Time Frame

by Douglas E. Richards

  So far, as expected, the sensors had yet to detect the slightest hint of a signal, although, for all DEI scientists knew, they had managed to connect with the field and had never known it, because the sensor array was nothing but a joke.

  But this joke had just come up with a new punchline.

  Because, at long last, the sensors had apparently detected a signal—but at a time when the Institute wasn’t even running an experiment. Good trick.

  Junior Technician Yang forced himself to remain calm and think logically. “Computer, identify the precise location of the signal,” he commanded, doubting this would help. He knew it wasn’t coming from any experimental chamber within the institute, and the sensor array was thought to have a fairly limited range, seven to fifteen kilometers at best.

  “Working,” replied the computer, and then only a few seconds later added, “The signal is concentrated within the Cargo Transportation Station of Beijing Capital International Airport.”

  Yang bolted upright. The signal was coming from the airport? This possibility had never even crossed his mind, despite the airport’s proximity. And it wasn’t just coming from the airport, but from the cargo section.

  Surely there must be some combination of factors that could account for this, that could provide a mundane explanation, but for the life of him Yang couldn’t find it.

  “The signal is now moving,” reported the computer in a calm, soothing voice, unaware of what a bombshell announcement this truly was. “It is traveling southeast at a speed of twenty kilometers per hour—and accelerating.” Pause. “Forty-five kilometers per hour.” Pause. “Eighty kilometers per hour.” Pause. “One hundred ninety kilometers per hour.”

  Less than a minute later, after several additional updates, the computer added, “The signal can no longer be detected.”

  Junior Technician Yang’s eyes widened and electricity coursed through his body. Given that the signal was detected on a runway, it didn’t take much imagination to figure out what had happened. The source of the signal had accelerated rapidly until it was out of range of the sensor. The conclusion was inescapable: the object in question must be on a plane, now flying away from Beijing.

  Yang stared at a monitor that no longer indicated anything unusual, but which had just shaken him to his core.

  So what should he do now? If he brought this to the immediate attention of the higher-ups, he would do so at great risk to himself. If Yang had overlooked something obvious, some way that made it clear this was a false signal, he would surely lose face, and probably his job. The Chinese government didn’t tolerate mistakes or incompetence, especially among those who had been given the honor of working for one of the Institute’s forty-eight different science and technology projects.

  Yang would rather kick a dragon in the teeth than interrupt a superior with a false alarm.

  On the other hand, if he failed to report this signal promptly, and it turned out to be as important as he feared, it would go even worse for him. Besides, the strange behavior of the signal indicated the dark energy connection was taking place within a cargo jet, moving as the jet moved. If there really was an object that could fit within a cargo hold capable of opening a hole in the fabric of space-time, assuming the sensor really could detect the proper signature, they needed to know about it.

  Junior Technician Yang Tan swallowed hard and rushed out of the lab, moving toward the office of the head of the entire project, Director Chang Yin, bypassing the usual channels in an effort to save time.

  Yang hoped that going directly to Director Chang with this information would be lauded as a bold move, saving precious minutes that could prove decisive as the DEI sought to understand what they were dealing with.

  But he was well aware that he might be doing nothing more than racing toward the maw of a wood chipper, bringing about career suicide with all possible haste.

  17

  Blake’s face was glued to a window as the jet climbed into the sky. Within seconds the seemingly ever-present layer of smog that plagued Beijing and its vicinity blocked out the ground, and he turned to face his fellow passenger.

  Zhang’s plane was a unique hybrid, half luxury passenger jet and half cargo aircraft. Its tail opened like a crocodile mouth at the back for ease of loading and unloading, and it had a transparent hull between passengers and cargo, perfect for VIPs with precious cargo they wanted to keep an eye on at all times. Blake refused to even ponder what kind of dark, illicit goods may have also taken a ride in this hold over the years.

  Blake was seated in an impressive leather chair across from Zhang in the luxurious passenger compartment. Although the compartment seated twenty in spacious comfort, he and Zhang were its sole inhabitants, and a large prototype refrigerator its sole cargo. A refrigerator that couldn’t even keep an icicle cold, but which did have a few tricks up its sleeve.

  Zhang eyed the unit with great interest, but knew enough not to ask its importance.

  “Now it is safe to talk, Mr. Blake,” said Zhang in perfect English, dispelling any notion Blake might have had that the man was partially mute. He hadn’t exactly been chatty over the previous hour. “It’s unlikely anyone was listening in down below, but I’m certain they aren’t now. I am honored to share Sun Yee On’s plane with you.”

  “Not at all,” replied Blake, schooled in both the importance of praising guests and the deep humility expected in the Chinese culture. “The honor is all mine, Enforcer Zhang,” he added, also aware of the Chinese penchant for using honorifics followed by last names—which were given first—the opposite of the Western system.

  When the jet leveled out, Zhang removed a green nylon duffel bag, almost five feet in length, from the overhead compartment and handed it to Blake. “This contains the weapons and other gear that you requested. I encourage you to inspect it, and hope that you will find it worthy.”

