Atlantis a-1 Page 17

  “Next time I tell you there’s an ambush,” Dane said, “I suggest you listen.” He gestured at the Canadians. “I'm not being paid to back you up.”

  As Freed turned away, Dane froze both him and Michelet with his next words. “I want to know what happened to your first rescue team and I want to know what our plan is to get to the plane. I want to know who your enemy is that attacked us and I want to know who attacked them. Otherwise, I am not going anywhere.”

  * * *

  One entire wall in Patricia Conners office was covered with a mosaic of satellite imagery. She'd gone to the NSA Imaging Communications Center and pulled up all requests for imagery from Foreman for the past twenty-four hours. She wasn't surprised to discover that there had been other requests besides the two she had handled. What did surprise her was the nature of the requests: they were directed to a comrade of Conners, the ELINT or electronic intelligence specialist just down the hall from her. ELINT also included magnetic and radioactive data, so it covered a lot of ground.

  She'd printed out the results gathered by the string of ELINT satellites the US had circling the globe and now she had a mosaic that encompassed the entire planet. She had no clue, of course, what the various colors and lines overlaid on top of the basic geo-data meant. She knew it represented various spectrums in the electromagnetic realm, but that was the extent of her knowledge in that area.

  Conners walked down the hallway and stuck her head in a doorway. “Jimmy, dear,” she smiled.

  A young man with long hair pulled back in a pony-tail looked up from his computer screen with a slightly unfocused stare. “Yes?”

  “Jimmy, I need your help interpreting something.”

  Jimmy blinked. He wore a loose-fitting t-shirt and a pair of jeans that had seen better days. His eyeglasses were thick, the metal frames holding the lens almost sagging under the weight.

  “Interpreting? Interpreting what?”

  “Come to my office, Jimmy. I'll fix you a cup of that special tea that you like.”

  Conners led the way. Jimmy walked in the door to her office then paused. He whistled seeing the mosaic. “Whoa, Pat, when did you do that?”

  “Just now.”

  Jimmy walked over and started tracing lines with his fingertips, peering intently. “This data is new. I got the request this morning. Forwarded it all. You're not supposed to have this.”

  “You didn't look at it?” Conners plugged in her small hot water heater.

  Jimmy turned away from the wall in surprise. “We're not supposed to look at it unless directed to do so. We're supposed to forward and file.” He paused in thought. “Do you look at everything you're requested?”

  “Of course, dear.”

  Jimmy's bottom lip curled in as he chewed on it. He reached over and swung Conners' door shut. “Actually I look at everything too. I mean what's the point in doing this if you don't. Hell, I’m supposed to be the expert. It's not that-”

  “Jim,” Conners gently interrupted, “you don't have to explain it to me. Remember-I do the same thing. The point is, that means you've looked at this data, right?”

  Jimmy turned back to the wall. “Yeah. Foreman. I don't know who the hell that guy is, but he's into some weird shit-Uh, sorry, stuff.”

  “What kind of weird shit?”

  Jimmy's hands were back on the mosaic, tracing various colored lines as if his fingertips could feel what they represented. “These blue ones are electromagnetic flux lines. The reds ones are geomagnetic. The green ones show radioactivity.”

  “And?” Conners prompted when Jimmy fell silent.

  “Well,” Jimmy tapped the mosaic, “this isn't right.”

  “What do you mean it isn't right?”

  “It's not the normal patterns for any of those images. Something’s happening. On a global scale.”

  “What kind of something?” Conners asked.

  Jimmy shrugged. “Something is upsetting the natural flow of the earth's geo-and electro-magnetic fields. That something also carries a trace of radioactivity with it, although how that could be I have no idea.”

  “Radioactivity?” Conners repeated.

  “Yeah, but I’ve never seen anything like this. Really weird. Bizarre. In fact, downright impossible.”

  Conners was startled by this information. “Have you told anyone about this?”

  “Why?”

  “Because according to what you just said, something abnormal is going on,” Conners said in exasperation.

