“They’re watching us but they’re not moving towards us on the beach. Probably because of the frogs,” said Thomas.
“I’ve seen a lot of stuff in my career,” said Sue Ann, “but this beats it all.”
“Wait! Look at the strange color those guys are giving off. Is it a reflection off the water, or something else?” asked Thomas
“I see what you mean. It’s sort of purple. No. Now it’s gone. It must’ve been a reflection. Like you thought,” said Sue Ann, but she sounded a little uncertain.
“Whatever all this is, I’m getting us back to safety,” said Yuki. “No arguments.”
“Just bring me over there and I’ll open a side door. We can point a directional mike at them and see if we pick anything up.” Sue Ann thought it was worth a shot.
“Okay,” said Yuki, “but I will not let you drop in there.”
“Not your choice, girl. You’re responsible for the helicopter, not for me,” said Sue Ann.
“Listen, Sue Ann,” Thomas said hesitantly. He wasn’t sure of Sue Ann’s intentions. “We’ve got great visuals – visuals that no one else has - and if we drop you in there-”
“Okay. Okay. But let’s get those close-ups with your camera, Thomas.”
The noise deafened everyone in the bird as it hovered over the water with an opened side door. After two or three shutter clicks and about three seconds of video, the men in the forest near the beach simply vanished. All three people in the chopper found themselves rubbing their eyes.
“Did you get anything?” Sue Ann asked in disbelief.
“I got the before and after,” said Thomas. “It’s all recorded.” Thomas ran his hand through his hair and shook his head in disbelief.
“This is too weird. Let’s get out of here.” The pilot was clearly uncomfortable. Sue Ann nodded.
“I don’t believe I am saying this, but ya, get us the fuck out of here,” she said.
****
Colonel Lau listened to the feed and chuckled to himself. It had been a simple trick. His drone had responded instantly to his command, turning on the suits of the walkers watching the helicopter. A passing drone fed molecules to their suits. With the suits activated, the men simply vanished from sight.
Bibi Khanym Mosque – Samarkand
Sue Ann and Thomas’ story, together with the accompanying slideshows and videos from Lake Khanka, went viral. They went from unknown to celebrity in one day. Every news agency was vying for their attention and their editor, who had already been predisposed to their activities, started fawning on their every request. Wheels within wheels turned in their favor. Colonel Lau’s tentacles wound ever more tightly around the Al Jazeera network after the success of his hidden campaign supporting Sue Ann. Through a series of companies acting as blinds, Lau made discrete but enormous investments in Al Jazeera. His indirect influence infiltrated to the highest offices at the network.
Always cautious, Colonel Lau transmitted his requests through legitimate intermediaries. He planted the idea to send Sue Ann Lee to Samarkand to cover an evolving situation, but at first he’d met with resistance. Sue Ann was ambitious and she wasn’t stupid. Being in the limelight, she refused to go to a backwater at this point of her career. Her editor, after a call from his own managing editor, helped her to understand that her contract, stardom aside, gave him the right to send her where he pleased. He gently reminded her of her desperation when she had signed with Al Jazeera. The editor neglected to mention the call he’d received from a highly placed shareholder requesting Sue Ann for this job. Sounding unconvinced himself, he placated Sue Ann while Thomas listened on speaker.
“You’ll be pleased by the importance of the planned photo shoot at the mosque. Pick up your tickets with my secretary. You’ll like the transport this time,” her editor said just before the line closed with a decisive click.
“What the fuck's he going on about, Sue Ann? Samarkand is the butt end of the universe. Nothing’s happening there,” Thomas said in a tone that revealed his doubts.
“Go figure. You heard what he said about my contract. It’s not like I’ve got so many other fish to fry.”
“You’ve got offers from every network.”
“I’ll tell you something my father taught me, Thomas. Better to be a big fish in a little pond than-”
“Don’t go giving me that old Chinese proverb crap,” Thomas interrupted her.
