"It's right there. There's a small landing; the tracks and car are there behind that steel door," Martha said as she pointed.
"Carl, move in and check it out and make sure these guys didn't come across that little bit of information, too."
"Right," Everett said as he moved to the door and quickly opened it. He jumped out and made ready his response, but there was no fire. "It's just stairs, Jack."
"Get going, all of you. Mr. Ryan, assist the lady."
The others quickly made for the door and the stairs beyond. Jack waited one minute and then turned and followed.
A moment later, they found themselves a hundred feet down in the earth, staring at a small electric car that sat on tracks. The small tracks led upward and they saw light illuminating the tracks.
"Okay, Ms. Laughlin, you and Mr. Rothman get moving. We will cover you for as long as we can. But pretty soon these guys are going to smarten up and cut the power, so send that thing right back here." Jack looked at the locked door, just waiting for a satchel charge to blow it inward. "If for any reason we get separated, you have got to tell your story, either at the White House, where my director is--his name is Compton--or out at Nellis Air Force Base. If that's the case--"
"If that's the case, I know the base commander there. I got him appointed to the Academy," Rothman said.
"That's nice," Everett said as he pulled Rothman to the small cart.
The four men watched as the two old people moved off in the electric cart. Martha turned and Jack would have sworn she mouthed the words, I'm sorry.
Several explosions sounded through the steel door as the assault on the basement began in earnest. Dirt settled onto them from the tunnel above and around them.
Jack looked closely at the incline of the small tracks as they disappeared into the distance. Then he made a decision.
"Look, I don't feel like waiting here for our company to just drop in. Let's make this more expensive for them and head up toward the surface. Maybe we can pick a few off."
"I'm for that," Everett said as he caught a clip of ammunition from Mendenhall.
"Then let's catch the number nine, boys. Will, lead the way."
As they started out, they heard the first real explosion against the steel door. Jack motioned to Everett to catch up with Mendenhall and Ryan.
"Dammit, that's enough! Let me take the risks once in a while."
"That's an order, swabby. Now move it."
As Everett obeyed, Jack hunkered low and waited. He did not have to do so for long. He heard whispered orders as the attackers made it through the steel door. He cocked his head to listen. Jack knew that he was high enough on the incline of tracks that he was not seen. He would have to make that advantage count. The first four men came into view. They wore black Nomex and covered like professionals--two men forward, two squatting and covering. He waited for the optimal shot.
As the first two went low to cover the second, Collins aimed and fired at the two, who had just stood to run. He fired four times. Both men crumpled and fell onto the tracks. Then he adjusted and fired at the kneeling men before they knew what was coming. Two shots apiece. But this time only one man fell. The other, on the right, was only wounded and he nearly made Jack pay for missing. On full automatic, the man fired as he fell backward. The bullets hit the metal track to Jack's front and then stitched their way up into the concrete wall of the tunnel.
"Dammit!" Jack said as he quickly recovered and took hurried aim and fired. His rounds caught the man in the thigh and then the stomach. He was rewarded by the view of the man dropping his weapon and letting out a sigh.
Suddenly more men appeared and this time they let their automatic rifles do the covering. Bullets started hitting everywhere and Jack knew that he did have a chance to get off any return fire.
Everett had caught up with Mendenhall and Ryan just as the firing below began.
"Dammit. You two get to the top and find the damn light switch. These guys are well-equipped enough that they probably have night-vision gear." He looked at his watch. "Give me exactly three minutes and then hit the lights. Thirty seconds later, turn them on again. Got that?"
"What if there's no switch at this end?" Ryan asked.
"Then you may be moving up in rank real quick."
"Really!" Ryan said with all the false levity he could muster.
Jack knew that he was in trouble. He would stop for a split second and then fire blindly, hoping to hit one of the assailants with a ricochet. Then he would run, stop, and do the same again.
As he turned a third time, the lights went out.
"Oh, oh," he said to himself.
As he strained to listen, he remained perfectly still. He could hear quiet orders being voiced by whoever was in charge; he also heard the noise of men as they shuffled around in the darkness. He aimed toward some of that noise but held his fire, hoping that his eyes would adjust to the sudden darkness.
The withering fire opened up right at Jack's position. Chunks of concrete flew and struck him as he tried to back off on his stomach. The assault was too accurate for men blinded by darkness; they had to have night-vision goggles. Which he knew spelled disaster for him.
Above the din of exploding rounds, Jack heard a familiar voice.
"Stay down, Jack, and be ready!"
Suddenly, the lighting in the tunnel came to glaring life. The men in black Nomex screamed out as the brightness struck their eyes after being enhanced a thousandfold by the ambient light devices. Men fought as the tried to raise the single-lens goggles.
Everett, who was only ten feet from Jack, opened fire with deadly accuracy. Jack didn't hesitate as he sighted and added his 9-millimeter to the fray, hitting screaming men in their chests, faces, and arms. The two military men had caught each of their supposed killers in the open.
Three men turned and ran back the way they had come, but the rest would never return to the man who had ordered them to Rothman's house.
