The Omega Theory (33 page)

David roared again and jackknifed his body, hoping to fling himself at the bastard, but all he managed to do was make Hatchet Face stumble. Nicodemus laughed. “All right, enough gossip. You have an appointment with Brother Cyrus. Come this way.”

He marched toward the slope and the soldiers followed, swinging David like a side of beef. At the base of the mountain was a jagged hole, about six feet high and four feet wide. It was the mouth of a cave, utterly dark. Nicodemus removed a flashlight from his belt and stepped inside, lowering his head with practiced familiarity, as if he’d done this many times before. Hatchet Face backed into the cave, tightening his grip on David’s ankles, and the two soldiers holding his arms moved closer together and shuffled into the darkness.

David was reminded of the smugglers’ tunnel under Jerusalem’s Old City. The cave was long and narrow and musty, its limestone walls slick with bat droppings. The floor was level for the first hundred feet or so, then began to descend. Nicodemus slowed his pace and turned around, pointing his flashlight at the stony ground to help the soldiers find their footing.

“A nice place, don’t you think?” he said, looking at David. “This mountain is like Swiss cheese, full of holes. And all the passages come together at the bottom. We call this tunnel ‘the back door’ because it’s much narrower than the main entrance. Wait a moment and you’ll see.”

The soldiers slipped and slid down the sloping tunnel, almost dropping David a couple of times. He’d stopped struggling by this point and just stared at the cave’s walls, which flickered with the shadows cast by the flashlight. He could sense the mountain above him, the billions of tons of rock and dirt, and the air seemed to get warmer and damper as they descended. It was suffocating, the closeness and the darkness, and he started hyperventilating through his gag. This was a one-way trip, he thought. The soldiers were taking him to his grave.

Then the tunnel leveled out and they stepped into a subterranean chamber. A smooth shelf of limestone ran alongside an oval pool of greenish water, about fifty feet across. The rocky ceiling of the chamber arched overhead, studded with stalactites. Water dripped from the ceiling into the pool, making circles on its surface. The air was very warm and smelled like rotten eggs. David knew right away it was a geothermal spring. The Kopet Dag was a tectonically active area—below the mountain were molten rocks that heated the water in the underground chambers. The rotten-egg smell was hydrogen sulfide, which was produced when the hot water dissolved sulfur-bearing minerals.

Nicodemus and his soldiers walked along the limestone shelf to the other side of the chamber. As they carried David down the path, he noticed a shaft of light coming through a hole in the chamber’s far wall. His heart leaped for a moment because he thought it was sunlight, but then he realized that the color was wrong. It was bluish, artificial light coming from an adjacent chamber on the other side of the wall. The passageway between the chambers was less than three feet wide, just big enough to crawl through, and as they got closer David saw a large man standing in front of it. He was a soldier, too, with a rifle slung over his shoulder, and he saluted Nicodemus as they came near. But this soldier’s uniform was different from the ragged brown fatigues of the True Believers. It had a pale green camouflage pattern and looked crisp and new.

Nicodemus returned the man’s salute. “We found him, Sergeant. So now you owe us an apology. Didn’t I tell you that my men would track him down?”

The sergeant stared at David. “This is the guy?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“I know, he doesn’t look like much. But he’s clever.”

Shaking his head, the sergeant bent over to get a closer look. He had a blond buzz cut and bad razor burn on his cheeks. The sleeves of his combat uniform were rolled up to his elbows, revealing muscular forearms covered with tattoos. In the strong light coming through the passageway, David could read what was written on the front of his uniform. On the right side of his chest was the name
MORRISON
; on the left,
U.S. ARMY
. On his left shoulder was a patch with the name of his regiment:
75-RANGER-RGT.

David started screaming again behind his gag. This man wasn’t some ragtag True Believer—he was a U.S. Army Ranger, a Special Operations soldier! David yelled, “Help me!” but of course the gag made his words unintelligible. Sergeant Morrison glared at him, then stood up straight and turned back to Nicodemus. “How the hell did this guy get the jump on Colonel Ramsey? He’s a goddamn runt.”

“We think he’s a spy, but we’re not sure who he works for. He may have ambushed Ramsey after the colonel walked out of the cavern. Our interrogators will find out exactly what happened. That’s why we brought him here. So please, let us through.”

