Extinction Code

Chapter 1

Yucatán Peninsula—5 miles off the coast of Mexico

Chief Scientist Dr. Jack Greer watched through high-powered binoculars as the helicopters drew nearer. It was early morning as he stood on the upper deck of a repurposed oil rig, his cheek fanned by a warm Gulf breeze. He drew in a lungful of salty air, feeling his pulse begin to quicken.

A geophysicist in his early forties, Jack was blessed, or some might say cursed, with a shock of dark wavy hair that, much to his elderly mother’s chagrin, was often kept hidden away under a ratty old Houston Astros baseball cap.

His attention soon returned to the two choppers. They were about ten miles out, both little more than twin white dots pressed against a powder-blue sky. The second was larger than the first, a tandem-rotor heavy lifter. Swaying gently beneath the aircraft was a bright orange shipping container, secured by four taut cables. Rajesh Viswanathan from MIT was almost here. The final member of the team, he was already a week late.

Lowering the binoculars, Jack listened to the drilling team working below. They’d been here a month, boring a hole deep into the earth’s crust. He and his team were on the hunt for the remnants of something no one had expected them to find: the asteroid that had slammed into the earth sixty-five million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs and causing one of the largest mass extinctions in history.

At least that was the story most of the scientific community had come to believe. While the space rock theory was by far the strongest hypothesis, a growing chorus of scientists were beginning to wonder whether increased volcanic activity hadn’t really been to blame. The team’s goal was simple enough. By carefully studying the limestone deposits around the impact, as well as what was left of the meteorite itself, Jack hoped they might settle the debate once and for all.

But getting the research grants to embark on such an audacious expedition had proven far more difficult than he had ever imagined. Plain old-fashioned ridicule was the biggest obstacle. The crux of the problem was this: when a slab of iron, rock or ice slammed into the earth, most of it was instantaneously vaporized. And any remnants were flung up into the atmosphere and dispersed across the planet.

The laughing stopped abruptly once Jack’s seismic surveys revealed a giant magnetic anomaly five hundred meters beneath the earth’s surface. It didn’t matter that the data on the meteorite itself were somewhat vague—the actual readings revealed a dark splotch in a sea of wavy horizontal lines.

Fuzzy or not, it was enough to pique the interest of DiCore, one of the largest mining operations on the planet. To them, the initial readings indicated the possible presence of diamonds and lots of them. In the 1970s, a similar discovery had been made in Siberia, at the Popigai crater.

In more practical terms, DiCore’s funding had meant that a research project that might have lasted two weeks with grants from the US Geological Survey could now go on for months. For its part, DiCore’s conditions were predictable enough. Once the scientists were done studying the remnants of the meteorite, DiCore would move in to extract whatever diamonds were present.

Jack was still contemplating the project when his co-chief on the expedition, Gabby Bishop, exited the main superstructure and crossed to where he was standing. She was an astronomer, but more than that, she was a friend of many years. A decade older than Jack, Gabby had shoulder-length silver hair and a pleasant, round face. She had also been the first to renege on their shared commitment to stop smoking. And as if to prove the point, Gabby fished a hand in her pocket and came out with a pack of Marlboro Lights. She started to offer him one and then stopped.

“Sorry,” she said, lighting up. “Forgot you’re still on the cigarette wagon.”

Jack glanced over and tugged at the brim of his ball cap. “I’m trying to be good and you’re not helping things.”

“Am I detecting a crack in Jack Greer’s infamous willpower?” she said mockingly. “Maybe you should stop fighting the inevitable.”

He grinned. “Right now I’ll settle for you blowing some of that smoke in my face.”

They shared a burst of uneasy laughter.

The helicopters were less than a mile away now.

Gabby shook her head, unable to hide her own deep concern. “They must have gotten tied up with bureaucratic red tape,” she said. “I’m sure that’s why they didn’t call.” She found Jack’s gaze and held it. “You know, given the situation out here.”

The situation Gabby was referring to could best be described as Murphy’s Law in action. Last month, as the rig was being towed into place, political tensions in the Gulf of Mexico had risen to an all-time high. A recent decision to step back from open relations with Cuba had quickly led to the reimposition of sanctions. Not surprisingly, the Cubans had retaliated by calling up dredging machines to form artificial islands along the edge of their maritime borders. It was a trick no doubt learned from China and undeniably part of an attempt to increase the scope of Cuba’s exclusive economic zone. Whether or not the move was designed to strengthen their seat at the bargaining table wasn’t clear. What was clear was that as a result, both countries had begun beefing up their military presence in the region. So long as Mexico remained neutral, the license granted to the expedition from that government remained in place. But Jack hesitated to even consider what might happen should the situation escalate any further.

The walkie talkie on Jack’s belt belched out a burst of static.

“Boss, it’s Billy. We just hit a real coarse layer. Much harder than granite. I’m gonna need to pull up and swap out the tungsten carbide roller-cutter.”

Billy Brenner was their sometimes impetuous chief drilling engineer.

Jack’s gut told him they were getting close. When the meteor had first impacted the earth’s crust, it had created a massive tsunami, eventually depositing layers of sand over the impact area. The largest bits had been the first to settle, followed by ever-smaller pieces. The result was rock layers of increasing density. That meant the harder the layer, the closer they were.

“Give me a depth reading first,” Jack insisted.

There was a pause as Billy checked the digital readout on the drill’s control panel. “Fourteen hundred and fifty-two feet.”

The meteorite sat at around fifteen hundred feet.

“Push through it,” Jack urged him, rubbing the pads of his fingers together as he tended to whenever his stomach coiled with nervous energy.

The hesitation in Billy’s reply was hard to miss. Jack’s order would surely put the engineer’s baby at risk, but there was more to Billy’s reaction and Jack knew it. Deferential as he sounded, Billy wasn’t asking Jack—he’d been telling him, or at least trying to. Jack repeated the order and replaced the walkie-talkie, deciding he would deal with Billy and his temper later.

Gabby’s brow furrowed as the cigarette slipped from her fingers. Jack watched the wind take hold and spin it in endless circles as it fluttered down to the crystalline waters below. The cautious wisdom she brought to the table was often a nice counterbalance to Jack’s eagerness to take giant risks.

“You understand that if Billy loses that drill bit, we may be done,” she told him in a tone few others could get away with.

The helicopters were overhead now, the wash from their blades kicking up a fierce wind and an even worse racket. Jack held the baseball cap tight to his skull. He leaned in. “How can we stop now when we’re so close?”