by P A Vasey
Hubert picked up the microphone. “See anything, General?”
Baker looked at the camera and shook his head. “Nothing all day on visual. Captain Powers is back at Creech, controlling four Predator drones circling twenty thousand feet above us. There’ve been a couple of suspicious movements out in the valley, but we think probably wild cats, small deer, that sort of thing. ”
“Anything on radar?” I piped up.
Baker squinted into the camera, and gave a sour look when he saw me. “Nothing confirmed by radar or infrared. I’ve another four Predators coming on station in thirty minutes. I’ll move them into a concentric pattern outside the inner ring, approximately ten miles distant. This should give us an early warning of anyone or anything approaching from a radius of fifty miles.”
Hubert had told me that these drones were armed to the teeth with ballistic weapons, non-electronically controlled to prevent electromagnetic jamming and interference. I turned to him and whispered, “Could a single person get through on foot, like at SETI?”
Somehow the microphones picked up my question, and Baker leaned in. “Theoretically, yes. But our instruments are calibrated to detect and localise movement of objects smaller than a human being. We should see him coming.”
“And when you do,” I said tightly, “what’s the grand plan?”
Baker blinked in surprise, then scoffed. “You’ve seen the cordon we’ve put up here. State of the art US military hardware. The best in the world. If he shows up, and is an aggressor, we’ll take him down.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Did you even watch the footage from SETI?”
Baker scowled, picked up his binoculars and pointedly started scanning the horizon. I was about to say something about the inflexibility of the military mind, when there was a familiar tickle behind my eyes and my legs wobbled.
“General,” I said quietly, “Can you get the external cameras to pan around for us?”
He reached down out of shot and the screens switched to a view of the main road leading away from the crater snaking into the distance. As the camera moved along the road and passed a rock formation I saw a blur of motion, like a smudge on the screen.
“Back up. What was that?” I snapped.
The camera backtracked and brought the rocks into focus. There, standing silently on the top of the tallest boulder, was a figure. Details were indistinct, but there he was, standing tall and conspicuous, unconcerned about cover or stealth.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Hubert whispered. “How long d’you think he’s been here?”
Baker had brought his binoculars up again and was scanning in the same direction. “Is it him?” he asked, and I thought I could hear a slight tremor in his voice.
I ground my teeth, jaw muscles bunching. “Yes. Yes it is …”
Baker flung the binoculars on the bench in front of him and picked up the field telephone, connecting him to the troop commanders around the crater. “Target in view, distance approximately three clicks south east, direct line of sight by the rock formation adjacent to the road. Nearest units, engage at will.”
Two M1A2 Abrams tanks on station a mile up the road cranked their gears and brought their 120mm artillery to bear on the rock formation. Their guns blazed orange, the reports coming a few seconds later like distant thunderclaps. Their targeting systems were accurate and the rocks blew apart into a million pieces, orange desert dust and black smoke obscuring the result. Apache helicopter gunships were also now arrowing in from the south and unleashed Hellfire missiles into the expanding ball of smoke. They banked like fighter jets and opened up with their Gatling guns, sending tracer rounds and 30mm cannon shells into the target zone. The Abrams were now moving towards the rocks at high gear, their ten ton bulks eating up the ground at forty miles an hour, seemingly oblivious to the bumpy rock-strewn desert floor. They were firing continuously, their guns staying locked onto the target despite the high speed jumping and rolling. More huge explosions lit up the sky and the percussive forces were visible at the crater where General Baker was directing operations. Still firing, the tanks disappeared into the dust and smoke drifting up the road. The Apaches had stopped but remained hovering a hundred or so yards out, hugging the desert floor just high enough to have line of sight to the target area, and were still pumping high velocity rounds into the centre of the cloud. I assumed all the gunners were using IR or UV to see through the cloud and would be avoiding the tanks.
I heard Baker on the field telephone again, getting a line to the tank commanders. “This is Baker, report. Target situation?”
