The Tesla Legacy

by Robert G. Barrett

  ‘You were fine,’ smiled Jesse. ‘We had a great time.’

  Mick thought for a moment. ‘Did we make love afterwards?’

  ‘Reckon,’ said Jesse. ‘You were like a tiger. I could hardly walk when I got up this morning.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, you only got yourself to blame. Evil seductress.’

  ‘Why don’t you go and have a swim?’ suggested Jesse. ‘That’ll help clear your head.’

  ‘Yeah I might.’ Mick swung his legs over the bed and rose unsteadily to his feet. ‘Where’s my cossies?’

  ‘In the bathroom. Hanging on the shower.’

  ‘Shit! Are there any more Panadeine?’

  ‘Above the sink.’

  Mick mumbled and muttered his way to the bathroom and closed the door. A short while later, Jesse heard the toilet flush and Mick came out with a towel draped round his shoulders and wearing his Speedos.

  ‘I wouldn’t go in there for a while if I were you, Oz,’ he said. ‘It’s worse than Chernobyl.’

  ‘That’s all right, thank you Mick,’ replied Jesse. ‘I’ve had a shower.’

  Mick stared blankly at her. ‘I’m going for a swim.’

  ‘Terrific. Can you find your way to the pool? Or would you like a seeing eye dog?’

  Mick gave Jesse a tired once-up-and-down. ‘Oz. The last thing I need this morning is your oliv…olig. Whatever it is. Sarcasm.’

  Mick disappeared, closing the door quietly behind him. Jesse got the diary from her bag and sat down, turning to the pages she’d been reading the night before. She was writing on the motel stationery when there was a knock on the door and a young red-headed girl in black was standing there with a tray. Jesse got the girl to put the tray on the table and, when she left, poured herself a cup of coffee and continued writing. Jesse was sitting back finishing a toasted sandwich when the door opened and Mick walked in.

  ‘How are you feeling now, Mick?’ Jesse asked him.

  ‘Still pretty ordinary,’ muttered Mick. ‘But the swim helped. Christ! It’d want to,’ he shivered. ‘The water was like bloody ice.’

  ‘Good. Have a cup of coffee.’

  ‘Righto. Wait till I get changed.’ Mick looked around him. ‘Where’s my jeans?’

  ‘On the floor next to the bed.’

  While Mick and Jesse had been sleeping, for others it had been a very busy night. After informing his superiors, Officer Blessing had rung Major McKell and organised a medivac helicopter complete with two Army doctors and a specialist cleaner. Officers Cozens and Ryman had patched up the two wounded NSA agents with a first-aid kit they had in their car and stemmed most of the bleeding. The helicopter arrived within the hour and a uniformed police officer attracted by all the commotion had pulled up to investigate. Badges were flashed, another phone call was made and the young officer was sent on his way with a warning to forget everything he’d just seen if he wanted to further his career.

  Along with the body of Agent Niland, the two NSA agents were put on board the helicopter and taken to a private hospital in Newcastle where they were debriefed by Agent Sierota, who refused to make a statement on the grounds of United States’ National Security. Agent Niland was left in his body bag to be flown back to the United States with Agents Moharic and Coleborne on the NSA jet as soon as the doctors had finished with them.

  Officers Cozens and Ryman drove the Jeep Cherokee back to Newcastle where the vehicle and its contents, including the agents’ weapons and the briefcase, were handed over to Zimmer Sierota at Bible Bungalow and he was told the safe house was blown. Agent Sierota gloomily made an inventory and got a report ready for Washington. The specialist cleaner, a steely-haired Vietnam veteran, drove the Commodore to the Greater Scone Hotel where he washed away the blood, gathered up all the shell casings and disguised any bullet holes around the car park. He then drove the Commodore back to Officer Cozens’ unit in Sydney and left it there. Officers Cozens and Ryman were commended on a job well done and told to get a good night’s sleep at their Newcastle motel. A driver would take them back to Sydney and, when they were ready, they could hand in their reports, which would be analysed then shredded. When the away team arrived back in Washington, Agents Moharic and Coleborne would be given leave and commendations after getting wounded in a shoot-out with Libyan-backed members of the Southern Sudan Liberation Front in Ras Abu Shagara then transferred to desk jobs. Agent Niland would get a hero’s burial.

  The only loose end was the two bullet holes in the passenger-side door of Scone farmhand Ray Kelso’s old grey Holden utility. However, Ray wouldn’t notice the holes under the caked-on dirt until his boss pointed them out a day later and Ray would good-naturedly laugh it off, knowing it was one of his nutty mates playing a joke on him. As soon as Ray found out who was responsible, he’d shoot a couple of holes in their car. Ray had a pretty good idea which one of his nutty mates it was, too.

