Diamond Rain: Adventure Science Fiction Mossad Thriller (The Spy Stories and Tales of Intrigue Series Book 2) (15 page)

A few hours later, in
the Gulf of Oman, the lurking Akula popped a communication antenna into the
air.  The coded burst from Macaulay had all the hallmarks of a message from the
Russian oligarch financing the Akula.  History would call it ‘Orlov’s Gamble’;
few would imagine Macaulay at its root.  An oligarch would pay with his life.

Orlov’s Unsuspecting Gambit

 Macaulay’s coded message to ‘The Admiral’,
Commander aboard the rogue Russian Akula submarine, started the wheels spinning
towards a horrific reality.  Doing his oligarch’s bidding, whether delivering
cocaine from Columbia to Europe or providing clandestine delivery of weapons to
despots in Africa since the time of the fall of the Berlin wall, ‘The Admiral’
kept his own council.  He despised the man sitting himself down in the minute
space opposite him in his sleeping quarters.  He did however, respect the man’s
engineering skills.

“Klaus, it seems your
abilities are in demand again,” he said, looking up from a sea bottom
coordinate map on a drop-down shelf between them.  “If I read that map correctly
from this side, we are in the Gulf of Oman.  Are we making for the Persian
Gulf?”

“Astute, as usual.”

“We need you to set a
more controlled event than the one in Indonesia, Klaus.”

The Admiral turned a
folded section the map to face the German.  “You’re still using paper.  These
displays’re all digital now.”  The Admiral handed Klaus a magnifying glass and
instructed him to look at Qatar.

“Can you build a charge
that’ll inundate Qatar but leave Saudi Arabia and Bahrain untouched?”

Klaus played with his
goatee between his thumb and forefinger.  “I have no-”

“Give it a break, will
you?  I’ll show you some background to set your Nationalist Socialist heart at
ease.  The Chinese have played a wild card.  They took over the assets of
Qatar.  We mean to get ’em back.”

“Still doesn’t explain
why I should do this for you.”

“You fascist prick.  I
was a boy in Leningrad, remember.”

“You never let me
forget.”

“You’ll do it for the
‘green’, as they say in America.  Can you do it or not?”

A bottle of cognac appeared
from a space under the Admiral’s seat. “Seal the deal, shall we?”

“Drinking with a
fascist?”

“Hitler and Stalin did
it.”

“And we both know where
that ended up.”

“Look at this,” said
the Admiral.

A screen lit up on the
wall opposite the men.  It displayed pictures of Lake Khanka, covered with
Chinese men and satellite images of thousands upon thousands of Chinese men in
a place that Klaus recognized as Armageddon Valley.  The last sequence of
images showed the fall of Qatar taken from Al Jazeera’s report featuring Sue
Ann Lee as the reporter.

“How’re they doing it?”

“I’m told they’re using
nano technology, but I can’t make heads or tails of the report.”

“That’s nonsense. 
Nanofog is the stuff of science fiction,” said Klaus.

“They said the same
about your tsunami weapon,” retorted the Admiral.

The Admiral placed an
enlarged portion of the bigger map between them.  He took a marker and covered
an area of it with hash marks, then he filled two glasses with the dark liquid
and handed one to Klaus.  “To successful collaborations.”  They drank.

“You really can be sure
Riyadh won’t be under water?”

“It’s all speculation
at this point in time, but the math looks promising.”

“Arrange it.  We have
to stop those slant-eyed bastards.”

“Who’s the fascist
now?”

“I’ve learned it’s all
a matter of perspective.  Fill your glass?”

“Don’t mind if I do,”
replied Klaus, as he glanced down at the map section.

The Admiral studied the
map again.  As if reading Klaus’ mind, he said: “I’ll get us in there through
those shallows.  You get your job done.”

Klaus squinted at the
chart through his monocle.  He traced a line on the bottom of the sea, leaving
the Arabian Basin, then passing over the Owen Fissure Zone and then making its
way in to the Persian Gulf.

“A chance flyby’ll see
us in those waters.  Thirty-four metres only.”

“Where?”

“Only here gives us
deniability.  Christ, I sound like a politician.”

“Show me.”

“The charge must be
placed here in the entrance of the Gulf of Oman on the Owen Fissure.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get
you there.  The rest is up to you.”

“I’m going to hell,
anyway,” Klaus said.

The Admiral placed a
photograph of a teenage girl on the improvised desk between them.  Klaus raised
his eyebrows.

