Decipher, p.27
Decipher, page 27
Matheson rolled his eyes, alarmed. “Oh, Christ. This is bad. This is very fucking band.”
Houghton took a deep breath. “We can only assume the Chinese are using the current crisis to dismiss the rule of international law. In which case you’ll have to go in under armed escort. The only other option is—their base is simply no longer there.”
Matheson was confused. “I don’t understand. Surely you can check something like that?”
“Three major spy satellites were knocked out last night,” Houghton revealed. “There’s just no way of knowing for sure. The President’s asked me to join him in Rome for a debriefing.”
Pearce fidgeted nervously. Gasping for air, he met Houghton’s gaze and couldn’t help but draw attention to himself. “I can find out,” he said quietly. “Why don’t they ask me?”
Everyone in the back of the van exchanged curious looks. What on earth was he talking about? Only Houghton seemed to understand.
“They know, Bob,” the lawyer answered gravely. “They know. And they will be calling.”
No one asked any further questions. No one bugged Pearce about his odd conversation. No one seemed to want to know. They should have been nervous. They should have been apprehensive. But exhaustion was a curious thing. Instead, they reclined their seats on the green army Hercules C-130 transport plane, pulled blankets up around their necks, and spent the eleven-hour flight to Cape Town, South Africa, fast asleep. Not even stirring when the plane touched down briefly in Cairo to pick up another passenger.
CAPE TOWN DOCKS PIER 19
“Be careful with that! Be careful!”
Scott woke with a start. How long had the plane been on the ground? It was a customized Hercules C-130 with a pressurized cabin for senior officers in the front, and a small depressurized rear compartment from where drops were made when the plane was flying low.
But the cabin door was wide open. Hot sticky air wafted inside, with a sharp, striking light to accompany it. And, Scott realized, he’d been left all alone.
He could hear a radio playing somewhere. Focused on it and became aware of a familiar voice. It was the President, addressing the nation. Trying to reassure the public back home, as he continued his tour of the Vatican, that there was nothing to worry about. Lying bastard. Scott sat up, thought of Fergus for a moment, and then there was a clatter, a loud bang, like something heavy had just been dropped.
“Goddamnit! I said be careful!”
He knew that voice. Strong. Firm. Severely pissed. Yet somehow attractive. “Sarah?”
He shook off the last vestiges of sleep and stumbled from the chair. Stepping out into the corridor at the side of the cabin, he paused to let a crewman pass through to the cockpit, before continuing on his way to where the load door was lowered, forming a ramp.
Crates that hadn’t been on board in Switzerland were piled up under webbing and straps. Airmen carried all the equipment down to a series of flatbed trucks lined up on the sweltering tarmac.
A slim tanned woman stood on the lip of the slope, with incredible legs stretching up to a pair of old beat-up shorts. One arm was akimbo, while the other swung out directions.
Scott coughed. “Hi, Sarah. It’s me—Richard.”
Sarah turned slowly and relaxed. “Hi,” she brightened. “We finally meet.”
Scott blinked in surprise. “I’m glad you’re all right. That you got out okay. What with the line going dead,” he thought for a moment, choosing his words carefully, “I didn’t know what to think.”
“Miss me?”
Scott chuckled. “I hardly know you.”
“No, you don’t,” she said warmly.
He smiled. Surprisingly relaxed. “Has this been a weird couple of days or what?” She tried to smile back but it was difficult. “I’m sorry about Eric, and Douglas.” She thanked him. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “They abandoned me back there.”
Their eyes met, perhaps for longer than they should have. Scott dug his hands in his pockets and took a couple of steps down the ramp. When Sarah added, “You talk in your sleep,” Scott glanced back. “I took the seat next to yours.”
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Scott reaffirmed by way of an invitation.
Sarah joined him on the ramp and disembarked, stabbing a finger at one of the airmen to be more careful while Scott rubbed a hand over his chin. Two days’ growth. He really needed to find a razor.
Outside, he could smell burning. The sun was bright, maybe too bright. Without the slightest hint of haze, there was a perfect view of Table Mountain in the far distance. They were on a private airfield, part of the docks. Huge buildings lined the pier. Cranes loaded cargo ships.
