“Our people here say what you’re looking at resembles the gear Michelson was working with in the Telemorphy Lab at Fort Mead,” Brescoll said. “They say he absconded from there with more of that gear than you’re seeing, though.”
The same realization was rising into Michael’s thoughts—and probably Susan’s and Darla’s, too—when Brescoll gave voice to it from afar.
“Fremdkunst, Michelson, and Levitch seem to have flown the coop,” the director said. “Our sources indicate Retticker might well have been at Wabar also. If he was there, and he’s gone now too, I think it’s safe to assume they were tipped off to the impending raid.”
“By whom?” Michael asked.
“We can’t say with certainty,” Brescoll said into their helmet speakers. “Dan says Fremdkunst has connections in the Saudi government, so maybe it was from their end. General Retticker has connections with people on our end who might have been loose-lipped, too. The important thing now is to find out where they’ve gone—and if they’re pursuing the kids, or already have them.”
“I suggest we head west,” Darla said suddenly. “Mecca is almost due west of Wabar, after all.”
“Informed intuition, Doctor Pittman?” Brescoll asked.
“Maybe. But perhaps no more untrustworthy than your remembrance of things under the dome, eh, Director?”
“Perhaps not.”
“It makes sense,” Susan said. “We came in from the north, and Michael says the Saudis came in from the south and east.”
“Westward ho, then,” the director said. “We’ll divert as many of our radar and satellite sources to your search area as we can spare. Lieutenant Carling, your liaison, will set your transport in motion as soon as the crew has returned with your meteorite crates. The majority of the CSS and Saudi forces will finish mop-up operations and secure the Wabar area while you reconnoiter.”
They left the already hastily abandoned labs. Waiting for their crate-laden helicopter to return, they walked toward the sand-sunken Wabar craters themselves.
“Even by night vision you can see at least three crater rims,” Michael said. “Or parts thereof.”
“One’s eleven meters across, one’s sixty-four meters, and the biggest is one hundred sixteen meters in diameter,” Darla said wistfully. “Sorry…long but distant familiarity.”
“I’ve always wanted to explore this place, too,” Michael said, sympathizing.
“No time,” Susan said as a helicopter came in low and fast over the horizon. Soon it was hovering impatiently overhead.
“No, not this time,” Darla agreed.
Their helo dropped winch lines with attached harnesses toward them. Michael hoped things were moving westward, and not worst-ward. At least they’d recovered a goodly percentage of Fremdkunst’s meteorites. He’d bet that, in the materials recovered here at Wabar, they’d just happen to find slices from a lot of the skystones stolen from around the world.
Around him, the predawn light lay like a diaphanous veil upon the still-shining stars.
MORNING FLIGHT
This invisible dirigible both did and didn’t make a good getaway vehicle, Retticker thought. They were at most a ghost on any number of detection systems—radar, infrared, visible optical. Yet the craft was most efficient cruising high in the stratosphere, where its tens of thousands of cubic meters of helium expanded twentyfold more than at sea level, and its solar-powered engines and high-altitude propellers were most efficient. Limping along on reduced solar, through denser air, and with only the slight help of hydro fuel-cell backups and low-altitude props, they were not exactly burning through the morning sky.
Especially now, while dune-hopping to decrease the chance of anyone getting a radar fix on them.
Given the resources Vang and Otis commanded—and at least the possibility that international law enforcement agencies might come hunting them—he’d have thought they’d have a faster getaway vehicle in reserve. Even as he thought it, however, Retticker realized that ground vehicles wouldn’t fit the bill—too slow and easily targetable. The highly modified helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft that could land on or take off from the sand sea surrounding Wabar were few and far between, too. No choice but to make do with what they had.
He debated with himself about whether to land and sit tight or stay airborne. The chameleon-cloth camouflage might prove more effective on the ground, especially combined with the immensity of the potential search area of the entire Empty Quarter. Anyone looking for them would inevitably have to cover a good chunk of this France-size dune ocean. Even the heat of the day, when it came into its own, would be his ally against anyone trying to locate them by plane or helo.
