Authors: Dean Crawford
‘We?’ Lopez echoed.
Jarvis’s jaw twisted into a tight grin.
‘The Defense Intelligence Agency has some concerns about the way the operations that involve Warner & Lopez Inc. have been conducted. You’ll remember Washington DC, and of course
Santa Fe.’
Ethan sighed and leaned back in his seat. Years after they had gone their separate ways from the Marine Corps, Jarvis had approached Ethan in Chicago and begged him to search for his
granddaughter, who had gone missing in Israel. At the time, Ethan had been grieving for the loss of Joanna. Tempted by the possibility of resurrecting the search for his missing fiancée in
Gaza, Ethan had agreed. The chase had brought them back to Washington DC, where he had met Nicola Lopez and founded Warner & Lopez Inc. Much later, he and Lopez had travelled to New Mexico as
partners on another mission for the DIA. The resulting carnage out in the lonely deserts had proved difficult for Jarvis’s department both to justify and to cover up.
‘We did what we could under extremely difficult circumstances.’ Ethan glanced at Lopez. ‘Sometimes you just can’t keep these things entirely under the radar.’
‘Indeed,’ Jarvis murmured. ‘Abraham Mitchell has insisted that in this case I accompany you on your investigation and provide a full report on your methods.’
Ethan knew Abraham Mitchell, Director of the DIA, as a towering pillar of patriotism and not a man he would cross lightly. But placing Jarvis in the line of fire was an uncharacteristically
reckless gesture. Christ, he was in his sixties. Ethan stared at the old man. ‘No offense, but that could slow us down, Doug.’
‘Wasn’t my decision,’ Jarvis said with a shrug. ‘I’m too damned old to be charging about, but I can oversee and hopefully justify your work to Command.’ He
leaned forward in his seat. ‘Fact is, I gave up a great deal in order to get this department of the DIA sanctioned and provided with both a budget and trust. After what happened in New
Mexico, there’s concern that you’re unable to maintain a discreet profile.’
‘We get results,’ Lopez challenged.
‘You do,’ Jarvis conceded. ‘But if the cost is too high then this whole thing will be over and I’ll be looking at retirement, so let’s just play the game the way
the high and mighty want to, and see what comes up. Right now, our priority is getting down to Miami the fastest way possible.’
A shadow of concern fell across Lopez’s features. ‘Just how fast are you thinking?’
June 28, 07:31
‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
Joaquin Abell stood on a roof on the outskirts of what was one of the poorest towns, in one of the poorest nations, in the western world, and surveyed the scene of utter devastation lining the
shores of the Rio Grande de Loiza river. He smoothed down his glossy black hair and straightened his tie. His expensive suit, a blue so dark it almost seemed black, contrasted sharply with the
dust-coated piles of shattered rubble beneath him.
A handful of television crews from international networks focused their lenses on him as he slowly turned on the spot and took in the entire panorama.
The magnitude-7 earthquake had hit just twelve hours previously, the mysterious depths of the Puerto Rico Trench that surrounded the island shuddering with a force equivalent to innumerable
nuclear explosions as the strain on tectonic plates far beneath the earth’s surface had been released in a spasm of seismic energy. Joaquin knew that the Puerto Rico Trench was a unique
geological formation due to plate subduction, and one that geologists had for decades been predicting would produce a major quake. Warnings of increased seismic activity in the Caribbean had gone
largely unheeded by the population and the world at large, and now the consequences were writ bare upon the landscape.
The roof on which he stood was only four feet off the ground, the building having collapsed in a cloud of fractured masonry. Seventy school children and their teachers had been entombed in the
debris, none had survived. Beyond, the roads were churned like the desiccated plates of a dry river bed, immense chunks of asphalt split and upturned to expose the raw soil deep beneath them. The
palm trees lining the roads had been torn from their roots to block what little access to the town remained. Across the landscape, dotted amongst the handful of standing trees, was a barren
wasteland of collapsed houses and apartment blocks, drifting clouds of cement dust churned by countless desperate hands clawing to locate family members suffocating in their macabre tombs.
