Dragon Over Washington (The Third War Of The Bir Nibaru Gods) (13 page)

The Ford behind them had opaque windows and a large antenna aerial. Someone watched the couple from inside the van, the opaque windows making him invisible to anybody watching the vehicle from outside. Static noise suddenly erupted from one of the radio sets built into the side of the van’s compartment. The watcher, a heavyset, balding man, hurried to the radio and picked up a headset.

“Guardian, this is Alpha. Please respond,” the voice said.

The man flicked a switch.

“Alpha, this is Guardian. You took your sweet time. Status?”

“Guardian, I’m renting a room in a place called Susie’s place. It’s on Main Street. My cover story seems to hold. I have made preliminary contact with the target,” the voice said.

“Security?” The man asked.

“There are two exists from the building I’m in. From there I can reach your position in twenty minutes. There does not seem to be any threat as far as I can see. There is some presence of the targets but nothing that seems dangerous,” the voice said.

“That’s great. Then you are the only dangerous thing out there,” the man said.

“Hey! That’s not fair! How long are you going to remember that incident?”

“Just long enough to remind you that you can’t go about breaking people’s bones,” the man said.

“Some bones just beg to be broken. Keep this in mind, Guardian,” the voice growled.

“I never forget it around you, Alpha,” the man said.

“Good. I suggest you move out. We will be in touch two times a day according to the established timetable. There’s no need for a babysitter.”

“Negative, Alpha. We’ll stick around till morning. Living in a tent makes you stronger, as Benny and Joanna are going to find out. Give me the all-clear and we will hightail it out of here. In the morning.”

“Hoping to use that cannon of yours, Guardian? I think we won’t need it today,” the voice said. The man smiled. His hand caressed the huge Barret rifle resting near him, as if he were caressing a fierce hunting dog.

“Keep a sharp lookout, Alpha. Appearances can be deceiving, especially with cults,” the man said.

“Yeah. Guardian, I’m going to try line communication next time. I think that storm cloud above us may be affecting radio.”

“We’ll have the equipment ready.”

“Roger, Guardian. Alpha out,” the voice said.

Day 10 after Earth Barrier Breach.

Just outside Silverthorne, Colorado State Highway 70, United States. Wednesday, 13:05.

The United States army convoy passed Silverthorne. Agent Mathew sat in the back of a military truck going full speed and frowned at the image on his ruggedized laptop computer. His command team surrounded him.

“You need a one mile runway?”

“Yes, Sir. And nothing higher than ten yards half a click after the runway either, sir,” said Air Force Captain Ruth Parker, of the 11 Recon Squadron.

Mathew frowned at her and got back to his laptop, looking at the image of the area between Bellyache and Heart Mountains, in the Flattops. He pressed several locations on the touch screen, calling up a vector map of the major roads, to overlay the satellite image of the area. He zoomed in and selected two locations. The computer added a straight line between those locations, overlapping a road for well over a mile. Then Agent Mathew brought up a much higher resolution aerial photograph of the area. The road was still there, right where it was supposed to be.

“I think I found your runway, Captain. Take a look. County Road 7.”

The captain took the computer and looked at it for a moment.

“It looks fine, sir. I need to have my flight chief take a look.”

“Captain Anderson, this is our designated Operations Base. Have one of your teams take the flight chief. I want them there an hour before our ETA. Check it and give me the Okay.”

“Sir. Yes, sir.” Captain Carl Anderson, of the 101 Airborne Division, First Brigade, 327 Infantry Regiment, nodded sharply. He commanded the A company, “Above The Rest”‘ battalion.

“I want the area blocked.” Mathew paused while enlarging the area shown and calling up all the roads, including dirt paths. He touched several of the junctions, making a red cross appear on every one of them.

“Have MP posts on all the crossroads I marked. You’ll work by my printout. The area is to be clear of any civilian traffic by sixteen hundred hours. I want a patrol on a Hummer every hour. The first one is to map all roads and routes - there may be some that don’t appear on my map. I don’t want any curious civilians nosing about. The official cover story is that the area is closed for a military exercise. Don, talk to the local police chief.”

Donald Heinemann, an NSA agent, just nodded. Unlike his boss, Agent Mathew, who was in military fatigues and toting a sidearm, the blond agent was wearing jeans and a dark jacket. He zoomed back on the makeshift runway. The road designated as such was heading in a general easterly direction, a small hill was just north of the road. The forested mountain area where their targets were located was several clicks northward of the road.