  “But if I told someone, they'd know I was looking at data I wasn't supposed to be looking at,” Jimmy said simply.

  “Good God,” Conners shook her head. “We have met the enemy and they is us.”

  “What?” Jimmy frowned.

  “Forget it.” Conners focused her mind. “All right. What do you think is causing this?”

  “I don't have a clue,” Jimmy said. “The patterns are very regular though and the lines intersect and seem to focus on several spots on the planet's surface. So its not random.”

  “Not random,” Conners muttered. “So something’s causing this?”

  “Of course something’s causing this,” Jimmy said.

  “No,” Conners shook her head in exasperation. “What I mean is someone is causing this?”

  Jimmy squinched his face. “Well, actually no. Nobody could do this. I mean, the pattern is not random, so that would suggest that there is a guiding cause, but nobody could propagate something like this so-” his words tumbled on top of themselves to an awkward halt.

  Conners walked over and looked at the lines. “What effect is this going to have?”

  “At the current levels,” Jimmy said, “not much at all. But it seems to be growing in power.”

  “And if it keeps growing?” Conners pressed.

  “Gee, I don't know, Pat.” Jimmy rubbed his chin where a few hairs struggled to hint at a beard. “But it would be bad if it went, say four powers higher. The electromagnetic stuff could knock out power grids, cause certain types of electronic devices to malfunction. You know how they ask people to turn off their laptops and cell phones when a plane takes off? Well, those things aren’t really a problem but the airline doesn’t want to take a chance with anything interfering with the plane’s systems. Right now, at the center of each of these points, the interference is about four times more powerful than that sort of equipment.

  “The radioactive stuff, now that's a whole 'nother ballgame. I don't see how this upswing could be happening, but if it keeps up for a few more days at this rate, we're going to have some very sick and some very dead people at the intersections of some of the flux lines.” Jimmy brightened. “But it can't keep growing.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, cause-” Jimmy paused. “Cause, I mean it just happened and… “ his voice trailed off.

  But Conners had suddenly noticed something about the map. She reached for a three ring binder on her desk and flipped through it. “Oh, my gosh,” she muttered.

  “What is it?” Jimmy was alarmed at the ashen look on her face.

  Conners jabbed her finger into the book. “I think I know how this is spreading. And I think I know where it's coming from.” She ripped out a page and carried it over to the mosaic. With a red marker she begin making small X’s on the paper.

  “It’s not all of them, but some of them fit.”

  “Not all of what?” Jimmy asked.

  “MILSTARS satellites. See how these are along the lines of propagation? You have a MILSTARS satellite in geosynchronous orbit at each of these points. Whoever or whatever is doing this is using satellites as a medium.” She remembered the strange data on the MILSTARS-16 satellite and now knew what it meant.

  “But how can that be? You can't do that,” Jimmy said. “It's not technically possible.”

  “I don't care if it's technically possible,” Conners said, “but someone is doing it. This all fits too well.”

  “But why?” Jimmy asked.

  “I don't kno
w why because I don't know who’s doing it,” Conners said. “But I can tell you exactly where all this power is originating from.” She touched a point on the mosaic. “Right here in north-central Cambodia where good old Mister Foreman wanted me to take a look with Bright Eye. And that someone didn't appreciate us taking a look because they blasted Bright Eye right out of space.”

  Jimmy's eyes opened wide at that. “Bright Eye blew up?”

  “Damn right.”

  Jimmy shook his head. “These lines aren’t originating from just the one point. Not anymore. They were, I mean, from what was requested before, but not now.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “The colors,” Jimmy said. “The shades. They tell-” Jimmy paused, as if trying to figure out how to explain to her. “All right, just trust me on this. I can read these colors and patterns, OK?”

  Conners nodded.

  Jimmy went on. “OK. I went back when I saw all this, trying to get a read on how quickly the power was growing.” He gave a slight smile. “And not only was I able to get an estimate on the growth rate, but also the path the propagation is taking. It did indeed start in Cambodia, but it seems to be picking up power from a couple of other places now.”

