Ocean of Storms

by Christopher Mari

  Zell traced a finger across the map. “If the walls of Jericho cannot be breached, they must be scaled.”

  “You mean climb up over that rock wall you were talking about?” Benny said.

  Zell smiled. “Exactly, Commander. We ascend over the rock wall in a discreet location, then descend into the crater. From there our global-positioning equipment should lead us right to the spot.”

  Benny rubbed his chin. “I hate to ask how high the damn wall is.”

  “More than twenty-one hundred meters above sea level,” Zell replied. “It gets fairly brisk up there at night, so I hope you brought your winter coat.”

  Benny sank back in his chair. “Terrific. And here I only brought my suntan lotion.”

  Just then Badru and Donovan entered the room. Zell offered them a drink, which they eagerly accepted before he returned to his rocking chair.

  “So I’ll assume that you gentlemen have procured means of transportation by now?” Zell asked.

  Badru and Donovan gave each other a look. “Well, Elias,” Donovan began, “procure might be too strong a word.”

  Benny took a sip of his scotch. “Don’t tell me you just dragged us halfway across the world and haven’t even chartered a private flight out there?”

  “A private charter flight would be too risky,” Badru explained. “Too many eyes would be watching the airport.”

  “So what’ve you got in mind?” Soong asked. “Overland, by Jeep?”

  “Still too risky, Soong,” Donovan said. “If anyone’s looking for an archeology team heading for the crater, they’ll be expecting us to either come by plane or by caravan.”

  Soong shook her head. “Then how can you possibly expect us to get all of our equipment to the site?”

  “Badru’s arranged to have our equipment shipped incognito to his village.” Donovan smiled sheepishly. “We’ll be arriving separately.”

  “Oh Jesus.” Zell’s face flushed with dawning realization. “Not the damn bus!”

  “The bus, Elias,” Donovan said flatly.

  Benny looked to Donovan and Zell, and then back to Donovan again. “What’s wrong with the bus?”

  “Well,” Zell said, contemplating his cigar, “give it some time. You may find yourself wishing you were still stranded on the Moon.”

  September 10

  Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania

  8:05 p.m.

  There was no single technological advancement that Dr. Joseph Cuevas detested more than videoconferencing. If no one had ever thought of it, he might have been able to mask his nervousness in an ordinary telephone call. Instead, he had to face the wrath of Cal Walker full-on, protected only by the thousands of miles that separated them. And, at the moment, even that distance didn’t feel like much protection.

  For a thin old man, Walker had the amazing ability to fill an entire computer screen. He always drew himself in close, the top third of the screen filled by his silver-gray hair, the bottom two-thirds by his ruddy yet still youthful face and shoulders. Cuevas wondered if he sat that way because he was nearsighted, but then thought better of it. If Walker was good at anything, it was intimidation. And he knew the best way to do that was through a face-to-face confrontation.

  Cuevas watched the old man’s visage grow larger on the screen. The ice-blue eyes never seemed to blink. “I was made to understand that the project would be completely shut down this morning.”

  “With respect, Dr. Walker,” Cuevas began, absentmindedly running a hand through his thinning black hair, “what the company expects is impossible. They’re asking us to completely abandon a project many people have worked on for nearly two years, knowing how much progress we’ve made in the last six months alone.”

  “No one asked anything, Dr. Cuevas.” Walker leaned back slightly, exposing his shoulders to the screen. “What was expected was for your team to shut down operations and seal the dig site by seven this morning. I cannot continue to give excuses to the board.”

  “Sir, if you only give us a little more time. We should be able to—”

  “You have another hour, Doctor. Beyond that I am afraid that matters will be out of my hands.”

  Cuevas watched as Walker sat back and his thick-veined hand reached toward the keyboard, tapped a key, and ended the transmission. The researcher sat for several long seconds before the blank screen, then turned to the members of his team who had gathered around the periphery of the terminal.

  “You heard the man, ladies and gentlemen. We’ve got another hour.”

  The team dispersed with worried glances and muttered comments. He knew as they did that their entire careers were now on the line. Walker and the other members of the board had the power to destroy them. Cuevas pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and patted down his glistening brow as he scanned around him. They couldn’t disassemble all the equipment they had brought with them, but he knew they had to take as much as possible before they sealed up the dig. He didn’t fully understand the urgency about shutting down operations so quickly, but having experienced all the secrecy surrounding the project—including the incredible outbreak story—he could guess why. Someone had discovered what they were doing, someone who was likely heading toward their position at this moment. Whoever was coming was obviously beyond the control of Walker and the others.

  Cuevas almost wanted to meet such a person. He knew the company had more than its fair share of competitors, but there were few people they outright feared.

  Cuevas was a geneticist. Not that he bragged about it, but he knew he was at the top of his field. That’s why TGI recruited him so many years ago. That’s why they invited him to lead this project six months ago. But he didn’t have the stomach for this kind of cloak-and-dagger business. He knew that the moment he had signed all of the confidentiality papers before heading off to Africa. But the money—and the prestige—that came with such an offer were far too tempting.

