01-01-00

by R. J. Pineiro

  “Now,” Strokk said, grinning at his hostage before surveying the faces of his men. “It’s time to send these Indian bastards a message.”

  7

  Joao Peixoto crouched over a thick rosewood branch overlooking a small clearing. The moon hung high in the crystalline sky, its gray light dancing on the leaves as a breeze swirled the canopy overhead. Monkeys hooted in the distance, their raucous mixing with that of a pair of red macaws squawking on an adjacent tree.

  The noise abruptly stopped and the birds took flight, their sounds replaced by Joao’s own, a warning to his men that their guests had arrived.

  The Mayan chief readied his blowpipe, inserting a poisoned dart and bringing one end to his lips while aiming his deadly weapon at the ground below.

  Through moss and scattered leaves, he saw the figure of his own man under the moonlight using his hands to feel his way through the jungle. No soldiers were with him. The young Maya tripped on an exposed root and fell, quickly getting up and reaching out with both hands to feel for his surroundings.

  Joao felt an anger boiling deep inside of him. His man was blind. Upon closer inspection, he noticed the bloody tracks down his cheeks and neck.

  Climbing down from the tree, he reached the moss-slick path next to his subordinate and was horrified at the sight. The soldiers had plucked out his eyes.

  Controlling his emotions, Joao emitted a hooting sound. It’s us, your family. You are safe now.

  The wounded Indian opened his mouth to reply but could only make guttural noises mixed with bloody froth. The savages had also cut off his tongue.

  Enraged, Joao called for his men, who materialized in the jungle moments later, along with several women and the two scientists hauling their backpacks.

  Jackie Nakamura looked away in terror, burying her face in her husband’s chest as he hugged her.

  Joao turned to the women and ordered them to take the maimed warrior to safety. One of the women began to cry, the young Maya’s mother, and so did another woman, his sister, but they complied with Joao’s order and took the trembling warrior away.

  Joao Peixoto tried to focus on his predicament, shoving the scourging anger aside. Two of the elders were dead. The third was still unconscious. He had no one but himself to consult, to review his plan prior to implementing it. But like his father, and his father before that, Joao Peixoto’s blood carried the genes of the region’s finest warriors, the ones who proudly and bravely defended their land against wave upon wave of invaders, even in the face of overwhelming odds.

  The Mayan chief wondered what had happened to the soldiers. Why weren’t they following his man, who in spite of being blind had managed to reach the clearing? Did they realize that they were headed for a trap and decided to send Joao a message? Did they return to the temple of Kinich Ahau?

  Joao was convinced that he was up against a dangerous and ruthless adversary, but nevertheless he gathered his men and laid out his plan of attack, determined to purge his land from such creatures.

  8

  The numbers in the laptop browsed down the screen as a custom C++ script tried to find the mathematical formula defining the order of the numbers in the array of mosaics carved on the far wall of the temple’s terrace. Susan sat by the edge of the steps, beneath the corbel arches, the laptop resting on her thighs, the light from the pulsating screen mixing with that of the hissing lantern next to her. Cameron worked on the reliefs carved on the left wall of the terrace, with the assistance of another gas lantern, its yellowish light washing the ancient inscriptions. Petroff stood guard at the bottom of the steps, by the stone pillar on the left side of the large limestone edifice, his concerned expression matching Celina’s. Something was very wrong, but the terrorists kept it to themselves while ordering the scientists to continue their investigation.

  So far her search for a pattern in the number sequence had been in vain. She couldn’t make any sense of them, and the more she tried to reorder them before restarting the sequence-matching algorithm, the less they made any logical sense. She returned the screen to their original order, staring at them with diminishing confidence.

  “Find anything?” Cameron asked, kneeling next to her, his rugged features softened by the moonlight. He dimmed his lantern and set it next to hers.

  “Just more geometrical relationships,” she said, tapping the screen. “Each quadrant, as defined by the rows and columns of number twenty, is almost a mirror image of each other. Beyond that, my mathematical models detected a few sequences, but they don’t propagate beyond a few numbers before becoming erratic, random. Any luck on your end?” She saved her work and closed her laptop.

