Project Aura (10 page)

"How does this affect the mind?" the general asked. "Make someone think of show tunes?"

"At a certain frequency it is disharmonic to the natural virtual plane of the mind."

"And what will that do?"

"It will kill all within range."

There was a moment of silence before Eichen spoke again. "So what do you plan on doing? Set up a massive field of antennas within line of sight of your target? And what, the enemy is just going to sit there and let you do that? Do you have any idea of the pace of modern warfare?"

"We have some ideas for making it a practical weapon system," Boreas said.

Eichen nodded. "Such as using MILSTAR satellites as retransmitters so the line of sight can cover any place on the planet's surface?"

Boreas stiffened.

"Don't treat me like an idiot," Eichen said. "I just flew from California, where I found out what you've been doing. Now tell me: what is the status of the MILSTAR retransmitters for HAARP? You've had some work done during shuttle missions, haven't you? Four missions to be exact"

Boreas spun the glass in his hand, eyes catching the light reflected through the alcohol. "We had to retrofit the four MILSTAR satellites. That was completed just recently. The entire system though, won't be operational until SC-MILSTAR is launched." Boreas slid his glass away. "But you knew most of this from MILSATCOM. Why did you come here?"

"To let you know that things are bit more complex than you believe," Eichen said. "I contacted Space Command, which will control MILSTAR. They've programmed a lock code into each MILSTAR master computer, which will keep the HAARP retransmitter shut down unless the code is sent. That code has been classified at DefCon Four, accessible only to the National Command Authority."

"We need to test the system," Boreas said. "I assume we’ll be given access to the codes for that."

"You assume wrong."

"Why are you doing this?" Boreas asked. "We work for the same government"

"Do we?" Eichen shot back. "It's my job to check on programs like this and make sure they stay within certain parameters. When a weapon system is being developed, especially on such a scale as this, the Black Budget oversight committee requires certain checks and balances." Eichen smiled coldly. "I'm the check. Consider your system in balance."

Boreas showed no reaction.

“There's one other thing," Eichen added. "What about Professor Souris?"

"She disappeared over two years ago," Boreas said. "Why are you concerned about her now?"

"'Disappeared'?" Eichen spit the word out. "What the hell does that mean? Is she dead? Kidnapped? Joined a commune?" Once more he didn't wait for an answer. The woman was the primary developer of HAARP and you simply say she disappeared?"

"I run this program," Boreas said. “The whereabouts of Professor Souris are a matter for the FBI and CIA. I reported her missing. More than that I don't know."

General Eichen stood and glanced at his watch. "My helicopter is waiting." He didn't bother to shake hands with Boreas. "Best of luck with your project. I still think we're going to need the infantry though." He looked at Kirtley. "Are you coming?"

"Mr. Kirtley will be staying behind," Boreas said. "He's coordinating HAARP with the NSA."

As soon as the general was out of the office, Boreas hit an autodial number on his secure speakerphone. It was answered immediately.

"Yes?" McFairn's voice echoed out of the speaker.

"Eichen just left my office," Boreas reported. He quickly summarized the meeting, ending with the information about the lock codes and Eichen's inquiry into Souris's location.

"So he could be for real?" McFairn said.

"He could be," Boreas granted. "Have you found out anything about him?" Boreas watched Eichen get into a Humvee outside the building. Kirtley remained in his chair, as still as a predator waiting to strike.

The Humvee throwing up a spume of snow as it headed for the helipad three miles away, near the edge of the HAARP field. A Blackhawk helicopter squatted there, blades beginning to turn as the crew saw the general coming.

"No," McFairn said. "Do you think he's one of your enemies?"

"I don't know," Boreas said. "Wouldn't you have known of him if he was for real?"

"Not necessarily," McFairn said. "The Select Committee on Intelligence isn't very trusting. If he is what he says he is, then we shouldn't be able to find out who he is, if you follow the logic, skewed as it may be. And if he is with Nexus, they keep a very compartmentalized organization that I haven't been able to penetrate." There was a pause before McFairn spoke again. "If you would tell me exactly who your real enemy is, I might be able to do a better job."

