Shortly before noon, a helicopter carrying a small squad of bomb disposal specialists lifted off from Groom Lake in the direction of the Mojave. Their orders were to clear the area of explosives but do nothing else. Being military, they simply did as they were told; following orders without question. They were conditioned to being kept in the dark and doing the job without knowing why.
Emily decided that she could make her life a little easier and less frustrating if she didn’t use Photoshop to match up combinations of individual layers of images. Half the problem was, that after a few hours of mixing and matching, she’d forgotten which combinations she had already tried.
Excluding the imaginative first layer, the others were stored on her computer as separate images. She was now in the process of writing a program which combined them in every possible combination, displaying the merged results one at a time. When finished, all she had to do was press either the right or left keyboard arrows to have the next or previous combination presented.
“I hope I’m going to be completed with this program by the end of the day,” she said to Nathan. “I’m really keen to see if I’m going to get anything useful.”
“Let me know if you need help,” he said. It was a moot point. Emily was SkyTech’s foremost graphics expert. If she couldn’t figure it out, no one could, but Nathan thought it polite to offer.
“Thanks,” she said. “How are you progressing?”
“I’ve been doing some research. It’s amazing what you can get from Google.” As there was no Wi-Fi in Level-2, Nathan had plugged his laptop into the local network to get on the internet. “Punch in a few simple formulas, and I get various results explaining their purpose.”
“That could answer most of your questions.”
“I thought so, but now I’m not so sure,” he said. “I suspect you were right. These formulas are nothing more than misdirection. Either that or this entire document is a complete hoax.”
“What’s made you change your mind?”
“Everything I’ve researched so far points to articles on thermal properties of volcanos, the Earth’s core, the magnetic poles, lodestone, and so on. What the hell is lodestone? This is all complete rubbish.”
“Maybe it will start making sense once we’ve deciphered the illustrations,” she said.
“I’m having serious doubts, but I’ll continue my research anyway. Maybe something useful will turn up.”
“Looks like we’re going to be here a while,” she said.
Chapter Thirty-Three
James and Obadiah were with Uri in Hangar-26. James had never seen a stealth strike-aircraft up close before. Photographs did little justice and he was surprised at how big they were. Walking around the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, he was amazed at how little the delta-winged fighter had in the way of aerodynamics. With its flat surfaces and sharp edges, it looked more like an oversized Lego model than a streamlined fighter jet capable of flying faster than the speed of sound.
“What makes it stealth?” Obadiah asked.
“Its shape, largely,” Uri replied. “The surface design and composite materials avoid detection by visible light, radar and most radio frequencies; not completely, but it does conceal itself extremely well.”
“Were we the first to develop stealth aircraft?” Obadiah asked.
“I wish that was the case, but the first prototype, the Horten HO-229, was developed in Nazi Germany during World War II. It was a remarkable success. Of course, the US Air Force would never admit to that.”
“So, the Brits invent radar in 1935 and shortly after, the Germans invent stealth,” James said, with amusement.
“It’s a never-ending game,” Uri said.
“How old is this plane?”
“This particular one, I’m not too sure,” Uri said. “They first came into service in 1981 and were retired in 2008. We have a few here at Groom Lake. They all still fly but aren’t used for combat purposes any more.”
“Why not?” Obadiah asked.
“Cost mostly. At one hundred and ten million dollars each, they were no longer viable to build.”
What he would give to fly in one of these military aircraft, James thought.
His wish would be granted sooner than expected.
Just before sunset, when Uri and the SkyTech team were making their way towards the officers’ quarters, the helicopter returned from the Mojave. They waited a while for the rotor to slow down before approaching.
“Those rotor blades are very high,” Emily said to Uri. “Why do people always duck so low when they approach?”
“The blades are incredibly flexible,” Uri said. “An unexpected wind or downdraft can bend them so low that anyone in the way would easily be sheared in half.”
“That’s a pleasant thought,” she said.
The pilot and crew jumped out. In their possession they had several mines which had already been neutralised on site. In the cargo hold, Emily noticed something else, but couldn’t quite make it out in the dimness of the interior.
“Ma’am,” the pilot said respectfully to Emily. “You may not want to see this.”
He was right.
The crew pulled out the gruesome remains of three bodies and dumped them unceremoniously onto the ground. Limbs were either severed or missing completely.
The pilot faced Uri. “The mines are of Russian origin. These three Mexicans appear to be landmine victims. They have no identification.”
“Most likely illegal migrant workers,” Uri said.
“There were tire tracks leading to and from the location,” the pilot said. “Looks like someone got there before us.”
“Did you find anything else?”
“Other than a bunch of empty oil drums labeled as toxic waste, nothing, Dr. Lovinescu,” the pilot said. “I don’t want to question our mission, but it seems a bit strange that we found landmines and three dead bodies out in the middle of the desert.”
“Yes, it does seem strange,” Uri replied, not saying anything further.
“Toxic waste?” James asked.
“Deterrents,” the pilot said. “They’re bogus. We do that ourselves regularly if we want to keep people from snooping around.”
Helicopter returned with three dead bodies and what appear to be explosives. Lovinescu and entourage talking with pilot
Three bodies? Strange?
The Controller deleted the message.
“Something’s been bothering me,” Emily said across the dinner table to the others. “We’ve been sent here to decipher a document and find the location of its transmission. LaForgue seems to be a step ahead of us the whole way. What is it that she’s after?”
“Besides what’s in the document, likely an answer as to why it was sent at such an unusual frequency and from such a strange place,” James said.
“Something tells me she already knows that,” Uri added.
“That’s the thing,” Emily said. “Assuming the document is totally authentic, why digitally encrypt it in such a convoluted way, then come out to the middle of nowhere, bury an aerial, long-wave or whatever, and transmit it? Seriously, who does something like that?”
James looked at her with keen eyes. “Go on. What else are you thinking?”
“And to your point a few days ago,” she said, looking to Nathan. “We assume that it was Kubacki who sent the data, but how could he be so sure that it would be intercepted?”
“And by the people who happened to have a long-wave receiver pointing in just the right direction,” Nathan finished.
“You don’t put down landmines and toxic waste deterrents to hide an antenna. So why hasn’t it been obvious to us until now?”