Scott shielded his eyes and glanced up at the sun. “Hard to believe,” he said. “It gives us hot sunny days and skin cancer all in one fell swoop. Yet we refuse to believe it can do us any more harm than that.”
Sarah handed the linguist a sheet of paper with a list of numbers running down it.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“DEOS figures. Deep Earth Observation Sensor figures. Earthquake data for the last twenty-four hours.” Scott tried reading the list. “I already briefed everyone else. You’re the last to know.”
DEOS had been conceived in 1998 by a team at Cambridge University, Sarah explained. Across the planet, a ten-year operation attached DEOS probes to the ocean floor, measuring seismic activity within the mantle. In time it built up a picture of the earth’s core. Each probe was linked, and the data beamed to the satellite communications networks encircling the earth, where it was available to anyone with access to the Internet.
She pulled in closer to Scott. “Y’know that light show in the tunnel?” Scott gave her that look that said: how could he forget? “Well, before that one, there were five other separate energy bursts that were harmless. I was caught in the middle of one of ’em. We got data on the other four. The light just whizzed through the tunnel and moved on out.” She handed him another sheet of paper. “This is a map of the tunnel system on the Giza site—”
“There’s a ring down there?”
“Yeah. And see here, here and here? Three main tunnels join the ring at 120-degree intervals. The one from the east, the one I was in, goes straight into the Sphinx Chamber where the benben stone’s housed. The other two, the ones that come in from the southwest and northwest, link to the ring. And the ring, from what I can figure, joins the Sphinx Chamber through the east tunnel.”
“What are you saying?” Scott asked soberly. “Am I making too much of a leap here if I assume you’re suggesting this earthquake data is linked to the energy bursts in the tunnel?”
“That’s exactly it,” Sarah confirmed. “These are the times at which the energy bursts passed through the Sphinx Chamber. And these are the closest associated earthquakes.”
“But the times don’t match.”
“You have to allow the seismic wave time to travel. On average, they move through the ground at 13,000 mph. They go faster or slower depending on the magnitude and depth. This one here, this energy burst at 11:37 P.M.? An earthquake hit Chad, magnitude six, just minutes before. Chad isn’t on a faultline, but it has volcanic activity from a hot spot that’s burnt through the crust, like Hawaii. It’s about 1,000 miles away. Simple arithmetic tells you it travels 1,000 miles in about four and a half minutes. The Chad earthquake hit at 11:32 P.M., five minutes beforehand, with an epicenter that’s almost precisely due southwest of Cairo, directly in line with the southwest tunnel.”
Sarah traced her finger around the information. Scott followed intently as she added, “All of these earthquakes are in some kind of direct line of sight with one of the three tunnels leading into Giza. And the time delays between earthquake events and the energy bursts match exactly. Chad, Italy, Greece, Lebanon. The middle of the South Atlantic. They all match.”
“Don’t worry,” Scott reassured her, “I believe you. I can’t not believe you. Could this get any more complex? That’s one hell of a machine we’re talking about. What did the others say?”
“They’re trying to work out how the seismic wave was converted into heat and light.”
“I’m sure they’ll figure it out,” Scott said, eager to get on. He glanced around, didn’t recognize markings, people or directions. “Where are we going, by the way?”
“We were supposed to re-fuel and head straight down to McMurdo, but the weather’s too bad for a landing. They put us aboard a Coast Guard Icebreaker with a science team that was going anyway. It’s that bright red one—over there.”
They hopped on the back of one of the flatbeds and rode over to the ship alongside some of the other crates. But it was only as Scott started to take in what he was seeing that he noticed the huge scars down the side of Table Mountain, perhaps twenty miles wide in places.
“Landslides,” Sarah explained. “They ran out some way. Killed about three thousand people. Knocked power out across half of Cape Town.” She mulled it over. “They’ve had some problems. Looting. Rioting. Panic and stuff. That’s why we landed here. The main airport’s swamped.”
“Because of the landslide?”
“Yup. People are trying to get out.”
