Desmond shook his head. “Charlotte—”
“These… terrorists funded my work for some reason. Sent potentially dangerous material to my camp for years. I have to know why. And I might know something that we don’t even realize—something that could help when we get there. If there’s even a remote chance that I could help, I have to try. Billions of lives are at stake. I’m going. I know the risks. I accept them.”
Desmond looked to William for help, but the older man just shrugged. Apparently he, too, sensed that they were fighting a losing battle. They weren’t going to keep Peyton and Charlotte off the team, no matter how much they wanted to.
“Fine,” Desmond said. “Let’s assume that this island is our best shot at finding where the shipments of cure have been sent.” He looked around, watching the silent nods from the group. “So how do we even get there? We can’t exactly fly there—landing on the island would end our little adventure pretty quickly. And by the time we get there by sea, the world as we know it will be over.”
“I think I can help with that,” Avery said. She drew a cell phone from her pocket and affixed a satellite sleeve. Desmond watched her activate an app called North Star. She shot him a sly smile. “It turns out I didn’t trust you either.”
The app beeped once, a long drone. Then a man’s voice came over the speaker. “Ops.”
Avery smiled. “We’ve found it.”
Chapter 108
Desmond was pushing the twenty-foot box truck’s engine to its limits, trying to keep up with Avery’s truck ahead. She was barreling down the deserted streets of Port Adelaide with reckless abandon. They hadn’t seen a soul, but Desmond was still concerned that they might hit a pedestrian. Peyton sat in the passenger seat, gripping the handle on the ceiling. She apparently was concerned too.
“I wish she’d slow down,” Peyton yelled over the roaring engine.
Desmond nodded, but he had to admit: time was not on their side. Every minute that passed, people lost their lives.
William sat behind the wheel of the truck behind them, keeping up as best he could. In the rearview, Desmond saw Charlotte in the passenger seat with an expression of terror similar to Peyton’s.
At the Citium warehouse, Avery’s NorthStar app had connected her to the Rubicon command center, who had quickly gotten in touch with the US and Australian militaries to coordinate the plan. They had directed Avery and the team to take as many doses of the cure as possible to the Royal Australian Air Force Base at Edinburgh, South Australia, and to expect details of additional arrangements by the time they got there.
At the base, the gates stood open. Planes sat on the runways with their glass canopies open. Avery was talking on the phone when she stepped down from her truck. As soon as she signed off, she walked over to the other four and said, “Okay, the US Navy has an aircraft carrier in range. We’ll fly there, and get further orders. They’re trying to organize a strike force now.”
They ventured inside the barracks, which had been converted to a hospital of sorts. Nearly half the staff were caring for the other half. They seemed to all be sick.
A man with a captain’s insignia, who introduced himself only as Mullins, was in charge. “My CO said to give you any plane you want and our best pilot.”
After some discussion, they selected a small cargo transport with the range they needed. They loaded it with as many doses of the cure as it would hold and took off immediately. From a window on the plane, Desmond watched the Australian Air Force men unloading the box trucks, carrying the boxes of jet injectors and vials of the cure into the barracks.
We saved those lives.
And if they were successful, they would save many more.
Peyton slept on the plane. Or at least, she tried. Her nerves wouldn’t settle. Her mind raced with feelings and thoughts she could barely sort out. Desmond Hughes was someone she had written off—had forced herself to forget about. Now he was back, and she knew her feelings for him were, too. They had never truly gone away after he left.
The same was true of her father. Knowing he had been alive all those years, unable to contact her, tore her apart.
And then there was the island. If her father was right, it held the key to stopping the pandemic. She wanted that more than anything—even more than her own happiness. She wondered if she would have to choose; if in the tangled web the Citium had spun, she would have to choose between saving many lives—or saving her father, or Desmond.
In the cockpit, William stared down at the massive aircraft carrier. The USS Nimitz was America’s oldest aircraft carrier in service, but the ship was still extremely formidable: over three football fields long and two hundred and fifty feet wide, with over four acres of flight deck and nearly five thousand crew on board. The sun was setting behind the RAAF cargo plane when the massive city on the sea came into view.
William activated the internal speaker. “On approach. Prepare for landing.”
The Australian pilot nodded, activated the radio, and called to the carrier’s tower. “Old Salt, this is Rescue Bird, request permission to land.”