When it was over, Jack stood and hurriedly replaced his spent clip. He scanned the area around him and then looked at Everett.
"When in the hell are you going to follow orders, Captain?"
"Maybe when you start giving me orders that make sense by allowing me to assume some of the risk, Jack."
"Okay, Captain," he said, letting a smile finally crease his tanned face. "That wasn't a bad makeshift plan, by the way. Especially since we didn't know if they had night-vision gear. Also the part of the plan where you assumed Ryan would find the right switch for the lights."
"Nah, I knew he would just hit them all; the odds were with us."
Collins stared at the empty cart and the open door. Mendenhall and Ryan stood next to it and they did not look happy.
"The helicopter?" Jack asked.
"Gone," answered Ryan.
"Maybe that bad guy on the phone had a point about those two, Jack," Everett said. "I mean, leaving us to fend off the wolves while they run is not the makings of people with a whole lot of character."
Jack grimaced and then looked at the others.
"Well, we learned a few things. Let's go home and see what comes of it. We'll call the locals and use Europa to see if we can pin some names to the Virginia hospitality down in the tunnel."
"Yeah, we learned a few things all right, like not to trust anyone over fifty," Ryan mumbled as he turned and left.
9
EVENT GROUP CENTER
NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, NEVADA
Sarah had been on a conference call with Bell Labs for four hours and had even awakened the chief design engineer for Bose. She had to run some questions by the chief engineers of both facilities after Niles Compton, in Washington, had pulled some powerful strings and cleared the way for her to speak directly to the labs. When she was done with her questions, the Group's Engineering Department ran her theory in model form on Europa.
With some success in the theory end of things, they needed an actual working model to prove it sound. They set up a mechanical
model inside one of the many workshops of the complex. They had engineered two sandstone slabs, each eight inches thick, and it was these strange items that the Earth-Sciences team was currently examining as the communications division hurriedly set up their equipment to be used in the experiment.
"I don't get what you're suggesting, Sarah," said the young doctor from Virginia Tech. He looked over at a room monitor and into the face of Niles Compton, who was on the line from the White House subbasement, where he had set up shop with the new science adviser to the president.
"I think I do, and if she can pull this off, we have at least a theory to advance to the Russians and Chinese, and maybe, just maybe, they can convince the Koreans," Niles said from Washington.
"The key here is our naval-communications gear." Sarah nodded at the com techs and they gave her a thumbs-up.
The summoned scientists and engineering personnel assigned to the earthquake investigation stood around the lab, and all were wearing goggles. Most shook their heads in doubt at what Sarah was trying to do. Most of them had heard of sound as an impact carrier, but few believed that it could actually be used in real-world situations. As they watched the final connections being made, each was handed a pair of earphones and earplugs. They were instructed by the communications men--an army sergeant and a navy signals man--to insert the ear-canal plugs first and then place the headphones over them.
Sarah was nervous but she knew that this experiment should work. She was standing next to Jerry Gallup, who held a PhD from Harvard in telecommunications. He had informed her, after seeing Europa's results, that she had a very viable theory.
Sarah thought briefly of Lisa Willing, her roommate who had been killed in a field operation close to three years before. She was in communications and had once that sound decibels could penetrate aggregate formations in just the same manner as an opera singer could break glass when a certain pitch was reached. It was very rare in that scenario, but she and Gallup had received startling information from Bell Labs and the corporations of Audiovox and Bose that such theory was in practical use inside their own labs.
Sarah watched on closed-circuit television as Professor Harlan Walters of the University of Hawaii and director of the Trans-Pacifica Institute of Seismic Studies on Oahu started the experiment.
"Okay, I think we're set to begin," he said from Hawaii. "The hydraulic rams you see on the bench are set at scale level to two hundred billion metric tons, an estimate to be sure, of the pressures some of our continental plates induce on their leading ledges. The two sandstone slabs that you see represent the plates. The hydraulic rams are exerting this pressure on them at this moment, just as our real plates are doing below our feet. Now on top of these sandstone slabs we are placing a piece of granite with a hairline surface fracture that will act as our fault line."
Sarah looked at the sound technicians and nodded on her cue from Hawaii.
As the gathered witnesses watched, the communications men placed small domes in a long line two feet from the surface crack of the granite and then attached electrical leads to them.
"Now, what you see being done is the small domes placed on the granite have what the audio scientists call 'sound-inducing tone forks.' A small electrical current is sent through to the forks, which will act just as a real tuning fork will when struck; only we will control the amount of vibration by electrical current, thus controlling the power of the decibel output. While no sound-wave energy will be strong enough to damage strata that are as hard as granite, our intention is not to attempt that. Instead, we will strike at what supports the granite, or the upper crust of the earth, the actual tectonic plates that support the upper crust and are responsible for continental movements throughout earth's history. Since these plates all have leading edges that are uneven and the thickness varies to some degree, we presuppose that they can be attacked, for use of a better word, by audio waves."
There was loud mumbling as people in the engineering lab disagreed with one point or another about the theory.
