by Bob Mayer
“Don’t.” The man laughed, the manic edge sharper. “The Fireflies got to me.”
“What are you talking—”
The man tossed something over into the passenger seat.
Winslow saw the hard drive with the ASU control number on the side. “I’ll need time to get the money,” Winslow said. “A week?”
“What are you going to do?” the man asked. “Take out a fourth mortgage on your house?”
Winslow started in surprise.
“I wouldn’t be here trying to make a deal if I didn’t do my homework,” the man said. “I know you don’t have the money. But there is someone who does have the money who actually lives rather close to you.” Burns tossed a slip of paper over the seat. “Tell him it’s an investment. He’s the sort of man who would be interested in that. But I wouldn’t cross him.”
Winslow picked up the paper. He read the name. “But—”
“Trust me on this,” Burns said. “He can loan you five hundred thousand. It’s nothing to him. Unless you don’t pay him back.”
Five hundred thousand was nothing to what he could reap if he made this work, Winslow thought. “All right. Five hundred thousand.”
“Smart man.” The man shifted in the seat.
Winslow resisted the urge to grab the hard drive and race back inside and start right away.
“Something you need to know,” the man said, “if you want to not get caught and stay alive. Unlike Mister Craegen.”
But Winslow’s mind was racing ahead, hearing the applause from the audience in Geneva. Forming the words to the speech that was now inevitable. “Yes?” he muttered, his mind on other things.
“You need to shield it so there are no emissions once it activates,” the man warned. “Especially muons.”
“Muons?”
“That’s how they can find you,” the man said.
“Who?”
“The Nightstalkers.”
“Uh-huh.” Winslow wondered how much the Nobel medal weighed. How it would feel on his chest.
The man held a hand between the seats. “Give it to me.”
As Winslow reluctantly handed the hard drive back he saw the scars on the back of the man’s hand. The drive disappeared and then the man extended a small slip of paper. “Once I see the five hundred thousand in that account, I’ll call you. Set up a dead drop so you can get the drive. You know what a dead drop is?”
Winslow tensed at the term.
The man laughed again, sounding a bit insane, but Winslow wasn’t listening. “Of course you don’t. Tradecraft. Not required learning for physicists. Put simply, I’ll call you and tell you where you can find it. It’s now on you, Doctor.”
The man abruptly got out of the car, slamming the door shut. Winslow powered down his window. “How soon—”
“As soon as you deposit the money.” The man was gone into the darkness.
As Winslow put the car into drive to race home, he began to hear the applause once more.
* * *
Moms and Nada sat in the CP still discussing various ways they could catch Burns. Arriving back at the Ranch just before dawn, most of the day had been spent standing down from the Courier operation and doing the After Action Report. Now payback was on their minds.
In the Den they were discussing various ways to kill him.
Given the state of the van, it had to have been, as Nada had immediately surmised, an inside job. Someone who knew the Protocol, knew the vans, knew the Couriers, knew it all.
It only took till early afternoon for Ms. Jones’s long arm to discover that Burns was off the grid.
“‘How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,’” Eagle quoted.
“About twenty times in the past year,” Mac said. “Why don’t you come up with something original?”
“I never liked Burns,” Roland said. He was throwing a hatchet at the three-foot-high stump of a tree. How the stump of a tree had found its way out here to the desert and down into the Den was a mystery, but it had quickly become the magnet of all matters of throwing devices: hatchets, knives, spears. Bored men needed some release. Bored killers liked to throw killing devices.
Mac snorted. “Moms named him after Major Burns from M*A*S*H for some reason. Moms never likes naming anyone and she was surprised when Ms. Jones chose it. I don’t know what they picked up in him. He didn’t like the name either.”
Eagle went over and grabbed the handle of the hatchet. He grunted with effort, trying to pull it out after Roland’s throw. It came on the second jerk. He walked to the other end of the team table and prepared to throw.
“Duck!” Mac yelled as Eagle let loose.
