The 6th Extinction (25 page)

“And if we could discover what that was,” Edmund added, “then maybe we’d know what that X stands for and could begin to turn the tide on this whole mess.”

Lisa’s radio crackled and Painter came onto her private channel. She was excited to talk to him, to share what she had just learned—both the grim and the hopeful.

“I think we may have another lead,” Painter said before she could speak. “Jenna suggested we take another look at Amy Serpry’s cell phone. It looks like someone went to great lengths and sophistication to erase their communication with Serpry, to clear the local usage details from her service provider. But not everything got washed away completely, not if you know where and how to look deeper.”

“What did you learn?” she asked, stepping away from the others.

Painter explained, “We were able to reconstruct enough of those records to know a call had been placed to her from South America. From the city of Boa Vista, the capital of the northern Brazilian state of Roraima.”

Lisa knelt by Nikko’s cage. The husky lifted his head, his eyes glassy as they rolled in her direction. He thumped his tail once.

That’s a good boy
.

“Before that trail gets any colder,” Painter said, “I’m going to lead a team down there to investigate. I’ll keep in contact with Colonel Bozeman, who will be running the show here in my absence.”

Lisa wanted to go with him, to keep close to Painter’s side, but she met the husky’s pained gaze and knew her place was here. She also remembered Lindahl’s warning.

You can’t let sentimentality cloud your professional judgment
.

She would not make that mistake again. Still, that didn’t keep her from worrying. As Painter signed off, a question weighed on her.

What or who would be waiting for Painter down in Brazil?

16

April 29, 11:35
P
.
M
. AMT
Airborne over Brazil

Dr. Kendall Hess ducked lower in his seat as another bolt of lightning shattered across the underbellies of the black clouds, lighting the dark forests far below. The thunderclap shook the helicopter, while rain slashed the window canopy of the small aircraft.

In front, the pilot swore in Spanish, fighting through the storm. Kendall’s hulking escort sat in the back cabin with him, looking unperturbed, staring out the window on his side.

Kendall swallowed back his terror and tried to do the same. He pressed his forehead against the window. The flash of lightning had revealed little but the endless expanse of green jungle below. They had been flying southwest over this rain forest for the better part of the day, landing once at a refueling dump, which had been hacked out of the forest and camouflaged with netting.

Wherever they’re taking me, it’s beyond remote
.

He despaired at ever seeing the larger world again.

He knew he must be somewhere in South America, likely still north of the equator. But he knew little else. Last night, his kidnappers had landed their Cessna for a final time outside a small town. He was taken to a ramshackle house with a corrugated tin roof and no running water and was allowed to sleep on a mattress on the dirt floor. They’d kept him hooded as they ferried him from the plane so he got no chance to figure out the name of that town. He had heard voices, though, from the streets, speaking in Spanish, some English, but mostly Portuguese.

From that, he guessed he was in Brazil, likely one of its northern states. But they hadn’t stayed long enough for him to determine anything else. At dawn the next day, they transferred him to this small helicopter, which looked weathered and barely airworthy.

Still, it had gotten them this far.

Another burst of chain lightning crackled across the clouds. A dark silhouette appeared near the horizon, rising starkly from the forest, like a black battleship riding a green sea. Kendall shifted higher, trying to get a better view—especially as Mateo stirred, gathering a pack from the floor.

Was that their destination?

As the helicopter droned onward, the rain slowed but the rumbling thunder continued, accompanied by occasional bolts of brilliance, each one revealing more details of the mountain ahead.

And it was a
mountain
—rising from the forest floor in sheer cliffs, thousands of feet tall. Its flat summit, shrouded in heavy mists, pushed above the lowermost clouds.

Kendall recognized this unusual geological formation. It was unique to this region of South America. Towering blocks of ancient sandstone like this—called tepui—lay scattered across the rain forests and swamps of northern Brazil, extending into Venezuela and Guyana. They numbered over a hundred. The most famous was Mount Roraima, rising almost two miles above the forest floor, with its summit—a flat plateau—spread over ten square miles.

