by Graham Brown
“But you were close the other day,” Kang said. “And yet they escaped your grasp.”
One of the technicians squeezed between Choi and the table, twisting and connecting tiny wires to the actuators on Kang’s fingers.
“They escaped,” Choi replied, sounding aggravated, “but only because of the electromagnetic burst. But prior to that, they led us directly to the offshore site. Our men are diving on it at this moment. They’ve found a submerged temple filled with hieroglyphic writing that we’ll soon be able to translate. This information will lead us to the next destination.”
That news did not seem enough for Kang. “And if you had been quicker,” he said, “you would have been able to obtain what they found down there. The second stone would have been in our possession now.”
“Yes, of course,” Choi replied. “But we know their theory. There are four stones to be found. That means there are still two others out there.”
“No,” Kang said with certainty, “there is only one stone remaining.”
Choi looked puzzled.
Kang’s voice turned softer, a tone reserved for a foolish but loyal dog.
“Of course, I cannot expect you to know these things,” Kang said. “They are beyond your ability to perceive or to truly understand. You are a simple instrument, best reserved for simple tasks.”
He nodded toward the technicians, who were using tweezers to connect the thin wires to different nerve junctions on his arms. Each time they did so his arm twitched slightly.
“If a hammer is used where a fine blade is needed,” Kang continued, “the workman cannot fault the hammer for its failure. And if you are put to a test you cannot pass, whose blame is it but mine for putting you there?”
“With the information we have, we will beat them to the next site,” Choi said. “By the time they arrive we will be in possession of all that matters. And we can set a trap from which there will be no escape.”
“We’re ready to power up,” the technician said.
Choi looked exasperated.
“Begin,” Kang said to his technician. As the power came on, Kang’s arm moved and twisted, then settled.
“I’m concerned,” Choi said, appearing aggravated at having to conduct the conversation in front of the technicians.
“About what?” Kang asked, his eyes locked on the device that was enabling his arm to move.
Choi began carefully. “I understand why you want the stones, but the power they possess—”
“The Russian stone was used to heal the boy,” Kang said sharply, not happy to be questioned.
“Yes. But you saw what they did, you saw what happened down here. Perhaps it is not safe for us to possess them.”
Kang’s eyes widened. “I will have what I’m after,” he said sternly.
“And I will retrieve it for you,” Choi said. “But I feel we must be careful.”
Choi’s statement was couched in all the deference a man could muster, but Kang saw something else. He saw avarice behind the concern; he saw disloyalty. Now he understood Choi’s failures, the near misses. His ire flared.
“You do not want me to have it,” Kang growled, seething with anger.
“No,” Choi said. “That’s not true.”
Of course this was happening, Kang thought. If he died, Choi would take over. He was a traitor like all the others.
“You would keep it from me,” Kang bellowed. “You would have me die!”
“No. You misunderstand. I want you to have it. I’m just—”
Choi didn’t finish. His eyes had flashed to Kang’s arm and the strange device strapped to it. The arm was moving back and forth in an extending and contracting motion, like a man stretching after a long sleep. The finger actuators that had balled Kang’s hand into a fist were now stretching and flattening his palm once again.
Behind them one of the technicians pried the front off a huge coffinlike crate. It fell with a bang. Inside were similar contraptions to the one attached to Kang’s arm: two legs, another arm, and a torso unit, all with hydraulic actuators, bundled wires, and racks of G4 lithium batteries.
Kang’s face flushed with pleasure. Choi’s flashed confusion and then fear.
“For many years I have relied on you,” Kang said to Choi. “I have tolerated your failures and your thefts and your scorn. But I need not do so anymore.”
Kang’s hand was hovering above a large screwdriver. In the blink of an eye, the hydraulics on his fingers snapped shut. Kang’s hand grasped the tool and pulled it back. And then the arm extended, firing forward with a speed and force that stunned Choi.
The screwdriver drove into him, and Choi fell backward. The chair he sat on clattered to the floor and Choi landed flat on the concrete behind it. He put a hand to his chest, clutching at the impaling weapon but unable to pull it out.
His breathing came in spurts. He looked up toward Kang, eyes searching his master. “I am loyal,” he managed to say. “I would punish them … for … you.”
“When I find them,” Kang said to his dying lieutenant, “I will punish them myself.”
CHAPTER 39
It was daytime. Yuri liked the day. There was less sharpness in the day, more in the dark. In the day most of the things were asleep, though not all of them.
From where he sat on the floor, he watched one that was awake; the light around it seemed to shimmer, floating like a ghost amid the moving blades of the ceiling fan. The wind came down from the fan but the light stayed near the hub, twirling around it. The pattern changed, shifting and bending, bulging slightly at times. But Yuri found that he liked it. It was soft and quiet, the colors pale and smooth.
Across the room the darker man sat at the table, working. This man was important; he knew things, things the other two didn’t know. And he saw things and heard things. Yuri didn’t see them or hear them, but the important man did. Sometimes he wondered and sometimes he seemed to be sure. Sometimes he even spoke to them.