  “Lots of pictorials but very little meaning on the surface. There’s enough new data here to keep the likes of me occupied for the next decade.”

  Susan Garnett checked her watch. “I was afraid you would say something like that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we only have fourteen days to figure it all out.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  010010

  1

  December 17, 1999

  Standing at the edge of the cenote with Cameron by her side, Susan Garnett gazed up at the evening sky, star-filled, majestic. Moonlight diffused through the mist rising out of the water hole, gaining a sublime presence, a glowing life of its own. Grayish beams waltzed with the fog, gently swirling to the rhythm of a light breeze sweeping across the lowlands of the Petén, to the sounds of insects clicking, distant monkeys howling, birds chirping.

  Susan watched it with intrigue, but could not bring herself to enjoy it despite its mystic overtone because of the dark cloud veiling her life for the past day, since the Russian brutes had arrived. For a moment she had held some hope, when the team led by Strokk had taken longer than planned to return to the site. She had hoped for a miracle, for a supernatural force to come in and make the mercenaries vanish, leaving her biding her time, waiting for the right moment to use the Walther PPK still tucked in her shorts, by her spine. But the Russian terrorists had returned to the jungle, albeit short five men.

  She sighed, staring at the moonlit, swirling haze, alive with fluttering moths. Perhaps a small miracle did occur, for the Russian commander seemed angry, disturbed, concerned, shouting orders to his men, deploying them to the surrounding jungle, out of sight, leaving her and Cameron once again alone with Petroff and Celina.

  “It’s time,” Cameron said, pointing at his watch and then at their gear.

  She nodded. “Let’s do it.”

  2

  The night breeze sweeping through the thick jungle caressed Joao Peixoto’s face and neck with the same tempo as the moss swaying overhead. Joao, his skin glistening with sweat, moved across the terrain quietly but swiftly, his senses tuned to its sounds, easily imitating them. He walked in a deep crouch, moving through the dense bush with ease.

  Joao stopped, closing his eyes, moving his head in every direction, scanning the area, listening, moving forward again, slower now as he closed in on his target.

  He continued his stealthy advance for fifteen more minutes before stopping by a large, moss-draped ceiba, backlighted by the pulsating glow from a distant fire streaming through the jungle. If he listened very carefully, he could also hear voices no more than a thousand feet away. The ceiba’s opulent trunk fenced one edge of a small clearing, layered with animal bones, mostly mammals, but also a few reptiles—all unfortunate to have come within the killing zone of the cartiga ants, their large mound, resembling a mud obelisk, standing six feet tall next to the ceiba, almost hidden from view.

  Joao carefully stepped around the clearing, unwilling to trigger the mound’s alarm. Cartiga ants were as fast as they were voracious, capable of skinning a deer in minutes. He continued his advance, moving only when the breeze picked up and rustled the branches and enshrouding moss, stopping when it died down. His callused feet provided him with added friction, reducing the stress on his muscles as he worked his way around the edge of the clea
ring, spotting a man in dark olive fatigues hiding in the thick brush holding an automatic weapon.

  Joao unsheathed the knife belonging to one of the soldiers he had killed at the village, firmly curling the fingers of his right hand around its rubber handle. The stranger turned the weapon in his direction as Joao dropped to the ground behind a mahogany tree and let a curtain of moss shield him.

  The sentry, his face darkened by the night and also by camouflage cream, remained still in the tangled brush bordering the courtyard end of the sacred site, twenty feet away, looking almost directly at Joao, but keeping the weapon pointed to his right, toward the flickering specks of light filtering through the dense jungle.

  The armed stranger took one step toward the mahogany tree where Joao hid. The Maya slowly began to crawl around the trunk to remain out of sight, coming around the other side, taking advantage of the opportunity to catch his quarry sideways.

  He lunged from behind the shield of moss and tangled vines with the speed of a jungle cat, the blade pointed at the neck. The stranger reacted like a worthy warrior, pivoting on his left leg, avoiding Joao’s initial strike. The blade missed its intended target and the Mayan chief had to settle for a blow with his shoulder into the man’s stomach.

  Joao heard the quick expulsion of air as he landed on top of him. The man’s weapon flew off as both figures rolled over the leaves for a few moments before separating.

