“Did you have a test today?” Tyler said.
“It wasn’t on the schedule. I imagine Professor Stevens wanted to do some fine-tuning.”
“How does it work?”
“The truck can be driven normally, but once the robotic system is activated, the driving functions are totally autonomous. We have a chase van used for control and monitoring. The truck uses sensors, GPS navigation, and computer-controlled servomechanisms to stay on the road, and the person monitoring in the van gives it commands to start, stop, and turn. Eventually you’ll be able to plug in a destination with no further input. While we’re testing, you usually need three people to operate it: one in CAPEK, one to drive the van, and one in the back of the van monitoring.”
Hyland frowned.
“What’s the matter?” Tyler asked.
“Oh, nothing. It’s just that I was surprised they took it out without me. It being winter break, the only other student around is Milo Beech.”
“So it’s just the three of you? Isn’t it odd for you not to go with them?”
“I suppose it’s not that unusual. The professor must have had his reasons. And it’s easy enough for two people to do. They find a stretch of road, park the van, and drive the truck up and down to collect data.”
“Can you call the professor?” Tyler asked. “We’d like to talk to him.”
Hyland shook his head again. “When he left me the message that they’d be taking it out this morning, he told me he’d be turning off his phone so he wouldn’t be distracted during the testing. But he should be back after lunch.”
“What time?”
“Two o’clock should do it.”
“You sure we can’t contact him sooner?”
Hyland looked to each of them in turn as if he were making up his mind about something, then nodded.
“I suppose it’d be all right to tell you where you can find him.”
“You just said he’s not answering his phone,” Fay said. “How can you find out where he is?”
“I’ll show you.” He beckoned for them to follow him into the garage.
Hyland sat at a computer terminal and everyone gathered around him. He talked while he clicked through the screens. “Of course, when there’s a fleet of robotic trucks in operation, we’ll need to know where they are at all times, so we have a system to track their GPS signals.”
The map on screen was scaled to one inch per hundred miles, so the blinking dot representing the truck didn’t tell them much. Hyland blew up the map by a factor of ten.
“That’s weird,” he said.
“What’s weird?” Tyler asked.
“Well, I expected them to be out the back of beyond, but they’re in Alice Springs. The truck’s not moving. Wonder what he’s doing there.”
“Can you overlay a satellite map on that?”
“No worries.”
A few clicks later, an overhead view of Alice Springs appeared.
If the satellite map was up to date, the truck was currently parked next to a warehouse, right in the middle of town.
SIXTEEN
While the C-17 taxied to a remote area of the Alice Springs airport’s tarmac, Morgan called Dr. Kessler. Vince was already standing; Josephson was busy checking the moorings to make sure none of the equipment had come loose during the flight.
“Yes?” Kessler answered.
“Are you ready?” she said.
“I saw you land as we were driving in. We’ll be there in a minute.”
She hung up.
“I hate flying on planes with no windows,” Vince said. “I wanted to see Ayer’s Rock.”
“That’s over a hundred miles west of here,” Morgan said. “You wouldn’t have seen it anyway.”
“Still. Where’s Kessler?”
“On his way.”
The cargo plane lurched to a halt. The loadmaster scrambled down the stairs from the upper deck and opened the side door. Per procedure, he wouldn’t open the rear doors until the cargo was ready to be unloaded.
Morgan followed him out to see two local police cars guarding the street entrance. They’d stop anyone who tried to get within a hundred yards of the plane.
Vince stretched his arms and put on sunglasses as he peered at the sparse trees dotting the red landscape.
“That is a whole lot of nothing,” he said.
“You’re from West Texas.”
“So I know what I’m talking about.”
So did Morgan. She grew up in Ohio, but her pilot training had been at Laughlin Air Force Base in Nevada. The terrain here looked familiar to her, except there were no tall mountain ranges surrounding the airport like they did in Vegas — just a few ridges in the distance.
The sound of a truck’s engine made her turn. A nondescript white two-axle truck was stopped by the police, and the driver flashed his identification. The policeman waved him through. Morgan walked toward the back of the plane to meet the truck at the cargo door.
Kessler got out of the passenger side, and three men emerged from the rear of the truck.
“Welcome to Australia, Agent Bell,” Kessler said. “Agent Cameron. Have a good flight?”
“Peachy,” Vince said.
“Have there been any new developments while we were in the air?” Morgan asked.
Kessler shook his head. “We’re all settled in and ready to get prepped for the weapon test.”
“I’ll need to see your IDs,” she said to the men with Kessler. All of them were carrying pistols. She peered in the back of the truck and spotted three automatic rifles.
They looked at the scientist as if to ask if she were for real. Kessler nodded that she was, and they showed her their IDs. All of them were NSA agents on the Pine Gap security team.
“All right,” she said to the loadmaster. “Let’s go.”
He lowered the ramp and released the clamps on the crate carrying the Killswitch. The four security men kept watch as Josephson and the loadmaster used a hand truck to move the crate off the plane. It took only a few minutes to lash it securely to the truck’s floor.
Once Kessler was satisfied that it was in place, two of the security men and Josephson climbed inside with it.
