Mick takes her hand and starts swimming. Together, they move through a succession of vast underwater rooms, their presence seeming to activate additional strobe lights, as if the beacons are linked to an unseen motion detector. Above their heads, the domed-shaped ceiling has grown rows of needlelike teeth, the limestone formations creating majestic, archlike partitions and bizarre, jagged sculptures of rock.

Mick feels a tightness growing in his chest as they move from an indigo blue vault into one of luminescent azure. He checks his air tank, then turns to Dominique, his hand motioning to his throat.

He’s out of air. She passes him the second-stage spare regulator attached to her BCD vest, then checks her own supply.

Eight minutes.

Eight minutes! Four minutes each. This is insane! Why did I follow him into the cenote? I should have stayed in the truck—I should have stayed in Miami. I’m going to drown, just like Iz.

The bottom suddenly drops, the cave opening to a boundless, subterranean domain. The limestone cathedral walls and ceiling glow in a luminescent pink flesh tone, the underwater cavern as large as an indoor basketball arena.

You won’t drown, you’ll just suffocate. That has to be better than what poor Iz went through. You’ll lose consciousness, you’ll just black out. Do you really believe in heaven?

Mick tugs her, motioning ahead excitedly. She swims faster, praying he’s found an exit.

Then she sees it.

Oh, no … Oh God … Oh my fucking God …

Bluemont, Virginia

The president’s helicopter is eighteen miles north of Leesburg, Virginia, when the twelve-kiloton bomb explodes.

The president and his entourage cannot see the intense flash of light, a thousand times brighter than lightning. They cannot feel the monstrous pulse of heat radiation, which races through Mount Weather’s subterranean complex, vaporizing the first lady, her children, and the rest of the inhabitants and superstructures within. Nor do they experience the crushing embrace as millions of tons of granite and steel and concrete collapse the mountain like a house of cards.

What they do see is a bright, orange fireball that turns the night into day. What they do feel is the shock wave as the blast roars past them like thunder and the firestorm sets the Virginia woods ablaze like a burning carpet.

The pilot whips the helicopter around and races away as President Mailer wails in agony, the emptiness ripping at his wounded heart, the anger raging through his mind, tearing at the fabric of his sanity.

Chichén Itza,
114 feet beneath the base of the Kukulcan Pyramid

Wide-eyed, her blood pounding furiously, Dominique stares in disbelief at the prodigious structure looming above her head. Embedded within the cavernous limestone ceiling, protruding from the rock, is the keel of a mammoth, seven-hundred-foot-long alien spacecraft.

She sucks in a slow breath of air, trying not to hyperventilate, her skin literally crawling beneath her wet suit. This isn’t real. It can’t be …