  Cuevas pulled himself from his seat and strolled down the central aisle of workstations and computer banks under the rigged fluorescent lights bolted into the roof of the cavern. At the end of the aisle sat the ship, still half-buried in earth and volcanic muck. Though the archeology team had excavated several hundred feet of the vessel over the last two years, much of it still remained underground. Its sheer enormity overwhelmed him. They could still only estimate its actual size and shape by walking around inside the craft. And much of that was barred from them. The ship had long been exposed to the elements and was heavily damaged in many sections, making them inaccessible. The best-educated guesses suggested that the ship was at least nearly two miles long and more than half a mile wide.

  Still, it was remarkable that so much of the ship had been preserved after roughly two and a half million years. But the vessel was composed of a metal unlike anything any member of his team had ever seen. If it really had been piloted through time and space as they now suspected, its builders must have known the ship could survive burial in a volcanic antechamber.

  Though his team had disassembled many of its components, the Eos still very much looked as it did the first day he beheld it—like a massive prehistoric beast trapped in a tidal wave of nature. And like any prehistoric fossil, this ship looked out of place in his own time—except that its time was not a past age but a future one. He had discovered that much in the last six months. Before him rested a piece of humanity’s collective future.

  Cuevas pulled his pipe from his coat pocket and stuffed it with tobacco. He knew he was breaking his own rule by smoking in the cavern, but it wouldn’t matter all that much now. In an hour this place and its secrets might well be sealed for the rest of his lifetime. He struck a match and touched it to the pipe’s bowl as he strolled before what they had decided was the bow of the ship. The pipe calmed him. He ran a hand against the ship’s hull, which still had an almost-living warmth.

  He knew the rumors surrounding the ship’s discovery. Supposedly, a little over two years ago, a Maasai warrior who lived in a nearby village
had led a British archeological team to the ship. The Maasai had described falling into a cavern while walking through the Ngorongoro Crater one day. Wielding a torch composed of shreds of his robe and a tree branch, he explored deeper into the chamber. Before him was a metallic wall. Scrambling up out of the cavern, he returned to his village to inform some of the tribal leaders about the discovery, who in turn informed a dear friend who was also a British archeologist. The leaders told their warrior to tell no one else of what he had discovered. And true to his word, the warrior kept the secret and was allowed to lead the team back to the cavern.

  Beyond that, Cuevas knew little of the British team’s story, aside from the fact that they were found, along with their Maasai guide, shot to death inside their vehicles on the road leading out of the crater. Local government officials had claimed that the team had been murdered by thieves intent on robbing them of their supplies and vehicles. Apologies were issued to the British government, and compensation was made to the members of their families. The Maasai remained silent on the subject. But no trace of where the exploratory team had been or what they had been doing on that road had ever surfaced. And neither had the killers.

  Two weeks later, an American team of archeologists was called in. They surveyed the cavern and unearthed a fair portion of the ship over a year and a half. Six months ago the dig was subcontracted out to TGI. Cuevas didn’t know how his government had managed to take the dig away from the British, but once a genetic team was clearly needed at the site, TGI was given the project. He knew his employer was well connected inside the American government—the amount of political campaigns the company had contributed to over the years was testament to that—but he didn’t know how high up those connections went. For all he knew, the President herself might be aware of the Eos, though that didn’t seem likely. If anything ever smacked of a case for plausible deniability, this was it.

  Someone cleared his throat behind him. Cuevas pulled his pipe from his mouth and turned to face his assistant director, Dr. Arnold Anderson.

  “What’s up?”

  “Joe, we’ve got the specimens all packed away. But we’re not sure about what to do with the research. Should we load it all onto one truck, or should we split it up?”

  “Better split it up, Arnold. Make sure each truck has copies of our records. This way if anything gets damaged we’ll still have a complete record somewhere.”

  “What about the components from the ship?”

  “Same drill. Split them up. I know we’re not completely sure how they work, but the computer people seem to think each station is a complete microcomputer in itself.”

  “Okay.”

  “What’s wrong, Arnold?”

  Anderson wiped sweat from the back of his neck. “We’re still leaving a lot behind. Too much.”

  “I know. But we have to take what we can and hope it’s enough.”

  “There’s still a lot of questions.”

  “I know,” Cuevas said, looking back toward the Eos. “And in less than an hour no one may ever learn the answers.”

  Donovan had to admit he was impressed. Benny had gone all of two and a half hours before he began complaining about the more-than-thirteen-hour bus ride from Dar es Salaam to the Ngorongoro Crater.

  Still, he was amazed that Benny could be complaining at all, especially when one considered all the discomforts they had to endure during their trip to the Moon. But, as Benny said frequently throughout the bus ride, he had been trained for that. No training he had ever gone through had prepared him for the inadequacies of the developing world’s public transportation.