“Ha.  No need to bring
that up.  It was a ploy.  I never would’ve done it,” said the German.

“I whisked her away
anyway.  She’s in a fine school under another name.  Even your oligarch friend
can’t get his paws on her now, you bastard,” said the Admiral, referring to an
earlier meeting between the two men.  Before the last artificial tsunami, Klaus
had dropped the same picture in front of the Admiral to save his skin by
threatening the life of the Admiral’s niece.

“Get the fuck out of my
space.”

“That sounds more like
the Admiral we all know and love,” Klaus said as he executed a smart about face
after saluting Nazi-style.

“We’ll be at that
coordinate at four bells.  You be in the forward torpedo room to supervise.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for
anything.”

Qatar Sinks – 4:13 AM In the Gulf Of Oman

Stopping to wipe their brows, the two sailors
inhaled the greasy stench of oil and machinery before returning to the task of
wrestling the seismic weapon into the forward number two torpedo tube. 
Ordinarily a hydraulic lift would accomplish the task but this piece of
equipment was a little too wide for the torpedo tray.  Klaus piped a video feed
directly to the Admiral’s cabin. 
The men are still wearing tattered Soviet
uniforms,
he thought.

Klaus’ undoubted genius
stemmed from his flexibility.  Working for the Russian Oligarch Doctor Rostov,
he’d mastered the art of shattering subterranean rock in order to direct the
flow of gas to migrate towards a designated oil well.  His efforts had filled
Doctor Rostov’s pockets for years.  Rostov had communicated earlier this week
with the Admiral asking for another demonstration of the weapon’s feasibility,
irking the Admiral. 
Buyers lining up, but need another demonstration,
said Rostov in the coded burst. 
All those deaths are on my head, but at
least Orlov will catch the blame.
  He never suspected an Irishman’s
treachery lurking behind his orders.

Under Klaus’
supervision, a trail of self-destructing, timed and shaped depth charges lay on
the upper edge of a thirty-metre deep trench starting at the Oman Peninsula and
ending opposite Bahrain.  When exploded, the charges created an undersea
earthquake by causing a shift in the Qatar South Fars Arch.  This major
regional anticline ran through the central Persian Gulf.

Precisely as the
Admiral’s Akula evaded detection by plunging over the edge of an underwater
cliff and into one hundred metres of water, an enormous wall of water rose in
the wake of the dishonourable Akula submarine.  Klaus had done his job.  The
crew, Klaus and the Admiral passed concealed as they headed around the Oman
Peninsula through the Strait of Hormuz for deeper water.

****

The shimmering reflections on the unique
skyscrapers of Doha became agitated in the sheen of the Gulf’s early morning
normally mirrored, calm surface.

Unsuspecting migrant
workers made their way on foot or in public transport from their overcrowded
makeshift sleeping quarters.  Shaheen Oil Production’s facilities succumbed
first to the onslaught of the growling wave.  The effect was instant and
devastating.  Metal walkways and platforms twisted from their pylons, sinking
to the bottom, taking sleeping workers with them.  Those who saw the wave didn’t
have time to pray.  Those who didn’t would never know what hit them.  Two of the
world’s largest floating storage super tankers rose on the wave and were spat
out like toys towards the night skyline of Doha.

The FSO Africa, a
tanker carrying almost three million barrels of oil, slammed into Burg Doha’s
twentieth storey.  The time of day limited loss of life in the office tower,
but the FSO Asia struck a more deadly blow, careening between the Japanese and
Saudi Embassies above Diplomatic Street.  She slammed into the thirty-first
storey of the sixty-four floor Kempinski Residences and Suites.  The huge
vessel split itself against yielding cement and metal, sparks igniting oil
spouting from the ship’s hold of three million barrels.

The huge quantity of oil
exploded into flame and fell onto the second wave of the tsunami, covering all
of Doha in a watery, burning twenty-metre high escalator of flames.  People
above the thirtieth storey survived if the skyscrapers they inhabited remained
standing, but most threw themselves to their deaths when they saw the
destruction.  Wave surges sent fiery globules of oil and boiling salt water almost
twenty-five kilometres inland, swamping all of Qatar and Bahrain in horrendous,
blistering death traps.  Sunrise would never be the same again in this region. 
The destructive power of the wave did not ebb until it reached about fifty
kilometers from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

After the water
returned to the gulf, indifferently carrying countless bodies of migrant
workers, millions of wealthy Qatari citizens and the flotsam of a destroyed
civilization, a curious phenomenon occurred.  Inescapable fact defeated both
the oligarch’s and Russia’s intended purpose of merely destroying a Chinese
base of power in the Gulf created by the abdication of the Qatari Royal Family
in favour of General Chou.  However the catastrophe succeeded in watering the
seeds of discontent in Sino-Russian relations.

