Empire

Chinnereth

Before they got close enough to Chinnereth and Genesseret to need to cut off cellphone use, Load briefed them all on what he saw during his first driveby. Both National Forest Roads 20 and 21 had been gated off because of the dam, with electronic keycards required for entry. But not road 48. “Which is odd,” said Load, “because it switchbacks up the mountain and 4820 cuts off and skirts around it, way above Chinnereth. Overlooking it. Nothing you do at Chinnereth wouldn’t be completely visible to somebody on 4820.”

“Doesn’t sound odd, if there’s nothing going on there except a couple of dams,” said Cole.

“Except that they had to build awfully high and expensive dams to contain the amount of water those lakes can hold,” said Load.

“Either they aren’t there,” said Cole, “or they think their concealment is so good they’ve got nothing to fear from being observed.”

“Or,” said Load, “they’ve got patrols up there to make sure nobody sees anything and lives to tell the tale.”

“So what do you think?” said Cole. “Go in at night, dark? Or still play tourist like we planned?”

“Your call,” said Load.

“Why me?” said Cole. “It’s our mission, not my mission.”

Load didn’t answer.

“We’ve all led missions.”

“You’re active duty,” said Load. “And you’re the one Rube picked.”

“He didn’t even know me,” said Cole. “Three days.”

“But we know you now,” said Load. “We voted you our abun.”

It meant “father” in Arabic, but it had come to mean “boss-man” among the Special Ops troops that went in-country in the Middle East.

Cole didn’t waste time arguing when he was only talking to one guy anyway. “I think we go in dusk,” he said. “Some daylight, but gone before we unload the truck. The seven of you come in with only two cars. We rendezvous low on 48. To unload the ordnance. We don’t want it to look like a parking lot, and we don’t want to try to take this U-Haul up a winding mountain road. You go in first, Load, and pick the spot, out of sight from the valleys with the lakes.”

“And you come in right before dusk?”

“With no lights, once I’m on the road.”

“Anybody asks you,” said Load, “you’re going up to Hager Lake and Jennings Falls.”

“With a truck full of furniture and dishes?” asked Cole.

“Tell them your friends have the fishing tackle and cameras.”

“My plan is not to get challenged,” said Cole.

“Go with that one,” said Load. “Better plan.”

Cole’s timing went well enough. The sun sank below the ridgeline fairly early, but there was still light in the sky when he found the entrance to road 48 and pulled off. Other cars were using headlights, but it wasn’t particularly odd that he wasn’t yet.

He was a little bothered by the sign warning about a dangerous, narrow, unpaved switchback road. But with any luck, he wouldn’t have to negotiate any of the tight turns.

He was half right. The truck ground along in low gear to the first switchback, and there was Load, greeting him like an old fishing buddy. But there was the tricky maneuver of going straight when the road curved, backing up the higher part of the switchback, and then making a scary little hairpin turn to get the truck pointing down the hill and the back of it pointing into the trees. Several times it felt like the truck was going to tip over, which would have been inconvenient. But finally it was done.

They used the last shreds of daylight to load the furniture and boxes off the truck, take out the weaponry, and conceal it in the trees. Then, with only one lantern inside the truck, and with a bit of cursing, they loaded all the furniture and boxes back onto the truck so it wouldn’t be so obvious to a curious forest ranger or rebel scout that the important stuff had been taken out of the truck and nobody cared what happened to the furniture.

Then, in the dark, they changed into their camo and put their civilian clothes in big Ziploc bags. They put on their vests and packs, loaded and hefted their weapons, and then started up the road, picking different spots to conceal their civvies and then memorizing the spots.

“Just in case we return alive,” said Arty cheerfully.

“Sometimes your sense of humor is actually funny,” said Benny. “I hope I’m there next time it happens.”

After that they were quiet, except for the occasional low click of the tongue to draw their attention to something—a turn, an impediment in the route. They stayed close to the trees. There was light enough from a sliver of moon to see where they were going, but that meant enough light for them to be seen. But they stayed with the road, since in the dark all they could do among the trees was crash around. Flashlights were out of the question. If there were sentries anywhere, flashlights would alert them like the blinking lights on airplane wings.

