The Signal

by John Sneeden

  Philippe crept between two of the large SUVs, toward the low concrete wall in front, and noticed something out of the corner of his eye. It was a long, cylindrical object lodged against one of the tires. Bending down to one knee, he turned on his penlight and realized it was a monocular.

  Out of the blue, Philippe heard an inner voice tell him to pick it up and smell it, which he thought was odd. Nonetheless he stuck it under his nose, running it back and forth across his nostrils. He had always had a keen sense of smell. In fact, it was so developed that he could often detect the slightest scent at great distance, so he immediately recognized a faint aroma on the monocular. It was the scent of a woman, and more specifically, a woman’s perfume.

  But whose was it? His thoughts ran over all the women he knew and their associated smells. And then ten seconds later, it hit him. The only problem was that the woman who belonged to that scent would never have left the instrument there of her own accord, which meant she was in trouble.

  As the pastor pondered what to do next, he heard the sound of voices approaching the parking deck below. His pulse racing, Philippe turned off the penlight and tucked the monocular inside his jacket.

  If he didn’t find a place to hide soon, he—like the woman—would be caught.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  “YOU WERE NOT expecting me?” Keiko asked, blinking in the light.

  Zane remained silent for a moment, still stunned at the sight of the humanoid standing in front of him. “No, I wasn’t. I’m not exactly sure who or what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t you. Were you following the two that just walked by?”

  “Yes, I was,” replied Keiko, blinking again. “And I might suggest you get me out of sight before another team comes along.”

  “Of course.” Zane turned off his flashlight and motioned she and Reid into the room.

  When Skinner arrived, he seemed mesmerized by Keiko. It was his first time seeing the robot, and he noted with interest her realistic appearance, particularly the skin of her face and neck.

  “I’m assuming Mironov doesn’t know you’re here?” Zane asked, once they were all inside.

  “No,” Keiko replied, her eyes glowing aqua blue. “He thinks I am still on the boat. If I am discovered, I have a pretty good cover story, but I am hoping I don’t have to use it.”

  “So you do know how to lie.”

  “Absolutely,” Keiko said. “It is a part of our design. Dr. Higgs programmed deceit into my system because it has all sorts of practical applications, primarily for use in case I was taken by a group hostile to Renaissance. But I prefer not to use it, if at all possible.”

  Zane nodded. “How did you get out here to CERN? And how did you get in the buildings?”

  “Let’s just say I’m resourceful. That may be a story I can tell you when we have more time.”

  “Agreed. I’ll take you out for a beer when this is all over.” He thought he saw her mouth turn into a slight smile at his joke. “We haven’t received any recent transmissions from you, so we weren’t sure what your status was.”

  “I have had to shut down communication because Marrese has turned against me completely. Normally I can transmit a message without worrying about who is reading it, but now I am not so sure.”

  “How much do you know?” Reid asked. “Were you aware that they kidnapped a Dutch—”

  “Yes, earlier today I overheard talk of the plan. It is one of the reasons I decided to risk coming out.”

  “We have reason to believe he’s being used to start up the collider,” Zane offered.

  “That is correct.”

  “Have you been able to perform any reconnaissance?” Zane asked her.

  “Yes,” Keiko replied. “Thankfully, I have been able to move around without being detected, although I have had a few close calls. My sense of hearing is about ten times yours, so I can detect almost any sound within about fifty yards, even someone trying to use stealth.

  “After overhearing that they had captured one of your people, I suspected that some of you were already inside the building, and my suspicions were confirmed when I heard him speak to you inside this room.” She nodded at Skinner, who was currently watching the door, and Zane remembered that the operative had said something just prior to Keiko’s arrival. She looked at Reid. “I was then able to confirm your precise location when he cleared his throat.”

  Reid felt bad at being singled out but quickly realized it was her advanced sensory perception that had drawn her to them, and not any mistake on his part. No human being would’ve heard him clear his throat at such a distance.

  “So are we correct in our assumption that Mironov and Marrese are both in the control room?” Zane asked, trying to turn the conversation back to the situation at hand.

  “Yes, that is correct. That is also where they took your friend, at least according to the men I was listening to.”

  “Is she still there?” asked Reid. There was something about the humanoid's mannerisms and the soft blue glow in her eyes that put him at ease.

  “That I do not know.”

  “Do you know what we’re facing between here and there?” Zane asked. When Keiko looked confused, Zane tried asking it a different way. “Are there any guards, any security personnel between here and there that we need to be aware of?”

  “I know that there are a couple of patrols moving around inside the buildings—the one who just passed through here a few minutes ago and at least one other one as well.”

  “Are you familiar with the area around the control room?” Zane asked.

  “Well, when you leave this building you will enter another.”

  “The one that houses the elevators which lead down to the collider,” Reid stated.

  “That is correct,” Keiko replied. “You will run into the first men on the other end of that building. They are guarding the entrance to the fourth and final building.”

  “It’s our understanding that there's a lobby just beyond the entrance to the fourth building, and then beyond that, the control room.”

