“The geodetic effect is altering,” the engineer explained, pointing to a monitor. “A point two percent deviation.”
“That shouldn’t be possible,” Dr. Shaw mumbled at Painter’s side. “Not unless space-time around the earth is starting to ripple.”
“And look!” the engineer continued. “The Eye’s gyroscopic momentum is growing stronger, far stronger than prelaunch estimates. I’m even getting a propulsive signature!”
Dr. Shaw gripped the rail harder, looking ready to leap below. “That can’t happen without an external source powering the Eye.”
Painter could tell she wanted to declare it dark energy, but she restrained herself from jumping to premature conclusions.
Another voice called out—this time from a station marked CONTROL. “We’re losing orbital stability of IoG-1!”
Painter turned to the big board in the center, the one showing the world map and the flight paths of the satellites. The sine wave of IoG-1’s trajectory was visibly flattening.
“The gyroscopic forces inside the satellite must be pushing it out of orbit,” Dr. Shaw explained, sounding both panicked and thrilled.
The screen to the left showed the profile of the earth growing larger, filling up the monitor, eclipsing the dark void of space. The satellite was falling out of orbit, starting its slow crash back into the gravity well from which it came.
The transmitted image quickly lost clarity as the satellite entered the upper atmosphere, showing streaks of data artifacts and ghost shadows, drunkenly doubling and tripling the picture.
Continents flashed by, swirls of clouds, bright blue expanses of ocean.
A moment later, the screen went dark like the other.
Silence settled heavily over the room.
On the world map, the satellite’s path split into a frayed end as the mission computer attempted to extrapolate various crash trajectories, taking into account a slew of variables: the roil of Earth’s upper atmosphere, the angle of entry, the rate at which the craft broke apart.
“Looks like debris will strike along the eastern border of Mongolia!” the telemetry specialist said. “Maybe even spilling into China.”
The commander of the 50th Space Wing groused under his breath. “You can bet Beijing will pick this up.”
Painter agreed. China would not miss a flaming piece of space garbage hurling toward them.
General Metcalf glanced hard at Painter. He understood that look. The advanced military technology aboard that satellite was classified. It couldn’t fall into foreign hands.
For a fraction of a second, the screen to the left flickered, then died again—a last hiccup of the dying satellite.
“Bird is gone!” the control officer finally declared. “All transmissions ceased. It’s a falling rock now.”
The telemetry data slowed to a crawl across the world map—then finally stopped.
Dr. Shaw’s hand suddenly clutched Painter’s forearm. “They need to bring up that last image,” she said. “The one before the satellite died.”
She must have noted something anomalous in the data, something that clearly had her scared.
Metcalf heard her, too.
Painter stared hard at his boss. “Do it. Make it happen.”
The order passed along the chain of command to the floor. Engineers and technicians worked their magic. After several long minutes to redigitize, sharpen, and clean up that brief flicker, that final image bloomed again on the large screen.
Gasps spread across the room.
Metcalf leaned to Painter’s ear. “If even a sliver of that satellite survived, it must be found. It must never reach our enemies.”
Painter didn’t argue, fully understanding. “I’ve got field operatives already in the region.”
Metcalf gave him a quizzical stare, silently asking how that could be.
Just dumb luck.
Still, he would take that bit of good fortune and mobilize a recovery team immediately. But for the moment, he gaped at the screen, unable to look away.
It displayed a satellite view of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, the photo taken as the satellite blazed a trail across the sky. It was detailed enough to make out the major coastal metropolises.
Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C.
Every city lay in smoldering ruin.
2
November 17, 11:58 P.M. CST
Macau, People’s Republic of China
They had crossed half the world to hunt a ghost.
Commander Gray Pierce followed the midnight crowd off the boat and into the ferry terminal. The high-speed catamaran had made the passage from Hong Kong to the peninsula of Macau in a little over an hour. He stretched a kink from his back as he waited to clear passport control in the crowded terminal building.
