Project Aura (24 page)

*****

Raisor had wanted to go back to his body before they left Bright Gate, but Valika denied him that option. She had seen the two Blackhawks leaving as they arrived and was sure some sort of alert had already been broadcast and reinforcements were most likely on their way. She had her mercenaries racing about, unhooking Sybyl and moving the two designated isolation tubes to the landing grate.

"What about the others?" she asked Raisor, indicating the tubes containing the rest of the other three teams.

"According to the computer, the only one who is still technically alive is him." Raisor pointed at Kirtley's tube.

"Do we need him?" Valika asked.

"No. And he’ll be lost as soon as you finish unhooking the computer."

She tucked the stock of the MP-5 in her shoulder and aimed at the tube. She fired a sustained burst, shattering the tube and freeing the freezing liquid. An alarm went off and a yellow warning light began flashing. One of the ancillary computer monitors flickered and came on. A man's face appeared.

"Dr. Hammond." Kirtley's voice came out of the computer's speakers, his face appearing on the display.

Raisor and Valika went to the screen.

"If you are seeing this," the man on the screen continued, "something has gone wrong and I am dead. I warned you not to do anything to me. You should have taken me more seriously."

Valika looked from the screen to the body half- hanging out of the tube she had just shot "It's him," she said, pointing. She had a very bad feeling about this, which was immediately confirmed as the man on the screen continued talking.

"If this program is activated, it means that life signs from my isolation tube have flat-lined. That you've killed me. So in keeping with my warning, I will now kill you and everyone else in the facility." The face on the screen smiled and his right hand appeared, holding a watch. "Sixty seconds. How does it feel to know you only have a minute of life left?"

Valika didn't wait to see any more. "Bomb! Evacuate!" she screamed at the mercenaries as she raced toward the exit. They dropped what they were doing and followed her.

Raisor didn't run. The tube containing his body was on a cart near the door to the corridor--abandoned. Along with the Aura generator that was giving him what little power he had. He looked at the screen.

"Fifty seconds," Kirtley said. "I have to assume, though, that is more time than you gave me when you did whatever it is you did to me."

Raisor reached out and flowed into the computer. Perhaps whatever Kirtley had planned was being run by the computer and he could stop it. He sped along electronic pathways, searching.

"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 suddenly realized. 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 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, 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 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.

Searchlights highlighted the shuttle 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 ET and 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 MILSTAR 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 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, a man holding the strobe in the center. 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 side, a pair of large doors were swung wide open, leading into the mountain.

"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. "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 haggard 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 information gathered on 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."

"Eichen had Space Command place that code in the Defcon Four package," McFairn explained. "That means the only way it can be accessed is if the President alerts the military to Defcon Four, which is our highest alert standing. That has only happened twice before in the entire history of our country."

"I'm not asking you to get the President to go to Defcon Four," Boreas said. "I just want the code. You're in charge of the most powerful intelligence-gathering machine in the world. Surely you can retrieve a code tucked away in a computer somewhere."

"You don't understand," McFairn said. "Space Command's computers are the most secure in the world, because they control both the communications nodes and authorizations for the use of nuclear weapons. It's an entirely separate system that the NSA helped establish."

"Then you can get into it."

"No, I can't. When we set it up, we made it tamper-proof, even from us. After all," she added, "we never saw that there would be a need for the NSA to break into Space Command's computer."

"I'm very disappointed in your attitude," Boreas said. "I recommend you spend this evening thinking of a way to get the code. You don't have much time. I don't think I need to tell you that the results will be most dire if you don't comply."

*****

Dalton had never been so grateful to see the stars. Hammond and he were on a small ledge, about two thirds of the way up the side of the Mount of the Holy Cross. He was missing his eyebrows, which had been singed off by the explosion, but was otherwise unhurt. He pulled the SATPhone out and flipped it open, punching in one.

After the third buzz, it was answered.

"Yes?"

"Mentor?"

"Of course. Where are you? I have some people here who are most concerned about your welfare."

"Aren't you?"

"Of course."

"Right. I can feel it."

"There's no time for this. Where are you?"

Dalton gave Mentor his location.

"We’ll be wheels up in five minutes," Mentor said, closing out the conversation.

Hammond, meanwhile, was sitting with her back to the mountain. Her eyes had the thousand-yard stare Dalton had seen before, a precursor to going into shock. The diesel fumes combined with the surprise of the sudden assault and the subsequent explosion had taken its toll. He knelt down next to her and took her hands. They were ice-cold.

"You've got to hang in there," Dalton said. "The helicopter will be on its way soon."

