Pandora's Temple (14 page)

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“Fucking fantastic is what it is. Maybe what we got here is a genuine close encounter of the whatever kind. What was the number again?”

“Third,” McCracken told him.

“Yeah, Richard Dreyfuss building a mountain out of mashed potatoes in the movie. And people think
I’m
crazy.”

“You are, Captain.”

“Then I fit in just fine here, because we’ve just entered the realm of the impossible.”

McCracken moved away when Captain Merch hailed him over the communicator built into his helmet.

“Get your people ready to move in twenty, sir. That’s an order.”

“Say again.”

“We’re evacuating the area. Got a tropical depression crawling straight up our ass, in case you didn’t notice.”

McCracken looked back toward Wareagle and Captain Seven. “I’ll get back to you on that.”

“You hear me say it was an order?”

“I heard you.”

The silence lingered long enough for McCracken to wonder if he’d lost the connection.

“They warned me this might happen,” Merch said finally.

“Warned you
what
might happen?”

“You going rogue, forgetting the mission parameters.”

“Mission parameters,” McCracken repeated. “Ever been in a firefight, Merch?”

“What’s that have to do with anything?”

“Paul Basmajian and I were in a whole bunch of them, often side by side with the Indian here. And anyone who thought I was going to leave this rig until I found out what happened to him, and who was responsible, was wrong in a big way.”

“These are my waters, sir, and what happened on that rig is tragedy enough for one day.”

“Your waters, Captain, but it’s my rig now. That makes it my call.”

“Twenty minutes, McCracken. That’s as much as I can give you. After that it won’t matter whose call it is.”

“This is great!” Captain Seven proclaimed exactly sixteen minutes later under light shed by small portable floods he’d brought with him as well, the initial analysis NSA’s mainframe had made of the data he’d collected displayed on the screens of his dual laptops. “No, better than great—fantastic! Christmas morning come early! Did you know I believed in Santa Claus until I was eleven?”

McCracken crouched to better see the captain’s laptops poised atop waist-high portable tables. Both were military grade, reinforced with hard rubber and a special polymer to cushion falls and remain functional even when doused in water or damaged by explosives or a bullet. “What am I looking at?”

“The screen on the right shows the chemical and molecular structure of plate steel.”

“So?”

“So the screen on the left shows the chemical and molecular structure of the
Venture
’s deck from the readings we just took,” Captain Seven continued.

“They’re different,” noted Wareagle, as the wind howled around them and nearly tore the thin tarp from the now jerry-rigged poles supporting it. “Not entirely, but enough to stand out.”

“Right you are, kemosabe. Because what we’re standing on is no longer steel, not steel as we know it anyway.”

“Explain,” said McCracken.

“You got that joint?”

“Not on me.”

“Then I can’t. And neither can NSA’s mainframe.”

“You need a joint to take a guess?”

“An educated one, yeah,” Captain Seven quipped. “In the meantime, you’ll have to settle for molecular reorganization.”

“Come again?” said McCracken.

“Molecular reorganization,” he repeated. “Goes to your observation about ripples in the steel, about something melting and then re-forming it. Only when it re-formed, it had a different molecular composition. Be a few more hours before we see the next set of data from NSA but we’re talking about something that until now has only existed in theory.”

McCracken and Wareagle glanced at each other, then back at Captain Seven.

“Gentlemen,” he proclaimed, “we are looking at the ultimate proof of Einstein’s unified field and conservation of matter theories. I can’t tell you how yet, although I expect that to change once we get a more detailed analysis of the rig’s components. But I can tell you something else that is absolutely freaking fascinating. I mean, if I still remembered what sex felt like, I’d tell you this was better.”

With that, Captain Seven worked one of the laptops until the screen shifted to an entirely new data analysis courtesy of the other sensor device, picturing a twisting funnel shape eminently familiar to both Wareagle and McCracken.

“DNA,” Wareagle noted, his shoulders stiffening.

