Rage Read Free Page B

’Cause, you see … you don’t have a lot of time.”
    As they walked toward Hill’s office, the captain pointed to a little kitchenette off to the side. “Coffee? Glass of water?”
    “No, sir. I’m fine.”
Why is he stalling?
    They reached his office, and Raine took a seat facing Hill’s desk. It was piled with papers, stacks of photos, and an open laptop. Behind the desk, another computer screen. On it was a paused video, cued to run.
    “Tell me, Raine. What do you know about Apophis 99942?”
    “Asteroid. Doing a flyby of our planet. Big. Seen the pictures.”
    “Right.”
    Hill hit something on his computer, and the frozen video on the screen began running. It showed a massive object moving through space. The asteroid.
    “That animation?”
    “No. Real. We’ve had some deep solar system projects out there. Not public knowledge, but they do intersecting loops of our solar system. Give us video feeds. Mainly to watch what other countries might be doing in space. At least, that was the idea.”
    “Jesus, Captain. That is mighty big.”
    Raine stared at the live image. This careening hammer threatening to destroy anything in its path.
    If this rock from space actually was to hit Earth, we wouldn’t have a chance.
    “God. The size of a city. Over three miles wide. Good thing it will miss—”
    “But here’s the thing, Raine. It’s
not
going to miss. It’s going to be a hit. A direct hit.”
    The words hung in the room like the pronouncement of a death sentence.
    Because in that instant … Raine knew that’s exactly what they were.
    “An asteroid that big? It would be—”
    “A slate wiper.”
    The screen changed. Now it
was
animation, showing the asteroid plummeting through the atmosphere, a massive shock wave racing before it, walls of ocean water rising up, screaming away from the impact well before the asteroid hit.
    Then—
impact.
    No sound. But there might as well have been, as the animation showed an explosion that seemed to bite off a massive chunk of the planet, sending country-sized pieces of Earth flying upward.
    Hill touched his laptop.
    The animation paused.
    Raine shook his head. Hill had been his captain for two major counterinsurgency efforts, a by-the-book officer who stood by his men, and definitely stood by the truth.
    So Raine didn’t question what he’d just been told.
    But it seemed unbelievable, unreal … 
impossible.
    “I don’t get it,” he said. “The whole world thinks we’re safe. They’ve been told.”
    Hill nodded, and gestured to the control room they had passed.
    “See out there?”
    “Couldn’t miss it. Like Canaveral.”
    “Yeah. This is just one of many sites with a similar purpose. Here in America, and in other countries, too. Apophis is coming, and there’s not a goddamned thing we can do about stopping it.”
    “So …” Raine took a breath.
    The whole mad night had turned surreal. Maybe he’d blink, wake up, and find himself sleeping off the boilermakers from The Hook.
    “… we’re doomed?”
    Hill sat down. He leaned close. Raine thought
—God
—that he saw something in the captain’s eyes he’d never seen before. Not in all the bloody streets and valleys of Afghanistan and Pakistan, as bad went to worse.
    Were his eyes watering up?
    “We couldn’t stop Apophis,” Hill said. “But that didn’t mean we couldn’t do
anything.
”
    He had looked away, and only now looked up at Raine.
    A small smile, and Hill looked away again.
    Something else was going on inside his captain, Raine realized.
    “Ready for your orders?” Hill said.
    Raine actually hesitated before responding. He was a soldier, though, and an officer was about to give him a mission. Somberly, professionally, he said, “Yes, sir.”
    Hill stood up.
    “C’mon, then.”
    And Captain Hill led the way out of the office.

FOUR
THE ARK
    T hey walked up the stairs behind the bank of workstations, toward a door Raine had noticed when he first descended into this