Atlantis (15 page)

She was surprised to learn that the Navy didn't know the specific locations of its own submarines for a deliberate reason: to insure their security.

The boomers, as the Navy called them, patrolled at the discretion of their own skippers within a large designated area. That way no one could find them. But the Navy realized after hooking the SOSUS system together that they had to be able to tell friendly subs from unfriendly or else they could end up sinking their own submarines in time of war.

The solution to
that
problem became the seed idea for Bright Eye. Some whiz kid at a Navy lab happened on the answer, which at first was greeted with disbelief. Every US and NATO sub was given an ID code which was painted in large letters and numbers with a special laser reflective paint on the upper deck. The Navy could read the codes by pinpointing a sub's location using the SOSUS, then using one of the FLTSATCOM satellites firing a laser downlink. Using a high intensity blue-green light, the laser could penetrate the ocean to submarine depth. The paint reflected the laser beam and the satellite picked up the reflection, forwarding the code to fleet headquarters. No code was a bad guy.

The Odysseus scientists studied the results of this laser program. The key to Star Wars had always been finding and tracking enemy planes and missiles in the first place. You couldn’t hit it if you couldn’t find it. Surveillance was the critical link and they were looking for the next step beyond the infrared and thermal imaging used aboard the KH-12. Lasers, operating at the speed of light and capable of great power, seemed the next logical progression and thus Bright Eye was born.

Bright Eye consisted of a large circle of laser emitters. By varying the focal length of the emitters, the operators could vary the color of the beam emitted. Using a special computer, the lasers could cycle through a spectrum of colors in rapid succession. Depending on what colors were reflected and how quickly, an accurate view of Bright Eye’s focus could be developed. The advantage of the lasers over other emitters was their more powerful beam could cut through severe weather conditions. They were also effective at night. Having a power source in orbit strong enough to fire the lasers from orbit down to Earth was solved by lifting a small nuclear reactor into space, a move made in the utmost secrecy. There was of course the possibility of nuclear disaster if the launch vehicle had exploded going into orbit. Fortunately, no mishaps had occurred.

The second problem was a substantial one. The lasers were so powerful that they would blind any humans in the area who happened to look up into the beams at the moment they came down; therefore Bright Star’s use was limited.

And this was why Conners had gone to Konrad. She didn't want to be responsible for hundreds, if not thousands of blinded Cambodians.

The computer beeped, letting Conners know that Bright Eye was rapidly approaching the target area. She ran through the final checks one more time. She sensed Konrad had joined her. He was looking over her shoulder waiting to see what happened.

One hundred and twenty miles up, the dual satellite combination sped through space, north to south over the globe, China passing beneath rapidly. The reactor was working perfectly, a large cylinder, lacking the shielding of its cousins on the planet's surface below. Next to it, the circular satellite containing Bright Eye was also functioning properly. The twenty foot round door that covered the laser array smoothly slid open, revealing the tips of the emitters. A large flat panel, the laser receiver, was extended on a mechanical arm to the right of the array, unfolding until it was over a hundred yards long by fifty wide, its cells ready to receive the bounceback.

Power flowed from the reactor to the lasers, accumulating in capacitors as the countdown dropped below twenty seconds. As Bright Eye passed over north-central Cambodia, the on-board computer went into hyper-drive. Bolts of laser light flashed out, each individual laser immediately firing again and again as the computer rotated both the frequency of the laser itself and the direction the tip was pointed in, making minute adjustments at the base of each. Those tiny adjustments, when multiplied over the one hundred and twenty-five mile down trip each laser beam traveled, allowed Bright Eye to take an accurate picture of a large area.

Traveling at the speed of light, the first beams reached down and hit the target area.

“We're getting something,” Conners announced as she read the data on her computer screen, a real-time downlink from Bright Eye, showing what the receiving panel was getting. “I think we've got a--”

She paused as a large glow showed in the middle of the screen. “What the heck?”

