Domain (49 page)

Mick reties the end of his rope around her waist, then points below.

She shakes her head no.

Another flurry of bullets ends the debate.

He takes her wrist and descends, dragging her down with him.

Waves of panic ripple through her insides as she plunges headfirst into darkness. The silent oblivion closes in upon her, the ache in her ears telling her she is going too deep.
What’s he doing
?
Untie the rope before you die
. She struggles to undo the knot.

Mick reaches up and stops her. He takes her hand, patting it, trying to reassure her, then descends again.

She pinches her nose and equalizes, the pressure in her ears easing as she follows him down. The angled wall becomes a ceiling over her head, the mounting claustrophobia almost unbearable. She feels herself losing all orientation, the darkness and silence suffocating.

Now she is plunging straight down the face of a vertical shaft. Her depth gauge drops below 110 feet, her pulse pounding in her face mask, her mind screaming at her to break free.

The appearance of the luminous crimson light startles her. Descending farther, she blinks hard and levels out, staring at the glowing icon.
My God … he actually found something
!
Wait a moment, I’ve seen this figure before
…

She watches as Mick maneuvers around the shiny white facing, feeling his way along the outer edges of the metallic sheath.

I know … I saw it in Julius Gabriel’s journal
—

Dominique’s heart flutters as a deep rumbling sound fills her ears. Gargantuan air bubbles burst out from the center of the facing and envelop Mick, then a monstrous torrent grabs her, sucking her toward the center of the portal and the blackness of a void that had not been there a moment earlier.

The current inhales her feetfirst into darkness. She twists sideways, caught in the turbulence of an underground river, the force of which pushes her face mask down around her neck, blinding her. She inhales water, then pinches her nose and retches into her regulator as she rolls wildly in the suffocating pitch, fighting to draw a breath.

The portal closes behind them, stifling the stream.

She stops rolling. Repositioning her mask, she clear it, then stares, transfixed by her new surroundings.

They have entered a vast underwater cavern of unearthly beauty. Surreal strobe lights of unknown origin illuminate cathedral-like limestone walls in intoxicating shades of blue and green and yellow. Fantastic formations of stalactites hang from the submerged ceiling, dwarfing them like gigantic icicles, their points descending to entwine around a petrified forest of crystal-like stalagmites, rising out from the silty floor of the underwater cave.

She looks at Mick, excited, astounded, wishing she could blurt out a thousand questions. He shakes his head and points to his gauge, indicating he has only five minutes of air remaining. Dominique checks her own supply—shocked to learn she is down to her last fifteen minutes.

Anxiety courses through her body. The claustrophobic realization of being trapped within a subterranean chamber, a rocky ceiling above her head, overwhelms her ability to reason. She pushes Mick away and swims back toward the portal, desperately attempting to reopen it.

Mick drags her back by the towrope. He grabs her wrists, then points to the south, where the entrance to a twisting cavern looms ahead. He forms a triangle shape with his two hands.

The Kukulcan
. Dominique slows her breathing.

Mick takes her hand and starts swimming. Together, they move through a succession of vast underwater rooms, their presence seeming to activate additional strobe lights, as if the beacons are linked to an unseen motion detector. Above their heads, the domed-shaped ceiling has grown rows of needlelike teeth, the limestone formations creating majestic, archlike partitions and bizarre, jagged sculptures of rock.

Mick feels a tightness growing in his chest as they move from an indigo blue vault into one of luminescent azure. He checks his air tank, then turns to Dominique, his hand motioning to his throat.

He’s out of air
. She passes him the second-stage spare regulator attached to her BCD vest, then checks her own supply.

Eight minutes.

Eight minutes
!
Four minutes each. This is insane
!
Why did I follow him into the cenote
?
I should have stayed in the truck—I should have stayed in Miami. I’m going to drown, just like Iz
.

The bottom suddenly drops, the cave opening to a boundless, subterranean domain. The limestone cathedral walls and ceiling glow in a luminescent pink flesh tone, the underwater cavern as large as an indoor basketball arena.

You won’t drown, you’ll just suffocate. That has to be better than what poor Iz went through. You’ll lose consciousness, you’ll just black out. Do you really believe in heaven
?

Mick tugs her, motioning ahead excitedly. She swims faster, praying he’s found an exit.

Then she sees it.

Oh, no … Oh God … Oh my fucking God
…

Bluemont, Virginia

The president’s helicopter is eighteen miles north of Leesburg, Virginia, when the twelve-kiloton bomb explodes.

The president and his entourage cannot see the intense flash of light, a thousand times brighter than lightning. They cannot feel the monstrous pulse of heat radiation, which races through Mount Weather’s subterranean complex, vaporizing the first lady, her children, and the rest of the inhabitants and superstructures within. Nor do they experience the crushing embrace as millions of tons of granite and steel and concrete collapse the mountain like a house of cards.

What they do see is a bright, orange fireball that turns the night into day. What they do feel is the shock wave as the blast roars past them like thunder and the firestorm sets the Virginia woods ablaze like a burning carpet.