“You bet,” the captain told him. “Not human exactly, but something organic for sure.”

McCracken tried to make sense of what he was hearing. “Looks like we found what you got a sense of before, Indian.”

“Yes . . . and no.”

“How’s that, Captain?”

“Organic as in functional cellular activity, MacNuts, but that’s about the only thing whatever you’re looking at has in common with life as we know it. As in an entirely new life-form. As in something that may really not want us here, if it finds the ability to think.”

“Now or never.” Captain Merch’s voice blared through McCracken’s helmet, loud enough for the others to hear.

McCracken gazed up at the sky that had turned utterly black. Thick raindrops that felt like needles began to stab at him through his hazmat suit, the wind that threatened to ravage whatever evidence remained on the
Venture
picking up to a steady gust.

He looked around him at the vast assemblages of re-formed and remolded steel, picturing them coming to life as Captain Seven suggested they might to wage war on those deemed to be interlopers in this new world.

“We’re staying,” McCracken said into his hidden microphone.

Katie DeMarco sat in the dim murkiness of the Canal Place Theater, watching an independent, subtitled film for the third time through and paying no attention to the screen whatsoever. Her feet stuck to a dried pool of spilled soda, and the stench of body odor drifted faintly on the air.

After fleeing K-Paul’s, she had opted to remain in the city for fear the same men sent to kill or capture her would be watching the airport as well as train and bus stations and rent-a-car centers. They clearly knew who she was and any car she rented or ticket she purchased would be immediately traceable, and she had neither the time nor funds required to build a false identification.

Another
false identification, that is. There’d been several of them these past few years, one for each of her infiltrations. That made it hard sometimes to recall her actual identity and background, in large part since she’d done her best to erase it from memory as well. “Katie DeMarco” was only the most recent she’d concocted with WorldSafe’s help and expertise.

She’d been trying to reach Todd Lipton again for hours now without success. Something had clearly changed since she fled the
Deepwater Venture
, the stakes raised considerably. Pursuit alone had not surprised her; pursuit by men determined to kill her—that was something else again. She had no idea who her two saviors had been in K-Paul’s. Coincidence, of course, but she’d glimpsed enough of their actions before resuming her flight to know they were no ordinary good Samaritans, at least as polished as her deadly pursuers.

Katie checked her watch. If the person she was expecting, a WorldSafe connection based here in New Orleans who called himself Twist, didn’t show up by the end of this film, she’d have to find an alternative route out of the city as well as another means of finding the information she needed. And that’s when she felt someone settle into the seat next to her.

“Kiss me,” the young man said, smelling of McDonald’s fast food.

Katie pulled away reflexively, taken aback.

“I’m Twist,” he continued, using a name that was no more real than hers. “Now kiss me so it seems like we know each other.”

Katie finally did, his mouth tasting of onions and heavily salted french fries. His hair had the texture and shape of a bird’s nest.

Twist eased his arm over her shoulder and drew her in against him.

“It’s about time,” Katie whispered.

“I’ve been here since the flower scene. Had to make sure no one else was watching you. Could you have chosen a more boring movie?”

“I haven’t been able to reach Todd.”

She felt Twist stiffen. “He’s gone, they’re all gone.”

“What?”

“A raid on the camp in Greenland. Very professional and with good reason, the same reason why they came after you.”

“What reason? What are you talking about?”

“Something happened on that rig, Katie.”

“I only left today, this morning.”

“And if you’d stayed, you’d be dead along with everyone else on board.”

“Dead? Jesus Christ . . . It wasn’t, I don’t . . .” Katie couldn’t finish a sentence or a thought, could only wait for Twist to say more.

Twist looked away, uncharacteristically evasive. He’d been the one who arranged her placement on the
Deepwater Venture
, including altering her résumé to include the proper qualifications and credentials. It had proven to be a long, laborious process with Katie ultimately gaining access to the rig months after it began. Twist strongly suggested she “apply” for pretty much the same job with additional rig operators, but Katie insisted on an Ocean Bore–owned facility.