“Let’s not get carried away. It was just one story, Thomas. Ya, it went viral but tomorrow, well you know. My ‘creds’ wouldn’t get me past the first interview at a bigger network and even if they did, those guys working at the big broadcasters would eat me for breakfast. I need some time to build up a framework of supporters. It’s all good.”
Sue Ann called the editor’s frosty male secretary and asked for details about which airline desk they would pick up their tickets at. His warm manner took her by surprise.
“Why Ms. Lee, your takeoff is under the radar this time.”
“Sorry. I didn’t get the name of the airline.”
“It seems one of our shareholders has taken a personal interest in your recent work and asked as a favor that you accept the Samarkand posting. He’ll fly you there on his company Gulfstream.”
“Did I hear right?” Her voice revealed her surprise.
“I must admit I was surprised too, Ms. Lee. It is a full service, direct flight at Mach 0.85. You won’t need tickets. Just present yourself at the Rizon Jet desk. They are expecting you.”
“And my cameraman?”
“The same itinerary.”
“Thanks.”
“Please call me anytime for anything, Ms. Lee. My private extension is 88345 and call me Ab. All my friends do. It’s short for Abdul. Is there anything else?”
“Expenses?”
“How silly of me. The Rizon desk will have your envelope.”
Sue Ann looked between the computer screens on their desks at Thomas. He had been listening on speaker for the last part of the call. His hands turned palm upward and he shook his head while opening his eyes wide.
“Guess it won’t kill us,” he said while typing 'what planes fly at Mach 0.85?' at the Google prompt.
The answer that popped up was the Gulfstream G650.
“We’re flying in style, Honey. The Gulfstream G650 is state of the art. Who’d Abdul say sponsored this little junket?”
“He didn’t.”
“Wonders never cease.”
****
Pleasant weather greeted the men who flooded out of the Bibi Khanym Mosque after evening prayers. Sue Ann cursed under her breath as she instructed Thomas to pan the men leaving the impressive structure named after the wife of the ruler Amir Timur in the 14th century. Impressive reconstruction, she thought, despite herself and her convictions about Islam. They were standing on the corner of Bibikhonim and Chorraha streets. Sue Ann was preparing an overdub for the video when a commotion, building in momentum on the many pedestrian footpaths leading to the mosque, caught her attention.
“That haze over those guys looks familiar, Sue Ann,” Thomas commented as he swung his camera around towards the noise.
“We saw it before at Lake Khanka,” she replied, looking more closely.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
They both ran for a decorative but robust tree with low hanging branches near the entrance to the mosque complex. Thomas boosted Sue Ann into the tree and shimmied up the trunk, demonstrating lightning physical skills that surprised even him. Sue Ann passed him his camera just in the nick of time; the commotion was about to become a riot.
People were running in every direction. Bloodcurdling screams, moving closer by the second, came from just up the walkway. Some people were so afraid that they had left their children to the whims of the throng. Some individuals were trampled under the feet of escaping worshipers close by the tree from which Sue Ann and Thomas looked on. She turned to him.
“You getting this?”
“All o
f it. Thank God we got up here,” Thomas said,
“Do you think we’re safe?” Sue Ann’s question was genuine.
“Better than running down there. No one’s even looking up. They’re just too terrified.”
“Jesus, look at those guys. They look exactly like the ‘walkers’ we saw at Khanka, the same dazed expression and everything.”
Thomas filmed the growing anarchy.
“Look over there,” he said. “They’re carrying that woman off after slaughtering the men.”
“This is the biggest event of your career, Thomas. You’d better get a clear shot,” shouted Sue Ann over the cascading din.
Thomas concentrated on capturing the events unfolding on the ground though hindered by the foliage in front of him. Sue Ann busied herself with breaking a branch directly in front of them. Thomas panned through the space she had created while nodding his head in thanks. She slammed her elbow into his ribs, pointed and shouted at him with excitement.
“One o’clock. Look! Isn’t that a drone glinting over the crowd?”