  The bus was old and without air-conditioning. And despite all the wide-open windows, the air inside the vehicle was thick and gamy. The smells reminded Donovan of many of the farms he had visited as a child when his father went crop dusting. Here the open windows did little more than blow dust inside from the roads to coat the worn, cracked seats with grime. About four and a half hours into the trip, the driver pulled to the side of the road and announced that they had a one-minute bathroom break before pulling out again. As soon as Badru translated what the driver had said, Benny burst from the bus in pursuit of the other passengers who had scrambled into the brush for a moment of privacy. In one minute exactly, the driver blew the whistle he wore around his neck, and everyone raced back into the bus, Benny trailing behind as he pulled up his pants.

  They all knew better than to laugh at him. All of them, that is, with the exception of Badru, who burst out in hysterics.

  “Keep it up, pal,” Benny said as he buttoned up his pants, “and I’ll knock your teeth out.”

  Badru wiped tears from his eyes. “I’m sorry, my friend,” he said, “but I’ve got a head start.” He smiled widely, revealing his missing lower front tooth.

  “What?” Benny joked. “You piss someone else off worse than me?”

  “Not quite,” Badru said as he regained his composure. “It is a rite of passage for all Maasai males. When we come of age, one of the elders knocks it right out, pop!” He slapped his hands together for emphasis.

  “Neat trick,” Benny said.

  Badru nodded. “Not only does it mark us as having completed the journey to manhood, but should one of us succumb to the heat while in the wild”—he clenched his teeth and broadened his smile—“it makes for a convenient place into which to pour water.”

  “Huh,” Benny said thoughtfully. “Sounds like your tribe is really something.”

  “Once, we were the most feared tribe in East Africa,” Badru said, his voice becoming reflective. He then chuckled. “Some say we are one of the ten lost tribes of Israel.”

  “And others believe you’re the living ancestors to the ancient Egyptians,” Donovan added.

  Badru nodded thoughtfully. “Based primarily on the braided hair of our warriors. I think that theory is rather dubious.”

  “As are most theories,” Zell said, glancing at Soong, “until backed up with solid facts.”

  “Perhaps it is better to believe in myths then, Elias,” Badru noted. “Myths are never as disappointing as facts often are.”

  Donovan took a breath. “Or as dangerous.”

  September 11

  Arlington, Virginia

  2:12 a.m.

  “Jim, did I wake you?”

  “Not at all, ma’am. I was sitting up waiting for you.”

  The President laughed. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

  McKenna sat up in bed and stuck a cigar in his mouth, unlit. He glanced over at his wife, who stirred slightly in their warm white sheets, and took the cordless phone down the hall into his study, where he struck a match. Easing back into his desk chair, he watched as the smoke curled off the cigar and into the well-worn volumes in his bookcases.

  The phone call at two o’clock in the morning came as no surprise to McKenna. For as long as he had known the President, he knew she couldn’t sleep when she had something on her mind. And after that meeting with Stein yesterday, he was surprised that the President had waited until two to place the call.

  “I guess I don’t have to ask what’s on your mind.”

  “I can’t believe this mess we’ve gotten ourselves into, Jim. I understand all this plausible-deniability crap, but something like this—”

  “I know, ma’am. But that’s the goddamn NSA for you. Who the hell knows what they’re doing?”

  “Well, I mean to change that,” the President said firmly. “You’d think we’d have learned our lessons after 9/11, not to keep all our cards so close to the vest that nobody knows what the hell anyone else has their fingers in.”

  McKenna glanced at his desk calendar. He couldn’t believe he had forgotten the anniversary. Obviously the President hadn’t. What sitting president could in this day and age? Though the ceremonies to mark the attack had become less and less ornate over the years, McKenna knew that he was going to participate in just such a ceremony at the Pentagon that very morning. For a few moments, he found himself una
ble to respond to the President. Since his involvement with Walker, he had become quite good at compartmentalizing the various aspects of his life. He felt ashamed to have shoved the anniversary to some barely used broom closet of his brain.

  “With all due respect, ma’am, this is a card that had to be played close,” McKenna answered. “And this is coming from the head of Space Command. If anyone besides you should know about it, I should.”

  “I know. But I’ve been doing some thinking. We can’t have Donovan and that bunch on the loose. But we can’t do it through ordinary channels.”

  McKenna sat up in his chair. “Ma’am, are you asking me—”

  “Jim, prep a team. We need reliable people, trustworthy people. I don’t care where you get them from or how you get them, so long as we keep this thing quiet.”

  “What about the British prime minister? She might not like this, since it also concerns a British citizen.”

  “I’ll handle her. I’m sure she’ll understand our wanting to take extraordinary measures to be discreet.”

  “Understood, Madam President. Thank you, ma’am.”

  McKenna switched off the phone and tossed it on a pile of papers on his desk. He stood up and paced around his study absentmindedly, reading the spines of his books, cigar in the corner of his mouth, hands behind his back. His gaze fell as it so often did to the photo of his son in his wheelchair. So many had sacrificed so much for so long to keep this country safe. They had sacrificed their families and their lives for the good of the whole. He thought of men he had known in combat, of those passengers aboard Flight 93 who brought that plane down in a field in Pennsylvania to keep it from hitting the White House. For most of his career McKenna took comfort in the idea that he was one of those few who had sacrificed for the many. And now, and now—