"They just killed my people," Hammond said. "Gunned them down like animals. Then they destroyed it."

"I know," Dalton said.

"Why?"

"I’m not sure. But we’ll find out."

Captain Lonsky turned on the light above his bunk and squinted, trying to make sense of the message Zenata had just woken him to read. He could feel the vibration of the
Gagarin's
engines through the floor plates.

"Your glasses," Zenata reminded him

He groped on the small shelf next to his bunk and retrieved his reading glasses, slipping them on.

"Besides that, I have received a set of instructions," Zenata said.

"Reference?"

"Changing the antenna dish arrays. Modifying them. I've already got my people working on it."

"What kind of modifications?"

"Rather interesting," Zenata said. "Adapting the two main dishes to transmit on different bandwidths at very high power."

"Why would someone want to do that?" Lonsky yawned. He scanned the information on the sheet. "There is no one listening on those bandwidths."

"I know. It's most strange."

Lonsky turned the light off. "I am going to get some sleep. Wake me when our owner contacts us again."

*****

"Who were they?" Dalton demanded of Mentor as soon as he put the headset on, cutting down the noise of the helicopter. "The Priory? It doesn't make sense that they would attack Bright Gate. And why destroy it?"

Mentor reached up and adjusted the controls for the intercom, insuring that only Dalton could hear him. "The Priory has an enemy."

"Besides Nexus?"

"Yes."

Hammond was collapsed next to Dalton, no headset, her eyes closed. The Blackhawk was racing away from the ridge where it had picked the two of them up. Dalton waited, then finally tapped Mentor on the arm. "Some more information would be helpful."

Mentor leaned back against the web seating. " If the Priory operates in the shadows, then this group operates in the pitch black."

"The Droza," Dalton said.

That caught Mentor's attention. "Where did you hear of them?"

"Never mind where I heard of them. Are they the Priory's enemy?"

"Not exactly. The Droza are where the Priory came from. And this enemy."

"And Gypsies? The Roma?" Dalton added.

"Yes."

"Who is the enemy?"

"Because we've never met one, or even talked to anyone who has met one of this group, we had to take the Priory's name for their enemy: Mithrans."

"’Mithrans’," Dalton repeated.

"Most people associate the name Mithras with the pagan Roman sun god, but it actually predates Rome. The Romans picked up Mithraism in the second century A.D. via their army's conquests of areas where it still thrived. Mithras was originally an Indo-European god way back around the fifteenth century B.C.. And we've learned that Mithra actually even goes back before then. Have you ever heard of Kali?"

The words stirred some vague memories in Dalton. "A statue with a lot of arms? India?"

"Kali is most commonly known as the primordial Mother Goddess of Hinduism. But the same name, or derivation of it, goes far beyond India. In prehistoric Ireland, people worshipped a goddess known as Kelle. Ancient Finland had an all-powerful goddess named Kal-ma. In Greece there was Kalli. In the Sinai there was a goddess named Kalu. I think the similar names in very dissimilar languages makes it more than just a coincidence"

Dalton was trying to follow. "So the Priory's enemy is a goddess?"

"The Mithrans are undoubtedly matriarchal," Mentor said. "While the Priory is patriarchal."

"Lieutenant Jackson thinks these Mithrans exist on the virtual plane," Dalton said. He could see the glow of Colorado Springs behind Cheyenne Mountain, a large dark bulk directly ahead of them. Pikes Peak was off to the left

"That may well be," Mentor said. "It would explain why we've never met one."

"Maybe you have met one and you just don't know it" Dalton said.

"That’s also possible," Mentor allowed.

"This Ring is just a front for the Mithrans then, correct?"

"Yes. But we don't think the members of the Ring know that they are being used."

"How can that be?"

"We don't even know exactly what a Mithran is," Mentor said, "so I can't tell you how they operate. But while the Priory pulls strings through their various agents, I think the Mithrans are less direct in getting others to work for them. I think they subtly affect people's minds and make their victims think the goals they are after are their own, when in reality, they are the Mithrans' goals."

“So we have no clue even what a Mithran is.” Dalton considered that as they flew over the mountains: two ancient enemies going at each in a very modern way. And he and his people were caught in the middle.

"What is this place?" Dalton asked as the Blackhawk descended down the western side of mountain.

"Remember Eichen told you about what happened to JFK?"

What Dalton remembered was that Eichen had hinted but not explicitly said the Priory was behind the assassination, but he nodded.