People were pouring into the peninsula to celebrate a special Water Lantern Festival in honor of the comet in the sky. A large party was under way this night, where floating lanterns were set adrift in the lakes and rivers as offerings to the spirits of the deceased. Hundreds of lights even bobbed in the waters around the terminal, like a scatter of luminous flowers.
Ahead of him in line, a wizened old man cradled a reed cage with a live goose inside. Both looked equally sullen, matching Gray’s mood after the seventeen-hour journey here.
“Why does that duck keep looking at me?” Kowalski asked.
“I don’t think it’s just the duck,” Gray said.
The big man, wearing jeans and a long duster, stood a head taller than Gray, which meant he towered over everyone in the terminal. Several people took pictures of the American giant, as if some craggy-faced Godzilla with a crew cut had wandered into their midst.
Gray turned to his other traveling companion. “It’s a long shot that we’ll learn anything from our contact here. You understand that, right?”
Seichan shrugged, seemingly unperturbed, but he read the tension in the single crease between her eyebrows. They had traveled this far to question this man in person. The meeting was Seichan’s last hope to discover the fate of her mother, a woman who had vanished twenty-two years ago, ripped from her home in Vietnam by armed men, leaving behind a nine-year-old daughter. Seichan had believed her mother was long dead—until new information had come to light four months ago, suggesting she might still be alive. It had taken all of Sigma’s resources and connections in the intelligence communities to get them this far.
It was likely a dead end, but they had to pursue it.
Ahead, the line finally cleared, and Seichan stepped forward to the bored customs officer. She wore black jeans, hiking boots, and a loose emerald silk blouse that matched her eyes, along with a cashmere vest to hold back the night’s chill.
At least she fit in here, where ninety-nine percent of the patronage was of Asian descent. In her case, with her mix of European blood, she struck a slightly more exotic pose. Her slim face and high cheekbones looked carved out of pale marble. Her almond-shaped eyes glinted like polished jade. The only softness to her was the loose cascade of her hair, the color of a raven’s wing.
All this was not missed by the border agent.
The round man, his belly straining the buttons of his uniform, sat straighter as she stepped forward. She matched eyes with him, moving with a leonine grace that was equal parts power and threat. She handed over her passport. Her documents were false, as were Gray’s and Kowalski’s, but the papers had already passed muster at the stricter entry point back in Hong Kong after their flight from D.C.
None of them wanted their real identities known by the Chinese government. Gray and Kowalski were field operatives for Sigma Force, a covert wing of DARPA, made up of former Special Forces soldiers who had been retrained in various scientific disciplines to protect against global threats. Seichan was a former assassin for an international criminal organization, until recruited by force of circumstance to ally with Sigma. Though she wasn’t officially part of Sigma, she remained its dark shadow.
At
least for now.
After Gray and Kowalski also cleared customs, they hailed a taxi outside. As they waited for it to pull to the curb amid the milling crowds, Gray stared across the breadth of the Macau peninsula and its connected islands. A sea of neon beckoned, along with the blare of music and the echoing muffle of humanity.
Macau, a former Portuguese colony, had become the Sin City of the South China coast, a gambling mecca that had already surpassed Las Vegas in gaming revenues. Only steps away from the ferry terminal rose the gold tower of one of the city’s largest casinos, the Sands Macau. It was said that the three-hundred-million-dollar complex had recouped its costs of construction in less than a year. Other gaming powerhouses continued to pour in, with new casinos popping up regularly. The total count stood at thirty-three, all in a city one-sixth the size of D.C.
But the appeal of Macau did not stop at gambling. The hedonistic pleasures of the city—some legal, most not—went well beyond slot machines and poker tables. The old adage of Vegas applied equally here.
What happens in Macau, stays in Macau.
Gray intended to keep it that way. He maintained a close watch on the crowd as their taxi pulled up. Someone tried to shoulder past him to steal their ride, but Gray stiff-armed him away. Kowalski bowed his way into the front seat, while Gray and Seichan ducked into the backseat of the cab.
