by Greg Bear
‘Sounds like we’re being sent to do the one thing Quantico doesn’t train us for,’ Rebecca said.
‘What would that be?’ Grange asked.
‘Sweep up after the elephant parade.’
William snorted coffee through his nose.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Mecca
The city was now in the eighth day of the last month of the Islamic calendar, Dhu al-Hijja. Islam’s year of twelve synodic months, each of approximately twenty-nine days, was ruled by the moon and cyclically fell behind Western calendars. This had pushed the Hajj into October, a relatively pleasant time of year in Mecca. Daytime temperatures rarely exceeded ninety degrees. Many were now dressed in the two white cloths of ihram, right shoulders protruding, fat and shining and nut-brown or bony, ancient and withered. They were on their way to Mina, carrying their bags and cases of worldly goods or waiting at the curbs for buses and shuttles. There were no trains or subways in Mecca. Travel to Mina could take hours through heavy traffic. Many simply walked.
Winter felt invisible. He looked poor and sick, not prosperous. Indeed, he was sick. And so he stood on a corner near the Grand Mosque and watched as the pilgrims’ mandatory patience—a requirement of ihram—was tried by inexperienced police and guards from Oman and Yemen. The air was cool. He struggled to remember and concluded that he had come in search of something—logically, that would have to be God. He had come to listen. He felt as if there had been long years of grief and pain, an unceasing agony of duty and labor, of betrayal and evil—but somehow the details escaped him. Something had been left unfinished.
Along the busy streets, the modern thoroughfares and underpasses and overpasses, the hotels and shops and apartment complexes studded with air conditioners that surrounded the broad plazas around the Grand Mosque, came the streams of travelers and citizens. Down one narrow road lined with bistros and shops and overarched by apartments and neon signs blinking in Arabic and sometimes in English, Winter saw Pakistanis and Palestinians. Along another wider street, shops selling rich fabrics were attended by Indonesian pilgrims who cast suspicious glances at Chinese Muslims. There were old men and young, in some cases handsome but also exotically ugly, even barbaric, as if plucked from ancient centuries—with scars on their glossy cheeks and foreheads, or missing eyes or hands or limbs.
Nervous masses, by the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. Troubled or blissful. Sweating and vomiting in the gutters, or walking with heads high, singing the prayerful chant of talbiyah. Pilgrims frightened by the confusion, troubled and exalted by what they might find within themselves. Shopping, eating from paper plates and plastic bowls in stalls and at tall round tables set on cracked ochre and red tiles or garish pink linoleum, fueling for the long and trying day ahead.
He could not remember hating these people. He watched them calmly and then felt the lump in his pocket and, right there on the street, reached in and pulled out the vinyl folder and stared at the odd documents and the polished badge. Seeing the English words, he closed the case and returned it to the pocket where it pressed against his thigh.
They would mob him if they saw his creds. They would stone him to bloody pulp. But no one had seen.
What have I done? What have I brought?
Forgetfulness.
But I don’t remember why.
He took out his keys and opened the small door beside the battered steel roll-up garage gate. Inside, Gershon stood watch over the second Volvo truck, perched on the edge of a plastic crate, eyes wide at the unexpected entry. Fluorescent lights flickered in the cracked and patched concrete ceiling. Water was leaking from the apartments above. Gershon looked at him with some concern. ‘Mr. Brown. It’s not time, is it?’
The American jangled his key ring and smiled. ‘We have to keep our powder dry.’ He opened the back of the truck and climbed up beside the crates. Then he walked the length of the truck bed, caressing the plastic and canvas tarps, tugging at the ropes.
Gershon crammed his hands in his pockets and watched from the rear.
One rope was loose. The American stooped to untie it, then swung it away. ‘Why do that?’ Gershon asked. ‘We aren’t supposed to mess with them yet, are we?’
The American held his finger to his lips and smiled.
Yigal entered from the rear and stood beside Gershon. Together, they asked again what he was doing, voices echoing. He took a crowbar and pried away the side of the middle crate, revealing a launcher within—steel tubes still shrouded in bubble wrap. ‘They’re traveling well,’ he murmured. ‘They look fine.’
‘We aren’t supposed to open the crates,’ Yigal said.
‘That’s what I told him,’ Gershon said. ‘He’s going against his own orders.’
‘Well, he should know.’ Then, more sharply, ‘What are you doing, Mr. Brown?’
The crates containing the rockets had been stacked between the larger crates. He knelt and used the crowbar to rip open the wood at a lower corner, exposing the plastic wrapping and foam packing. He jammed the bar into the crate, vigorously punching and whacking at the exposed bottoms of the rockets. Glass beads and white and gray powder dropped in chunks.
‘My God, he’s gone crazy,’ Gershon said, pulling himself up onto the truck bed. ‘Stop it!’
Mr. Brown—that was what they called him, and he could not remember his other names—backed away from the crate as the young men approached.
‘Tell us what’s happening, Mr. Brown,’ Gershon said, regarding him levelly.
He shook his head. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing to worry about. I’ve been out walking, seeing the sights. Haven’t you?’
