Of Salt and Sand

by Barnes, Michael

  “Well,” Jacob puzzled. “The strange thing is that only one of the Five—and Gracie of course—know the encryption algorithms necessary to make modifications to any of the remote stations.”

  “And Jimmy?” asked Tom. “Does Jimmy know the encryptions, Jake?”

  Jacob’s eyes flashed strangely up at the man. He shook his head, slowly. “Jimmy has never been involved, nor privy to the station-generator’s, or the drone’s programming. Not only does he not know how, but he isn’t authorized. He doesn’t have the encryption sequence.”

  “But if he had them,” Tom questioned. “If he had somehow gotten the encryption—”

  “Tom.” Jacob suddenly halted. “Jimmy didn’t reprogram the generators. Why would he do such a thing?”

  Tom relaxed, and nodded. “Of course. Sorry Jake. It’s just very odd,” he leaned back and turned away. “Then you’re saying that those two boys were actually in some real danger out there?”

  Jacob’s eyes went wide and his features blanched. “To be perfectly honest. If I hadn’t gotten out there in time, those boys,”—he paused—“let’s just say it could have gone very, very badly.”

  “I see. I guess I can’t blame Jimmy for being upset then. Those boys could have been hurt, or even killed by the sound of it.”

  Jacob snorted, scornfully. “Jimmy didn’t care about what happened to those boys. In fact, he was infuriated when Gracie overrode him and sent me out to get them.” Jacob took a long breath. “He said it was a blatant breach in protocol, and that the rescue may have compromised HOPE. But the rest of us stand behind Gracie one-hundred percent. She said we must accept full responsibility for our technology, including its malfunctions. And that nothing supersedes a human life—even HOPE.”

  “Good for her,” rallied Tom. “That’s my Gracie. She’s absolutely right. I understand Jimmy’s concern for not wanting to risk anything that might draw attention to the project. But at the cost of lives? He frightens me, Jake.”

  Jacob didn’t reply, but his eyes belied his own fearsome concern. “Unfortunately—and I hate to admit it,” he consented, “Jimmy was right about public scrutiny though. These malfunctions have already drawn unwanted attention to the area—the very thing we’ve tried to avoid all these years. That’s another reason he’s so all up-in-arms.”

  “Hmm,” grunted Tom.

  “In fact, we’ve been tracking several groups—scientists, meteorologists and even some government black-suites who have been asking questions and snooping around the west desert with their fancy equipment,” continued Jacob, nervously. “So far they have not breached Reitman property, but they are encroaching ever nearer, and we are nervous.”

  Tom’s eyebrows rose.

  “We have our best droid engineers troubleshooting the system, but so far we can’t find anything wrong. We are stumped. Gracie has even considered taking HOPE offline for a while—just long enough for us to run more test simulations—but Jimmy wouldn’t have it. He wants to keep the project online and on schedule. He was adamant, and would not back off until he wore her down. She finally gave in. So for now, HOPE’s schedule remains unchanged.”

  “HOPE is her progeny . . . hers and the Five! Not Jimmy Reitman!” growled Tom. “Why does she let him tell her what to do!”

  “Because he is her son,” Jacob answered, factually. “And I sometimes think she looks for Zen in Jimmy’s features; he does look a lot like his father.”

  “He’s nothing like his father!” Tom retorted sharply, his hands clenching to fists. “Zen was kind, and charitable. His entire life was devoted to benefit of others.” Tom’s face swelled with emotion, his head veined. “To juxtapose the two of them is unforgivable!”

  Jacob fell awkwardly silent. This was not like Tom at all. He had unintentionally thrown salt into a wound obviously still unhealed. But this outburst of recrimination seemed to be fueled by more than just Jimmy’s jealous sparring. This eruption came from fear and hatred, a cut far deeper than Jacob had imagined. The boy looked an odd question at his friend. “What is it, Tom? I know you don’t especially care for Jimmy—I don’t know that any of us do any more—but is there something you’re not telling me?”

  Tom eased, and attempted to sidestep the question. “You just keep a firm company of sentinel droids around each substation. You tell Gracie that the request came from old Tom. She’ll trust me.”