There was a crackle of interference, and static, and then; “Approaching target now… completely destroyed… no signs of … wait … what’s that?”
The line went dead.
Out of the cloud and tossed like a child’s toy, a crushed Abrams tank bounced and rolled into view coming to rest upside down in the middle of the road. It was followed by the second tank, similarly crushed like an empty soda can, ripped into two pieces, gun and turret separated and spinning into the desert. The Apaches resumed shooting Hellfire missiles but suddenly their rotors lost all co-ordination and they jerked and twitched in the air like epileptic bats, spinning end to end and dropping to the ground, bursting into flames and setting off a fireworks display of residual ordinance.
“Shit, shit!” shouted Hubert at no one in particular.
I grabbed his arm. “Get Baker to pull them all back. Get the troops out of there!”
Hubert keyed the mic. “General, are you getting this?”
“Affirmative,” came the reply. “But no visual on the target. Releasing ballistic packages … into centre of cloud … now.”
I knew this meant the four Predators had been lining up like Stuka dive-bombers from World War Two, and had dropped their entire ordinance, which was now falling at terminal velocity from their release ceiling of five thousand yards. With no electronics, these bombs were lumps of metal and high explosives, arrowing in with huge kinetic energy and a thousand pounds of explosive. I could still see nothing moving within the cloud, but there was a light wind thinning it out and blowing it north towards the crater. As if reading my mind, Hubert flicked the camera back to IR, and I caught sight of a figure walking slowly through the cloud and then the bombs hit, and I had to look away as the IR flashed bright white. Prodigious plumes of smoke and dust and erupted as sequential impacts jettisoned rocks and debris into the air. There was a rippling effect at the edge of the smoke, like a stone had been skimmed across a lake. Adam emerged from its centre, unscathed, and broke into a run, heading directly up the road towards the crater.
Hubert’s eyes were wide, and he seemed struck dumb.
Baker had already picked up the phone. “All units, target approaching on foot. Fire at will.”
Hubert licked his lips and muttered, “Now we’ll see if those MAARS units are worth a million bucks a pop.”
The cameras switched to the fences and gun emplacements surrounding the crater and the massed troops occupying fortified positions down the slopes to the second line of fences where the automatic gun emplacements were bedded in. Another six Abrams tanks were racing around from the northern side of the crater to set up another perimeter higher up where the laboratories and gangways leading into the canopy were situated.
At that moment all the radar-controlled motion-sensitive MAARS emplacements facing south opened up at once. The subwoofer in the situation room began to shake with the noise, which was rattling my bones, and I stuck my fingers in my ears. M240B machine guns rained ordinance on the approaching figure, and grenade after grenade launched in a computerised orgy of destruction. The troops lining the slopes began firing their automatic weapons, machine guns on HUMVEEs opened up, and the Abrams joined in with their 120mm cannons. There was no break in the cacophony of noise and the figure of Adam Benedict was once again obliterated by smoke, fire, dust and hurtling debris. Then the dust cleared as a transparent bubble appeared with a human figure at its centre. Ma
chine-gun rounds and grenades impacted harmlessly against the bubble, and the huge 120mm rounds from the Abrams tanks could be seen to disappear into the surface like water droplets onto a placid lake.
Another ripple appeared, bigger than before, pushing the smoke and flames away in concentric circles. Directly underneath the bubble, the desert floor started to liquefy producing a wave of earth and rocks that broke the surface and rolled up the hill tsunami-like towards the gun emplacements. Within seconds it had engulfed the guns and tanks, burying them completely, and continued to roll up the slope into the lines of troops already scattering and running for the cover of the crater. There was to be no escape, and no respite was being given. Within the bubble, Adam was gesturing right and left at remaining tanks and artillery pieces, which then crumpled as if they had been dropped to crush depth in the ocean. More Apache helicopters dropped like flies hit with bug spray, their power cut and systems fried. Predator drones were plucked from the sky, engines flaming, spinning into the sides of the crater and exploding in fireballs, which engulfed fleeing troops. Soldiers remaining at their posts were tossed aside, their bodies ruined and dead before they fell to earth.