“Are you staying here or going with it?” Morgan asked Kessler.
“Josephson can take care of it. I’ll stay here to supervise unloading the most delicate equipment. You may ride back with me.”
“How long will you be?”
“No more than ten minutes.”
Morgan nodded as she watched a semi pull into the airport entrance, where the police allowed it to enter. It stopped next to the C-17. At the same time a forklift motored over to the plane.
“Are we cleared to go, Dr. Kessler?” one of the security men said.
“Yes,” Kessler said. “Close it up. Collins will meet you at the base to unload. Make sure you stay with the crate until it reaches the lab.”
“Yes, sir.”
The rear door of the smaller truck was shut, and the two other security team members climbed into the front seats. Morgan watched them drive off.
While she waited for Kessler’s men to load the semi rig with the rest of the equipment, she called back to the office to see if they’d made any progress tracking down the origin of the Internet videogame forum message.
* * *
Tyler parked the Jeep down the street from the unmarked warehouse where the CAPEK truck was located. He’d driven slowly past it and they had seen the robotic semi and chase van next to a dozen white trailers, four of which were backed up to the warehouse loading bays. Cars and trucks passed them periodically, so the Jeep’s presence wouldn’t be noticeable.
“Hyland thought this was an odd place to bring the truck,” Tyler said. “I agree.”
“What do you think it’s doing here?” Grant asked.
“Only one way to find out.”
“If you’re going inside,” Jess said, “we’re going with you.”
“That would be no,” Tyler sa
id. “Something about this doesn’t feel right. Until we know it’s safe, you’re staying in the car.”
“Should we call the police?” Fay said.
“We don’t have any reason to just yet.”
Grant pointed at the warehouse. “We’ve got movement.”
Two men walked quickly from the warehouse. One of them, a powerfully built man in his forties, had steel-gray hair. They climbed inside the van.
“Neither of those guys looked like students to me,” Grant said.
“Looks more like our mysterious sponsor.”
“And the other one wasn’t Stevens. He must be in the warehouse.”
“We’re going to see if we can get a better view of the place from the other side,” Tyler said. “We’ll also try to snap a photo of our mystery man’s face. Jess, you take the wheel. Drive us down past the next warehouse. We’ll hop out and you continue on.”
“Where?”
“Drive around the block and come back here to keep an eye on the place. We’ll turn off our cell phone ringers but leave them on vibrate. If you see anything suspicious, text me, then call the police. We’ll call when we’re ready to be picked up.”
“I don’t like this.”
“Neither do I,” Tyler said as he backed the Jeep up the street until they were out of view of the warehouse. “But we need to get some answers, and I’m not ready to put Fay in harm’s way again.”
Getting shot at and having her house burned down was bad enough. If it was the same guys, they might want to finish the job. Tyler was already queasy about putting her in this much jeopardy.
“You don’t even have guns,” Jess said.
“This is just a recon mission. If we see any weapons, I’ll text you to call the cavalry.”
Jess reluctantly nodded. “All right. But be careful.”
“What do you think?” Tyler said to Grant. “Should we be careful?”
Before Grant could answer, Jess punched Tyler in the arm. “Okay, wiseass. Out of the car.”
As he passed her outside, he said with a smile, “That’s Doctor Wiseass to you.”
“Tell me when it’s on your business card.”
Tyler and Grant got in the back and put their phones on vibrate. Jess drove to the empty warehouse next door as if she were delivering something in back. When they were on the opposite side, Tyler and Grant jumped out. Jess made a U-turn and headed back to the street.
Grant peeked around the corner at the warehouse and switched his cell phone to camera mode. “There’s a Dumpster thirty feet away. We’ll be able to see him if we hide behind it. I think that’s about as close as we can get.”
Tyler smiled. “We could always bust into the warehouse unannounced.”
“Going into a warehouse potentially full of gunmen with no intel and armed with whatever large rocks we can pick up from the dirt? Even a rookie lieutenant would think we’d be nuts going with that plan.”
“And so instead we take pictures.”
“Then we’ll text the photo to Hyland,” Grant said.
“Right. If he positively identifies the guy as Blaine’s cohort, we’ll ask the police to come on down and knock on the front door.”
“Sounds easy enough.”
A woman spoke from behind them. “No, it’s not.”
Tyler turned expecting to see that Jess had ignored his instructions. Instead, a blonde woman walked toward them flanked by two serious-looking men.
All three of them were aiming pistols at him and Grant, who raised their hands to show they were unarmed.
“What?” Grant said. “They have cameras that can see all the way over here?”
“If you mean the men inside that warehouse,” the woman said, “I’m not with them.”
“Who are you?” Tyler said.
“Nadia Bedova. Russian intelligence.”
Tyler looked at Grant, who stared back at him with the same astonished look he must have had on his own face.
“What the hell is going on here?” he said.
“Dr. Locke, you and Mr. Westfield are going to help me disarm a bomb.”
SEVENTEEN
“Search them,” Bedova said.
While she and one of the men kept their guns trained on Tyler and Grant, the second man frisked them. He found their phones and Tyler’s Leatherman multi-tool. She held on to the phones but tossed the tool back to Tyler.