  “She does trust you . . . I trust you,” replied Jacob. “Now tell me what’s going on in that head of yours.”

  Tom made some circuitous grumbles and averted eye contact for several more awkward moments.

  “Tom?” Jacob pressed.

  The man paused and put a contemplative hand to his chin, then glared back at Jacob. “Do you know where Jimmy is at this moment?”

  “Yes. He is at Cape Canaveral Base, in Florida. He has one of his best teams stationed out there getting the hangar prepped for the arrival of the HOPE Satellites. He has been traveling back and forth from the Cape for months now.

  Tom didn’t reply. He just nodded expressionlessly.

  “The liftoff is scheduled for next month. But then you know this, Tom.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  His apathy took Jacob by surprise. “This is the big event. The culmination of project HOPE, the grand finale. It is what we have been working for all these many years. This is the final stage—”

  “Jake,” Tom broke in. “Jimmy is not at Cape Canaveral.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s not in Florida.”

  “I don’t understand. Then where is he?”

  Tom paused. He fumbled and averted the boy’s quizzical gaze. “I’ll explain everything to you. But not now. I need more time.”

  “For what?”

  “Just trust me, Jake.”

  The boy finally relinquished his probing. He crossed his arms, and sat back looking very disgruntled.

  “I need you to do something for me, Jacob. It is extremely important.”

  “Of course, Tom. Just name it.”

  Tom rose and walked to the back of the trailer. He fumbled with a pile of junk on the rear couch until he finally knocked most of it to the floor. Then he brushed off one of the large cushions and gave it a distinct yank. He did this several more times before finally ripping it away from the seat. Underneath the cushion was a false cover. Tom promptly removed the top casing to reveal a secret compartment. Within the casing was a locked metal box. Tom had the box opened in seconds.

  Jacob watched with some uneasiness. This was very odd indeed.

  Finally, Tom pulled a sealed letter from the box then returned to the table and sat back down. He took a long breath, then handed the envelop to Jacob. “This letter must get to Gracie,” he said.

  Jacob hesitated, then took hold if it. “Come back with me and deliver it yourself. She will be thrilled to see you.”

  “No,” he replied, then cleared his throat. “I mean—I’m just not quite ready to go back to Sandcastle. I can’t risk bumping into Jimmy.”

  “But you won’t?”

  Tom lifted a suppressing hand. “Please, Jake. Just deliver this envelop to Gracie.”

  Jacob nodded and threw his shoulders up in submission, “very well.”

  “Jake,” Tom said, somberly. “This is more important than I can say.”

  Jacob felt the wash of Tom’s penetrating gaze. It was growing uncomfortable, and he wanted to avert it. He nodded slowly. “You can trust me, Tom.”

  Tom’s strange behavior menaced something within Jacob. Slowly, like the prodding of a sleeping monster locked away in a deep abyss, it awoke, and manifested itself first in the pit of the boy’s stomach; a queasy perception that brought to surface a memory so distant, so buried, and so completely forbidden that when it suddenly leaped into his head, it made him jolt physically. It had been at Sachsenhausen, the Nazi concentration camp just outside of Berlin. His family had been held there along with other Jewish prisoners. It was on a cold night in Septembe
r. Jacob’s father had shaken him awake sometime in the hours before dawn. I’ll be back, he had simply said. You stay with your mother. But the man’s eyes had belied his reassuring words: I’ll be back, and Jacob had known—by that same sickening sensation—he had known that he would never see his father again. And he had been right. Executed that morning for helping his mother, his father and twenty other randomly selected men had been marched to the east trenches on a hill above the compound; the Nazi quota needing to be met for the day.

  Jacob felt an intake of breath. He swallowed down the lump in his throat and pushed the ugly memory back into the cavity from whence it came. He would never allow it to touch him again.

  “Jake?” Tom’s voice repeated.

  Jacob blinked, then forced a subtle smile. “You can count on me, Tom,” he replied, still gathering himself.

  Tom sighed a relief then reciprocated his own farewell smile. He tossed an arm around the boy and gave him a brisk pull.