But worse even than the collapsed buildings were the now-silent rivers of mud encrusted with lethal shards of splintered wood and debris, and upturned and half-buried vehicles lodged like
discarded toys, filled with unmoving bodies that were already beginning to rot in the sweltering heat. The sullen gray sky above seemed to reflect the somber mood in the town, which had been
destroyed overnight by the savage power of the tsunami that had engulfed it minutes after the quake.
Joaquin turned to face the cameras. A silent, motionless throng of local citizens and emergency-response teams, their faces and clothes caked in grime and blood, stared up at him, their faces
rigid with the paralysis of shock.
‘This, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when people fail to act in the defense and support of their neighbors,’ Joaquin said, his voice sounding muted in the listless, muggy
heat. ‘This is what happens when lack of investment, lack of infrastructure and lack of political will strands a population in poverty and exposes them to nature’s wrath. These people
could have been helped: instead they were abandoned by our government, by their government, by us all.’
Abell, his flawlessly tanned skin sheened by the heat, gestured to a brilliant white helicopter that had landed nearby on what had once been the school playground. The craft was emblazoned with
a bright blue logo: IRIS.
‘It is for just this reason that International Rescue and Infrastructure Support was founded, the legacy of my father’s success, to go where our hallowed leaders fear to tread, to
provide the kind of support that politicians have proven themselves too conservative, too greedy, to give. It will take the United Nations weeks to even begin to organize the humanitarian effort
necessary to lift the people of this island nation out of their tragedy.’ Joaquin directed a stern gaze at the cameras and pointed down at the churned earth beneath their feet.
‘I’ll put four hundred trained experts on the ground here and ten million dollars into the rebuilding of this country before the sun goes down tonight!’
From behind the camera crews a meager crowd of locals gave a muted cheer, their ragged clothes and weary faces blossoming with new hope as translators gave them Joaquin Abell’s good
news.
‘There are some thirty-five million people living here in Puerto Rico and the surrounding islands,’ Abell went on, ‘all low-lying territories vulnerable to both earthquakes and
tsunamis. Despite all of the natural disasters that have occurred around the world in recent years, from Aceh to Haiti, despite all of the warnings,
still
world governments wait until tens
of thousands of people are maimed and killed before they even begin to act. Already there are reports that this disaster alone, when disease and starvation from lack of resources are taken into
account, will result in the loss of up to one hundred thousand lives.’
A voice called out from among the reporters.
‘What makes you think that you can make a difference? IRIS is a powerful company, but you can’t change the world in one stroke.’
A lance of irritation pierced Abell’s studied calm. It was followed by a vision of the late, great Isaac Abell: upstanding, proud, his jacket buttoned tight along with his collar, a pipe
jutting from beneath his neatly trimmed moustache. His words echoed through Joaquin’s mind.
No man can do everything son, but all men can make a difference.
Isaac Abell had been a product of a generation more noble than that which had inherited the earth, a man of rigid principles and immaculate morals. Born just early enough to witness the
unspeakable horror of the rise of the Kaiser and the First World War, when millions of young lives had been lost in senseless slaughter amidst trenches of freezing French mud, Isaac Abell had
returned home from those bitter killing fields aged just twenty-one. As he had related to his son a thousand times, he had sworn that he would devote his life to the task of learning, not killing.
Within a few years he had become a physicist and a brilliant star in the dawning of the atomic age.
And then his worst fears had been realized, as once again Europe was torn apart in the wake of the Third Reich’s rise to power. When the United States dropped the world’s first
atomic weapon on Hiroshima, Isaac Abell was transformed from a valiant champion of scientific endeavor into an embittered recluse consumed by the conviction that mankind was incapable of saving
itself from an endless abyss of self-destruction.
‘You’re not the Pope,’ another reporter pointed out, breaking Joaquin’s somber reverie.
Abell smiled as the images of his father vanished, whipped away by an uncaring wind sweeping in from the nearby ocean.
‘Thankfully, no, I am not,’ Joaquin replied. ‘Because I deal in reality, not fantasy. The difference that IRIS can make is to show the world, to show those who
govern
our world, that it is beneficial to help our fellow human beings without reserve, without thought to the consequences, because if we help each other then we become greater than the sum of our
parts. Why wait? Why debate whether or not we can
afford
to help? Why debate anything at all when people are dying, right now, right here? Would you prefer that we delay, sir?’
