Project Aura

by Bob Mayer

  The coast of Colombia was directly ahead of the bow of the carrier, a hundred miles over the horizon.

  *****

  Valika had spent the flight on her cell phone and laptop, coordinating what she would need. She had operated in the United States many times before for Cesar, so she had had no trouble lining up the men and equipment to do the task In a capitalistic society, money could indeed buy anything. She had already transferred over sixteen million dollars into various accounts and upon completion of the mission would transfer another fifteen million.

  The small Aura projector was across from her, hooked to the plane's power. At this low level it generated a large enough field for Raisor to appear, listening in on her conversations. She had not needed his help or contacts. The rest of the passenger compartment of the Lear jet was empty.

  "Make sure they have explosives," Raisor advised her for the third time.

  "I've already insured we will have adequate means to get inside the complex," Valika said. "I have a question for you, though."

  "Yes?"

  "What if we are confronted with Psychic Warriors? What if not all of them are in Colombia?"

  "The most critical time will be when you land," Raisor said. "You must get inside the complex quickly. It's the one place where the Psychic Warriors can't operate, since it's shielded. It's the same way Dalton destroyed the Russian facility."

  "Dalton?"

  "One of the army people at Bright Gate," Raisor said. "He betrayed me also. They all did."

  "You still did not answer me about what we should do if we are confronted," Valika noted.

  Raisor pointed at the two cases that Valika had bought from Kraskov. "I know what you have there."

  "Will they work on Psychic Warriors?"

  "I don't know for certain," Raisor said, "but I imagine they will have some effect. That's if you see them first"

  "They can't stay invisible from you, can they?"

  "No."

  "Good. Then you will warn us if you see them on the virtual plane, correct?"

  "Correct."

  The rest of the trip was made in silence.

  The Lear touched down at a small airfield outside of Granby, in north-central Colorado. It had been chosen because one of her contacts knew that there were four Army National Guard Huey helicopters parked there, exactly what they would need.

  The mercenaries she had hired had already taken over the small field, capturing the two full-time employees. As the Lear rolled to a stop, a Ford Explorer came racing out of a hangar and up to the plane. The man who stepped out was short and wiry, wearing khaki with a combat vest. He carried an MP-5 submachine gun casually in his right hand.

  "Good-bye, Mr. Raisor," Valika said as she crossed the aisle and flipped off the switch for the Aura generator. Raisor's form popped out of existence. She then unhooked the generator and went to the now open door of the plane. She hopped down the steps and met the man.

  "Mr. Gregory," Valika said, nodding in greeting.

  "Ms. Valika. It's a pleasure to do business once again." Gregory led her toward the truck "You do know, of course, that due to the mission to be accomplished, the location here inside my own country, and the amount you are paying, this will be the last time I will be working. My men and I will be retiring to a remote location after this."

  "That would make sense," Valika agreed.

  "I could use some more specifics on what actually we are looking for and what is to be recovered."

  "Get us in first," Valika said. "Then you'll be shown what is to be taken." She paused at the door. "There's a computer in the airplane that you need to off-load and place inside the helicopter I am to ride in. There are also several cases of high-power lithium batteries. Those are to be placed near the computer."

  She waited while Gregory's men hauled out the small Aura transmitter and the batteries. Then she got in the truck and they drove to the hangar.

  *****

  "They're here," Jackson's voice, modified through Sybyl, sounded inside of Dalton's head. Or actually, he realized, his avatar's head. He still wasn't comfortable operating on the virtual plane. She relayed what she was seeing, through the computer, to both Barnes and Dalton.

  Kirtley's team appeared, popping into existence, almost simultaneously. Four men on the roof of the main building, one in each cardinal direction. Targets began popping up and the avatars fired, small balls of power exploding the wooden silhouettes.

  Dalton moved down the sewer tunnel he was in, forcing himself to not jump. He shoved open a manhole cover and fired as he came out, hitting one of the team in the back with a low-power shot. Dr. Hammond froze the avatar.