The sergeant moved aside. Nicodemus crawled through the passageway first, then Hatchet Face. The two soldiers behind David lowered him to the ground and stuck his bound legs into the hole, but just as Hatchet Face grabbed his ankles and started to pull, Sergeant Morrison stepped forward.

“This is for Ramsey, you scumbag!” Then the sergeant delivered a swift kick to David’s ribs.

The pain shot through his chest. Closing his eyes, he went into a fetal curl. Hatchet Face pulled him through the passageway and David took an aching gulp of air. Then he opened his eyes and the pain turned to shock as he stared at the chamber he’d just entered. It was as big as an arena, as big as Madison Square Garden. The ceiling was at least a hundred feet high, lit by powerful floodlights on tall steel poles. To his left was another pool of greenish water, but this one was a genuine underground lake, stretching to recesses at the back of the cave that were so far away even the floodlights couldn’t reach them. Straight ahead was a rock shelf where two tents had been erected, a large one that was at least forty feet long and a smaller one behind it. And to his right was a natural staircase of limestone slabs, climbing about fifty feet to an immense upper chamber. David saw dozens of tents up there, and that was only in the area closest to the staircase. The cavern extended way beyond and seemed to hold an entire military camp. He could hear the voices of hundreds of soldiers echoing against the rocky walls. Jesus, he thought, what the hell is going on?

He was still gasping when the True Believers picked him up from the ground. They carried him toward the large tent just ahead, where two more Army Rangers guarded the entrance. The guards saluted Nicodemus as if he were an old friend, as if it were perfectly normal for a band of religious fanatics to come waltzing into a hidden U.S. Army camp. The True Believers brought David inside the tent and deposited him, faceup, on a plain wooden bench, the kind you’d see in an army mess hall. Nicodemus came forward with another length of rope and tied David to the bench. He wrapped the cord around David’s knees, waist, and chest, binding his whole body to the long wooden plank.

“You must be confused, eh?” Nicodemus said as he worked. “Well, I have just enough time to give you an explanation. You’re in Camp Cobra, which is a cavern occupied by nine hundred and sixty American soldiers. Most of them are Army Rangers preparing for a surprise attack on Iran. And their commander is General McNair, who happens to be a friend of Brother Cyrus.” He tightened the rope, making David wince. “McNair invited Cyrus and the True Believers to Camp Cobra, but there was a problem. The general had to explain to his Rangers why all these unfamiliar men were coming to their cave. So he invented a little story. He said he’d ordered an undercover Special Forces team to find Colonel Ramsey, a very unlucky Ranger who wandered out of the cavern and went missing a few days ago.” He gave the rope a final tug and tied the knot. “Then the story took a tragic turn. The Special Forces team discovered that Ramsey was dead. But they found his killer at least. And that’s you!”

Nicodemus pointed at him and grinned. “It’s a good story, eh? But now we’re close to the ending. Good-bye, Professor Swift.” His grin vanished as he spoke David’s name. Then he and his men left the tent, exiting the same way they’d come in.

The ropes were so tight, David could hardly breathe. He turned his head and surveyed the tent, which was shadowy and silent. Peering into the darkness, he saw electronic equipment—computers, radios, map displays—resting on tables that ran along the canvas walls. It looked like a command-and-control center, the kind of place where army generals could monitor the battlefield and issue orders to their troops. But besides David, there was only one person in the tent, a man dressed in black pants, a black jacket, and black gloves. He stood about twenty feet away, in the center of the tent, with his back turned. One of his gloved hands touched a steel pipe that stood on its end, anchored in the ground. About ten feet high and six inches in diameter, the pipe loomed over the man’s head, which was wrapped in a black scarf.

“Hello, David,” the man said without turning around. “I’m Brother Cyrus.” He tapped the pipe. “And this is Little Boy.”

THE PAIR OF HELICOPTERS LANDED IN THE DESERT, TOUCHING DOWN
between the dunes. Michael was more than a hundred feet away, but the rotors kicked up the sand so violently that it stung his skin and pelted the stranded motorcycle. Blown free of the dunes, the sand grains whirled in a huge dust devil that obscured the helicopters, blurring them into vague black shapes. They didn’t look like birds anymore, Michael thought. They looked like giant tadpoles with propeller beanies on their heads.

