Текст книги "Black Sun"
Автор книги: Graham Brown
Соавторы: Graham Brown
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CHAPTER 35
Danielle burst through the doors to the emergency room. Hawker came behind her carrying Yuri in his arms.
“We need a doctor!” Hawker shouted.
“Necesitamos un médico,” Danielle repeated in Spanish.
She looked around. The room was dark, lit only by the sunlight coming through tinted windows and by a pair of emergency lights in each corner.
“No power,” she said.
The drive to the hospital had been panicked madness. The traffic lights were out, cars stalled in various places. To get them here Danielle had driven on the median and down the sidewalk at one point. But the power loss had preceded them. As had a large number of prospective patients.
Like most ERs in America, this one was overcrowded and understaffed. There were already more patients in the waiting room than the unit could accommodate quickly.
Priority went to those most in need: heart attack victims, those with life-threatening wounds or conditions. For patients who were fortunate enough to have minor traumas and lesser conditions, the wait could be hours.
Danielle was certain that Yuri did not have that kind of time.
A nurse glanced at them from across the room, focused on Yuri’s limp form. A second later she was rushing over, stethoscope in hand.
“Do you speak English?” Danielle asked.
The nurse nodded. “What’s happened to this child,” she asked, putting the stethoscope to his chest.
“He had a seizure,” Danielle replied.
The nurse checked the blood oozing from Yuri’s ear, then lifted one of his eyelids and flashed a light into it. The concern on her face deepened.
“He’s nonresponsive, barely breathing,” she said. “This way.”
She led them down a darkened hall to a curtained-off room lit by the emergency power. It was clean but the equipment was older. Danielle wondered if they would have what Yuri needed.
“We should have taken him to the States,” she said aloud.
“I assure you we have good doctors here,” the nurse said.
Danielle nodded. She hadn’t meant to disparage the health care they were likely to get at this place. She hadn’t even meant the statement to refer to now; she’d meant after Hong Kong, instead of coming to Mexico.
“It’ll be all right,” Hawker said, laying Yuri down on the examination table.
“How?”
“I don’t know. But it will.”
The nurse ducked out and a few seconds later a doctor came in. “I’m Dr. Vasquez,” she said, going right to the examination table without looking at either Danielle or Hawker.
“This child had a seizure?” she asked.
“That’s right,” Danielle replied.
Dr. Vasquez moved to the other side of the table, checking Yuri’s pulse and blood pressure.
“When?”
“Twenty minutes ago.”
The doctor looked up. “When the blackout hit?” she asked. “What was he doing at the time?”
Danielle paused, her mind searching.
“Was he watching TV? Or in a room without natural light?”
The question made sense to her now. Seizures could be caused by many different stimuli; one common cause was flickering light, like that of a television or computer screen cycling or on the fritz.
“No,” Danielle said. “We were outside, on the water.”
Dr. Vasquez stared at her and then looked over at Hawker. “Near Puerto Azul?”
Danielle didn’t reply. She guessed that news of the strange incident there had reached the hospital despite the blackout. Boats racing into a sleepy harbor, explosions that caused blackouts, and a group of people beaching their craft and racing on foot while carrying an injured child were not likely to go unnoticed.
Danielle stared into the doctor’s eyes. “Look, I have two years of medical training, and I saw this child have a seizure. Now he’s unconscious, bleeding from his ear, with possible bleeding inside his skull. He needs an MRI or a CT scan or whatever you have available to make sure his brain is not swelling.”
Dr. Vasquez began to look uncomfortable.
“You’re not his parents,” she said.
At that moment, a tall, broad-shouldered orderly stepped through the curtain, closing it behind him. He seemed to notice the tension and looked at Dr. Vasquez.
“Ricardo—” she began to say as she reached for an alarm button.
Danielle was on her, a hand going over her mouth and slamming her into the wall. Ricardo lunged for Danielle, but Hawker was quicker. He slammed the orderly against the opposite wall, producing a black handgun and holding it to the man’s head.
The doctor looked at her, eyes filled with utter fright.
Danielle hated what she saw.
“Listen to me,” she said, quietly but with great intensity, her eyes boring into the doctor, willing her to understand. “I promise you,” she said. “I promise you. We are not here to hurt you, or your staff, or this child.”
She took a deep breath. Dr. Vasquez took a breath. Hawker pulled the gun away but held it at the ready.
