“Certainly.”
“Jeff,” Fred called to a young man in a lab coat standing by the underside of the simulator’s fuselage. “It’s Cleo’s beddy-bye time.”
Curious, Lazarus crossed the open floor of the simulator room and stuck his hand out to the young man, who was in his late twenties.
“Hi, I’m Lazarus Keesley,” he announced good-naturedly. “Do you mind if I watch?”
“Gee, no, Mr. Keesley,” the young man answered, self-consciously wiping his hand against his lab coat before shaking Lazarus’ hand. “I’m Jeff Anderson, Cleo’s baby sitter.”
“Cleo’s what?”
The young man laughed. “Actually, I’m her programmer, but nowadays I spend most of my time just looking after her and her sisters. You know, doing maintenance. Today, I’m doing a complete memory dump.”
Puzzled, Lazarus Keesley stared at Jeff Anderson. Even though they had stopped shaking hands, Lazarus hadn’t let go of Jeff’s hand.
“Something I said?” Jeff asked self-consciously.
“Several things,” Lazarus replied. “First, you said that you were her programmer. I thought she was self-programming. Second, you mentioned something about ‘sisters.’”
“Oh, that, Mr. Keesley,” Jeff replied with an infectious smile. “Cleo is by and large self-programming, but that’s what we would call the conscious part of her brain. However, the subconscious parts, like fear and the other emotions and reactions, have to be preprogrammed. That’s what I did a few years ago. Now and then, we still make slight changes to see what effect they might have. For example, we’re fine- tuning her fear right now. We want her to be not quite as fearless as she was before. We think it might improve her survival instincts. Anyhow, that’s what Colonel Rodell thinks, so we’re trying it.”
“Could you please explain that, Jeff?” Lazarus asked, still with a puzzled expression on his face.
“Well, what we’re about to do is copy out Cleo’s entire memory to these high-density tapes. That way if anything goes wrong, we can restart her exactly where she is now. After that, I’m going to insert some very minor changes into her subconscious mind and see if they make her a little better at dogfighting.”
“And the sisters?” Lazarus queried.
“Well, Cleo is a machine, and like all machines, she can break, although not often. We have two other complete sets of her hardware over there, just in case. All I have to do is load the tapes from this CLEO system into one of those, and we have an exact copy. Even Cleo won’t know the difference.”
“I think I see,” Lazarus remarked.
“We’d better get moving,” Fred interrupted. “If you’d stand over here, Mr. Keesley, we can let Jeff and Joe take Cleo out of the simulator.”
Lazarus Keesley moved obediently and watched in fascination as Jeff and Joe DiConza quickly unscrewed a large panel from the bottom of the simulator.
“Cleo is located under the pilot’s seat in the ATASF, Mr. Keesley, so she can bail out with the pilot if the need ever arises,” Fred Kelder explained. “The panel they just removed allows us to take her out for routine maintenance, like today. In a moment, Jeff will put her to sleep.”
The procedure surprised Lazarus. However, in hindsight, it was so obvious.
“Cleo, it’s bed time,” Jeff coaxed.
“Do I have to?” Cleo whined like an eight-year-old.
“Do it, Cleo,” Jeff ordered gently.
An instant later, Cleo’s soft humming stopped.
“We have to stop her whenever we do a dump,” Fred told him. Jeff and Joe began disconnecting Cleo from the simulator. “When we’re done, Jeff will make the changes in her subconscious functions. After that, we’ll place her back into the simulator and wake her up. To her, it will be just the same as when we wake up in the morning.”
“She doesn’t need sleep, does she?” Lazarus inquired.
Fred chuckled. “No, it’s more like the way we use anesthesia on humans when we perform operations. It’s done only for maintenance.”
“How about those two units over there?” Lazarus questioned, pointing to two large metal boxes lying on a table. Each was about two feet square, three feet long and festooned with tags and warning flags.
“Those are hot backups,” Fred explained. “We actually have three CLEO systems. The one in the simulator is the active unit. Both of those are loaded with last week’s dump tapes and have been left in the sleep state. Should something horrible happen to the CLEO computer in the airplane, we’d only loose a week’s work.”
