“I know,” McCarter said. “We need to get help.”
With Oco’s assistance, he wrapped and dressed his wound and then pulled a satellite phone from its watertight container in his pack. He powered it up, giving thanks for the green light that told him the signal was getting through.
In his clouded mind, McCarter tried to remember what he was supposed to say, the acronyms Danielle had briefed him with over and over again. Terms and contingencies he didn’t want to think about, the worst of which had now come true.
He pressed the initiate button and waited for the satellite to link up. An answering voice came on the line, a staff member in a secured communications room in Washington, D.C.
McCarter needed someone of higher authority.
“This is Professor Michael McCarter,” he said. “Attached to Project Icarus. My code is seven, seven, four, tango, foxtrot. We’ve been attacked. Our status is Mercury. Now get me Arnold Moore.”
CHAPTER 3
Twenty-four hours and five thousand miles from where Professor McCarter had called, Arnold Moore, director of the NRI, waited. For the second time this day, he had bad news to deliver.
The first time had been to a former operative of his named Marcus Watson, who had left the NRI years prior. He now taught at Georgetown and was rumored to be engaged to Ms. Danielle Laidlaw.
Despite all the tact and promises Moore could offer, the meeting had ended in rage. “You had no right to ask her back,” Watson had insisted. “I told you that a year ago. God damn you, Arnold. You find her.”
Marcus had been dead set against Danielle going back to the NRI, and Moore had pushed every button he could think of to convince her to do so. The NRI was where she belonged, but that was not to be explained at a time such as this.
“You know I’ll do everything I can to find her,” he’d promised.
“And what if it’s not enough?” Marcus had said.
Moore had no answer for that. It was a contingency he did not want to consider. His old friend had stormed off, slamming the door on his way out with such force that it shook the building.
Now, hours later, sitting in the Oval Office, smoothing his unruly gray hair, Moore waited on another old friend: the president of the United States.
Sitting behind the impressively large desk, the president ignored Moore for the moment, signing a series of papers one after the other.
Slightly older than Moore, with dark hair that the newspapers were desperate to prove was dyed, President Franklin Henderson had been Moore’s superior once before, twenty years earlier, when both of them worked at the State Department. They’d remained friends, if distant ones, ever since. Moore kept Henderson’s trust and respect, partially because he made it a rule never to ask his friend for anything — at least, that was, until now.
The president stacked the papers neatly for an aide to retrieve and then looked Moore in the eye.
“Can’t say I’m happy to see you,” the president began. “Every time you come up here you tell us things we don’t want to know. Why don’t you just stay over in Virginia, or better yet retire?”
“Mr. President, this is my retirement,” Moore said. “This is the reward, or perhaps the punishment, for thirty years of government service.”
“Well, from what I remember you’re not much of a golfer anyway.” The smile appeared as he finished, the same easy, confident smile that had touched so many voters during the election. The one that said, It’s going to be all right.
Unfortunately, Moore knew better. “Mr. President, the NRI has a problem. Two, actually — maybe more. By my count they seem to be multiplying.”
The president looked around. “There’s a reason we’re the only ones here, Arnold. I was told you couldn’t give me any kind of prebriefing. I figured it was serious. What are we talking about?”
Moore pulled two sheets of paper from his briefcase. He placed them on the president’s desk. The first was a satellite photo depicting a fleet of Russian ships, steaming headlong through the Pacific toward Alaska. The second had multiple photos inset with text, showing similar movements from the Chinese navy and even a few merchant ships.
“I’ve seen these already,” the president said. “Talked them over with John Gillis this morning.” Gillis was the navy’s chief of staff. “It’s not like the Russians are going to invade Alaska with a couple of cruisers, a dozen destroyers, and a few reconnaissance aircraft. Nor are the Chinese.”
“I realize that,” Moore said. “It’s obviously not an invasion force. If you look carefully you’ll see that both groups are made up of fast ships only, and both began to fan out as they approached this point, here.” He touched the map indicating a spot in the Bering Sea, near the International Date Line.
“Gillis thinks they’re search parties,” the president said.
“I agree,” Moore said. “Which begs the question: What the hell are they searching for? Does the navy have any idea?”
The president glanced at the satellite photo but remained silent.
Moore pressed him; he needed the information. “Mr. President, I can find no evidence that anything went down in that part of the Bering Sea. No distress calls were recorded on the channels we monitor. There are no oil slicks or debris fields visible in the recon photos. Nor any heat spikes on the continuous infrared scans that would indicate an explosion. There is literally nothing to suggest that either side lost an aircraft or vessel of any kind. And yet both sides launched massive search parties within hours of each other.”
The president was direct. “What are you asking me, Arnold?”
“Do we have any submarines in the area? Do we have any sonar information suggesting either the Russians or the Chinese had a submarine in the area at the time?”
“Unfortunately, we don’t,” the president said. “But why would that matter, unless you think that’s what they’re looking for.”
“I’m not sure what they’re looking for,” Moore said.
“But you have a hunch. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
When intelligence agencies had an idea they went to the president, and when things were amiss they hid in their offices desperately searching for answers before the president or his staff came looking for them.
Moore explained what he knew. “Several hours before the Russian fleet launched, we recorded a gamma ray event in this exact location. Not a big burst by any stretch of the imagination but an unusual type of energy, for certain.”
“Gamma rays?” the President asked. “I went to law school, Arnold. Mostly because I didn’t like science. So why don’t you tell me what this means in layman’s terms?”
“Gamma rays are high-energy electromagnetic waves,” Moore said. “They’re used for many different things, including a type of nuclear surgery, or as hyper-powerful X-rays that can see through walls and steel containers. There’s even research being done on ways to use them as weapons, either to bring down missiles or to use against troops.”
The president seemed impressed. “Why didn’t Gillis tell me this?”
“He wouldn’t know,” Moore said. “His satellites don’t scan for this type of thing. The data I’m showing you comes from an NRI bird launched earlier this year.”
As the president absorbed the information, Moore continued.
“At almost that same instant, four of our GPS satellites, all in geosynchronous orbits over the Arctic Circle, went momentarily dark, forcing automatic resets to bring them back on line. The service interruption lasted less than a minute, but the event was recorded.”
He handed another printout to the president. “As you know, the GPS works by sending signals coded to the atomic clocks on board each satellite, which allows for very accurate time and distance measurement. According to the logs, the satellites went down all but simultaneously, to the billionth of a second. It’s impossible for any ground-based system to be timed that accurately into four different locations.”