“And go where?” Scott inquired. Deadly serious. “Unless you can get out of this entire solar system, there’s nowhere to hide.”
“That’s just what your CIA man said.” Scott looked quizzical. “Bob Pearce, your CIA guy … ?”
“Bob Pearce is CIA? What does he do for them?”
The deckhands were carrying equipment up the gangway while the larger, bulkier items, survival gear, supplies, food and so on, were being hauled on board by crane.
The USCGC Polar Star WAGB-10 wasn’t the largest icebreaker there was, being only 399 feet long and just over 13,000 tons. Her hull was bright red, with a thick white diagonal stripe running down the front end of each side of her bow. Her bridge was gleaming white with a black mast on top bristling with radar and communications antennae, and scientific measuring instruments. She had two mustard-colored funnels leading to two diesel electric turbines.
No, she wasn’t the biggest, but she was sturdy and ready to take on the challenge of getting her passengers to McMurdo Sound. Alongside her sister ship, Polar Sea, she happened to be the most powerful non-nuclear icebreaker in the world. To Scott she looked eerily familiar.
And then he remembered. Polar Star. Her home port was Pier 36 in Seattle. He’d seen this ship on and off, countless times before. Only last month he’d taken Emily down to see her when the Coast Guard had an open day. His daughter loved boats.
Her deck plates hummed in anticipation as Scott and Sarah went below to find their cabins and stow their things. They found Ralph Matheson coming out of one cabin, scratching his beard and looking irritated. “This is like being at camp,” he moaned. “They got room for twenty passengers, max. Can you believe we all gotta share? Boys in one. Girls in the other.”
As he said this, November poked her head out of another cabin excitedly. “Sarah!” she exclaimed. “You’re in here with me! We got one all to ourselves. Guess they don’t get too many women going to Antarctica.”
Sarah smirked at Scott. “See you around.”
As she reached the door Scott exchanged a look with Matheson, who pointed to one of his own hands and shook it emphatically. Scott sighed, and called out to the geologist, “Uh, Sarah?”
She looked back.
“I’ve been meaning to ask.” He hesitated. “In the tunnel … was it a hand that grabbed Douglas?”
Sarah nodded thoughtfully before heading into her cabin and closing the door behind her.
Matheson shook his head, “Aw, shit.” He rummaged around in his pockets. “Now where’d I put my pills?” He looked queasily at Scott. “I get sea sick.”
Scott took a deep breath as he lifted his bag. “Oh, great.” He hefted it onto one of the bunks. “Well, hopefully we won’t be at sea too long. Which is mine?”
“Too long?” Ralph remarked. “This thing does thirty knots, tops—oh, top bunk. We got over two thousand miles to go. That’s three days’ sailing time, at least.”
Scott slung his stuff on the top bunk. The cabin berthed six, so conditions were cramped. He had a reading light and a curtain, but other than that, not much. And then he realized: was this the last thing he was ever going to see? Hackett said the sun peaked its cycle in two days. He turned on Matheson. “We could all be dead in three days.”
“This is the USS Harry S Truman calling the U.S. Coast Guard ship Polar Star. We confirm the safe arrival of Rear Admiral T. W. Dower aboard our vessel. Cape Town Harbor-master has given clearance for your immediate departure. The Truman battle group is pleased to serve as your escort. Over.”
“Yeah, confirm that, Truman. The crew of the Polar Star thanks you. We will be under way shortly. Over and out.”
The CO, Captain Chris Rafferty, hung the radio back up on the console and nodded to the harbor pilot to guide his ship out. They would be sailing up Table Bay some distance before turning toward the open sea. Level, as it happened, with a small South African town called Atlantis. Such was the way of things.
Of his twenty officers, two were on the bridge. Of his one hundred and forty-three enlisted men, a further six manned other stations. But Rafferty’s main concern was Major Gant, who stood beside him at the Comm desk.
Rafferty folded his arms; lowered his voice. “Well, this makes a change. We’re not usually this popular.” Gant said nothing. “You were lucky,” Rafferty added. “We don’t normally come to Cape Town; usually we head straight for Sydney. But the biologists we got with us had some stuff to pick up.”