Saudi Blackhawk attack
helicopters, carrying Special Forces troops to the scene, recorded the disaster
and fed it to world leaders by satellite around the world.  A disaster of an
unprecedented order of magnitude spread out before their automatically activated
nose cameras.  Streaming video made its way to rooms under the Pentagon as
drones took off from USS Abraham Lincoln on patrol testing Iran’s resolve to
attain the right to enrich uranium.

The US drones
confirmed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what the Saudi early arrivals had first
discovered.  Nanosuited Chinese were walking nonchalantly around the shattered
and drenched ruins of both Bahrain and Qatar.  Despite everything, Qatar
remained in Chinese hands.  In addition, electronic chatter between the Chinese
mainland and underground military installations in Qatar hummed with activity.

****

In Europe, around Russia, in the previous
Russian Republics, and across the Middle East thousands of previously
concealed, tiny drones were sent on their airborne paths.  These drones fed
dormant nanosuited Chinese men who lurked throughout the world waiting the
order to move.  Coded foglets initiated the movement of masses of
indestructible soldiers, their nanosuits nourished by a pervasive utility fog. 
After a period of stasis, without a declaration of war, China invaded the world
with men thought to be tourists.  An Akula submarine’s commander, unbeknownst
to the world, had made the first move in World War Three.  Not for his country,
not for his leader but at the behest of a supposedly ex-Fenian terrorist with
an unknown agenda.

Mossad Makes A Cagey Peace With Macaulay

In Italy, about two kilometers outside the
stunning medieval town of
Polignano a Mari,
Macaulay’s Quantum computer
stirred in its limestone cavern
.
  It processed its information feed then
it used a macro to send a message to Macaulay’s phone in Israel.  His phone
received the video of the devastation in Qatar.  Macaulay was satisfied. 
First, he sent a text message to Thomas, then to the others who were all
sleeping in rooms on
Yona Street.

Somewhat bleary eyed,
they gathered in the kitchen area where Macaulay connected his phone to a
plasma screen mounted on the wall.  No one spoke for a while.  Then Thomas
cleared his throat.

“Did any of your ever see
those images shortly after the Hiroshima bomb exploded?” he said.

Ekaterina got the first
word in from her spot beside the espresso machine. “Wasn’t it the cockroaches
that survived there?” she said.

“If roaches were five
foot five on average after the Enola Gay dropped the bomb on Hiroshima,
they’d’ve looked like this,” Thomas replied.

“What gives here? 
How’d this happen?”  Yochana was clearly puzzled.

“Something tells me you
might have something to say about that, Macaulay,” said Thomas, unable to hide
his distrust.

“What’s with the
bullshit?  You know full well I did this Qatar business, or at least engineered
it.  It buys us some time, doesn’t it?”  Macaulay’s response was cold and
calculated.

“Or it starts World War
Three,” Ekaterina observed with equal coldness.

“You don’t get the
Chinese,” Macaulay said.  “They’re greedy, just like the rest of us.  You saw
the consumption tax they imposed on the world. What about their demand to make
the Renminbi the world’s reserve currency?  Does that sound like a power that
wants to end everything?  Don’t be fools.  Just like every civilization before
them, they want to rule and collect taxes,” he continued.

“This does create
suspicion of the Russians,” added Yatsick.

“Finally, someone’s using
his
noggin
.  Sino-Russian relations just went down the tubes.  No one
could possibly connect this to us.”

“Since when is it ‘us’,
Mister Macaulay?” asked Ekaterina.

“We need each other
right now.  Stranger bedfellows've decorated human history,” said Macaulay.

“Much as I hate to
admit it, he’s right,” Thomas said.  Regardless of the current situation, he
had more than this to worry about.  He allowed his thoughts to turn to more
pressing matters.

I have to get Kefira
out of Chou’s clutches.  This is gonna make him furious.  Thank God I planted
the idea that she was the key to the new diamond-based nanosuits.  He won’t
risk killing her.  I hope.

Thomas projected a
holograph from his mind into the room.  The image replicated a server under
attack by millions of bots.  Multitudes of miniscule black dots floated,
circled and finally
kamikazed
the server rendering it overheated and
inoperable.

