Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2)

by Glenn Michaels

  So, in early 2016, Iran had stepped into the picture in a big way.

  In both 2014 and 2015, Iran had made diplomatic overtures with Syria, Hezbollah, and even the Iraqi government, establishing a quasi anti-ISIL alliance. With acquiesce of the Iraqi and Syrian governments, the Islamic Republic of Iran Army Guard mobilized through the northern territories of Iraq in 2016 and marched into eastern Syria, battling the retreating forces of ISIL and pushing them in a pincer movement towards the Syrian Army in Damascus, finally reaching an uneasy and now often bloody stalemate in western Syria.

  And that’s where the current state of affairs still sat. Going into Iran might be exceptionally dangerous.

  She sighed. It was time to go home and to discuss the situation with Paul.

  • • • •

  “So, my dear,” Paul said, putting his fork down on his now empty plate. “The question is where to go from here, right?”

  Capie nodded, still toying with her food.

  They were at a back table in Truluck’s Restaurant in University City near San Diego, celebrating Capie’s successful return from the Mid-East. She had just finished giving him her detailed version of the trip and answering the tons of questions he had. And he was doing his best to restrain himself and not disparage or reprimand her for not keeping him informed on her whereabouts and also charging off to Saudi Arabia on her own. But Paul was an engineer, not an actor and despite his best efforts to hide his feelings, he was aware that she sensed his mood.

  “I can tell that you are still mad with me, aren’t you?” she asked, cocking her head to one side while studying his countenance guardedly.

  Paul leaned back in his seat and sighed gently before looking up to meet her gaze.

  “Yes,” he admitted grudgingly. “I am, my love, a little. Okay, I know what you are going to say. You went all the way to the Middle East, you were very careful, you did your investigation, you learned a lot and you returned. All in complete safety. No harm, no foul. But try looking at this from my point of view. You promised to keep me informed and you promised to be careful. And here I sat, half a world away, not knowing where you were or if you were in trouble or not.” He bit down on one lip before continuing. “Being left in the dark that way—the anguish, the pain, the fears. You are the love of my life.” Paul smiled, reaching out to stroke the side of her face with his hand. “Not knowing scared me to death.”

  Capie frowned, reaching out with one finger to toy with the edge of a napkin.

  “I’m sorry,” she replied. “But I didn’t think you’d miss me all that much. I mean, I could see that you were tied up with your quantum computer project.”

  Paul gulped, feeling as if he had been gut-punched. He looked away, trying to collect his thoughts. Of all the things she could have said, her words cut him deeply.

  “I need to go back to the Middle East,” she announced, before he could say anything in reply. “To Iran this time, to continue the investigation.”

  “I am still not convinced,” he declared, as he deliberately did not look back in her direction. “I admit the situation looks suspicious, but there is no evidence that there’s any conspiracy in play here, let alone that there are a lot of Normals about to be killed. And I especially don’t care for the risk that you would be in while running around in Iran.”

  “And you really can’t go with me this time either, can you? Just where do you stand with your qubit processor?”

  He sighed, taking a sip from his water glass and setting it back down none too gently on the table. “I finally worked out the problems and built a successful four qubit processor. I am halfway through the design build of an eight qubit processor.”

  She nodded, deep in thought. “So, no. You shouldn’t leave your work right now. I will be very careful and keep all of my energy expenditures low.”

  Paul rubbed one hand through his hair, a pinched and tension filled expression on his face. “That’s not going to be good enough,” he muttered mournfully.

  Capie licked her lips. “What does that mean?”

  “I want to be reasonable about this,” he said with a frozen smile. “If something happens…if you disappear or get hurt—then I want a way to find you. I don’t want to have to search the whole planet looking for you.”

  She forced a short laugh. “And how do you propose to do that? Do you want me to take the Raconteur with me?”

