Читать книгу Sky Key - Джеймс Фрей, James Frey, Nils Johnson-Shelton - Страница 14

Aisling Kopp saw the impact site on the way in through one of the plane’s small oval windows. That black bowl-shaped scar in the city, 10 times more devastating than any of the pictures from 2001’s man-made terror attack.

But something about it had changed.

It wasn’t that it had been fixed up or cleaned away—that would take decades. What had changed was at the crater’s center, the very point of impact. Now, instead of ash and rubble, there was a clean white dot.

A tent. Just like the one that covered whatever had happened at Stonehenge. Whatever the Cahokian and the Olmec had done to the ancient Celtic ruin.

One of her line’s places. An ancient La Tène power center.

Used. Taken away. And covered up.

The white tents are like signals to Aisling. Governments are scared, ignorant, groping. If they can’t fix what’s happened—the meteors, Stonehenge—then they’ll shroud the damage until they figure it out.

They won’t figure it out, though.

A few minutes after the plane arced over Queens, she saw something else. Something she wanted to see. There, in Broad Channel, on the stretch of land bridging the Rockaway Peninsula to the Queens mainland. Pop’s house. The teal bungalow on West 10th Road, still standing after the meteor that hit several miles to the north, killing 4,416 souls and injuring twice as many more. It would’ve been so much worse if the meteor hadn’t landed in a cemetery. The already dead bore the brunt of its impact.

Aisling is still alive. And her house still stands.

For how much longer, Aisling doesn’t know. How much longer will JFK stand? Or the government’s white tents? Or anything at all?

The Event is coming. Aisling knows when but not where. If it’s centered on the Philippines or Siberia or Antarctica or Madagascar, then Pop’s wooden house will survive. New York will survive. JFK will survive.

But if the Event hits anywhere in the North Atlantic, towering waves will crash down on the coast, washing away miles and miles of houses. If the Event hits on land, if it hits the city, then her home will go up in flames in a matter of seconds.

She’s convinced that wherever the Event is concentrated, it will be an asteroid. It has to be. That’s what she saw in the ancient paintings above Lago Beluiso. Fire from above. Death from above, just like life and consciousness from above. A massive hunk of iron and nickel as old as the Milky Way that will crash into Earth and alter life here for millennia. A cosmic interloper of massive scale. A killer.

That’s what the keplers are. Killers.

That’s what I am too. In theory.

She moves forward in the long, slow immigration line.

Why didn’t she shoot the Cahokian and the Olmec when she had the chance? Maybe she could have stopped everything. Maybe, for that brief moment, she held the key to stopping Endgame.

Maybe.

She should have shot first and asked questions later.

She was weak.

You have to be strong in Endgame, Pop used to tell her. Even before she was eligible. Strong in every way.

I’ll have to be stronger to stop it, she thinks. I won’t be weak again.

“Next at thirty-one,” says an Indian woman in a maroon sport jacket, interrupting Aisling’s apocalyptic train of thought. The woman has smiling eyes and dark lips and jet-black hair.

“Thanks,” Aisling says. She smiles at the woman, looks at all the people in this vast room, people from every corner of the world, of every shape and size and color, rich and not-so-rich. She’s always loved JFK immigration for this reason. In most other countries you see a predominance of one type of person, but not here. It almost makes her sick, thinking that it will all be gone. That all these people from so many different walks of life will no longer smile, laugh, wait, breathe, or live.

When will they find out? she wonders. As it happens? In that split second before the end? Hours before? Weeks? Months? Tomorrow? Today?

Today. That would be interesting. Very interesting.

The government would need a lot more white tents.

Aisling arrives at desk 31. There is one person in line before her. An athletic African-American woman in a royal-blue jumpsuit with fashionable bug-eyed sunglasses.

“Next,” the immigration officer says. The woman crosses the red line to the desk. It takes her 78 seconds to clear.

“Next,” the officer repeats. Aisling approaches, her passport ready. The officer is in his 60s with square eyeglasses and a bald spot. He’s probably counting the days to his retirement. Aisling hands over her passport. It’s worn and has been stamped dozens of times, but as far as Aisling is concerned it’s brand-new. She picked it up at a dead drop in Milan on Via Fabriano only hours before going to Malpensa airport. Pop had sent it via courier 53 hours earlier. The name on it is Deandra Belafonte Cooper, a new alias. Deandra was born in Cleveland. She’s been to Turkey, Bermuda, Italy, France, Poland, the UK, Israel, Greece, and Lebanon. Pretty good for a young woman of 20 years.

Yes, 20 years. If the meteors had landed just a few weeks later, she would have aged out. But Aisling celebrated her birthday while she was holed up in that cave. Although “celebrated” is a pretty generous word for eating spit-roasted squirrel and drinking cold mountain spring water. She did enjoy a few sugar cubes after her meal, along with two small pulls off a flask of Kentucky bourbon. But it was no party.

“You’ve been around,” the agent says, leafing through the passport.

“Yeah, took a year off before college. Which turned into two,” Aisling says, shifting her weight from one leg to the other.

“Headed home?”

“Yep. Breezy Point.”

“Ah, local girl.”

“Yep.”

He slides the passport through the scanner. He puts down the little blue book. He types. He looks bored but happy—that retirement is looming—but then his hands pause for a split second over the keys. He squints very slightly and adjusts his posture.

He keeps typing.

She’s been standing there for 99 seconds when he says, “Miss Cooper, I’m going to have to ask you to step aside and see some of my colleagues over there.”

Aisling feigns concern. “Is there something wrong with my passport?”

“No, it’s not that.”

“Can I have it then?”

“No, I’m afraid you can’t. Now please”—he holds up one hand and places the other on the butt of his holstered pistol—“over there.”

Aisling already sees them from the corner of her eye. Two men, both in fatigues and armed with M4s and Colt service pistols, one with a very large Alsatian panting happily on a leash.

“Am I being arrested?”

The officer snaps the strap off his pistol but doesn’t draw. Aisling wonders if this moment is the most exciting of his 20-odd years as an immigration officer. “Miss, I am not going to ask again. Please see my colleagues.”

Aisling holds up her hands and widens her eyes, makes them watery, like how Deandra Belafonte Cooper, the non-Player world traveler, would look in the situation. Scared and fragile.

She turns from the officer and walks haltingly toward the men. They don’t buy it. In fact, they take half a step back. The dog stands, as his handler whispers a command. His ears perk, his tail straightens, the hairs on his neck bristle. The man without the dog moves his rifle into the ready position and says, “That way. You first. No need for a scene, but we need to see your hands.”

Aisling dispenses with the act. She turns, puts her hands behind her back, just under her knapsack, and hooks her thumbs. “That all right?”

“Yes. Walk straight ahead. There’s a door at the end of the room marked E-one-one-seven. It will open when you get to it.”

“Can I ask a question?”

“No, miss, you cannot. Now walk.”

She walks.

And as she does, Aisling wonders if they are going to put her under a white tent too.

“Tango Whiskey X-ray, this is Hotel Lima, over?”

“Tango Whiskey X-ray, we read you.”

“Hotel Lima confirms idents of Nighthawks One and Two. Good night. Repeat, good night. Over.”

“Roger, Hotel Lima. Good night. Protocol?”

“Protocol is Ghost Takedown. Over.”

“Roger Ghost Takedown. Teams One, Two, and Three are in position. We have eyes?”

“Eyes are online. Op on oh-four-five-five Zulu.”

“Op on oh-four-five-five Zulu, copy. See you on the other side.”

“Roger that, Tango Whiskey X-ray. Hotel Lima out.”