Simeon’s latest tactic during sessions involved focusing on specific topics on which the staff did not understand the reason for his interest. Although he seldom revealed the motive for his curiosity, they suspected it was due to his access to the digital version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. In one VR session, he grilled Chunhua for an hour on the concept of bushido, despite her protestations that her ancestry was Chinese and not Japanese. He asked Jill to explain why some people preferred beef stroganoff over beef Wellington. Whether it was a random choice, or he somehow found out beef stroganoff was her father’s favorite meal remained a mystery.
In Zach’s latest session, Simeon began by asking for an explanation of the curse of the Bambino. From there, they got into a lengthy discussion on baseball tactics and finally came back to the question of how the Boston Red Sox couldn’t win a World Series until 2004 because they had traded Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1919.
With Ralph, the sessions with Simeon were the most consistent of any of the VR users. Simeon never strayed far from video games, a topic Ralph was happy to engage with ad infinitum, particularly the different genres and strategies.
Whatever the feelings of the Level 3 staff members, their work continued, as did the monitoring of China, North Korea, and Russia in Level 2 and the basic operation and research activities in Level 1.
Everyone noticed the sun hanging lower in the sky each day. Finally, the day came when Ed Schofield, leader of the four-member meteorological team, announced at the evening meal that the sun would officially set briefly in a few hours. The landmark event meant the autumnal equinox lay two weeks away, the day of equal hours of day and night, followed by two more weeks until the day when the sun would set for the last time, not to be seen again for three months.
Those staff members who had not experienced a long night had been amply warned by Huxler and other staff what it was like, and no one looked forward to it. The approaching night and the lingering depression from Wilcox’s disappearance led Bre and Huxler to change a routine. Shortly after Schofield’s announcement, Bre called for attention.
“Hey, everybody, listen up. Whether you know it or not, we usually have an autumnal equinox party on that auspicious day. There will be a change this year, but don’t worry, there’ll still be an equinox party. It’ll just be a little early. There’s also going to be a Halloween party on October 28. And yes . . . it’s going to be a costume party, and everyone is required to participate, no exceptions.”
“So . . . what’s General Sinclair going to come as?” asked Bill from maintenance.
“What do you think he should come as?”
“Uh . . . I don’t know. Maybe a general?”
Laughter and catcalls followed Sinclair’s snort.
“Hey . . . I know someone who knows the answer,” said Bre. “Lieutenant Montero. How about you? What do you think General Sinclair will come as?”
“Like any general,” said Montero, “he’ll come as any damn thing he wants to.”
This time the laughter shook the room.
“But what about the equinox party?” said Kathy. “You said we’ll still have one.”
“Yes,” said Bre, “but we will just move it forward a bit to October 3rd, so as not to be too close to the Halloween party. Exactly what will go on that evening is still being planned, but we hope it will be something to remember.”
Prince Patrick Island, Western Nunavut
Major Jun Peng leaned over the map covering the tactical table in the control room of the Changzheng 14, the same Shang-class nuclear-powered attack submarine that delivered the two Eskimos to Ellesmere. The stifling air resulted from a vessel designed for a crew of 102 being skeletonized to 78 for this mission and supplemented by 60 commandos crammed into every available space. In theory, the environmental system could maintain acceptable air quality for the entire voyage. Unfortunately, “theory” was not aboard. Overburdened environmental systems began having difficulty five days after they launched, forcing the captain to surface several times, always at night, to clear out the air and give the ship’s systems a rest.
Today was the first time Peng knew his exact location since his assignment to the mission. He and a hundred and twenty men from different units throughout China had flown into Harbin, been put on buses with windows painted black, and spent hours on winding roads at increasing altitude, as evidenced by his ears popping. Through a few scratches in the window paint, he recognized that they traveled mainly north. He watched as the terrain changed from short evergreens and scrawny shrubs to valleys and ravines with larger stands of trees. Once they passed a logging camp. By then, he was certain they were in the Greater Khingan mountain range north of Harbin.