“They have a serious
weakness in their technology that we can exploit,” Thomas said.  “Look at this
video I took for
Al Jazeera
in Samarkand.”

On the video, men filed
out of the
Bibi Khanym Mosque
in Samarkand after prayers.  Suddenly a
scuffle started and a second group of men, all of them Chinese, broke into the
ranks and bloodied many of the men leaving the mosque.  Some of these men
carried off women that were standing on the sidelines of the riot.

The film also captured
drones circling over the crowd.

“I caught ’em by
chance,” said Thomas, answering the questioning looks of his collaborators. 
“Watch this, I’m going to alter the transmission a bit.”  Thomas used different
colors to show the two directions of the molecules seeding the ‘walkers’ with
utility fog from the drones.  It was clear from the changing colors that some
fog was returning to the drones to be recycled.

“How’d you manage
that?” asked Yatsick.

“I just tagged the
related pixels with different colors,” Thomas replied.  “Not hard to do.”

“So, you believe the
drones are in constant contact with their Quantum computer?”

“You got it.  They have
to be.  I am going to attack them with a Denial Of Service bombardment.  Our
Quantum here and Macaulay’s in Italy should be enough to let us introduce a
pair of worms into the system while they are preoccupied with the D.O.S.
attack.”

“That was a mouthful,”
Ekaterina grinned.

“Yatsick?” said Thomas.

“He’s right. It could
work.  We could get directly to Kefira through their system by the backdoor and
have enough time to plan her escape.”

“We could also
reproduce the lethargy often witnessed in the ‘walkers’ when their system has
been destabilized.  They’re like drug addicts.  They go into hibernation when
they don’t get replenished.  It’d buy us time because we could simply repeat
it,” Ekaterina said.

“At least until they
learn how to counter it and close the backdoor I’ve opened up by discovering
the return trip of the foglets,” Thomas nodded.

“That’s where I come
in,” said Macaulay.  Yochana looked at him.

“How’s that?” she
asked.

“While you people sat
on your asses trying to figure out what to do, I pressed some of my connections
in the Chinese military,” Macaulay started to explain.  Ekaterina interrupted
him.

“What connections could
you possibly have in China?”

“Where’ d’ya think I
got my Quantum computer in the first place?  Chou, and more importantly, Lau
and I, go back some.”

“My probe of your
relationship with General Chou didn’t reveal much contact,” said Thomas.

“Only needed to see him
once.  We agreed to let me gather information for him and use the network of
unrelated computers I had invaded all over the world to cover the cost of his
building his first Quantum computer.  Let’s just say that I found a way to
finance it for him.  As a reward he gave me a simpler version of his newer
model Quantum to keep the cash flowing.”

“How does more evidence
of your treachery with the enemy help us?” Yochana said with irritation.

“The newly promoted
General Lau is Chou’s weakness.”

“Lau’s his technical
genius.  How’s that a weakness?”

“For a Mossad
operative, you’re a bit slow on the uptake sometimes.  You’re letting your distrust
and hatred cloud your judgment.”

“Well?” questioned
Ekaterina this time, coming to Yochana’s rescue.

 “Thomas can confirm
this information by probing my connections to Lau while he was moving up the
ranks.  Once, a long time ago, I impersonated a Syrian officer in China buying
weapons at an arms fair there. By chance I overheard a conversation between Lau
and Chou before they were what they are now. They never suspected my fluency in
Chinese and I learned that Chou was blackmailing Lau and holding him on a tight
leash.”

“What did he have over
him?”

“Lau was a child genius
with technology.  He came from nothing in the Chinese hinterland.  The army was
the only hope for him.  Where he lived there was a shortage of available women
and the possibility for a poor boy like him to meet a woman and start a family
was almost zero.  Lau’s weakness is that he has always had an eye for the
ladies.”

“Interesting history,”
said Yatsick.  “Lots of men have an eye for the ladies.  Get to the point,
would you?”

“Your hurry obliges you
to miss important details and explains why I am alive and successful and you’re
just a techie, son,” replied Macaulay smugly.

“Quit squabbling, all
of you.” Thomas was losing patience.  “Move on, will you?” But inside Thomas
breathed a sigh of relief.
They're all too preoccupied. No one's asking
where Macaulay got the improved suit in the first place. How's he keeping it
from my probes? No time now. I'll get to the bottom of this when Kefira's safe
and sound. Of that Mister Macaulay, you can be sure.