Kirk took it seriously and dove under the table — just in time, as the top of the weapon hit the stump and it recoiled back, skidding across the table and then clanking to the floor.
“Dude, we have a rule!” Mac said as he picked up the hatchet. “You don’t get to throw.”
Eagle frowned. “I’ll get it eventually.”
“You’ll get one of us eventually,” Mac said, holding the hatchet out to Kirk. “Let’s see how our new man does.”
Kirk remembered the woodpile, the one Pads had forced him to make that summer after finding him hiding in the hollow of the old tree down by the creek. Pads had ordered him to cut the old tree down and stood there pulling from the bottle as Kirk, then known as Winthrop Carter, did it. Then Pads had given him a quota of wood to be cut every day from the dead tree, until there was nothing left of that tree but kindling. No more hide spot, and every log tossed on the fire that winter was a reminder that you couldn’t hide from Pads.
Kirk threw, and the hatchet flashed across the room, hitting the trunk with a solid thud, the blade burying deep into the wood.
“Damn,” Mac said. “You can throw.”
From the corner of the room, Doc said a single word. “Rifts.”
All activity ceased as Doc continued. “While you gentlemen have been concerned all day with Burns and his betrayal, I believe we need to further educate Kirk on Rifts, since we might well be facing one sooner than anticipated.”
Mac and Roland sat down at the team table. Kirk grabbed the seat closest to Doc, who was in the armchair that had been in the CP for the in-briefing with Nada and Moms.
“Let’s start with what we don’t know,” Doc said. “We don’t know what Rifts are, nor do we know what the Fireflies are. Not exactly. But skipping all the scientific jargon and theories, let’s construct a framework from which you can conduct operational tactics.”
Kirk said nothing, beginning to understand Nada’s warnings about the scientists.
“My best guess is that Rifts are tears to the multiverse. To either a world parallel to ours or another world entirely. And the Fireflies are probes. Some think the Fireflies are living entities who have crossed over, but the way they inhabit objects and creatures indicates a level of programming and not innate intelligence to me. Some of the choices the Fireflies make aren’t exactly the best — the cactus in the Fun Outside Tucson, for example.”
“Tell that to Burns,” Roland said. “And that rabbit didn’t seem a smart choice, but if Nada had been a shade slower, it would have torn your neck open and you wouldn’t be here. And the rattler did get you.”
Doc flushed; whether in embarrassment or anger, it was impossible to tell. “Yes, yes.”
“Doc,” Roland said, “as even you said: he don’t need theories.” Roland put his heavy hands flat on the table. “We’re the Nightstalkers. We, the Shooters, kill Fireflies, and Doc there, the Scientist, he shuts the Rift. That’s it. Moms and Nada told you how we kill the Fireflies. If it’s living, I usually ending up flaming it until there’s nothing but ash. Other stuff, Mac and I and the rest of the team blast and flame until there’s nothing left. Then this little gold thing floats up out of whatever it was in and — poof — no more Firefly.”
“But how
did this start?” Kirk asked.
“When the first Rift was opened,” Doc said.
“Who did that?” Kirk asked.
“A German scientist here at Area 51,” Doc said. “Near the end and after World War II we brought a bunch of their scientists over here to work on—”
“Fucking Nazis,” Mac said.
“—various projects under the auspices of Operation Paperclip. We fought the Russians for the brain trust left from the Third Reich. It made Guantanamo look like a joke. Most people know about the ones we used in the space program, but we took whoever we could grab, and there were several theoretical physicists who had really produced nothing of practical use for the Germans, but were let loose in the labs in Area 51 to experiment—”
“Fuck around,” Mac said.
“—and one of them developed a way to open a Rift in 1948,” Doc said. “You can read about it in the binders that Nada gave you. It turned out to be a mess, since no one had encountered the Fireflies before and it took them a while—”
“And a lot of good men,” Mac interjected.