The doctor turned her eyes back toward Danielle.
“I’m not his mother, nor am I some deranged person who’s kidnapped him and thinks he’s my son. He’s not. But he’s been through hell and there are people looking for him who’d like to drag him back there. And I am not going to let that happen.”
Danielle noticed a softening in the doctor’s eyes and saw her steal a glance toward Yuri. She relaxed the pressure on the doctor’s mouth so she could speak, but held her hand close should Dr. Vasquez try to scream.
“Who are you people?” the doctor asked.
“We’re members of an American security service,” Danielle said.
“You have no authority here,” Dr. Vasquez said bluntly.
“No, we don’t. But our superiors are in touch with important members of your government.” Danielle had no choice but to lie. “People who both know of and have approved of our presence. I don’t have the time or the ability to contact them now. So please, just help us. Then we’ll go.”
Dr. Vasquez seemed torn. She looked at Yuri again. How could she not help? “We can do an MRI,” she said. “And after that you leave.”
Danielle nodded, thinking she would promise anything to get Yuri the examination he needed.
Professor McCarter sat in a public plaza, hiding among a crowd of people and the chaos of a traffic jam caused by the midafternoon blackout.
He tried to concentrate on the surroundings, looking for any sign of trouble, struggling against the flight reflex building within him.
In his backpack he carried the newly found stone, an object that had just discharged a massive burst of electromagnetic energy, an object that at least two groups of armed men were looking for and willing to kill over. As uneasy as he felt carrying it around undefended, both he and Danielle realized it would be unconscionable to bring it into the hospital, where it could interfere with countless tests and devices, not the least of which were the items needed to examine Yuri.
Across from him a fountain rose in concrete and stucco. Hundreds of people milled around, many of them out on the street and in the park because of the blackout. In an open area a group of teenagers was playing soccer. Near the borders of their makeshift field stood a group of uniformed federales. They walked through the mass of people looking like predators among a herd of prey.
Logic told him they were there for crowd control, to make sure an afternoon blackout didn’t turn into something worse. But despite his well-founded logic, he couldn’t shake the thought that they were specifically looking for him. Coming to find him and to take the stone.
Danielle stood with Dr. Vasquez in the control room studying the MRI. It showed a cross section of Yuri’s brain, highlighted in red, orange, and pink. One section was blue and it was blurred.
“What is that?” she asked.
The doctor adjusted the controls and had the machine run another scan. The beltlike apparatus that Yuri laid on moved him back into the tube of the massive machine and a series of loud clunking noises were heard as the machine took another picture of Yuri’s brain.
This one was slightly better, but still blurred around the blue section.
“Could something be wrong with the imager?” Danielle asked.
Dr. Vasquez shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I changed the angle of the scan slightly, just to be sure.” She pointed to the blurred area. “If it were the machine, the blurred area would have appeared to move. It didn’t. It’s in a different place on the image, the same spot in the child’s brain.”
“What is it?” Danielle asked.
“You said someone was doing experiments on him?”
“To the best of my knowledge that’s true.”
Dr. Vasquez nodded sadly. “In that case I would guess that we’re looking at the remnants of one of those experiments,” she said. “That is an object, a powered object, inserted into his cerebral cortex.”
“A powered object?”
“It’s emitting its own electromagnetic wave,” Dr. Vasquez said. “Minor, to be sure, but that’s the blue distortion.”
Danielle felt sick to her stomach. And then she heard a sound that made it worse. Yuri had woken up and had begun to scream.
McCarter moved toward the outskirts of the park. He had stopped at the table of a street vendor and pretended to examine some of his offerings. He glanced back toward the group of policemen.
They’re coming for the stone.
Were they his thoughts or a voice?
Run. It was an urging, not a physical sound. Run!
McCarter couldn’t help it. He dropped the trinket from his hand and ran for the street.
Yuri had awoken screaming but had calmed down as soon as the MRI machine was shut down. He clung to Danielle as Dr. Vasquez did a number of other tests.
“There’s no sign of swelling to his brain,” she said. “His neurological responses are good.”
Thank God, Danielle thought.
“What about the blood from his ear?”
“It looks as if he had a cyst inside his ear canal that ruptured during the seizure,” she said. “But he can hear okay. So, no damage.”