Like an Angel of Death, Adam walked through the flaming wreck of a tank towards a group of soldiers with shoulder-held missiles. Their missiles streaked towards him at almost point-blank range but at the last minute careened off into the sky, wobbling and spluttering and exploding in the atmosphere. Soon, every piece of artillery, mobile or stationary, was either buried under rubble or in flames. The remaining soldiers fell back, supporting the injured and firing sporadically and uselessly at the unstoppable force bearing down on them.
“We’ve lost,” I said, swallowing hard. “It’s over.”
Hubert was looking at the floor of the situation room, breathing heavily, head in hands. He turned to me, his eyes red. “No. We’ve one more play to make.”
He picked up the handset and punched a single digit, and then hung up. My eyes widened as the realisation struck home.
“You’re not serious,” I stammered.
He just looked at me and gave a slight shrug. “It’s all we have. God forgive us.”
On the monitor, Baker could be seen looking up into the sky, squinting, smiling. Wispy white clouds could be seen in the stratosphere, mixed with circling contrails.
B52 bombers.
There were fewer and fewer bursts of noise, all gunfire was spluttering out as the remainder of Baker’s troops retreated down the hill. I could see Adam (or was it the Vu-Hak, and did it matter?), now on the edge of the crater, the bubble dissipating and evaporating as he climbed onto the gantry and disappeared down the sides into the crater itself.
On the monitor Baker looked directly into the camera, and gave us a salute. There was a faint crescendo whistling to be heard, just at the edges of perception but gradually increasing. The camera flicked skywards, and I thought I could see the bombs approaching, small black pinpricks against the powdery sky.
I looked back at Baker, and I caught a grim smile as he nodded at me. I put my hand up to my mouth, and then everything flared white as the nuclear fireball consumed the crater.
DAY 7
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Ground Zero, Nevada Test Site
Like two bloated vultures, our Chinook helicopters warily approached the crater in ever-decreasing circles. The morning sun would not be making its appearance for an hour or so, but the sky was already softening to a blue behind the distant mountains, while clouds were blushed like a ripe mango. It was beautiful, the stars still twinkling in the charcoal of the firmament, but fading fast.
I looked out of the window, numb and beyond shock at what I was seeing. Next to me Hubert was craning his neck, grimacing and gurning as he tried to get a good look. I didn’t recognise the crater from the previous photograph which had shown a symmetrical pockmark on the desert floor, surrounded by gentle slopes, cactus plants and Joshua trees. The devastation from the four nuclear bombs was of an order of magnitude bigger than the explosion that had created it sixty years ago. The new crater was a ragged hole, having gouged out and flattened the slopes whilst scorching the earth. What I assumed were the remnants of military equipment and mobile laboratories were just tangled metal shapes, melted and flattened into the ground, blackened and smoking. Nothing was recognisable; there were no trees or plants and even the bitumen had melted away. Small fires were still burning from the remnants of larger buildings but the force of the blasts had incinerated everything and then sucked the oxygen out of the air, leaving nothing behind to burn.
“It’s not what I expected,” I said to Hubert, through the intercom.
“I know,” he said, looking at me strangely. “It should be much worse.”
I heard Stillman’s voice through the headphones. “It’s incredible. According to the readings taken from satellite, and now from the recorders on board, there’s still no radioactivity from the crater.”
The scientist in me couldn’t accept this, despite all the data. We’d spent a good part of the evening pouring through the satellite uplinks and drone cameras, evaluating the effects of the first nuclear weapon used in anger on American soil. The first nuclear weapon to purposely kill American lives. In ‘self defence’.
Hubert had assured me that nothing could have survived the sheer devastating power of hundreds of kilotons of TNT-equivalence and radiation delivered into a kill zone corralled by sheer rock walls. The focussing of blast wave would have been amplified by the geography so that anything living within the crater would have been immediately vaporized.