  Paul looked thoughtful for a minute. “No, that wouldn’t help. We only have one of them. But I have another idea. Remember the subcutaneous transponders with the rubindium crystals in the Star Trek episode “Patterns of Force?” Or when Data scanned the planet Angel One for platinum in order to find the survivors of the starship Odin? Something like that.”

  “Something specific that you could scan for with a magical spell?” Capie noted slowly. “Something that Errabêlu wouldn’t know to look for.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I can see that,” she responded with a furrowed brow. “But I would expect you to do the same thing. Insert something in your body that I could track if I needed to.”

  “Agreed,” he said, briefly closing his eyes in relief. “In addition, I expect at least two emails or phone calls a day from you updating your progress. And your whereabouts.”

  She smiled at him slyly. “Agreed. And I apologize about that. I got so caught up in travel and there really was nothing to report until near the end.”

  “Then send me an email that says ‘nothing to report,’” he said, giving her a firm eye.

  “Yes, that does seem fair, Dom. Okay, I will do that on this trip. Anything else?”

  “And, as an added precaution, CB, I will get us each a satellite phone, probably one of the new Iridium models.”

  Capie cocked her head to one side and smiled smugly. “Subcutaneous transponders and a satellite phone? Isn’t that overdoing it a bit?”

  “Don’t you remember all those Star Trek episodes where their communicators were taken away from the landing parties?”

  She shrugged, conceding the point. “Why a satellite phone and not a cell phone?”

  He chuckled. “Don’t get me wrong. Cell phones are great and they have a lot of bells and whistles that satellite phones don’t have. But cell phones don’t work everywhere. Like in lots of mountainous terrain, deserts and out at sea. A satellite phone solves all of that. They can even do limited texting as well. I’ll get you a good one before you leave.”

  “If it will make you feel better, then yes, I will take one with me,” she said, smiling reassuringly.

  “Good!” Paul said, with a light slap on the table. “That makes me feel a lot better about your trip. Now, I can know where you are and come track you down, if need be. So, okay, a change of subject here. Your timing is good. Before you go back, I suggest that we enjoy a weekend at the San Diego Comic-Con. You can leave for Iran on Monday.”

  Her smile was contagious. “I hereby approve your plan enthusiastically. But tonight I want some cozy time with you. Okay, big boy?”

  “My thoughts exactly, CB,” Paul admitted with a lecherous grin on his face. “And I know just the place. Ready to go?”

  • • • •

  This time Capie took the shortest Great Circle route, which took her over the North Pole and over central Russia, east of Moscow, and then a central line down the middle of the Caspian Sea. A small dogleg to the east allowed her to avoid the capital city of Baku, Azerbaijan. Her dogleg also took her around Tehran as she headed for the city of Esfahan, Iran, home of the 8th Raptor Air Base and home station for the Dassault Falcon 20 in question.

  The skin between her shoulder blades still itched from the implantation of a single gram of platinum of isotope 190. According to her husband, that isotope of platinum was extremely rare in the Earth’s crust, something on the order of 0.7 parts per trillion. According to the tests he had quickly run, that one gram was detectable up to 800 miles away!

  Once she crossed the beach of Iran, near the border of Turkm
enistan, she kept her portal jumps short, only five miles a hop, keeping the energy levels as low as possible. A hundred miles out of Esfahan, she chose to fly instead at a fairly high altitude, keeping her exposure to a minimum.

  Since she was exhausted from the very long trip, and the morning sun was already up (precluding any nightly avatar interrogations for at least several hours), she therefore disguised herself as a local and found a small hotel on the outskirts of Esfahan, as far from both the airbase and the downtown sector as she could get. There, she crashed for a ten hour sleep, getting up in time for dinner.

  Refreshed, she headed out, taking a cab to the Shahid Beheshti International Airport. The Air Base lay beyond, only a couple of miles distant, close enough that she was able to walk to it in the cooling night air.

  On the outskirts, she found the military air terminal operations building. Using a cloaking spell, she passed through the open lobby area to the rear of the building to the offices where all the rooms were already locked for the day. A small spell took care of that problem and she was soon powering up a desktop computer and logging in.

