The SONG of SHIVA (36 page)

“You’re only shy a few million details, you know,” Lyköan said, spying an opportunity. “But if you want my help with any of it you’ll have to take me along ― in the
first
wave. If you have any doubt that I might not be able to hold my own with your boys I’d be happy to prove otherwise. Whatever it takes to show I deserve a spot on the roster. You can keep me on the periphery if you like, but if you want the inside information you’ve been asking for, you’ll have to promise I’ll be there when that hangar door opens. I’ve got a score to settle with the master of Cairncrest. Watching this little donnybrook on some plasma screen just won’t cut it.”

While it reeked of braggadocio, Lyköan meant every word.

* * *

Walking across the tarmac to their quarters in one of the now dilapidated barracks that had been hastily erected between the run up to Kosovo and the wind-down in Iraq, Lyköan excused himself from the group and asked Nora innocently if she wanted to take a stroll around the inside of the perimeter fence before rejoining the others for dinner. Passing between a long line of tethered, mottled-grey Harrier GR7s, they crossed a well-manicured baseball diamond together, stronger testimony of the American presence at Fairford than all twelve of the B-2s secured behind hangar doors.

“Oh six hundred hours,” Nora exhaled wistfully when they were out of earshot, echoing Bremer’s last pronouncement concerning the morrow’s mission launch. As they walked, she strummed her fingers along the razor-wire-topped steel mesh fence.

“Almost midmorning, for God’s sake,” Lyköan muttered. “Sun’ll already be up. Daybreak would’ve made a lot more sense. But since Bremer wasn’t entertaining any more suggestions, it seemed the better part of discretion to let him determine the particulars. He’d already given me what I wanted – a seat on the first bus. No sense pressing my luck.”

“When tomorrow morning arrives, you don’t seriously believe he’s actually going to risk his precious mission by taking you along, do you?” Nora laughed.

“He’d better. I meant every word of what I said in there.”

“All Bremer wants is to keep the evil genie in his bottle, shut down the Node and capture Pandavas. That’s Fremont’s overriding concern too. You and I are almost extraneous now that we’ve told them everything we know… They’re certainly not going to allow us to make any of the life-and-death decisions. Besides, if that report out of Asia is true, plenty of trouble’s already brewing even without the Node.”

“Maybe. Pandavas sure knew all about it.”

“Well,” Nora replied, “if Fremont’s right and the epidemic is spreading, things are going to change for everyone ― real quick. Airline travel restrictions will be mandated, countries will begin announcing national states of emergency, closing borders, imposing martial law. Large venues in affected countries ― stadiums, amphitheaters ― will be commandeered for use as makeshift hospitals. Quarantines will be imposed at every confirmed outbreak location: Vietnam and Thailand now; Taiwan, Brussels or New York next ― wherever the virus is suspected. Work stoppages will follow as fear and panic spread ― all of it resulting in food shortages, famine, riots, maybe worse. If things really get bad, governments will fall. I’ve seen the models. An entire department at FEMA is dedicated to nothing but developing them.”

Nora stopped at a corner of the fence. Leaning against the chain-link, she looked across the deserted landing strip and then up into Egan’s face. 

“It may be a year or more before the 60 million doses of vaccine needed to even begin combating the TAI-2 strain alone can be produced. By then, tens of millions will be infected; a good number will have died. And that’s without the introduction of Innovac’s designer pathogen, which is likely to kill orders of magnitude more.”

Lyköan had nothing to say. The future Nora was painting was almost unimaginable, a far cry from the old English churchyard and riotous, bright gardens fanning out around the tiny, tattered village that stretched for a short distance north of the airstrip behind her, each differently colored cottage door sentried by hanging flower baskets.

Far off in one of the surrounding fields, a small herd of fallow deer lazed in the shadows, almost invisible under a stand of hedgerow elms, one enormous buck standing guard with his great antlers still swaddled in soft summer felt, dull grey in the late afternoon light. In another direction, shimmering behind rippling thermals rising from the runway macadam, a clutch of pheasant strolled single-file across a dainty, high-grassed hill. Only a few yards outside the fence, two blanketed horses nipped innocently at one another in the low-lying meadow, then galloped off effortlessly into the pale distance. The world felt so warm, so simple, so innocent, so oblivious of this threatening storm. With a deafening roar, a Harrier jet swept in out of the sun and the deer and pheasant melted into the landscape. 

