by Cindy Dees
She took his hand as he helped her up the ladder and stepped out into a giant cave that did look exactly like the kind of place pirates and whiskey smugglers would frequent. “Cool!” she exclaimed.
Carter’s hard gaze softened for a minute. “I never get tired of coming into the facility this way.” But then he was off, striding toward a black opening in the rock wall in front of them. She tagged along, wishing her legs were a little longer or his a little shorter.
The tunnels were high and brightly lit enough not to make her feel too closed in. After the submarine, they were a huge improvement. She consoled herself with the notion that she was probably very close to the surface.
And then Carter stepped out into a massive room that made her breath catch in her throat. It was the size of an outdoor drive-in movie theater in here. The place was easily a hundred yards long and a good fifty feet tall.
“This was the main magma chamber when the volcano was active,” Carter murmured.
Voices called out greetings to Carter from computer stations in long rows of high-tech consoles pretty much covering the floor of the cave. A raven-haired beauty came down a set of metal steps from a glass observation room high on one wall of the cave. Lily didn’t think of herself as the jealous type, but it was hard not to have her gut tighten at the warm smile the woman gave Carter.
“Lily, this is Jennifer Blackfoot. She runs the civilian side of the house around here.”
Lily managed to smile back at the woman’s pleasant greeting. “Welcome to the Bat Cave, Dr. James. I hear you need to use Big Bertha.”
“Excuse m-me?” Lily stammered.
Carter grinned. “Bertha’s our mainframe computer.”
Lily nodded in comprehension and smiled at the other woman. “Thank you so much for letting me run my little simulation.”
Jennifer laughed. “No, no. Thank you. You’re the one who’s going to save the world. I’m happy to help.”
She really wished people would quit saying stuff like that to her.
“The mountain locked down?” Carter asked gruffly.
“As soon as you cleared the airlock.”
“How many operators do we have in-house?” he demanded.
“All of Alpha and Bravo squads. Sixty-plus men. The Medusa and Charlie squads are out on ops right now and couldn’t be recalled.”
Lily didn’t have the faintest idea what they were talking about, but Carter’s shoulders relaxed and the grim set of his mouth eased a little.
“How’re you doing?” Jennifer asked him quietly. “We retrieved telemetry of the attack on the bluff last night. I was pleased to see your performance.” As Carter’s gaze went thunderous, she added hastily, “I mean your ability to fight without freezing up.”
As Carter continued to be board-stiff beside her, Lily’s gaze snapped to Jennifer and she demanded, “How did you manage to get video of us? We were out in the middle of nowhere.”
The other woman swept a hand toward three gigantic television screens mounted high on the far wall. “From here we can monitor almost every square inch of the planet at a moment’s notice. This facility sorts and monitors inputs from satellite cameras all over the world.”
Holy cow. Her parents’ wild theories about government surveillance from space were true after all! Ha. And people thought she was crazy for believing them. Little did they know.
Carter spoke briskly. “Lily’s going to need a workstation. Access to the computational algorithms. Internet access to download her preliminary equations. Those Russians last night stole my flash drive with the equations.”
“They caught the second guy, by the way,” Jennifer announced. “And we’ve recovered the flash drive.”
“He say anything interesting about who he’s working for?” Carter asked grimly.
“He’s not talking yet. But the day is young.”
Lily jerked at the bloodthirsty chill underlying the woman’s mild comment.
Carter nodded. “Let me know what he says, eh?”
“Wilco, Boudreaux.”
Lily didn’t like the easy familiarity between the two of them. But all jealousy aside, they were colleagues. And it wasn’t like either of them was making bedroom eyes at the other. She was just being paranoid. And as much as she might like it to be otherwise, she didn’t own Carter.
“We’ve freed up the station beside yours, Carter,” Jennifer was saying. Lily followed along as Carter made his way down a long row of computer workstations.
“This is my desk,” he announced. “You can work here, Lily.” He gestured at a station to his right.
Lily sat down gingerly at a computer nicer than the best one the astronomy department had back at the university.
“You’ll need a password,” Jennifer said briskly. “I took the liberty of setting one up for you.”
Lily took the piece of paper the woman handed her and typed in the random sequence of letters and symbols when prompted to do so. In moments, she’d connected to the internet and accessed her equations. Comfortable for the first time in hours, she immersed herself in downloading the information and re-creating the tweaks she’d wanted to make to the equations yesterday. She registered that Carter sat down at his own computer and started typing.
After a while, he announced from beside her, “Big Bertha’s ready to go. Whenever you’re ready to make a test run, I’ve got the interface set up.”
She nodded. “I’m ready. I’ve created a false data set of easy numbers to work with. If we run this set through and get reasonable results, then we can make a run with A-57809C’s numbers.”
Carter made an announcement that echoed through the huge cave on a loudspeaker, something to the effect of Bertha going offline for the next several minutes. If all went well, the run should take no more than three minutes. She hit the send button.
A slowly spinning wheel came up on her computer screen. And now the waiting began. A few techs from nearby migrated over to stand behind her at her desk. Before long a small crowd had gathered. And with each added person waiting expectantly, her nerves increased.
