The Siren Project

by Renneberg, Stephen

  “Maybe they are storage facilities,” Gunter said, “Housing substances that require separate containment for safety reasons. Explosives, chemicals, hazardous materials.”

  “So how do we crack this nut?” Mitch asked. “They’ve got video cameras covering the approaches, let’s assume three sixty degree coverage. If it is a combined intel and military facility, they'll have infrared beams, motion detectors and heat sensors. Possibly pressure sensitive floors.”

  “And armed guards,” Mouse added. “Let’s not forget them.”

  “Internal generators will make the power supply uninterruptible,” Gunter said. “Cutting external power to the building will achieve nothing, but warn them of our approach.”

  “The fence is probably not electrified,” Christa said. “That would be too risky in an urban area. The last thing they want is a child being killed by their fence.”

  “The car park's full by day, empty by night,” Mitch said, “So we go in after midnight. Mouse, how are you coming with that data stream you recorded from the snooper?”

  “The air conditioning system uses a simple command and response syntax. No encryption, but then, all it’s doing is regulating the temperature. Once I get twenty four hours of recordings, I should be able to map the entire language. From there I can drop a worm in and see what the box controlling the air conditioning system is connected to.”

  “We’ll get the data and video recording tonight.” Mitch turned to Gunter. “G, start researching all the latest gimmicks the defense and intel communities are using. We’ll assume everything they have in there is top shelf. Profile that place as if you were fitting it out yourself, no expense spared.”

  Gunter nodded.

  “What do you want me to do?” Christa asked.

  Mitch was thoughtful for a moment. “Knightly told me your organization watched all other spook organizations. That was your job, right?”

  “Monitoring, yes.”

  “How?”

  “We observe their activities.”.

  “I got that. But how do you monitor their activities when they're all locked behind walls of secrecy?”

  “We rely on informers, we track government expenditures, we gather–”

  “Christa,” he said soberly, silencing her with a word. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. How do you penetrate what they’re doing, the stuff no one ever gets to see? The hidden records, the secret operations, the black projects. Knightly was surprised his people missed Siren, even though it was a black operation. That means he’s used to knowing what covert ops are going on. It’s been bugging me ever since he told me that. How does he do it? How does he know?”

  Christa looked uncomfortable, but said nothing.

  “What is it? A back door? A key that unlocks the military and intelligence communities, so you can see what they’re doing without them ever knowing?”

  “There’s no such thing,” Christa declared icily.

  “Tell him we want it, whatever it is, whatever passwords or machines you use. We want them.”

  “I can’t.”

  Mouse’s eyes bulged. “It exists? Freaking awesome!”

  “We can't crack that place without help,” Mitch persisted. “Just four of us, with no way to contact our usual sources, with Echelon on our backs and a bunch of highly trained spooks sniffing for us. It's time to get serious.”

  “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “I know exactly what I’m asking for.”

  “If it got out, if you lost control of it, the entire US military and intelligence system would be compromised.”

  “It is already,” Mitch said simply.

  Christa opened her mouth to speak, then fell silent, realizing he was right.

  “What exactly are we talking about here?” Mouse asked eagerly.

  “It's called Peter,” she said.

  “Peter?” Mouse repeated confused. “P.E.T.E.R,” he sounded the letters slowly, thinking. “What is that an acronym for?”

  “It’s not an acronym. It’s short for Saint Peter.”

  Mitch smiled. “Because Saint Peter stands at the gates of heaven and no one may pass without his permission. If you have it, you unlock the gates. . . .”

  “And gain entry to Paradise,” Christa added.

  * * * *

  Shortly after midnight, they returned to the hills overlooking the Newton Institute. While Mouse and Gunter retrieved the video and data recordings from the buried receivers, Mitch and Christa used an infrared camera to study the Institute.

  “There’s a hot zone in the center of the facility,” Mitch said, taking several pictures of the glowing red blur emanating from the ground floor. “The rest of the building is normal.” He slowly scanned the length of the building, occasionally picking up man sized heat sources, counting each one. “I make at least a dozen people in there, probably guards this time of night. Plus the guy on the gate.”

  “That hot spot might be the x-ray laser lab,” Christa suggested. “Cooling off after tests today?”

  “Take a look,” he said, passing the bulky camera to Christa.

  Mitch switched to a conventional night scope to check the approaches to the Institute. He noted how the guard at the front entrance sat inside the gate house reading, hardly ever looking up. “Gate house guard is sloppy. I bet they haven’t had a break in since they set up here.” He memorized how far the light from the main building flooded onto the surrounding green lawns, certain they illustrated the field of view of the surveillance cameras. The six bunkers behind the main office complex were not directly lit, but stood out clearly in the fall off from the main flood lights. “Those block houses don’t have their own lights. Mustn’t be much of value in them.”

  Christa angled the infrared camera at the block houses. “No heat signatures there. Maybe they are just store houses.”

  “At least the outer fences aren’t directly lit,” Mitch said, studying how the floodlights from the main building were carefully aimed so as not to spill light beyond the fence. “I guess they don't want it to look too much like a fortress, or they'd draw the attention of the local authorities.”