  Blake smiled, not even glancing at the heavy bag, stuffed to the gills. “No need, Enforcer Zhang. I’m sure everything is there, and is more than satisfactory.”

  Zhang was tall and muscular, with fine black hair and other features that were unmistakably Chinese. He appeared calm, self-confident, and moved with an athletic grace. Despite the studied passivity of his face, there was an aura of menace about him.

  Zhang’s lack of expression was also not unexpected. The Chinese people had long been stereotyped as inscrutable, not entirely without reason. Many Chinese did try to appear emotionless whenever possible, wearing neutral, unreadable expressions that would make the best poker players jealous. This showed that they were taking their guest seriously, exuding harmony, and adhering to the Confucian dictate of balance in all things.

  “I was instructed not to take a direct route to our destination,” said Zhang. “I don’t expect any trouble, or that anyone will try to follow us, but I believe this to be a wise precaution.”

  “What is our route?” asked Blake.

  “We are heading southeast toward Shanghai. This is the flight plan that was filed with authorities. But when we are halfway there, we will circle back and head northeast to our final destination, a private airfield on the outskirts of Shenyang. A very private airfield. One that is four hundred of your miles closer to the North Korean border than Beijing. Our transponder has been modified so we will appear to be continuing on to Shanghai, as planned.”

  “How close is Shenyang to the border?” asked Blake.

  “About two hundred kilometers,” Zhang replied, momentarily forgetting to do the conversion for his American guest. “A hundred twenty miles,” he amended. “But we won’t be pursuing a direct route. The truck you requested will be awaiting us on the runway. We will cross using a tunnel under a remote part of the border, two hundred twenty miles from our landing. I will then drive you to a secluded area within a hundred miles of Hyangsan, as agreed, and leave you there.”

  Zhang paused. “Can I assume you have a phone, and that it is untraceable?” he asked.

  “Yes. It mimics the latest Appl
e model, but it has a number of enhancements and safeguards. No tracking, no hacking,” added Blake with a smile.

  Zhang’s face remained impassive. “Good. Give me its number and I’ll send the precise route I plan to take to get you where you want to be. We should also link our phones so we can communicate, if necessary, while I’m driving the semi and you’re in the back. The trailer as you call it.”

  Blake was impressed. He knew Zhang would be competent and experienced, but the man was also more careful and meticulous than he had expected. Zhang sent the route he planned to use to Blake’s phone, and they set up communications so their voices would come through the comms each wore in their ear if this proved necessary.

  “You mentioned we’d be using a tunnel,” said Blake when this process was complete. He looked uneasy at the prospect. “Can you elaborate?”

  “Please do not be concerned, Mr. Blake. The tunnel is well concealed and drivable. Even with a truck the size that we will be using.”

  “Are there no runways closer to the border-crossing than Shenyang?” asked Blake.

  “There are many,” replied Zhang. “But the private airfield we will use is guarded and controlled by our people. Unfortunately, this marks the easternmost edge of our . . . influence. It is a territory we have only recently begun to expand into. The airfield was completed only a few months ago. We have a policy of steady expansion. Only by continuing to grow, continuing to gain strength, can we ensure our long-term prosperity and survival.”

  “This is a wise strategy,” said Blake, not sure what else to say about this. He detested everything Zhang and his group stood for, but in this case, clandestine operations made for strange bedfellows.

  During his brief mission prep, Cargill had explained that American Black Ops had long had a relationship with Sun Yee On, one of the most powerful of the numerous Chinese Triads. This had come as a shock to Blake, but he realized that it shouldn’t have. Collaborations between the US government and the American-based Mafia were known to have occurred in the past, so forging an unholy alliance with Chinese organized crime wasn’t breaking any new ground.

  And it made strategic and tactical sense. Spies could be recruited in China, but could they be fully trusted? For the most important Ops, could America really be sure the agents they thought they had turned weren’t really double agents? Agents waiting for the highest-stakes missions to reveal themselves?

  A Triad, on the other hand, would be expected to have far less loyalty to the homeland, and far clearer motivations. Sun Yee On, formally and euphemistically known as the New Righteousness and Peace Commercial and Industrial Guild, had arisen in Hong Kong, as had many of the most powerful Triad groups, and had quickly spread. The organization now boasted over seventy thousand members in China and around the world, where it was involved in counterfeiting, gambling, narcotics, human trafficking, prostitution, smuggling, and extortion.

  So the head of Black Ops had opportunistically forged an alliance with this group to get intel on China, and in-country contacts for US operatives with missions on the ground there. The US government could offer Sun Yee On much more than just money in exchange for its services. America could provide the Triad with intelligence on activities outside of China that only the world’s predominant superpower could obtain, and technology that could enhance the group’s capabilities. In the US, it could influence prosecution of members of the American branch of Sun Yee On, which was growing quite nicely, offering several get-out-of-jail-free cards each year to high-ranking America-based chieftains.

  No one on the US side was thrilled with this arrangement, but Cargill had indicated they were willing to hold their noses and live with it. The alliance had proven invaluable over and over to US intelligence efforts within China, and worth ten times what it cost, financially and ethically.