Yet landing and sitting tight also might make them sitting ducks. Maybe better to stay on the move, and go to ground only when a threat was imminent—counting only then on the brute vastness of the desert to hide them. Flying by night, and holing up in the heat of the day.
As presumably the Mawari kids were doing. And maybe Zaragosa and Ankawi, too, already a week and a half into their crazy jaunt across the desert, if what he’d gathered from Fremdkunst’s speculations about their activities proved to be true.
Assuming, of course, that any of those people had managed to stay alive in the deadly drought, dust, and heat of this sun-hammered place.
As he pondered it, the stealth airship flew on, an inversion of the world: all the shades of sand and earth on top, the brass-and-blue of the sky on the bottom. Many fish used the same upside-down logic in their protective coloration schemes. Retticker knew, however, that that didn’t necessarily protect those fish from being seen and picked off by birds from above, or other predators from below. He’d feel a lot more comfortable if this aircraft could somehow pass to stratospheric altitude without being detected—and the sooner the better.
Although Fremdkunst, Michelson, Levitch, and Semenov were in the crowded lounge with him, Retticker said nothing of this to them. Michelson and Levitch were asleep, or nearly so, after sampling the well-stocked bar. Semenov seemed to be in a drunken stupor. Fremdkunst was still managing to stay awake, probably out of anger at being forced to leave so many of his beloved meteorites behind. The “tepui art piece” itself was aboard, however, for all that it was very much unneeded ballast.
Retticker sighed inwardly. He’d had no choice. Fremdkunst and Semenov had wanted to load them up with too damned much stuff, and he had to make a command decision that made no one happy. So there Fremdkunst now sat, furiously accessing via blinks the readouts from the ground-scanning and earth-penetrating detection systems they had rigged up on board, before their hurried departure from Wabar.
So far the search had not produced evidence of the Mawari kids—or anyone else in this wasteland.
Retticker wondered how much Fremdkunst’s nonstealthed detection gear raised their radar cross-section. Probably best to let that go, though. At least for the time being.
“I’m going to join the crew up forward and see if they have any news,” Retticker said, to no one in particular, as he stood up. Fremdkunst gave him a belated nod, too caught up in his searching to do much of anything else.
“Good to see you, General,” said the pilot, a square-jawed black man named McGuire. Ex-military, like everyone else Vang crewed this ship with. “We were just getting ready to send someone to find you.”
“Oh? Trouble?”
“We don’t know yet,” said the crew’s communications and countermeasures officer. “Two blips have been executing a pretty standard search pattern out of Wabar. The one farther east apparently just got into the air a few minutes ago and doesn’t seem to have tagged us at all yet. But the closer one appears to be roughly paralleling our course now—almost as if they’re losing us and finding us again.”
Good God, Retticker thought. How are they managing that? This same crew on this same craft had slipped through the airspace of nearly a dozen nations during the middle of an international crisis, over Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean, above moun
tain ranges and deep into this ocean of sand, without their once being effectively detected. How could someone have picked up their location so fast?
“Better begin evasive maneuvers, Mister McGuire,” Retticker suggested.
“Yes sir.”
“You might want to reconsider that, General.”
Looking over his shoulder, Retticker saw it was Fremdkunst who had spoken, about the same instant Retticker recognized the man’s voice. There was something of the loaded gun in Fremdkunst’s tone, which gave him pause.
“Why ‘might’ I want to do that?”
“Because I think I’ve located those kids,” Fremdkunst said, taking off his blinks and handing them to Retticker, who put them on.
“What am I looking at?”
“A gravimetric display. I took a chance and thought I’d try it. I didn’t really expect to find anything, but it seems I’m wrong. See that dashed line, following the dot? Slightly to the north and west of our position?”
“Yes.”