“I see,” Lazarus uttered as he hefted one of the metal boxes. He barely budged it. “How much does this weigh?”
“Oh,” as Colonel Fred Kelder searched his memory for the exact figure. “I believe it’s a little over a hundred pounds.”
Lazarus studied the two metal boxes and then tried to lift one for a second time. This time he succeeded in raising it clear of the table top.
“Here, let me give you a hand,” Fred exclaimed. He rushed to help. “I don’t want you to drop it.”
“We’re going to have to lock these up better than this,” Lazarus declared. He let Fred Kelder help him put the heavy box on the table again. “These are too easily moved. Two men could grab one and run out of here with it faster than you can tell me about it.”
“You don’t mean,…” Fred said before stopping to stare at Lazarus Keesley, “that those men?…”
“The ones that tried to kidnap Dr. MacCauley? Yes.”
“In here?” Fred Kelder pointed to the floor.
“Exactly,” Lazarus answered. “What’s to keep them from breaking into Hangar 18, stealing one of these, and be gone faster than you can say your name, Colonel Kelder?”
“But who were they?”
“Spetsnaz.”
“You’ve got to be kidding! Those are Russian Green Berets, aren’t they?”
“Something of the kind,” Lazarus replied while glancing around the room. Everyone was staring at him. “Even though we might have gotten two, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t another dozen or so up in the hills, ready to shoot their way in here tonight. Now, where can we lock these boxes up?”
It was several seconds before anyone responded. “I know,” Jeff Anderson spoke up, “the bank vault!”
“The bank vault?” Lazarus repeated, obviously surprised.
“Of course,” Colonel Fred Kelder agreed. “It’d be perfect, once we clean that junk out of it. Jeff, why don’t you show it to our guest.”
The vault was located in the back corner of the hangar and appeared exactly like a bank vault. Its massive steel door hung slightly open as Jeff Anderson and Lazarus Keesley peeked into the gloomy interior.
“Apparently,” Jeff explained, “they built this vault for the project that occupied this hangar before we did. When we arrived a year ago, there was nothing in here. We’re just using it for storing old papers and stuff.”
“Is there a light?” Lazarus asked. He leaned forward to see through the gloom. “It’s darker than a black hole in there!”
“I think the switch is over here,” Jeff said. He cautiously reached in and felt for the switch. Two fluorescent lamps flickered on inside. Lazarus pulled on the vault’s door and was surprised by how easily it moved.
“It’s a real bank vault door,” Jeff noted, pointing to the back side of the door. “It even has a time lock. That’s why we leave it open—we might want to get in at night. Besides, I don’t think anyone remembers the combination any longer.”
Lazarus walked in and looked around. The vault was big, about fifteen feet by fifty. “It’s a lot bigger than I’d expect a bank vault to be.”
The place was half-filled with boxes stacked in no particular order. Broken and unused equipment lined one wall.
“It’s perfect,” Lazarus declared. “In fact, couldn’t we move your computer equipment in here, too?”
Jeff Anderson glanced around the room and shrugged.
“Sure,” he ans
wered, “but why?”
“As I understand it,” Lazarus told him, “those computer tapes you make every week are almost as important as the CLEO computers themselves.”
The young man grimaced. “I’m sorry, sir,” he apologized, “I completely forgot about that. You’re absolutely right. We’re going to have to lock them up, too.”
“And if we have the room,” Lazarus added, “why not the computers or whatever you use to program them?”
“Well,” Jeff responded, glancing around the room. “The only problem I foresee is getting enough electric power in here.”
“But why?”
The young man snickered. “This is the Air Force, sir,” he lamented with a certain amount of bitterness. “I’ve been trying to get a new electric circuit run into my lab for six months now. I doubt if you’ll get this place rewired any quicker.”