“—before they were able to figure it out, shut the Rift, and destroy the Fireflies. The first version of the Nightstalkers was formed under the supervision of a committee called Majestic 12 and originally headquartered at Area 51. Their primary mission was to find and destroy Fireflies and close the Rift they came out of. Since 1948 there have been twenty-seven recorded openings of Rifts.”
“All in the US?” Kirk asked.
“Most,” Doc said. “The theory behind them is the key, and ever since 1948, it’s been like the Holy Grail of physicists to create a controlled Rift and figure out what’s on the other side. No one has even been able to control one and no one has ever figured out what’s on the other side.”
“They’ve all dropped the Grail,” Eagle said. “They can open them and Doc here can shut them, but they can’t be controlled. Pretty much everyone who has opened one gets sucked through. To where, we have no idea, but such is the price of stupidity.”
“What about Rifts outside the US?” Kirk asked.
“The Russians have a team like us,” Doc said, “and between us we cover the world. We’ve done five missions overseas.”
“Not fun,” Roland noted.
“The problem,” Doc said, “is that science has the potential—”
“To screw things up,” Moms said from the door of the CP. Kirk reacted without thinking, hopping to his feet and popping to attention like he was back in the Ranger Bat.
Moms smiled. “I like this. It’s like the real army.”
“Don’t get used to it,” Nada said from behind her.
“Chill, dude,” Mac said.
Kirk sheepishly sat back down, the habits of the Rangers hard to let go of.
“In my opinion, the real birth of the Nightstalkers,” Moms said, “was not 1948, but on the sixteenth of June, 1945, not too far from here in the desert outside Alamogordo Air Force Base.”
“A Rift?” Kirk asked.
“No. Worse.” Moms came over to the team table and took a seat. Nada also grabbed a chair. “On that day, at five thirty in the morning, the first atomic weapon was detonated. You have to understand the context. They were trying something unknown. There were no computer projections. Those guys were using slide rulers. Some of the smartest people out there in that desert, people who had helped build the bomb, were convinced they were going to start an atomic chain reaction that would consume the entire world. And they detonated it anyway.
“Oppenheimer looked at the mushroom cloud and thought of a Hindu saying: I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. At that point, man crossed a line that few have really focused on. We became capable of destroying ourselves.”
“And we haven’t stopped since,” Nada said. “Not long ago, at the supercollider near Geneva, they discovered the — what is it, Doc?”
Doc had a defeated look on his face, having been through this discussion before. “The Higgs boson particle.”
“Often called the God particle,” Eagle threw in.
Nada picked back up. “But when they first turned that thing on, there were some scientists who speculated they might actually cause a black hole and consume the planet,” Nada said. “But they turned it on anyway.”
“That held an incredibly small possibility,” Doc argued.
“But a possibility nonetheless,” Nada said.
“The pursuit of knowledge—” Doc began, but Nada cut him off again.
“Us and the Russians, both our teams, we were over there, waiting that day.” Nada shrugged. “We weren’t sure what we could do, but we were ready to try if anything went wonky. And they actually did — nine days after that thing was turned on it broke.”
“Magnet quench,” Doc said, as if anyone had an idea what that meant.
“Right. Clusterfuck,” Nada clarified. “We’d redeployed back to the States and had to fly back over there. They lost five tons of super-heated helium. Took forever to cool it down. Faulty electrical connection, they said. Took the thing off-line for over a year. And that still didn’t stop them. They fired it up again. And again and again. Until now they found one of the things they were looking for. But what if they find something they weren’t looking for?”
“Would you have us move back into caves?” Doc asked.
“I’d prefer if we didn’t blast ourselves back into caves,” Nada argued.
“The Higgs boson could hold the key to figuring out the Rifts and the Fireflies,” Doc shot back. “It might make that part of our job unnecessary if we really can control the Rifts.”
“I don’t want to control the damn things,” Nada said, “I want to stop them. Forever. I’ve lost friends to the Fireflies.”