“I’ll zoom in. Christ! Good eye, girl. It is a definitely a drone and I got it clear. Hey, what’s that shit spewing out of it onto the crowd?” Thomas’s question was directed to no one in particular.
“Fucked if I know,” said Sue Ann as the noise from escaping worshipers lulled temporarily.
Sue Ann took a long headscarf out of her bag and wrapped it around her and Thomas and the tree. Thomas snickered a bit. “In a tree, Sue Ann, dear?”
“Jokes? Not now. That cloud is approaching us fast. Secure your camera around your neck and make sure you get that drone coming in above the crowd too.” She felt her concentration beginning to drift. Just before they both lost consciousness, she grabbed Thomas' arm. “What’s that buzzing sound?” she managed to say as the heavy mist enveloped them.
Even though they collapsed against the trunk of the tree, by some fluke Thomas’ camera continued filming as it became entangled in the branches. It caught the drone passing right over them and the film would clearly show something misty pouring out of a spout under the craft.
****
Although they had not been expecting it at the time, their film was to be a bombshell. What they’d captured was the first deployment of a highly secret weapon system – and a remarkable one at that. As the clip went viral in the coming days, talking heads tried to put a catchy name to the unfolding events, but it was Sue Ann who coined Thomas’ suggestion in a CNN interview, and it stuck. “Nano Swarming,” she called it, and the world media swooned.
No one had fired a shot and yet the world was at war. As similar footage that left nothing to the imagination came in from all over Central Asia, world leaders met to try to decide how to counter Chinese duplicity. Meanwhile the Chinese Central Government leader vociferously denied any knowledge of or participation in the invasion. Except for the isolated example of violence in Samarkand, the unarmed and surprisingly passive movement of men met little resistance. Pacified world leaders looking for a way to explain away the strange events in Central Asia turned a blind eye.
As the days passed, the news media moved on. All the trouble remained in the previously Russian Republics and Asia and world interest started to wane. The news media found new stories. Policies of appeasement incapacitated most world leaders. The UN postured, but China’s veto on the Security Council halted any real action. Touchy, independent government leaders in the Republics prevented the Russians from acting in any concerted way. In America, the president remained preoccupied with nationalistic commitments to Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. He made some speeches decrying events in the Central Asian Republics but with no real effect, the public were barely interested. War fatigue translated into political and military inertia. These men were, after all, peaceful and appeared to pose no military threat.
Despite the fact that they were crossing borders not struggling to liberate their own people, words echoing Ghandi’s passive struggle started leaking into news reporting of these events. Images reflecting tacit approval and representing the plight of men looking for wives all over Central Asia dominated instead of the riots in Samarkand, now forgotten as a blemish on an enormous but otherwise peaceful migration.
Sue Ann and Thomas’ notoriety receded until one morning Colonel Lau orchestrated a coup beneficial to her. General Chou, recently named principal spokesperson for the party as a whole, agreed to give her a short interview. Without explicitly answering any difficult questions, a shocked world looked on as General Chou stood in front of a large image of Mao Zedong taken during Mao’s ‘Long March’ and delivered a shockingly flippant statement:
“Unfortunately the one-child policies of our misguided predecessors created an imbalance in Chinese demographics.” He gave a theatrical pause and then continued. “These problems will be addressed over time. The Chinese Central Committee deplores any suggestion that the Party or the Red Army are in any way involved in this unprecedented migration of peace-loving Chinese men. What is it you say in the West? Ah, yes. I remember now. ‘Boys will be boys’. Good day.”
Needless to say, Sue Ann’s story and Thomas’ video went viral.
Chapter Four
Disappearing Nano Weapon
“There it is again. Did you see it this time? The pattern is quite unmistakeable. She’s alive.” Relief flooded the demeanor of Ekaterina, Kefira’s birth mother and a highly placed administrator in the Mossad command structure.
Yochana looked at her, uncomfortable at her colleague’s conviction.