  The man reached for his side arm, but Joao didn’t give him the chance to use it, slashing his knife down and across the stranger’s neck, the blood rhythmically jetting from the deep cut spraying him.

  The sentry fell to his knees, collapsing face first, his life over.

  Joao leaned down to hide the corpse in the foliage behind the mahogany before resuming his hunt.

  3

  EM activity filled Susan Garnett’s system, the vertical bars of the digital meter dancing on her screen, jolting up and down the decibel scale according to the intensity of the activity in each 10-MHz-wide frequency channel, from 900 MHz to 1 GHz. Like yesterday, the electromagnetic activity began before the official start of the global event, which lasted fourteen seconds, as expected. Susan watched the single EM pulse across all frequencies at the end of the event, before all returned to normal.

  “That was it?” asked Celina, standing behind Susan and Cameron, a big gun in her left hand. Petroff stayed back, in the background, but very much alert, keeping an eye not just on the trio by the glowing computer hardware, but also on the deserted site.

  Susan nodded without turning around. “Good things come in small packages. Let’s see what was dumped tonight.”

  She went to the bottom.

  “What do you think?” she asked Cameron.

  The archaeologist shrugged, the glow from the color screen washing his sharp features, as well as the purple lump on the side of his face. “Looks about the same, and the date hasn’t changed.”

  “Let’s clean it up with the averaging program. Then I’ll perform a DIFF.” She typed a few commands and let the system take it away, returning seconds later with,

  She went to the bottom.

  “Doesn’t appear to be that much different from yesterday’s,” she mumbled.

  “It may be different enough to get a match,” offered Cameron.

  Susan tilted her head from side to side, not certain if she bought that. “Let’s see just how different it is.”

  She launched the DIFF program. The hard drive whirled for a minute as her C+ + script compared the two large files. The system displayed:

  DIFF

  VERSION 4.0.1.

  FILE

  BYTES

  1217

  42,342,021

  1218

  42,342,021

  DIFF_0

  9,230

  DIFF_1

  2,101

  TOT_DIFF

  11,331

  % DIFF

  0.0267%

  Susan frowned. “Less than point zero three percent. Not much of a difference.”

  “I see the difference, but how do you read the other lines?” asked Cameron.

  “The first file, from December seventeenth, GMT, is compared against the second file, from moments ago. Any zeroes in the first file that changed to ones in today’s file will be noted under the DIFF_0 category. Likewise, any ones in the first file that changed to zeroes, will be noted under the DIFF_1 file. The sum of the two represents all of the zeroes and ones that switched states between yesterday’s dump and tonight’s, likely as a result of the narrower search.”

  “So now we run the map comparison program, right?”

  “After I connect with Reid. No sense in us trying to run these comparisons when the FBI’s computers can do it so much quicker.” Susan turned around. “I’m going to dial into the FBI now,” she told Celina, who gave her a nod, her eyes barely acknowledging her request. Like Petroff, the slim terrorist seemed preoccupied with her surroundings. Obviously something terrible must have happened to the missing members of their team that now the surviving terrorists seemed on edge.

  Susan remote-logged into the FBI system and started an Internet chat with her boss.

  REIDT@FBI.GOV:

  HOW DID IT GO?

  SG@RLOGIN.NET:

  I’M ABOUT TO E-MAIL YOU THE NEW FILE. ANY LUCK TRYING TO GET A MATCH WITH LAST NIGHT’S MAP AGAINST THE ENTIRE WORLD?

  REIDT@FBI.GOV:

  NOPE. SAME STORY AS WITH THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. HOPEFULLY WE’LL GET LUCKY TONIGHT.

  SG@RLOGIN.NET:

  YOU’LL HAVE TONIGHT’S IN A FEW MINUTES. SUGGEST YOU START UP AT SIXTY PERCENT AND SEE WHERE THINGS LEAD FROM THERE. WHAT ABOUT TONIGHT’S VIRUS?