He laughed. It was a funny sight. He had no idea why the helicopters had landed here, or who was inside them. They might be carrying Brother Cyrus’s soldiers, he thought, and the soldiers might try to shoot him again. But he wasn’t afraid anymore. Dying from a gunshot was better than dying of thirst. The soldiers would be doing him a favor.

He stood up and squinted, trying to see through the whirling cloud of sand. A man jumped out of one of the helicopters and started jogging toward him. He was a big man, that was all Michael could tell at first. And he was holding a rifle. A second soldier jumped out of the helicopter, and this one was shorter and slimmer than the first. They ran through the sand cloud and when they emerged Michael noticed two things. The first soldier had a black eye patch. And the second soldier was a woman. It was Monique Reynolds.

“Michael!” she shouted, throwing her arms around him.

32

ARYEH GOLDBERG’S CONTACT IN THE PENTAGON WASN’T JEWISH. HE WAS AN
Irish Catholic named Joe Dowling who worked as a telecommunications specialist in the Defense Information Systems Agency. Dowling had no particular affinity for Israel, and no ideological desire to help the country. He’d become a source for Israel’s intelligence agencies simply because he felt that the U.S. Defense Department wasn’t paying him well enough. So he supplemented his income by selling tidbits he gleaned from the Pentagon’s communication networks, usually news of American troop deployments in the Middle East. Aryeh didn’t like the man personally, but his information was always reliable.

“I have a job for you,” Aryeh told him over the phone. He used a customized satellite phone issued by Shin Bet. It had enough encryption to frustrate any eavesdropper who wasn’t in possession of a quantum computer. “And I need it done quickly.”

“No problem,” Dowling replied. “But I charge an extra fee for fast service. You know that, right?”

“Yes, I’m familiar with your fee schedule. You’ll find the work order at the usual place.” Aryeh had already sent the order to a Mossad colleague in Washington, who’d hidden the packet at the dead drop where Dowling picked up his clandestine assignments. The packet contained information on the DRSN call from Turkmenistan to California, including the estimated time of the call and the approximate locations of the sender and receiver. Once Dowling had this information, he’d be able to find the call in the system’s records and identify the personal codes that had been used to access the network. “It’s a simple job, really. We’re just looking for a name. The name of the person who placed the call.”

“Hey, I’m good with names. So when do I get paid?”

Aryeh thought about it for a moment. He hadn’t cleared this assignment with anyone in Shin Bet. He couldn’t share his suspicions with his superiors because one of them might be a spy for the
Qliphoth
. But Aryeh felt certain that once the mess was cleaned up and the traitors were exposed, Shin Bet would retroactively approve the expense.

“The cash will be there tomorrow, at the usual place. But only if you’re quick.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll call back in an hour.”

DAVID RECOGNIZED IT, OF COURSE. EVERY HISTORIAN OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY
physics knew about Little Boy, the fifteen-kiloton bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. It was the simplest possible design for a nuclear weapon: just shoot a chunk of uranium down a ten-foot-long gun tube and smash it into a second chunk at the bottom. It was cruder and less efficient than the bombs that were built afterward, but it was such a surefire device that the researchers in the Manhattan Project had never even bothered to test it. They knew without a doubt that Little Boy would work.

As soon as David saw what it was, he started screaming through his gag. He strained against the ropes that tied him to the bench and yelled, “BOMB! BOMB! BOMB!” just as Lucille had done when she’d spotted the C-4 in the Turkmen depot. He screamed until he felt his vocal cords tearing, and then he screamed some more, hoping that maybe one of the hundreds of Rangers in the underground camp would become curious or concerned. But the gag muffled his voice and garbled his words, and no one rushed into the tent.

Brother Cyrus turned away from the gun tube and walked slowly toward him. David noticed that Cyrus’s head scarf covered his whole face. Only his eyes were visible through a narrow slit in the black fabric. He came to the bench and looked down at David. “It’s all right,” he said, his voice muffled by the scarf. “You can scream if you like. It doesn’t bother me. And it won’t disturb anyone else in the camp either. The Rangers believe you killed their Colonel Ramsey, and he was a well-liked man. They also believe that I’m here to interrogate you, so they’re expecting you to scream.”