  However, despite everything getting swept under the carpet in Australia, back at Room 90 in Fort Meade, Mick was still an HVT—a Highly Valued Target. So was Jesse. And a top-level covert operation still had to be carried out with the utmost expediency. This time the NSA would make sure it was carried out properly. Thanks mainly to one man, ASIO still didn’t know about Project Piggie. So that man was again designated to organise the Australian end of the operation.

  The morning sun was streaming through the loungeroom window at Bible Bungalow and Zimmer Sierota was seated alone in front of the surveillance equipment, wearing a crumpled blue suit and staring thoughtfully into another cup of coffee. After debriefing his field agents at the hospital, he’d contacted Washington, where Clay Bousseal exploded when he found out what had happened. However, he assured Agent Sierota the foul-up wasn’t his fault and a new away team would be organised ASAP. Only this time they would arrive in Sydney on a commercial flight and Agent Sierota would drive them to Newcastle where they would take out Vincent and his girlfriend as intended. Agent Sierota agreed this was a good idea, then told Clay he might have a plan to stop Mick and Jesse himself. Clay informed Zimmer that all NSA facilities were at his disposal and he had roughly twenty-four hours before the fresh away team arrived in Australia. Good luck. Agent Sierota felt twenty-four hours and luck might be enough.

  Following his acrimonious meeting with Officers Ryman and Cozens, Zimmer had concluded the shooting incident was a case of mistaken identity. He had the Weekender magazine photo alongside him and the two ASIO officers’ resemblance to Mick and Jesse was absolutely uncanny; compounded by both parties driving similar vehicles. Agent Moharic was right in assuming Mick and Jesse would be at the hotel, and Agent Coleborne did see them sitting in the parking lot. If Agent Niland had been less hasty, things would no doubt have turned out differently. That aside, Mick and Jesse were still on the loose. However, in Zimmer’s view, there was a small window of opportunity to take them out before they uncovered Project Piggie. Zimmer would need outside help, but if he could do it, he’d shine in the eyes of the NSA. It all depended on the remote chance either Mick or Jesse had picked up the missing transceiver while they were seated in the parking lot. If they had, it was microchipped and, provided it was switched on, could be traced almost anywhere in the world. So after organising an interactive hook-up through an Agent Skeet Maldon in Room 90, Agent Sierota was glued to the surveillance equipment at Bible Bungalow, beamed into Aquacade, the United States Geostationary Signals Intelligence Satellites System, tracking an RG4A Global Hawk UAV—Unmanned Aerial Vehicle—that was triangulating with a Crystal KH11 Keyhole Imagery Satellite. Searching for the transceiver’s radio fingerprint. That, however, was the easy part.

  Even if the transceiver did get switched on, Agent Sierota still had to trawl through all the bands, then surreptitiously engage the person at the other end in nonchalant conversation and make certain it was Mick or Jesse. After Mick’s car getting blown up, he and Jesse would have to know someone was onto them. And if a businesslike American accent suddenly came over the transceiver asking questions, t
here was no doubt they would get suspicious. Therefore, Agent Sierota would have to lose his American accent and sound like an Australian. And for a man of Mexican–Portuguese heritage born and raised in Kokomo, Indiana, this wasn’t going to be easy. Agent Sierota opened up a book of quotations kicking around Bible Bungalow and turned to a quote by someone called Buzz Kennedy that a previous agent had highlighted.

  ‘At its worst, the broad Australian accent is reminiscent of a dehydrated crow uttering its last statement on life from the bough of a dead tree in the middle of a clay pan at the peak of a seven-year drought.’

  Buzz was right. To accomplish his devious plan, Agent Sierota would have to master a dry, nasally twang interspersed with colloquialisms all jumbled into some unintelligible dialect called Strine. If he could manage that, he then had to whine it at exactly the right pitch through his nose. Agent Sierota stared at the intelligence-gathering computer and crossed his fingers, hoping everything would work.

  In room five at the Tudor Motel, Mick had managed to climb into his jeans and a blue Central Coast Mariners T-shirt an electrician mate from Toukley had given him. He was seated at the table and after two cups of coffee, more Panadeine and half a toasted ham sandwich, he’d regained the power of speech; sight, touch and hearing would develop later. Seated opposite him, Jesse was bubbling.

  ‘Honestly, Mick,’ she said. ‘You look great. I’ve never met anyone with your recuperative powers.’

  ‘Yeah? Well you’d better visit OPSM and get your eyes checked,’ croaked Mick. ‘Because I still feel shithouse. In fact I’ll tell you what, Oz, you’re going to have to drive back to Newcastle. I’m still over the limit.’