It was a drone video that had started the head scratching. Despite the motion of the bird, the feed was steady and the picture sharp. The screen showed an orbital view of the crater taken just before the bombs impacted. There were burning tanks, destroyed buildings, and what looked like dead ants, which I knew, were human beings. Then the screen went white as the bombs exploded, rings of energy and fire rippling outward. But then a black circle appeared at the centre of the crater followed by a kaleidoscope of colours appearing to spiral concentrically into it. In disbelief I had watched the nuclear detonations being sucked in to the black heart of whatever had appeared in the crater.
“Down a plughole,” I murmured aloud.
Hubert looked over at me, hearing my voice through the headphones. “Whatever that was, it sucked the radioactivity and all the heat out of the detonation.”
Stillman said, “No radiation, so it’s safe to go in.”
“Safe?” I raised my eyebrows. “We’ve no idea what happened. Or what’s waiting for us.”
Hubert shrugged, and gave the command to the pilot who banked the huge machine around and descended nose up into the crater. There was a soft bump on landing and the rotors immediately started to power down. We unclipped and made our way to the stern of the Chinook, Hubert in the lead followed by Stillman. A couple of agents carrying Heckler and Koch submachine guns pushed past us and flanked the bottom of the ramp.
“Really?” I looked at Hubert. “More guns?”
The ramp opened to reveal the crater floor, which was now shiny and glasslike. As the Chinook shut off its engines, an eerie silence descended which felt almost like a purification after the deafening noise of the rotors. When my ears became more accustomed to the lack of sound I thought I could hear the creaks and ticks of the slowing blades and the hot motor starting to cool. Other than that only my rhythmic breathing brokered the air to my ears, and so I gingerly headed down the ramp and looked out. The crater had been flattened and now was three times the diameter I remembered. One half was in absolute darkness due to the angle of the rising sun, and ragged crevices and cracks climbed the walls like scars. A faint warm breeze drifted down from above and brought with it the smell of smouldering brush and scrubland. I stepped off the ramp and almost lost my footing as my shoe slipped on the glassy floor. Hubert steadied me with a hand from behind and pointed towards the darkened half of the crater. The agents fanned out e
ither side and brought out pen torches.
I walked carefully to the wall and ran my hand over it, expecting a cool rock-like surface. What I felt was strangely warm and slimy, and some sort of unguent coated my palm and fingertips. I brought my fingers to my nose and sniffed, inhaling a weird odour that was oddly sweet and sharp. I pushed my finger in and the wall gave gently under the pressure, like a rubber mat, springing back slowly as I withdrew.
“What the fuck happened here?” said Stillman next to me, her voice tinged with awe. “Don’t the laws of physics apply any more?”
I laughed out loud. The extraordinary, the exceptional, the sheer unnaturalness of the last week seemed to have come to a head, here in this crater. A week ago - shit, was it only a week? - I would have struggled to do my own taxes, now … I seemed to be the calmest person here.
“Something over there,” shouted one of the agents, shining his torch into a larger opening further down the wall, hidden in the shadow. We crossed over to where he was standing, straining our eyes into the depths of a triangular-shaped cavity about six feet high. Hubert brought out a torch of his own, which he added to the agent’s beam. The two lights fought for dominance, highlighting floating clouds of dust and what looked like small jets of steam venting from the floor. I peered around Hubert’s shoulder, squinting into the rearmost corners, my eyes still not quite dark-adjusted.
“Oh my god, what’s that?” whispered Stillman, putting a hand to her mouth.
The light beams had converged on a dust-covered human-sized figure, curled foetus-like against the wall. There were no distinguishing features apart from a head shape and an elongated body and legs, and in fact it bore a startling resemblance to one of the stone corpses found covered in volcanic larva at Pompeii.
“Is it him?” said Hubert, with a quick glance in my direction.
I tentatively reached out and touched the shape. It was solid, almost rock-like, and dust sloughed off where my finger traced a line. I took a sniff, and pulled my nose back at the sharp, acridness of the odour.
