by Fritz Galt
“Go now.” He patted her on the rump.
She turned and walked off to the cliff with the handholds. He watched her climb with agility, her body twisting from side to side. She was going to make some fine act on stage. All she needed was a pole to wrap around.
There was only one man on earth who appreciated her as much as he did. One slimy American grad student with a crush on her. If Liang was ever going to win her heart, he would first have to eliminate Bradley West.
He strode toward the kiva and peered over the edge. The old scientist was deep in a trance. In his hands, he rotated a kachina doll that wore a cloud of white fur.
“What are you doing now?” he called down.
“I’m trying to resurrect the fallen souls and lift them back to the heavens.”
“Fascinating.” At least the man wasn’t communicating with the Pentagon. “Toss me that cell phone, will you?”
A moment later, he caught May’s phone. He pressed a few buttons, the buttons that May’s fingers had caressed over the past year. He cycled back through a list of missed calls. The last had been from Bradley.
Liang activated the number and waited. Exactly how he was going to invite Bradley to Las Vegas, he didn’t know. He received an automated response. “The number you have dialed has the power off.”
That stumped him. Wouldn’t Bradley be waiting eagerly for May to return his call? Maybe he was wrong about the young American. Maybe Bradley didn’t care enough to wait for her reply.
The idea that Bradley cared so little made him angry. Wasn’t May worth fighting for? What kind of eel would treat her affection so lightly? If for no other reason than revenge, he needed to get word through to Bradley that she would be waiting for him, lap dancing in Vegas. And he had the perfect location in mind, a club he had visited several years before.
“Toss me that BlackBerry, will you?” he called down to the old man. A moment later, the electronic totem flew out of the kiva and into his hand.
He checked Jade’s address book on the little computer. It contained all the numbers of friends and contacts in Beijing. But it had another name that sounded familiar: “Sullivan.” Yes, that was the name of the American he had captured and interrogated the year before, thinking he was a spy.
Back on the cell phone, he called the number listed on the BlackBerry.
“Central Intelligence Agency,” a female voice answered.
Liang almost hung up by reflex. So he had been right all along. Just as he had warned the Chinese military and just as his torture of Sullivan was about to reveal, the guy was a spook. Bradley had been in Sullivan’s party that fateful day. So that made Bradley…
Suddenly the pieces began to fall into place. Bradley was a spy, too! Now he had an even greater reason to eliminate the young American. Liang couldn’t let the upstart viper ruin his plan to become China’s next president.
“Connect me to Mr. Sullivan.”
“Do you have his extension?” the CIA’s switchboard operator inquired, a note of suspicion in her voice.
This was even better. Sullivan was undercover. Liang glanced down at the pocket computer. “Yes, his extension is 4856.” He felt like he was using a secret code.
“Thank you. One moment, please.”
Almost immediately a voice answered. “Sullivan here.”
Liang swallowed hard. He had just reached into the heart of the CIA and was on the line with Bradley West’s spook cohort. “I am honored to meet the venerable secret agent.”
“Who is this?”
“No names,” Liang insisted. “I am simply asking you to relay the following message to Bradley West. I am taking May Hua to Las Vegas, where she will be starring as an exotic dancer at the Corral.”
At that point, the battery in the cell phone gave out. He had meant to say more, but perhaps it was for the best. After all, he didn’t want Sullivan to trace the call.
Phones and power were dying all over America. But how strongly had the economic crisis hit his homeland? With luck, quite hard. But most likely not hard enough. It was time to take the next big step.
He returned to the kiva where the old man harmonized with the spirits. “Old man, I have one final command.”
Yu stopped muttering to himself.
“I want you to summon up all the spirits and create a twenty-meter-high tidal wave to devastate the Pacific coasts of China and America.”
Dr. Yu looked troubled. “Do you have any idea how many lives would be lost?”
“That’s why I want you to do it.”
“I refuse,” Yu said flatly. “This has gone far enough.”
Liang contemplated the burning anger in the old man’s eyes. That was good. It told him that Yu was honestly carrying out his orders and not trying to communicate with others behind his back. “Not to worry. I just called Washington and will call Beijing next to warn them. Nobody will get hurt.”
Yu bowed his head. But he was not meditating. He was resisting Liang.
“You know the water spirits, don’t you?” Liang goaded.
The old man nodded. “There’s the spirit of Jin that I met at the Sage Mother’s Temple in Shanxi Province.”
“Is she powerful enough?”
“I would need her help, along with others.”
“What others?”
“Matsu,” the old man whispered, the word almost too holy to utter.
Liang couldn’t keep from grinning. If the spirits hadn’t been working so hard on his behalf, he would be tempted to laugh with contempt at such a conversation. “Very well. Then reach Matsu, too.”
“This will take hours of work. How soon do you need results?”
“I will give you a day.”
“I will have to summon up great powers.”
“That’s why we’re here in the center of the spiritual world.” Liang looked at the kivas and cliff dwellings. “They know the importance of water here. Now ask them to summon up great volumes.”
