The Siren Project (42 page)

He stole a look over his shoulder. The sky
was empty, the Apache hadn't yet cleared the ridge and for a moment had lost
sight of them. He banked toward Gila Bend, using the long ridge running north
to south to conceal their movements. Mitch knew he had to conserve what altitude
he had left, to put the greatest distance between them and the Apache. Every
shudder, every movement, he balanced for speed and distance. A minute passed
and still the gunship didn’t appear. Mitch guessed the pilots were searching
for the wreckage of the glider, not believing it could have escaped its wild
dive. He gingerly followed the contours of the cliff as it curved slowly west
and south, wringing every bit of lift he could from the thermals that swirled
up the southern rock face. When the glider rose in an updraft, he drifted out
away from the cliff and circled twice, gaining altitude, before slipping away to
the south again.

“What . . . happened?” Christa stammered
weakly.

“They lit us up with something that shorted
out the electrical system, and you,” Mitch replied, stealing a quick look back.
Her face was a sickly white, but her eyes were focused.

“Is there a sick bag back here?”

“Not on this flight,” he said, hoping she
wouldn't need it. “Keep checking behind us. It won’t take them long to figure
out we’re not dead.”

Christa looked back along the rough cliff
walls. which flashed past only feet from the wing tip. The blue of the sky was
broken only by a distant wisp of white cloud, but no helicopter was in sight. “It’s
clear behind us.”

Mitch eased the glider out into clear air,
thinking they might have escaped, when a black object appeared above them,
tucked into a tight curve and dropped in behind them.

“Now we’re cooked!” Mitch declared as the
Apache closed on them, bringing guns to bear. He pushed the stick forward
sharply, diving the glider as a double stream of tracer cut the air above the
canopy. “That’s our luck gone! They won’t miss twice.”

The Apache flew above them, banked, then side
slipped towards their tail. Christa craned her neck to see the pilot, sensing
the distance. “Get closer!”

“What!” he exclaimed, confused.

“We have to get closer. I can’t reach them
from here!” She yelled, never taking her eyes off the two helo pilot’s black
helmets.

Mitch checked the gunship's position and
course, then pulled the stick back, hard to port, lifting the nose and banking,
gaining a little height as he bled speed. The Apache reached its firing
position, but Mitch’s maneuver had the glider circling out from the cliff,
turning back toward the north, just out of reach. He banked sharply back toward
the cliff as the Apache turned while hovering, swinging its 30 millimeter chain
gun toward the fragile glider. The glider came around fast, as the pilot swiveled
the nose mounted turret toward his prey. Christa leaned forward, staring past
Mitch intently, trying to steady her nerves and fighting the furious pounding
inside her head from the directed energy weapon’s attack.

“Which one is the pilot, left or right?”
she yelled.

“I don’t know.”

Christa took a deep breath, held it for
several seconds as she forced the deceptive thought into the pilot’s mind. The
Apache finished rotating mid air, its automatic cannon aimed directly toward
the glider, then its tail dropped, pointing the cannon skyward as it fired. Tracer
blasted the air close to the glider’s perspex canopy, then the gunship slipped backwards.
Mitch pushed the stick hard to starboard, dropping the wing and circling away
from the cliff. The chopper pilot threw off his confusion and attempted to
level his aircraft, but the tail rotor clipped the cliff face behind, and sheared
off. The Apache shuddered for a moment, hung in mid air as if surprised by its
fate, then spun out of control. Halfway down the cliff, the main rotor hit the rock
wall and tore part of the engine mounting free. The helicopter lurched sideways
and collided with the cliff face, exploding in flames. The burning wreckage bounced
off the cliff face as it fell, scattering burning aviation fuel through the air
in a grotesque fireball. When it hit the rocks at the base of the cliff, it
exploded and disintegrated into a hundred fiery pieces.

Mitch circled in the updraft above the
flames below as a plume of black smoke began to rise toward them. “Ouch!” He
winced, then glanced back at Christa. “I’d hate to steal your car parking
space.”

Christa rested her head on her forearm, against
the back of Mitch's seat, eyes closed and sobbing.

“Sorry, bad joke,” he said gently.

“I felt his terror, all the way down, until
he died. I was so close to his mind.”

“What did you . . . do?”

“I made him see the glider much closer than
it was, made him think we were going to collide.”

“That’s why he pulled back? A reflex
action.”

Christa glanced at the flaming wreckage
below, then looked away. “He didn’t die until the bottom. He was . . . terribly
burned by the time they hit. I . . . I can still hear his screams in my head.” She
sobbed uncontrollably.

“Christa, they were going to kill us. You
had no choice.”

“You don’t know what it’s like.”

Mitch set the glider back on its southward
course, looking for the next thermal. “I’ve done some hard things, I–”

“No! You don’t understand. You never knew how
the other person felt, when they knew they were going to die. You weren’t
attuned to that person. You didn’t feel their pain, their terror. You can never
know! No one ever knows what it’s like to die, until they actually die. No one
except me. I know. Now . . . I know.”

It was something that had never occurred to
him. She was right. He never knew his enemy’s pain, his enemy’s moment of death,
from their perspective.

Mitch circled the glider through the
thermals, gaining altitude, then turned south for the long slow glide back to
the airstrip. All through the return flight, Christa remained submerged in a
deep silence, struggling to forget the screams of the burning helicopter pilot
etched forever in her mind.

* * * *

Mitch placed his crude rectangular map
of the Sincom facility on the hotel room table. It was based on the digital
photographs they'd taken from the glider, which were now displayed on the
notebook computer sitting beside the map. He turned to the laptop and selected
a photograph of the perimeter fences and the silver metal towers equipped with
a sophisticated array of sensors at each corner. 

“What do you make of that?” he asked.