"We've been over that. You don't have a need to know," Boreas said. "I don't think we can take a chance. We're too close to going on-line. Even if he’s just what he says he is, there's the possibility we could have the plug pulled by the committee. This is bigger than them. We've never been this close."

"Close to what exactly?"

"You know better than to ask that"

"And the location of the last transmission?"

"We're still analyzing the data." Boreas hung up before McFairn could say anything else. He looked over at Kirtley. "What's your take on the general?"

"He takes his job seriously."

"A patriot?"

"Yes."

"And you? Who or what are you loyal to?" Seeing the frown on Kirtley's face, Boreas amplified his question. "Are you loyal to McFairn? The NSA? Your country? Yourself?"

"All of the above."

"It's not possible," Boreas said. "There's inherent conflict." He scanned the man's face, reading it. "I think you put yourself first. Deputy Director McFairn did so and look where she ended up with my help. She was a glorified secretary when I first ran into her. My help got her where she is now. I know her well. She wouldn't have picked you for this assignment if she didn't think you belonged here." He leaned forward in his seat. "Would you like my help?"

Kirtley didn't blink. "At what cost?"

"You help me when I need it. I help you when you need it."

"And if our goals diverge?"

"They shouldn't." Boreas smiled. "My enemies are your enemies, I can assure you of that." Glancing out the window, Boreas could see the Humvee approaching Eichen's helicopter. "Are you with me?"

Kirtley's head barely moved, but there was no mistaking the assent.

"Good. Come with me."

Boreas walked out of his office, Kirtley behind him, and entered the control room. He gave orders to his staff. There were no questions asked. Everyone was sworn to secrecy and absolute obedience to the project and more importantly their own self-centered goals, each of which Boreas had uncovered and used as leverage. It was the way the Priory had worked for millennia. Virtually every person had a weak point where leverage could be applied, and the Priory was expert at applying that.

Switches were thrown and power surged to the transmitters. The towers hummed. The dipole antennas were warming, changing the nature of the electric power, pushing it into the air. A red glow suffused the air over the center of the metal farm, antennas making connection with each other throughout the field.

"Level one," Dr. Woods called out.

Boreas was peering through a large pair of binoculars mounted on a tripod. He could see that the general was getting out of the Humvee and into the chopper. He indicated for Kirtley to take a spare pair of glasses.

"Level two." The red glow was over a hundred meters in diameter, reaching up the same distance into the sky.

The helicopter lifted, banking to the east

"Level three." There was excitement in Woods's voice.

"Increase," Boreas ordered.

"Level three point five."

The red glow now covered the entire antenna field and was racing after the helicopter, the crew and passengers of which were unaware of what was happening behind them.

"Level four."

Boreas adjusted the focus. He could see into the cockpit as the field reached the aircraft. Both pilots jerked upright in their seats and the chopper skewed about as if on a string. There was blood flowing over the pilot's face, pouring out of his ears.

The pilot slammed forward onto the instrument panel, twitched for a few seconds, then was still. The chopper nosed over and smashed into the ground, exploding in a ball of fire.

"Decrease power," Boreas ordered.

The red field diminished until the power was completely off.

Boreas turned to Kirtley. "Now come to my office and I'll brief you on what I want from you at Bright Gate."

McFairn had four pieces of paper on her desk. One was the intelligence summary from Boreas regarding the activity on the virtual plane which HAARP had picked up. The second was an action brief from Southern Command, detailing the disappearance of a Special Forces team assigned to Task Force Six in Colombia. The third was an interception and subsequent decryption of satellite communications between a ground element in Colombia and an unknown location.

She noted the brief introduction to the intercept, which gave information about the way the message had been encrypted: a top-notch program, but not good enough to beat the acres of computers hidden underneath NSA headquarters. The NSA was the largest employer of mathematicians in the world, almost all of them focused on making and breaking codes.