Leaning forward, she spoke to the driver in rapid-fire Cantonese.
Moments later, they were quickly headed toward their destination.
Seichan settled back in her seat and handed Gray back his wallet.
He stared down at the billfold in surprise. “Where did you—?”
“You were targeted by a pickpocket. You have to watch yourself out here.”
Kowalski barked out a sharp laugh from the front seat.
Gray craned around, remembering the man who tried to shove past him. It had been a ruse to distract him, while another relieved him of his wallet, apparently stealing his dignity also. Luckily, Seichan had skills of her own, learned on streets not unlike these.
After her mother had vanished, Seichan spent her childhood in a series of squalid orphanages across Southeast Asia, until eventually she was recruited off the streets and trained to kill. In fact, the first time the two had met, she had shot Gray in the chest, not exactly the warmest of meetings. Now, after the destruction of her previous employer’s cartel, she found herself orphaned once again, left adrift, still unsure of her footing in the new world.
She was a trained killer with no roots.
Even Gray expected her to vanish at any moment and never be seen again. While they had grown closer over these past four months, working side by side to hunt for clues to her mother’s fate, she still kept a wall between them, accepting his companionship, his support, and once even his bed. Not that anything had happened that night. They had simply been working late, and it was a matter of convenience, nothing more. Still, he had gotten no sleep, lying next to her, listening to her breathe, noting small twitches as she dreamed.
She was like some wild beast, skittish, feral, wary.
If he moved too fast, she would likely spook and bolt.
Even now she sat stiffly in the taxi, wound as tightly as the strings of a cello. He reached over to her, slid a palm along her back, and pulled her closer. He felt the steel in her slowly soften. She allowed herself to sag against him. One hand fiddled with the small pendant at her neck, in the shape of a tiny silver dragon. Her other hand found his, one finger tracing a scar across the back of his thumb.
Until she found her place in this new world, this was the best he could hope for. He also sensed what fueled the intensity of this four-month-long search for her mother. It was a chance for her to rediscover herself, to reconnect to the one person who had loved and sheltered her, to rebuild the family she had lost. Only then, he suspected, could she turn from the past and look to the future.
Gray shared that goal with her, wanted that for her, and would do anything to make that happen.
“If this guy knows anything,” he promised aloud, “we’ll get it out of him.”
12:32 A.M.
“They’re en route,” the caller said. “They should reach their destination in another few minutes.”
“And you’ve confirmed their identity, Tomaz?”
Ju-long Delgado paced the length of his desk, constructed of solid Ceylon satinwood. The wood was as rare as it was expensive, which defined his interests. The remainder of his office was shelved with antiques, a mix of Portuguese and Chinese, like himself.
“We attempted to steal the smaller man’s papers,” Tomaz said, “but the woman intervened. She somehow got his wallet back from us.”
She was certainly skilled.
Ju-long stopped and touched one of a trio of photos on his desk. The woman was Eurasian, a mix of cultures like him, but in her case, she appeared to be French Vietnamese.
He caught his own reflection in the dark computer monitor. He carried his father’s surname, marking their family’s Portuguese presence in Macau going back to the opium wars of the early nineteenth century. His given name came from his mother’s side of the family. Likewise, he also shared his father’s round eyes and heavy facial hair, trimmed tight to his face, and his mother’s refined features and smooth skin. Though he was in his forties, most considered him much younger. Others made the mistake of assuming him inexperienced from his youthful demeanor—and made the worst mistake of trying to take advantage of that.
It was an error that was never repeated.
He returned his attention to the woman in the photo. As an assassin of some distinction, she had a steep price on her head. The Israeli Mossad had placed the highest bounty so far, for some past crime of hers, with the promise that she would be killed, silenced before anyone learned of his involvement.