The reporter said nothing in reply and Joaquin Abell surveyed the watching, growing crowds.
‘It’s just as my rocket-scientist father once said: it’s not rocket science,’ Joaquin continued, and was rewarded with faint chuckles from the news crews. ‘Either
we move without hesitation, without compromise, without condition, to the aid of our fellow human beings, or we leave these people to rot whilst we in the wealthiest countries worry ourselves over
which restaurant we’re going to dine in tonight. I’m going to provide the funds that these people need to save themselves, so if you’ll excuse me ladies and gentlemen . .
.’
A ripple of applause clattered amongst the Puerto Ricans, many of whom crowded around Joaquin as his last words were translated, their skeletal hands patting his back and clouding his suit in
dust as he climbed carefully down off the collapsed roof of the school.
Joaquin reached up and brushed the dust from his shoulders as a swarm of his personal staff huddled protectively around him. One, a striking red-haired woman called Sandra, who had been his
personal assistant for the past ten years, strode to his side and held out a thick wad of papers.
‘Court orders from Mexico, blocking our donations to the rebuilding of wells in the southern territories. They’re citing unspecified health-and-safety concerns.’
‘Build them anyway,’ Abell replied briskly as they walked. ‘What can they do, sue us?’
Sandra flipped the page over and selected another.
‘We’re also getting obstruction from landowners in Aceh, who want to build hotels on the land destroyed by the tsunami in 2004. What should we do?’
‘Tell them that if they don’t back off, I’ll buy the controlling share of their hotel chains and then raze them to the ground. They don’t own the land, the people do. Get
our people in Singapore onto it – they know the legal terrain out there.’
Sandra produced another file.
‘And New Orleans? We’re still bogged down by the new wave of building regulations being enforced by the mayor. If we’re pushed out, you know that they’ll build malls
rather than replace the homes destroyed by the hurricane.’
Joaquin considered for a moment.
‘Get the people to rally, in their thousands. Organize something really visual and let IRIS pick up the bill for it. If the mayor doesn’t fold he’ll probably lose office over
it. People-power, Sandra, is sometimes more effective than lobbying Congress.’
Sandra was about to answer when her cell trilled. She picked it up immediately, and Joaquin turned away as two noisy children bounded toward him, delight on their faces. Joaquin knelt down on
the debris-strewn road as Jacob and Merriel leapt into his arms. At four and six years respectively, they seemed oblivious to the tragedy around them.
‘How are my two firecrackers?’ Joaquin asked, holding them tightly.
Behind them, Joaquin saw his wife glide up the road, dressed in a smart charcoal suit and with her long auburn hair flowing like liquid velvet across her shoulders. Katherine smiled at him as
she picked her way through the debris, and as he picked up the two children she leaned in and kissed him on his cheek.
‘How did it go?’ she asked.
‘As well as can be expected,’ Joaquin replied. ‘Let’s hope that when the government sees the news tonight, they’ll be provoked to get off their asses and start
doing something about what’s happened down here. We need investment, not debate.’
Katherine smiled.
‘I know you’ll get it.’
Before he could reply Sandra tapped him on the shoulder, a phone to her ear and a concerned expression on her face. Joaquin set his children down beside their mother and joined Sandra as she
beckoned him discreetly to one side.
‘What’s wrong?’ Joaquin asked.
‘There’s been an accident,’ Sandra whispered. ‘One of our planes crashed in the Bahamas yesterday evening. I’m afraid there were no survivors.’
June 28, 07:48
‘You’re not serious.’
Lopez stared at the drab olive overalls as she pulled them on, along with the heavy black boots and the over-suit festooned with tubes and cables.
Ethan yanked on his flight suit and was handed a helmet with a glossy black mirrored visor, oxygen mask and a pair of fire-retardant gloves. He watched as Lopez struggled into her own flight
suit and then followed as an ensign directed them out of the building in which they stood and into the bright sunshine. The sound of countless jet engines whined, and Ethan saw a giant KC-135
re-fuelling tanker slip off the runway and soar into the clear blue sky. But it was not the big aircraft lining the servicing area that caught his attention.