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Lieutenant Lobo and another SEAL walked away. Cameron sat sideways to her while she ate.

“You're brilliant,” he said.

He caught her with a mouthfull of processed chicken. Pointing at her jaws, Susan nodded, chewed some more, and finally swallowed. “Thanks,” she replied, taking a sip of water. “But most of it's the tools and a little luck.”

His square face, framed by the long dark hair, softened as he said, “Don't ever sell yourself short, Susan Garnett. You're something very special.” He put a hand on her right shoulder and gave it a soft squeeze.

For a moment Susan forgot all about computer algorithms and viruses, about binary codes and countdowns. She liked the physical contact and smiled while holding his hand. “That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me in some time.”

He didn't reply—
didn't need to reply.
His eyes conveyed his feelings for her, more direct than ever before. The eye contact lasted several seconds, but Susan felt that they had communicated for hours. In that brief, unexpected moment, her palm pressed against his knuckles, she knew
exactly
how he felt. She could read his mind in the same manner that she could read her husband's after years of marriage, only she had known Cameron for less than five days.

Cameron Slater.

Susan filled her lungs, conscious of her nipples pressing against the white cotton T-shirt. Ever since meeting Cameron Slater, Susan had felt like a woman again, had felt alive again. Sunlight became brighter. Colors came alive in her eyes as she gazed about, as if Cameron had lifted a veil off her face, allowing her to enjoy the world as she had done long ago.

A beep on her system returned their attention to the screen. Another message from Troy Reid. The search with ninety percent resolution had resulted in zero matches.

She lowered her gaze. “I was afraid of that.”

“What?”

“Too loose a resolution and we get many matches, most of them false because too many topologies conform to the binary map. Too fine a resolution and we get zero matches, probably suggesting that the translation of the EM event into binary code was too noisy, too coarse even for the image-enhancing algorithm. I'll recommend we drop to eighty percent and try again. See what we get.” She tapped the keys of her laptop and sent the instruction to Reid.

“What else could it be?” asked Cameron.

“The frequency range,” she said. “Last night I performed a wide-area scan from one megahertz to one gigahertz in increments of one hundred megahertz. So I essentially had ten listening channels open, each being sampled once per millisecond. Most of the EM activity occurred in the nine hundred megahertz to one gigahertz range, meaning that the frequency being transmitted from the source is likely to be in that high-frequency range. The resolution of the binary conversion could be immensely improved if I narrow the range and increase the sampling rate of the conversion algorithm within that smaller range while also decreasing the width of each listening channel.”

“I see,” replied Cameron. “So if you were to narrow the search frequency to a range of nine hundred megahertz to one gigahertz, and then divide that range into ten listening bands of ten megahertz each, it should reduce the noise and improve the resolution of the conversation, right?”

She nodded. “Exactly. It's kind of like trying to tune in to a radio station but you don't know the frequency. All you know is that the station broadcasts only once per day for several seconds. That forces you to perform a broad scan of the entire range of interest at a lower resolution. Each of my listening channels last night was one hundred megahertz wide. For tonight I'm planning to narrow the listening channel width to around ten megahertz, with the entire range being only one hundred megahertz wide. That's a ten X improvement in the frequency selection.”

“Which you hope would result in a ten X improvement in the resolution of the binary map.”

“You've got it. The problem, of course, is that even that may not be enough to get a clean conversion. Keep in mind that sometimes there is a difference of less than one megahertz between radio stations. You have to play with the tuner to get a specific station, and that's after you
know
the station's number. Imagine trying to find a station without knowing the number and of course the station only broadcasts once a day for several seconds.”

“Sounds like we may have a few iterations to go.”

“The problem is that we don't have that many bullets left in our gun. Today is the seventeenth. We only have fourteen more chances to find the frequency, map it, and figure out what the message is.”

“What if the selected frequency is not within this new frequency range? What if it's higher that one gigahertz? Should we try to perform a search at a higher frequency than that?”

She shrugged. “Again, it boils down to the resolution. Widen the search and drop the resolution. For now it appears that there was a lot of activity in this upper frequency. Let's try the proposed narrowed range tonight and go from there.”

“I'm in, but there's still something that doesn't make sense.”

“What's that?”

“If the resolution of the binary map is so way off, why is it that we got such crisp information on the date of the event?”

Susan thought about that for a moment and quickly went back to her system, pulling up a window that showed the electromagnetic meter right before the event. She clicked the
PLAY
button at the bottom of the window, replaying the event, looking at the graphical record of the EM meter as the event progressed, pausing often, noticing the intensity of the activity in the upper frequency range, up to the last instance, right before the event ended, when a single pulse of EM activity filled every frequency in the selected range for a fraction of a second. She clicked
REWIND
for a second and then
STOP
, followed by
PLAY.
This time, when the frequency-independent EM pulse appeared on the screen, she clicked
PAUSE.
At the time she had not thought much of it. But now she understood.

Tapping an unkempt fingernail on the plasma screen, Susan said, “This last pulse corresponds to the bottom of the binary file, the Mayan date. Looks like it was broadcast across all frequencies.”

Cameron grinned while nodding. “You're an amazing woman.”

“Save that for when we're out of the woods,
literally
speaking. Also, don't forget that we still have to figure out the meaning of the 260 bytes of data in the captured viruses. Each has been different so far.”

“Do you think you might also have a resolution problem there?”

She shook her head. “That code is extracted directly from the body of the virus. There is no translation from the outside world into the digital world. It's all digital. It should be already clean. We just have to figure out what it means. And I get the feeling that the answer to that puzzle is somewhere around us.”