  Yes, she was able to quickly identify records for the Falcon 20, including flight plans and maintenance schedules. Hmm, the last few records for the plane were minimal with no flight plans at all, only maintenance and fuel consumption reports. Odd. The pilot’s name, however, was the same for all of the last flights, a Lieutenant Javad Hosseini.

  She logged into the personnel records and discovered another odd item. Lieutenant Javad Hosseini, deceased, body shipped somewhere…apparently back home for funeral services and burial. Date of death. More odd. The same day that Kuzmin died.

  Was Hosseini’s some of the blood in the Falcon? It seemed likely. According to his medical records, his was type A positive. Perhaps he and Kuzman had exchanged gunfire on the aircraft? Hosseini died but not before mortally wounding Kuzman?

  The base commander. He would know the answers to these questions. His name was Brigadier General Ebrahim Ahmadi. Hmm, another further check…yes, he had quarters on base and he was scheduled for an early morning meeting so he should be in his quarters.

  She left, putting everything back to rights as she went.

  Outside, she went airborne, flying slowly through the night air to the northwest until she found the commander officers’ quarters she had seen on the base map, nestled in among a grove of trees. A small stand of trees fifty yards from the house seemed adequate enough for cover and she gently landed in the shadows behind them and set to work.

  The general’s avatar was short, stout, and rather unattractive with lumpy skin, a couple of nasty moles on his face, black greasy hair, and a large bulbous nose. Capie found herself wishing that the man was single; heaven help any woman married to this repulsive looking specimen of manhood.

  More than ever, she felt the need to keep this conversation short.

  “General Ahmadi, what can you tell me about Lieutenant Hosseini’s death and about a Russian named Kuzman?”

  For once, an avatar looked uncomfortable, which surprised Capie.

  “They were part of Project Amm,” the man replied as he looked around distressed.

  “Tell me about the project.”

  “I cannot. It was classified. I had orders to support the project, but I was not briefed on the details.”

  “You must know something. Tell me what you know and even what you suspect.”

  “The commander of the project here was Major General Abbas Jafari. I was ordered to give him everything he wanted and to ask no questions. His aide was a civilian named Omar. I never learned Omar’s last name. Jafari brought in a team of Quds Force special troops. They arrived about two months ago, along with two Russians, the Kuzman you mentioned and another man, named Burkov.”

  “Two Russians!?” exclaimed Capie quietly.

  “Both of them were obviously ex-military. We put everyone up in Building 408. The next day, several aircraft arrived: an Ilyushin II-76, a Lockheed C-130C, a Boeing CH-47C Chinook and two Bell 214C helicopters. They also commandeered my Falcon 20. Several trucks arrived during the week after that and loaded the planes. No one was allowed to see the cargo or get close to the planes or trucks. Then all the aircraft began making shuttle runs out to the east. There are a few dry lake beds out there. One of them, I think, is where they went. Then, a month ago, they all left, I know not where. I never saw the Falcon 20 again, or any of the troops. However, on that day when they returned from the desert, Jafari drove over to the base hospital in a truck, with seven body bags and ordered six of them to be shipped to their home cities. Lt. Hosseini was one of them. Five of the others were Quds force troopers. The seventh one was one of the Russians. Burkov, I think. We buried him in the base cemetery in an unmarked grave per Jafari’s orders. That’s virtually all I know.”

  A special project, conducted by the Iranian military with the help of at least one Russian munitions expert. Who knew, perhaps the other Russian, that Burkov fellow, had been an expert too?

  Out to the east, huh? A test site maybe? For a special weapon, perhaps? One that the two Russians had helped with? But why all the troops and the hardware? Any weapon that required that many planes and men to deliver wasn’t much of a weapon. Even the first nuke didn’t need that much hardware or man power.

  She’d have to find the place they went to. Hopefully, it was one of those dry lake beds that the general was talking about. A decent map would help too.

