Project Aura

24

The cargo bay doors of the shuttle swung open to space. Sitting in the lower level of the flight deck, facing the cargo hold, Eagle Six had his hands on the controls for the Remote Manipulator System (RMS), a fifty-foot-long articulating arm. The tip of the RMS was attached to CS-MILSTAR. Earlier, while the doors were still closed, he had gone in and removed the locking bolts on the satellite, freeing it.

Boreas checked the computer program for the tenth time in the past hour. It was all set. Millennia of battling would be over in a minute. If he had the unlock code for CS-MILSTAR. He pressed Redial on his SATPhone once more.

He cursed as the phone rang and rang without an answer.

The dishes on the Yuri Gagarin shifted in orientation, aiming toward the nearest MILSTAR satellite. In the communications center, Cesar was with Valika, the crew under strict orders to leave them alone.

“We will destroy HAARP first,” Cesar said. “Then, I think, maybe the Pentagon.”

Valika frowned. “Señor Cesar, I do not see why-”

Cesar smiled. “Valika. Call me Hector.”

“Why are you doing this, Hector?”

“Because it is-” A confused look came across Cesar’s face. “Because.” The confusion disappeared and anger replaced it. “Goddamn it, can’t anyone do what I tell them to, just because I tell them?” “I’m sorry, sir,” Valika said.

“We have the power!” Cesar said. “Don’t you see that?” “But it makes no sense for you to do this.” “You are like Naldo,” Cesar said. “A coward.” Valika stiffened. After all she had done for Cesar, he was treating her like the Soviet Union had done to its faithful soldiers, turning its back on them. She got up and left the communications center, slamming the hatch behind her, leaving Cesar staring at the program on the computer screen that Souris had set up.

In the small cabin she had been allocated, Valika looked around. Her weapons cases were laid out on the bed, along with the small bag containing her few personal items. She tried to calm down, but her chest hurt and she felt as if she might be ill.

She realized this was the sum of her life. The original of the photo that Souris had used in the simulation, of her parents, was in her bag. Valika sat down next to the case holding her sniper rifle and took the picture in her hands.

Jackson saw the field of antennas. And she could feel the psychic wall like a dog would feel an electronic fence. She hung in the virtual plane, waiting, close by. While she was there, she cast about, searching for others, but there was nothing, just the cold wind over the icy mountains.

“ Mentor ?” she relayed through Sybyl. “Are you there?”

“I’m here.”

“Have you pinpointed my help?”

“Yes,” Mentor replied. As he relayed the information she needed, Jackson was already moving.

The two B-2 bombers were “hot,” meaning they had live ordnance on board. They’d been in the air for eleven hours, having taken off from their home base at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri and flying a complex route, designed to test the crews’ abilities en route to their “target.”

Each plane was loaded with a conventional Block 30 weapons package: forty MK-82 five-hundred-pound bombs and thirty-six CBU-87 combined-effects munitions, each weighing a thousand pounds. Almost forty thousand pounds of ordnance was packed inside each aircraft, more than ten B-17 Flying Fortresses could carry. The bombs were loaded inside the fuselage on cylindrical racks, which allowed them to be dropped at a high rate of speed.

The two bombers were flying north at high altitude, having gone “feet dry” over the southern coast of Alaska. Their designated target was an Air Force bombing range in the middle of the state.

They were using GATS/GAM to conduct their mission: Global Positioning System Aided Targeting System/GPS Aided Munitions. In normal speak, that meant the two-man crews were basically surrendering control of targeting and even flight path to the computer, which had the location of the objective programmed in and which was updating the flight path every one thousandth of a second using Ground Positioning Satellites that fixed the aircraft’s position within two meters. The computer would not only get them to the target, it would release the bombs in a predetermined order to cause maximum destructive effect.

It was cutting-edge technology and something the crews of the planes didn’t particularly care for, as they were little more than observers.

Jackson found the two B-2s by following the GPS downlink. She flew above them on the virtual plane, admiring their sleek lines. While only 69 feet long, each aircraft was over twice that wide, at 172 feet. The smooth black surfaces were designed to make the aircraft virtually invisible to radar, and also served to make them almost invisible as they flew through the dark night sky.

Jackson slid into the first bomber. She found the master computer and entered it, flowing along the electronic paths inside.

Eagle Six’s hand barely twitched on the controls, but the RMS magnified the effort and the CS-MILSTAR satellite lifted off the floor of the cargo bay.

“The mainframe is still booting,” General Mitchell told McFairn. “But we have found access to an outside line. It’s an old one. Landline. As far as we can tell, it’s a regular phone line that someone forgot about.”

“Where?”

Mitchell led her out of the building they were in, into another that held stacks of crates. In the rear an old rotary dial phone hung on the wall. “One of my men checked it. It has a dial tone.”

McFairn grabbed it. There was a dial tone. She began dialing.

