“Recognition,” Garth corrected. “FUBAR is fucked up beyond all recognition. That’s exactly what this is.”
“Right.” Sam shook himself all over like a wet dog. “Ignore me, dude. I’m coping.”
Garth chucked him on the shoulder. “Me too.”
They shared a brief smile, then he glanced at the people coming out of the shortened train. Between the two and a half cars, there were maybe twenty riders.
“Exit time?” Garth asked.
“Exit time,” Sam agreed.
“Things will seem better once we get up to street level.”
Sam gave him a thumbs up. “I’m sure it will.”
Garth had to believe.
“This way to the top!” Garth yelled to the small crew, waving his arm for them to follow. For once, he was prepared to use his New York City transit knowledge for a good cause.
NORAD, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado
“General. We’ve got some intel you have to see.” Lieutenant Chris Darren placed a large blueprint on the general’s desk.
“It better be good, Chris,” he said in his gruff voice.
“It is, sir.” Lt. Darren used his arm to smooth the sheet, then he pointed to all the dots. “We’ve found some discrepancies in these.”
The general studied the large paper. It carried the markings of the 50th Space Wing USAF. “You’ve found problems with our GPS satellites?”
“No, sir. Well, not really. A minor problem, perhaps.”
“You don’t sound very sure of yourself. You want to re-think this meeting?” He didn’t have time for guessing.
“No, sir, there is a problem,” he said with more confidence. “Maybe one that doesn’t matter, but I don’t want to ignore this.”
The general sighed. “Let’s have it then, and soon.”
“Right.” Lt. Darren pointed to the blue line drawing. Numerous black dots blanketed an outline of the Earth. “These represent the global positioning satellites visible to the northern hemisphere. For the sake of this discussion, I’d like to focus on these, but the problem does affect all of them.”
“Did we lose some of them?”
“No, sir. But they did lose something important. As you know, the world network of satellites relies on accurate timekeeping so the trilateration between any four stations in the sky will assign a location to a point on the surface. That is what gives the user accuracy to within thirty centimeters.”
“Go on.”
“Well, you told me to check satellites for any anomalous behavior in the last twelve hours. I sent the request to the 50th, and they shot this back almost right away. This data shows each of the satellites is slightly out of sync with the calibration equipment.”
“Out of sync? By how much? Which ones?”
“That’s the funny part, sir. Every single one shows the exact same error. I’ve checked this five times from five different ground stations. The satellites are all wrong.”
“It’s got to be a calibration error, right? The ground stations sent bad data.”
“I asked the same question because it seems logical, but the commander over at Schriever assures me this error was not caused by the Earth-bound stations. They checked all six nodes in the ground tracking system. They confirm the entire constellation of thirty-one active satellites got recalibrated in space.”
“Well? What happened? Did the blue wave knock them into next week?” The general laughed a little at his own joke because he didn’t want to believe anything could mess up all the satellites. Rare solar events might affect the internals of a satellite here or there, but those were always localized. Not universal. If the satellites were tweaked just a little, it could be a probe by an enemy power to see US response time. Maybe it was a prelude to war.
“No. They aren’t knocked out, thank god, or we’d have a real traffic crisis down here on the ground.” Chris’s laugh was hollow. “But every satellite in the GPS grid, without exception, has lost point-six-six-six seconds.”
General Smith sat down in his leather office chair. “Six-six-six?”
Lieutenant Darren’s face turned pale.
The general steepled his fingers in front of his face. “You a religious man?” he asked, taking a stab of logic.
A nod.
Obadias turned serious. “This isn’t the devil’s work, son. This is the first piece of evidence that shows the burst of energy did something. I want every byte of telemetric data for each of the satellites in the constellation. I want...”
He rattled off a laundry list of requests he had for the boys and girls at the 50th Space Wing.
And he did everything possible to avoid thinking of the evil number.
Thirteen
Search for Nuclear, Astrophysics, and Kronometric Extremes (SNAKE). Red Mesa, Colorado
“I can leave you alone if you’d like,” Bob said as he approached at the window overlooking the experimental equipment.
Yes, I’d like that.
“No, it’s still a free country.” She couldn’t tell her chief computer mathematician to pound sand, even if he was Dr. Bob Stafford, chief asshole in residence.
Bob was a head taller than her and built like a professional football player. His trim beard had a touch of gray to give him the distinguished look of a scientist. It was the contrast of brainy and brawny that first attracted her to him those many years ago, but like those bosons and neutrinos written into the table, even the stars couldn’t hold them together forever. Now she saw him as nothing more than an ape in a lab-coat.
The ape started his statement with a sigh. “I won’t undermine you like that again. Happy?”
She pursed her lips while studying his face to see which way she wanted their chat to go. His wire-frame glasses seemingly added ten points to his IQ, which was already considerable. He always made sure people knew it, too. For many years, she had been drawn to his incredible intellect, and they had risen through the University of Colorado science department as an unstoppable team, but their relationship imploded soon after the SNAKE lab came online. She always assumed it was because he wanted the head job, instead of her, but they never talked about it. It was easier to let the implosion happen.