“Someone’s using the signal. That’s certain, but you know it doesn't mean Kefira is alive,” Yochana said in what she hoped was a gentle tone. She didn’t use such tones often; she’d previously been second-in-command at Mossad and she wasn’t thrilled to have recently been recalled from a forced retirement.
A third person sat in front of a thin laptop at the same table as the two women. His concentration matched the speed of his typing, interspersed with whispered commands, both of which changed the large wall display in front of them. His name was Yatsick Cheboloski, youngest son of a Polish holocaust survivor recently laid to rest in the soil of his adopted country, Israel. Yatsick’s Ashkenazi genius and unquestionable dedication to the work of protecting Israel’s cyber integrity might have slotted him for political success had he not steered clear of any attention-getting posts. His lifeblood was Israel’s security. Ekaterina loved that fact about the apparently sloppy whiz kid. Despite his appearance, his work was anything but sloppy. He exemplified ‘old-school’, dyed-in-the-wool commitment.
“Yatsick, tell me she’s alive,” said Ekaterina with controlled desperation in her voice.
“I wouldn’t normally get your hopes up in a case like this, but Kefira and I established a cryptogram when I injected the mind-controllable molecule into her spinal cord.”
“Speak in terms I can understand, please.”
“Alright. This is how it works. Kefira and I devised a three-part code based on the timing between communications if she was captured. We came up with a second series of messages should she find herself forced to act under duress.” Yatsick paused, to ensure that his words were being absorbed.
“Spit it out, son,” said Yochana.
“Ladies, please. Look at the display. She must expose the signal for our satellites in this specific thought pattern,” replied Yatsick as he displayed a mind map of Israel on the wall-mounted screen.
“A picture of the state of Israel?”
“Yes, but more specifically, exactly Kefira’s photographic memory of the image of the state of Israel. Now compare these two images.”
The two women looked at the pair of images on the screen as Yatsick moved them on top of each other. A well-deserved look of contentment passed briefly across his face.
“They’re exactly the same,” said Ekaterina, “but what does that tell us?”
“When I injected the tracing molecule into Kefira, we established this exact image, taken from a proje
ction inside Kefira’s mind, as the key to knowing if she was under duress. She is no doubt alive, trapped at the GPS coordinates you see below the image, and able to communicate in this limited way.”
“Amazing. You really are the future,” said Ekaterina enthusiastically as she hugged the young man. “This is fantastic technology.”
“Where are those coordinates?” asked Yochana.
“Mainland China.”
“China?” Ekaterina queried.
“Forget that. Look at this screen now,” said Yatsick.
“That’s the cameraman’s suit engaging and drawing on our Quantum Power Source while he thinks he’s invisible to us. Wait.” Yatsick suddenly looked less confident. “That’s not possible,” he said. He pushed some buttons and scrolled through text in a small monochrome window. “I don’t know how to explain this, but his heat signature has disappeared.”
“Where did it go to?” It was Ekaterina who spoke.
“Good question, Ma’am. Hate to say it, but I don’t know. He just vanished. There are only two possibilities. One, he’s dead. Or two, he managed to reprogram the molecules of his suit,” Yatsick said slowly. He typed a command and reviewed the response on his screen.
“Nothing else I can deduce - at this point,” he said, shaking his head.
“What does that mean?” asked Ekaterina.
“I noticed a diminishing of his suit’s drain on our power source over the last couple of days. At first, I assumed he was using the suit less, but when the signal disappeared completely, I had to start extrapolating possibilities.”
“It’s not the first time then? And what do you mean by possibilities?” demanded the two women almost simultaneously.
“I hadn’t seen it actually occurring before my eyes until today,” Yatsick intoned. His attention was partially distracted by a scrolling list of numbers. He turned to face the two women. “To say Thomas is a quick study is an understatement. There’s something more about this guy. He may have managed to create a self-replicating system that no longer needs our power source.”
Diamond Rain: Adventure Science Fiction Mossad Thriller (The Spy Stories and Tales of Intrigue Series Book 2) Page 7