  “I downloaded a layout of all these buildings, and that appears to be the case,” Keiko explained. “Unfortunately I was not able to approach close enough to let you know what you might find once you get there. I’m assuming Mr. Mironov would have the lobby filled with security personnel, but that is just a calculated guess.”

  “Is there any other way to get to the control room, other than continuing straight ahead?” Reid asked. “Even if we can get past the two men in the next building, we’re likely to encounter armed personnel in the lobby beyond, just as you indicated.”

  “There is no other way to the control room except through a set of doors in the lobby that lead to the outside of the building, and you can rest assured those doors will be well guarded.”

  “Even if we thought that was the best way in, we don’t have time to retrace our steps, get outside of the building again, and then come up with a plan to attack that entrance,” Skinner said in a loud whisper from his position at the door. “We’d spend all that time working our way into position, and we'd still have the same issue we have in continuing straight ahead.”

  “He’s right,” Zane admitted. “We stay with our initial plan, which is direct penetration through the buildings. And our first task is to take down the two men that Keiko mentioned.”

  “We have flashbangs,” Reid suggested, referring to the stun grenades they were carrying.

  “No,” Skinner said. “Way too loud. The others would be on us within seconds.”

  “Right again,” Zane said. “No flashbangs. Our best chance of success is to get close enough to the two guards to use Tasers. Or if the situation dictates, we’ll use suppressed shots. After that, we move down the hallway and reassess before hitting the lobby.” Zane looked over at Keiko. “Is there a closed door at the end that leads into the lobby, or is it open?”

  “The architectural drawings I possess do show a door at the other end. But it is possible the
y were left out in final construction, or that they are propped open.”

  "When we reach the third building, we’ll have a better idea of what we’re up against," Zane said.

  “What if all the lights have been killed?” Reid asked.

  “I believe that actually helps our cause. Remember, Skinner has night-vision capability.”

  Keiko said, “I think there may be a better way. In fact, after calculating the odds of success I believe it is by far the best way.”

  Zane nodded. “Let’s hear it.”

  “I know both of the men down the hall, and they know me. I will present myself to them, let them know that I have some important information for Mr. Mironov, and then I will ask them to escort me down to the control room.”

  “That’s exactly what we don’t want,” Zane pointed out. “They’ll immediately take you into custody. You aren’t supposed to be here, remember?”

  “Perhaps, but if they do, that is the beauty of my plan: I will still get taken to the control room. Mr. Mironov will want to speak to me, regardless of what he thinks I might be up to. He would be foolish not to find out what it is that I wanted to tell him.”

  “And what then?” Reid asked.

  “When one leaves with me, you can take down the other, which should be much easier. I will then report back to you what you’re facing in the lobby and in the control room.”

  “And how do you propose getting that information to us?” Zane asked in a slightly skeptical tone. “You said you’re not able to safely send messages.”

  “To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Mironov has almost everyone on his team here at CERN. Now that their operation is underway, I seriously doubt anyone is monitoring me as closely as before. And even if they are, it will take them a while to react. By then, you will have everything you need in order to make your move.”

  After a long pause, Zane nodded. “I like it. Let’s do it.”

  “So does anyone have a phone?” Keiko asked.

  Skinner pulled his out and handed it to her. She moved it across the front of her body, which produced a beep. Having transferred all of the information electronically, she handed it back to him.

  Zane gave everyone sixty seconds to prep. When everyone had finished checking their weapons and radios, Zane gave the signal to proceed. Making sure all was clear, the group stepped out of the room and continued in the direction they had been traveling. They made it through the remainder of the second building without incident, aided by Keiko’s almost perfect sense of hearing. At one point she heard a second Renaissance search team in the distance, but they were moving away from them and posed no threat.

  As they approached the entrance to the third building, the humanoid pulled everyone aside and told them that the two guards were only about a hundred yards ahead. The group slowed down, doing everything they could not to make any noise.

  By prearrangement, the humanoid lifted a hand when they were about fifty yards out. On cue, Zane and Skinner ducked behind a row of lockers on the right side of the hall, and Reid behind another row on the left.

  Zane watched Keiko continue straight ahead. She walked with purpose. The ambient blue glow from her eyes was still visible for a while, but eventually it disappeared altogether. As they had guessed, there were no lights in that section of the third building, and while the darkness helped keep them hidden, it also meant that they could easily be surprised themselves if they weren’t careful.

  After what seemed like an eternity, flashlights turned on in the distance, and Zane could just barely make out Keiko’s voice. The beams bobbed around as the guards made sure nobody was following her. A few seconds later, a sliver of dim light appeared as a door opened, presumably the one to the fourth and final building. Zane watched as one of the guards escorted Keiko into the hallway beyond. Perfect. The closed door meant that they could dispatch the remaining guard without being heard.

  After the door shut, the remaining guard started walking in their direction, the beam of his flashlight playing around on both sides of the corridor. That was something they hadn’t expected. Zane figured he must have been suspicious of Keiko’s sudden appearance and was checking things out.