The doctor smiled. “He’s a lucky child,” she said, then seemed to realize better. “In some ways.”
Danielle stood, holding Yuri protectively.
“What will you do with him now?” Dr. Vasquez asked.
“Try to get him to somewhere safe, where he can receive help,” she said.
“You could leave him with us,” she said. “I’ll make sure he’s cared for.”
Danielle hesitated. There was an undeniable attraction to the idea. Let Yuri disappear, no Kang, no Russia. No more problems for him. But she couldn’t be sure it would turn out that way.
She shook her head. “There are people looking for him, people you won’t be able to protect him from. If they found you, they would kill you and anyone who stood in their way.”
“Why?”
“It’s a long story,” Danielle said. “When we leave, you should call the police. In case these men come here.”
The doctor nodded, looking nervous. She glanced at Hawker still holding the gun. “I’ll give you five minutes before I call. Don’t come back.”
Danielle turned and left the room carrying Yuri. Hawker followed a second later.
“Should I call security?” Ricardo asked.
“No,” Dr. Vasquez replied.
“You’re going to let them go?”
She nodded. “I think it’s best,” she said. “If they are who they say they are, then there is no need getting mixed up in the situation.”
“And if they’re not?”
“Better they be far from here when the police find them,” she said.
Ricardo nodded reluctantly and then looked past her to a small device beside the door. A bright green LED was flashing rapidly.
“Was the intrusion in the child’s head radioactive?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” Dr. Vasquez said. “Why?”
He pointed to the LED. “The waste alarm. One of them has been exposed to radioactive materials.”
McCarter tried to run in a controlled fashion, but he knew it must have looked bad. His leg was hurting and his mind was spinning, and he reckoned his pace was that of a man in a three-legged race, even if he was tied to no one but himself.
He continued across the street, thinking he had to get away, away from the police, away from whoever was chasing him, away from Hawker and Danielle.
The last thought hit him hard. Why had he thought that? They were his friends; they were protecting him. Was his subconscious mind trying to tell him something?
He saw a bus stop in front of the hospital and a city bus coming down the crowded street. He ran over and got in line. The bus slowed, releasing a great blast of air from its brakes.
“Professor?”
He turned to see Danielle and Hawker coming out of the hospital. Yuri was walking with them. He was thankful for that.
“What are you doing?” Danielle asked suspiciously.
His mind raced. “Ahh, I’m hiding,” he said. “Trying to look inconspicuous.”
He gestured at the police, both in the park and on the street corner.
“The police aren’t after us,” Danielle noted.
“Can’t be too sure,” he said defensively.
Danielle looked at Hawker, then nodded toward the bus. “What do you think?”
“Time to let the old jeep go,” he said, agreeing.
“We’re getting on?” McCarter asked, surprised.
“Yeah,” Danielle said. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 36
Arnold Moore sat in the permanent darkness of the Yucca Mountain tunnel holding a cold compress to his temple while technicians buzzed around him, connecting cables and moving equipment, turning a double-wide trailer into their new laboratory.
He watched them work, fighting the urge to throw up as he had every ten to fifteen minutes since the incident and listening to Byron Stecker bitch so extensively that he’d actually begun looking forward to the next episode of vomiting.
With the first of the lab’s flat-screen monitors now operating, a review of the energy discharge event had been arranged, but there wasn’t much to see.
Moore stared at the screen. The playback, which was now frozen, had been paused with a line of distortion running through the left side of the frame.
It showed the pockmarked desert floor, the smoking eighteen-wheeler, and the Humvees scattered about randomly. It also took in the two Black Hawk helicopters that had crash-landed on separate sections of the route. One seemed to have come down almost normally, but the other was smoking and crumbled over on one side, its rotor blades in dark pieces all around, shattered like old LP records.
In the freeze-frame image, the shape of a man could be seen jumping from the burning hulk.
Byron Stecker, who had been waiting at Yucca for Moore to arrive, spoke. “We have no video depicting the actual event. Nothing prior to this. Despite the fact that there are cameras all over the base—including cameras designed to catch nuclear blasts—all the data feeds are blank from a moment four minutes and nineteen seconds prior to the blast until this point approximately one minute and thirty seconds after.
“But we have one eyewitness describing it as a shock wave rolling across the desert floor, a nuclear blast with everything but the mushroom cloud.”
