I awoke to the pounding throb of helicopter blades and cold air.
“Hey Carl,” a voice said. He picked my head up off the metal floor of the helicopter. I tried to move but quickly realized I was shackled to the seat supports. “That’s right Carl, we know who you are. You’ve been a very bad boy, Carl, and you’re going to pay for that, but first the General has something special he needs you to do. You remember the General, don’t you Carl?”
I struggled against the shackles. His only response was to laugh at me. After several hours the helicopter landed and I was transferred to a military cargo plane sitting on a desert road in the middle of nowhere. From there it was another 18 hours in the air. We landed, refueled and took off again. Twelve hours later we landed again.
It was dark. As I was moved from the cargo plane to another helicopter I got a chance to look around. The buildings were gutted from fire and damaged from the meteor storm, but I recognized it as the airport at New Delhi, India. Two hours later we landed in the dark and they moved me into a building with creaky wood floors. I recognized the smell of the place and the sound of the Baspa River cascading down through the valley. We were in Chitkul. We ate and went to sleep on the floor.
I awoke to someone jerking on my shackles.
“Carl!” General Strom looked down at me. “I had a feeling I was giving you too much rope at NASA, and this is how you repay my kindness to you?” I scrambled to get away from him but the shackles bit painfully into my legs and wrists. The journey here had worn the skin raw and left me bleeding under the cuffs. “But before we get to that unpleasantness, you have a chance to redeem yourself, Carl. You don’t want to disappoint me a second time, do you?”
I shook my head. “No.” I said, shaking almost uncontrollably.
“Good boy, Carl,” the General said as he reached out and patted my left cheek with his right hand. “I knew you’d understand.”
He brought me outside where a soldier removed the shackles and strapped a leather collar around my neck.
“I’m granting you this much freedom, Carl, but just so you know, it’s a Taser collar. The sergeant here will take you down if you refuse any order or try to fight us in any way. It’s non-lethal, so he has permission to use the Taser function as often as he likes.” I looked over at the soldier. He grinned back at me. “Come on, we have a long way to go,” the General said.
I surveyed what remained of Chitkul. The private homes were gone, as was the ITBP building. The only standing structure was the Buddhist temple, which had been damaged, but the people of Chitkul had apparently let their own homes burn in order to save the temple. Not that it mattered now; the whole place was deserted.
We boarded the same helicopter and flew for two hours weaving in between the mountains, generally following the same path we had walked the year before to get to the cave. We landed at the site of the Monastery and got out. The helicopter lifted off and headed back to Chitkul. From here we would walk.
“Your buddy Trent Colburn got us this far, but he was useless in getting us to the cave from here,” the General said. “Too bad, he could have had a decent life working for us, but it just didn’t work out.”
“You killed Trent?” I asked.
“He was old,” the General said. “Eventually the Taser collar and his heart weren’t a good mix. You know how it works.”
I looked at the monastery. There was some damage from the meteor storm but the bulk of the building was stone. It seemed to be in fair shape for what it had been through. I wondered about the old guardian and the Buddhist monks who had lived here.
“Your buddy Trent said there was an old priest who knew where the cave was, but the place was deserted when we got here. So now it’s up to you, Carl. Which way do we go?”
I looked at the General and hesitated. The high voltage surged through me as if I had been hit by lightning. As I slowly regained consciousness General Strom stood over me smiling.
“Which way do we go, Carl?” he said slowly. I pointed. “Good boy, Carl. Shall we?”
We began walking toward the cave. I wondered how the robot was going to handle the group of heavily armed and highly trained soldiers since my survival depended on only him.
CHAPTER 33
We arrived at the base of the mountain with the small waterfall and the pool late in the afternoon of the third day. The cave was above us. I had been very cooperative since being Tased at the monastery. I wondered if Trent had told the General about the robot inside the cave. If he had, I expected the General to be more on alert than he was, so my guess was that Trent had remained true to his commitment to the old guardian, bringing the previous team only as far as the monastery.
The General set two soldiers on watch at all times. He sat at the campfire and had the sergeant bring me over to him. I sat on the ground where the sergeant pointed.
“Tomorrow is going to be a great day for me,” the General began, “and of course for our country. I’ve learned some about what’s in the cave from your buddy Trent. The electric generator you’ve been handing out to people is nice, but the real treasure is in the weapons and flying craft. That will take us to Mars and beyond. See, I knew finding squints like you was the way to go. You let me know how smart you were by breaking into the pentagon computer system. You were good. It took me a while to find you. But once I found you, you were mine. I pushed for the federal prison for you. I knew what would happen. Once you were properly softened up, all I had to do was rescue you and I owned you from that moment on.”
The anger was rising in me like bile backing up in my throat. Everything I went through was at his direction, under his control. I wanted to jump on him and strangle every bit of life out of him. I glanced at the sergeant. He was watching me intently, grinning, and just waiting for an excuse to trigger the Taser collar again. Then I realized why the General was telling me all of this. He was baiting me, trying to entice me into a reaction so he could see me suffer from the Taser collar again. I realized he drew a perverse satisfaction from hurting people. I took a deep breath and forced myself to relax.
“I had hundreds of squints like you, seeded into every agency in the country. Through people like you, I influenced and controlled knowledge, information and policy. I controlled the direction this country followed. Once you discovered the meteor storm my grand plan moved to the next higher level. After I get the technology in that cave and you show me how to use it, I will have control of the entire military, and with my cousin, the president, we will control the world, at least until I don’t need him anymore. So you see how important you are in the scheme of things? Your role is critically important to me, and I will see to it that you are properly compensated for everything you do here. You’ve got it made, Carl. You should be very proud of yourself. You’ve made it to the top of your career: number one squint in the world.”
The General looked over at me and studied my face for a moment. He scoffed a little as he realized I wasn’t taking the bait. “So, Carl, do you think the machines in the cave actually work?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Everything in the cave has been sitting there for 63,000 years. How much of the equipment you use would work after sitting in a cave for that long?”
The General poked at the campfire with a stick. “You’re a smart kid, Carl. I’m sure you and a few others like you can get all of this stuff working again. It’s just a matter of time and resources, and I’ve got both.”