Snow covered the higher peaks. We must be at five or six thousand feet, he thought after seeing the snow and Asiatic-appearing loggers dressed in furs.
They finally stopped after arriving at an obviously recently constructed camp. There, they spent the next month in vigorous physical training and unit operations for men who had never served together. Three times during that month, Peng heard workers speaking in an unknown language. He thought the speech might be one of northern China’s ethnic minorities. He was correct. They spoke one of the Tungas languages more related to Turkish, Japanese, and Korean than Chinese.
The original one hundred and twenty commandos gradually dwindled from the rigors of the training and based on criteria never explained to Peng. By the end of week three, only sixty men remained.
Then, one day, a trainer lacking insignia led Peng and his five senior subordinates to a room where a colonel briefed them on the Ellesmere mission. A major general and a brigadier general observed without participating or being identified. When the briefing ended, Peng and his men had one hour to pack before boarding more blacked-out buses for another hours-long trip. During one extended stop, Peng heard what he believed were men speaking Korean. Two hours later, the bus stopped again, this time in a small, deserted fishing village. There, motor launches transferred them to the submarine.
They had now been waiting a week off the west coast of Prince Patrick Island, the westernmost island of the Queen Elizabeth Islands in Canada’s far north. The boat’s captain had told Peng that only in the last few years had the island not been ice-locked most of the year, a presumed byproduct of the warming planet. Now the submarine hugged the coast—a check of the boat’s charts said they rested in a coastal indentation named Satellite Bay in the island’s north. They surfaced every other night to let crew and commandos stretch their legs on the hull and long enough for more effective reception of burst transmissions from high command relayed through Chinese satellites.
Most of the time, they lay stationary a hundred feet under the water. When they surfaced, the freezing air came as a welcome relief. The boat’s captain used the rapid transition from warm, humid air rife with male odors to frigid arctic air as a diversion appreciated by all. As a result, the men went from wearing shorts to furs in seconds. However, today was different.
Major Peng waited as the hatch opened, the arctic air flushed out the submarine, and the communication station checked for a message. For both security and current solar storm conditions, any message was simply a single word, repeated for thirty seconds at a satellite’s highest output. There were only three possible messages: “water” for mission aborted; “air” to remain on station; “earth” to proceed with the mission. For seven days, the message had been “air.” Peng watched the communication technician at his console. Suddenly, the technician sat up straighter, wrote something on a pad, and handed it to the boat’s captain. After glancing at the pad, the captain showed the message to Peng. It was a single symbol, the ideogram for “earth.”
CHAPTER 37
CONVERGENCE
The Party
The Autumnal Equinox party was in full swing on October 3rd when Zach entered the dining hall. As usual, Bre had gone all out with the decorations and the lighting. Once everyone had finished eating, the dini
ng tables were crowded to the sides of the room to create an ad hoc dance floor—which at the moment was being used by an eclectic mix of mainly younger staff members, plus some oddities such as Wilbur Huxler dancing with Paula Rosario.
Talk about opposite personalities! Zach thought when he saw the avuncular counselor and the acerbic biologist.
The music was an unknown instrumental—at least, unrecognizable to Zach—not that people noticed, as judged by couples engaged in a variety of dances, whether fitting the music or not. The astrophysicist Astrid Bergstrom was doing something like a foxtrot with Howard Mueller, Harold performed a respectable rumba with the dentist Marylou Stebbins, and Maggie Lazlos and Mary Coutriard engaged in something that involved roving hands and lip contact.
Find a room, ladies, thought Zach. As for the other dancers . . . who knew what they thought they were doing?
Zach surveyed the room, noting that most of the staff members were there. The remainder were on duty, ill, or a few disinclined to socialize. The latter would be noted by Huxler and Dr. Wilkenson as a potential danger sign of having psychological problems.