Susan looked at the beautiful temple, at the pyramid, at the smaller palace, marvelous works of stone, so much in harmony with its surroundings, looking not like something erected
on
the land but coming
out
of the land, like an extension of the jungle, like her unkempt fingernails, different from the rest of her hand but very much a part of it.

Breathing the warm and humid air, Susan returned her attention to the laptop to review the recorded event once more.

Chapter Fifteen

001111

1

December 17, 1999

Antonio Strokk was the first to hear it, vegetation being hacked away. He listened intently for another moment, eyes closed, hoping that the sounds would reveal an animal, but the slashing sound was human, and it was coming toward them.

For a moment his instincts failed him. With all of his preparations, he had not thought of the possibility of someone noisily approaching from behind. He had set up booby traps beyond the perimeter hot-wired by the SEALs in case one of the American soldiers decided to take a stealth tour of the jungle around the site. But he had not expected this.

Celina was already moving off the moss, seeking the cover of a ceiba's wide trunk. She had personally set up the charges and knew what kind of blast to expect. Strokk also rolled off the moss and behind an adjacent tree, keeping his silenced weapon aimed at his personal target, the SEAL commander.

In seconds the intruder would reach the trap, not only blowing himself to pieces, but also telegraphing Strokk's team's presence to the SEALs. If he allowed the elite American fighting force the opportunity to vanish into the jungle, Strokk knew that his chances of coming out alive were drastically reduced. As seasoned as his team was, Strokk knew that it could not match an alert SEAL unit on the hunt. His only advantage against the highly trained naval force was the element of surprise, of being able to give an order and shoot them all at once, before any of them knew what had hit them.

And Antonio Strokk, former Russian Spetsnaz commander, gave the order, leading the strike by firing three silenced rounds into the head and chest of the SEAL commander. Celina did the same with her target.

2

Susan jumped away in shock the moment Lieutenant Lobo's head blew apart, spraying her and her equipment with a crimson mist. In the same instant, all SEALs within her field of view dropped to the ground, silent bullets ripping open their craniums. Before she could react, Cameron was on top of her, forcing her down on the stone courtyard, shielding her with his own body.

“Everybody down!” a distant SEAL screamed moments later, raising his silenced submachine gun at the jungle, shooting several rounds before falling to his knees, blood spurting from his chest. Then he collapsed.

A surreal mantle descended over the entire area as the surviving SEALs returned fire in all directions while seeking shelter behind stelae and pillars, but the enemy seemed to be everywhere, firing from all angles, catching the Americans in a deadly cross fire, rapidly decimating the naval team.

Susan and Cameron rose to a deep crouch, gazing at the havoc around them. Most SEALs were down, limbs twisted at unnatural angles, blood pooling around their bodies.

“We have to get out of here!” she said, a sudden burst of confidence gripping her, flushing out the initial shock, forcing her to look past the slain figures sprawled across the courtyard.

Together they raced the twenty feet separating them from the nearest SEAL, Lieutenant Lobo.

Susan forced back the vomit reaching her gorge at the sight of Lobo's face, eyeballs out of their sockets from the internal pressure of the round that tore his head in half, splashing the limestone around him with gray matter and bloody foam.

Cameron grabbed the SEAL's large side arm. Clenching her teeth, gunpowder assaulting her nostrils, she followed him around the cenote as a powerful blast shook the jungle to their right, followed by screams.

They reached the stone pillar, the one by the large temple, near the main cavelike entrance to the site. Susan stopped, pressing her back against the stone reliefs of the pillar, Cameron standing next to her, also breathing heavily.

A SEAL ran in their direction, the ground around him exploding from a fusillade of silent rounds. The warrior, the bulky blond Cameron had saved from the caiman two days ago, zigzagged as he sprinted across the front of the temple, by the steps. Then he suddenly arched back, a bullet stabbing his chest. He hit the ground just a dozen feet from Susan, rolled toward the steps, and miraculously surged back up to his knees, as if he were praying. The soldier lifted his weapon toward the trees beyond Susan and Cameron, but before he could fire, a round tore into his neck. As the young man's body remained kneeling for a few grotesque moments, his nearly severed head leaned back to a sickening angle, before ripping cleanly off his upper torso, hitting the ground with the thump of a sack of potatoes.

Susan cupped her mouth as she ran away, led by Cameron, feeling another convulsion, tasting the MRE in the back of her throat, her heavy breathing mixing with the howling of monkeys and squawking of birds. Moss dangled from high branches as she kicked her feet against the uneven terrain, the ground suddenly exploding in front of them, bullets walloping against the trees leading to the jungle.

They stopped, looking around them, nearly dropping to their knees as a powerful explosion shook the ground, followed by the terrified screams of a woman.

“What—who is that?” Susan asked, panting.

“Don't … don't know. But someone … wants us alive!” Cameron replied, nearly out of breath, scanning their surroundings with Lobo's gun, unable to find a target. She kept her Walther PPK hidden from view.

“You're … right,” she replied. “Otherwise we'd also be dead by—”

“Don't move!” a voice echoed by the edge of the site, mixing with the female screams emanating from the jungle to their immediate right. “And drop that gun!”

3

Antonio Strokk received a status report from each of his fire teams surrounding the site. All SEALs had been terminated and the scientists had been intercepted by the temple.

Staring at Celina who was currently reloading her submachine gun, he gave the order to terminate the intruders with extreme prejudice. He also ordered two of his men to hold the scientists at the temple until he got there.

A moment later he heard four of his men racing through the jungle in the direction of the screams.

4

Ishiguro Nakamura rushed to Jackie's side the moment a deafening explosion blasted Luis's body into a cloud of human debris, spraying the jungle around him, as well as Jackie, who had braced herself in the thick underbrush while screaming out loud.

“Are you okay?” he shouted, grabbing her shoulders, the loud explosion ringing in his ears.