"Tonati, I love you," she shouted over the noise of the engine and the rushing water.
The puma turned his head and their eyes met. His otherwise powerful voice produced a sound that would have made the large wildcat appear cute to even the most fearful of men. Isabelle could feel that he loved her, too. The moment between Isabelle and the love of her life didn't last very long.
"Four more miles upriver."
Ryan's voice took Isabelle back to her mission in an instant. She turned her head towards the computer-savvy man by her side. He was looking up from the map on the computer pad in his hand. Isabelle felt a presence of danger growing stronger that she hadn't felt since Berlin. The reason would soon become apparent.
Only a short distance away, the sharp blades of a helicopter were slicing through the dark serenity of the river valley like machetes. None other than a very angry Tasha was in the pilot's seat, searching the jungle for her prey. She had convinced Morabi that letting Isabelle get away would pose a threat to his country. A trade of a few crates of Tasha's unique surveillance gear from the troop carrier had bought the General's cooperation. The weapons served as payment for her use of the military's most sophisticated and only brand-new helicopter. Had Morabi been aware of Tasha's track record with vehicle-based calamities, he might have thought twice about handing her several million Dollars worth of equipment. He had figured an experienced pilot and tactical commander such as her would have little chance of damaging a helicopter that was filled with a large array of safety features. Just to be sure there would not be an exchange of fire, he had ordered his troops to disarm the aircraft. This allowed him to classify her excursion as a diplomatic mission, given Tasha’s heritage of leadership in her homeland.
Tasha had updated the helicopter's infrared and radar systems with her proprietary biometrics software, which included Isabelle and Ryan's data. She was skimming over the jungle canopy. The strong down-wash from her rotor was violently knocking coconuts and animals to the ground. One of the screens identified a family of apes running for their lives in a hail of debris. Soon, Tasha approached the river. Despite the tropical temperatures, her sensitive heat-vision camera picked up the trail of hot exhaust left by the small watercraft's combustion engine. Filled with blood lust, Tasha banked the helicopter into a sharp right turn and followed the river upstream. She wasn't far from Isabelle. After a short flight along the rushing waters, she spotted the motorboat up ahead. Tasha knew immediately what her biometrics scan was about to confirm. She had found her prey. Isabelle felt a chill running down her spine as the darkness of her shadow grew closer. The noise from the boat was drowning out the sound of Tasha's blades for the moment, but Isabelle knew who was upon her. She turned back and saw the rotary-winged blackbird approach. She caught Tasha's angry eye, illuminated by the gages of her cockpit, for the first time.
Without flinching, the hunter flew past her prey and continued upstream alongside a steep cliff.
44 GENE'S FINAL ORDERS TO TASHA
Gene's lair laid only a few kilometers ahead of Isabelle and Tasha, hidden where few would expect a doomsday device. A serene lake was situated atop a large waterfall that fed into the river below. Under the lake was what used to be one of Apophis' graphite mines. Just like Dr. Kenshin had explained to Ryan, Gene had built his hidden lair into the granite and graphite unseen from the outside. A maze of tunnels and shafts provided ample space for the secret operation. The nerve center of pain was an enormous control room that housed technology which made any of Tasha's equipment seem ancient and primitive. An army of Gene's henchmen operated control boards and a series of view-screens that covered one of the room's walls. Several steps in the back of the room lead to a podium. This was the platform on which Gene was perched, supervising the lair's activities.
Sitting comfortably in his impressive chair, the dark industrialist had found a hair in his soup of destruction. It was Isabelle's progress that had ruined his enjoyment of what was to be his biggest day, yet.
Three very large screens dominated the video-wall he was facing. On the leftmost viewer was a map of the world with a red dot over Tasha's homeland in northeast Africa. The rightmost image was of his launch bay, where two ceramic missiles laid on storage racks next to a launch track. The center screen showed Tasha wearing aviator headphones and piloting her helicopter. The henchmen stopped what they were doing to hear the dialogue between their employer and his unsuccessful chief of covert forces. Gene had never been this annoyed with Tasha and frustration rang through his voice.
"The fact that she's here can only mean that you lead her to me."
Just like Gene wasn't used to interference, Tasha was not accustomed to being accused of incompetence. She was getting defensive, a style that would not fare well with her employer.
"It was one of your scientists that told her about the facility."
Gene was not about to be dragged into confrontation by someone he paid to obey. He keyed a code into the number pad in his armrest. The three tones he used to recall Tasha's training as a killer played over her headphones. This would cause her to be guided by her reptilian brain, the cerebellum, and forego any scruples or emotions the mammalian cerebrum - her intellect - might otherwise bring into play. Gene only had one more thing to say.
"Do your job, Commander."
Tasha had once again become the pliable puppet Gene wanted. Her robotic response, "yes, sir. I've got this. I'm about to take care of her forever," was lost in the ether. Gene had long disconnected the link so he could focus on his all-important launch preparations.