With tears in his eyes, the old man stared at the dwellings above him. He didn’t want to demand such a task of his newfound spiritual friends.
“Should I remind you,” Liang said, “that your daughter’s life is at stake?”
At last, Yu relented. He grabbed a carving clad in a white outfit with peacock feathers that stuck straight out of its headdress. “I will have a talk with the water god.” He bowed his head over the dancing deity.
Only then did Liang notice a wavy blue line painted across the doll’s loincloth. Most likely it represented water. There was a god for everything, and Dr. Yu was on the case. He turned away with satisfaction. In the coming days, Liang would return to the motherland and reveal his existence to the party elite. He opened his personal cell phone and placed a call to Beijing.
His friend Chou Peng, the head of security and surveillance at party headquarters, answered.
“This is Red Water Buffalo,” Liang said, using his prearranged codename. He was grateful to his vigilant friend in charge of all the eavesdropping on the grounds of Zhong Nan Hai. “Thanks for the warning that May and my grandfather were onto me.” Without Chou’s forewarning, Liang might have been cornered at Bei Shan Industries, his biotech company. As it was, he barely escaped with a handful of microchips and troops hot on his tail.
Chou had been a colleague since their days at the military academy and was a full colonel in the People’s Liberation Army. “I hope my work will advance us both.”.
Ah, Chou Peng, ever the career builder. “Have you withstood the wonderful collapse of the American economy?”
“That was you?”
Liang smiled but wouldn’t commit himself over the phone, especially to a major cog in the world’s most pervasive surveillance apparatus. Instead he said, “What’s the status of our beloved country?”
“Not good,” Chou said tersely. “We need you back. The economy is faltering. Social unrest is growing. The military wants to take action.”
“How is our exalted leader holding up?” Lia
ng said with a note of sarcasm.
“He is cracking under the strain. He cannot hold General Fang back much longer.”
Liang smiled. When he came home, his first act would be to loosen the reins that held General Fang back and let him take control of provincial and city governments.
“I want you to pass a message on to the members of our group,” Liang said, referring to the group he had created to take over once his grandfather fell from power. The government in waiting included both General Fang and Chou Peng, but Liang was the mastermind and clearly intended to take over the presidency. “The message is this: There will be certain seismic events in the near future. Have General Fang raise the necessity to immediately evacuate all coastal areas in advance of these events.”
Chou objected. “Since no one can predict earthquakes, naturally our ‘exalted leader’ will condemn this as an attempt to exert military control over the government. He will countermand the order.”
“That’s exactly what I want to happen.”
“But there will be no earthquake.” A nervous quaver was detectable in Chou’s voice.
“More than an earthquake. The coastal cities will in fact be washed away.”
“Ay-yo! Are you serious? How do you know this will happen?”
“Trust me. Tell General Fang at once. When the disaster strikes, he will gain new standing with the party, and our ‘exalted leader’ will have lost face.”
“And you will return home?” Chou said.
“Yes. Now tell General Fang at once.” He clicked the phone off.
General Fang was a strong man, but he needed direction. Liang had won his confidence over the years, so when he returned to Beijing, Liang could expect to find the entire military and party at his disposal.
His first act as President of China would be to form an alliance with U.S. President Terry Smith. The two countries thus joined together would form a superpower the likes of which the world had never known. And China would regain her rightful place at the center of the world.
Brad felt the wheels of the small jet kiss the concrete runway. They taxied smoothly to the end of what looked like a rural landing strip. He stood up and had to duck to avoid hitting his head on the cabin ceiling. “Now can you tell me where we are?” he asked the captain.
The man shook his head with an emphatic no.
Brad popped out the exit and squinted at the terminal across the airfield. The name of the airport was printed right there. “Waynesboro.” Oh, great. How many Waynesboros were there in the country? Probably one in every state. He’d just have to use his powers of deduction to figure out where he was.
A tan bus with tinted windows waited on the tarmac. Two pairs of military policemen approached and escorted him onto the bus. Was he being protected or taken into custody? The stony expressions on their faces gave no indication.
The terrain was mountainous and forested. Trees were still a faint green. The changing seasons plus the fact that they had flown for two hours directly into the sun at noon told him that they were somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic States.
They took a winding road up into the hills that cradled the town. There they passed a stone church, followed by a junkyard filled with former Army vehicles. Shortly thereafter, they took an unmarked road straight up the steepest hill. Gears grinding, they passed a large sign warning that they were entering a restricted area.
Soon they passed a blue sign that read “AJCC Secure Area.” He wracked his brains to come up with what AJCC stood for. Something like Allied Joint Command. It all added up to some sort of headquarters.
They stopped at a sliding metal gate. Beyond that were two more barricades that could be raised to allow vehicles through. An MP bearing an M-16 assault rifle approached the bus from the guard booth. It appeared that he had been expecting Brad. “Step out, Mr. West.”