"Lieutenant McIntire, you may begin," the professor said from Hawaii.
"Sergeant, if you will start the decibel assault on the plates, please."
A large console hurriedly pieced together by the Communications Department came to life. The sergeant and naval signals man started manipulating the knobs and switches that would activate the current, which would in turn start the minute motion of the forks inside the small domes.
One woman--a young first-year PhD from Stanford--shook her head and became unsteady on her feet. When she became nauseated, she was assisted out of the lab by another lab technician who was not feeling well.
"Some of the wave will escape. It will affect people differently, as our inner ears are not identical. Some will feel queasy and light-headed, while others may feel nothing at all. Once we interview survivors of the quakes and determine if any of them felt these same symptoms just before the earthquakes hit, that will add punch to the theory," Walters explained over the closed-circuit television link.
Sarah winced, as she too had felt uncomfortable as the wave started its assault. Then she felt better after a moment.
"They will start adjusting the pitch of the wave at this time," she said. "The pitch refers to whether the sound is a high or low note. High frequencies create high pitches and low frequencies produce low pitches. The human ear can process frequencies between twenty Hz and twenty thousand Hz. These are audible sounds. Sound waves with frequencies above twenty thousand Hz are called ultrasonic. Dogs can hear sounds up to about fifty thousand Hz. So a whistle that only dogs can hear has a frequency higher than twenty thousand but lower than fifty thousand Hz. Sound waves with frequencies below twenty Hz are called infrasonic. We will begin at the lower end of the ultrasonic scale and work our way up."
At first, they watched the sandstone a foot beneath the slab of granite and connected by several steel rods holding them together. Nothing was happening. A white cloth was placed under the stand-in for the tectonic plate to catch debris, so that they could see clearly any small granules of sand that fell.
"Take the wave to five hundred thousand Hz, please," Sarah ordered.
As the two technicians adjusted the frequencies on their makeshift board, a few more people in the room started to feel the effects. It was nothing that they could really describe as they placed their hands on their heads and temples. Another tech was feeling it in his stomach and his dental fillings, and all symptoms ended in a nauseating cramping.
As Sarah and Virginia watched, they saw the first grains of sand start to hit the white cloth. Then more and more granules started to fall. Then a small piece about one inch thick fell off the bottom of one of the sandstone slabs. Then another, even larger section fell free at the opposite edge.
The hydraulics kept up a steady pressure, pushing the two sandstone slabs together with great force.
Sarah nodded and the power was increased. More large pieces from both ends started to fall. The leading edges started to crack as the sound bells penetrated the granite and passed through it to strike the sandstone below. Suddenly, the leading edges went with a loud snapping sound as they mimicked the movement of the continental tectonic plates during an actual seismic event. As they broke apart, the hydraulics continued their pressure, thus moving the connection rods attached to both sets of stone.
"My God," Virginia said to no one but herself.
The connection rods pulled inward as the sandstone beneath came apart and suddenly the granite with the weakened fault on its surface cracked with a loud pop, as the fault line in the granite completely separated and then broke into two pieces, one half sliding completely over the other. As the pressure continued from the sandstone beneath, the entire structure of granite caved in.
The room was silent as the hydraulics shut down. The experiment had worked. As some of the professors and techs smiled and patted Sarah and Professor Gallup on the back, they saw that Sarah in her triumph was not smiling at all. She slowly removed he
r headphones and looked at the engineering model. She turned to Virginia.
"We may be in serious trouble," she said as she turned from Virginia to the monitor that would pass her image on to Niles in Washington and Harlan Walters in Hawaii.
"But, Sarah, it worked. That proves that--"
"Dr. Compton, please listen closely to what Sarah has to say. I just thought the same thing myself," Walters cut in.
"Director, the experiment was a success, yes, but it proves one thing: if these incidents were created by human manipulation, we are sitting on a time bomb."
"How do you mean?" Compton asked.
"When the plates move, even if it's only measured in mere feet, it would be enough to cause a fault line to fracture, creating an earthquake. If the wave is increased and the plate crumbles, by, say, a mile or maybe two, the main reaction of any fault that the assault is directed at may not just take out the desired targeted area, but continue on down the line. Another, even worse reaction could be thousands of miles away on the other side of the plate. Do you see what I mean? Because the actual tectonic plates aren't elastic in the least, they will pull at another point, affecting every fault line along the way."
"God," Niles said. "Virginia, get a copy of the experiment over to me double quick."
"Yes, sir."
"Dr. Compton, someone out there may be playing with a doomsday weapon that could crush an entire continent.
"Or open up a hole in the earth's crust large enough to swallow an ocean or a continent that may not have been an intended target," Walters added bleakly.
Second Lieutenant Will Mendenhall yawned as sat at his desk inside the security center on level three. He'd been virtually sleepless since the return flight from Virginia.
He yawned again as he was filling out the new duty rosters for the expanded staff brought in from field operations. The colonel was uptight about their little secret in the desert, now known to the man on the phone the night before.
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