Installing absolute rule had traditionally included the eradication of large portions of the population so the survivors would accept the new situation as a welcome relief. Destruction of housing and industry would keep future subjects busy scrambling to rebuild their lives. There would be no time for the people to revolt or even try to understand the true reasons for the changes that were brought upon them. Gene knew from history that after partial annihilation, a populous is easy to control, especially when they think they have been liberated.
Tasha had become the alligator that knew it would starve if it didn't catch the gazelle by the watering hole. Guided by little more than a survival reflex, she landed her helicopter atop the cliff, several river-turns ahead of Isabelle. She could see the waterfall that marked the exterior of Gene's lair in the distance. It wouldn't be long before Isabelle would catch up with her. Tasha had to act fast. She kept the rotors turning at idle speed, there was no time for engine shut-down and restart, a process that would normally take at least ten minutes. She jumped out and slid open the aft passenger door. Inside was her overnight bag. It was the only luggage Morabi had permitted her to bring into his picturesque country that lived in such harmony with nature. Once again, Morabi had completely misjudged Tasha's true nature. Just like everything else about her, even Tasha's toiletries were deadly. She combined her toothpaste and perfume in a water glass. After stirring briefly with an eye-liner pen, the two components formed a gel. Tasha located a crevice in the cliff and poured the highly explosive mixture in. She pulled out an electronic lighter and a package of birth-control pills from her case and quickly attached one to the other. Tasha flipped open the prophylactic's lid, which served as a receiving antenna for what had become a remote detonator. The angry fighter pushed the end of the lighter into the explosive and jumped back into the idling helicopter.
No sooner than she was airborne, did the headlight of the little motorboat appear below the cliff. Tasha flipped open the transmitter that was disguised as an electronic hair-removal device. The opening of the stainless-steel cylinder revealed a trigger. Finally, the moment had come to take out the biggest problem of her career. There was no consideration for anything but the impending kill. Triumphantly, Tasha uttered her words of victory.
"Good-bye pussycat."
The warrior of darkness depressed the button in the detonator, and triggered an immense explosion, still very close to the aircraft. The sudden p
ressure wave from the powerful detonation forced a megalithic chunk of granite loose. The gigantic boulder plummeted directly onto the small boat and took it to the river bottom in the blink of an eye. Tasha saw little of this, because she experienced firsthand the futility of her hasty action. Just as quickly as the boulder plummeted onto the boat, the concussion from the explosion ripped the tail off her helicopter. With no force to counteract the motion of the quickly turning main rotor, the aircraft went into a violent spin. The G-forces of her rapid rotation forced all of Tasha's blood to the right side of her so very muscular body and her brain. As the last reflex before losing consciousness, her right hand reached for the ejection handle by the side of her seat.
Her eyes closed and Tasha's body became limp like a rag-doll under the strong forces of the uncontrolled aircraft. Pulling the red handle by her side had initiated the sophisticated helicopter's ejection sequence. The explosive bolts that held the rotary wings and fuel tanks fired. Enormous centrifugal forces sent the carbon-fiber blades and two reinforced tanks shooting into the jungle like projectiles. The tempered glass of her canopy shattered into millions of gravel-size pieces. Servo-controlled pistons in the cabin structure had impacted it to clear the way for the pilot. The next explosion came from charges under her seat that propelled the unconscious predator up and clear of the fuselage. A few moments later, the disabled aircraft smashed into the side of the cliff and became little more than scrap metal. With her suspender-type seat belts holding her firmly into the contoured seat, Tasha would have been safe, had she not flown so close to the ground. The parachute built into the back of her seat deployed, but with only a short distance to travel she hit the dark rushing mass of water barely slower than free-fall.
45 GENE STARTS HIS COUNTDOWN
Gene was busily engaging in launch preparations for his monstrous weapon. The functional centerpiece of his lair of darkness was the missile launch-bay. Adjacent to an electromagnetic track, two ceramic missiles laid side by side on their enormous storage racks. The track consisted of a pipe, slightly larger in diameter than the missile. High-intensity electro-magnets surrounded the length of the pipe. The superconductive tube curved from its horizontal portion in the launch bay towards the vertical end at the rocky bottom of the lake above. There, a launch door sealed out the lake water. A length of track at the launch bay's end allowed for the missile to be loaded into the mechanism. Several tungsten escape-pods lined the wall next to the tan cylinders of high-density ceramic material.
A heavy-equipment crane lifted the first of the two missiles onto the open portion of the track where it rested just outside the opening of the long electro-magnetic pipe. This was the dummy-missile that carried no war head. It was Gene's way of making sure his dark engineers had calculated the proper trajectory for his weapon of doom. The non-lethal projectile was an exact duplicate of its live cousin in weight distribution and size, with inert mass in place of a warhead. The track beneath the heavy ceramic blank groaned as its weight shifted from the crane onto the electromagnetic surface. The power was off and thick rubber wheels cradled the weapon that stretched about ten car-lengths to the insertion point. Robotic arms moved in at the missile's aft and connected supply-lines for electric power and superfluid helium-4. Gene had chosen this rare form of the noble element because of its temperature near absolute zero and its unique ability to quickly flow into the smallest spaces. Both of these qualities had brought the scene of horror upon the German viaduct.