Mathew drew a circle on an empty plain on his map southward from the hill. The road passed through the middle of the circle.

“Operations Base will be here,” he pointed. “Captain Parker will decide where her trailers stay. I want the CP to be adjutant to the UAV control station. The first priority is to set up the communications trailer. The trailers are to be off limits to everyone except authorized personnel. This is a highly classified mission. I decide who is authorized to enter those areas.” He looked at the captain.

“Agent Mathew?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“The runway must be clear of soldiers. Someone drops a pack of cigarettes, it gets sucked into the engine and we lose a fifteen-million-dollar bird,” the captain said calmly.

The agent frowned at her and then looked down at his screen. His finger grabbed the circle and dragged it northward till it cleared the road.

“Captain Anderson, inform your men. Anyone caught near the road or the command area is to be court marshaled. We can’t make mistakes here.”

“Sir. Yes, sir.”

“Okay. Now, perimeter defense. We need to protect the perimeter of the base and the runway. Our threat profile suggests heavy, umm, opposition. Maybe armored. How many Javelins have you got?”

“Sir, we have ten CLUs with four missiles each.”

“We are going to use them for intruder detection. I’ve seen targets in Iraq picked up by a CLU well before any other night vision sensor did.”

Mathew and the captain bent over the little 10-inch screen. Mathew called up a ground elevation map of the area. The laptop calculated fields of vision and fire for each position the captain suggested. They placed two OPs on the north side of the hill, and another one on the southern slope of the hill, where there was a clear field of view back to the camp and the runway. A fourth OP was placed near the end of the runway, about 750 yards from the base, and the last OP was on a local mound near the base, with clear fields of view and fire towards the west and south.

The map was now filled with overlapping triangles. Green triangles opened up from each OP and extended four clicks, the effective range of the day- and thermal-integrated sight of the Javelins, since the four-times magnification optics allow target detection at four clicks and target identification at two clicks. Red triangles terminating at two-and-a-half clicks marked the range of the Javelin missiles themselves.

“Brief them carefully. They are to report every approaching vehicle, man or anything else. Nothing is to get into the base. The rest of the Javelin crews will be on Hummers as mobile response teams.”

“Agent Mathew?”      

“Yes, Captain?”

“What is our target, exactly? What is ‘something else’?” Captain Parker asked.

The agent didn’t look up from his laptop.

“Information will be divulged only on a need-to-know basis. Captain Anderson, I want several quick-response teams. One team will be an MP team. Every civilian that trespasses and enters the region of the base is to be arrested, but use of lethal force is to be authorized only by me. I want two Javelin teams on Hummers ready to go in five minutes. This is for perimeter defense. Questions?” There was no sound except the rev of the truck engine and the flap of the canvas wall.

“Good. I want two double-wire fences erected. One around the camp and one around the communications trailer, UAV ground station and the CP. I want patrols around the outer fence and guards posted at the gates.”

“Roger that, sir.”

“Captain Parker, when can you get the first bird airborne?”

“We need to unload the birds from their coffins, assemble them, run a system check and get the control station going. I’d say twelve hours, provided the runway checks out all right.”

“Don”?”

“Sir. We can get the communications trailer up and running in about four hours. You will have uplink another hour after that.”

“Agent Mathew?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“I need to know what we are here to find. I cannot send out my birds, let alone plan flight paths and sensor sweeps if I don’t know what we’re dealing with here.”

“Captain, I’ve already said that this information is classified. You’ll get what you need later,” The air force captain appeared as if she had just tasted something sour.

“Okay, everyone’s got their orders. I want status reports every half hour. We will reach the base area in one hour. Command meeting at twenty-two-hundred hours, when I will brief you on our target and our mission. Captain Parker, you will be able to plan your flight plan accordingly. I want a bird in the air at zero one hundred hours. Start to work.”

Each turned to his radio communicator. Agent Mathew watched as Anderson briefed his S3, his operations officer. The agent leaned back on his plastic seat, smiling. The big NSA operative was in his element here.

                                                                        ***

Two hours later, the long convoy of trucks and towed trailers stopped in a forested area. Mathew was the last to leave his truck. He jumped down and looked around, watching soldiers climbing down from trucks and running around on various errands. A group was starting to take measurements of the terrain and wire fencing was being unrolled. People were shouting into their radios and the Hummers were leaving trails of dust as they sped away.