That was Ju-long’s best talent: to move unseen, to manipulate from afar, to find profit in opportunity.
He stared at the picture of the soldier, a former army ranger. His face was deeply tanned, his gray-blue eyes sun-crinkled at the corners, his strong jaw shadowed with dark stubble. The bidding for this one still continued to grow, especially over the past twelve hours. It seemed this man had made many enemies—or knew secrets of considerable value. It was of no matter. Ju-long dealt merely in commodity. So far, the anonymous buyer from Syria held the highest bid for him.
The third man—with a face like a gorilla—seemed to be nothing more than a bodyguard. Someone to sweep out of the way to reach the true prizes here.
But first Ju-long had to secure them.
It would have been easy enough to grab them both from the ferry building, but such a kidnapping in the open would have drawn too much attention. After the Chinese took over control of Macau in 1999, he had to operate with more stealth. On the positive side, though, the crackdown by the new government had rid the peninsula of most of the warring Chinese Triad gangs, eliminating his competition and allowing him to assume greater control of his organization. Now, as the Boss of Macau, as some called him, he had a thumb in everything, and the Chinese government turned mostly a blind eye as long as he kept a firm rein on matters, and the officials here got their weekly cut.
As Macau grew richer, so did he.
“Your men are in position at Casino Lisboa?” Ju-long asked Tomaz, wanting no mistakes. “They are ready to receive them?”
“Sim, senhor.”
“Good. And what resistance do you expect?”
“They carry no firearms. Yet we suspect they all have knives on their persons. But that should not matter.”
He nodded, satisfied.
As he ended the call, he glanced over to a plasma screen resting atop an antique Portuguese naval chest. Earlier, he’d had Tomaz bribe one of the security guards at Casino Lisboa to gain access to their internal video surveillance, specifically the feed into one of their VIP rooms off the main gaming floor. Such rooms were plentiful throughout Macau, servicing high-stakes gamblers who wanted a priv
ate table or some exclusive time with one of Macau’s elite prostitutes.
This room held a lone occupant, seated on a red-silk sofa, awaiting his guests. The man had been too loose with his tongue over the past few days, telling of this midnight rendezvous, sharing the story of his upcoming good fortune. And when it came to reports of newfound money of this size, especially windfalls from foreign lands, word eventually reached Ju-long Delgado. He quickly learned the identity of the newcomers.
Where money flowed, there was always a way to turn a profit.
Ju-long stepped behind his desk. His family’s mansion overlooked Leal Senado Square, the historic colonial heart of Macau, where for centuries Portuguese troops had paraded in force and where now Chinese dragons danced during holidays. Even this night, lanterns hung in the neighboring trees, amid cages holding songbirds. Across the plaza, small shrines to the dead held floating candles in small earthenware bowls, all to light the way for the departed spirits.
But the biggest flame of them all hung in the sky, shimmering and bright: the silvery fire of a comet.
Content, he settled into his seat and swung his attention to the plasma screen, ready to enjoy the night’s entertainment from Casino Lisboa.
12:55 A.M.
This was not the Macau she remembered.
Seichan climbed out of the cab and stared around. It had been over fifteen years since she had last set foot here. On the dark ride from the harbor, she could barely pick out the sleepier Portuguese town of the past, a place of narrow alleys, colonial mansions, and baroque plazas.
It was now hidden behind towering walls of neon and glitz. Back then, even Casino Lisboa had been a seedier affair, nothing like the remodeled neon birthday cake of today, not to mention its newest edition, the Grand Lisboa, a thousand-foot-tall golden tower in the shape of a lotus flower.
Definitely not the Macau she remembered.
The only semblance of those sleepier times was the thousands of glowing lanterns floating in the neighboring Nam Van Lake. Incense burned on the shores, too, and perfumed the gentle sea breeze with the scents of cloves, star anise, and sandalwood. It was a tradition that went back millennia to honor the dead.
The Eye of God: A Sigma Force Novel sf-9 Page 3