For her own reasons.

Twist swung back toward her suddenly. Even in the darkness of the theater, she could see the fear glowing on his face like a light sheen.

“For God’s sake, Katie, what did you do?”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“You think you could get away with something like this?”

Now Katie DeMarco’s fear was beginning to mirror Twist’s. “Something like
what
?”

Something changed on Twist’s expression, the fear giving way to utter befuddlement. “You really don’t know, do you?”

She continued to regard him. “Tell me, for God’s sake!” she blared, loud enough for those nearest her in the theater to swing her way.

“Original reports from the scene were panicked, sketchy. Then nothing at all. But it’s big, Katie, really big. And bad.”

She swallowed hard. “They tried to kill me in the city. I called you after I couldn’t raise Todd again.”

“That’s because he’s dead, they’re all dead.”

“Oh my God . . .”

“It’s the rig; it all comes back to the rig.”

Katie steadied herself. “I’m going to get up and leave now. Wait five minutes and then meet me outside, in case they’re waiting for us. I’ll be at the bus stop on the corner.”

She started to stand up, felt Twist’s hand latch on to her wrist, holding her in place.

“What they’re saying about that rig . . .”

Katie looked down, waiting for him to continue.

“The logs will list you as fleeing the
Venture
in the hours before whatever it was happened. That means you’re going to be a suspect. That means there’s nowhere you can hide. There’ll be pictures from the rig’s security cameras. Your face is all they’ll need.”

“Meet me outside, Twist. We’ve got to figure out something, maybe how what I filed in my reports fits in to all this.”

Twist managed a nod. “To the effect of you didn’t believe the
Venture
wasn’t just drilling for oil. That somebody had placed it there to look for something else as well. So?”

“So,” Katie told him, “maybe they found it.”

Katie slid out of the theater, pausing briefly near the refreshment stand to check for lingering stares or men loitering about who looked similar to the ones who’d trailed her into K-Paul’s. When neither of these alerted her senses, she emerged into the night on Canal Street and walked as leisurely as she could manage to a covered bus stop at the corner. It had started to drizzle, flashes of heat lightning in the distance and the smell of ozone in the air telling her a storm was coming.

If it hadn’t struck already, that is.

The
Venture
never should have been out there in the first place drilling so deep. In the wake of the Gulf oil disaster on board the
Deepwater Horizon
at the hands of BP, the world should have shunned such operations until they could be made safe for the environment. Instead, in the face of rising gas prices, the world had only embraced them more. WorldSafe’s reason for planting Katie on the
Venture
was for her to provide a chronicle of the truth, ultimate proof that the industry had learned nothing from its mistakes and overreaches. To think even now drilling in the Arctic and another dozen sites unspoiled by industry and business was about to commence was repugnant. What would it take to make normal people pay attention?

Katie checked her watch. Twist should have joined her by now.

But he hadn’t.

She realized she was trembling, fear the only thing that was suppressing the vast shock over the deaths of Todd Lipton and the other WorldSafe members housed at base camp in Greenland. She gazed back up the street to find the crowd spilling out the theater’s front doors, Twist sure to be among them. He had contacts, both in the media and the little known world of environmental law. In the wake of what he insisted had transpired at base camp, these were the kind of forces he could bring to bear, new fronts opened in an old war.

But there was still no sign of him. Then police sirens blared, a pair of squad cars streaming past her covered bench with lights flashing in eerie synchronicity with the heat lightning that flashed ever closer. Two more squad cars raced from the head of the street, the four of them converging on the theater façade where a manager in a red jacket rushed out to greet their arrival.

Katie felt a surge of cold through the fetid heat of the night. Something must have happened to Twist, and that could only mean Todd Lipton’s killers and her pursuers had tracked him to the theater. Or perhaps happened upon him while looking for her. Either way, they’d know she was nearby; they could be closing in even now. Katie longed for a bus, a cab, anything to help spirit her from the area.