“All right, gentlemen,” Moms said, cutting off the growing argument. “Speaking of caves, Doc, show our newest member the Can. The rest of you, grab some sleep.”
Doc made a face indicating it was not a task he relished, but he got to his feet. “Come with me, Kirk.”
* * *
Doc hated this part of his job, but it was necessary. Every member of the team had to understand the process. The elevator inside Groom Mountain had been descending fast for over ten minutes and suddenly came to a jarring halt next to massive air ducts that poured cold air into the cavern.
“Don’t like being underground?” Kirk said as the whine of the elevator wound down.
“Not particularly,” Doc said. He didn’t want to get into how his mind was calculating how much rock and dirt was above them, automatically figuring out the weight, and what kind of pressure that would exert if it suddenly collapsed. He knew the odds were unlikely, but that knowledge was scant comfort.
They were over two miles below Area 51. This facility, having taken over three years to build and costing over fourteen billion dollars, served one purpose: to detect Rifts as they developed and then locate them.
Doc shoved aside the metal gate to the high-speed elevator and they walked down a corridor carved out of solid rock, over ten feet wide and ten high.
“Ahead is a natural cavern, a void that was discovered early in Area 51’s history. No one thought much of it, until it was decided we needed to put in a Super-Kamiokande.”
“Right,” Kirk said. “The Can.”
Doc glanced at him and noticed Kirk had a slight grin.
After two hundred yards, the tunnel opened into the large natural cavern eighty yards deep and eighty wide. They paused in the entrance as Kirk took it all in.
“Most people think there is only one Super-Kamiokande in the world. Over in Japan, deep inside a mine shaft. But we have this one and the Russians also built one, after we figured out that it could detect a Rift in early formation. Sharing data with the Russians and Japanese, we can eventually triangulate the location of a Rift.”
A steel grating extended out over the open space, with several workstations.
Doc pointed down. Flat black water reflected the overhead lights. To Kirk it
looked like the water in the quarry back home, on a moonless night. Scary, dark, and deep.
“This is a stainless-steel tank holding that water. Sixty meters wide by sixty deep. Along the walls of the tank are over twenty thousand photomultiplier tubes. They are extremely sensitive light sensors that can detect a single photon as it travels through the water and reacts with it. They are all linked together to those displays over there.”
A young Asian man was watching the displays Doc indicated, one of two people on the duty shift. The other on-duty person was a young woman five desks away, peering at her screen with a rather bored expression.
“Since we built this, the Can has detected the formation of every Rift in the past seven years: nine altogether. So it is not exactly the most exciting place to work, unless something bad happens.”
“Sort of like the Nightstalkers,” Kirk said.
Doc raised his voice so the two worker bees could hear. “The Can is critical in getting us on-site as quickly as possible. We even managed to block three Rifts from opening by arriving before the formation was complete.” He walked over to the young man. “Anything?”
“Nope. Everything’s quiet.” He nodded toward a stack of papers. “The latest printouts are there for you, Doc.”
“Technically,” Doc continued to Kirk, “this is a ring-imaging water Cerenkov detector. Cerenkov light is produced when an electrically charged particle travels through water. The reason this has to be so far underground is to allow the earth and rock above us to block out the photons emitted by man’s devices on the surface of the planet. It also helps that we are in the middle of the desert.”
“Yeah,” the young man said, “but we’re underneath Area 51. Some researchers do some strange experiments in that place. Once in a while we pick up some weird readings.”
“Yes,” Doc said, not wanting to dwell on that. “But most of the Can is focused into the Earth. It covers the entire planet. Since charged particles should not be emitted by the Earth itself, no one thought to use it that way. It was only when, at the most classified levels, information on the Rifts was shared among various governments, that someone checked the data over in Japan and found they’d picked up abnormal readings through the planet when each Rift occurred. So we had the Japanese keep an eye out, and sure enough, for the next Rift, they picked it up, even before it opened. So it became a priority to build one here and in Russia.”