She'd read many such reports in her years, and the dryness of spoken words typed on a page had always struck her as a weak substitute for the real thing, so a thumb drive with the intercept decrypted was attached to the report as per her standing order. Before she read the report, McFairn stuck the thumb drive in her computer.

There was a hiss of static, then a woman's voice. "They're surrendering." Glancing at the report, McFairn noted that her voice analysts had deduced the accent to be Russian, specifically from the Moscow area.

The second voice startled her. Feminine, but with an echo to it.

“Three of them are dead, one is wounded. There are six others. I think Valika is going to kill the surviving Americans even though they are surrendering"

McFairn hit the Pause button. The report indicated that the speech experts had no fix on the owner of the second voice. The writer of the report summarized that the voice might have been distorted by the transmitting equipment at the source. McFairn thought differently. She couldn't pinpoint it, but the edge in the voice went beyond what a machine could do. Besides, they had the machines downstairs to reverse distortion, and they obviously hadn't been able to.

The next voice was male. "We want them alive."

The report indicated: male, Colombian, educated. No surprise there. They had the same voice on other intercepts: Cesar-the leader of the organization.

"I said we want them alive," the man repeated. "Put the gun down, Valika, and send the men in."

Natasha Valika. McFairn's intelligence officers had a file on the ex-GRU agent She'd go through that later.

"I don't like being spied on, Senor Cesar. Where is the witch?"

The strange voice again: "Where I can see you."

"It worked, Professor. We don't need you any more, Souris. Turn off the Aura generator."

McFairn sat up straight. That confirmed what they had already been almost positive of. It was indeed Professor Souris who was behind Aura.

"This is just the beginning. The world will be ours."

Checking the report, McFairn noted that the voice analyst could not match the voice off this intercept with their file copies of Souris's voice. The two weren't even close, which was strange. What had happened to Souris? Why had she become a turncoat?

McFairn had read the scientist's FBI file. There was nothing there to indicate treason. Dual Ph.D.s from MIT. The highest security clearance possible, which meant an extensive background check had been passed without the slightest blemish. Over a decade of work on various projects before going to the HERTF group when it was founded. From there she went to work at Bright Gate and then to HAARP. And then one day she just didn't show up for work.

McFairn tapped the end of a pen against her lips. Souris and Professor Jenkins had been the keys to getting HAARP/Bright Gate going. Now Souris was working for the Ring and Jenkins was dead.

The other essential piece of information from the report was the fact that the location of Valika and Souris had been pinpointed in Colombia via a KH-14 spy satellite tracking their uplink. Almost exactly where the Special Forces team had been waiting in ambush. That meant that Souris had developed a portable Aura transmitter since the SF team had picked the ambush site. Cesar's uplink had been tracked back to a commercial transmitter in Puerto Rico, which meant he was most likely using a ground line from a distant source to the uplink.

The fourth item on her desk was a copy of an accident report filed to the aviation center at Fort Rucker concerning the crash of a Blackhawk helicopter in Alaska. Four fatalities-two pilots, a crew chief and General Eichen. Cause of crash was initially being called pilot error pending further investigation. McFairn knew such investigations could take months. And then they would most likely support the initial conclusion, since the effect of HAARP would not be taken into account because the investigators would have no idea how it worked.

More blood spilled. She took out her Sun Tzu and read for a little while, before going back to her work.

*****

Sweat poured down Dalton's face. His left arm jerked, then lifted up to cover his eyes as his legs kicked the blanket off the bed. He moaned, protesting in his sleep against whatever demon was invading his unconscious mind.

Jackson put a hand on his shoulder and shook gently. "Sergeant Major."

Dalton bolted upright, hand snaking for the automatic pistol under the pillow. Jackson's hand was on top of his, having seen this once before. "Easy, Jimmy, easy."