“Six weeks!” Lazarus Keesley exclaimed in disbelief. He glanced at both Colonel Kelder and Jeff Anderson, who had accompanied him to the base’s facilities maintenance office. The officer in charge, Major Sampson, a plump man with a small black mustache and a bald spot on the top at his head, peered angrily back at the intruder.
“Yes,” Major Sampson responded. “I’ve got just two electricians cleared to work in any of those hangars, and I have all these requests to fulfill,” he added, waving a thick handful of requisition forms at Lazarus.
“But this is an emergency!”
“Mr. Keesley,” the major replied irately, “around here everything is an emergency. General This wants that, and it’s an emergency. General That wants this, and it’s also an emergency. I run this office, and I run it according to the book. Your requisition will be handled in its proper order. Until I get more men to do this work, that’s the way it’s going to have to be.”
Lazarus eyed Fred Kelder before he suddenly grabbed the black telephone on the major’s desk.
“You can’t use that!” Major Sampson protested as he tried to grab it back.
“Just watch,” Lazarus snapped angrily. He began punching buttons. It took just seconds for him to tap the number. A moment later, he heard a buzz and a click as somebody answered.
“This is Lazarus Keesley,” Lazarus said, announcing himself. “Is he in? I must talk to him.”
Lazarus frowned at the facilities officer while he waited for his call to be transferred.
“Good day, sir,” he said. “I have a small problem out here; I need your help on it, sir.”
“What is it?” he repeated. “Well, I’m trying to get some electric power run into a vault they have out here, so I can lock those computers up where they’ll be safe. I’ve just been told by the facilities officer that I’ll have to wait six weeks. You know that we can’t wait that long.”
Lazarus listened for a few seconds and then handed the phone to Major Sampson. “He wants to talk to you, Major.”
“Who?” Sampson bleated as he took the telephone. Lazarus responded with a glare.
“This is Major Sampson,” the major uttered cautiously. “To whom am I speaking?”
The major’s eyes formed perfect circles as his face turned white. An instant later, he shot out of his chair to stand rigidly at attention.
“Yes, Mr. President!” he cried.
“Thule, Greenland,” he sputtered.
“Tonight,” he added an instant later.
Sampson held the handset against his ear for several more seconds, although it was apparent that he wasn’t listening to it any longer. Finally, as the shock drained away, he slowly slid back down into his chair. Numbed, he gazed blankly at Colonel Kelder.
“That was the president,” he mumbled weakly. “He just transferred me to Thule, Greenland. I’m to leave tonight.”
Chapter Thirty-three
The Indian moved cautiously along the footpath that led through one of the mine fields. The trail was carefully marked by two strips of white tape tied along rows of wooden stakes driven in the ground. Every so often, pennant-shaped flags printed in Russian warned that something unpleasant was lurking off the sides of the trail. A few minutes later, he was through the danger zone and back into the brush, when he heard a noise to his left. Roger Fontaine froze as a light played on the surrounding rocks.
“Von tam.Over there,” a voice shouted. An instant later, he heard the sounds of feet stomping through the light underbrush. Roger Fontaine’s heart raced as the light came closer. A moment later, he could see the outlines of figures moving noisily toward him. His hand slipped down to his pants leg where his pistol holster was strapped. He slid his Heckler Koch VP70 9-mm pistol out and carefully twisted the selector to three-shot full-auto; each pull of the trigger would fire a burst of three bullets. Suddenly, the light flashed on him. The beam of light stayed on Roger Fontaine for just a moment and then moved on. A few seconds later, it illuminated a small clearing in the underbrush.
“Zdes.Over here,” a voice commanded as five men stumbled through the brush and rocks, heading toward the clearing illuminated by the leader’s flashlight. Soon, all five were standing in a semicircle answering the call of nature, not five meters away from Fontaine.
They moved away a few minutes later. After a ten-minute wait, Fontaine resumed moving uphill. Obviously, they’d mistaken Roger Fontaine’s camouflaged body for a rock.
