Callsign: King

EPILOGUE

Afar District, Ethiopia-One week later

The Old Mother made one more journey to the elephant graveyard.

Felice had spent the week resting and recuperating from injuries she hadn’t even realized she’d suffered. Her deepest wounds of course were not physical in nature, and some of them were only now manifesting themselves in the form of chronic insomnia and panic attacks. She had been referred to a specialist in treating post traumatic stress disorder, but deep down she felt there was more to it than that. She knew that she carried within her the ability to undo hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution-to utterly destroy human civilization.

That was a lot for one person to carry.

Good thing that I’m not just one person, she thought. There’s two of us in here.

But how much longer would that last? The Old Mother’s memories were a source of comfort and strength to her, but sometimes she felt that her connection to the past was slipping. She thought about Sara’s theory of quantum entanglement; it was as good an explanation as any other she’d entertained. Was it possible to become disentangled?

She hoped so.

“We’re just about ready,” Jack Sigler announced.

Distracted from her thoughts, she glanced over to where Sigler and Sara were gazing out across the floor of the Rift Valley, to the cave entrance leading into the elephant graveyard, and then went over to join them. Sigler was hunched over a small laptop computer, holding a small joystick controller. The computer display showed the interior of the cave, and when he adjusted the stick, the image on the screen moved.

But nothing else moved in the elephant graveyard. There was no sign of her former co-workers; the men and women who had been transformed into mindless drones were nowhere to be found. Even though she knew in her heart that she was in no way responsible for what had happened to the Nexus team, Felice felt a pang of guilt whenever she thought about them. She hoped that they had at last found peace.

“Coming out now,” Sigler announced.

Felice looked to the cave exit, about a hundred yards away, and saw what looked like a miniature bulldozer come rolling out of the opening.

Sigler called it “the Wolverine.” The remote controlled military utility robot moved around on tracked wheels, like a battle tank or bulldozer, and was equipped with several surveillance cameras and a powerful manipulator arm that could lift almost two hundred pounds. The Wolverine was primarily used by the military for explosive ordinance removal, but Sigler had used it for almost exactly the opposite purpose.

“Do we really have to do this?” she asked, not for the first time.

Sara nodded grimly. “We can’t be sure that the cave doesn’t contain some form of the virus that Manifold and Brainstorm were looking for, and we can’t take the chance that it might be inadvertently released.”

“I know you’re right, but I can’t help but think about Moses, and his dream to use the ivory in the cave to make Africa a better place.”

“It was a noble idea,” Sigler said. “But if history has taught us anything, it’s that the discovery of some new source of wealth almost never makes things better. Look how quickly his dream was perverted by those rebel fighters.”

“And of course, every single one of those elephant carcasses is a potential source of the contagion,” Sara added. “To say nothing of the possibility of further quantum contamination.”

Felice sighed. “I know that you’re both right. But what’s the answer? If we can’t use something like this to make the world a better place, what’s left?”

“You focus on what you’ve already got,” Sigler answered. “Use your skills, your strengths, your passions…that’s all any of us can do.”

Felice considered this. With everything that had happened, she had lost sight of the simple fact that she was a scientist. Her interest in genetics had grown from a childhood dream of discovering a cure for cancer. Maybe it was time to return to that dream.

Sigler steered the Wolverine across the open expanse and drove it up the ramp of the waiting CH-47 Chinook helicopter that had brought them here. He closed the laptop and tucked in under one arm. “Time to go.”

# # #

The twin-rotors lifted the massive Chinook into the sky above the Great Rift Valley and the site of the elephant graveyard. The helicopter circled the area, gaining vertical distance with each pass, until the pilot called back to let King know that they had reached the desired altitude.

King flipped off the red safety cap on the remote triggering device, and then took Felice’s hand and placed her finger on the switch. “Would you like to do the honors?”

He could see the hesitation in her eyes. Even though the cave had been the source of unimaginable horrors for her, the uncertainty of what might happen next probably seemed even more terrifying. But King knew well that the first step toward healing was to get some closure.

He nodded to her. “Whenever you’re ready.”

She smiled weakly, and then pressed the switch.

The device sent out a radio signal that was picked up instantly by a receiver unit on the ground. The receiver in turn sent a small electrical charge surging through several hundred feet of copper wire that disappeared into the cave opening. That charge detonated a small conventional explosive, which scattered a cloud of powdered aluminum high above the maze of elephant skeletons.

A fraction of a second later, the fuel-saturated air ignited.

The thermobaric bomb transformed the elephant graveyard into a miniature sun. The bones and ivory teeth of ancient elephants, crushed to dust by the initial blast front, were subsequently incinerated in a firestorm that exceeded 5,000° Fahrenheit. The force of the explosion hammered into the domed ceiling, opening enormous cracks in the stone. An instant later, the vacuum created by rapid cooling of the scorched air, caused the entire cavern to implode.

From high above, King watched a cloud of dust rising, the result of the shockwave traveling through hundreds of feet of rock. When it cleared, a new crater was visible on the landscape of the Great Rift Valley.

The elephant graveyard had ceased to exist.

›››Your services are required, General.

I didn’t think I’d hear from you again.

›››The Brainstorm network remains operational.

Sure. I just thought you would be keeping a low profile. At least until some of the heat dies down.

›››Recent events have not compromised operational efficiency.

Maybe not for you. But I need to be very discreet. Everyone is under suspicion now.

›››There is no cause for concern. Key network personnel have been positioned to minimize the consequences of this investigation. However, no external action is demanded of you, General.

What then?

›››Information about the man who caused the recent disruption. I want to know everything about Jack Sigler.

Sigler? I didn’t realize he was behind all this. It makes sense now.

›››You are familiar with him?

I am. Look, it’s not safe for me to do this right now, but I’ll put some information together. Contact me in a week to set up a dead drop.

›››There is a 93.9% probability that Sigler will pursue further action against Brainstorm. The need for this information is urgent.

I’ll get it to you.

Graham Brown read the text message reply. He deleted it without responding and put his smartphone away.

A week after the destruction of the facility site in Algeria…a week after Jack Sigler had showed up to ruin the most audacious enterprise he had ever conceived…he found that he still could not keep the anger and desperation from creeping into his Brainstorm communiques. He had spent decades cultivating the myth that Brainstorm was something larger-than-life; a sentient, even omniscient computer, and not just an ordinary- well, maybe extraordinary -gambler from Atlantic City with an uncanny ability to accurately assess the probabilities of almost any event.

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” he muttered.

Like the Wizard of Oz, his real power wasn’t his genius, but the illusion that he was something more than human. Maintaining that illusion required him to behave like a computer, to be logical and emotionless when interacting with the men and women whose service and loyalty he had surreptitiously purchased over the course of thirty years.

That kind of clinical detachment hadn’t been a problem for him until Jack Sigler entered into the picture. Fortunately, there was an easy solution.

Kill Jack Sigler.