A bolt of energy, in the shape of large glowing golden ball, over fifty meters in diameter, punched out of the mist covering the triangle and raced up through the down-firing lasers, scattering them in all directions.

As it gained altitude, the ball's diameter slowly grew smaller, but it was covering the distance between it and Bright Eye at a rapid pace.

“Shut it down!” Konrad yelled.

They could both see the large golden ball on the sighting scope downlink that was part of Bright Eye. The laser image had gone completely haywire.

Conners fingers flew over the keyboard, turning off the lasers, but the ball continued to gain altitude toward Bright Eye, until it filled the entire screen. Then suddenly there was a gold flash of light and nothing. The data that had been on the computer screen suddenly went dead.

“Do you have contact?” Konrad demanded.

Conners felt the bottom of her stomach fall out as she realized what she had seen. “Nothing. I've got nothing. Bright Eye is gone!”

“Oh, man! I've got to call the Director,” Konrad was running from her office.

“Dear Lord,” Conners whispered.

CHAPTER SIX

“Monsters? What exactly did you mean by that?”

Dane had been waiting for that question and as he'd expected, Freed was the one to pose it. There'd been no time for it to be asked earlier. Since Dane had accepted the mission they had been busy, getting ready to depart and heading to the airfield.

They were in Michelet's private jet, the same converted 707 that had flown Dane and Chelsea from the disaster site to LA. Now they were over the eastern Pacific, heading west at maximum speed. Paul Michelet and Roland Beasley were seated in deep leather chairs on the other side of a small table. Freed was next to the window on Dane's right and Chelsea lay in the aisle at Dane's other side, sleeping.

“If the CIA told you about me,” Dane said, “then you probably saw the after-action report for that mission. I told them the truth.”

Michelet shook his head. “We never saw a copy of the after-action report. But if you told the CIA that monsters were responsible for the mission's failure, that would explain a lot.”

“Like my getting chaptered out of the army on a psych eval?” Dane asked.

“Yes,” Freed said, meeting Dane's gaze. “We knew about your discharge, but all we could find out was that it was listed as combat stress.”

Dane's laugh had a bitter edge to it. “I was on my second tour and I'd been running cross-border recon missions for six months. I'd had more than my share of combat stress, but when I got debriefed in Laos by the CIA field rep, he didn't back up a word I said, just passed me to their army liaison who thought I was bonkers.”

Dane hadn't been worried about keeping his army career. Not after what he had seen. Surprisingly, Foreman had listened to him carefully, asking many questions, expressing no opinion one way or the other. But the army had definitely had a negative reaction and with no back-up from Foreman, they had quickly dumped him.

“What kind of monsters?” Freed asked, ever the professional, trying to size up the opposition no matter how strange.

Dane wondered why they believed him. Of course, he reminded himself, maybe they didn't and were just humoring him.

“If we're going in there,” Dane said, pointing at the ever-present map on the table in front of him, “then you need to hear what happened on that mission.”

He told the story, from leaving the CCN camp in Vietnam, through the CIA base in Laos, the flight in, the landing zone, the movement and the crossing of the river. He wasn't interrupted once, not even when he tried as best he could to describe the encounter on the other side of the river. When he finished describing Flaherty being dragged away into the fog by a blue beam of light, he had to stop for a moment. He had never told another person the complete story after being debriefed by Foreman.

There were many times he had wondered if it all hadn't been a nightmare, but always the reality of his memory was reflected by the scar on his forearm.

“How did you get away?” Freed asked.

“I ran,” Dane said.

They waited for an elaboration, but Dane added none.

“How did you get out of immediate area and escape the monst--whatever it was that did that to your team?”

It was hard for Dane to know what Freed believed by the tone of his voice. “I was lucky.” The voice in his head, Dane decided was something he best keep to himself. Over the years working with Chelsea, he had learned to keep silent about the voices and the things his mind saw and heard that others didn’t. He’d known since he was very small that he was different. He’d learned early on that people feared and distrusted different.

“Lucky?” Michelet repeated.

Dane shrugged. “I was chased to the river. Once I got on the other side, out of the mist, there was no problem.”