Gershon called back, ‘Get Menachem. No, stay here and help me. We have to keep him from doing more damage. Get some rope.’
‘He’s our boss!’ Yigal said.
‘Mr. Brown, you need to come down here with me. Let’s go back to the tent or back to the room. Let’s discuss this.’
Mr. Brown lifted the crowbar but he did not hate Gershon. He could not strike him. His shoulders slumped. Gershon leaped forward, pulled him down, and jammed him against a crate. Yigal brought more rope. By that time, three more young men had entered the garage. They bunched at the back of the truck, staring at the tall American who had once recruited and led them.
‘He’s off his nut,’ Menachem said. They took his arms and legs and dropped him from the back of the truck and let him slump on the floor.
‘What should we do?’
The folder fell from his pocket onto the floor. Yigal reached down and flipped it open, examined the credentials with dismay, and then passed the folder around.
‘Who is this Lawrence Winter?’ Menachem demanded. ‘This is your picture!’
‘Throw him out in the streets,’ Yigal said angrily.
‘Don’t go back there!’ Gershon yelled at one of the young men who had climbed onto the truck bed. ‘There’s powder all over.’
Gershon and Menachem slammed him against the wall of the garage. ‘Who the hell are you?’ Gershon demanded. Menachem struck him several more times with the back of his hand, across the face. His lip cracked open.
He could not answer.
He did not know.
‘We have to decide,’ Menachem said. ‘Is this some sort of trick?’
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
The Red Sea U.S.S. Robert A. Heinlein, SF-TMS 41
The helicopter flight from Oman took two hours. William looked through the port beside his seat. Below, the early morning darkness that shrouded the Red Sea was painted by a thin ribbon of silver moonlight. The weather was clear. The new moon would soon be visible across the Arabian Peninsula.
Then, William spotted a long, blunt knife cutting through the ribbon with a glint of sloping sides and a gentle wake that vanished less than a hull length behind. He guessed this was the stealth frigate Heinlein.
The chopper descended and described a perfect circle around the Navy ship until clamshell doors opened aft of the two ro
und hillocks of the superstructure. Three ramps folded outward, creating a triangular platform. The chopper was given permission to hover but not to touch down. It dropped a cable to the deck plates to ground its considerable buildup of static electricity. An eerie glow around the rotors and blades slowly diminished in the dry night air.
Grange led his BuDark team to the hatch and they jumped to the platform, ducking in the downdraft. As the helicopter departed, they were met by the executive officer and escorted down a flight of stairs.
‘Welcome to the Heinlein,’ the exec greeted them as the noise diminished below a deafening roar. ‘I’m Lieutenant Commander Stengler. Our skipper is Commander Peter Periglas.’ Following Stengler, they crossed a lofty hangar beside and beneath dozens of self-guided UAVs stacked in tiers and hung from the bulkheads, wings folded like huge sleeping albatrosses. There were a lot of gaps. Many of the Heinlein’s birds were already soaring above the desert and the cities of the Hijaz.
The platform folded, the clamshells closed. Stengler guided them down narrow corridors and more steps to a ready room opposite the Tactical Surveillance Center—what would have once been called the Combat Information Center. ‘Heads are down the hall and to the right, as well as two staterooms. Do not turn left, or you will be met by some of our fine Marines, and they have no sense of humor. Our ship is small and tidy but our food is excellent. We will be serving an early breakfast at 0700 GMT, to which you are all invited. In the meantime, we’ve received a secure recorded briefing from Washington which I am instructed is for your eyes only. After you avail yourselves of our facilities, make yourselves comfortable and we will pipe that briefing into the ready room ASAP.’
Grange thanked Stengler. They dropped their kits on one side of the ready room. Fifteen minutes later, Grange stood beside the door as it was locked. They all sat in the comfortable high-backed chairs arranged before a wall display on which a sunny ocean portrait of the ship was currently being shown.
The screen went dark. A young, nervous male voice-over informed them that their secure briefing was to be delivered by SAC Quentin T. Dillinger of Diplomatic Security. Dillinger stood behind a White House podium with a map of the Arabian Peninsula half in shadow behind him. He was not at ease and frequently referred to notes on the podium or glanced over his shoulder as areas of the map were highlighted.
‘Greetings. David. The rest of you I have not met.
‘BuDark was established three years ago as an internal, inter-agency investigation team, by mandate of the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees. I was appointed SAC of the operation, tasked to learn about a covert U.S. plan to respond to a major Islamic terrorist strike, on the order of 9-11. We have discovered that such a plan did in fact exist, targeting Mecca and code-named Desert Vulture, and a version of it may very well be under way. An FBI special agent named Lawrence Winter apparently decided to ignore his original orders and reconstruct Desert Vulture into a scheme of his own, using his own contacts. He traveled throughout Mexico, Central America, and the Middle East, arranging for the transfer of money from several international parties. For reasons still not clear, he expanded the original target list of Desert Vulture to include Ohio, Rome, and Jerusalem—in addition to Mecca.
‘Branches of his operation have been located and halted in Washington State, Rome, and in Israel. We could not prevent what may have been a dress rehearsal in Ohio. And one last operation, unfortunately, still threatens Mecca. It is this operation that immediately concerns us.