Gunter zoomed the image in on one of the
towers.  “Motion sensors for day, heat sensors for night.  And these are
security cameras.”  He pointed to a blunt bulbous object mounted on a rotating
turret.  “Hmm . . . this is unusual.”

“More of their high tech Star Wars crap?”
Mouse suggested.

Gunter switched to another image of a guard
tower, taken closer and from a different angle.  “Could be.  We should assume
electrical equipment will be useless anywhere near these devices.”

“It’s small enough to be camouflaged out near
the radiation fence,” Mitch said.  “Maybe that’s what disabled our car.”

“And what tried to shoot down the glider,”
Christa added.

“What is interesting about those towers,”
Gunter said, “Is that they are unmanned.”

Mitch switched to a photograph of the
western line of double perimeter fences, broken by a pair of remotely
controlled, motorized gates.  A rectangular camera housing stood on a metal
pole observing the perimeter fence.  “The gates are also unmanned.”  He then
selected an image of a low concrete building near the inner gate.  Thick dark
glass was inset in each wall, providing an unobstructed view of the gates and
the western half of the facility.  The bullet proof windows were horizontal
slits, overhung by several feet of concrete.  “This is a bunker, not a gate
house.”  On top was a low cylindrical concrete structure encircled by a narrow
firing slit.  “And this has to be a gun emplacement.  Anyone trying to force
their way in there, won't live to tell about it.”

“It is large enough for a multi-barreled weapon,”
Gunter said, “Possibly a chain gun.”

“A chain gun!” Mouse said nervously. 

“They seem well funded,” Mitch said,  “So we
should assume they have the best of everything.  Radar guided firing systems,
depleted uranium ammo, every conceivable sensor.”

“Energy weapons, helicopter gunships and robot
chain guns!” Mouse exclaimed, shaking his head.  “Am I the only one who thinks
this is a really bad idea?”

Mitch selected another image, this time of the
main building, long and wide, with windows on the northern face, but few on the
relatively featureless eastern side.  The building took up almost half the
site.  The northern two thirds of the structure’s roof was low and flat, while
the southern third rose high above the rest, and was covered in a tangled maze
of pipes. “Any guesses what these pipes are for?”

Gunter zoomed the computer image until it
began to pixilate.  “These are heavy duty pipes. Too thick to be electrical
conduits, too much insulation for wires.  They look like something you would
see in an oil refinery.”  He traced the pipes to their source on the western
side of the building, where the pipe maze fed into the roof.  “They come out of
the building here, on the left.  We should investigate that area.”

Mouse looked perplexed.  “I admire your
optimism, but time for a reality check guys.  That isn’t a corporate laboratory
with second rate domestic security.  That’s a triple A, prime grade, big
brother, secret military shoot on sight, death trap.  Who knows what kind of
weird shit they have?  Stuff we’ve never even heard of.  Not to mention the
tank killing robot gun covering the gates.  It’s a fortress.”

“It's the Maginot Line,” Mitch countered.

“The what?”

“World War Two French fortifications.  The
French sat in them, and the Germans bypassed them.  France fell in six weeks. 
Nothing is invulnerable.  All we have to do is find a way around their Maginot
Line.” 

“Oh, I see ... Luke!  You're going to blow
up the Death Star.”

“I'm at least going to peek at the plans.”

“Do you know how many wing men died before Luke
blew up the Death Star?”  Mouse looked horrified.  “And we know who the
expendable wing man is!”  He pointed to himself.  “I don't want to be Red
Five.  Let the damn Death Star win!”

Mitch suppressed a smile, then indicated
another section of his map.  “Over here, we have several tall buildings, with
exhaust fans in the roof, large sliding doors and paved access roads.”  He brought
up the corresponding photograph on the laptop's screen.  “My guess is they're warehouses.” 
The next picture was of a large square building beside a concrete apron.  He
dropped the photo on a square he'd drawn on the map.  “This is the hanger and
helipad, minus one helo.  Probably more choppers inside.”

Christa lowered her eyes as the memory of
an agonized scream flashed through her mind.

“That’s another thing,” Mouse declared.  “The
downed chopper.  Don’t you think they’ll be on full alert now?”

“Maybe,” Mitch conceded.  “If they check
the wreckage, it will look like pilot error.  There are no bullet holes in the
chopper, so they’ll know we didn’t shoot it down.  For all they know, the
glider crashed and they haven’t found the wreckage yet.”

“And maybe they’ll call out the National
Guard, just in case we did shoot it down.”

“Unlikely.  That would attract too much
attention.”

“What if they have a battalion of marines
up there?” Mouse demanded.

“They don’t,” Christa said with certainty.

“How do you know?” Mouse asked.

“They have a manpower problem.”

“What are you talking about?  They’ve out
gunned us every time we’ve come up against them.”

Christa pointed to Mitch's map, indicating
the guard towers, the sensors and the robot chain gun.  “It's all automated.”

“Ya,” Gunter said.  “They have money and advanced
technology, but the number of unconditioned people we’ve encountered is small.”

“That's right!” Mitch said. “McNamara, the
general, the senator and a few renegade special forces types, plus the
technical people doing the conditioning.” 

“The old man and his tow truck,”  Gunter
said. 

“And Cousin Floyd,” Christa added.

“Were the helicopter pilots conditioned?”
Gunter asked.

“I didn’t have time to register them.”

“It's not exactly an army,” Mitch said.  “There'd
be wall to wall guards protecting this place, if it was legal.”

“Like Area 51,” Mouse said.  “No one can
get near that place.  The aliens insisted if they were going to help the
military, they had to be protected.”

“We drove right up to the outer fence,”
Mitch said.  “No guards to get rid of us, none of the usual heavy handed
military BS, just signs warning us about radiation and a bunch of old cow
bones.  It’s a con.”