The Genesis Plague (2010)

‘We should pull the camera out.’
    ‘Good idea,’ Jason said. ‘All right, Camel,’ he loudly called out, ‘let’s pull it back.’
    But before Camel could react, the tiny flicker dropped off the unit’s screen just before one of the Arabs popped into view and stormed towards the camera. His rifle was safely slung over his shoulder, but between his hands was a melon-sized rock. His dirt-smeared face twisted into a snarl as he raised the rock up high over his head and lunged at the camera. The last image was a clear shot of the man’s grungy sandals. The last sound was a resounding thwack that rattled the unit’s speakers. Then the image snapped offline and turned to snow.
    ‘That’s not good,’ Hazo said.
    ‘Ouch,’ Meat said, cringing.
    Camel began pulling out the flex cable in fathoms and Jam coiled the line back into neat loops. A minute later, the flattened tip popped out from the conduit, smoking and crackling.
    ‘Sorry buddy,’ Camel said to Meat in mock apology as he assessed the damage. ‘That thing’s toast.’ He tossed it to Jam.
    ‘At least we know they’re still in there, Sarge,’ Jam said.
    ‘I was thinking the same thing.’
    ‘Guys,’ Camel said, peering off in the distance. He spit a gob of chewing tobacco on to the ground and pointed out along the flatland. They all turned in unison.
    Three kilometres out, a military convoy whipped a billowing dust cloud up into the blazing orange sunset. A UH-60 Blackhawk was flying random crisscrosses above it to scout the terrain.
    ‘Cavalry’s here,’ Camel grunted.

8
LAS VEGAS
    Once the muted thumping inside the vault stopped, Randall Stokes sauntered to the wet bar, pulled a tumbler off the shelf, and poured two fingers of very expensive single-malt Scotch, neat. He withdrew a plastic pillbox from his jacket pocket, popped open the lid, and pinched out a pure white Zoloft tablet.
    Putting the pill on his tongue, he raised the glass towards the vault door.
    ‘Cheers, Frank.’
    He nipped at the Scotch and swilled down the dose of tranquillity. Then he went and sat behind the desk.
    It hurt when good men - loyal men - were sacrificed for the greater good. Military life had a way of hammering into one’s head the notion that brotherhood always came first. Survival could be a singular effort, but lasting victory could never be. Fighters are made, not born. And that was certainly true with Frank Roselli.
    Roselli was an extremely valuable asset. He’d perfectly coordinated the project in Iraq, which, given the mission’s complex logistics and broad scope, was no easy task. Though it was Stokes’s brainchild, Roselli had tackled recruiting the multi-disciplined talent who took the project from concept to reality. From around the globe, he’d assembled a team of renowned archaeologists and anthropologists and brought them into the middle of a war zone to unlock the greatest discovery in human history. It was Roselli who’d designed the ingenious security protocols and eliminated redundancies so that each scientist working on site knew only a piece of the cave’s intricate puzzle. Most impressive was Roselli’s brilliant handling of high-ranking members of Congress, the FBI and the armed forces, to bring together the funding and technological know-how. And as far as the stakeholders were concerned, it was all an anonymous debit against the defence budget in the name of national security. So thorough was the mission’s cover that even the president’s eagle-eyed Cabinet members would give the appropriations a mere cursory glance.
    Stokes and Roselli had been together since the beginning: through twelve weeks of boot camp at Parris Island and the gruelling fifty-four-hour Crucible march; side by side at the Emblem Ceremony, receiving their eagle, globe and anchor pins; at Marine Special Operations School learning the tactical art of irregular warfare.
    Best friends.
    Brothers.
    Staring out the window, Stokes lost himself in the muddled reflections that danced across the cathedral’s reflective glass dome. The colours pinwheeled and shifted like a kaleidoscope. Entranced, his mind’s eye brought him back to the Kuwaiti desert: distant oil fields burning like torches against a night sky as black as oil; the paradoxical bitter cold of a sunless desert set ablaze. He could still feel the sixty-five-pound field pack weighing on his back, the ice-cold fifteen-pound M40A1 sniper rifle biting into his hands; the sand creeping down