  “That’s strange,” Christa murmured, her eye glued to the infrared camera. “There’s a faint heat signature coming from the path leading to one of those block houses. It’s moving slowly toward the main building.” She handed Mitch the camera. “Fourth building along.”

  Mitch set his night vision scope down and studied the path leading to the building she'd identified with the camera, taking several shots as he detected the localized infrared signature. “Looks like an ordinary concrete path, no reason for it to have any heat signature at all.” The heat blur moved from the path to the road, and continued on toward the building. “Wait a minute . . .”

  “You see something?” She said, picking up the night scope and studying the road.

  “That heat signature isn’t coming from the path.” Mitch said, taking photographs every few seconds, tracking the heat bloom. “It’s coming from underneath it!” He followed the thermal blur as it edged towards, then vanished beneath, the main building. “Now what do you think they’ve got hidden under those paths?”

  “It’s got to be hot for us to read it through the concrete.”

  Behind them, Mouse and Gunter had finished reburying the recorders, and were now waiting at the van. “Time to go,” Mitch said, already considering the possibilities.

  * * * *

  Gunter sifted through hours of video recordings of the Institute taken by the roof top spy camera, building profiles of the people who inhabited the Institute, how many civilians, how many guards and when shifts changed. He enhanced images of vehicle license plates and people’s faces for later reference. Eventually, he invited Mitch to join him in front of the television screen. The screen filled with an image of the Institute in mid afternoon. The car park was full as a shadow passed over the lawn and a helicopter dropped into view, settling on the grass.

  “It's
an army Blackhawk,” Gunter said.

  Several soldiers jumped out to stand guard beside the chopper, then an officer and a civilian climbed out and walked toward the main entrance. When they were in the middle of the screen, Gunter froze the frame and enhanced the image until the two blurred faces were in close up. He held up the photograph Mitch had taken of Richard McNamara, the ex-NSA officer, and compared it to the image on the screen. Even though the civilian’s face was blurred, the resemblance was undeniable.

  “Echelon must have voice matched me when I called from the airport,” Mitch said uncertainly, looking for a reason why McNamara was back on the West Coast.

  “I do not believe he returned for you.” Gunter enhanced the image again, removing McNamara from the picture, focusing on the military officer he was with. The officer was wearing a gold braided cap, the visor concealing his face from the high angle camera.

  “We can’t ID him from that.”

  “I’ve gone over every frame. There is no clear image of him. But there is this.” Gunter expanded the blurred image, reorienting it until the man's shoulder was center frame. “Do you know what that is?”

  Mitch looked perplexed. “Photo reconnaissance was never my strong point.”

  “Watch this.” Gunter imposed a green wireframe outline over the image, rotating it to match the angle of the shoulder. The wireframe formed into three stars.

  “A lieutenant general?” Mitch said incredulously as he stared at the wireframe insignia. It could mean only one thing.

  Treason.

  * * * *

  While Gunter analyzed the roof top camera’s recordings, Mouse studied the crawler’s pictures of the weapon test beds while Christa looked on. Mitch edged around behind her to watch.

  “There's some weird shit going on in that lab,” Mouse said. “Check this out.” He replayed a section of recording he'd already watched a dozen times. “Those three big mothers on the left are older prototypes. I’m three quarters of the way through the recording, and so far, no one has touched them. The fourth machine, the smallest one, gets all of the attention.”

  Two scientists in white coats took up positions at the computer consoles to the right of the machine, while three others worked on the machine itself. Two more men in lab coats carried a cage with a chimpanzee to a metal table at the end of the long glass tubular focusing unit. They gently eased the chimp out of the cage and strapped it to the table. The animal was placid, until its movements were restricted by the straps, then it began to actively scream complaints at them. The scientists ignored the animal’s protests as they strapped its head into a brace, hydraulically orienting the table to the end of the focusing unit. The three scientists preparing the main machine now positioned eight small white spheres around the chimp’s head, each sphere suspended on its own white metal armature. Each sphere was connected by glass tubes to the focusing unit. One of the two animal handling scientists took an electric cattle prod from a table and jabbed the chimpanzee with it multiple times. The animal screamed wildly, struggling futilely against its bonds.

  Mitch noticed Christa was deeply disturbed by the video, but said nothing.

  The chimpanzee continued screaming in remembered agony, even after the cattle prod had been withdrawn. The second scientist ignored the screaming, giving the animal an injection that caused its body to go limp.

  “I don’t get it,” Mitch said. “He tortured the monkey, then sent it to sleep. What’s the point?”

  “You’ll see in a minute,” Mouse said, motioning for Mitch to continue watching the screen. “Notice the monkey isn’t asleep, it’s paralyzed. Its eyes are open. They want it conscious, but incapable of physical movement.”

  Machine number four sparked to life as the glass focusing unit filled with a bright white light. An electrical haze formed around the rectangular brass object at the source of the focusing unit, where the energy field was generated. In front of the two scientists at the computer console were eight television screens. The screens turned from gray to an image of the chimp skull with finely graded color differences defining different levels of brain activity. Each screen showed the brain and skull structure of the chimp from different angles, then computer generated lines formed on each screen in a complex overlapping pattern.