The infantry company was a veteran of many deployments, often on hostile ground, having seen action in both Gulf Wars and in numerous clandestine operations. The 101 Airborne Division took pride in its ability to deploy anywhere on earth within 36 hours. This time, the deployment was easier, being so close to its Fort Campbell base in Tennessee.

Night was spreading, chasing away the last remains of daylight. Mathew stood on a flat, wooded hill, looking out towards a dark mountain. In his dark military fatigues he was almost invisible. Captain Anderson cleared his throat.

“Sir, we have a clear visual range of six clicks here. Anything comes at us from there, it passes right through our fire zones.”

Mathew didn’t say anything, just continued to stare ahead.

“Sergeant, let Agent Mathew have a look through your CLU.”

On the observation post were two men flat on their stomachs. One of them had an M16 slung over his shoulder, and the second was staring through a Javelin CLU. The bulky, six-kilogram contraption had two forward-looking ‘eyes.’ One was a day sight while a much larger ‘eye’ was a second-generation passive infrared sight. The CLU was used to aim and lock a Javelin missile onto a target and fire it.

Mathew lay down near the sergeant and took the CLU. As he grasped the handles, his fingers automatically positioned themselves on the track and fire buttons, even though he knew that the CLU did not have a missile loaded. The team had two missiles in canisters on the ground near them. Mathew panned the CLU around, a view of the world in shades of gray unfolding before him. The view was clear and sharp, and anything up to a distance of several clicks was easily identifiable. He got up.

“Very good, Captain. I understand all the OPs are in place?”

“Sir. Yes, sir.”

Mathew took a last look and turned around. He walked to the other side of the hill, passing two Hummer vehicles - his own and the one allocated to the OP. He looked at his camp.

“Pass me the binoculars.”

Mathew scanned the camp, going over it systematically.

“Captain, are all the lights in place?”

“No sir, we had several problems with the generators and -”

“I want all the lights in place in one hour. Especially the perimeter lights.”

“Sir. Yes, sir.”

Captain Anderson turned away. He was wearing a portable radio, its earphone in his ear.

“S3, Top Man.”

“Go ahead, Top Man.”

“Get those torches running now. Use the vehicles till the generators are up.”

“Roger, copy that.”

“Top Man, out.”

Captain Anderson turned back to the agent.

“Let's go,” the agent said. Mathew tossed the captain his binoculars. They got back to their Hummer. Mathew adjusted his P90 as he sat down, an automatic move. The weapon had become a part of him a long time ago.

The Captain drove back. They entered the base, soldiers saluting them as they passed the gate. They parked the vehicle and walked through the base. It had assumed a more orderly aspect: a cordoned-off section with a soldier guarding the access gate accommodated all the green tents within which where the workshops and equipment needed to maintain and operate the Predator UAV system.

Mathew entered one of the larger tents. A host of air force people were clustered around a twenty-foot drone with a forty-foot wingspan. Its avionics, radome and engine-bay doors were open; a large satellite dish was visible inside the radome, pointing upward. A technician was on the floor under the vehicle, working on a small round turret under the aircraft nose. The captain was there, talking with her sergeant crew chief. She saw Mathew, finished her talk with the sergeant and walked over.

“Agent Mathew. The first bird will be up in two hours.”

“Very good, Captain. Carry on.”

“Agent Mathew, please respond.” A small voice was emitting from the agent’s radio transceiver.

The agent left the tent, unhooked his radio and spoke into it tersely.

“Mathew here.”

“We’ve finished interrogating Benson again. We can’t get much out of him. He’s insisting some people trashed his farm, but he cannot say who or why or how.”

“What’s your impression?”

“He’s just a farmer, and a weird one at that. Some kind of hippie. Ecological farming. Don’t harm the earth. Don’t kill animals for food.”

Mathew frowned, looking at his radio in annoyance. Trying to interrogate Benson had proven useless till now.

“Sir, we can’t really keep him here legally for long.”

“I don’t want to let him go, yet. He’s the only one who might have seen something. Just ask him to stay. Make sure he understands that he is free to go. Perfectly free. Anytime he wants,” agent Mathew said, his voice low and menacing.

“Roger.”

Mathew put the radio back on his belt. “Great. Just great,” the agent murmured. The base’s lights were just beginning to come to life.

***

Benson walked aimlessly, approaching the gate in the wire-encircled camp. He wasn’t under arrest, but he wasn’t allowed to leave the base either.