Yuri liked him. The important man was kind. When he spoke, his voice was heavy. He liked paper and pencil, not the machine that he was working with, pressing keys and swearing at.
He could see that the machine was hot. Maybe it was burning him. Certainly it burned Yuri’s eyes when he looked at it. Yuri decided that he didn’t like it any more than the important man did. He wished it would go. That would be best. It should just go away, to somewhere else.
The door to the room opened and he saw the woman come in. He heard them talking but he didn’t understand them. Their words were not like his.
“Any luck?” she said.
“Not so far,” the man replied. “But I’ll keep at it.”
The woman came over to check on Yuri. Her face was warm; she brought warmth to them. He wasn’t sure how; she just did. When the woman touched him, Yuri was not afraid. Others who touched him made him hurt, made him afraid, but this woman helped make others feel better.
She and the important man were trying to find something, looking for something that was lost. She was nervous, afraid that they might not find it. He was not; he was certain; he expected to find it. So much difference. Yuri thought maybe they were not looking for the same thing.
Out through the glass door, in the sunlight, stood the other man. He was different than the other two. He didn’t want to find what they were looking for, but he helped anyway and he watched for things. The man outside was always looking; his eyes were always moving. He didn’t see the lights or the colors like Yuri did, and he didn’t hear the words like the important man, but he looked and looked as if he knew something was coming.
That was it, Yuri thought. The other two were looking for something and this man was helping them, but he was looking in a different way. They were expecting to find things and this man was watching for something that might find them.
The woman spoke again. She was trying to help the important man.
“What if we contact the embassy, have them reach out to some of your colleagues?”
“All right,” she said, opening a plastic bag she’d brought with her.
She pulled out several bottles. Yuri knew those kind of bottles; they had medicines in them. Sometimes the others had given him medicines. Not this woman, but the ones who spoke like he did. Some of the medicines made the lights darker, until he couldn’t see them dancing.
He didn’t know why, but sometimes he liked that, and sometimes they were too bright. But other times he didn’t like the medicines at all. They made him feel sick to his stomach and hurt his head. And besides, he didn’t want the lights to go away.
She took two tablets out of each bottle. “Take these,” she said.
“What are they?”
“New antibiotics.”
“Your fever is almost gone and this should knock out the infection for good. We might almost get you back to normal.”
He held out his hand and she dropped the pills into it.
“Thanks,” he said.
She nodded to him, then turned and walked away.
The important man reached for a glass of water and then stopped. He looked at the medicines and then he slipped his hand into his pocket and brought it out without the tablets. The woman didn’t see. She didn’t know. And then he took a drink of water anyway, and turned back to the hot machine.
The medicines made things go away, Yuri knew that, and the important man wanted the things he’d seen to come back.
CHAPTER 40
After a brief trip to the infirmary at the Groom Lake base, Arnold Moore returned to Yucca Mountain, riding shotgun in an air force Humvee as it rumbled toward the gaping entrance of the massive tunnel.
Off to the right lay the giant tunnel boring machine. It looked like a Saturn V booster lying on its side. The hundred-ton machine had single-handedly carved, gouged, and concreted the tunnels that penetrated Yucca Mountain. And then, too big to move without taking it apart, the machine had been parked and shrink-wrapped by the entrance in case it was needed to do further work.
The Humvee rolled past it and through the huge blast doors that fronted the tunnel. The environment went from blazing Nevada daylight to utter darkness, only partially illuminated by the lights in the walls and the Humvee’s high beams.
“You ever get used to this?” Moore asked, looking around.
“After a while,” the driver said. “We check the mountain three times a day. And we’re always here when science guys like you drop in. Not usually with this much firepower, though.”
Moore guessed he was referring to the machine-gun-toting Humvees that had been stationed near the entrance, the squads of armed men, and the hourly Black Hawk reconnaissance sorties.
Moore turned his attention to the tunnel ahead of him. The entrance section was a triple bore, meaning it was three times as wide as the individual tunnels. It ran that way for about two hundred yards before the main tunnel narrowed into what was essentially a two-lane road, walled by rock and concrete. Moore once again found himself growing claustrophobic in the long, narrow cavern.
“What happens if the walls cave in?”
He hadn’t meant the question seriously, but the driver answered anyway.
“There are a series of escape vents that go up to the surface. You have to climb a couple hundred feet of ladder but they pop you out topside.”
“Huh,” Moore grunted, not knowing which was worse: getting quickly crushed in a cave-in or climbing a hundred feet of ladder. “No elevator?”
The driver shook his head, and the Humvee continued on for just over a mile until the double-wide lab began to loom in the headlights.
The main shaft continued for another four miles. Concerns about whether they were deep enough in had already been raised. The truth was they were now in the central part of the “test” tunnel, which had been home to numerous experiments over the years, most of which were designed to tell if there was any chance of instability, seismic activity, or groundwater issues that might make the site unsuitable as a depository.