Dalton's hand stopped, his eyes focusing. He swung his feet over to the side and planted them on the floor, connecting with reality. "What's going on?"

"The new boss is here. Named Kirtley. And he has a half dozen people with him. A new team."

"Military?" Dalton asked as he retrieved the pistol and stuck it in the small of his back under his fatigue shirt.

"I don't think so. Civilian clothes."

"CIA?"

"Maybe," she said. "One of the alphabet soup organizations, for sure."

"Then why does he want us around?"

"I suppose he'll tell us. After all, we're the old hands; the only experienced people left who have operated as Psychic Warriors."

"Where's Barnes?"

"He was on admin leave, but they called him back. He came in on the same chopper from Denver with the new team."

"Three of twenty-four," Dalton noted "After PW team one and PW team two, we're going to run out of spare tubes to keep the bodies."

"I wouldn't mention that in front of Kirtley," Jackson warned.

That startled Dalton. "You think hell pull the plug on the first two teams?"

"I don't know what he's thinking" Jackson said. "He gives me the creeps. He's one of those no-affect people. I can't get a read on him, which either means he's masking his feelings very well or he doesn't have any."

Dalton looked about. What struck him most were the empty bunks. He'd come here initially with eleven other men.

Dalton nodded toward the door. "Let's see what our new friend wants."

They left the billets area and walked toward the center of the complex. Jackson swung the door open, revealing the nerve center of Bright Gate. Two rows of ten cylinders called isolation tanks, filled one end. On the other was the control area where a dozen monitors gave access to Sybyl, the mainframe computer.

The first thing Dalton noted was that all the tubes were empty.

Jackson caught the look. "No one's gone over since my last mission. Hammond has been reprogramming and updating Sybyl."

"Hammond have anything on the bug she found?" Dalton asked.

"Not yet."

Dalton shifted his attention to the control area. Dr. Hammond was standing next to a black man with a shaved head. He was talking on a cell phone, which he snapped shut as they approached

He crooked a finger. "Over here."

Dalton led the way, around the row of computer consoles.

"You were supposed to be back yesterday," Kirtley said.

Dalton didn't bother to offer his hand. "I wasn't told that until this morning. I was taking care of my wife's remains."

Kirtley reached into his pocket and pulled out a small pager. He tossed it to Dalton. "From now on you have that with you wherever you go, even if you're taking a shower. You're on my team now, Sergeant Major, until I tell you that you're not."

Dalton took the pager in his callused hands and put it on the desk between him and Kirtley. Then he pulled out the chair and sat down across from the younger man. Dr. Hammond flanked Kirtley on the left. She was middle-aged, her face marked by deep, dark pockets under each eye, her blond hair disheveled and badly in need of a cut. Jackson took a seat next to Dalton. He noted that she already had her pager attached to one of the pockets on her flight suit.

"Lieutenant Jackson. Sergeant Major Dalton." Kirtley said the names as if he were reading them off a manifest. "I've been assigned to get a Psychic Warrior team operational as quickly as possible. I expect you to help with whatever I request to get my team up to speed."

"Then we're not to be part of it?" Dalton asked.

"You're whatever I tell you to be."

Dalton felt old, worn down by his years of hard service, the wounds he had accrued over the years, subtle aches that underlay the most recent wound. Eichen's visit the other night and the hints of treachery echoed in his mind.

He knew the answer but he asked anyway. "Do you have written orders for the lieutenant and me indicating that?"

Kirtley handed him a piece of paper. "Yes."

Dalton read it. They were from the office of the G-l, personnel, at the Pentagon. Such sheets of paper had ruled Dalton's entire life. An order to Iraq; to Afghanistan; all over the world. He folded and slid it into a pocket to add to the thick sheaf in his personnel records.

A long silence ensued.

Dalton finally broke it. "Why as quickly as possible?" He remembered what had happened last time they were in a rush. He had lost one man in training even before they became operational.