* * *

Rotor blades thundered, filling the hangar with a concussive heartbeat. Repetitive blasts of hot air beat against Lyköan’s back, swirling dust madly into the poorly lit expanse ahead. Leaving two figures bathed in sunlight at each edge of its gaping maw, a dozen black-clad men fanned out into the hangar towards a line of pallet-laden forklifts. Bolting from his seat as they approached, one of the forklift drivers ran for an exit across the dark, Rorschach-stained cement. Two steps from his apparent goal, a bright red alarm button on the wall next to the door, a dual-pronged taser probe slammed into the center of his back, bringing the man down in an obscene, jerky dance, arms splaying convulsively, finally crumpling into a heap on the floor.

Within inches of touching down inside the hangar, as Lyköan pressed flat against the far wall and watched, the entering helicopter suddenly rose abruptly toward the ceiling like an unsteady lumbering beast, two black-clad figures dangling from one side of its sled-like landing gear. At a shouted command, Lyköan and five other men dashed for the exits ahead of the other fleeing forklift operators.

Behind them the air cracked once, followed immediately by another sharp report, then another, and then a staccato of thundering, shuddering echoes as the great beast, listing precariously, repeatedly drove its ever-shortening three-bladed rotors into pieces against the smoking floor in a great shower of sparks, spewing shards of concrete and metal in a screeching rhythm of flying debris. Before the cracking echo had ended, sirens were wailing to the accompaniment of whirling blue and red lights flashing through thickening smoke.

“Mu-ther-fuck’r!” someone cried out of the cloud of dust. “Christ what a fuck-up. C’mon, Lyköan, let’s get hopping.” Seeing the dark figure rush into an open doorway, Lyköan hurriedly followed.
   

Two steps into the corridor a bullet zipped past Lyköan’s ear, burying itself in the wall behind his head with a white dusty spray and dull sonic thud, followed immediately by a burst of four more rounds, rapid whizzing zips that shattered glass into a spray of shards, the last round passing across his unprotected body armor shoulder strap with a painful tear. He stared at the smoking wound in the woven black nylon, immediately recognizing the expanding dark crimson stain.
Not life threatening
, he caught himself thinking.

Another burst of gunfire erupted from down the hall. The trooper who had led Lyköan out of the hanger ―
Strainger or something
he thought abstractly ― toppled forward headlong onto the hallway floor without uttering a sound,. An ugly gaping exit wound stared up at Lyköan, occupying almost all of the back of the man’s skull, brain matter and blood streaking in reflective gore down his flak-jacket from neck to waist.

Pollock with a limited palette
, Lyköan couldn’t keep from thinking, awestruck by his fascination with this picture of mortality. He wiped his face. It was dripping blood that had splattered when poor Strainger’s cranium had exploded. Standing over the fallen figure, slick crimson pooled in a hideously expanding, uneven halo on the polished linoleum around the man’s head,. He waited for a few heartbeats as the body continued to twitch in a mercifully brief but macabre afterlife.

No chance
, Lyköan thought, diving behind a protected corner. Crouching on his haunches, head level with his knees, he cowered behind his weapon, still virginally cold and unfired in his hands. One of the other rangers, taking cover in a shallow doorway a few yards farther down the hall returned fire, attempting to drag Strainger’s lifeless corpse to safety. It seemed so futile, such a foolish act. Another burst of gunfire threw a spray of slugs into the wall above Lyköan’s head. He instinctively covered his helmet with one hand, white chalk showering his head and shoulders.

The overtly optimistic plan had already turned horribly deadly. They were trapped within feet of the wide-open hangar bay, pinned behind wallboard and glass, confronting an enemy, unknown in number and resources ― and still two levels and who knew how many defended doors from the control room.

Heart pounding thunderously against his thigh, Lyköan ripped one of the concussive grenades from its jacket anchor, pulled the pin and left-handed, heaved the canister into the gunfire.

“Taylor! Fire in the hole! Take cover!”

Silently, counting
one-one thousand, two-one thousand
, he waited for the anticipated explosion. As he counted,
three-one thousand,
a distinct metallic skitting came to in his ears.
Four-one thousand, five-one thousand
. Curious, as the sound grew louder, he peeked around the corner ―
six-one thousand
― saw the grenade come sliding back down the hallway ―
seven-one thousand
― past the doorway where Taylor was hiding ―
eight-one thousand
― and bounce off the wall at the T-Intersection where he crouched ―
nine-one thousand
― and stop directly in front of his feet, spinning madly.

