Текст книги "Black Sun"
Автор книги: Graham Brown
Соавторы: Graham Brown
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“I’ll have a workup done on your theory,” Moore said, “but I think you’re on the right track.”
“So what’s the next move?” she asked. “I hope you have some plan for getting this stone back there. Because I doubt I can get it through security in my carry-on. Not that I’d bring it on a plane.”
“Don’t even try,” he said. “Just keep it with you. At least for now. Find some way to shield it or you’ll be causing blackouts every seventeen hours and thirty-seven minutes.”
“I can do that,” she said. “But I need you to arrange travel for Yuri.”
“Why?”
“He was injured by the pulse. He seems to be okay now but I want to get him out of here. Whatever the Russians did to him, it seems to have made him vulnerable to harm from this thing.”
“What exactly are you talking about?”
“He has some type of implant embedded in his brain,” she said. “He had a seizure during the event and was unconscious for thirty minutes or so afterward. I got him to a hospital and they did an MRI.”
She took a breath. “Bottom line is this: He needs more care than I can give him, and we’re endangering him by keeping him with us. We’ve already been attacked once and even though we’ve moved, we’re not safe by any means.”
Moore remained awfully quiet.
“Can you arrange something discreet?” she asked.
“I told you before, you risk the Agency getting their hands on him,” Moore said. “My guess is that they’d take custody of Yuri if they got the chance and I don’t know if that would be any better than turning him over to Saravich.”
Danielle felt a wave of anger surge through her. “We can’t endanger him like this,” she said urgently. “He’s just a child, a special-needs child at that.”
“I understand what you’re saying, but things are going out of control up here,” Moore replied.
“They’re not exactly going well down here, either,” she said.
“Yuri will be safer with you,” Moore said.
Moore really had only two expressions: smug satisfaction and thinly veiled disgust. Nervousness was not his way, but she could hear a type of tension and concern in his voice that was out of place.
“What’s going on?”
“The Russians and the Chinese are going out of their minds over this event. They’re accusing us of building and testing some new weapon that we can’t control. It’s giving Stecker a lot of ammunition and the president, who I thought was smarter than that, is playing right into it.”
“Bottom line,” she asked.
“Suddenly showing up with a Russian child who’d been kidnapped by the Chinese, before being stolen by American agents and dragged off to Mexico, might not be the smartest thing to do right now.”
“Then find me a safe house,” she demanded.
“In Mexico?” he said. “Do you really think we have one?”
Danielle cursed under her breath and looked at Yuri again. She’d begun to feel as if she were risking Yuri’s life for someone else’s gain. Being forced to make that type of compromise was the main reason she’d quit the NRI in the first place.
“Are you telling me the safest place for him is here with us?”
“No,” Moore said. “I’m telling you that if things get any worse there might not be anywhere safe for anyone.”
Moore’s voice was cold and unyielding. It left her wishing she’d never answered the phone. She felt a soft breeze drift in from the balcony. The storm was growing closer.
“You’ve got ninety-two hours,” Moore said. “Make them count.”
She had no choice but to trust his take on the situation. “Find out what you can about Yuri,” she asked. “I’ll let you know before we make our next move.”
Moore signed off and Danielle put the phone down. She turned out toward the balcony. The wind had grown stronger and cooler and drops of precipitation had begun to spatter against the wall. As the lightning flashed in staggered waves, she could see the rain blowing sideways across the beach.
Hawker had moved from his chair and was now leaning against the wall in the sheltered part of the veranda, just outside the doorway. He was just standing there quietly, watching the storm.
She wondered if he was thinking of the last storm they’d been in together, a moment in time two years ago that was so fresh in her mind it could have been yesterday. She wanted to walk over to him, put her hand on his shoulder, and wait for him to turn to her, but she knew things could not be that simple.
She thought about Marcus and felt a new wave of guilt. She imagined him back there waiting, forced to trust what Moore told him about her well-being, probably worried sick over her fate. Now she wished that she’d spoken with him when offered the chance.
She took a deep breath. She didn’t like this. Didn’t like confusion.
Her mind flashed to Moore’s statement. There might not be anywhere safe for anyone. She needed to focus. To stop thinking about Hawker, to stop thinking about Marcus. To stop thinking about anything but the job in front of her.
She watched Hawker a moment longer. And then she turned from temptation, walked to her bedroom, and closed the door.
CHAPTER 38
The massive warehouse on the outskirts of Campeche belonged to a subsidiary of Kang Industrial. But the normal business that was conducted there had been moved, giving way to Kang’s pursuit of the stones.
From his chair Kang surveyed the effort. Through the windows near the back of the structure, he saw the Skycrane helicopter his men had used to hoist the statue from Isla Cubierta. It sat dormant on a helipad, waiting with two others of its kind for a new mission to fulfill. Inside the building, stacks of equipment lined the walls: there were armored vehicles squatting on massive tires, containers holding inflatable rafts, a small two-manned submarine, and a flight of drone reconnaissance aircraft similar to the U.S. Army’s Predators.
As Kang looked around, his heart swelled with pride and fresh confidence. His collection of high-tech equipment had been growing for years, part of a newfound reality he had embraced.