The tepui ahead was much smaller, maybe a quarter of that size.

But long ago, these hundreds of mesas had once been connected together into a single giant sandstone massif. As the continents broke apart and shifted, that ancient massif fragmented into pieces, where rain and wind eroded the broken blocks into this collection of scattered plateaus, lonely sentinels of another time.

Though Kendall had never visited any of these tepuis, he knew about them from his research into unusual forms of life. The tepuis were some of earth’s oldest formations, going back to Precambrian times, older than most fossils. These islands in the sky, isolated for ages, were home to species found only atop their summits, animals and plants unique unto themselves. Due to the remoteness of the region and the sheer cliffs, many of the plateaus had never been walked by man. They represented some of the least-explored areas on the planet, remaining unpolluted and pure.

The helicopter climbed higher, buffeted by stronger winds, and swept toward the mountain—which from a bird’s-eye view looked dark and forbidding, untouched by man.

As they crested the plateau, the surface of the tepui wasn’t as flat as it appeared from a distance. A large central pond dominated the summit, reflecting their navigation lights. Along its southern bank, storm-flooded waters spilled down to a lower section of the plateau, a shelf covered by a dense, stunted forest, a mockery of the rich life far below. North of the pond spread a labyrinth of rock, sculpted by wind and rain into chasms, caves, and a forest of unearthly pillars, all of it covered by a spongy dark-green moss or a gelatinous-looking algae. But between the cracks, he spotted flourishes of orchids and flowering bromeliads, a magical garden bathed by the mists.

The helicopter lowered for a landing on a flat section of stone near the pond, its lights sweeping the plateau. Only then did Kendall see signs of human occupation. Built within one of the larger caves—filling it completely like an overflowing cornucopia—was a magnificent stone home with balconies, gables, even a hothouse conservatory. The home’s surfaces were all painted shades of dark green to match its surroundings.

He also noted a neighboring corral, which held a couple of Arabian horses, alongside a parked row of golf carts, which looked distinctly out of place, though the vehicles were also painted green. Beyond the house, a handful of tall wind turbines blended perfectly with the stone pillars.

Someone plainly wants to keep a low profile
.

That someone stood nearby, under an umbrella.

Once the skids touched down, Kendall’s guard opened the cabin door and hopped out. He kept his tall height bowed from the blades overhead. A handful of men stood nearby with camouflage netting in hand, ready to hide the aircraft after it shut down. The group shared the same dark complexion and round faces as the guard and pilot. Likely they were all from the same native tribe.

Knowing he had no choice, Kendall climbed out into the misty drizzle. He shivered at the clammy coldness at this elevation, a distinct difference from the swelter of rain forest below. He stepped toward the man who the world believed had died eleven years ago.

“Cutter Elwes. For a dead man, you are looking well.”

In fact, Cutter appeared
better
than the last time the two had spoken. It had been ages ago, at a synthetic biology conference in Nice. Then Cutter had been red-faced, full of youthful fury at the poor reception his paper had received from Kendall’s colleagues.

But what had he expected?

Now the man appeared fit, relaxed, a calm purposefulness to his blue-steel gaze under dark black hair. He was dressed in crisp linen pants and a white shirt, with a beige safari vest on top.

“And you, my dear friend, look tired . . . and wet.” Cutter held out his own umbrella.

Angry, Kendall ignored the offering.

Cutter voiced no offense and returned the umbrella to above his own head. He turned, clearly expecting Kendall to follow, which he did.

Where else am I going to go?

“I imagine you’ve had a hard trip getting here,” Cutter said. “It’s late and Mateo here will see you to your bed. There is a cold dinner, along with hot coffee—decaffeinated, of course—waiting for you on the nightstand. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

Kendall stepped faster, drawing abreast of his host, trailed by his hulking escort. “You killed . . . murdered so many people. My friends, colleagues. If you expect me to cooperate after all you’ve done . . .”