“I can fire you, you know,” she deadpanned.
“Nah, you need me. This shutdown problem is too complicated for you to handle on your own.”
Though technically true, she wasn’t going to admit any such thing.
“Well? What is it? What caused the shutdown? I’m waiting.”
She stared out the glass again. The experimental underground chamber was the size of a large aircraft hangar with people walking along railings eight floors up. It was built around a piece of equipment fifty feet-tall and a hundred long that looked like the world’s largest automotive transmission, or a horn of plenty. It was mated with a similar-sized cylinder in the leftmost part of the room. When the two pieces mashed together...
It’s like watching the universe make love.
The small trace of romance near Bob brought her out of her reverie. “Well? Nothing? What are you good for?”
He snickered. “I kept the reporter off your back. He was snooping around the conference room while you and pops were in there. I told him you would explain the shutdown as soon as you could.”
Faith gritted her teeth. As part of the Colorado education system, the administrators above her didn’t want the place locked down with high security. Anyone could get in by showing a driver’s license at the front desk. “Why would you tell him that? I’m not going to talk to a reporter. I have no idea what shut us down.”
He shrugged. Somehow, it had a belligerence to it. “As I said, I’m working on the answer for you. But if you want to take everything personally, I can bonk off for the afternoon and take a pleasant drive up Mt. Evans.”
Her blood was already boiling. She pursed her lips and squinted her eyes because every word out of his mouth clawed at a chalkboard just behind her eyes. It was made worse because he knew she could
n’t refuse his help.
She forced herself to speak with her normal, calm authority. “Correction: I’m not going to talk to anyone until I know the answer to every question they’re going to ask. That’s good public relations, right? And you apparently are hot to prove my incompetence by coming up with the answers I seek. Go find them already.”
“And then you’ll talk to the press?”
“When I’m good and ready,” she snapped.
Inside, she was already planning to avoid the reporter for as long as she could. Bob was a genius, but his motives were often broadcast with the clumsiness of a child. It came from his self-assurance and absolute belief that the rest of humanity were a bunch of idiots. For a while, she found his braggadocio charming. Now, it repulsed her.
“Fair enough.” He stretched his arms above his head like he’d just gotten out of bed. It was another annoyingly childish trait that signaled he was about to ask something entirely different. “So. Have you given any thought to finishing the experiment, if it’s possible? If we plug this bad boy back in now, we can be up and running in three hours.”
She tapped on the window with her knuckles. “CERN is offline. There is talk of a meteor somewhere out there. Maybe UFOs are flying around.” She didn’t believe that last part for a second, but there was no need to be rational with an ape. “There is no way we can fire up the engine while we still have no clue why it was shut down.”
“True,” he agreed a little too fast. “It’s good to know the answer. I hate to lose research time is all. Hell, maybe we caused all the world’s problems. That would be the ultimate roundhouse kick to SNAKE’s beanbags.”
“That’s bullshit!”
Her chest heaved up and down, and her hands were balls of pent-up anxiety. She glared at Bob because she’d let her anger get too close to the surface, and she knew it. His very presence made her think and say stupid things.
“Sorry,” she said in her business voice. “But it is absolutely crazy and those words cannot escape anyone’s lips here, not even in jest.”
“Of course. I’m just saying it might be better to get in front of the worst possible outcome. Tell the reporter you’re working on proving we didn’t cause that blue light, or whatever it was. When the real source is discovered somewhere else, your shutdown will seem irrelevant by comparison.” Bob’s voice was cool and oily, like he’d planned to say those exact words.
He wants to blame me for the blue light. Fucking great!
She spoke in a mechanical tone. “I’ll think about it.”
The fuck I will, she thought.
“That’s all I can ask.” He was as agreeable as the devil after discussing a fire-singed contract.
Bob departed the observation deck. She caught a whiff of his cologne and cursed herself for drawing in even a molecule of it. In a moment of weakness, she remembered a time when she pined for his scent, but the memory soured when she thought of him as he was today. He woke up and made a choice to wear that same cologne just to piss her off. It was as transparent as everything else he did.
She stalked off in the opposite direction, determined to solve the mystery of what shut them down. She preferred to find the answers without his help.
I-5 South of Sacramento, CA
Buck found his groove as he sped south on the I-5 freeway. He flashed his lights continuously and became the town crier on the CB. Whenever he made contact with a northbound trucker, he told them about the storm ahead and convinced them to turn around. Those drivers, in turn, began sending out warnings on channels other than 19.
It was easy to coordinate while driving the arrow-straight segments of flat interstate between Sacramento and Stockton. He was high on adrenaline when he noticed the wig-wags and flashing red and blues in his side mirror.
“Fuck, no. He must be crazy. Mac, we’ve got a bear nosing our back door.” He enjoyed sharing trucker slang with his small friend.