At the third switchback, a track led off to the southwest—road 4820. They followed it around the mountain for a little over a mile. In the stillness of the evening, they could hear a waterfall below them, though the trees were too thick for them to see down to the surface of the lake they knew must lie below them. Then there were a couple of switchbacks. When they came to a third one, they finally left the road and proceeded only a few dozen yards into the trees between the legs of the hairpin turn.

The ground sloped; they found the most level spot. Cole, whose alarm watch was already on vibrate, assigned Mingo and Benny to the first watch, Mingo upslope, Benny down.

Three hours later, Cole’s alarm woke him. In turn, he woke Drew, and they went together to relieve Mingo. Leaving Drew where Mingo had been, Cole and Mingo went to relieve Benny. Cole remained on watch while Mingo and Benny went back to the main camp to sleep.

Another three hours. There was only a faint breeze now and then, but it was a chilly one—this far up in the mountains, July didn’t meant what it meant down in the lowlands. But they had dressed for it.

There were things to be seen and even smelled, but mostly Cole listened. He had to learn the natural sounds in order to be able to distinguish unnatural ones. Animals aren’t as quiet as most people think. Humans don’t hear them because the din they make themselves masks all smaller sounds. But squirrels are not silent as they move through brush or leaves. The stooping of an owl; the screech of small prey; the padding of an animal’s footsteps through the night.

Something larger. Probably a porcupine, thought Cole. Whatever it was, it got close enough to catch Cole’s scent; then it hustled away in another direction.

His alarm went off again. Summer nights were short at this latitude—about nine hours—but it was still dark. It hadn’t taken them all that long to walk up the road.

Cole returned to the camp and wakened Cat and Babe. Tonight Arty and Load got the full night, though Cole knew by now that for Arty, sleep was never all that deep. Babe once told him that Arty spent most of his nights reliving dark passages through Al Qaeda tunnels in Afghanistan. He never woke screaming, but he slept with a constant alertness, as if in his sleep he still knew he could find an enemy lurking in crevices anywhere.

“First light,” he reminded Cat and Babe. They went up and relieved Drew first; Cat stayed and Drew went with Babe to the downhill post before he returned to camp.

Their watch was less than an hour long. First light meant the first glimmer of lightening in the eastern sky. But Cole had used the time to catch more sleep. Soldiers learned how to sleep whenever the opportunity presented itself. Like any other people, they needed eight hours or more to be at peak. But in the presence of the enemy—which, for all they knew, they were right now—adrenalin made up for the lack of sleep. Besides, even at half of their peak alertness, Cole knew these soldiers were sharper than most people. Sharp enough to still be alive despite all their enemies had thrown at them in the past.

They created a weapons cache a hundred feet from the road, leaving the heavier weapons there. Cole assigned Drew and Babe to stay with the cache. Each of the others carried sniper rifles and sidearms, rations, ammunition, and other supplies.

They also wore the infrasound transceivers Torrent had obtained for them. They used a digital signal, but it was carried on sound waves too low in pitch to be heard by human ears. It was like the shout of a giant. Elephants used sounds that low to communicate with each other from miles away. The receivers were on; they didn’t turn on the transmitters until the carrier signal was actually needed. No need to be blasting low-pitched tones all over the mountains except at need. Besides, the captured mechs had a variant on this technology. The best guess was that their equipment operated at such a different pitch from the Army’s new system that they wouldn’t be able to pick up the jeesh’s transmission tone. But there was no certainty of that.

They spread out, never so far that they couldn’t keep track of where the man in front of them was, but never so close that a trap could be sprung on all of them at once. There was a ranger tower atop the ridge between the lakes, but it seemed to be unoccupied. It might hold cameras, however. Cole and the others knew enough not to let themselves be seen from that angle—but not to assume that it was the only observation point, either.

The slope and the trees were such that from their side of Lake Chinnereth, they could observe the opposite shore but not their own. Certainly the other side of the lake offered nothing interesting. If the trees had been cut right to the maximum waterline, then the lake level was about three feet below full—about normal for summer here. Once the turbines started running to generate electricity, though, the lake would drain steadily but slowly all summer, and it didn’t seem to Cole as though the watershed here would be large enough to replenish the lake waters if there was a constant drain.

This reservoir didn’t make sense. The slope of the canyon was so steep that the dam had to be very high in order to hold enough water to make a lake of any size. Yet the lake was only about four miles long on one branch, three and a half on the other. He knew from the map that Lake Genesseret was even smaller—two miles long.