Somewhere between volition and reaction, he reached for the device, felt the cold metal cylinder in his hand, and instinctively threw it down the hallway where, in midair, barely beginning its flight, the grenade exploded. Thrown against the wall by the percussive impact of hundreds of atmospheres, ears ringing, tiny white flame pinpricks spiraling in the fabric of perceptual reality, he felt the expansiveness of Sun Shi’s fractal immersion program enter him with his first labored breath. Like morning mist into a meadow ― slow, silent, enveloping ― it grew in strength and control ― without any need for yíb or dawn or dusk or hypnogogic shudder. Once again, he was there and here and universally in control of what he was and all that was or would be or could be or…
 

Shuffling through the vast expanse of the emptiness that comprises everything, accepting or rejecting from the limitless multitude of variously erupting alternate possibilities, a grand procession of exploding seeming-inevitables, projecting out into the invisible future. Slowing down the passage of time to a crawl when necessary, which allowed for the best possible selection from a palette of infinite choices, he headed for the control room. Occasionally forced to backtrack when the choice he first set upon proved less than ideal, he pressed onward as though slogging through a deep ocean of molasses, like straining against a relentless current that grew stronger the deeper he delved.

A bullet approached. He shifted its trajectory, manipulated the spatial context in which it was suspended, altered the width and breadth and depth of space and time as he saw fit and so was no longer in its path when it passed. A figure barred his way, ready to lock a door. He moved the man aside, and others as well, by changing the space that surrounded and stood between them, then using their now two-dimensional forms like a succession of shields, drove them by sheer force of will through the filmy corridors of the Node, tossing one aside as another became available.

All the avenues of the underlying multiverse emerged, prostrate before him like a sublime skeletal structure upon which the fragile fabric of reality lay draped and stretched, transparent and diaphanous. Each potential variance stood at his disposal, eager to obey his every whim. Plato’s shadow creatures entered and exited in the context of an infinitely varied and variegated tunnel of breathtaking light, along which his insubstantial soul or essence or being made its way, finally arriving at the control room door where, after ejecting all of its occupants, like pouring water from a glass, or sweeping dry leaves off cement, he locked the door from within and, sitting down in one of the molded workstation chairs, finally exhaled, allowing reality to solidify around him once more.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

MUNDUS VULT DECIPI

Unknown

Easing forward on the yoke, the pilot dipped the Comanche’s rotors below the horizon. Dual turbine engines shifted in pitch. The attack helicopter hovered momentarily, then hurtled earthward, lifting Nora’s stomach uncomfortably into her throat. A few hundred yards ahead, a thick column of black smoke curled out of the base of Temple Burn hill and rose ominously into the cloud-mottled sky. Whether the aftermath of a hitch in Bremer’s assault or an even more dire scuttling response from the Node’s occupants, it was not a good sign. Neither was Fremont’s curt evasiveness over the phone.

“Casualties?” Nora had asked. “Who? How many?”

“Don’t worry, Lyköan’s safe,” he had replied, already a step ahead of her questions. “He got knocked around some ― but nothing serious. He’s fine, Doctor.”

“What about the bio-seal?”
             

“Far as we can tell it’s still intact, but why don’t you come out here and give the place a once-over before we sound the all-clear? I’m sending a taxi to pick you up. It should be honking any minute. We’ll discuss the details when you get here. Until then I’ve got plenty to keep me busy. Sorry, gotta go.” The conversation had ended without goodbyes.

Within minutes she was circling above the smoldering hangar entrance, strapped tightly into the Comanche’s claustrophobic jump seat. Below, a tangle of men and equipment scurried in and out of the smoke-filled opening like ants around a disturbed anthill. The pilot slowed their descent, set down softly and trimmed the engines.

Ducking under the spinning rotor blades, Fremont ran up and banged on the helicopter window with the heel of his fist. Nora hurriedly unbuckled her harness and opened the door.

“We need to make a short stop before heading inside,” he shouted above the engine whine.

Grabbing her pack, Nora jumped to the ground and, following Fremont’s hunched over lead, dashed out from under the rotating blades.

“What’s all the smoke?” she asked once they were clear.

“Innovac’s incoming transport tried to make a run for it ― crashed inside the hangar. It’s a real mess. Serious injuries ― some of them ours. Jet fuel all over the place and still burning.”

Gunning its engines, the Comanche lifted skyward behind them. Fremont continued walking, Nora trailing him by half a step.

“Our mobile command center,” he said after they had gone a short distance, indicating a hulking camouflage-painted helicopter parked just outside the shadow of the fully-opened hangar door. “A specially modified Huey Stallion on loan from the Navy. Totally tricked-out for bio-hazmat duty.” Opening the door, he helped Nora climb aboard.

Without introductions, just smiling nods to and from the half-dozen uniformed occupants seated at plasma-screen workstations inside the electronics-stuffed belly, Fremont headed for the rear of the craft. Along the full width of the aft bulkhead, dozens of snow white EDS suits hung in narrow bays.