Dalton saw the ship below him, the large dishes facing the sky. He jumped once more, to the unoccupied flight deck at the rear of the ship behind the smokestack. He slipped from the virtual plane to the real. He assumed the form of Cesar and began moving forward along the port side.

He wished he had as clear a plan as Jackson did. He was winging it at best, but he figured thirty-five years of Special Operations experience would come up with something.

Mentor checked his watch. Five minutes until CS-MILSTAR was supposed to be on-line.

Hammond was at the computer console. “Barnes is out there, but he’s not responding to my attempts to contact him through Sybyl.” She scrolled down. “His pattern isn’t right.”

“What do you mean?” Mentor asked.

Hammond shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s just not right.”

Boreas glanced out the windows of the control center. Even on this moonless night he could make out the white peaks of the Wrangell Range. He glanced at the red digital countdown at the front of the control room as it clicked through four minutes.

His desk phone rang. He ignored it and hit Redial on the SATPhone. The desk phone continued to ring. He stalked over to the desk and grabbed the receiver.

“What?” he yelled.

“It’s McFairn. I have the code.”

Jackson left the first B-2 and went into the second. She knew what she was doing now and this time it went quicker.

Eagle Six had the arm at full extension. He locked the controls for a second and removed his hands. His palms were wet and he wiped them on his flight suit before regaining the controls.

“Status?” he called out.

“Green,” the payload master replied.

“Position?”

“Right on.”

“Attitude, velocity?”

“Within parameters.”

Eagle Six pulled a trigger and the end of the arm released the satellite. He spun ninety degrees to the right, to a communications panel, and accessed his private, secure link.

“Boreas, this is Eagle Six. Over.”

“This is Boreas. Over.”

“CS-MILSTAR is deployed. Operational in two minutes. Over.”

“Roger. Out here.”

“What the hell?” the pilot on the lead B-2 exclaimed as the plane banked to the right. He checked his navigation computer, then turned to the mission commander in the right seat. “We’re off course.”

The commander had already noted that and was furiously typing into his keyboard. “I can’t access control.”

“Shut it down then!”

“I can’t.” The commander slammed a fist down on the keyboard. “Where are we headed?”

“I have no idea.”

A red bulb lit up in front of them. The mission commander swallowed hard. “We’re weapons hot.”

Dalton cut through a cross corridor on his way toward the bridge and paused.

Jimmy.

He was perfectly still as he faded slightly from the real plane, accessing the virtual. He knew he was vulnerable, floating on the cusp between the two planes, but he felt Marie. He waited.

Two doors down. Left.

Dalton waited, knowing as he did so that he was running out of time to act, never mind come up with a plan. But there was nothing more from Marie.

He returned solidly to the real plane. He walked down the corridor and pivoted left in front of a door. He grabbed the knob and threw it open.

A woman was sitting on a bed, several plastic weapons cases next to her, a frame in her hand-the woman who had thrown the strange grenade at the villa in Saba. She jumped to her feet.

“Cesar! You’ve reconsidered?”

Dalton had to trust Marie. She wouldn’t have sent him in here without knowing more than he did. He shifted avatars, assuming his own form.

The woman was as fast as his change, her hand snaking to the shoulder holster and having a gun pointed at him before he had finished transitioning. “Who are you?”

That was an interesting question, Dalton realized, one he wasn’t sure how to answer.

“You’re American?” the woman asked.

Dalton nodded.

“A Psychic Warrior?”

“Yes. Sergeant Major Dalton.”

“I’m Valika.” The gun was still pointed at him. “Why are you here?”

“To stop the transmission.”

“It is bad, isn’t it?” Valika asked, the muzzle of the weapon lowering slightly.

“Yes.”

“Cesar is not himself.”

“He’s being manipulated.”

“By who?”

“A group. They-” Dalton searched for words. “Live on the other side. In the virtual plane.”

Valika nodded. “ Souris has also been corrupted by them. And they have changed her. I knew it. I knew something was wrong all along.”

“They mean to kill everyone on the planet.”

Valika shook her head, but not very convincingly.

“Cesar says the satellites will target specific places on the planet.”

“The MIL STAR satellites blanket the world,” Dalton said. “And he’s not in control like he thinks. Is Souris here?”

“No.”

“Why do you think she’s not here?” Dalton didn’t wait for an answer. “She’s going to a shielded location. Everyone on this ship will be killed when you transmit.”

“The bitch,” Valika muttered. “I never trusted her.”

“There isn’t much time,” Dalton said.

“What can we do?”

He noted a long case on her bed and he had the spark of an idea. “What’s that?”

“Barrett fifty caliber.”

Dalton smiled and he knew Marie had pointed him in the right direction. “Strategic target interdiction.”

“What?”

“Something I trained on in Special Forces.” Dalton was opening the case. “Grab a couple of extra magazines.”