It was a boondoggle. The federal government had paid for this project, and it would never pay for itself. Nor would it generate that much electricity if it was also supplying some town somewhere with water. This was exactly the kind of project that environmentalists loved to kill. It should have been easy to do, because the dam was indefensible.

Yet there was no sign of any kind of development here beyond the lake itself. The original route of road 21 was under water, and if a new road had been cut it must be on this side of the lake, since it could not be seen on the other.

Their travel today would go much faster if they climbed down to the clear-cut slope between the waterline and the trees, but there they would be completely visible to any observers. The idea was not to be detected. So they would move slowly through forest, going miles around Lake Chinnereth, then moving up to the ridge between the lakes and again going down to look at Genesseret and go far enough around it to inspect all its shores.

And then back again to the cache and, if they found nothing, then pack it all up and come home again.

There was an island in the middle of Lake Chinnereth, which must once have been the rounded top of a low hill. There Cole could see the only human structure beyond the dam itself that was visible here. It was a cabin that might once have been a ranger way station or, conceivably, somebody’s small summer cabin. It looked like it had probably been made from local timber, laid down like Lincoln logs. It was impossible to tell whether it pre-dated the dam or was thirty years old. It certainly wasn’t much older than that, and might not be abandoned—there was still glass in the windows.

Down near the waterline, there was a small dock with a short swimmer’s ladder. And not a floating dock—it made no allowance for changing water levels. It’s as if the builder expected the lake always to be full.

The dock had to have been built after the dam, or there would have been no point. But the cabin didn’t look like it could hold a serious number of mechs, even in the basement. And even if it could contain such things, how could they be loaded onto barges from that tiny dock?

Even stopping frequently to listen and observe, they made good time through the woods; they took turns walking point and tail, and now and then they could talk in low voices to each other and pass observations and orders up and down the spread-out line. Each man controlled his own eating as he walked—there was no need to stop for meals.

When they reached the end of the east fork of Lake Chinnereth, Cole split Load and Arty off to go out to the point of the peninsula between the lakes and observe what they could. If they hadn’t heard from Cole to the contrary, they were then to go back around to rejoin Drew and Babe at the cache.

So now there were only four of them proceeding overland to the west fork of Chinnereth and then up the ridge between the lakes. There were a few signs of hikers, but none of the litter was new and the few campsites were covered with layers of pine needles. Again, no way to tell if there had been hikers through here since the lake was formed.

Cole sent Mingo and Benny around to the west side of Genesseret to reconnoiter the eastern shoreline. They didn’t need to go all the way to the dam. As soon as they had observed and photographed the whole eastern shore, they should come back around and, again, if Cole had not told them otherwise, round both lakes and return to the cache.

Only Cat was with Cole now, moving together near but not on the crest of the ridge between lakes. Occasionally they would cross over the ridge and move down the other side, since they were observing the far shores of both lakes now.

They were near the peak of the ridge now, approaching the observation tower. Now they moved even more stealthily, moving slowly and methodically toward the tower from two different directions. There was no sign of any kind of wiring, though that hardly proved that there was no wiring. Nor was there any sign of cameras—but, again, that might simply mean that the cameras were very small and well concealed.

In the southwest, clouds were building. A summer thunderstorm? That would be potentially disastrous—lightning could do worse things than an EMP gun. Even fog would be irritating, forcing them to wait till it cleared to complete the mission.

Cole crept back away from the cleared area around the tower; he knew Cat was doing the same. They would move slowly around to two other vantage points and inspect the other two sides of the tower.

It was in the midst of this maneuver that Cole’s receiver vibrated. He immediately began backing farther away from the tower. He pressed the go-ahead button.

“Mingo here,” said Mingo. He was talking softly, but articulating very clearly. “Come down to the area twenty feet above the clear-cut zone. Right where you are, just go down. No structures, no sign of tunneling, but something you need to see.”

Cole pressed the go-ahead button again, requesting more information without having to speak aloud.

“If you don’t see it, then we’re crazy,” said Mingo. “I’m not going to predispose you.”

Cole pressed the code for Cat, knowing he had heard. Cole whispered, “Down to Genesseret.”