Brad complied, happy to stretch his legs.
“Identity documents, please.”
He dug his passport out of his backpack. Maybe that was official enough.
The soldier compared his face with the one on the inside of the passport and handed it back to him. “Are y’all carrying any weapons, explosives, knives, or any other type of blade longer than three inches?”
“I left my box cutter at home.”
“Narcotics?”
“I’m clean.”
“Intoxicating beverages?”
“I wish.”
“Are you carrying any restricted items such as video or sound recording or transmitting devices, undeveloped tape or film, cameras?”
“Left ’em at home.”
“Okay. Sign here.” The soldier handed over a clipboard with a security badge.
Brad signed his full name, “Bradley West,” and clipped the badge to his windbreaker.
Having survived the third degree, Brad was allowed to climb back into the bus. The gate slid aside to let them through. The first barricade lifted and the bus pulled forward.
There, a security guard circled the vehicle with what looked like a huge dental mirror. He used it to check the underside of the vehicle, presumably for bombs and other cavity-causing devices. Another guard swept a chemical detection card over the door handles and front hood, then disappeared into the guardhouse.
A minute later, the second barrier rose and the bus was permitted to proceed up the road.
After they rounded several sides of the mountain, the suspense finally got to Brad. He turned to the MP across the aisle. “What is this place anyway?”
The young man nodded at the hill above them. “This here is Raven Rock, home of the Alternate Joint Communications Center.”
He knew what a “Communications Center” was, and by “Joint,” he hoped the military leaders weren’t smoking grass. But what did the “Alternate” part mean?
He looked forward to seeing the facility, but at the next turn, he was taken aback. Raven Rock was no ordinary military base. Before him yawned the mouth of a giant entrance. The facility lay within the hollow shell of the mountain.
“This is like NORAD,” he said. That facility lay beneath Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs and housed the North American Aerospace Defense Command along with, he suspected, other top-secret command posts.
The MP’s mouth formed a grim line.
“Whoa,” Brad said. “More secret than NORAD?”
He was met with a nod.
The bus came to a halt just short of the opening and parked beside a fire truck and forklift on one side and several pieces of heavy construction equipment on the other.
“Here’s where we let you off,” the MP said. He escorted Brad to a golf cart. “Take a seat, sir.”
Brad noticed that the driver was not wearing an MP armband. Rather, he wore a khaki shirt with short sleeves, long, creased trousers and a white hat. He reminded Brad of the marine guards at the American Embassy in Beijing.
Brad took the seat beside him. “I’ll let you tee off first.”
Not reacting, the soldier switched the headlights on and started the cart into the cavern. This would be one very interesting ride.
Chapter 35
“Welcome to Pennsylvania, Mr. President.” A general sat next to President Nelson Burrows and drove the electric cart along an underground tunnel illuminated only by their headlights. Somewhere above in the rugged countryside lay a political boundary between the states of Maryland and Pennsylvania. But that meant little to someone who was about to enter an underground federal complex.
Burrows had heard of Site R before, but he had never been there. As one of the rotating red lights in the seven-mile passageway flickered off the chrome of the cart, he reflected on the extent of paranoia that existed in the military.
There were contingency plans and operations centers set up for every conceivable form of attack. The overactive imaginations at the Pentagon had buried command and control centers under mountains and recreated them inside airplanes. They had carried out change of government drills among people who were no longe
r in government service in case all those in the government died. They had deterrent weapons for weapons that didn’t even exist. And he was about to be exposed to one of the military’s longest-running deterrence programs that threatened to become a weapon of its own.
They approached a reinforced door and the cart stopped. The general stepped out and threw a salute to the fully armed soldiers who guarded the gate. Burrows was stepping out of the Camp David tunnel and into the underground Pentagon.
The site was also known as “Harry’s Hole,” a project begun in 1953 by then President Harry S. Truman. Site R was the non-disclosed backup location of the Pentagon, officially called the Alternate Joint Communications Center. It also served as one of the two major CoG, or Change of Government, facilities whereby a shadow government could take control of the military and other departments of the government in the event of a nuclear attack or some type of invasion that killed or otherwise incapacitated the top chain of command in the government.
Above ground, the uninhabited wooded ridge of Raven Rock Mountain bristled with communications towers and satellite dishes. The nearby town of Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, was a sleepy, dying community like so many other rural towns across America. Below ground was another world.
Engineers had excavated seven hundred thousand square feet of floor space in order to create a multi-level warren of offices, living areas and storage warehouses. Inside the operations center were the latest Pentagon computers and communications equipment. Site R operated like a giant machine around the clock seven days a week.
Many Department of Defense agencies were represented there and relied on resources from the computer operations staff. Important among them were the Nuclear Command Authority, the Joint Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Also crucially, the facility functioned as the disaster recovery site for the Global Command and Control System of the Defense Information Systems Agency and housed the Emergency Operations Centers for the Army, Navy and Air Force.