  “We’ll see you later, then?” Jacob asked.

  “Absolutely. You drop by next week. I’ll be looking forward to it—and tell Three-Of-Ten I’ll be at the door in my swimming trunks.”

  Jacob laughed, then waved. But as he headed toward the Sandray, his back to Tom, the pleasant expression on his lips quickly vanished. It was a silent ride back to Sandcastle.

  Chapter 20:

  The Wendover Base underground complex did not exist. There were no documents, blueprints or schematics in any file or construction company’s database; no transactional records, no registrations; no bureaucratic ties, traces or connections to any local or state agency; topographically invisible on any map, and not a GPS device in the world listed its coordinates. It was effectively an Area 51.

  Since the military’s reactivation of the retired base, only restoration work on surface structures had been completed. Hangars, bunkers, and a freshly repaired old airstrip had been salvaged and saved from the sands. It was a bipartisan hit, both locally and politically. A joint effort which would give the old base its historical accolades—it having once been used as a training area for pilots preparing to drop the world’s first atomic bomb. From these, a crew had been selected to pilot the Enola Gay; a Boeing B-29 Super-fortress which, on April 6, 1945, had dropped its single nuclear ordnance, the Little Boy, on Hiroshima, Japan.

  Locally, the renovation was seen as a real effort. But on a military scale, the venture above ground was low budget and superficial; enough to keep the structures standing for another decade or so. Below ground, however, the price tag for Uncle Sam had been staggering. Beneath the renewed and freshly washed structures, construction had been colossal. A massive fortress had taken shape; the brooder safe-house and eventual home for the US Military’s most clandestine and protected project: the EMR (Energy-Matter Redistribution) device.

  Just two years prior, the Tooele County officials had been ecstatic when the US Government’s black-suit emissaries had offered to restore several of the decrepit buildings for historical purposes. The salt wasteland had already begun its assimilation of the old encampment well before the Tooele district had acquired the property in 1998, and there had been no funds allocated for developments of any kind. It was to become a ghost base, and the county officials had effectually resolved to let the desert claim it. Besides the issues the county had with the facility, there were other challenges as well. On the Utah-Nevada border, Wendover City’s several popular casinos, on the Nevada side, complained that their panoramic desert vista was tainted by the distant deteriorating structures. There had even been a petition by affluent casino proprietors to level the base and return the land back to its natural habitat, but the committed funds had never materialized. The military’s acquisition of the property, then, seemed to preempt years of debate and deliberation on both the Utah and Nevada side; the mutually advantageous contract having provided a cathartic win-win.

  Shortly after the acquisition, a convoy of flatbed trucks transporting backhoes, bulldozers, drilling machines, excavators, cranes—the full breadth of heavy construction equipment, moved in on the historical site and the renovation process commenced. The first improvement made was a substantial overhaul and expansion of the old, pitted air strip, which was completed at best speed. Soon afterwards, two Boeing C-17A cargo planes repeatedly flew in and out, day and night, for weeks. When the dust finally cleared, a ten-foot high, razor-tipped security fence bounded an area not only reclaimed, but renewed. The refurbished structures gleamed. But the most extraordinary and prodigious accomplishment of the entire Base project was nonexistent and void from the desert’s face. Like the iceberg who’s tip breaks passively above the surface in a specious masking of its true gargantuan size, so too had been the government’s feigning construction and restoration of the base. The reality was that a four-level, sub-terrain infrastructure now rested below ground. The expanse, undetectable to all surface monitoring technology, was home to seventy-three occupants—a conglomerate collective of military personal, engineers, scientists and technicians. These, like ants, carried out their work and responsibilities underground, and undiscovered.

  There was much work left to be done, and schedules were tight. The two bottommost levels of the underground base were still under construction. These reinforced bunkers had to be flawless, the crux of the entire structure. Here, a device known only as EMR was to be relocated, fitted and permanently housed, and the time for the transfer was ticking down—fast. The secret project would not only get a new home, but a new identification. Formally referenced by its architects as HOPE (High Order Phase Energy), it would hereafter be called, EMR.