  The two scientists with the chimp stepped well back from the table, as one of the scientists at the computer console activated the eight white spheres. They began moving slowly, orienting themselves, as one by one, the computer generated lines formed crosshairs on the eight screens, indicating the emitters were perfectly aligned with a point deep inside the chimpanzee’s brain. When all eight screens displayed a perfectly formed crosshair over the chimp’s brain, a small flash of light showed on each screen as the eight sub atomic particle beams intersected inside the chimp’s brain.

  Mouse pointed to the eyes. “See that! Its eyes are nuts.” The chimpanzee remained motionless, completely under the sway of the paralytic drug, but its eyes fluttered rapidly. “Maybe it’s in pain, maybe it’s lost control. Who knows, but my theory is the spheres are emitting particle streams that intersect in the brain, at a molecular level.”

  Gradually, the eight sets of crosshairs slid across eight slowly moving images of the chimp’s brain while the robot controls reoriented the emitters.

  “Are those spheres firing while they’re moving?” Mitch asked.

  “I ran tests on the pictures,” Mouse replied. “The spheres move in very small increments simultaneously, then stop. My guess is only after they’re stationary and have refocused on the intersection point, do they fire. Because the movements are small and the firing is rapid, it looks like constant movement, but it isn’t. It’s rapid stop start.”

  “Getting those beams to move and intersect accurately, that fast, is quite a feat.”

  “You said it! One beam does nothing, but eight beams intersecting the same molecular coordinate inside the brain does . . . whatever the hell it does? The beams might even be different types of particles that interact when they collide. Like nitro and glycerin being added together. Tricky stuff.”

  They watched the chimpanzee with a mixture of fascination and revulsion, as it experienced the treatment with glazed flickering eyes. The eight projectors slid back from the metal table, then one of the scientists injected the chimpanzee again. Several minutes later, once the stimulant had taken effect, the chimpanzee began to writhe as it regained control of its body. The scientist with the cattle prod then stepped up and jabbed the chimp, sending electricity arcing into the animal, but the chimp showed no reaction.

  “Now that’s creepy,” Mouse exclaimed. “The monkey doesn’t feel anything.”

  “He feels it,” Christa corrected him. “But, he’s been conditioned to ignore the pain.”

  Mitch watched the scientist jab the monkey with the cattle prod several more times. “If they’re still experimenting on monkeys, that’s proof they haven’t perfected the technique, even if they can use it on humans in an emergency.”

  “If they can do that to a monkey, the technique is far advanced. They’re not developing it, they’re perfecting it.”

  “The human brain,” Christa said, “Is far more complex than a chimpanzee’s.”

  “Mouse is right,” Mitch said. “This thing is much further ahead than we thought. When is Knightly going to get back to us about Peter?”

  “When I called him. His first response was a flat no, but eventually he agreed to discuss it with the Executive Committee. I really doubt he'll hand it over to you.”

  “Call him again. Tell him this thing is more advanced than any of us suspected. If he doesn’t give us everything he can, it'll be too late.”

  Christa didn't answer. She just looked at the screen, watching the flashes of electricity strike the chimpanzee who remained oblivious to the pain.

  “This thing is the future,” Mitch said. “Nuclear weapons can destroy countries, but this invisible monster can control mankind without anyone ever knowing it. It�
�s not only the end of our way of life, it’s the end of all free will.”

  Slowly, Christa realized Mitch was right. “I'll call him.”

  * * * *

  Gunter drove the blacked out van up to the ridge above the Newton Institute shortly after 2 AM, parked and donned a pair of night vision goggles. He settled back to keep watch, while behind him, Mouse established contact with the signal snooper attached to the air conditioning control cable. Mitch and Christa sat opposite, watching in silence, while Gunter’s voice sounded clearly over the intercom.

  “Site is clear.”

  Mouse had fully dissected the language used to control the air conditioning units that controlled the Institute’s environment. There was nothing unusually sophisticated about it, and there was no cipher protecting it. He typed in some instructions and his computer transmitted the program to the snooper.

  “Worm away,” Mouse said.

  “Will they spot it?” Mitch asked.

  “Unlikely. It’s coated in the garbage they use to talk to the air conditioners. And it’s segmented, so no one piece is enough to show what it does.”

  “What exactly does it do?” Christa asked.

  “Goes home to mama.”

  Christa looked confused.

  “Finds the controlling computer,” Mitch explained.

  Mouse watched the screen for barely two minutes. “Found it!” Control and output codes flashed across the screen. Mouse scanned the cryptic text expertly, then issued a command that brought up a screen with a simple list of menu items. “Okay, it’s a dumb box with a one dimensional brain and a simple job, keep the temperatures constant in various rooms. Not exactly what I’d hoped for.”

  “Can you do anything with it?” Mitch asked tensely.

  “It’s more a question of, is it connected to anything useful? Unfortunately, it’s totally stand alone. All I can do is turn the temperature up or down or off. Not much use, unless we want to make them freeze to death.”