“Lau was smart enough
to see the corruption in the Red Army and he moved up the ranks by providing
tech support to hundreds of illicit operations for each of his commanding
officers in succession.  Chou was one of those officers, except Chou is kind of
like J. Edgar Hoover.  He kept records of everything and used his records to
corner Lau.  Sure, he rewards him, but nothing like the amount his skills
should receive.”

“You’re here.  Lau’s in
Qatar or maybe in central China.  How does that help us?”

“I have an established
link with him and I know something that’ll open him up to us.  He is just a
poor boy who wants to have a family.”

“More gibberish,” said
Yatsick.

“We have something he
wants,” said Macaulay as he glared at Yatsick spitefully.

“What’s that?”

“Sue Ann Lee.”

“He could’ve had her
when she was interviewing Chou in Qatar.  Why didn’t he take her?”

“You can take the
Chinese boy from his loving mother in a small village in central China, but you
can’t take the village and its relationships out of the boy.”

“Are you saying he’s an
incurable romantic despite the climb to world domination?”

“I’m just saying that I
know it’s important for him.  He came from a village without women.  It’s not
for nothing his drones offer women to the ‘walkers’.  There’s some serious
psychology at work there.  But that’s not all.  Sue Ann looks remarkably like
his mother when she was young."

“Where’d you come up
with this kind of intelligence, if you can call it Intel?”  Yatsick asked.

 “The Chinese love to
drink, but they can’t hold their booze.  Now, the Irish, on the other hand-”

“I can enhance Sue
Ann’s feelings for him,” said Thomas.

“I don’t like the sound
of that, Thomas,” said Ekaterina nervously.

“Yatsick’s your
watchdog.  I can’t do that to you without him knowing, right Yatsick?”

“Does look that way,
but you’re so much more capable with the suit, Thomas, I’m really not positive
about that.”

“Guess you’ll have to
take my word for it until we get Kefira back and then there’ll be two of you. 
Don’t forget I offered you a version of the suits too.”

“I guess you’re right.
It’s just hard to-”

“Move on, please, ladies. 
We have to make some decisions and I have to initiate my Quantum attack from my
phone here.  We just need to coordinate things now,” Macaulay interjected.

At that moment there
was a knock on the door.  A bedraggled, exhausted looking young man came into
the room on Yona Street.  He was accompanied by one of the young women who
worked in the hairdressing salon that fronted Ekaterina’s Mossad office in
Haifa.  They all turned to look at him.

“We never thought you’d
get here,” Thomas greeted him with a smile.

“I’ve got it. I’ve got
it,” said Jean Pierre interrupting the usual formalities of introduction.

“You’ve got what?” 
Ekaterina looked at him hard.

“BTX’s.  We can use
bent triple helixes to augment the storage on the molecular level.”

“Congratulations,
Lanky, somehow I knew that if anyone could do it, it would be you.”  Thomas
briefly embraced him.

“What’s going on here?”

“He’s found our
solution to the storage and personal safety problems surrounding my movement on
the Net and the means to a way to attack Chou’s seeding process,” Thomas
replied, an obvious pride for his friend showing in his voice.

“I need a shower,
now.”  Jean Pierre looked uncomfortable.

“How was the plane
ride?”

“If you like roller
coasters, wonderful.”

Thomas laughed.  It was
time to complete the introductions.

“Jean Pierre, this is
Ekaterina, Yochana, Yatsick and Macaulay.”

“I... I was so excited,
I forgot to-”

“Don’t worry about it,
and welcome,” said Yatsick.  “I’ll show you to your room and the shower.  Wait!
How thoughtless of me. You must be starved. What about some grub?”

“I’ll take the shower,
thanks though, and eat after.  Later, all.”  He turned to leave.

Thomas raised his arm
towards Ekaterina.  She shook her head but Thomas was insistent.  Reluctantly
she pressed her thumb print onto the reader embedded in the gadget on his
wrist.  A soft gray haze surrounded Thomas as the suit emerged and came back
under his control.

“You won’t regret it,”
he said to Ekaterina, reading her apprehension at letting him have his power
back.

“What’re we going to do
with your friend’s information?” she asked.

Thomas projected the
DNA of his suit’s diamond molecule into the air between them.  The shape moved
in an animated manner, rolling over and displaying all of its sides to the
onlookers.  Thomas then tweaked it with his mind.  Two strands of the molecule
bent as they came into contact with a third strand, then something happened. 
To everyone except Thomas the event was unexpected.  A beautiful crystalline
structure was born and as they watched it proceeded to copy itself and grow. 
The image was as captivating as it was beautiful.