"Because those are my orders. And now they are your orders."

Hammond cut in. “I’ve updated the program."

Dalton didn't even look at her. He leaned back in his chair and considered Kirtley. A man who controlled his fate because of a piece of paper signed by another man. Finally Dalton turned to Hammond.

"With the update, can you recover the first two teams?"

Kirtley answered. "The first two teams are no longer a factor."

Dalton straightened. "’No longer a factor'?"

"Don't misunderstand me," Kirtley said. "I'm not pulling the plug on their isolation tanks. I'm saying they are no longer a factor in operational terms. If we can find them or recover them, then we'll do it. However, do understand me that they are not the mission priority."

Dalton reached forward and picked up the pager. He clipped it onto his belt. "What is the priority?"

"I've just been informed that a special ops team from Task Force Six has been lost in Colombia and we've been detailed to find out what happened to it."

"Lost a team? How?" Dalton asked.

"They didn't make extraction and they've missed all scheduled contacts," Kirtley said. "There was no one at primary, alternate, or emergency exfiltration points."

"Why are we getting called on this?" Dalton asked. "Task Force Six can draw from all of Special Operations. Seems like a misuse of a valuable asset"

"We need to operate stealthily and Psychic Warrior is best suited for that,” Kirtley said. “Our relationship with the Colombian government is strained at best and Task Force Six is not a sanctioned operation under our agreement with them. Also," Kirtley continued, "the team that was lost was from your old unit-10th Special Forces."

"What team number?"

"Zero eight four."

Dalton knew from the number that the team was from Bravo Company, Third Battalion, not his battalion. But he also knew the team sergeant Mike Garrison. A good man.

"What was their mission?"

"Interdict and destroy a large load of cocaine."

"Task Force Six has no idea what happened to the team?" Dalton asked as he considered the situation.

"It just seems to have disappeared. If the cartel caught them we'd be seeing it on CNN, so we're not sure what's happened. As I said, the Pentagon wants it handled discreetly, so we've been called in to sneak and peek. This initial tasking is for you and Lieutenant Jackson and Sergeant Barnes," Kirtley said.

"You've got your men here," Dalton argued, knowing the answer even before he asked the question. "Why us?"

"My men have to be fitted and then trained as Psychic Warriors. That will take a while, according to the schedule Dr. Hammond has given us. You prefer to have the search for your comrades delayed that long?"

"I've never been asked my preferences," Dalton said. “They've never really seemed to matter in the course of things."

Not even the slightest hint of a smile touched Kirtley's face. “True. They don't. I want you, Jackson, and Barnes to prep and depart immediately. My men will observe and learn."

"Who are you people?" Dalton asked. "CIA?"

Kirtley shook his head. "NSA."

"And if we find the team, what are we supposed to do?"

"Report back."

"And leave them there?"

"You can't bring them back via Psychic Warrior, can you?"

"No, we can't."

“Then you leave them there, return, and file a complete report. Someone else goes in and rescues them."

*****

Valika gripped the arms of the seat while forcing her face to remain expressionless as the Lear dove toward the ocean. From her first time in a plane, the initial jump at the Russian army parachute school at Mukchevo, she had never been fond of flying. She'd enjoyed jumping that first time, simply to be under her own control and out of the plane, where she had to trust the pilot and the mechanic who serviced the plane and even the people who built it. She'd seen the mechanics in the hangers, imbibing hydraulic fluid they drained out of the airplanes to get drunk. Certainly the pilots of this jet were professionals-- Cesar only hired the best-- but she still preferred to be in charge of her own destiny.

Valika had received her initial training as a member of the GRU: the intelligence arm of the Soviet army. She served as an assassin, working with elite Spetsnatz teams, killing enemies of her country both inside of Russia and out. When the Wall came down in 1989, she had been one of the first to realize her talent might be better appreciated elsewhere. She'd found work with Cesar as he was taking over the reins of the Ring from his father, and she'd been with him ever since.