  “Get Reid to hit him,” Zane whispered into Skinner’s ear as they crouched behind the lockers.

  “Roger that.”

  About twenty feet from the operatives, the guard inexplicably stopped, the beam from his flashlight pointed straight head. Zane tensed. Had the man seen them? Or was he looking at something behind them?

  Eventually the man moved forward again, slowly and with purpose. When the guard was about ten feet out, Skinner slid to the edge of the locker and lifted the Taser. The man must have caught the movement because the beam of light swung immediately toward the operative.

  In the seconds that followed, Zane heard two simultaneous noises—the zap of a Taser and the firing of a suppressed shot. At the sound of the shot, he leapt out from behind the locker, got down on one knee, and raised his weapon. Only then did he see that the Renaissance guard and his light were already lying on the ground.

  As he got up and approached the body, he noticed that there was not the twitching you’d expect when someone was hit with the Taser. Instead there was a rapidly expanding pool of blood around the man’s head.

  “I had no choice,” Reid said, approaching from the other side of the hall. “He had a gun-mounted light and was about to fire at Cleavon.”

  “Understood.” Zane examined the body. Reid’s shot was lethal, taking the man out before he had time to squeeze the trigger.

  Zane grabbed the dead man’s rifle and turned off the mounted light. He then pulled off the guard’s black sweater and handed it to Reid for cleaning up the blood. Zane and Skinner lifted the body and carried it into a nearby room. After hiding it under a desk, they rejoined Reid, who finished the cleanup and threw the sweater into a nearby locker.

  The three operatives then stole down to the closed door where the guards had been positioned earlier. Recognizing that the one who had escorted Keiko to Mironov could come bursting back through at any moment, Zane signaled Reid and Skinner that he was going to take a look. He then opened the door a few inches and used the monocular to examine the corridor beyond. After a couple of minutes, he turned back around and whispered, “Just as I expected, there is a long hallway that runs the entire length of the building. I could just barely make it out, but there appear to be two doors on the other end.”

  “Were they glass doors?” Reid asked. “Could you see anything beyond?”

  “The doors had small windows set in them,” Zane replied, “but the only thing I could make out was a bit of ambient light coming through. I thought I might have seen some movement beyond, but I really couldn’t tell what was going on. The bottom line is we have to assume there are tangos beyond, and plenty of them.”

  “Copy that,” Skinner said.

  “So, as soon as we go through this door, we move with speed down the hallway,” Zane said, “and we don’t stop unless we meet resistance. As we approach the other end, we’re going to take up position in rooms on either side of the hallway. I’ll take the one on the left, and I want the two of you to take the one on the right.”

  “How do you know there are going to be rooms?” Reid asked.

  “I don’t. But it’s a reasonable guess, based on the layout of the other buildings we’ve been through. If I'm wrong, we’ll huddle again.”

  After peeking one last time through the crack, Zane then opened the door completely and the three sprinted down the corridor. The distance was greater than they imagined, and they passed several intersections before finally arriving on the other end. As Zane had predicted, they discovered two rooms there, one on each side of the hallway. Zane silently slipped into the room on the left, while Reid and Skinner disappeared into the one on the right.

  A few seconds after the operatives positioned themselves inside the rooms, the doors to the lobby burst open, and the corridor filled with dim light. Op
ening his door a hair, Zane watched as four armed men walked briskly past his position. Each was armed with a semi-automatic rifle, and the one in front was barking orders in Russian.

  As the men disappeared down the hall, Zane made a quick assessment of the situation: in a few short minutes, the men would discover their comrade had been killed. And when they did, all hell would break loose.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  “HOW MUCH LONGER?” asked an increasingly irritated Marrese. As he waited for Koehler to answer, he looked over at the Italian woman standing against the far wall between two guards. Her hands were cuffed behind her back and she was still groggy from the blow to her head, but Marrese still wasn’t comfortable. She had already eluded an entire Renaissance security team a couple of days before, and could very well cause more trouble before it was all over. Not to mention there were likely others roaming the grounds.

  “The energy of the proton beam is now at eight TeV,” replied Koehler, staring at the monitor in front of him. “That was the maximum achieved when CERN was last operating.”

  “I’m aware of that,” hissed Marrese. “Increase it… Our time is running out.”

  “You truly are a fool,” said VanGelder, who was standing at the back of the group that was huddled around Koehler. “This is not the accelerator on a car. You don’t increase energy on a new system without making sure the machine is still able to handle it at that level.”

  “I said move it now,” Marrese said to Koehler in a loud voice, ignoring the Dutchman.

  Several people in the room turned their heads at the sound of the priest’s voice. Koehler glanced back over his shoulder at Mironov, who nodded.

  Satisfied that his instructions were being followed, Marrese walked toward the cubicle where his disciples were gathered, his cape flaring behind him. His anger and sense of urgency were related to something he had sensed in his spirit for the last hour or so. There was something—no, someone—out there in the storm who opposed their efforts. At first he thought the person might be one of the Americans, but then the Masters showed him it was someone else. He might be aligned with the Americans, but he wasn’t one of them.