Moore stared at the display. He’d been unconscious until several minutes later.
“At least fifteen commercial airliners were affected,” Stecker said, “including nine that lost complete electrical power and had to make emergency landings. Nellis radar and communications went down and we have extensive grid failures all along the West Coast. Vegas, Henderson, and Tahoe are completely blacked out.”
Moore tried to ignore it.
“And worst of all,” Stecker added, “both the Russians and Chinese are accusing us of breaking the test ban treaty or of creating some new superweapon. The UN is even convening a Security Council meeting on it the day after tomorrow. And it’s the damned weekend.”
Moore rubbed his head. The interest of the foreign powers certainly complicated things.
“What’s your point?” he asked, too exhausted to wait for the DCI to get around to it.
“I’ve been telling you,” Stecker said, annoyed. “This thing is dangerous.”
“Anything that has power can be dangerous,” Moore said. “A car, a gun, a bomb. Even you. The question is how you use these things and negate the dangers.”
“That’s just the point, Arnold. We don’t know how to use this thing. We don’t even know what it does. All we know is that after two years of studying it you got caught with your pants down.”
No doubt Stecker had already commissioned similar findings and sent them to the president. Moore would have to get off a response quickly and hope that the president could remain rational in the face of such a strong attack.
In the meantime, the scientific effort would kick into high gear. New equipment would be flown out to replace what had been lost in the blast and the new power-sharing arrangement would be tested.
The door to the trailer opened. An air force major came in leading three civilians. The men were scientists: Moore’s own chief analyst, who had fortunately or unfortunately not been on the truck; the CIA’s chosen expert, a stern-faced true believer of about forty-five who had apparently worked on some advanced projects for the military; and an older Native American man in his late fifties. He had tanned, wrinkled skin, thin white hair, and a billy goat’s tuft of scraggly whiskers on his chin. He wore a bolo tie, a plaid cowboy shirt with rhinestone buttons, and an oversized pocket protector stuffed full of pens. Moore recognized him as Nathanial Ahiga, a theoretical physicist who’d once been with the Sandia Labs in New Mexico and now worked for the National Academy of Sciences.
The name Ahiga was Navajo for “the one who fights” and Nathanial’s family had a pedigree in combat. His grandfather had been one of the famed Navajo Code Talkers during World War II, his father had earned medals in Korea, and his older brother had been one of the first Native Americans to join the Green Berets, earning a chest full of commendations during three tours in Vietnam.
Nathanial himself had gone to college instead of joining the military, but his contribution to the armed forces eclipsed them all, since he’d helped design the nuclear triggers used in the warheads on the Trident missile and had spent years after working with the missile-defense effort. If World War III ever did come, Ahiga’s work would be instrumental in both annihilating the enemy and saving what could be protected in the United States.
It was clear from Stecker’s speeches that the CIA wanted the stone destroyed, and Moore and his people already believed that such an action would be a mistake, unless there was truly no other choice.
That dynamic effectively turned Ahiga into the decision maker. When all was said and done, his opinion would be the only one that counted.
Moore shook his hand, then watched as Ahiga strolled around the makeshift lab and over to the viewing station. Leaning in and squinting slightly, he got his first look at the assignment and pursed his lips tightly. It could have been a sign of curiosity, or a simple mannerism the man often used, but to Moore it looked an awful lot like a display of disgust.
CHAPTER 37
Hawker sat on the balcony of their new hotel, a five-star resort fifty miles south of where they had been staying. Like almost everywhere else along the gulf coast of Mexico, this hotel was without electrical power. That had served them well, since the front desk manager had been unable to electronically record their arrival.
A cash bribe had convinced him not to do so even when the lights came back on. An additional payment had put them in this suite and rented the one next door as well. A thousand dollars had been promised for each of the next five days if their presence could be kept secret. That would take them up to the day of reckoning. One way or another, Hawker doubted they’d be around after that.
With no lights on and no moon to speak of, the coast looked as dark as the sea, but out over the blackness of the gulf, a pair of heavy thunderstorms was building, splitting the night with bolts of purple lightning. At times there were long delays between the flashes, but at the moment the show was intense, with flashes illuminating the clouds from inside and handfuls of forked lines spidering across their billowing faces.
Though the storm was tracking inland, the air on the balcony was utterly still. Not the slightest hint of a breeze could be felt and even the flame on the candle beside him burned without a flicker.
