there been any more leaks besides Sam Watson?”

  “No. He appears to be the only one who was in on it.”

  “Still, we can’t have the rest of our people getting it into their heads that they can back out now. Not all of them may have the nerve to follow through. Not without a little reinforcement.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  Garrett had just the method. He stood abruptly and whispered to Petrova, who smiled her agreement at his plan and nodded. She gave him a long kiss, then stood and walked into the house.

  “Come with me,” he said to Cutter. “And have Olsen meet us in the observation room.”

  Garrett walked down the stairs from the veranda and out under the cloudy skies typical of the Pacific Northwest. The house was a massive Tudor-style mansion, used to host the new disciples of his religious organization. Next to it stood a hotel housing the estate’s 250 workers. The three other buildings were identical square structures 300 feet on each side and 50 feet tall. The unassuming buildings looked like airplane hangars, but the only aircraft on the property were three helicopters lined up on landing pads outside the hotel. A dock stretched into the small harbor on Massacre Bay, long and wide enough to handle any large equipment he wanted to bring in.

  He strode toward one of the hangar-style buildings and walked through a door where he was met by a guard in a small antechamber. He sat at a desk behind two-inch thick bulletproof windows. Garrett placed his hand on the biometric scanner.

  When it showed green, the guard nodded and waited for Garrett to
utter the password, which was changed weekly. Nobody — not even Garrett — was allowed in without the proper password. There were two passwords, both randomly generated: a safe word and a warning word. If Garrett gave the warning password, the guard would know the person with him was coercing him. The guard would let Garrett in, then shoot his companion in the head as he walked through the door.

  The warning word this week was, “Heaven.”

  Garrett said the correct password: “Searchlight.”

  The steel door slid open. Garrett and Cutter passed the guard’s desk to a four-way intersection. At the ends of 80-foot halls to the right and left were doors that led to emergency stairwells. Ahead of them was a door that led to the main part of the warehouse. Garrett turned right and stopped at the call button for the two elevators. He pushed it, and the left door opened immediately. He and Cutter got on.

  The elevator’s control panel listed seven floors, all underground, plus the ground level. Garrett inserted a key into the panel and turned it. An LCD panel lit up, and he typed a pass code into the touch screen. The elevator doors slid closed, and they glided silently toward the fifth level, which was accessible to only a few select people. The doors opened a few seconds later to reveal a clean white hallway 100-feet long directly in front of him, plus two 80-foot hallways to either side identical to the ones on the ground level. All seven floors of the underground facility were designed in the same T-pattern, with a stairwell at each of the three ends, east, west, and north.

  Two technicians in lab coats saw Garrett exit the elevator and quickly ended their conversation. They nodded at Garrett and walked through one of the many doors lining the hall.

  Garrett walked forward down the long hallway and stopped at a set of double doors halfway down. He walked through the doors into a vestibule and then opened another set of doors to reveal a chamber with a 15-foot long window on the opposite side. An operating panel lined the bottom of the window. The chamber was used for observing the effects of their experiments in safety.

  Howard Olsen, one of Cutter’s security operatives and a fellow Army vet, stood at attention when Garrett entered. He was typical of Cutter’s recruits, a religious idealist who had joined one of the Army’s more fanatical underground faith groups. Like the other soldiers Cutter had found for Garrett, Olsen had little hope for the future of the human race after what he’d seen in Iraq and Afghanistan and had gladly joined Garrett’s Holy Hydronastic Church when he had been dishonorably discharged for going too far in battle, killing two supposedly innocent civilians. Garrett knew there was no such thing as innocent in this world.

  “Olsen,” Garrett said. “You need to hear this.”

  Olsen didn’t respond. Like a good soldier, he only answered when asked a question.

  “How many do you think we can fit in here?” Garrett asked Cutter.

  Cutter looked around the observation room. “At least 25.”

  “That’s enough. We’ve had too many mistakes and too much compromised loyalty. We’re going to have a demonstration.”

  “Of what?”

  Garrett glanced at the window, and Cutter followed his gaze. A look of understanding crossed his face when he realized what Garrett was planning.

  “Sam Watson is already dead,” Garrett said, “but we still have Gavin Dean and Barry Pinter. They were careless and will be a liability in our future plans. Bring them here. Immediately.”

  “Who should observe it?” Cutter asked.

  “Bring everyone who knows the full extent of the plan. They need to see what will happen to them and their spouses if they try to back out now.”

  Every one of his followers was ready to die for the cause, but most knew only that a wonderful New World would begin in five days and that they were chosen to be a part of it. For security purposes, only a select few knew what the New World really meant. Sam Watson proved that security might have been put at risk.

  Garrett turned back to Olsen, who seemed confused. He was not one of the select few.

  “Pinter and Dean,” Garrett said, “are going to die in the room right behind that window because they did not accomplish their missions. Now I have a mission for you. I have discovered that Tyler Locke is going to Seattle. He rearranged his travel plans, so he obviously suspects something. I don’t know what it is, but at this point, it can’t be much. However, he is a very resourceful man, and with time, he will find out more. Your mission is to kill him.”