Because of that history, cables for power and data were already hardwired into place ready for the NRI/CIA teams to hook into. Going deeper meant extending the infrastructure, something they didn’t really have time for.
As a contingency, a rocket sled of sorts was being set up. The motor powering it had been liberated from a Sidewinder missile. In the event the stone appeared to be going supercritical, it would be attached as a payload and fired into the deepest heart of the mountain. A three-second journey into oblivion.
Moore jumped out of his taxi, climbed up the two steps of the trailer, and entered the makeshift lab. He was ready to launch into battle, but a more immediate problem had grabbed everyone’s attention.
The UN meeting was going badly, and the men inside the trailer were watching it all in high definition via satellite. Nation after nation stood up and took the dais to denounce the United States. Unlike the old days, when only a few enemy nations could be counted on for such outbursts, many friendly nations were demanding to know what had happened in the desert, statements that further emboldened the leaders of the lynch mob.
Unlike British parliament, where a statement was made and a rebuttal allowed, the current system in the UN permitted representatives to grab the floor and make uninterrupted speeches one after another. The U.S. ambassador could only sit there, lamely making notes and holding a hand to the translation headphones on his ear.
In general, Moore believed in the UN process, but this was turning out to be a circus.
To make matters worse, the president was also watching, albeit from the Oval Office in Washington. In a teleconference type of situation Moore could see him on one screen while watching the UN debate on the other. Mercifully, Stecker had temporarily gone back to Langley and, at least for the day, was nowhere to be found.
“How bad is it?” Moore asked.
Nathanial Ahiga had taken a break from the reams of data to watch.
“If I was a man who liked to gamble,” Ahiga said, “I wouldn’t double down.”
Moore listened to the feed. The Chinese delegate was claiming that some new American superweapon had destroyed one of their “communications” satellites, an act they considered dangerous and illegal, in other words a precursor to war. No explanation as to why a Chinese “communications” satellite would be orbiting over U.S. territory was offered, and everyone involved knew it was a spy satellite, of course, but that made its destruction no less dangerous.
“Is this true?” Moore asked
The president spoke. “Intel confirms the Chinese air force trying desperately to reestablish contact with one of their information-gathering satellites this morning.”
“Damn,” Moore said.
“It gets worse,” the president said. “The Russians say they’ve lost a satellite, too.”
Moore cursed under his breath, wondering what the hell kind of luck had spy satellites from the world’s other superpowers in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then again, Nellis Air Force Base, the airfield at Groom Lake, and Area 51 were among the most heavily scrutinized sections of U.S. real estate. Maybe he should have been surprised that they only had two.
“Any military activity?”
“Selective but heavy mobilizations and unit dispersions,” the president told him. “Accompanied by stepped-up activity at all military ports.”
Of course, Moore thought. Taking out spy satellites was something that all military doctrine considered a necessary precursor to war. In response the Russians and Chinese were acting both paranoid and yet with perfect logic, mobilizing their units and dispersing them to remote locations as a precaution. If it had been the other way around, the United States would have done the same thing.
He rubbed his temples, the stress level bringing on a migraine. He wondered if he should have checked himself back into the infirmary.
“What have we done in response?”
�
�I had no choice but to raise our own alert status,” the president said. “We’ve gone to Defense Condition Four and the Joint Chiefs are likely to suggest DefCon Three if the Russians and Chinese continue with their activities.”
Moore exhaled, exasperated. “Well, that ought to confirm their worst fears,” he grumbled.
“Excuse me?” the president said.
“We should be talking to them, Mr. President, not moving tanks and aircraft into launch positions. Escalation leads to more escalation; it’s the predictable result of itself.”
The president grew instantly angry. “You are out of line, Arnold. And you’re missing the damn point as well. This mess is half of your making. So far I’ve backed you up, but you’re not getting anywhere and my patience has limits. Limits which are going to run out in about three days.”
“Mr. President—”
President Henderson cut him off. “You insist these things are supposed to save us from something. So far all they’ve done is endanger us. We need a strategy for dealing with them, and you’d better goddamned well get me one or you’ll leave me no choice.”
Moore heard the threat in the president’s words, a warning that he had pushed the boundaries of their friendship too far. This wasn’t a simple argument between policy wonks; it was the president and the commander in chief he was talking to. Moore reminded himself of this and of the fact that at a word the president could order the Brazil stone destroyed.
“I apologize, Mr. President,” Moore said, adding, “I’m very tired. What story are we going with?”
The president turned to him and shrugged. “Give me one,” he said. “What can we tell them?”
Moore paused. He couldn’t think; it was as if his mind didn’t work anymore. He couldn’t fathom any type of explanation that would make much sense. He looked down. The floor of the trailer was uncarpeted, to prevent static buildup that could affect delicate instruments. Fatigued to the point of exhaustion, the cool, metal floor looked inviting and Moore wondered what the president would think if he stepped off his chair and lay down to take a nap. Probably, it would just confirm that he’d lost it.