Zach’s gaze passed over one table, then returned. Kathy Zerlang stood talking to the people seated there: Ralph, one of the technicians—John something, Houdini, and Jill. John and Houdini had an exchange, and the entire table broke into laughter, with Jill joining in. Zach noted a twinge of irritation and wondered where that had come from. Maybe the evident camaraderie. He was tempted to wander over, but he wouldn’t have chosen to include Houdini if he was going to socialize. The man was good at what he did, but Zach wasn’t required to actually like him. His gaze moved back to a laughing Jill, noting her happy flush, bright eyes, and animated gestures at whatever was being said.
He moved on, perusing the room, then picked up a beer at the bar and headed for a table with an empty chair. The occupants had finished eating and were talking good-naturedly. Seated were Lieutenant Montero, one of his sergeants, Sandra Chu, and two radar men, Jose Avila and Pedro Laporta. Zach thought he heard Spanish as he approached the table, but they switched to English when they noticed him. Montero and Avila moved their chairs to make more room. “Have a seat, Zach,” offered Montero.
“Hey, Zach,” Sandra said with a grin. “How come you’re not out dancing?”
“Very simple,” riposted Zach. “As site safety officer, my job description includes minimizing accidents. And believe me, Zach Marjek on a dance floor is an accident waiting to happen.”
The others laughed, and Laporta added, “Now, as soon as they put some salsa music on, I’m asking Sandra to dance.”
“Be careful what you say,” Sandra shot back. “I do a mean salsa.”
Zach took a healthy swallow of beer and addressed Montero. “So, I noticed you and your men trudging in today. Looked like you’d been out a month, instead of just three days.”
“That was all a disguise,” Montero responded. “We always need enemies to underestimate us.”
“And what enemies did you run into this time out?” asked Avila, grinning.
“Oh, it was a hazardous mission. An entire company of camouflaged armor. Thought they could fool us by hanging fur pelts over their tanks.”
Zach interrupted. “You mean the musk ox herd southeast of here?”
“See! That’s what they want you to believe and proves the wiliness of the enemy. And how about those damned mobile land mines? We ran into a whole field of them yesterday and almost lost a man.”
This time, Sandra interrupted. “Oh, you mean the rabbits. Someone stepped in a rabbit hole again? I thought you guys were ‘always alert’?”
“They’re hares, not rabbits, and I rest my case. The camouflage of our enemies is ingenious.”
The entire table laughed, and Avila rose, slapping Montero on the shoulder. “I’m for another beer, anyone else?” Montero and Zach took him up on the offer.
Montero turned to Zach. “Seriously. No, it was pretty routine. I think we’ve done about all the useful training here we can do. We’re repeating the same exercises and covering the same ground over and over again. Can’t say I understand why the brass originally scheduled this tour for six months or why we just found out they extended us here another six weeks. Everything we’ve done could have been finished in no more than a month.”
Zach couldn’t reveal that the main purpose of the “training duty” for Montero and his men and the other such units that rotated in and out was to provide a minimum security force with sweeps out into the surrounding terrain. While it was unnecessary for these units to be enthralled with this situation, it never hurt to keep them alert and not thinking about other reasons for this assignment.
“Tell you what, Ramon. How about setting up some ‘mini-missions’? For example, some of the staff could serve as opposition forces while they’re out on their fossil hunts, hikes, whatever. One thing that’s hard in this terrain is long-distance spotting of movement. The openness can fool you if a target doesn’t contrast enough.”
“Not a bad thought, Zach,” Montero said thoughtfully, “and you’re right. We’re used to seeing things up closer, so spotting anything unusual is not a problem out to maybe a thousand yards, but here you can sometimes see ten miles if you’re high enough. We’re not used to discriminating at those distances.”
“Well,” said Zach, “we could also have some human silhouettes made and ask for volunteers to place them around an area. Then you and your men could practice being able to spot them at various distances and under different light. I’m sure some people would be interested in helping. In fact, when Bre finds out, she’ll probably dream up some kind of game and reward system.”
“Okay,” confirmed Montero, “let me get back to you tomorrow, and we can think about it some more.”