It took only fifteen minutes to move, relatively noiselessly, to the zone twenty feet or so above the clear-cut zone. Whatever they were supposed to see, Cole couldn’t see it.

And then he could. The ground was suddenly wet underfoot.

Cat noticed it, too. He moved toward Cole and when they were near enough, said in a low voice, “Somebody ran the sprinklers this morning.”

The ground was sodden, as if it had been heavily watered. From about fifteen feet above the waterline, the pine needles no longer carpeted the forest floor in a natural way. They had been carried downward as if by receding water, hanging up on tufts of grass, roots, rocks, any obstruction, the way floating pine needles would when the water drained away.

Cole switched on his transceiver and coded for Mingo. “Is this about even with the top of the dam?”

“From what we can see,” said Mingo, “it could go ten feet higher. But the line is absolute. Everything below it soaked, everything above it as dry as normal. Benny has me for ten that this lake has been fifteen feet higher within the last twenty-four hours. Which is impossible and/or weird.”

“You bet against him, though.”

“Somebody had to,” said Mingo. “It’s how he pays for food.”

“Anything else on our side?” asked Cole.

“Nothing.”

“And we’ve seen nothing on yours. Anything near the dam?”

“Just the old road 20, where it dives down under the water. The new road’s on our side, but it’s already overgrown with grass and saplings. Nobody’s using it.”

Cole sat and thought for a while. This obvious change in the water level was weird, but it was hard to see what the point of it would be. Why would they have released so much water, so rapidly? The lake was small, as reservoirs go, but it was still millions of gallons of water. By now Mingo had probably figured out approximately how much. He asked.

“If it was all released in a single flow, it would be enough to cause flooding downstream,” said Mingo. “The valley floor is populated. The neighbors would complain. Cole, this water was here, no more than a day ago. It went somewhere.”

Mingo was a civil engineer and it was his business to be able to make guesses that were worth something.

“Any sign of it draining right now?” asked Cole.

“No,” said Mingo. “In fact, it’s at the usual waterline right now. Where the vegetation changes. The high level seems to be the rare condition.”

“Heavy rainstorms here lately?”

“No,” said Benny. “Dryish summer for this area.”

“Rain heavy enough to raise the water level this high, you would have seen it on the news. ‘Washington State washed out to sea,’ that would have been the story.”

“Somehow they’re raising and lowering the water level of the lake by massive amounts,” said Cole, “and I can’t think of a single reason why.”

“I’m still trying to think of how,” said Mingo.

“Anybody get close enough to the shoreline on Chinnereth to see if it does the same?” asked Cole.

“Drew here. We reconnoitered the shoreline while we were waiting. Nothing like what you describe. The shoreline was the first wet area. No flooding higher up.”

“Load here. Ditto. If the water level rose fifteen feet on Chinnereth, it would flood that cabin.”

Cole sat and thought for a long moment.

“Maybe they dumped a huge amount of rubble in here,” said Mingo. “That would raise the level. But that wouldn’t explain why it went back down.”

“No roads where they could dump the rubble,” said Benny.

“While we’re complaining about what they don’t have here,” said Load. “I don’t remember seeing any power lines running away from this dam.”

“No, there were power lines,” said Benny.

“And a power station? Lots of transformers? Where?”

“No. Nothing like that,” said Benny. “But definitely power lines. No, wait. They ran along Highway 12. But I never saw them link up with the dams. Sorry.”

“This was officially a hydroelectic project,” said Cole. “There are turbines in the dams.”

“So maybe they use the power right here,” said Cat. “In their vast system of underground factories and training facilities.”

“Cat and I are going back up to the observation tower to check whether there’s any kind of vent up there for an underground system.”

They all switched off their transmitters. It was harder going uphill. But not slower. That’s what all the stairstepping and rock climbing were for.

Now Cole knew what to look for, he climbed a tree well back from the cleared perimeter and scanned for some kind of pipe or vent hidden in the tall grass.

Bingo. There were about two dozen small pipes, sticking up only a few inches above the ground before they bent over to keep water from coming in. At ground level you couldn’t see them for the grass.

Cole pointed his soundcatcher toward them and was able to pick up a difference between the pipes and the surrounding area. They were connected to something that was actively producing noise.