  What had the avatar said there at the last? It was virtually all he knew?

  “What do you mean, virtually all you know? Come on, give!” she urged the image.

  “One of my gate guards saw a logo on the shirt pocket of one of the truck drivers. From the description, I think that truck came from the Shiraz Electronics Industries, a subsidiary of the Iran Electronics Industries, which is a state owned company.”

  Okay, a state owned electronics company. She knew not what to make of that or of their delivery to the airbase.

  Since she couldn’t think of any further questions to ask, she released the spell on the avatar, letting it dematerialize. Deep in thought, she turned and cast another spell, rising into the air toward the southeast, back the way she had come. She had no idea what to make of it all, but her email to Paul that night would be longer and more interesting than usual.

  A shadow separated from a nearby tree and moved to follow her, the Oni hanging back in order to remain unobserved.

  • • • •

  The morning sun was just peeking over the eastern horizon when Capie headed out in that direction, flying along at 6,000 feet, satellite images in hand with all the dry lake beds clearly circled in ink if not labeled. The biggest one, just east of Dastjerd and Malvajerd, was her first target. But after an hour of crisscrossing back and forth over it, she reluctantly concluded that there was nothing there to see.

  There were maybe six or seven smaller ones to the south to check out.

  Looking at the satellite images, Capie began to lose hope. A lot of the desert here was not dry lake bed but sand dunes, rocky hills and ravines. If the Iranians and Kuzman had done—well, whatever it was that they did—in some other location, then she would never find it. This place was vast!

  It didn’t take long, and the second such dry lake bed passed below her with no sign that anything other than nature had touched it. A third one was only a few miles further south.

  As Capie approached it, she thought at first that her orientation was wrong, that she had lost her sense of direction. Up ahead, on the horizon, she should be seeing a stretch of flat white sand. But there, the sand was mostly as black as coal. Another quick check of the satellite images revealed no such location anywhere in the neighborhood. And then, with a tingling sensation running up and down her spine, she suddenly realized that she had found what she was looking for.

  It was the dry lake bed she had been expecting. Or at least, it had once been that.

  She dropped lower, angling in toward one edge of th
e huge black area. And it was huge! The lake bed, according to the image scale of her satellite images, was three miles long by one mile wide. The blackened area was circular, nearly half as large in diameter as the lake bed was wide.

  Almost half a mile in diameter.

  Her stomach churned.

  Out beyond the blackened circle, she could see some odd posts sticking up. Not many but a few. They looked charred and partially melted, especially those closer to the center of where the blast must have occurred.

  Landing gently just inside the edge of the blackened circle, she reached over to touch the ground.

  The black dirt was crusty, partially fused together, extending downward an inch into the earth. Whatever explosion did this had generated incredible heat!

  Now that she was on the ground, she could see small pieces of debris scattered everywhere. Fragments of charred wood and short sections of melted twisted aluminum tubing. Even a few small pieces of burnt cloth. They had been part of something, but the blast had totally disintegrated whatever that something had been.

  She walked father out, over to one of the metal posts sticking out of the ground. There was some sort of circular device mounted to it, about two feet above ground. It somehow looked familiar, as if she had seen one before.

  And then she remembered where. On Mythbusters, not once but several times. They were rupture disks, designed to be placed in the area of an explosion to determine how much damage—and yes, how much deadly force was present.

  The rupture diaphragm in this disk was missing altogether, totally blown away. There were very few such posts further out. Glancing in toward the center of the blast site, she could see where the explosion had left a large circular pit in the ground.

  For all the world, it looked like ground zero of a nuclear blast.

  “I need a nuclear physicist here, please. Hmm, Buckaroo Banzai will do nicely,” and she waved a hand.

  A holographic image of the young and handsome Peter Weller appeared before her, dressed in a gray suit, white shirt and dark gray bowtie. The specter glanced around at the ground, observing the posts but made no comment.