His deteriorating health had given him an unusual vantage point from which to study his empire. As he’d been forced to delegate and rely on others, he’d seen the growth of his empire stall and the number of failures and missed opportunities rise to a level he could not abide. It had taught him a lesson that he considered a revelation: Human limitation and fallibility were the greatest of enemies.
Just as his own body betrayed and failed him, the people around him betrayed and failed him. Physically Kang was forced to rely more and more on the machines. They strengthened him, healed him, and gave him mobility and independence.
To save his empire he had forced a similar paradigm into place. Ultramodern surveillance systems blanketed every square inch of his domain; predictive artificial intelligence software allowed him to move quickly in business and other fields without a large cast of human analysts to slow him down. Computer programs tracked the productivity and reliability of every employee he had. They decided who to hire and who to fire. There were no meetings, emotions, or friendships involved. Just facts, data, and algorithms. With the human element removed, his businesses had begun to thrive again.
And now he intended to bring similar changes to his quest for the stones. Despite the efforts of Choi and his men, Kang knew it would be machinery that allowed him to find and recover what he was looking for. Human power was only necessary to operate or initiate the equipment, and if the humans failed or lagged they were easily replaceable.
In Kang’s eyes, Choi and his men were nothing more than spare parts, one just as good as another, but the machines … the machines were the key.
One of the doctors called to Kang. They were ready to begin the latest and most advanced incarnation of his treatment. At this Kang turned his chair and crossed the floor. Choi followed dutifully at his side.
They arrived at a metallic worktable. Spread out in sections were various types of familiar equipment: the electrical stimulators, the monitors, the power packs.
“Are you ready, sir?” the doctor asked.
“Is the testing complete?” Kang asked.
The doctor nodded. “All diagnostics have been run and the feedback from the earlier sessions downloaded.”
This was the moment of truth.
“Then you may proceed,” Kang said, extending his right arm awkwardly.
The doctor assisted him, straightening and stretching Kang’s arm and sliding a gauntlet of sorts onto it. Next he connected a brace to Kang’s elbow and a shoulder harness of sorts. Once Kang was strapped in, the doctors began connecting wires to various points of the harness.
“I will leave you,” Choi said.
“You will stay,” Kang ordered.
Choi sat down uneasily.
As the doctors worked, a yellow forklift carrying several large crates traveled methodically toward them. The forklift deposited its load and then scurried away as men rushed into position and opened the crates. Inside rested the mechanical equivalent of pack mules: four-legged machines, powered by an internal engine and controlled by an advanced computer brain that kept them agile and balanced on almost any terrain while carrying hundreds of pounds of equipment.
Kang’s techs immediately began assembling them. From the look on his face, Choi seemed to take this negatively.
“Something troubles you,” Kang said.
Choi hesitated.
“You disapprove of these efforts?” Kang felt anger growing within him.
“So much equipment will slow us down,” Choi said.
“No,” Kang said. “This is the only way.”
The doctor finished connecting the wires and then taped them flat against Kang’s arm and plugged them into a power pack in the harness. Kang admired the work. With titanium braces, hydraulic actuators, and an articulated elbow and shoulder joint, his new sleeve looked like some type of futuristic body armor, but it was more than that.
The technicians tested the fit, adjusted it, and then tightened the straps again. After that they went to work connecting smaller mechanical appendages to each of Kang’s fingers.
“I wish to speak of our quarry,” Kang said to Choi. “They continue to elude you.”
“For the present,” Choi explained. “We will find them soon enough.”
“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?”
“I don’t think it would help,” he said. “And what if it gives us away?”
“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.
He looked toward the science section of the laboratory. He’d had a sense, since first viewing the stone, that it was important somehow, vitally important. Had his conviction brought him too far? There were reasons, he had to keep reminding himself, to question his own judgment.
Despite two years of study, the thing was still beyond their understanding. It presented itself as an object of great power, and had at least temporarily linked itself to the second stone, boosting that power tenfold. Did that mean three stones would have a hundred times the power and four stones a thousand? If that was the case they were now talking about the equivalent energy release of several hundred nuclear warheads simultaneously.
As far as they could tell there was no radiation, no explosive component, nothing beyond the massive electromagnetic wave, but how could they be sure? The stone had surprised them once already. Maybe he was the one that had it wrong; maybe the stone should be destroyed before things got out of hand.
“Tell them the truth,” he suggested.
The president just looked at him.
“Share the data with the whole world, instead of keeping it secret. With a lack of information, they’re being forced to make their own conclusions, usually based mostly on fear.”
Onscreen the president looked surprised and then glanced off to the side, exchanging words with someone outside the frame. Moore guessed it was his chief of staff.
“I’ll take that under advisement,” he said finally.
“Maybe they’ll understand,” Moore added, feeling suddenly proud of himself. “Hell, they might even have a few ideas as to what we should do about it.”
An aide came up to the president. A folder was placed in front of him. A few words whispered in his ear. The feed was muted but the look on his face became increasingly strained. He turned back to the screen, to Moore.
“We have another problem,” he said. “The Russians have just shot down a pair of Chinese spy planes.”
Moore turned his attention back to the UN screen, cringing at this latest development. The Chinese ambassador had apparently gotten the word and was already railing at the Russian delegation, and worse yet, he was threatening retaliation.