  This wasn’t to say that the Triad didn’t have some loyalty to its homeland. The group reserved the right to refuse to help US efforts if they thought such help would cripple China, but for the most part they believed that spy-vs-spy operations, a never-ending jockeying for position among superpowers, did nothing to truly hurt their country or affect the balance of power, and so were more than happy to assist—given the right inducements.

  Blake stared at Zhang and wondered how any of this could possibly have become reality. Hadn’t it only been last month that he was a PI in Los Angeles? Now, fast-forward just a brief period of time, and he was in China working side by side with Sun Yee On’s top enforcer, a man who ranked only two levels down the organizational chart from the mob’s Dragon Head, its CEO equivalent.

  And this was one of the least surreal things that had happened to him during this time.

  As much as Blake hated to admit it, the mob enforcer did exude an air of competence. And the American did feel secure from a double-cross. This would not have been the case had Blake been working here with a Chinese intelligence operative the US had turned.

  Blake decided that this would be the rare mission that went off without a single hitch.

  He sighed. When mission success meant returning home to hearty congratulations and well-earned R&R, nothing ever went smoothly.

  But in this case, when his only reward for successful completion of the mission was death, when his most sacred duty was making sure the kettles and excess copies of Aaron Blake were eliminated, of course the mission would run like a Swiss watch.

  The universe was nothing if not ironic, Blake decided.

  18

  Colonel Li Ming stared at the three-dimensional image of Director Chang Yin, the head of the Advanced Science and Technology Institute’s Dark Energy Initiative, who was unable to hide his urgency and excitement. The colonel couldn’t even venture the first guess as to what the call might be about.

  Li headed military operations for the Institute, which included attempting to hack the computers of top tech companies and top scientists around the world, and buying, stealing, or otherwise acquiring critical technologies. In short, anything directors at the Institute needed to advance their goals that required muscle, or force, rather than strictly brainpower, was in the colonel’s purview, and he wasn’t shy about deploying soldiers or spies to fulfill his duties.

  The Institute hosted forty-eight different programs, a number that was rapidly climbing, which tended to keep Li Ming and his handpicked team fully occupied, although Chang had yet to require his services. Not surprising since the director of DEI led a program that was so outrageous it wasn’t clear what technologies not already in hand might help his team achieve success.

  The colonel was bald and in his late forties, and had earned a reputation as a no-nonsense performer who got the job done no matter what it took. A man who wore his fierce loyalty to China on his sleeve, and one who was expected to continue to rapidly climb the ranks in the years ahead. The importance of his current assignment was underscored by the manpower and resources he was able to access to accomplish any goal.

  “What can I do for you, honored Director?” said Li.

  “Colonel Li, something very . . . unusual may have come up,” said Chang immediately, forgoing the usual self-effacing back and forth. He explained how DEI had invented what they were confident was a dark energy detector, but had so far failed in their attempts to open a pathway to this mysterious field. He went on to explain how he had been notified that a signal had been recently detected, quite unexpectedly. Given that someone had succeeded in tapping the dark energy field where the DEI’s efforts had failed, this was a development that was as troubling as it was earth-shattering.

  “Forgive my ignorance, Director Chang, but I believe you just told me you could not be sure your sensor device even works. Isn’t it more likely this is an error?”

  “A wise question, Colonel, and one I had my team expend considerable effort to explore. We’ve analyzed the almost sixty minutes of data stored in our computer. We first picked up the signal about eleven kilometers out, which is consistent with our estimates of the detector’s pro
bable range. It was moving, but rapidly decelerating, with the exact deceleration profile expected of a plane on approach to landing. Given that less than a minute after the signal appeared it slowed to a stop in the middle of the cargo section of Beijing Airport, this assessment seems . . . likely.”

  The colonel’s expression changed very little, but the newfound intensity in his eyes showed that this last had gotten his full attention.

  “Thirty-four minutes later the signal began moving again,” continued Chang, “but only a short distance, and at a snail’s pace, before becoming stationary once more. This is consistent with cargo being transported to another plane. This was followed not much later by a rapid acceleration, exactly matching the acceleration profile of a plane taking off. We lost the signal when it traveled more than eleven kilometers from the detector, as would be expected.”

  Colonel Li pondered this information for several seconds. “Go on,” he said finally.

  “We ran multiple computer system diagnostics and visually inspected the sensor array. Everything checked out. Before and after these anomalous readings the detector was silent, as it has been since the system was first deployed. Because the signal was dead center within the cargo area of an airport, and because the deceleration and acceleration profiles so perfectly match a plane, we deem the chances that this was nothing but a detector malfunction to be extremely low.”

  “Is it possible the detector is mistaking a more standard signal emanating from a jet or from cargo as a dark energy signature?”

  “Yes,” replied Chang. “This is trillions of times more likely than that the detector really did identify a genuine connection to the dark energy field, one arising from out of nowhere. But the array has been in use for more than three months, during which time countless planes, filled with an endless variety of cargo, have landed and taken off from the airport. And yet never before, and not since, has the detector stirred from its slumber. For all of these reasons, I tend to take these readings seriously. If this detection is accurate, I don’t need to tell you just how monumental this would be.”