The concept that would give flight to his weapon was that ceramics reach a state known as superconductivity when cooled to a temperature of only a few Kelvin. The scientific temperature scale named after the brilliant physicist has its starting point at absolute zero, the lowest temperature any material in this universe can attain. When the ceramic fuselage at the head of the launch track attains superconductivity, two new qualities appear on its list of properties. One is the material's sudden ability to conduct electric current with virtually no resistance. The other, quite related change would be the body's intense magnetic force. Gene took advantage of this by surrounding the length of his launch track with strong electromagnets that would levitate the missile once it became magnetic. It was designed to propel the weapon at such staggering velocity that rocket-engine powered ballistic missiles would not be fast enough to shoot it down. The weapon's super-cooled ceramic hull and the lack of an onboard propulsion system would furthermore give radar guided and heat-seeking weapons little opportunity to lock onto the unusual projectile.
In the command center at the other end of his lair, Gene was pleased with the progress in the missile bay. His arms were nestled comfortably in the padded sides of his throne-like chair. Gene leaned back with a look of great confidence as he watched the automated activity in the launch bay on the three enormous view-screens. He was contemplating the necessity of his actions.
From the texts of the forgotten cultures, Gene learned about the rise of consciousness on earth. This knowledge prompted the most detrimental move in his upside-down version of peace.
For tens of millions of years all plants on earth were green. The world was abundant with ferns, trees, mosses, and other plant life that used chlorophyll to draw energy from the sun and convert it into new materials. During this time, animal life was reptilianesque and acted out of reflexes to maintain its survival. The coldblooded reptilian brain afforded the animal simple decision-making abilities to size up an opponent’s vigor. Then, the lizard or dinosaur could chose between fighting or running away. Its young would grow from a single cell shielded by an eggshell, removed from the mother’s body. Life evolved through mutations and Darwin’s principle proved later accurately that the animal most suited for its environment would be the prevailing mutagenic advance. During this virtual eternity of time, evolution came about through accidental mutations during a specie’s replication process. Animals’ actions were triggered by stimuli for fear, hunger and survival.
In the not so distant past, higher consciousness entered the evolving planet. With higher consciousness came beauty. With beauty came flowers, bees and mammals. The mammal was something completely different. Its offspring matured from a single cell inside the mother’s womb. During the gestation period, the single cell would evolve into the specialized cells of the body, as did the lizard egg. The mother’s act of carrying her offspring as part of her body created an opportunity for consciousness and love to transfer from the warm-blooded mother.
A warm-blooded creature adds energy to its environment in order to be able to survive. A coldblooded creature draws from its environment to stay alive. This energy does more than just manifest as heat. It also exerts energy in the form of love or hate - positive or negative. The reptilian world failed to attain beauty because every animal was drawing energy from it. Once mammals were adding energy to the cycle of life, beauty had been given its first vehicle on planet earth. The appeal of flowers and fuzzy animals soon spawned a wave of positive energy that enveloped the globe.
When man built the world’s first pyramids in Bosnia over 10,000 years earlier, he was an enlightened creature. Humanity was aware of its divine abilities and with ease overcame the limitations of the mind. Man built megalithic structures like the Egyptian, Meso-American or Eastern European pyramid complexes. Living in abundance, man and woman’s actions were guided by their mammalian brain; art, love, science, and literature were the prevailing marks of the time. The reptilian brain that resided in humanity’s head laid dormant, just in case there was ever danger or the dire need for survival skills.
After ten millennia of an enlightened world full of humor and laughs, the first outburst of sadness snapped humanity into a state of fear. A single enlightened soul followed down the path leading to the simple gratifications of the snake-mind. With the sensation of lower emotions came sadness. What followed were anger and the thrill of killing to this leader of a once brilliant civilization. In a single moment of unbridled fury, his spark of anger ignited an inferno of suffering. Pan
dora had opened her box. Gene was determined to put darkness back in its cage so humanity could return to paradise. He saw blunt violence as his only means to return to a better world.
The incredible rise in cases of children with Autism was a sign that time was running out. Gene recognized that the brilliant souls of this new generation had come to their lifetimes expecting an enlightened age. The wave of sadness that was blanketing the world was so strong that it pushed the souls behind a protective shield deep within each of these true angels. The result was beyond the kind of suffering Gene could endure. In his fear, Gene began to act like those from whom he wanted to protect the world.
One of the Troopers at the console snapped Gene out of his daydream. "Test projectile in place."
With These Eyes Page 27