  REIDT@FBI.GOV:

  FIGURED YOU’D ASK. CHECK YOUR E-MAIL. I’VE HAD ONE OF YOUR SUBORDINATES DO ALL OF THE LEGWORK READING THE CONTENTS OF THE COCOONS. HE’S E-MAILING YOU THE RESULTS TO KEEP YOU FROM SPENDING TIME ON THAT. I’VE GLANCED AT IT. NOTHING EXCITING. JUST MORE OF THE SAME. HOW’S THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ANGLE COMING ALONG?

  SG@RLOGIN.NET:

  MAKING PROGRESS, BUT NO BREAKTHROUGHS YET.

  REIDT@FBI.GOV:

  KEEP ME POSTED. BTW, IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE SEALS’ LINK TO THE PENTAGON? THE BRASS HASN’T RECEIVED THE TEAM’S REGULAR UPDATE IN THE PAST TWELVE HOURS.

  “Watch how you answer that,” warned Celina from behind.

  Susan sighed. Preoccupied or not, the female terrorist was paying close attention.

  SG@RLOGIN.NET:

  WILL CHECK. SAW THEM EARLIER WORKING ON THEIR SCRAMBLER BUT DIDN’T HAVE TIME TO ASK QUESTIONS. THE PROBLEM HAS TO BE WITH SOMETHING SPECIFIC TO THEIR SETUP BECAUSE WE’RE USING THE SAME EQUIPMENT FOR THE UPLINK AND OUR COMMUNICATIONS IS WORKING FINE. I’LL CHECK WITH THEM RIGHT AFTER THIS. IF THEIR SCRAMBLER’S DOWN I’LL OFFER THEM OURS IN THE INTERIM.

  REIDT@FBI.GOV:

  GREAT. WILL PASS THAT ALONG TO THE PENTAGON. ANY PROBLEMS WITH THE SEALS? NAVY BOYS BEHAVING?

  SG@RLOGIN.NET:

  NO PROBLEMS. BTW, LIEUTENANT LOBO’S STANDING RIGHT HERE. WANT TO ASK HIM SOMETHING?

  REIDT@FBI.GOV:

  AH … NO, BUT IF THEIR GEAR IS NOT UP IN ANOTHER FEW HOURS, A COUPLE OF COLONELS WILL COME HERE TO TALK LIVE TO THEIR TROOPS DOWN THERE SINCE OUR CONNECTION APPEARS TO BE MORE STABLE.

  SG@RLOGIN.NET:

  WILL PASS THAT ALONG. ANYTHING ELSE?

  REIDT@FBI.GOV:

  NO. WILL E-MAIL THE RESULTS OF THE SURFACE MAP COMPARISON IN TEN TO FIFTEEN MINUTES, DEPENDING ON HOW LONG IT TAKES TONIGHT.

  Susan suspended the Internet chat but kept the connection open to share files. She reviewed the contents of tonight’s captured virus, verifying that the mutation sequence looked just as it had in previous days and also that there was a 260-byte section of undecipherable code that was different from any other captured virus. She added this code to a file that contained the 260-byte sections from the other files, displaying them on the screen back to back.

  “And it’s always in the sa
me location,” she said, pulling it up on the screen. “Starting at byte number 367 to byte number 627 of the virus. Here’s the string from the first day that we captured the virus, which corresponds to the second daily event. There are eight bits in a byte, or 2,080 bits in 260 bytes. That’s what follows, arranged in rows of 71 bytes each, except for the last row.”

  “Looks pretty random,” commented Cameron.

  Susan nodded, staring at the undecipherable string of characters that resembled neither assembly language instructions nor a binary map, like the one Reid was currently trying to match to a topography anywhere on the planet. “Not sure what to make of it.”

  “It’ll come to us,” he replied. “I’m sure it’ll come to us. We’ve just got to keep chipping away at it.”

  4

  Joao spotted another figure in fatigues clutching an automatic weapon, near the tree line, one leg resting on a fallen log, the other immersed in a sea of ferns bordering the petrified wood.

  The Mayan chief wasted little time. The moment he’d killed the first sentry he had committed himself, realizing that the soldier would be missed in the next radio check. He had to hurry and take out as many men as possible while he still had the element of surprise on his side.

  He reached for his knife, grabbing the steel end between his index and thumb, throwing it at the soldier with expert ease. The black shape dashed across the fifteen feet separating them, striking a direct hit in the side of the neck.