  Jesse smiled at Mick through her teeth. ‘We’re not going to Newcastle, dear.’

  ‘We’re not?’

  ‘No. We’re going back to Burning Mountain.’

  ‘What?’

  Jesse took the GPS transceiver from her bag and placed it on the table along with the diary. ‘You see this? It’s the phone I found last night.’

  ‘Phone? Ohh yeah. In the car park,’ Mick nodded.

  ‘Exactly. But it’s not a phone. It’s a Global Positioning Satellite transceiver.’

  Mick had to think for a moment. ‘Aren’t they for finding latitude and longitude or something?’

  ‘Right on, baby,’ beamed Jesse. ‘Now have a look at this.’ Jesse opened the diary and pointed to the two pages of strange numbers. She then showed Mick what she’d written down on the sheet of motel stationery. ‘Can you read that?’ she asked Mick.

  Mick stared at the figures through tired eyes. ‘No,’ he replied.

  ‘All right. Remember when I said to you in the car how Tesla had spread short rows of numbers and letters across different pages and it was driving me mad?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, finding that transceiver kicked me into gear. And I figured everything out while you were asleep.’ Jesse pointed to the diary. ‘It was the latitude and longitude of the death ray machine.’

  ‘It was?’

  ‘Yep. Back then Tesla would have used a sextant and compass. But I’ll guarantee these figures I’ve copied down show where it is to the square metre.’ Jesse picked up the transceiver. ‘All we have to do now is follow this, and bingo! We’re there.’

  Mick stared blankly at the figures then at the transceiver. ‘Fair dinkum?’

  ‘Fair dinkum,’ nodded Jesse. ‘Look, I’ll show you how the thing works.’

  Jesse pushed the On/Off switch, there was an erratic ring tone, and the dial lit up orange. The word INITIALISING came up beneath a large number 30. Then the words SEARCHING FOR SATELLITE rolled across the top of the screen.

  ‘Well I’ll be buggered,’ said Mick.

  ‘That number is one of the radio bands,’ said Jesse. ‘And we could be down a bit low. But in a minute or two I’ll push the NAV button and it should tell us where we are.’

  Mick stared at the transceiver in Jesse’s hand, the figures on the sheet of paper, then at her. ‘You’re a genius,’ he said bluntly.

  Jesse fluttered her eyelids. ‘I know, darling. But a modest one.’

  Agent Sierota had got up to stretch his legs when the monitor on the intelligence-gathering equipment at Bible Bungalow came to life. He stared at the screen wide-eyed. ‘Jesus H. Christ! The transceiver’s been switched on.’ Zimmer sat back down, stabbed at the keyboard, then flicked a switch next to the monitor and was immediately patched through to Room 90. ‘Agent Maldon? It’s Agent Sierota.’

  ‘Yes, sir, Agent Sierota?’

  ‘Maldon. Lock onto this signal and get back to me. Priority One. Condition Red.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m on it.’

  With bursts of adrenalin swirling into his caffeine-soaked system, Agent Sierota stared anxiously at the monitor. After what seemed like hours, Agent Maldon’s voice came back.

  ‘Sir. I can’t give you the room number. But the signal is coming from the Tudor Motel in Kelly Street, Scone, New South Wales, Australia.’

  ‘Outstanding, Agent Maldon,’ said Zimmer. ‘Now I might need a helicopter piloted by American military personnel. Can you prioritise that in Australia?’

  ‘Sir. I’ll have to get back to you on that.’

  ‘Okay Agent Maldon. Do your absolute best.’

  Agent Sierota clicked some keys on the monitor, flicked another two switches on the console, then picked up the remote.

  Sitting in the Tudor Motel, Mick was staring at the transceiver in Jesse’s hand, amazed at what the love of his life had discovered.

  ‘And that’ll take us straight to Tesla’s death ray machine?’

  ‘Yep,’ answered Jesse. ‘A nice walk in the bush. We’ll be there before you know it. In fact, the walk will do you the world…’

  Suddenly the transceiver came to life in Jesse’s hand. It squawked and scratched before a nasally voice whined out of the speaker.

  ‘’Ullo. Yer there?’

  Without thinking, Jesse pushed the talk button on the side. ‘Hello?’ she replied.

  ‘Yeah. G’day,’ drawled the voice. ‘Izzadyewjezze?’

  ‘Who’s this?’ asked Jesse.

  ‘Utsbrooz.’

  ‘Bruce?’

  ‘Yeah. Brooz Menzies,’ replied the voice. ‘I’zepushinmerigupda Damworth. Zo I thawd I’d giveyeragall. I ain’tseenyerinaygiz.’

  ‘A call?’ said Jesse.