Avila returned with four beers precariously clumped together within his hands.
“I forgot if it was three or four beers I was supposedly getting, so wisely took the safe course and brought four.” After distribution and sampling of the new arrivals, everyone at the table was silent for a moment.
“You know,” said Montero, “the more I think about this kind of exercise, the more I think it’ll be useful. Just yesterday, when we were about ten miles south of here, Cory thought he saw a couple of figures crossing a stream farther to the south. None of the rest of us could see anything, and he couldn’t either when he tried to point out the location. Where he indicated was at least a mile away, so maybe he was fooled by light reflecting off the stream and rocks. Anyway, I put it in my report.”
“Yeah,” said Avila. “Something similar happened with the bone hunters a couple of weeks ago. Paula told me how she, Nylander, and Samuel Romberg were checking out the escarpment to the west. You know, just north of where they’d already found a couple of fossil sites. On the way back, Nylander mentioned he thought he saw a human figure on Baldy Ridge above the camp. No one else spied anything, and Nylander wouldn’t discuss it. As smart as he is, he’s a real prick, and Paula figured he blurted it out without thinking and then didn’t want to look foolish when no one else saw anything.”
Zach’s breath caught, and he felt a sudden tensing in his muscles and hairs rising on his back. “You say that was about two weeks ago?” he asked Avila.
“That’s right. The same week Houdini tried making goulash with last of the musk ox meat. Christ. He comes up with some amazing meals, but he missed on that one.”
“Did they report the possible sighting?”
“No,” said Avila, frowning at Zach. “Should they have? It was almost certainly some mirage, if anything.”
“No,” said Zach, “just curious.” He wanted to agree it was probably nothing and didn’t want to alert any others who were listening.
“Speaking of food, how about that chocolate decadence cake Kathy made for the party?” Sandra gushed. “I’m afraid if I have one more piece, I’ll never sleep tonight.”
And with that, the conversation flew off into a paean to chocolate.
Zach’s mind was elsewhere. Two sightings of possible human figures where none should be. His instincts went on full alert. He remembered two weeks previous, about the same time as Nylander’s sighting, when he thought he caught a flash on the same ridgeline. He’d assumed it was the sunlight reflecting off quartz or some other mineral—but what if he was wrong?
“I need to relieve myself. Excuse me.”
He rose and surveyed the room until he spotted Samuel Romberg, the geophysicist who was recently taking geological surveys in the vicinity of the site. Zach skirted the gyrating figures on the dance area and wound his way over to the table where Romberg talked with Ed Scofield and Gorski, one of the Russian experts.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Zach said as he interrupted, “but there’s something I wanted to ask Samuel.” The three at the table paused their conversation and sat back slightly in their chairs.
“Sure thing, Zach,” said Romberg, nodding, “what’s up?”
“On Baldy Ridge above the site, is there any quartz or another mineral deposit that might reflect sunlight? A while back, I thought I caught a glimpse of a pretty good reflection and wondered if it was natural or someone had dropped garbage or tools.”
“Well,” said Romberg, “it’s most likely not natural. The formations in this area are relatively deficient in quartz or deposits that might reflect. In fact, that ridge has a massive coal vein running just under the top and almost a quarter of the way down the ridge. Where did you think the reflection was located?”
“About ten to twenty percent down from the top,” replied Zach.
“Well, there you go. That’s in the middle of the coal seam. Looks like possibly someone did leave something up there.”
“Okay, thanks, Samuel. I’ll ask people hiking up the ridge to look for anything. No point littering up the place or losing equipment.” With that, Zach excused himself. He now looked for Sinclair and found him nursing a beer and deep in conversation with Wilber Huxler. Zach wandered near their table to where Sinclair faced him. Once he caught Sinclair’s eye, Zach gave a causal nod toward the hall, then moved in that direction. At the hall entrance, Zach looked back. Sinclair was following, so Zach climbed the stairs.
Harbinger (The Janus Harbinger Book 1) Page 48