“I ran an analysis. It’s a gravitational anomaly, and it’s moving.”
“So?”
“Gravitational anomalies of that strength don’t ordinarily move. It would be like the mountain coming to Muhammad.”
“What makes you think it’s the Mawari kids?”
“If our sleeping geniuses in the lounge are right, and these kids can telekinetically alter the shape of the spacetime fabric, the way that alteration would most likely manifest itself is gravitationally. Gravity is the curvature of spacetime, the shape of that fabric. Like Einstein said.”
“Supposing you’re right, what do you suggest we do?”
“Given that those kids are our top priority, I suggest we make a beeline to intersect that mobile anomaly.”
Retticker considered it.
“No, not a beeline. Even if those are the Mawari kids, it’ll do us no good if we gather them up and then somebody else gathers us up.” He handed over the blinks to the airship captain, then continued. “If you’d be so kind, Mister McGuire, pull down the course from Victor’s gravimetrics and plot us a diminishing zigzag trajectory—one that intersects this gravitational anomaly our friend here finds so interesting.”
Fremdkunst shrugged, at least partially appeased, and disappeared below again. Retticker gazed at the screens showing the morning desert, still trying to figure out how they’d been detected.
Staring at an image from one of the portside cameras, he saw it: something moving where nothing should be moving. Like Fremdkunst’s gravitational anomaly. He cursed fiercely under his breath as he tumbled to the explanation.
EVIDENCE FROM ABSENCE
From the Executive Command Suite at NSA, Jim Brescoll and Dan Amaral watched a myriad of display screens and domes. On them, events in the desert unfolded as the helicopter that had earlier left Wabar—the only one spared for the search, initially—continued its pursuit. The second helo, loaded with soldiers, was now airborne, too.
“We’ve got an increasingly solid fix on that ghost ship out of Wabar,” Brescoll explained over throat mike to the CSS crew and its passengers aboard the search helo—Pittman, Yamada, and Miskulin among them. “We’ve found something that supplements what the spotty radar feeds hint at. Satellite optical scans show no object, but they do show a moving shadow. I’m sending you course coordinates now.”
“Any idea what kind of aircraft we’re looking for?” the CSS helicopter pilot asked.
“Our best evidence is from absence,” Brescoll said. “Lack of infrared signature. Virtually invisible radar or light-spectrum profile. Low air speed. The one thing we do have is anamorphic analysis of the shape of its shadow.”
“Which suggests what, sir?”
“Best guess is that what you’re looking for is a stealth airship. It’s from a black budget program that ran way over budget, until Congress found out and killed it. You won’t be able to see the thing until you’re practically on top of it, I’m afraid—though you might be able to see its shadow.”
“If it’s from a program Congress killed,” Susan asked over the helo noise, “what’s it doing flying around out here?”
“A Doctor Vang bought back the only two prototypes built. For ‘continuing research.’ Turns out his companies were primary contractors on the craft.”
From the corner of his eye, Jim saw Dan Amaral nodding vigorously and smugly at the mention of Vang’s name.
“Is it armed?” asked the pilot.
Jim looked through the spec sheet his analysts had given him.
“This particular prototype wasn’t, but it could have undergone a postproduction retrofit in that direction.
A missile coming at you out of what looks like empty air is not beyond the realm of the possible.”
“Rules of engagement, Director?”
“Track and observe, but do not engage. The Saudi troop helo is diverting to your coordinates as we speak. Hold back safely and let them take point on this.”
“And if our bogey fires on us, Director?”
“Then return fire. We’ll give you the best real-time we can on any missile’s point of origin, should it come to that.”
FLIGHT AND FIGHT
“General,” McGuire told Retticker, “we have a problem.”
“Say it.”
“Radar indicates that our pursuer has a better fix on our position now, but also appears to have slowed.
A second pursuer has altered course and is headed in our direction.”