“Just a precaution,” Fremont said, noticing the alarm in Nora’s eyes. “Until we’re sure it’s completely safe. There was a helluva lot of gunfire inside. We’ve sealed everything at the hangar’s inner wall and swept the interior for anomalies. So far, nothing. But we decided to play it safe until you had a look-see.”

Lifting one of the slick polymer suits from its compartment, he put one foot inside, then the other. “Take any one you want. They’re all identically ‘Oh-My-God!’ super-sized.”

Nora removed the nearest suit from the wall and began pulling it on as Fremont continued. “The production rooms were completely untouched, but a few of the labs and especially the route to the main control center were pretty heavily damaged.”

“Have you quarantined everyone who was inside without protective gear?”

“Including the eleven bodies. All told that’s nearly fifty people ― ours and theirs. Plus the five surviving burn victims and the additional two bodies from the crash. We isolated them separately.”

“Including all the men from Bremer’s assault squads. Lyköan too?”

“Yep.”

“And Pandavas?” she asked, pulling the visored hood over her head, adjusting the regulator on the bio-particulate air filter canister.

“Disappeared. We rounded up everyone we found ― from the Cairncrest labs too. He wasn’t among them ― and so far nobody’s talking.”

“How about the others: Narayan or Whitehall? Julie Prentice?”

“Nada. Seemed to be only caretaker crews at both locations. The production labs weren’t even running. Pandavas may have known we were coming. Whatever. He apparently had enough time to get away with his whole entourage ― and at least some of the viral agent.”

Passing under the door’s great hydraulic-lift cylinders, they entered the hangar. Staying close to the wall in the smoke-filled hollow, Fremont explained, “There’s an old military adage that no battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy. That sure was true here.”

“I see what you mean,” Nora replied, surveying the heap of twisted, still-smoldering wreckage as they circled around it.

“We treated everything as soon as we arrived ― once Bremer’s boys had secured the joint. Allcide fog and foam inside and out – every surface within fifty yards of the entrance.”

“Start everybody ― anyone who was inside the hangar before the area was treated ― TID: 75mg rimantadine hydrochloride and 100mg natrolamivir phosphate.
Immediately
, you understand?” She was speaking with somber authority now, unwilling to carry even one more Jack Cummings on her conscience if it could possibly be avoided.

“Are you guys getting this in there?” Fremont shouted above the din of firefighters battling the central blaze, holding two gloved fingers to his hood-covered ear.

“It’s only a prophylaxis ― you know ― until we can confirm there’s been no exposure. But humor me, okay. It’ll make me feel better.”

“Fine by me. This way,” Fremont said, motioning towards a guarded oval-shaped door, one of a number that stood along the hangar’s back wall. “We’ve set up an airlock de-con chamber for passage in and out. Before we head for the command center, though, I want you to speak with someone.”

“Who?” Nora asked.

“Derrick Taylor. The sergeant who was with your friend Lyköan when they first entered the labs. I want you to hear it from him ― just the way I got it.”

“And—?” Nora wondered.

“Just let him tell you his story.”

* * *

“I see him flying through the air,” Taylor exclaimed excitedly, reliving the events, “thrown back by the blast. Crashes real hard into the wall. He wasn’t five feet from the grenade when it went off. Thought he was dead for sure. Next thing I know ― poof! ― he’s gone. Like he disappeared. And there’s a helluva hubbub down the hall – screaming and gunfire ― and this god-awful screeching ― like metal grinding or something. Finally there’s this big crash. Then silence for awhile, followed by muffled gunfire farther off in the distance. Damned fine point work, but I have no idea how he pulled it off.”

“That’s it?” Nora asked.

“All I can tell you, ma’am. I was a little disoriented when that grenade went off ― but inside the doorway where I was holed-up, most of the blast blew by me down the hall. Anyway, once things settled down we followed the trail to the control room. It was hard to miss. Blasted doors and eight bodies along the way ― Lyköan’s weapon signature all over the place ― multiple rounds in the first two bodies, but the rest ― I dunno ― blunt force trauma maybe ― but no blood, not a single hole in any of ’em.

“When we reached the control room we found four armed guards piled together right outside the locked door. Lyköan was already inside. Those guys were the lucky ones, they were still breathing. We interrogated them when they came around, but they weren’t much help, didn’t even seem to remember what they’d had for breakfast. We didn’t dwell on it at the time ― still had the rest of the place to secure. ”

“Thanks, sergeant.” Fremont said. “I wanted Doctor Carmichael to hear it straight from you. We’re headed for the control room now to speak with Lyköan. I also wanted to personally thank you and the rest of the men for the fine job you turned in.”