The pilot whips the helicopter around and races away as President Mailer wails in agony, the emptiness ripping at his wounded heart, the anger raging through his mind, tearing at the fabric of his sanity.

Chichén Itza,
114 feet beneath the base of the Kukulcan Pyramid

Wide-eyed, her blood pounding furiously, Dominique stares in disbelief at the prodigious structure looming above her head. Embedded within the cavernous limestone ceiling, protruding from the rock, is the keel of a mammoth, seven-hundred-foot-long alien spacecraft.

She sucks in a slow breath of air, trying not to hyperventilate, her skin literally crawling beneath her wet suit.
This isn’t real. It can’t be
…

The metallic gold skin of the sleek, battleship-sized hull shimmers at them like a highly polished mirror.

Mick clutches her hand and ascends, pulling her toward two colossal assemblies mounted along either side of what appears to be the vessel’s tail section. Each structure is as large and as high as a three-story building. Swimming closer, they peer inside one of the alien engines, their flashlights revealing a wasp’s nest of charred, afterburner-shaped housings, each orifice no less than thirty feet in diameter.

Mick tows her past the monstrous engine mounts and swims toward the bow of the geologically camouflaged vessel.

Dominique sucks harder at the regulator, alarmed at her inability to draw a breath.
Oh, God, we’re out of air
! She tugs at Mick’s arm, clutching her throat, as the cavern begins spinning out of control.

Mick sees Dominique’s face turn bright red. He feels his own chest constricting, his lungs aching as she grabs for him.

Avoiding her grasp, he spits out her spare regulator, returning his own to his mouth. Then he turns and swims as hard as he can, dragging her by the towrope as he searches the hull for some kind of entry.

Dominique thrashes about, petrified, as she suffocates within her fogging mask.

Mick’s arms and legs feel like lead. He wheezes into his regulator, unable to draw a breath, his lungs on fire. He registers the girl panicking at the end of the rope, his heart aching, his mind fighting to focus.

In his delirium he sees it: a crimson beacon, glowing fifty yards ahead. With renewed vigor he strokes and kicks, his muscles burning, moving in slow motion.

He registers the deadweight on the end of the rope—Dominique no longer struggling.

Don’t stop
…

The subterranean world is spinning out of control. He bites down on the regulator until his gums bleed, sucking in the warm liquid as the glowing icon of the Trident of Paracas comes into view.

Another dozen strokes
…

His arms are lead. He stops moving. The ebony eyes roll upward.

Michael Gabriel blacks out.

The bodies of the two unconscious divers drift toward the glowing, ten-foot-wide iridium panel, triggering an ancient motion detector.

With a hydraulic
hiss
, the outer hull’s portal door slides open. A current of water rushes into the pressurized compartment, sucking the two humans into the alien vessel.

JOURNAL OF

JULIUS GABRIEL

W
hat a pitiful creature is man; born with an acute awareness of his own mortality—he is thus condemned to live out his puny existence in fear of the unknown. Driven by ambition, he often wastes what precious moments he possesses. Forsaking others, he overindulges his egotistical ventures in the pursuit of fame and fortune, allowing evil to seduce him into reaping misery upon those he truly loves; his life, so fragile, always teetering on the brink of a death he was not blessed with the ability to comprehend.

Death is the great equalizer. All our power and wants, all our hopes and desires eventually die with us—buried in the grave. Oblivious, we journey selfishly toward the big sleep, placing importance on things that have no importance, only to be reminded at the most inopportune times how frail our lives truly are.

As creatures of emotions, we pray to a God whose existence we have no proof of, our unbridled faith designed merely to quell our primordial fear of death as we try to convince our intellects that an afterlife must surely exist. God is merciful, God is just, we tell ourselves, and then the unthinkable happens: a child drowns in a swimming pool, a drunk driver kills a loved one, a disease strikes a betrothed.

When goes our faith then? Who can pray to a God that steals an angel? What divine plan could possibly justify such a heinous act? Was it a merciful God that chose to strike my Maria in the prime of her life? Was it a just God who determined that she wallow in pain, suffering in agony until He finally got around to the heavenly task of taking mercy on her tortured soul?

And what of her husband? What sort of man was I to stand idly by and allow my beloved to suffer so?

With heavy heart, I allowed each day to slip by as the cancer dragged Maria closer to the grave. And then one night as I sat sobbing by her bedside, she looked at me through sunken eyes, a wretched creature more dead than alive, and begged me for mercy.

What could I do? God had abandoned her, refusing her respite from the incessant torture. Bending down, my body trembling, I kissed her one last time, praying to a God whose existence I now both questioned and cursed to give me strength. Pressing the pillow to her face, I extinguished her last dying breath, knowing full well that I was extinguishing the very flame of my soul.

The deed complete, I turned, shocked to find my son, an unknowing accomplice, staring at me through the dark angelic eyes of his mother.

What heinous act had I committed? What brave words could I possibly muster to regain this child’s lost innocence? Stripped of all pretense, I stood there naked, a weak, beguiled father who had unwittingly condemned his own son’s psyche through an act which, only minutes before, I had believed to be both humane and unselfish.