“Wait a second.” Yakov was confused. “You said it was a weapon?”
“It depends on the amount of energy transmitted. At a certain low level it could transmit a radio message. At other low levels it could produce a glow. Indeed Tesla claimed shortly after the Titanic disaster that his device — located in the Azores — could prevent similar accidents by lighting the entire Atlantic Ocean at night with a low-level glow.”
Turcotte wasn’t sure how much of this he should believe. A month ago he would have thought it all nonsense, but he had seen so many strange things in the intervening weeks that very little was out of the realm of what he now thought possible. And he desperately needed a weapon, a human weapon, one that was powerful enough to attack the Talons and destroy the Mars transmitter.
“Most of what I am telling you is easily checkable,” Quinn said. “You can look them up in the library or on the Internet. Anyway, these people who believe Tesla was trying to contact Peary speculate that Tesla’s experiment went tragically wrong.
“If you look at a global projection, from Tesla’s tower site on Long Island to Peary’s camp near the North Pole and continuing on a line around the planet, you strike Tunguska straight on. The theory is that Tesla mistook both the power and the direction of his beam and instead hit Tunguska with a powerful electromagnetic pulse, causing the explosion.”
“You sound as if you do not believe that,” Turcotte noted.
“Tesla was a brilliant man,” Quinn said. “Reading his journals convinced me of that. I do not think he made a mistake. I believe the North Pole information was a cover story that was put out to hide the real mission. I think he did exactly what he set out to.”
“And that was?” Yakov prompted. “Destroy the Swarm spacecraft.”
“How did he develop such technology?” Yakov asked. And how could he know the Swarm craft was inbound, then target it?”
“That I don’t know yet,” Quinn said. “I’ve got more research to do. But if he had contact with the Master Guardian in Turkey, he might have been able to find out about the Swarm spaceship being inbound. I’m just telling you all I’ve found out so far.”
“Can we duplicate his weapon?” Turcotte asked. “Can it cut through the Airlia shield?”
“I’m speculating that the Swarm craft must have been guarded by some sort of similar shield,” Quinn said. “Tesla’s weapon seems to have worked on that.”
“Can we duplicate it?” Turcotte asked once more.
“I’m working on the data and construction details,” Quinn said. “His energy projector doesn’t appear to be very complicated.”
“Why has no one tried to duplicate it then?” Turcotte asked.
“No one really appears to have looked,” Quinn said. “As I said, his papers were taken by the Yugoslavian intelligence service and locked away. I’ve put out some feelers for experts on Tesla’s science. There’s one more thing,” Quinn added.
“And that is?” Turcotte asked.
“Tesla traveled to England in 1924.” “So?”
“That’s the same year Irvine left England to try to climb Everest. Tesla mentions in his journal that he met Irvine prior to his departure, but he doesn’t say why.”
“That’s not just a coincidence, is it?” Turcotte asked. “I don’t think so.”
Turcotte leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. “Where are they now?” “Excuse me?” Quinn asked.
“These other Watchers,” Turcotte said. “Where are they now? How come they haven’t done anything?”
Yakov shrugged his large shoulders. “I have not met any of them or seen the results of any of their actions in my years tracking the aliens. Perhaps Tesla was the last?”
Turcotte turned back to Quinn. “Can we make this weapon?”
“I’ve got someone coming — a professor from MIT who has done a lot of work with things Tesla worked on.” Quinn checked his Palm Pilot. “A Professor Leahy. Should be here very soon.”
Turcotte stood. “I hope so. Because we’re taking off within the hour.”
CHAPTER 13: THE PRESENT
The two Air Force officers walked to the surface entrance of thee Final Option Missile Launch Control Center (FOM-LCC). Both were dressed in black one-piece flight suits. On their right shoulders each wore a crest with a mailed fist holding lightning bolts and the words Final Option. A Velcro tag on their chests gave their names, ranks, and units. One was Major Bartlett, the other Captain Thayer.
The surface entrance to the LCC was set in the middle of an open grassy space, about a hundred meters square, surrounded on all sides by thick forest. Twenty meters from the edge of the forest on all sides surrounding the surface building was a twelve-foot-high fence topped with razor wire. One gravel road led to the building. NO TRESPASSING and DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED signs were hung every ten feet on the fence. Video cameras, remote-controlled machine guns, a satellite dish, surface-to-air missiles, and a small radar dish were on the roof of the building, the latter three pointing at the cloudless sky.
The two officers had arrived moments ago in a pickup from Barksdale Air Force Base, where the 341st Missile Wing was headquartered. The pickup was parked right behind them, waiting to take the off-shift crew back to base. The LCC was located eight miles from the main air base, one of a dozen launch control facilities scattered about the post. Each control facility was in charge of six silos, each housing an intercontinental ballistic missile.
One of the officers punched a code into the panel next to the outer door and it opened. They stepped into a short hallway and approached a massive vault door guarding the elevator. The Final Option Missile crest was painted on the elevator door. The first officer put his eyes up to the retinal scanner on the left side of the door. A mechanical voice echoed out of a speaker.
“Retina verified. Major Bartlett. Launch status valid.”
The second officer followed suit, raising his glasses so his eyes could push up against the rubber. “Retina verified. Captain Thayer. Launch status valid.”
There was a brief pause, and then the computer spoke again.
“Launch officers on valid status verified. Please enter duty entry code.”
On a numeric keypad next to the vault door, Bartlett entered the daily code they’d been given when departing Barksdale.
The unemotional voice of the computer echoed in the lobby. “Code valid. Look into the camera for duty crew identification.”
Bartlett and Thayer stepped back and looked up into a video camera hanging from the ceiling. The image was relayed below them to the current crew on duty.
“On-duty crew identifies,” the computer intoned. “Opening door.”
The vault door slowly swung open. They walked into the elevator and the door shut. The elevator hurtled down a hundred feet and abruptly halted, causing them both to flex their knees.
The elevator doors opened to the rear of the launch control center. To the left of the elevator, a door went to a small area that contained enough stores for the crew for three months. To the right another door went to a small room that held two bunks, a bathroom, and a kitchen area. The two men walked into the Final Option Missile Launch Control Center, a forty-by-forty room filled with rows of machinery. The entire facility was a capsule resting on four huge shock absorbers, theoretically allowing it to survive the concussion of a direct nuclear strike. Like the Space Command facility at Cheyenne Mountain, it had originally been built early in the Cold War, when there were those who thought such a thing was possible. Even with retrofits of stronger armor and better shocks, the crews of the LCC knew their survivability rate would be very low given an all-out nuclear exchange.