‘We are in the season of the Hajj. Approximately a million pilgrims have entered Mecca, despite unstable conditions caused by the breakdown and departure of the Saudi government. Lawrence Winter and a team of Israeli operatives, hand-picked from the sons of Jewish extremists, are in or near Mecca at this moment. They have more than two hundred custom-made fireworks charges designed to airburst and disperse biological payloads at two thousand feet. The payloads are not anthrax. Winter has substituted a transgenic strain of yeast. In the field, exposure to this yeast has caused rapid onset of memory disorders in civilians and in lawenforcement officers. A small quantity is sufficient to cause illness.
‘One of our forensic psychologists suggests that Winter is trying to punish us for killing his family, not with a Biblical plague, but something new: a stealth pestilence that causes permanent amnesia. Wipe away the world’s memory, and you wipe out hatred—that seems to be his theory.
‘Jerusalem and Rome are no longer threatened, so the Muslim world is likely to interpret any strike against Mecca as a call to all-out holy war. I think you can see that any U.S. involvement with Desert Vulture or Lawrence Winter is inexplicable and inexcusable.
‘Our only option is to take out these weapons with a series of pinpoint strikes, using a weapon that will cauterize anything within a diameter of fifty to one hundred meters. We cannot use high explosives or even tactical nukes, not just because of collateral damage or the extraordinary political consequences, but because of the potential dispersal of surviving toxic particles. Instead, we have decided to utilize a class of kinetic kill projectiles known as Lancets—essentially guided steel telephone poles tipped with a chemical warhead. They’re designed to fall from low Earth orbit and punch a hole in the ground, through several hundred feet of dirt, reinforced concrete, and even steel. They then incinerate anything within the relatively small but very deep impact crater, at temperatures above three thousand degrees Celsius. We’ve already launched sixty of these bunker-busters into low Earth orbit at intervals, in close-spaced clusters of four. They can be brought down on twenty minutes’ notice and will self-guide with an accuracy of one or two meters to obliterate pre-programmed or laser-painted targets.
‘We believe there are three trucks involved, and that Winter is going to release the fireworks on the second day of the Hajj, as pilgrims funnel through Mina. That will be tomorrow. One million pilgrims will be tightly concentrated in a small area within the village. Winter’s rockets could be launched upwind of Mina, explode, and disperse well over two hundred pounds of uniquely deadly particles.
‘We have very little time.
‘Sending non-Muslims into Mecca would be considered highly provocative under any circumstance, but we believe the seriousness of our situation renders such concerns irrelevant. It has been determined at the highest level, however, that this operation cannot involve serving military personnel. And so we have selected a team of government officers and agents that we believe are trustworthy and have demonstrably had no knowledge of or participation in any aspect of Desert Vulture.
‘If necessary, we will die to protect not only the pilgrims in Mecca, but the citizens of the United States of America and every nation on Earth—the entire human race.’
‘Who’s “we”, paleface?’ Rebecca asked under her breath.
‘Your next briefing will take place on the ground in Saudi Arabia. Godspeed.’
The screen faded on Dillinger’s drawn features.
Having it served up and delivered all at once left William numb. The deck vibrated under his feet as another UAV was RATO-launched into the early morning. Rebecca took his hand and gripped it.
‘Goddamn them all to hell,’ she said.
William returned the squeeze.
Captain Periglas met them in the TSC and dismissed their Marine escorts. ‘Ladies and gents, this is what we have for you so far.’ He waved his arm across the darkened room. There was only one display visible; most of the officers and enlisted men in the dimly lighted Tactical Surveillance Center were wearing gogs or helmets. ‘Currently, there are fifteen UAVs surveilling the sky above and around Mecca, most of them at altitude, that is, exceeding ten thousand meters. They have excellent SAR—fine-resolution synthetic aperture radar—as well as outstanding optics and other sensors. Many of our UAVs are equipped with smaller aircraft that can be dispersed in quantity. We refer to them as “midges”. Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows. They even fly like sparrows,
for up to twenty hours before they self-destruct. The ones we are utilizing at this moment to search the crowds in Mecca are known as Osmic Mobile Observers or OSMOs. They can zero in on individuals or groups of individuals based on long-term dietary habits.
‘Any vegetarian will tell you that meat-eaters stink; I stink, most of my crew stinks. Rich Muslims stink but with significant differences. Poor Muslims stink hardly at all. Three meals a day of eggs, meat, and/or fish, and we can send an OSMO right up to you with the passionate sensitivity of a moth seeking a hot date. We can also distinguish observant Muslims from drinkers of alcoholic beverages, which may or may not be helpful; we are discovering that a disturbing number of security, police, and army personnel have imbibed spirituous liquors, wine, or beer in the past two weeks.’
Grange motioned Jane Rowland forward from the group and Periglas pointed to a chair beside a Chief Warrant Officer. The chief removed his gogs and switched on a monitor so that they could all see what he was seeing—a complicated map of Mecca, spotted with circles and ellipses of pink, purple, and green. The larger pulsing overlays were accompanied by shifting ranks of numbers.