“I think they’re following the motion of our shadow over the desert,” Retticker said. “We’re not transparent.”
“No sir. This airship was developed for close-in night work, but day work was to be standoff and high-altitude. We could pop up to elevation and disperse the shadow cone.”
“That would make us more vulnerable to radar detection, wouldn’t it?” Retticker asked.
“Yes sir. Potentially. Especially since our first pursuer, at least, appears to have a closer fix on our present location.”
“What’s their time to intercept us, versus our time to intercepting Victor’s gravitational anomaly?”
“The first pursuer slowed, as I said. Apparently waiting to be joined by the second, which is just about to happen. If we assume both continue at the speed of that second pursuer…” McGuire gave him the figures for both sets of intercepts—their own and their pursuers’. They were virtually identical.
“And the time to execute the pop-up, versus coming into missile range—them of us, us of them?”
McGuire and his crew gave him more figures.
“And there are only those two craft pursuing us?”
“Yes sir. Unless they have something stealthed like ours.”
“We’ll have to take that chance. What little surprise we have left is our best bet, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes sir. We’ll start the pop-up now. As soon as they are within range, we will commence firing.”
DOWNINGS
“We have radar confirmation of incoming missile attack,” the CSS helo pilot said, sounding surreally calm over Brescoll’s speakers in the ECS. “Taking evasive action. We have visual confirmation. Do you have origin coordinates?”
“Sending,” Brescoll said. During a pause of almost unendurable length, he watched the reads on his screens, the Saudi helo slightly ahead and to the west, now, of the CSS flier.
“Received. Trajectory match confirmed. We are returning fire.”
Over myriad displays he and Amaral, telepresent witnesses, watched the air battle unfold. The helos, having loosed four birds between them, were making a run for lower air, trying to put a sand mountain—several hundred feet in height—between themselves and the stealther’s missile flight. Brescoll said a quick prayer they’d make that cover.
They almost did.
“—hit. Saudi ship hit,” said the pilot. “Two impacts. We’re hit. Tail rotor spiked. We’re going in.”
Brescoll and Amaral watched helplessly as altitude read
outs for both craft dwindled. The video feed from the CSS helo showed a sand mountain growing until it filled the screen. A sound like an eighteen-wheeler plowing into a runaway-truck catchramp filled the speakers. That sound had barely shrieked its way through the ECS before all their screens and all their displays from the helo went dead.
Brescoll puffed out his cheeks, hoping and praying no one had died in those downings. Nothing to do now but keep going until he had more info. Operate from knowledge, not from fear.
“The airship…did they manage to hit it?”
CALCULATED RISK
Retticker and the crew had no time to celebrate the downing of their pursuers before their own craft was viciously shaken.
“What the hell was that? Were we hit?”
McGuire and his crew quickly scanned sensors from throughout the ship. On one of the portside cameras they saw a fireball erupt some distance ahead of them. As Retticker watched and waited, Fremdkunst, Levitch, Semenov, and Michelson piled in behind him.
“Yes, and no, sir.”
“Explain.”
“One of the helos’ air-to-air missiles appears to have torn completely through the smartskin on one of our portside control surfaces. Without exploding.”
“And what we’re seeing now—?” Fremdkunst asked.
“—is its belated detonation,” Retticker said.
“Yes sir. My guess is it passed through without encountering any of the structural members. Or we’d probably be too busy to watch this. Just dumb luck.”
“Better lucky than smart,” Retticker said. “And we’re still airworthy?”
“She’s steering a bit more like a tank than usual,” McGuire said, “but she’ll keep flying. The problem is, that big hole in the smartskin makes us a lot easier to detect. Sir, I recommend we put down and effect repairs as quickly as possible.”
“Good. We can kill a couple of birds with one stone here. It’s coming onto the blaze of noon, so our shadow as we settle toward ground again will be minimized. Assuming we have no other immediate pursuers, we’ll wait out the day and make the repairs, then continue the flight tonight.”
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