“Yes, sir, thank you,” Taylor responded. “But that was the mission, you know? Anyway, once Lyköan secured the control room and could direct us to specific targets, running down the remaining resistance was nothing. But I’ll tell the men ― what you said.” With a snappy about-face he headed back to his brothers in arms, nonchalantly smoking and joking now that the death and confusion had passed.

Nora followed Fremont out of the quarantine room, taking a return route to the control center not very dissimilar from the exit she and Egan had traced during their escape: walls, floors and ceilings blood-stained and pockmarked, metal doors torn from their hinges, shattered glass, and odd depressions in the walls at irregular intervals. Fremont was silent, but none of it was lost on Nora.

“Those outfits you’re wearing ― very encouraging.” Lyköan chuckled, greeting them with a lilt and level smile when they entered the control room a few minutes later. “You guys worried about the virus? Don’t be. I’m pretty sure nothing escaped.”

“That’s what Felix thinks too, E,” Nora said, relieved to hear his familiar, easygoing banter again. Inside the bulky EDS suit and under the watchful eye of Fremont, embracing him was out of the question, but she couldn’t keep from walking over to where he was sitting in the glow of a bank of wide-angle screens and placing a gloved hand on his shoulder. He winced.

“Uh, okay, I got winged right at the beginning of the melee. Zigged when I should have zagged. But it’s only a scratch ― really.”

“Before you shifted into overdrive, you mean,” Fremont corrected. “What exactly happened back there, Lyköan? No one who witnessed it has any idea.”

“Ever hear of the Hermetic Transformation, Felix?”

“No.”

“Look it up sometime. It’ll give you something to chew on.”

“That’s no explanation ― it’s more like a homework assignment.”

“Sorry. It’s all you’re going to get.”

Immediately changing the subject, he went on, “Besides, there's other business needs attention. While I been stuck in here I took a look through what was left of the Node’s chrono files. Looks like those pallets back in the hangar were the last of it. The Shiva Node was built for one fast run up and they finished quick ― days ago. Even without that last load, Pandavas can still boogie. What is H9N2 anyway, beautiful? This is the second time it’s come up.”

“Another avian-borne influenza, why?”

“That’s what’s in the canisters. As long as they haven’t been damaged we’re uncontaminated. Trust me, the inside of the Node’s clean.”

“You may be right, Lyköan, but we have to confirm that,” Fremont said, almost apologetically. “We’ve already promised His Majesty.” 

“It’s his country I guess. Oh, I also ran across some other tantalizing tidbits. RPT1 to SIR2 gene stimulation. Ever hear of it? Age extension or something. Whatever the process, it seems to exponentially prolong cellular life ― all part of Innovac’s telomerase coding and nano-scripting work. These tiny devices his scientists had created that reworked the human genome at the molecular level. ‘Perfecting the organism’s genetic potential’ they called it. Apparently these things are virtually eternal, self-propagating and ― under certain conditions ―
transmissible
,” he emphasized the last word, lifting an eyebrow. “Really mind-blowing stuff. Way over my head, of course ― but thought you might find it interesting, Doctor.”

Nora understood immediately.

“Anyway, I’ve learned everything I’m going to here. It’s left me a good half step behind Pandavas, but, hey, that’s ten steps ahead of you, right Felix?” He couldn’t help himself, the Tanner was gloating again, for the moment the paramount aspect of his personality.

“Think so, Lyköan?” Fremont returned. “Well then, you must also know that Pandavas was at the Stockholm strategy session yesterday.”

“While Narayan was presenting in Ho Chi Minh City,” Lyköan smiled back, flashing a mouthful of astonishingly beautiful teeth, gleaming almost iridescently under the fluorescent lights. “Same presentation in fact. Every detail. Including viral exposure of the audience.”

“We notified the local authorities,” Fremont parried. “Successfully quarantined the Stockholm session. We did run into a little trouble with the Vietnamese. Took some time, but we eventually convinced them.”

“But,” Lyköan added, “not before our boys had left the conferences ― current whereabouts unknown. Just our luck, huh Felix? Nothing left but a few distracting wisps of smoke.”

Lyköan had grown tired of sparring with Fremont, their repartee exposing only the dark underbelly of an unpalatable truth.

“Anyway, once you’re satisfied there’s been no contamination here,” he said tiredly, “We’ll need to head back to Bangkok ― hopefully with State’s blessing and full diplomatic credentials. You can swing that, right?

“In the meantime, maybe you can call ahead and have somebody find out what’s been going on recently at Primrose.”