  “Where?” Conners asked.

  Jimmy’s long finger tapped the spots as he called them out. “Here, off of Bermuda. Here, in western Russia, right about Lake Baikal, and here in the western Pacific off the coast of Japan. It started in Cambodia and that’s where the most powerful force is generating, but these others are growing in strength and propagation ability, feeding off of whatever is in Cambodia.”

  “But-” Conners paused. She had been about to ask why, but she knew it was a pointless question. “Maybe Foreman knows what all this is. I sure hope he does.”

  * * *

  The USS Wyoming was part of the Second Fleet, headquartered at the naval base at Norfolk, Virginia. It was not due to put out to sea for another three weeks as part of its normal rotation of duty. But one phone call from the Chief of Naval Operations to Captain Rogers, the submarine’s commander, changed all that.

  For the last two hours phones had been ringing all over Norfolk and the naval base, alerting members of the crew and ordering them to report to duty.

  Standing high on submarine’s sail, Rogers watched his crew arrive in spurts, grumbling about the strange alert. He wasn’t concerned about morale-submariners were the elite of the Navy and he knew he could count on his men. He was, however, concerned about the strange nature of the tasking the CNO had given.

  First was the fact that it had bypassed every link, and there were many, in the chain of command between Rogers and the CNO. Second, the CNO had simply ordered Rogers to put to sea as quickly as possible, and go at flank speed to a set of coordinates in the ocean and await further instructions. Rogers had had the distinct and troubling feeling that the CNO himself wasn’t quite sure why he was giving these orders and was acting on orders himself. And to Rogers that meant the orders could only come from one of two places: the Secretary of Defense or the President. Either way, it meant whatever was going on was dead serious.

  But Rogers had plotted out the coordinates in the chart room and they puzzled him. They were for a point about 600 miles from Norfolk, to the southwest of Bermuda.

  Rogers rubbed a hand over his freshly shaved face as another bus pulled up to the gangplank, disgorging a pile of sailors. Now why, he wondered to himself, would someone need a ballistic missile submarine at those coordinates? Rogers could feel the thrum of the engines through the steel plate under his feet, as the reactor got up to power. He looked to his rear, along the massive desk of the Wyoming at the 24 sealed hatches that walked to the rear fin in pairs. Inside those silos he had enough nuclear power on board to destroy the world, or at least a very good chunk of it.

  “Eight hours to be on station at the designated coordinates,” his executive officer, Commander Sills, reported to him, coming up the hatch out of the conning tower.

  “Crew status?” Rogers inquired.

  “Sixty-seven percent accounted for.”

  “Let’s get under way,” Rogers ordered.

  Sills’ face showed his surprise. “But what about the rest of the crew, sir?”

  Rogers put a foot through the hatch and felt the rung. “The CNO said ASAP and sixty-seven percent makes us mission capable. Radio the harbormaster and tell him we get under way in five minutes.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “You can go one of two ways,” Hudson said.

  Ariana looked from the communications man to Mansor, who had just climbed down from the small opening, his mission to find a break in the cable unsuccessful. The three of them were gathered around a small table on which were spread the schematics for the plane.

  Other than Mansor’s mission, the last hour had been uneventful, for which Ariana was grateful. No more beams of light had gone through the plane. Nor had there been any noises outside of the plane but none of that helped the atmosphere inside much. The bodies of Daley and the engineer killed in the crash were in the rear of the plane, covered in blankets, reminders of their perilous situation, as if they needed any.

  Ariana looked across the table. Mansor was layered with dirt, grime and grease and looking none-too-happy. It had taken over an hour for him to traverse the crawl space to the base of the two stanchions that held up the rotodome. The SATCOM cables had been intact the entire way and disappeared up into the right stanchion, out of sight. Ariana was running out of options; that left going outside to check the rotodome. For all she knew, the entire system might have been sheered off in the crash and the satellite dish lost.