  Dalton ducked back down into the tunnel. He raced back toward the building, keeping track of Kirtley's forces via Jackson. The four men that had appeared on the roof were working their way down through the building, a classic clearing technique. Dalton had expected Kirtley's men to jump from the roof to the hostage room in one move, but it was clear they still had completely assimilated the capabilities of being a Psychic Warrior.

  Dalton popped his head up in the hostage room. Barnes's avatar didn’t turn.

  "Hey, Sergeant Major," Barnes said.

  "I'm taking a couple of the hostages," Dalton said.

  Barnes nodded. "Kirtley’s moving too slow."

  Dalton grabbed two of the dummies and ducked back down in the tunnel. He ‘saw’, via Barnes, the first avatars appear in the basement.

  Barnes fired, spinning, hitting the remaining dummies, as Kirtley's men shot at him. Barnes hit all of the ‘hostages’ before being shut down by Dr. Hammond. Dalton lost his ‘eye’ in the room.

  Dalton made it across the street and up into the next building. Through Jackson he could ‘see’ that Kirtley had called in his other three men from their guard positions. And then all went black.

  No form, no input. Nothing. Just self, lost on the virtual plane.

  Dalton knew immediately that Kirtley had had Hammond shut him down. He felt a moment's panic, but then used the techniques he had used in the Trojan Warrior program to regain control of his psyche. He was completely isolated on the virtual plane unable to move, unable to even sense the grayness of the plane itself.

  Jimmy.

  He didn't hear at first so lost was he in keeping control.

  Jimmy.

  Like a lifeline in a vast dark ocean, the voice got through. Dalton seized on his deceased wife’s essence.

  Jimmy. It's me.

  Marie.

  Be careful, Jimmy. There are others here.

  He felt power course into him, the black giving way to gray. He was moving, being automatically jumped back to Bright Gate by Sybyl, retracing the route he had taken to Fort Campbell.

  And then he was back in the tank, the program bringing him back from the virtual world into his body.

  "Marie?" Dalton queried into the gray, but there was no response.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The shuttle was mated with the external tanks and boosters, nose pointing toward the roof of the vehicle assembly building. The system rested on a crawler transporter forty meters long by thirty wide. Propelled by eight sets of huge tracked propulsion units, the entire thing began moving, starting the trip to the launch pad. At a speed of less than one mile an hour, it would take four hours to reach the launch pad overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

  Inside the cargo bay, the SC-MILSTAR satellite was ready to be deployed in space.

  *****

  It wasn't long into the Cold War before the United States realized that housing its command and control facilities in surface buildings, easily susceptible to attack, was not a good idea. Once the decision was made to build a hardened facility, politics and practicality chose Cheyenne Mountain, overlooking Colorado Springs, which already had a large military presence in the form of Fort Carson, the Air Force Academy, and Peterson Air Force Base.

  Work was begun on the one-hundred-million-year-old mountain in May 1961. A four-and-a-half-acre g
rid was hollowed out deep inside the mountain. Then over thirteen hundred metal springs were placed on the floor. Each spring was four feet long and twenty inches in diameter and could withstand a pressure of sixty-five thousand pounds. The theory was that the springs would allow the facility to withstand the shock wave of a thermonuclear blast on the surface of the mountain. On top of the springs, fifteen steel, windowless buildings were built to house NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, a joint U.S.-Canadian facility.

  There were only two tunnels into the underground base, allowing security to be very tight. The main entrance tunnel was over a third of a mile long and ended at a set of massive steel and concrete blast doors. Over eleven hundred people worked in the center, and it had operated 365 days a year, round the clock since inception.