  ‘Yair. Adalk. Avamag. Yer know,’ drawled the voice.

  ‘Who exactly are you after?’

  ‘Jezze. Jezze ‘astings.’

  ‘Jesse Hastings? I’m Jesse Osbourne.’

  ‘Fair dinkum? Ohh shit, luv. My flamin blue. I got the wrong bloody bonzer little sheila.’

  Jesse shook her head and gave Mick a blank look over the transciever. ‘That’s all right,’ she said.

  ‘Zo yernod there with yer ‘uzbandarry,’ whined the voice.

  ‘Husband Harry? No. I’m here with my boyfriend Mick,’ replied Jesse.

  ‘Ohh strewth mate. I’m barkin’ up the wrong flamin’ tree. Zorryabowthadgobber. I’ll zeeyerlayder.’

  ‘Don’t be in a hurry,’ said Jesse, placing the transceiver on the table.

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Mick.

  ‘I don’t know,’ shrugged Jesse. ‘Some goose. But you get that with GPS transceivers. As well as finding your location, you pick up fishermen, fire fighters. Morons like him.’

  ‘I hope it wasn’t those people from last night,’ said Mick.

  Jesse shook her head. ‘No. He was just some yobbo truck driver with only one side of his brain working.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Mick stared wearily at Jesse for a moment. ‘So when do you want to leave for Burning Mountain?’ he asked her.

  ‘When you’re ready,’ she answered. ‘Have another cup of coffee and a toasted sandwich and get your shit together.’ Jesse looked at her watch. ‘But I don’t want to leave it too late.’ ‘Fair enough,’ replied Mick.

  Back at Bible Bungalow,
Zimmer Sierota could not believe his luck. Now, a quick phone call, and that should be the icing on the cake. He dialled Telstra Assistance and got the Tudor Motel’s phone number. The girl at Telstra had barely hung up when Zimmer dialled again.

  ‘Hello. Tudor Motel. How can I help you?’ came a woman’s voice.

  ‘Yes. Could I speak to Mr Vincent, please? I believe he’s in Room Ten.’

  ‘Mr Vincent’s in Room Five. I’ll put you through.’

  ‘No. That’s all right. On second thoughts, I think I’ve got the wrong motel. I might ring back. Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  Agent Sierota replaced the remote then jumped up and punched the air. ‘Gotcha. You mouth-breathing Aussie sonofabitch,’ he yelled. ‘You and your beaut, bonzer little sheila. Right to your beaut, bonzer goddamn motel room.’

  Agent Sierota rubbed his hands together. Now, he schemed, if I can get my helicopter and Vincent and his girl go looking for Project Piggie, I can nail them out in the open. But no matter what, they’re toast.

  Zimmer went to a metal cabinet and took out a BMMAT—a Briefcase Multi-Mission Advanced Technical Terminal Scanner. With an LCD map and an AST Model 1235 Multi-Channel Digital Receiving System, Agent Sierota switched the scanner on and tuned it to the search beacon transmitting from Room 90. In seconds, Scone came up on the LCD map and an orange arrow pointed to the address in Kelly Street. Agent Sierota beamed. Oh yeah, he chuckled to himself, this has got to be my lucky day.

  Three floors down at Fort Meade, Agent Maldon had scanned all the possibilities in Australia closest to Newcastle for a US military helicopter with an American pilot. By chance, the United States minesweeper USS Tocqueville was berthed in Sydney at Garden Island. Agent Maldon had the ship’s crew and status up on his monitor. As well as its usual ordinance, secured on the Tocqueville’s after-deck was a modified US Army OH–58D Kiowa Warrior reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering helicopter. The 50-calibre heavy machine gun had been removed, along with the air-to-air Stinger missile system and the Hellfire modular missile system, plus the 70-millimetre folding fin aerial rocket. But as well as the latest Litton LR–80 inertial navigation equipment altitude and heading reference system, it was equipped with an upgraded mast-mounted sight thermal imaging sensor that automatically locked onto heat profiles and flew the helicopter straight there. The Kiowa OH–58D normally had a two-man crew. But only one man was piloting it at present: Lieutenant Commander Roy Sisti, a dark-eyed, medium-build New Yorker with knitted eyebrows and a hooked nose that gave his lean face a hawk-like appearance. Agent Maldon patched through to shaven-headed Captain Arnall Ultzhoffer on the USS Tocqueville and told him the NSA needed Commander Sisti for an urgent mission flying out of Newcastle, under the command of a senior agent, Zimmer Sierota. Commander Sisti was on leave. But Captain Ultzhoffer would have him back on board for a hook-up ASAP. That would be fine, assured Agent Maldon, and signed off.