“I can’t have you attempting to make a call, but you may need that for your task,” Bedova said, nodding at the Leatherman. “You can lower your hands.”
Tyler narrowed his eyes at Bedova. “How do you know our names?”
“When I saw you driving down the street casing the warehouse,” she said with the slightest accent, “I used our facial recognition software to identify you.”
“You have us on file?”
“Do you really think you could stay off our radar after finding Noah’s Ark and the tomb of King Midas?”
Grant raised a hand. “My first question, and, I think, most relevant: uh, bomb?”
“The silver-haired man you saw going to the van is Vladimir Colchev,” Bedova said. “According to our intelligence, he’s been trying to acquire explosives from mining companies around the country for months, apparently unsuccessfully. But we know that this week he procured forty tons of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosive and had it shipped here. We think he’s planning to use it. Today.”
Grant whistled. “That would put a nice dent in Ayer’s Rock.”
“Who is Colchev?” Tyler asked her.
“A Russian national wanted by my government. He has a highly trained team ready to follow his orders. Now a question from me. Why are you here?”
“Concerned citizens.”
“You’re not even Australian. I already have a potential international incident on my hands, so either you cooperate or I’ll shoot you both now and take my chances without you.”
Tyler cleared his throat. “Well, that seems like a fair trade. Two of his men attacked a woman in Queenstown, New Zealand yesterday. Burned her house to the ground and tried to kill her.”
“Did they succeed?”
Grant shook his head. “They’re both currently resting comfortably in the morgue.”
“Do you know why they attacked her?”
“Haven’t a clue,” Tyler lied without hesitation.
“Then why are you here?” Bedova asked.
“We got a tip that one of the assailants had been seen in Alice Springs,” Grant said, “so we came to do a little private detective work and ran into you lovely people in the process.”
“Did you talk to the man before he died?”
“Fay did,” Tyler said. He saw no reason to hide her name since it was all over the news.
“Did he say anything about Icarus or the date July twenty-fifth?”
“Not that we know of. What’s Icarus?”
“How about the Baja drug cartel or Wisconsin Ave?”
Tyler was confounded. A rogue Russian spy is willing to kill for a relic from Roswell, then buys enough explosive to depopulate central Australia, and now the agent after him is asking about Mexican narcotics gangs and Greek mythology? If Tyler lived through this, he was going to love to hear the explanation behind it.
He shook his head in answer to her question. “Never heard of them. Maybe a little context would be useful.”
Bedova stared at him. “I need you to look at the bomb he’s built and tell me if it can be disarmed.”
“Why do you want our help? Why not just call the police?”
“We obtained a layout of the warehouse, so we have our assault planned out, but we’re waiting on our bomb expert. When you showed up, I saw an opportunity to keep this quiet. He’s coming from Singapore and won’t be here for another five hours. From our observations, Colchev is getting ready to make his move sooner than that. Are you going to help us or will you let him detonate a truck bomb in the middle of the city?”
“What you’re really saying is t
hat you want us to save you the trouble of an international incident started by your rogue agent.”
“Will you do it?”
Tyler looked from the pistol to Grant. “What do you say?”
He could see that Grant was thinking the same thing. The odds were that she was sharing so much information with them because she was planning to get rid of them right after she did away with Colchev. Still, they had little choice, and if a bomb that size exploded, it could kill everyone within a quarter-mile, including Jess and Fay where they were parked.
Grant nodded and regarded Bedova with a dead-eyed gaze. “I couldn’t be more enthusiastic about assisting you.”
“Good,” she said, ignoring his sarcasm. “If you try to get away, I will shoot you both and then kill your friends waiting for you in the Jeep.”
Tyler mirrored her unflinching stare. “We’re not going anywhere.” Yet.
“The plan is that we wait for Colchev to come out of the van. As he’s entering the building, my two men on the other side of the warehouse will move in. We won’t kill him until we’re sure that there’s no danger of someone detonating the bomb. We think it’s in one of the four trucks backed up to the warehouse.”
“What if he’s divided the explosives among the four trucks?”
“Then you’ll have to assess all four and tell me if you can disable them.”
“And if we can’t?”
“Then we’ll call the police,” is what Bedova said, but Tyler didn’t think for a second that she actually would.
“All right,” Tyler said, furiously trying to think of a way out of their predicament. For now, going along with her was the only choice. “Lead the way. It’s your party.”
Bedova looked at him, perplexed. She obviously didn’t understand the idiom, but let it go. She tilted her head. Tyler guessed that she was listening to an earpiece hidden by her hair.
“He’s on the move,” she said. “It’s time. Stay behind me.”
With no one in sight, Bedova sprinted toward the warehouse. Tyler ran crouched next to Grant, with Bedova’s two men bringing up the rear. In the Army when he’d done this kind of thing, Tyler usually had a helmet, body armor, and M4 assault rifle, so now he felt practically naked. By the way Grant clenched his fists, Tyler could tell that his friend also missed the heft of a weapon.
The Roswell Conspiracy tl-3 Page 10