“We appreciate you giving us a ride,” Pearce offered. He and Hackett were also on the bridge, by the windows, watching the smoke columns from distant fires—the results of the looting and panic.
But Gant was less appreciative and more concerned with the voyage ahead. “I’ve been speaking to the Truman and the Ingersoll. The weather’s getting worse down there. We need to be ready to batten down at a moment’s notice.”
“The weather?” Rafferty snorted coldly. “We get another one of those—gravity waves, did you call them?” Hackett nodded. “We get another one and there’s a fifty-fifty chance we’ll go down. We’re not the size of an aircraft carrier. We can’t ride a fifty-foot wave. It took four years to build this ship, and she can cut through ice like nothing else. But the wrong conditions—and she’ll go down in four minutes.” He stuck his hands on his hips. Then adjusted his standard-issue baseball cap. “Just so you all know. Antarctica’s like nowhere else on earth, including the North Pole. With or without gravity waves.”
Ensign Varez was a stocky Hispanic from the fifty-first state of Puerto Rico. He grinned to himself excitedly as the communications desk lit up like a Christmas tree. Addressed his CO: “Captain! Satellite communications just came back online, sir.”
“What have we got?”
“Uh—everything. GPS. Direct lines to DC. Seattle. NORAD. Switzerland. The works.”
“Good.” He looked to Gant. “You boys work fast.”
“Well, of course,” Gant chided stiffly. “There are two whole carrier groups down here now.”
“Excellent,” Hackett said briskly. “Now maybe we can download the updates of my data from CERN to the labs downstairs—”
“Below decks,” Rafferty corrected.
Hackett shrugged. “Wherever.”
But the mood hadn’t lightened any for Major Gant. Checking in with Cheyenne Mountain, NORAD was disappointed to report that all efforts to locate the Chinese base via satellite had failed. And of the few satellites they could bump into position, the closest, VX-17, wasn’t going to be in prime position for another thirty-two hours.
Hackett and Pearce exchanged glances, as the CIA man shook nervously. He licked his lips. Tensed. “You got a room all set up for this?”
Gant said he did. And marched him off into the bowels of the ship.
At 13:06 GMT, Polar Star entered international waters becoming the primary responsibility of the Harry S Truman battle group, comprising the Fifth Carrier Group Nimitz Class aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman CVN 75, with the eighty-seven planes of Carrier Air Wing Five. Running alongside were the USS Bunker Hill CG 52, and the USS Mobile Bay CG 53. While farther out to sea, with some vessels even beyond visibility and tucked over the horizon, were the ships of Destroyer Squadron 15: the Vincennes, the Thach, the Curtis Wilbur, the Rodney M. Davis, the O’Brien, the John S. McCain and the Fife. Seven ships in all. And a formidable arm of the Truman battle group.
And this was the second battle group. The Nimitz herself, first of the Nimitz Class, was already in position with her own fleet, patrolling Antarctic waters: It was equally large, and equally committed to carrying out its duties.
To give some idea of the scale of the mounting situation at the South Pole, Gant explained. Antarctica, which was twice the size of America, had around five thousand people living and working on its shores at any one time. In contrast, the ship’s company of the USS Nimitz numbered 3,350, while its onboard Air Wing numbered 2,480 men and women. A total of 5,830 people. Just the arrival of the Nimitz alone had doubled Antarctica’s population overnight. The Truman had exactly the same complement. And when counting the number of people combined aboard the other eighteen ships, the population of Antarctica had multiplied by a factor of 10.
And that was just the Navy. The Marines had sent their people, as had the Army and the Air Force, all per Presidential decree. It was going to be busy at the South Pole, if nothing else.
But despite all the technical wizardry and know-how, despite all the gadgets and toys, they were blind on mainland Antarctica. They couldn’t even confirm whether an entire Chinese base still existed or not. And so finally it all boiled down to this. To one man. Robert Ellington Pearce, of Phoenix, Arizona. Serial Number A170044938-W9 of the Central Intelligence Agency. A crypto-historian by desire, but a psychic by trade, for want of a better word. And in possession of an extraordinary talent.