“No monsters?” Freed said, his voice flat.

“No monsters.”

“No beams of light?”

“No.”

“How did you get out of Cambodia?” Freed pressed. “You said you didn't know where the CIA pick-up zone was.”

“I used the river as my left guide. I knew it would flow east, eventually emptying into the Mekong. Then I followed the Mekong to South Vietnam. I was picked up by friendly forces there and immediately flown back to Laos for debrief.”

“You make it sound simple,” Freed said. He tapped the map. “It's over five hundred kilometers from where you were to South Vietnam. Through territory thoroughly infiltrated by the Viet Cong and the NVA.”

Dane shrugged, but didn't elaborate. He felt no need to share that hellish trip with these men, safely seated in the comfort of the Michelet corporate jet. The nights spent pushing through the jungle. The days hidden, covered by leaves, insects crawling over his body. The grubs he'd eaten for nourishment. The feeling of sitting totally alone, sensing there wasn't anyone within miles, listening to the sounds of the jungle, falling into fitful sleep, nightmares jolting him awake, hearing the cries of his teammates.

“What do you think it was that burned you and Flaherty?” Freed asked, bringing the conversation back to possible threats. “The beam of light?”

Dane thought it interesting that of everything he described that was the threat Freed focused on. He could feel the scar tissue on his forearm. “I have no idea. I just saw the beam of light.”

“A laser?” Michelet asked.

“I don't know.”

“You say there were two colors of light. One gold, one blue?” Michelet asked.

“Yes.”

“Perhaps the other things--the monsters--you saw were holograms,” Michelet suggested. “One of my divisions has been doing some work on those for the movie industry. Very realistic. In fact,” he added, “this strange fog you're talking about, it would help with the projection process considerably.”

Dane wasn't surprised at that response. “It wasn't a hologram that killed my team. The thing Flaherty shot died. I don't think you can do that with holograms. The bullets would have went right through it. And it was almost thirty years ago. I don't believe anyone had technology that could have produced those things back then or even now.”

“Did it ever occur to you that you might have imagined the whole episode?” Freed quietly asked.

Dane stared at the black man. “Yes. It occurred to me.”

“The CIA has done quite a bit of work on hallucinogens,” Freed said. “Perhaps you were part of an experiment. I know that some of those cross-border teams used chemical warfare agents, some of it pretty cutting edge stuff.”

Dane shrugged. “If you think I hallucinated the whole thing then you made a big mistake bringing me here. Unless of course you've hallucinated your plane going down.”

“I'm not doubting you,” Freed said. “I'm just doing my job.”

“I know that,” Dane said, “but remember you came to me.”

“I've heard that MACV-SOG used to issue drugs to its people,” Freed persisted, ignoring him.

Dane nodded. “We used amphetamines sometimes on missions, after we'd been in for a few days, but I hadn't taken anything on that mission. We weren't in long enough.”

“Did you carry any chemical agents to use on enemy personnel?” Freed asked.

“No.”

“But--” Freed began, when Dane interrupted him.

“Listen,” he said, pointing at the recorder on the table.
“You're
the one who told me that message from my old team was real and only two days old. And that it came from here,” Dane's fist thumped down onto the map. “So unless
you're
lying, then you have to believe I'm telling the truth.”

“Uhh--” Beasley caught everyone's attention. “Could you describe the thing that your team leader shot a little more clearly?”

Dane ignored Freed's look of irritation and gave as much detail as he could.

Beasley pulled a folder out of his briefcase when Dane was done. The professor thumbed through then stopped on a certain page. “Did it look like this?”

Dane looked at the picture of carved stone, then up at the professor. “That's it exactly.”

“Hmm,” was Beasley's only comment.

“Where was that picture taken?” Freed demanded.

“Angkor Wat,” Beasley replied. “Off a temple wall.”

“What is it?” Freed asked, taking the book and looking at it more closely.

“A creature of Cambodian myth,” Beasley said. “It seems the legends are coming alive.”