To Hawker there was some great truth in the scene, some lesson about life and trouble and how paying attention only to what was immediately around you did not grant a true sense of what was really going on. It was the type of folly that allowed danger to creep in. And he wondered if he was committing such an error himself.
At this moment in time he felt better than he had in years. Not physically, perhaps—the bruising events of the last several hours had left him choosing between ibuprofen and a few stiff drinks—but his mind had grown quiet for the first time in months, if not years. The gnawing sense of guilt, even the dreams of misdeeds in Africa had faded away for now.
He credited the change to being around Danielle and McCarter once again. He wasn’t sure of any greater purpose behind this stone and the prophecy that was linked to it; it all seemed like guesswork to him, but two people he truly cared about were mixed up in it and they needed his help. Whatever the outcome might be, protecting his friends brought with it a sense of purpose and peace.
And yet he guessed there were clouds on the horizon somewhere. He couldn’t see them, or feel their effect at this point, but like the storm out over the gulf, he knew they were coming.
In an effort to stave off the thought, he took another drink from the tumbler beside him. As he put the glass down, the door behind him opened and Danielle came out onto the balcony.
“How are the patients?” he asked.
“McCarter’s infection is getting better and he’s working on what we found down there. And believe it or not, Yuri is actually asleep now.”
Hawker’s eyebrows went up.
“I gave him a sedative. He seems to be doing fine.”
“That’s good,” Hawker said, stretching his leg.
Danielle sat down, then reached out and took the glass from him. After a large sip she placed it down on the table between them.
“Any guess as to how they found us?” Hawker asked, giving words to one of the thoughts that had been bothering him.
“They talked to the boat guy,” she said, sounding convinced.
“Okay, and how did they know to talk to the boat guy? How’d they know we would be out on the water?”
“They have the statue from the Island of the Shroud,” she said. “Those were the inscriptions that led McCarter to his discovery.”
“I thought you guys trashed it.” he said.
“We did what we could, but …”
He looked away. It seemed reasonable.
“You concerned?” she asked.
“Always,” he said.
She smiled. “Listen, my suspicious friend, it’s all right. We got the stone, they didn’t catch us, and Yuri’s okay. We’re all okay.”
“Are we?” he said, staring at her.
Hawker had noticed an odd pattern in Danielle, a type of behavior that had not been present in Brazil. When things went to hell, she grew concerned and introspective. And once the danger had passed, the same overly confident attitude returned. It was in her nature to be bold and aggressive, but this seemed like something else, closer to recklessness, as if she was unbalanced in some way.
She slumped back into her seat, exhaling. “Look, I’m sorry about what happened down there. I should have been more careful with the mix. Forty percent was too high, considering my situation. It was just a mistake.”
A huge bolt of lightning sliced across the sky. It lit up the horizon and the sea beneath it. Seconds later the faintest sound of thunder reached them. It made him think about the stone.
“What do you think that shock wave was?” he asked.
“The stones create energy,” she said. “Some kind of discharge.”
“Maybe because we moved it,” he said, half joking.
“Maybe,” she said. “The weird thing is, if it didn’t happen when it happened, we’d be dead. We’d have hit the beach and those guys would have shot us in the back before we reached the street.”
Hawker took the glass back. “I call that an extremely fortunate coincidence.”
He took another drink and then refilled the tumbler with two more of the little rum bottles from the minibar.
Danielle seemed to relax a bit. She gazed out toward the storm.
“Why’d you come for me?” she asked quietly.
“Moore paid me to,” he said. “How do you think we can afford this luxurious lifestyle?”
She took the glass from him, had another taste, and held it. “I’m serious. The last time I saw you was two years ago. I promised I’d try to help clear your name, but I couldn’t get anyone to move. And then instead of sending someone to bring you back into the fold, CIA sent some guys to haul you back in chains.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” he said. “I knew how that would play out. It means a lot that you tried.”
She sighed, took another sip of the rum, and put the glass down. “I didn’t lure McCarter into this,” she said, defensively. “I didn’t want him to be out there alone. I thought I could protect him.”
“I know that, too,” he said. “It sucks to know you can’t protect everyone, no matter how hard you try.”
She nodded as if the words held some deeper meaning. But she didn’t offer it up.