Cutter dismissed this concern with a wave. “We’ll hash out the details in the morning.”

They reached the four-story home and passed through double doors into a cavernous entry hall. It was floored in hand-scraped planks of Brazilian mahogany, the ceiling arched high, the walls decorated in French tapestries. If Kendall hadn’t known about the Elwes family wealth, he would have suspected as much from the many millions it must have cost to build this home in secret.

Kendall searched around, knowing that there must be more to this place. Cutter’s passion had never been about finance or the accumulation of wealth. His passion had always been about the planet. He had started as a dedicated environmentalist, using family money to fund many conservation causes. But the man was also brilliant, with a Mensa score that pushed him beyond genius. Though Cutter was French on his father’s side, he had studied at both Cambridge and Oxford. The latter was where his mother was educated and where Kendall had first met Cutter.

After the man graduated, he took that big brain of his and bottomless wealth and started a grassroots movement to democratize science with the establishment of teaching labs around the world, many delving into the early fringes of genetic engineering and DNA synthesis. He quickly became the proverbial king of the biopunk community, those heady entrepreneurs who were hacking their way into genetic code with delightful abandon.

He also nurtured a great following by fiercely advocating for an overhaul to environmental policy. Over time, he made extremist groups like Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Army seem conservative in comparison. People were drawn to his iconoclastic personality, his uncompromising purpose. He supported civil disobedience and dramatic protests.

But then everything changed.

He studied Cutter’s back, noting how he slightly favored his right side. While on a mission to thwart poachers in the Serengeti, Cutter was mauled by an African lion, one of the very creatures he had sought to protect. He had almost died—
did
die, at least for a minute on the operating table. His recovery had been long and painful.

Most people would have taken such a horrible, disfiguring event as a reason to turn their back on their causes, but instead, Cutter only became that much more dedicated. It was as if by surviving the raw fury of that lion—that literal representation of nature’s tooth and claw—he had somehow been infused with even more passion. But it also changed him. While he remained an environmentalist, his fervor became driven by a more nihilistic philosophy. He founded a new group, one of like-minded individuals, called Dark Eden, whose goal was no longer conservation, but to accept that the world was falling apart and to prepare for it, to perhaps even help it along, to look beyond the current mass extinction to a new genesis, a new Eden.

Over a short period of time, his actions became more radicalized, his followers manic. Eventually he was convicted in absentia on multiple charges, by multiple countries, and was forced to flee underground. It was while running from authorities that he suffered his plane crash.

Though now it was plain that his death had been a ruse all along, part of a greater plan for Dark Eden.

But what did he intend?

Cutter led him to an impressive stone staircase that swept upward. A woman descended toward them, dressed in a simple white shift that showed off the beauty of her burnished skin as it did her curves.

Cutter’s voice softened. “Ah, Kendall, let me introduce you to the mother of my children.” He held out a hand and helped her off the last step. “This is Ashuu.”

The woman gave a small bow of her head, then turned her full attention upon Cutter, her dark eyes almost glowing in the lamplight. Her voice was a silky whisper. “
Tu fait une promesse à ton fils
.”

Kendall translated the French.

You made a promise to your son
.

“I know, my dear. As soon as I get our guest settled, I’ll see to him.”

She tenderly touched Cutter’s cheek with the back of her soft hand, then nodded to Mateo. “
Bienvenue, mon frère
.”

She then turned and headed back up the stairs.

Kendall frowned and stared back at Mateo.

Frère
.

Brother.

Kendall searched the scarred countenance of the giant shadowing him. From the woman’s sheer beauty, he would never have fathomed that these two were brother and sister, but now brought to his attention, he could see a vague family resemblance.

Cutter touched Kendall’s elbow and pointed to the back of the hall. “Mateo will take you to your room. I’ll see you in the morning. I have important business of my own to attend to before I retire.” He shrugged with his usual rakish charm. “As my dear wife reminded me . . .
une promesse est une promesse
.”