Mentor continued. "President Johnson, upon being briefed about Nexus and the assassination of his predecessor being most likely caused by the Priory, decided he needed a secure location for Nexus to headquarter itself and for him to retreat to if the proverbial manure hit the fen. He had to assume, as our Nexus advisers did, that Blue Mountain in West Virginia, the alternate White House, was compromised by the Priory. There is a Nexus command and control center hidden under the Pentagon, but it was felt that was also probably known to the Priory.” Mentor gave a bitter grimace. "Which was proven not long ago. The only way to insure he had a place not known to the Priory was to build something new under the supervision of Nexus.

"He authorized the extra millions to build an adjunct, highly classified, smaller facility next to the NORAD base. It was the logical place for such a facility, as we could easily tap into one of the underground, secure communications tunnels that connected the larger base with the outside world, and thus be able to communicate and be hooked into NORAD."

The chopper was just about to touch down on the small landing pad. Dalton could see Jackson waiting for them, hand raised to protect her eyes against the down wash.

"The Ranch, which is what Johnson christened it, is over two miles away from the main NORAD and Space Command complex. Besides communications, we tap into them for power, water, and sewage. There's enough food stocked in the Ranch to keep a group of a dozen going for a year. It's been here since NORAD was established, and no one has ever noticed the power or water drain because it's never changed since the first day NORAD began."

The wheels touched down.

"Have you told Barnes and Jackson about Nexus yet?" Dalton asked.

"No. They've been busy setting up the isolation tubes."

As Mentor reached for the handle to slide the door open, Dalton halted him "Are you going to tell them?"

"That's not my decision." Mentor opened the door and Dalton and Hammond followed him out. As soon as they were clear, the Blackhawk lifted. Within a minute, silence reigned.

Jackson greeted Dalton with a smile. "Good to see you again."

Dalton nodded. "I think we've broken you for the military." He took Hammond's arm and helped her into the front passenger seat before hopping in the back with Mentor. Jackson drove them through the tunnel doors, which swung shut behind them Red lights came on overhead.

"The Ranch is a quarter mile ahead," Mentor said. "In the old days, that was thought deep enough to survive a direct nuke hit on the mountain. Nowadays, we know precision strategic nuclear weapons could take out Space Command and in the process probably destroy the Ranch also."

"Do you live here?" Dalton asked as they came to a second set of large steel doors.

"The Ranch was initially left unoccupied since 1966. It was thought that was the best way to keep it safe."

"Why open it now?" Dalton asked. "Because we needed to relocate Bright Gate?"

"I was here when you called," Mentor said. "As soon as I realized we’d been compromised in Washington, I moved here and opened the facility up."

They were in a cavern about two hundred meters in circumference with a ceiling forty feet high. Four steel buildings were directly in front of them The walls of the cavern were lined with thousands of crates, which held supplies.

Mentor pointed at the buildings one by one. "Billets and galley. Communications and science center. President's quarters, which we've stripped out and placed the isolation tubes in. War room with direct links to the operations center in Space Command. Everything they see on their displays we can see in there."

Dalton helped Hammond out of the cart. "Why were you here when I called?" he asked Mentor.

"Because I'm all that's left of Nexus in the United States. Everyone else is dead."

"Who's doing the killing?" Dalton asked.

"The Priory."

"What about the Ring?" Dalton asked. “I mean, the Mithrans?”

"I'm not sure what they're up to."

Dalton was trying to follow. "How did the Mithrans destroy the last Psychic Warrior team that went to Colombia?"

"The woman who basically started Bright Gate and HAARP now works for the Ring. The Mithrans have suborned her. They've developed a virtual plane projector called Aura. We're not sure where it's located."

"So both sides are working on the same type of weapon?"

"We're not sure the Mithrans are designing Aura specifically to be a weapon," Mentor said. "They might be developing it to do the opposite of Bright Gate. If they exist only on the virtual plane, they might be developing Aura so that they can come into the real plane. Using it as a weapon is just a by-product."

Dalton considered that. "So both sides are doing the same thing so they can go to the other side's plane and fight them? The Priory wants to attack on the virtual plane, while the Mithrans want to come into the real?"

Mentor nodded. "As near as I can tell, that's what’s happening. Both sides have been waiting thousands of years for mankind to develop the technology. If the Priory can uplink to MILSTAR and transmit on the virtual plane, they can target the Mithrans wherever they are. And they can target the entire human race. If the Mithrans can use Aura to come out of the virtual and have real form, they can directly attack the Priory. And, in turn, the entire human race. So the war might be between the two groups, but the collateral damage could well be the destruction of life as we know it."