“It’s not going to be that impressive,” she murmured. “Just a bunch of numbers.”
“Actually,” Carter replied, “I took the liberty of creating an algorithm to translate your calculations into a pictorial image of the impact point and blast pattern of your hypothetical asteroid.”
Her eyebrows shot up. That was a heck of a tough algorithm to just whip up. Why hadn’t she thought of doing it herself?
Three minutes passed. Four. Her palms started to sweat. Was something wrong with her equations? Had the computer gotten stuck in a computational loop? Frantically, she tried to figure out what she’d done wrong. And then, without warning, the big screen in the middle of the room lit up. A graphic depiction of planet Earth flashed before their eyes, and a small object tracked inbound rapidly, a red arc tracing its progress. The flashing white dot impacted at the North Pole, and bits of debris flew up into space.
Immediately, the view shifted to a close-up image. Green, wavy lines radiated out into the atmosphere, depicting the shock waves. Red, wavy lines spread outward in an expanding doughnut from the impact point, presumably painting the electromagnetic pulse. The view zoomed in even more, and a crater was depicted in a green field of simulated ice.
Applause erupted around her. Okay, so Carter’s visual depiction of the impact was pretty cool. But when she thought about the real asteroid and what all those lines and impacts meant, her blood ran cold. If she was right, the worst-case scenario was indeed hurtling toward them through space at this very moment.
“Check this out!” somebody called.
On the right-hand jumbo screen, a fuzzy white dot appeared in the middle of the black screen. The view hitched and the dot grew a little larger. It hitched again and a lump came into view. She recognized it immediately. She’d looked at that asteroid through the university’s optical telescope a few months ago just for fun.
The room went silent. S
ober. Apparently, everyone here had already been briefed on the implications of that chunk of iron smashing into Siberia and faking out a doomsday system into annihilating them all.
“Where’s that picture coming from?” she asked.
“We turned one of the satellite cameras to have a look at it,” Carter answered.
“Can you get any higher resolution than that?”
“Nope. That’s it. But as the asteroid comes closer, we’ll get a clearer picture of it. Why?” he asked.
“I should be able to refine my measurements of its dimensions and estimate its mass more closely from these images. That should help us get a more accurate idea of where it’s going to land and when.”
“You heard the lady,” Carter said to the group at large. “If anyone has any bright ideas for getting a better look at that rock, you’re green-lighted to try.”
Somebody said from the back, “Why not contact NASA and get them to point the Hubble telescope at it?”
Lily snorted. “The Hubble’s booked years in advance.”
Jennifer Blackfoot grinned back. “Yeah, but we’re H.O.T. Watch. And the fate of the world rests on this.”
Lily shook her head. “I’ll be grateful for any more imagery you can get me, but good luck with that.”
Jennifer murmured something about having a few phone calls to make and wandered off toward her glass office. The other techs scattered back to their desks. The simulated image of the North Pole went away, and a rather bland schematic of sine waves circling the equator came up on the three big screens. She recognized satellite tracks.
Carter said, “We can take Big Bertha offline again in twelve hours for another run.”
She nodded. “I’ll be ready. If I can get access at my station to the image you just flashed up of the asteroid, I’ll take a stab at updating its mass and velocity.”
“Roger.” He sent her the information and then got up and left his station, leaving her alone.
She spent the next six hours refining her estimates. Her head began to ache and her vision grew blurry before she finally pushed back from the desk. She asked the guy on her right, “Is there a drinking fountain around here? I’m feeling a little dizzy.”
“Yeah, sure. Hey, have your gotten up from your station since you got here?” the fellow asked.
“Uh, no. I guess not.”
The guy huffed. “I’ll call Carter.”
She listened with chagrin as the man said into his headpiece, “Boo, your girl’s about to pass out down here. Have you fed her in the past day or so? You know these scientists. All brains and no common sense.”
She ought to resent the comment, but in fairness couldn’t dispute its accuracy. Carter materialized beside her in a few moments. “C’mon, Einstein,” he muttered. “Let’s get you something to eat and drink.”
Glaring at his back, she followed him down a tunnel to a compact cafeteria. He made her sit down while he fetched her a big plate of fried rice and sautéed vegetables, then set two bottles of water in front of her and made her down one of them before she did anything else. As she dug into the rice, he glanced under the table at her feet.
“What’re you doing?” she asked around a mouthful of broccoli.
“Checking to see if your shoes are tied.”
“Very funny,” she retorted. “You’re the one who said this was a crisis. I was working as hard as I could to help fix it. If I’d known you wanted me to slack off, by all means I would have done so.”
He sighed. “You can sheathe your claws. I wasn’t being critical of your work ethic. We appreciate your assistance.”
“Do you know if Jennifer’s having any success getting access to a telescope somewhere? I told her it doesn’t have to be the Hubble. Any of the big observatories can get a good look at our rock now that it’s getting close to Earth.”
He frowned. “It may be twenty-four hours before we can get you your pictures and radio imaging.”
“That’s amazing. I gather you guys here are pretty important?”