He climbed back down the tree and backed away from the cleared area, heading down the Chinnereth slope this time. Cat was soon near him, though they did not talk and remained fifty feet apart as they made their way down the slope.

Near the cleared edge of the woods, but not close enough to be seen, they stopped and Cole approached Cat. Across the water, the cabin sat on its little island. It had a chimney, which might very well contain vents for more underground structures.

It might also contain something else. An entrance.

“I think I’m going for a swim,” said Cole.

“I was having the same thought,” said Cat.

Cole switched on his transmitter. “We’re on the west shore of Chinnereth, just west of the cabin. Cat and I are going to swim across to see if there’s an entrance there.”

“Water’s gonna be cold, abun,” said Babe. “You two gonna have little tiny dicks when you get there.”

“Least I’ll still have one,” said Cat.

“We won’t go for another half hour,” said Cole. “Drew and Babe, bring the SMAW down near the waterline in case we need some backup. Load and Arty, you get to Chinnereth shoreline nearest to the cabin. Benny and Mingo, you can’t get here in time to be useful. So go north, get to Highway 12, but stay in infra range. If we confirm that this is the place, get to where you can make contact with Torrent so he can send in a strike force.”

“I don’t know what you just figured out,” said Babe.

“That’s because you’re in public relations,” said Mingo, “and I’m an engineer.”

“Thought that meant you drove trains,” said Babe.

“There are standpipes in the tall grass under the observation tower,” said Cole. “There’s machinery operating underground.”

“And the water,” said Mingo. “Only place where it could go is from one lake into the other. Anything else would be too obvious. They must pump it out of Chinnereth, uphill, into Genesseret, using all that electricity they’ve stored up. Genesseret rises, Chinnereth falls. Exposing their doorway. They go in or out, whatever, and when they’re done, they seal the watertight entrance and let the water flood back downhill to fill it back up. Genesseret drops back to normal, Chinnereth rises.”

“You can’t know that,” said Babe.

“No other possibility,” said Mingo. “Word, man.”

“The ultimate moat,” said Drew.

“That’s a lot of water to move,” said Babe.

“The federal government paid for the whole thing,” said Benny. “Your tax dollars at work.”

“So why are you going out to the island?” asked Arty.

“We’re almost sure,” said Cole. “But are we sure enough to call in a strike force yet?”

“They got to have a back door,” said Mingo. “Can’t drain the lake every time somebody’s got to go outside to smoke.”

“Boat,” said Cat.

They switched their transmitters off.

A small motorboat was coming up the lake from the area of the dam. Heading for them or for the island? Had their chatter been detected? Even if they couldn’t decode the scrambled signal, they’d know somebody was there.

But the boat pulled up to the little dock on the island.

And waited.

And waited. The driver of the boat didn’t seem particularly alert. Like a cabdriver waiting for a fare.

The door of the cabin opened. Four men came out.

“Is any of them Verus?” asked Cole.

Cat looked through his binoculars. “No,” he said. “You recognize any of them?”

Cole took the binoculars. The men wore suits. He thought he might have seen one of them on television. The news, probably, since he didn’t look like an actor. But he didn’t remember who or when.

The men got into the boat and it pulled away from the dock. The boat headed on down the lake.

Cole took off his pack. He quickly inflated the floats on it and attached his weapons and boots to the top. The floats were widely spaced enough for it to be stable, at least on smooth water. Top-heavy, but it wouldn’t tip. He attached the towline to it and shrugged on the harness. Cat was doing the same.

“Never much call to use these in Afghanistan or Sudan,” Cat said.

“Nice to get a chance to test out all the equipment,” said Cole.

“Glad you’re so white,” said Cat. “Easier target on the water.”

Cole just grinned at him.

Then he moved swiftly down the slope and into the water. It was cold, but he didn’t hesitate. His body went into that momentary shock and he trembled a little, but as soon as he had laid the miniraft of his pack down on the water, he immersed himself and began swimming in long, steady strokes, dragging the pack behind him. He broke water as gently as possible. But if someone was watching, there’s no way he wouldn’t be visible on the calm surface of the water.

Having their main entrance hidden under water explained why they didn’t have a lot of patrols. Patrols would be seen. Encounters with civilians would leave memories.

Of course, so would letting a civilian see the lakes drain. It was so easy to get here. Hikers might do it at any time.