  The facility had opened for business on the sixth of February, 1964. Through the sixties and seventies, the major mission of the center was to provide missile warning, primarily through the Defense Early Warning line established across Canada and Alaska. In 1979 the Air Force established the Space Defense Operations Center there to counter the perceived growing threat by the Soviet Union toward satellites. In the 1980s the Air Force Space Command was established, and it absorbed all the subordinate units working in Cheyenne Mountain.

  In 1981, Space Command supported the first shuttle launch, as it has done ever since. It was also tasked to coordinate the deployment of the MILSTAR constellation. In preparation for the coming deployment of the last satellite in that system, a group of Space Command men and women deep inside Cheyenne Mountain were running through a practice exercise insuring that once the SC- MILSTAR was put in orbit by the shuttle, they would be ready to begin worldwide operations.

  *****

  "Don't ever do that to me again!" Dalton was inside Kirtley's personal space, causing the agent to take an involuntary step backward.

  "Don't worry," Kirtley said. "It won't ever happen again, because you're never going over again."

  Dalton didn't back off. "Were you embarrassed because we killed most of the hostages and stole the others? Because you screwed up?"

  "It was time to come back." Kirtley slipped out from between Dalton and the wall and walked to the control console, stepping up on the higher platform, looking down on the sergeant major.

  "You should have jumped right into the room where the hostages were held," Dalton said.

  "That's not proper technique," Kirtley argued.

  "'Proper technique'?" Dalton pointed at the isolation tubes from which the rest of the team were being extracted. "There's no book on this. There is no proper technique. You have to use the advantages Psychic Warrior gives you to the max. Why clear a building in the normal way, when you're not normal? I guarantee you that those cartel guards will put a bullet in the hostages' heads the second they realize something's wrong."

  "I'll take your advice under consideration," Kirtley said. He turned to Hammond. "We'll be ready to go in three hours." He left the control room.

  Dalton went over to Jackson's tube, waiting as she was lifted out and her TACPAD helmet removed.

  "Son of a bitch," she said, then spit some fluid out of her mouth. "That jerk cut us off. Goddamn," she cursed once more as Dalton draped a thick towel over her shoulders.

  "I've already talked to him, for whatever good it did," Dalton said.

  Jackson shivered. "Geez-if that's what those people in the other room are experiencing since they were cut off--" She shook her head. "That was bad, real bad."

  "We've got to do all we can to help them," Dalton said. "Before Kirtley turns off their iso-tubes."

  Jackson nodded. "Hell, yeah. Sign me up."

  "I've got a call to make," Dalton said. "Get Barnes when he comes out and meet me in our bunkroom."

  *****

  "Do you have contact with the satellite?" Cesar asked.

  Souris's eyes were closed, the leads from Aura covering her head. "Yes."

  "Is it working?"

  "I wouldn't have contact with it if it wasn't," Souris said. "Everything is developing exactly according to plan. Exactly."

  "The coordinates are programmed?"

  "Yes."

  Cesar nodded. He didn't like waiting. He left the operations center and went upstairs to the atrium, his favorite place. All the other Ring members except Naldo had gone back to Colombia, satisfied that their money was being well spent and that their future in Cesar's hands looked bright. Or possibly plot to overthrow him, but Cesar thought that unlikely given the display he had presented and Alarico's fate.

  Naldo was seated in a chair by the pool, a tall glass by his side.

  "Old friend," Cesar said as he sat next to him, a bodyguard quickly bringing his own drink.

  Naldo laughed. "Old enemy is more like it. We were at each other's throats many more years than we have spent sitting by the side of a pool drinking together."

  Cesar raised his glass in toast "To old enemies then."

  Naldo acknowledged the toast. "Things are different now. It's a new world. I miss the old days, though, when things were simpler."

  "They were never simple," Cesar said. "Just different. The deals and double-deals and triple-deals you and my father used to do to each other; there was nothing simple about those."

  "True. But it was between us. Two men. This-" Naldo fell silent

  "Go ahead."

  "This doesn't feel right, Cesar. Even you, you're different. Why do we need to fight the Americans?"

