“Forty seconds. I was recruited by the Priory. Do you know that?” Kirtley’s voice echoed in the now empty control room, but inside the computer Raisor could still hear the words. He found the location of the recording, then followed the thread of data to a link with Sybyl’s monitoring program. Wrong way, Raisor realized with alarm-this was the direction the alert had come to start the destruct program. He reversed direction.
“Thirty seconds.”
On the grate, Valika jumped on board the Huey, grabbing a headset. “Lift,” she ordered the pilot. “Now!” she added with emphasis.
The helicopter shuddered as the pilot increased power. The blades began turning faster, but they were still on the grate. Valika knew it took time to gain enough blade speed to take off. She smacked the firewall in frustration at the blades turning overhead, willing them to go faster.
Raisor was back through the computer that Kirtley had used to display his message, passing along a data line to the computer that ran Bright Gate’s environmental system.
“Twenty seconds.”
Then Raisor “saw” it. Plastic explosive wired to each of the tanks holding the fuel for the generators. The detonator switch on each wasn’t electric-which he could have manipulated-but rather an acid drip over which he had no control.
“Ten seconds.”
The Huey’s skids lifted.
“Get us away from here as quickly as possible,” Valika told the pilot.
He responded by nosing over and dropping altitude along the slope of the mountain to gain speed. Valika turned and looked back, waiting.
The acid ate through, activating the detonators.
Raisor’s essence was right next to the first of the fuel tanks. He would have laughed if he had had a mouth to issue the sound.
All four tanks exploded, ripping through the levels of Bright Gate.
Dalton staggered.
“What the hell was that?” Hammond cried out as she fell to her knees.
The entire mountain trembled. Dalton could see the night sky on the other side of the grate. His fingers scrambled around, trying to find a latch. He could hear something coming from behind them, like a freight train out of control.
He gave up looking for a latch and threw his shoulder into it, feeling the pain of his recent wound reopening. The grate didn’t give. He yelled and threw himself against it once more, holding nothing back, feeling the shock of hitting the metal through every cell of his being, but it gave way and he tumbled out, half expecting to go sliding down the mountain out of control, but instead landing on a ledge. He scrambled to his feet. The sound was getting closer. He grabbed Hammond, pulled her to his chest, then pressed against the side of the mountain, to the right of the opening.
A tongue of flame exploded out of the opening and into the night sky.
18
Searchlights highlighted the shuttle Columbia against the night sky at Vandenburg Air Force Base. The countdown was proceeding on schedule for a dawn launch. The shuttle was mated with the two solid rocket boosters and external fuel tank, putting the tip of the external tank 184.2 feet above the ground, while the base of the two external rockets reached the ground. The entire system weighed over four and a half million pounds.
“T minus six hours zero zero minutes. Next planned hold is at T minus three hours. Tower crew perform ETand TPS ice, frost and debris evaluation. ET is ready for LOX and LH2 loading. Verify orbiter ready for LOX and LH2 loading.”
The reason Vandenburg was the launch site instead of the more traditional Cape was the need to put the last MIL STAR satellite in a polar orbit. The Cape was used when a shuttle was to be put in an equatorial orbit, Vandenburg for polar insertions. The trajectory for Columbia was planned to be within twelve degrees of due north. The first mission once reaching orbit was to deploy the CS-MILSTAR satellite, thus making the system-and HAARP-operational worldwide.
The Blackhawks descended on the west side of Cheyenne Mountain, the opposite side from the well-known entrance to the underground complex that used to be called NORAD and now housed Space Command. Lieutenant Jackson watched as sheer rock walls-spurs from the mountain’s side-slid by on either side of the helicopter.
An infrared strobe light flickered below, the intermittent glow visible in the pilot’s night vision goggles. A thirty-meter-wide expanse of smooth rock was nestled between the two spurs. Gently they touched down the sling load, punched the release, and then moved over and landed the chopper. Jackson slid the door open and hopped out. The landing zone was just big enough to handle the load and the helicopter, surrounded on two sides with rock. The open side led to a precipitous drop, as they were about a third of the way up the slope of Cheyenne Mountain. On the fourth, mountain, side, a pair of large doors were swung wide open.
“We need to go back for the sergeant major.” Barnes had hold of Jackson ’s elbow and was pointing back toward the chopper.
Jackson had thought about it on the forty-minute ride here. “We have to get the iso-tubes stabilized first.”
The first Blackhawk was lifting, leaving room for the second one to deposit its load. Jackson waited until the man with the strobe light succeeded in guiding the helicopter to the correct spot and it lifted off, before going over to him.
The stranger was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket over a T-shirt. He clicked off the strobe and stuck it in his pocket before extending his hand in greeting. “You must be Lieutenant Jackson.”
“Yes. And you are?”
The man appeared to be in his mid-forties, with thinning dark hair. His face was thin and he looked tired. “You can call me Mentor.”
He looked past her at the two sling loads. “We need to get those inside. One of the Blackhawks is going back to Fort Carson. The other will land here as soon as we clear the LZ.” He turned toward a flatbed electric truck. “You can load that and we’ll take it in.”
They quickly loaded four of the iso-tubes and gear on the bed, working in silence and as quickly as safety allowed.
“Get on,” Mentor told them. With just a slight hum the truck headed for the dark opening. “Welcome to the Ranch.”
“ ‘The Ranch?” Jackson asked.
“No time for explanations now. All in due time.”
They entered the tunnel and he stopped. The doors swung shut on large hydraulic arms. Only then did red lights come, illuminating the interior without destroying their night vision. Mentor drove them down the tunnel.
McFairn’s desk was covered with paper. Reports from the Pentagon, intercepted messages, analysis summaries-all the result of what had happened so far.
There was good news and there was bad news, which seemed to be the way it always was. The hostages were all dead, but the rescue team from the Roosevelt had not suffered the same fate and had wiped out the cartel members guarding the villa. Communication with Bright Gate had been lost. The Ring was capable of retransmitting an Aura burst via satellite, but the satellite had been destroyed.
She reached for The Art of War, to search for a passage to give her soul peace, when her secure private line rang.
“Yes?”
“I need the unlock code for the MILSTAR retransmitters.”
McFairn rubbed her hand across her eyes as she listened to Boreas’s words. Nothing about the death of the hostages, the loss of the Bright Gate team, or the loss of Sybyl and the isolation tubes. Or the Nexus murders.
“I can’t do that.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Both.”
“ ‘Won’t’ is simply an unwise decision,” Boreas said. “ ‘Can’t’ indicates a lack of effort.”