Easy? Not so easy. They had moved very cautiously. They had made little noise and made sure to stay out of sight. Maybe regular hikers were detected, and either they didn’t drain the lake until they had passed or they’d send somebody out dressed in a ranger uniform to send them on their way.

It was so cold. He could feel his body reacting to it, struggling to stay warm. But they were most of the way to the island now. Not much longer. He glanced around to see Cat was only a little bit behind him.

Cat pointed toward the island and started swimming faster.

The island was rising.

Which meant the water level was falling.

Just a little way below the waterline, the island stopped being a hill. It was a thick pillar, solid concrete. Of course. There wouldn’t be an island here. They had built it.

The dock was now hanging in midair; the pillars of the dock were actually resting on steel beams jutting out from the concrete wall of the island. Under the dock, there was a ladder rising up to the level of the beams. From there, it looked easy enough to get to the short wooden swimmer’s ladder.

What was going to be hard was climbing that ladder without being seen.

Cole and Cat got to the base of the ladder at about the same time. The water was still sinking. But it wasn’t getting warmer.

“Can’t stay in this,” said Cat.

“Can’t climb,” said Cole. “They’ll see us.”

Back on the shore they had come from, only about a hundred yards closer to the dam, a heavy concrete wall was being revealed. Huge steel doors looked like they could withstand the water pressure just fine. But once the water sank low enough, and those doors opened, anybody coming out of them would have a clear shot at anybody climbing the ladder.

Cole clung to the ladder with his legs as he worked the pack back onto his shoulders. It was hard—his fingers were numb and he was shivering. Cat was having the same amount of trouble.

“Just leave the packs?” asked Cat, shivering.

“We’ll want our weapons if we make it up top.”

“Big if,” said Cat.

In answer, Cole started to climb. It was hard to keep his grip. And cold numb wet bare feet weren’t as stable to climb with as well-fitting boots. But he had to keep moving. Maybe he could still get to the top before the doors opened.

Cat was keeping up with him, nice steady progress up the ladder.

The big steel door started opening. A couple of men in rebel body armor came out and scanned the area. It didn’t take them two seconds to see Cole and Cat, and another two seconds to start shooting.

They missed.

“Their marksman training not as good as our marksman training,” said Cat.

“Fine with me,” said Cole.

A bullet came much closer.

“Getting the range now,” said Cat.

“I’m nearly there.”

Cole noticed the whooshing sound behind him and to the right. A moment later, the entrance of the tunnel erupted in flames.

“Good shot with the SMAW,” said Cat.

“Inappropriate weapon,” said Cole. “Rifles would have been enough.”

“Either way, I think we lost our element of surprise, abun.”

Cole knew that Drew and Babe would be moving the SMAW to a different position now.

“Wish I knew what was waiting for us at the top of this ladder.”

Rifle fire from directly behind them didn’t result in any bullets striking near them. It was sniper work—ping. Wait. Ping. That would be Load and Arty, firing past them at someone on top of the island.

And now there was returning gunfire from directly above them, shooting out across the water.

“I just hope Drew and Babe don’t try to use a mortar,” said Cole. “I don’t want them to blow up that cabin.”

“Don’t stop to put on your infra, abun.”

“Wasn’t going to.”

They were now on the steel beams that supported the dock. But there was gunfire coming from inside the huge doors again, and from men fanning out along the shoreline. Correctly, Load and Arty were only shooting at targets on top of the island, so that Cole and Cat would have a chance to get up and onto the surface without getting their heads blown off the moment they raised them above the level of the dock.

Cole got out his handgun and swung out to climb the swimmer’s ladder.

“Such a baby,” said Cat. He clambered directly onto the dock from the other side.

There were two bodies—in ranger uniforms, not armor—lying on the ground. But Cole was aware—from the sound, from motion—that there were others inside the cabin now, and a pair who had moved off into the brush beside the cabin. He flattened himself on the ground. He was immediately aware of every rise and dip in the surface and arranged his body to present the hardest possible target, even as he looked into the brush and found a target. A flurry of motion told him that he had at least come close.

He crept over to the nearest body and used that slight cover while he got his pack off. It would be like a howdah on an elephant to carry that around with him during this. He pulled his rifle off the pack. This was sniper work now.