  It was dusk at the Wendover base. The exterior lighting on the east and north hangars had just kicked on; a fresh company of guards had replaced those of the previous shift; and a half-a-dozen Humvees had set out on their nightly check of the perimeter fence. By all aspects, a normal evening at the base. But a sudden rumble soon broke the stereotypical scene. A section of ground between the airstrip and the north hangar began to peel back in a dusty rumble. Two heavy doors, whose outer surface had been carefully camouflaged to match the surrounding desert terrain, yawned open. From within, a large hydraulic platform whined upwards until, with a clang of metal and a hiss of released pressure, the artificial flooring reverberated to a swaying stop. Flood lights rotated from the outer circumference and leveled on a UH-60 four-bladed twin-engine Black Hawk helicopter. The chopper, motors powered up, gently lifted off the pad.

  Besides the pilot, two passengers sat across from each other. One, a subordinate military guard, the other, his ranking officer. The officer sat motionless, all concentration drawn to an open file which he had just pulled from a sleek, leather briefcase. The middle-aged, polished figure eyed the material with little emotion. His pristine coat adorned an impressive assortment of graduated insignia, and on his hat was a crest of an eagle with outstretched wings—a United States Colonel.

  Colonel Carl C. Briggs had a great deal on his mind. This unexpected rendezvous was neither planned nor authorized, and although he was not happy about the impromptu meeting, events beyond his control dictated that it take place. Unfortunately, Jimmy Reitman, like other men of genius, had his idiosyncrasies, and Colonel Briggs had nearly learned to deal with them—nearly. Reitman’s inability to discuss business in any manner other than in person was taxing to say the least. But for now, Briggs had to concede that Jimmy Reitman held all the cards. With billions of government dollars tied to this man and his company, Reitman could demand a meeting on the moon, and it would take place.

  Fortunately, the designated spot was not the moon, but a secluded location not far from the base. Briggs was only in the air thirty minutes when the chopper began its descent into a depressed area known as Deadwash, an ancient lakebed. Surrounding the unique geological flush were hundreds of small hills of shifting sand—a perfect spot for isolation.

  As the chopper dropped into blackness, the headlights from a single vehicle flipped on, creating a visible co
ne on the black terrain. The jeep sat motionless as the chopper touched down not a hundred feet away. Dust and sand pelted the vehicle before the motors on the black bird finally whined to silence. Only then, did a single passenger step out of the idling jeep. Jimmy walked only a few feet before stopping to lean against the jeep’s hood, his form strangely silhouetted in the headlights.

  There he stood, arms folded, waiting for Briggs to come to him. He was dressed in casual jeans, a polo shirt and a baseball cap—this was the first time Briggs had seen the man outside of a suit.

  “Doctor Reitman,” hollered Briggs, his hand outstretched.

  “Colonel,” Jimmy replied evenly, unfolding his arms long enough to return the handshake.

  “This is an unexpected surprise. I thought our business had been concluded for the time being. Do you mind if we talk inside your vehicle?” asked Briggs, holding up a shielded hand. The discomfort of the headlights was obviously, yet Jimmy was strangely stoic to it.

  “If you wish,” Jimmy replied coolly. He moved to one side and gestured toward the passenger door. As the two moved into the jeep, the pilot of the UH-60 flipped on a series of floodlights, illuminating his bird’s perch and the surrounding area. He jumped down and began to move about, checking his intimidating Hawk with the care of a trained mechanic.

  The guard who had accompanied Briggs had also exited the chopper. But his interest was clearly not in the craft which had delivered them, nor in its status or surroundings. The man took a tactical position aloof, and now stood as focused as a lion crouched in the Savanna moonlight.

  “I see you brought your bulldog,” spoke Jimmy, shutting his door.

  “It’s protocol. You know that.”

  Jimmy snorted. “Protocol,” he mocked. “Of course.” He turned the motor and headlights off, then switched on the cab light. He exhaled a long, putout breath. “So, Colonel. My sources tell me you have a problem with my schedules?”

  Briggs looked surprised. He paused and returned a blank stare. “I . . .I’m not sure —”