There was no doubt he was speeding. His foot was a brick on the accelerator for every bit of the miles he’d already traveled away from the storm. The dial said he was doing 85 miles per hour, which was about as fast as he felt safe with such a heavy load. A fully-laden train might have better stopping distance than him.
He didn’t let off the gas.
“Go around me!” He rolled down the window and waved the cop by. It was a long shot, but it could save both their lives, so he was willing to attempt the act.
The black and white Crown Vic sped up in the hammer lane, but matched his pace instead of moving ahead.
The officer leaned forward over his steering wheel so Buck could see him from up above. The gesture was unmistakable: pull over.
The dark storm was still back there, but he’d gained a lot of distance on it, so it wasn’t instant death to stop, as long as it was brief. There was a math problem if he wanted to solve it: after going almost ninety miles an hour for fifteen minutes, how much time does Bubba have before a storm moving fifty miles an hour catches him?
I can explain to the officer what’s behind us.
He let off the gas.
The second he had the Peterbilt off to the side of the road, he opened the door and jumped down.
Buck halted reflexively as a black panel van rode the white stripe along the shoulder and whizzed by within inches of his face.
“Holy shit!”
Without thinking, he hopped back onto his sidestep and hung to a handle as he re-evaluated another of today’s dubious life choices. He patted over his heart and felt something hard in the pocket of his shirt.
Picking up that quarter started my bad luck.
Everyone he’d been advising to turn around was now burning rubber to head south, but no one slowed down or switched lanes out of courtesy when they passed his rig. Car after car roared by as if he wasn’t there. It didn’t seem that fast when he was in the flow of traffic, but now it seemed like a NASCAR race.
And I’m the one who got busted. More bad luck.
He waited for a break in traffic and then ran to the front of his black rig.
“Damn, girl. What have you been eating?” The once-shiny front grille was now caked over with dust, small branches, and drink lids. The stiff winds and fast escape hadn’t allowed any of the junk to fall off.
He picked out a few of the larger pieces and was about to walk around the far side of the truck when an officer appeared by the front right tire, gun drawn.
“Hold it! Show me your hands!”
Buck dropped the last of the debris and held both palms up. “I’m unarmed.”
“Why’d you get out of your vehicle?” The guy looked at the ground near the front bumper. “Were you dumping drugs?”
Buck’s mind moved faster than the traffic on the highway. The storm. The wind. The lightning. It was all jumbled and messy in his field of vision at that instant. But there was nothing larger in his consciousness than the Smith and Wesson aimed at his chest.
“P-please, Officer,” he stammered. “There’s been a misunderstanding. I was coming around to see you, but I almost got cut in half when I jumped down to the slab.”
The young male officer looked at him from under his tan wide-brimmed hat. “You’re supposed to stay in your cab. It’s the law.”
Did the officer not know about the insane weather?
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m driving scared shitless after almost dying in the storm.”
The other man seemed to think about it, then he relaxed his stance and lowered his sidearm. “I saw it driving up here. I turned around when I saw you flashing your headlights, distracting other drivers. That’s also a regulation.”
Buck’s eyes wanted to pop out of his head. The greater Sacramento area was turning into a shit sandwich and this guy wanted to talk about what condiments to add?
“Officer, I assure you, my intentions were noble. I’m also on channel 19 turning other truckers away. You can’t let people in cars go north into the storm. It isn’t…”
He didn’t know what word
to use. The guy didn’t seem like a free thinker so it would do no good to try to scare him into action.
“It isn’t a safe storm to drive through. There are high winds, literally zero visibility, and more lightning than I’ve ever seen in my life. Lots of wrecks. If you call up there, I’m sure someone will confirm. I’m trying to save some lives.”
Including my own.
The trooper took a few steps back, then holstered his semi-automatic.
“I’ll have to call it in. I’ll be right back with your citations.”
Buck absently nodded but looked beyond the young man. Suddenly, fifteen minutes at ninety miles an hour didn’t seem like near enough distance from the hellish storm. His respect for the law would only go so far when his life was on the line, but he was willing to spare two minutes…
A breeze swirled into a miniature dust devil at the side of the road.
He was willing to spare one minute…
Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station, Pennsylvania
Carl stepped away from Pete’s body. The blackened indicator on the radiation badge proved the other man had been doused with radiation. He mentioned a blue light…
He considered using the phone to call back over to the control room, but he didn’t want to touch it. Even though his badge beeped a couple of times, it was currently silent. If he stayed where he was, maybe the radiation wouldn’t get him.
That’s not how it works.
A few more seconds went by while he deliberated. The containment room was behind the heavy door inset in the nearby wall. If he opened it and looked inside, it was possible he’d finally figure out what Pete discovered. On the other hand, opening the door might be the last thing he ever did. Like the other man.
He forced his legs to go backward.
“I’ll figure this out, Pete. I promise.”
When he was near the front door, he spun and sprinted through. The specter of radiation tagged along, and he imagined getting saturated with 20,000 roentgens per second like the boys at Chernobyl. Five hundred per hour was considered lethal, and Pete died in minutes.
End Days Series Box Set [Books 1-4] Page 11