That was too bad, Hawker thought, because here for the first time since they’d known each other she’d begun to show an openness that he found endearing.
“So that’s why you came to get me,” she said, smiling. “To protect someone you care about.”
“When I met you,” he said, “you were this immaculate, type-A corporate woman. You walked around with a kind of energy that I honestly can’t ever remember having. And all I could think was, here’s a gorgeous woman who can help me get what I want.”
She laughed. “I don’t know whether to be flattered or offended.”
He guessed that his statement could have been taken a number of ways.
“But then, when we were out in that jungle, you made a lot of hard choices. You did the right things, and by the time we left that place you seemed different. I thought, maybe here was someone who could help me find what I need, a way to believe in something, a way to find some kind of hope again.”
She looked over at him as if he’d said something strange. “I don’t know you as a person lacking hope. You don’t give up. You don’t give in.”
“I don’t like to lose,” he said. “And if I have to go down, I’m going down swinging. But that’s a long way from believing there’s anything out there to win.”
“Defiance,” she offered.
“I guess. But it’s not the same as belief.”
She stared at him quietly for a moment, her brown eyes locked on his, the candlelight bathing her face and her lips glistening from the rum. They were close now, looking into each other’s eyes.
He reached for her, but a shrill chirping interrupted them. It was the satellite phone.
“It’s Moore,” she said, standing up.
She went for the phone.
Hawker slumped back into the lounge chair, propping one foot up dejectedly and grabbing the rum-filled glass once again. “Great. Half the Western Hemisphere is blacked out and I get a girl with a solar-powered phone.”
Danielle took a last glance at Hawker and the storm brewing on the horizon, then picked up the phone. Moving to the next room, she typed in her code, confirming the lock to receive the transmission.
“Sorry it took me so long to reestablish contact,” Moore said. “I know you tried to initiate several hours ago. Things have been a little busy up here.”
He went on to explain how badly the move had gone and how the CIA had seized on the incident as a moment to attack.
“You were out in the open?” she said, surprised.
“Unfortunately,” he said.
“Were you delayed or something?”
“No,” he said, sounding aggravated by the question. “We were on time; there was no reason to expect a spike for hours. It came off early, and a lot stronger than it should have been.”
Her mind raced, going over what had occurred on the boat. It sounded identical. Both stones had discharged unexpectedly. And seemingly random events now made sense to her.
“I think I know what happened.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“We’ve found another stone,” she told him. “We pulled it out of a sunken temple eight miles offshore.”
“That’s damn good news,” he said.
“Thanks,” she replied. “But the thing is, this stone spiked also. I don’t know if you have access to the news up there but half the Yucatan is blacked out—just like Vegas from the sound of things.”
“I thought we caused that,” he said.
“Nope,” she said. “That one’s on us. And it sounds to me like the timing was identical.”
“What are you saying?”
She gathered her thoughts. “The stones sent out a constant signal, right? A carrier wave that cycles like a beacon or a searchlight, rotating over and over again. What we’ve never known is what happens when that wave bounces off something,” she said.
“You think the stones found each other,” he said.
“One stone queried and the other answered. Like our computer networks.”
“Sounds like a possibility,” he said. “How come they haven’t found each other before?”
“You had that one buried underneath Building Five,” she said. “We found this one eighty feet beneath the gulf, shielded by a thousand tons of rock and coral. But we happened to bring it up to the surface at the same time you were transporting that one.”
She expected Moore to be skeptical but he was with her.
“That makes a lot more sense than you know,” he said. “We’ve been studying the buildup of the energy wave, what we were able to record anyway. And the main signal showed a sudden divergence from its prior, constant pattern. A change in the carrier wave that we could only account for in two ways. Either the stone was having some type of internal malfunction, or the divergence was the result of the two separate waves merging.”
“It has to be,” she said.
“It would help explain some other things, too,” he added, sounding relieved. “To begin with, the burst we had up here was more powerful than normal by a factor of ten. That’s easier to understand if something new was amplifying the signal.”
“These stones were meant to do something in concert with one another,” she suggested confidently. “They might even be connected now, like some kind of network.”
He hesitated. “Maybe they were for a moment, but not now. Once we got the Brazil stone into the tunnel, the carrier wave reverted to normal.”
She considered that. Apparently Yucca Mountain would work as a containment site after all.