Soon he was through the defensive zone guarded by the 195th Guards Motorized Infantry, which ran from the gravel road at the foot of the hill to a line three hundred meters up the hill. A yellow cloth tape tied from a series of wooden stakes marked the upper boundary. Numerous signs warned that it was also as far as any of the soldiers were permitted to go. From his briefing, Fontaine knew that the ground beyond the yellow tape was guarded by a battalion of border troops. Their orders would be to shoot first and ask questions later. Worse, he knew that they would have dogs that were specially trained to hunt down smugglers and, more recently, Afghan Mujahideen infiltrators. He carefully ducked under the tape and moved uphill; the easy part of his trip was over.
“Osya,” Vadim Savechenoko inquired suddenly, “Do you know the difference between Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev and the Tsar?”
“Chto?What?”Iosif Goryanov sputtered, surprised by Vadim’s unexpected question. They were negotiating a particularly steep stretch of the hillside. Iosif was leading, shining a flashlight to illuminate the primitive trail. He stopped, faced his partner and glared at him.
“Nyet,” he answered.
“The Tsar knew how to read!” Vadim broke into uproarious, uncontrolled laughter.
“Vadim,” Iosif warned him sternly, “your sense of humor is going to get you into trouble one of these days.”
“But it’s true! Besides, all the Communists are now Capitalists.”
Iosif chuckled, remembering the jokes that had circulated secretly during Brezhnev’s era. Many referred to him as Tsar Leonid.
“Still, Vadim,” Iosif rebuked him. “You should be careful about telling such jokes. You never know who might be listening.”
“What!” Vadim protested. “Out here, in the middle of nowhere?”
“Even out here,” Iosif answered gravely as he continued walking down the hillside.
The Indian heard the voices and froze. His first instinct was to run, but instead he moved cautiously to the shelter of a rock and searched for the source of the laughter. He spotted the flickering of a distant flashlight, although he no longer heard the voices.
Surprised by how far the voices seemed to have carried, Roger Fontaine pulled out his night-vision binoculars and searched the area for any other guards. However, he found none. All he saw were just the two men and a dog following a trail headed in his general direction.
Swearing softly, he dug into his fatigue pants pocket and pulled out a small shoe polish tin. Until now, he had made the infiltration of the heavily guarded area without leaving a trace of any sort. However, the dog changed that. The dog now headed his way was undoubtedly specially trained to sniff out and track down humans who
were where they weren’t supposed to be.
On the other hand, to be forewarned is to be forearmed. In this case, it was a tin of deer musk. The border guard dogs were reportedly trained to ignore non-human scents, particularly those of deer, wild pigs and other animals that lived in the wild.
At least that’s the theory, the Indian thought to himself. He opened the tin and rubbed some of the pungent-smelling grease on his boot soles.
Ten minutes later, Shura suddenly stopped and whined.
“Shura, chto takoe?Shura, what’s the matter?” Vadim asked as his dog circled in confusion. He turned his flashlight on to see what had excited Shura. All he saw was the bare dirt of the foot trail surrounded on either side by rocks and gravel.
“Osya?” he queried.
“Chto?”Iosif answered.
“What’s bothering Shura?”
“How the hell should I know,” Iosif replied. “Do I have a nose like a dog?”
“I’ve never seen her react this way before,” Vadim remarked while his dog circled them. “It’s like she’s found something she can’t identify.”
“It must be a deer,” Iosif guessed. “I saw one just the other day. I would have shot it too, if that wouldn’t have raised hell.”
“Come, Shura,” Vadim commanded and pulled on the leash. Shura whined and resisted.
“Maybe we should report this?” Iosif suggested quietly while he watched the dog’s strange behavior. “Maybe it’s a spy?”
“And if it’s a deer or a camel?” Vadim’s question was more of a warning. The sergeant major wouldn’t be amused if it turned out to be a false alarm.
“Yes,” Iosif responded in a low voice, “maybe we should ignore it.”
“And if it is a spy?” Vadim’s meaning was clear: the sergeant major would be even less amused if there was an infiltrator and they didn’t report it.
“Maybe we should follow it and find out,” Iosif suggested pragmatically.
The Espionage Game Page 30