  “Yes, sir,” Olsen said. “Understood, sir.”

  “I want to make sure it is perfectly clear. I don’t want to see you back here until Locke is dead. Because if I do, you’ll be the next one going into that room. And what happens in there is far worse than you can possibly imagine. Either Locke dies, or you do. Understood?”

  For the first time, Olsen’s steely demeanor wavered. He took a quick glance at the sterile room and licked his lips.

  “It’s clear, sir. Locke is a dead man walking.”

  SIXTEEN

  Gordian’s Gulfstream jet left St. John’s at one in the morning, Newfoundland Time, 30 minutes after the helicopter arrived from Scotia One. There was room for up to twelve people, but Locke, Dilara, and Grant were the only passengers. Because of all the out-of-the-way locations Gordian’s staff worked, Gordian kept three of the Gulfstreams in its fleet. The fees Gordian charged more than covered their use, and the firm had been able to buy them for a song in a government sale of confiscated drug smugglers’ property.

  Grant was already asleep in the back, and despite a nap in the helicopter, Locke felt his own eyes drooping. Dilara, on the other hand, seemed wide awake. She had just returned from the plane’s lavatory, where she had changed into a jacket, blouse, jeans, and boots Locke had arranged to be waiting for them on the tarmac. He wanted to ask her some more questions before he snoozed.

  “Thanks for the clothes,” she said. “I felt like a prison inmate in that jumpsuit.”

  “I don’t think anyone would mistake you for an escaped convict, but I do think your new duds suit you better.”

  “And I never thanked you for rescuing us in the lifeboat. From what I heard, it was all your idea.”

  “Yeah, my crazy ideas sometimes actually work.”

  She looked back at Grant and shook her head. “How can he sleep like that after everything that’s happened?”

  “An old Army axiom,” Locke said. “Sleep when you can because you never know when the next chance will be. He’s just sleeping ahead.”

  “Sleeping ahead. I wish I could do that.”

  “You should try. We’ve got an eight hour flight ahead of us. But first, how about we chat?”

  “Okay. Tell me something about yourself.”

  Locke grinned. “Like what?”

  “Who was your boyhood hero?”

  “Easy. Scotty from Star Trek.”

  “The engineer?” She laughed, a rich, throaty sound that Locke found infectious.

  “What can I say? I’m a true geek at heart. Kirk was the hero, but Scotty was always the one saving his butt. And you? Don’t tell me it was Indiana Jones.”

  Dilara shook her head. “Princess Diana. When I was young, I was a girly girl. I loved the dresses. But my father kept dragging me around the world, and archaeology became my passion.”

  “And Noah’s Ark?”

  “My father’s passion.”

  “Sam Watson said your father actually found it.”

  “You don’t believe him.”

  “I’m a natural-born skeptic. So no, I don’t.”

  “Which part? That the Ark existed or that my father found it?”

  “That a 450-foot-long ship carried all of the world’s animals two-by-two upon waters that flooded the Earth.”

  “Many people believe the literal story in the Bible.”

  “And I’m sure you know that,” Locke said, “for many reasons, it’s simply not possible. At least, not without miracle after miracle. The story of the Ark took place 6000 years ago. At that time, w
ood was the only construction material used in boat making. The largest wooden ship ever made, a Civil War frigate called the Dunderberg, was 377 feet long.”

  Dilara looked dubious. “You just know that? What, are you a walking encyclopedia?”

  “As the risk of bursting my aura of omnipotence, I’ll admit I did a little research once we had the Internet connection back up.”

  “So you’re saying Noah’s Ark couldn’t have been bigger than 377 feet long?”

  “From an engineering standpoint, a purely wooden ship bigger than that is untenable. Without the iron frames and internal bracing that 19th-century ships had, a ship the size of Noah’s Ark would flex like a rubber band. It would have sprung leaks in a thousand places. Not to mention that in a raging storm like the Flood, wave oscillations would have snapped the frame like a twig. The Ark would have sunk in minutes. Goodbye, human race.”

  “Maybe it was smaller than the Bible claimed.”

  “The size is only the first problem,” Locke said. “Do you know how long it takes for wood to rot completely away?”

  “In a desert climate like Egypt, thousands of years. We find wooden artifacts in Egyptian tombs all the time.”

  “And in a rainy climate?”

  “Several hundred years if the wood isn’t maintained,” Dilara said. “Certainly less than a thousand years, even in alpine conditions.”

  “Exactly. Noah’s Ark was supposed to have landed on Mt. Ararat, which gets substantial amounts of precipitation. Just look at all the collapsing barns from a hundred years ago. If those barns are already rotting, any traces of the Ark would have disappeared thousands of years ago.”

  “Believe me, I know all the arguments against it. My father believed in the Ark, but he didn’t subscribe to the literal interpretation because of the logical problems with the story as it’s given in the Bible. For example, there are 30 million species in the world, meaning Noah would have had to load 50 pairs of animals per second to do it in seven days, even if he could fit them all in a boat that size.”

  “Which he couldn’t have, even if the Ark had been ten times bigger.” They were getting on a roll now, each of them feeding off the other.