  "Because we finally can," Cesar said. "Don't tell me you are not angry that the Americans tried to kidnap, or even kill, your son."

  "Angry? Yes. Stupid? No."

  A vein popped up on Cesar's forehead, blood throbbing. "You saw what we can do with Aura. And we will be more powerful after tonight."

  Naldo leaned forward so that listening ears beyond the immediate vicinity could not hear. "I have to admit yes, I was very impressed with the demonstrations of this Aura. But I have had time to think about it since. And I have to tell you that I do not understand what you are doing. You act as if this Aura is the final answer. The Americans have other weapons. They have not hesitated to even invade a country when it was in their interests. Noriega learned that and now he rots in an American prison. Saddam is dead."

  Naldo could see the stiffness in the younger man. "I know you are angry that I speak these words, but I feel as if ever since you moved from Colombia, you've been different. The others asked me to talk to you; that is why I stayed behind. They think this Aura thing is fine; as a device to spy on people. But your plan to take over the American satellites, that makes them fearful. They see it as inviting unnecessary trouble."

  "Yes, you are right" Cesar said. "They are fearful. They are whipped curs who want to keep their few bones and hide. Why should we hide? Why should we bow down to some group just because it has a flag? The Americans commit many more murders and crimes around the world than we do." Cesar's arm swept out, flinging the glass across the tiles, where it shattered. He stood. "You have said what you needed to. I have work to do. Go back to Colombia."

  ***

  Valika opened the case holding the Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle. She lifted it out and checked the bolt. Across from her, Gregory whistled. "Big gun."

  Valika checked her watch. "Are your men ready?"

  Gregory nodded. "We're ready. I would assume that since this base is so isolated, it's a military facility?"

  "It's affiliated with the military," she acknowledged.

  "Many guards?"

  "Actually, none, as far as we know. Not at least in the way you envision guards."

  "What does that mean?"

  "I’ll tell you on the way." She rested the barrel over her shoulder and headed for the hangar doors. "Let's go."

  *****

  Blades began turning on the two MH-60K Blackhawk helicopters parked on the runway at Fort Carson Army Airfield. Crammed in the cargo bay was red webbing that they used for sling loads.

  "Wh
eels up," Chief Warrant Office Roby ordered. Both choppers lifted off the tarmac and headed into the night sky, noses pointed northwest

  *****

  Boreas stared at the computer screen. He was seeing what Hammond had on her control console two thousand miles away at Bright Gate. Kirtley's team was beginning to go into their isolation tubes.

  He picked up a headset and put it on. Then he typed in commands, covertly accessing Sybyl.

  He spoke into the boom mike. "Kirtley."

  The voice that came back was muffled. "Yes?"

  "This is our private link through Sybyl. Neither Hammond nor your teammates can access it. You know your job, right? The real objective of this mission?"

  There was a long pause. "Yes."

  "Good." Boreas keyed off the connection. He spun about in his chair and looked out at the mountains. Even at night the white peaks were clearly visible. Soon he and his people would have nothing to fear from those who hid in the high country.

  *****

  On board the Roosevelt, blades also began turning on both Blackhawks and Apache gunships. Green Berets and Navy SEALs piled into the transport choppers while the gunships took off to lead the way.

  Low over the ocean, the air flotilla headed for the shoreline of Colombia.

  *****

  Linda McFairn stared out her office window, but she wasn't really seeing the Maryland countryside. Her mind was on events happening far to the south. The photo of the executed Special Forces captain was the only item on her desk. She knew the Colombians had done that to spur action, and she'd told Boreas that she saw another ambush coming, but he hadn’t seemed concerned.

  Whenever she was faced with a problem she tried to see it as Sun Tzu would have. She had no doubt that the Ring was preparing a trap for the rescue mission. On the other hand, her forces held the advantage of surprise with the Psychic Warriors leading the assault. And they were packing a lot of conventional firepower.