  “You've got the emergency over wing escape door or the emergency overhead hatch,” Hudson pointed out the two doors on the chart, one opening onto the right wing, the other onto the roof of the aircraft just behind the pilot's cabin.

  “Do you think the overhead one might have been damaged with the cockpit?” Mansor asked.

  Ariana remembered the way the metal had been cut. “I don't think so. The opening ended before the back of the cockpit.”

  “What about the beams?” Ingram asked. “What if they're being aimed by someone outside and once they spot you-” he stopped, the others knowing the end to the sentence.

  “We're not in a stable situation here,” Ariana said. “We have to act and act quickly. My father would have sent a rescue party as soon as he lost contact with us. It’s long past the time for such a party to have reached us, so we have to assume we’re going to get no outside help. I don’t know why, but that’s the situation. And the message we received told us we had only twelve hours. We’ve already wasted some of that.

  “The first step is to try to get satellite communications and see if we can contact someone. If that doesn't work, then I’ve made the decision we're going to have to leave the plane. I say we try the radio first.”

  Given those choices, the others nodded their heads. Mansor stood, shaking some of the dust off his clothes.

  “I'll go with you,” Ariana said, grabbing a mini-mag light and sticking it into her pocket.

  “There's no-” Mansor began, but he was silenced by the flash in her eyes.

  “Let's do it. We'll go out the top hatch,” Ariana decided. “That way we won't have to climb up from the wing.”

  Mansor held up a reel of co-axial cable. “I'm ready.”

  Ariana turned and walked toward the front of the plane. The emergency overhead access door was in the ceiling of her office. They unhooked her heavy metal desk and pushed it underneath. Mansor climbed up, after tying off one end of the coaxial cable to a leg of the desk. He grabbed the emergency latch and twisted it. With a loud popping noise, it opened inward, swinging down, revealing a pitch-black rectangle. There were no stars visible, nothing but utter blackness. He glanced down. “Ready?”

  “Ready,” Ariana said, climbing on top of the desk and crouching next to him.

  Mansor pulled himself into the darkness. He d
isappeared for a second, then his arm reappeared. Ariana grabbed his hand and he pulled her up and out of the plane.

  * * *

  “We had a rescue team on standby,” Freed said. “Lucian coordinated it.”

  “And?” Dane asked. Chelsea was rubbing against his leg. The four Canadian mercenaries were waiting by the plane, as was the pilot, out of earshot.

  Freed laid the facts out. “As per our emergency plan, Lucian ordered the team in once he got word the plane went down. It went toward the last plotted position we had for the Lady Gayle.”

  “And you never heard from it again,” Dane summarized.

  “Contact was lost and has not been reestablished,” Freed said.

  “Who were the lucky sons-a-bitches?” Dane asked.

  “Cambodian Special Forces,” Freed said. “A twelve man A-team, plus two men in the helicopter crew.”

  “That explains why the Cambodian government is so eager to support you now,” Dane said.

  “Screw the Cambodian government,” Michelet said. “I want my daughter out of there.”

  “Those Cambodian soldiers had lives too,” Dane said. “Families.”

  “Their families have been well compensated,” Michelet said. “It was the nature of their job.”

  “Running missions for rich Americans?” Dane asked.

  “They took the money quite eagerly,” Michelet said.

  Dane ignored the old man and stared at Freed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “We don’t know what happened to the team, so there wasn’t much we could tell you,” Freed said. Seeing Dane’s stare, he sighed. “All right. We didn’t think you’d come if we told you the team had disappeared.”

  Dane was thinking of something else. “The tape. Was it real?”

  “Yes,” Freed assured him. “The Lady Gayle picked up and forwarded that message before it went down.”

  “Maybe someone taped us back in ‘68 and…” Dane's voice trailed off.

  “And saved it for over forty years to use?” Freed asked.

  “Who ambushed us at the warehouse?” Dane asked. He knew Freed and Michelet weren't lying about the tape. He'd known it from the moment he heard it. But he’d known the two men were withholding other information.