He shrugged. “I suppose. We’re the eyes and ears of the United States in a good chunk of the world.”
“So who all works here?” she asked.
“A bunch of linguists and photo analysts. Plus a crew of computer and satellite technicians.”
“And Special Forces operators.”
He sighed. “Yeah. And operators. This is their operational support headquarters.”
Whatever that meant. She’d take it to mean this was their home base or something like that. She shrugged. “Where did you go this afternoon?”
“To talk to some of those operators.”
“What do trained killers sit around and talk about anyway?”
He scowled. “Shockingly normal stuff. The wives and kids. Sports. What’s in the news. I suppose you professors sit around talking about quantum theory and the nature of the universe.”
She shrugged. “Sometimes. Office politics and gossiping about our students are popular topics, too.”
Silence fell between them as she finished her meal and downed the second water bottle.
“I’ll show you your quarters,” Carter announced brusquely. In short order he’d led her down yet another tunnel to a small room that reminded her of what a personal module would look like on a spaceship. But it wasn’t like she had, oh, any possessions with her. A bed pretty much did it for her needs.
“Jennifer sent over some clothes and supplies. I put them away for you,” Carter said.
She opened the top dresser drawer and saw several articles of clothing folded neatly inside.
“Toothbrush, soap, towels and the like are in the second drawer,” he murmured. “There’s a shelf of books if you get bored, and a television’s behind this panel over here. We get pretty much any channel you want.”
“Satellite reception’s good down here, huh?” she commented drily.
“Something like that.” He looked away and back at her. “Do you want to rest before tonight’s run on Bertha?”
“Uh, sure,” she mumbled. What she wanted to do was break through this stupid wall he’d put up between them. To throw him down and make love to him again. And this time to convince him to do some of the things with her that he’d only hinted at last night.
“I’ll come and get you an hour before the offline window.” And then he was gone and she was staring, frustrated, at a closed door.
She turned to explore the tiny room and was delighted when a waist-high panel folded down into a small desk with a laptop sitting on it. She cranked it up and grinned when her password let her onto the system and onto the internet. It was time to do a little exploring about one Carter Baigneaux, Captain, U.S. Army, and his little problem. He might have had the best in military medical care, but she was hooked into research networks all over the world. Surely somebody, somewhere, was looking into psychosomatic illnesses and their cures.
Several hours later she leaned back and rubbed the back of her neck to ease the tension there. As she’d suspected, landmark work was being done in Sweden with forcing victims of his type of affliction to confront the source of their trauma. Psychiatrists there were inundating their patients with graphic visual and audio images and desensitizing them to their triggers. It was an extreme approach, but it was showing promising early results. She was no shrink, but she knew a few good ones. Maybe after this mess was over, she could arrange for one of them to talk with Carter about joining the Swedish research project.
She still had an hour to kill before he came to fetch her. It was only early evening, and she didn’t feel like sleeping yet. Idly, she typed Carter’s name into the computer’s search engine.
A list of hits scrolled down the screen, startling her. She’d have thought a Special Forces man like him wouldn’t show up much in a public forum like this. She scanned the first page of hits, and they all dealt with something that happened in East Africa some months back. She clicked the first one.
A news article popped up on the scre
en. “U.S. Army team slaughters children in Sudan,” the headline shouted. She lurched. What?
She read on. It seemed a journalist had been embedded with a U.S. expeditionary force that had crossed into Sudan covertly. According to the article, a small team of U.S. commandos had sneaked out of camp one night, and the reporter followed them. They’d swept through a village and then out into the bush. The guy caught up with them in time to witness them mowing down nearly a hundred little boys between the ages of six and fourteen who appeared to have fled from the massacre of their mothers and sisters.
Cold horror washed through Lily. Memories of her parents screaming at political rallies about baby killers flashed through her head. Was it true after all? Was her government that heartless? Was Carter a murderer of children?
She scrolled down and abruptly reeled back from the computer screen. Gruesome images of dead boys lying broken and bloody on the ground splashed across it. Dear God. They were babies, their faces so sweet and innocent in death.
Sick to her stomach, she read on. How the reporter had circled back and found evidence of the recent massacre in the village the American troops had just gone through. While the reporter couldn’t say with certainty that the team, led by one Captain Carter Baigneaux, had perpetrated the horrendous mutilation and murder of the villagers—mostly women and small children—he wrote that it was impossible to conclude otherwise. And the team had apparently raced out into the bush, chasing after the children the villagers had sent away to hide. When the Americans found the children, witnesses to the slaughter in the village, the soldiers had murdered them to the last child.
Lily bolted for the bathroom, emptying the remains of her supper into the toilet in violent wretches. How could she have ever fancied herself attracted to such a monster? God, she’d made love with him? A sudden need to bathe overcame her, and she climbed in the shower and turned it on as hot as she could stand. She let the water pound at her until her flesh was red and tender, but still it didn’t erase the feel of his hands on her skin.
She’d gotten out of the shower and dressed and had a towel turbaned around her hair when a quiet knock at her door made her lurch in horror. It was him. The baby killer. “Who is it?” she called through the door without opening it.