“Can I play with this flight simulator a bit?” Nathan asked.
“Enjoy yourself,” Gene replied.
“Boys and their toys,” Emily commented, tauntingly, but she too was just as intrigued.
They indulged themselves for half an hour before Emily pointed out that they really needed to get on with some work. It intrigued them both that a clandestine facility such as Groom Lake was revealed in so much intricate detail on a game that anyone could download from the internet.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Feeling quite at home in Building-3A’s Level-2, Emily had already started extracting the scrambled illustrations from the document by the time Nathan returned from the kitchen, coffee in each hand.
“Can you make sense of those images?” Nathan asked.
“Don’t know yet,” she said. “But one consolation, they were embedded as separate objects and not part of the document itself. I’ll manipulate the first one in Photoshop, and if I’m successful, the others should follow quickly.”
Nathan sat down on her left and opened his laptop. “I’m going to see what Sven sent back on the helicopter communication that arrived a minute before the long-wave broadcast.” He sipped at his coffee while his computer awoke from standby mode. “Mm, good coffee.”
Sven had sent him two files, one audio, the other text. There was no accompanying greeting or note. That’s what Nathan liked most about Sven; no formalities◦– just do what was asked without question.
Nathan put on earphones and opened the audio file. He listened intently for a few seconds, then stopped playback.
Removing the earphones, he turned to Emily who had just imported the first of the graphic illustrations into Photoshop. “Listen to this,” he said.
Already engrossed in what she was doing, Emily had taken a few seconds for her mind to register that Nathan had spoken.
“Sorry, what?”
“Listen to this,” he repeated to her, and replayed from the beginning.
“Operation located. We have eyes on the pickup truck and are less than a minute away. What are your orders?”
“Detain and interrogate. If necessary, terminate. Nobody must be allowed to leave.”
“Understood. And the truck?”
“You have missiles, destroy it. When mission completed, demolish entrance to the operation and conceal it well. Bury anti-personnel mines in the immediate vicinity, then remove all evidence that you’ve been there.”
“Copy that. Out.”
“We have to warn James and Uri immediately,” Nathan said with urgency. “Damn. I wish I’d opened Sven’s response while we were still in our room. We shouldn’t have taken our time getting down here.”
“I wonder who they were looking for,” Emily said.
“Probably whoever sent the encrypted transmission,” Nathan guessed. He quickly opened the accompanying text file. It was the audio file’s potential threat notification to the NSA; information SkyTech was not authorised to keep in its IBM databanks, but did.
POTENTIAL THREAT DETECTED
Communication data reference: NAFB_C0773C
Keywords: INTERROGATE, TERMINATE, MISSILES, DESTROY, MINES
Risk Level: LOW
Included with the threat notification were the date, time and exact geographic coordinates of the communication’s source.
“I was told you were an expert in communications,” Uri said. “But I never expected this.”
James had connected the long-wave transmitter to the antenna and activated a sequence of short pulses. To the surprise of both, they received an echo immediately. James calculated it to be about a quarter of a mile ahead and in the exact direction they were facing.
“I didn’t expect this either,” James said. “That was a real stroke of luck. Put your hats on. Let’s go for a walk and see what we can find.”
“I’m not getting a connection to JW’s phone,” Nathan said. “Text messages aren’t arriving either.”
“Must be some way to get in touch with them,” Emily said apprehensively. “We need to warn them.”
“Gene?” Nathan called over.
“What’s up?” Gene said, standing up from behind his low partition.
“We need to get hold of Uri and JW immediately,” Nathan said. “Thing is, I can’t get through to JW’s phone.”
“And you won’t,” Gene said. “If they’re already in the Mojave, they’ll be out of range of any cell tower. What’s the problem?”
“If they’ve already arrived, they may be walking directly into a minefield,” Nathan said. “Literally!”
“Shit,” Gene said. “Sorry, Emily, I didn’t mean to be coarse. Quick, follow me.”
Emily wondered why everyone always found the need to apologise to her every time they used foul language. She’d heard far worse from ten-year-olds. She followed Gene and Nathan up to the ground level.
They walked hurriedly through the late morning heat into the vehicle yard.
“Which car did Dr. Lovinescu sign out this morning?” Gene asked the guard on duty.
He looked at his log. “Toyota Land Cruiser 3.”
“Great, thanks,” Gene said to the guard.
Nathan and Emily followed Gene to the nearby communications building. Inside, he looked at a sheet pinned to a notice board. It was a list of Groom Lake’s trucks and cars with their unique radio channel number.
“We can contact their vehicle directly from here,” Gene said. “It works point-to-point through satellite on a secure military frequency.”
Nathan and Emily visibly relaxed as Gene quickly spoke to the radio operator, grabbed the microphone from its cradle and turned the rotary dial to the appropriate channel.
Standing alone in the heat of the Mojave, the Land Cruiser’s radio squawked urgently. “Uri. Uri Lovinescu. James Clark. Are either of you receiving? This is Gene Johnson. Please come in. Urgent. Come in.”
The closest in earshot were already a quarter of a mile away.
“We should just about be here,” James said, with a delighted look on his face. Both he and Uri were eager to see what they would find. Obadiah followed silently behind, keeping his eyes on the distant horizon.
A sudden deafening blast shattered the calm silence of the Mojave. Dust, sand and small rocks mushroomed hundreds of feet into the air before raining down on them. The shockwave from the explosion, less than twenty feet away, had landed Uri and James on their backs. Obadiah, remarkably, was still on his feet.
Dazed, ears ringing and disoriented, James sat up and turned to Uri who was still lying there, spitting sand out his mouth. “You okay?”
“I think so,” Uri said, rolling to his side and pushing himself up with one arm.
Both, a little shaky, stood up and dusted themselves off.
“You still in one piece, Obadiah?” James asked.
“Far as I can tell,” Obadiah said, wiping some grit off his face.
“What was that?” James asked, referring to the blast. Then pointing to where it came from, “And what the hell is that?”
“Looks like the remains of a large monitor lizard,” Obadiah said, peering closer. “It must have scurried from behind that shrub when it heard us.” Then it suddenly dawned on him. “Mr. Clark, Dr. Lovinescu, we need to get away from here. This place is booby-trapped with anti-personnel mines.”