Boreas’s eyes were locked on the red numbers counting down.

:58:57:56

Cesar was also watching the same numbers on the screen of the computer that Souris had programmed. He briefly wondered where she was. She had not called in for a while. It did not matter. His gaze went back to the screen and the distant stare returned.

Jackson released out of the trail B-2’s computer into the virtual plane, flying along with the two bombers. She watched as they both smoothly completed the turn, led by their guidance and targeting systems, and their bomb bay doors opened.

The first cylinder of the lead plane dropped down into the opening and cycled through, spitting out bombs.

Boreas leaned forward to hit the red transmit button just as the first MK-82 landed on the leading edge of the field of antennas. The second impacted a half a second later.

Mixed among the five-hundred-pound high-explosive bombs were the cluster bombs. Two hundred meters above the ground, the casing of each thousand-pound cylinder split open, dispensing 202 bomblets. The “footprint,” as the Air Force called it, for each CBU was two hundred meters by four hundred meters. As the heavier MK-82s dug out ten-foot-deep craters, the CBUs cut huge swaths through the antenna field, slicing metal like cheese.

Boreas was stunned as the thud of the first explosions reverberated through the control center. He ran to the window and looked out, seeing flash after flash in the darkness as bombs exploded.

Jackson was satisfied the HAARP field had been wiped off the face of the Earth by the first B-2. She was right behind the second one as its first cylinder unloaded.

She’d manipulated the GATS/GAM on that one to target the HAARP control facility. She knew forty thousand pounds of ordnance was overkill for one two-story building, but the bombs were available.

Boreas never saw the B-2, five thousand feet above in the night sky. He also didn’t see the first MK-82 as it hit the roof and tore through to the first floor.

He did have a brief glimpse of the fireball that consumed him before he died.

The screen cleared and a smiley face appeared. Cesar frowned. What was going on?

“Cesar.”

He recognized the voice. Souris.

“It is too late for anyone to stop this. We will rule the world.”

“Who? Who are you talking about?” Cesar jumped to his feet and slammed the monitor to the ground, glass shattering. The smiley face was still on other screens, grinning at him.

The face disappeared, replaced by a single blinking word.

TRANSMITTING

Dalton settled down with the butt of the Barrett tight into his shoulder. Valika was kneeling next to him, a set of binoculars oriented on the closest satellite dish. They were on the walkway that ran around the rear smokestack of the Yuri Gagarin, over a hundred feet above the main deck and on level with the top of all the dishes.

He pulled the trigger and the rifle rocked back against his shoulder. The half-inch-diameter bullet hit the exact center of the dish, blowing the core into a thousand parts.

“Adjust, up one twenty meters,” Valika said.

Dalton reacted, shifting the gun.

“Fire,” Valika ordered.

He pulled the trigger and the second large dish was out of commission.

“Adjust, plus one ten up ten.”

He had the rhythm, the feel of the Barrett, a weapon he had fired in training, and it took less than a second to find the new target. The third bullet took out the next transmitter. This was a mission he had been trained for at Fort Bragg, using the Barrett to hit critical components of various systems to disable them.

Red lights were flashing in the bridge of the Gagarin.

“What is it?” Lonsky demanded.

Zenata was staring at her displays. “The two main and first alternate dish are down. Transmission is rerouting to the final dish.”

“What the hell is going on? Who’s doing this?”

Dalton pulled the trigger.

“Miss,” Valika told him.

Dalton felt the snap of bullets whizzing by before the sound reached him. “What is it?” he asked as he resighted on the last remaining dish.

When there was no reply, he pulled his eye back from the scope and glanced to his left. Valika was against the smokestack, a large splotch of red on the upper left quadrant of her chest, a thin trickle of blood flowing from her mouth. Her lips twisted slightly in what might have been a grin, then her eyes glazed over and the body slumped back.

“Damn.” Dalton spared a look down and he could see Cesar running forward, a submachine gun tight against his shoulder. A string of bullets tore into the walkway just to the right of Dalton. He ignored them, knowing he had run out of time, and aimed at the center of the fourth dish.

“Reroute complete,” Zenata announced. Lonsky was on the left wing of the bridge, looking back, trying to find the source of the firing.

“Transmit in two seconds,” she yelled to him.

Dalton pulled the trigger and the bullet hit the center of the dish, silencing it. Even while the bullet was in flight he was fading, disappearing from the real plane into the virtual as Cesar fired another burst that tore through where he had been. The Barrett fell to the deck with a loud clang.

Dalton jumped and was on the deck just behind Cesar. He re-formed in the real plane, his left arm shifting into a firing tube. He didn’t hesitate or feel any compunction about shooting the other man in the back. He fired and the ball of energy hit Cesar in the middle of his back, blasting him forward.

Cesar was dead before he hit the deck plate.

Dalton shifted back into the virtual and jumped, heading back toward the Ranch.