Читать книгу Death Cry - James Axler - Страница 12

The breakthrough finally came two days later, when geologist Mariah Falk recognized a sequence of digits tucked away in the streams of coded information as an old-fashioned grid reference. As soon as she pointed it out, Lakesh slapped his forehead for being so stupid as to not notice it before.

“But where is this coordinate referencing?” he asked her as they sat together in the cafeteria that sometimes doubled as a meeting hall for the Cerberus personnel.

Brigid sat with them, prodding a fork through a yellow swirl of scrambled eggs on her plate. “Let me see,” she suggested, looking at the deciphered location code on Lakesh’s printout.

Mariah, a large woman who, while not especially attractive, had an ingratiating smile and an amazingly resilient personality, closed her eyes tightly as she tried to work out the reference numbers. Her arms moved before her, gesturing up and to her right for a few moments before she opened her eyes and spoke. “Northwest Russia somewhere, I think. I’d need to see a map to get you any closer than that, though,” she admitted.

“Great,” Brigid muttered disconsolately, “more snow.”

Lakesh was already standing, and he took in a hearty breath as he looked at his companions. “If Mariah is right, we can use this system to decrypt the contents of the computer and find out what it is we’ve been looking at for the past five days.”

It took another half day to write the decryption software and run the program through the files they had found, and even then parts of it appeared to be horribly vague or incomplete. But it turned out that Mariah’s observation was a Rosetta stone, giving them the key. After a few tweaks, a refined version of the decryption was applied and a wealth of military reports opened up to Lakesh and his team.

A lot of the files were nothing more than personnel records and requisition forms, but several items held interest. Brigid took it upon herself to investigate one sequence further, putting in long hours to piece together all of its scattered parts.

Lakesh called Kane, Grant and Brigid together for an informal meeting in the empty cafeteria the next evening, and he sat beside Brigid, facing the two ex-Mags. Brigid had worked throughout the past thirty hours, transcribing important details from the files and piecing the information together with her own formidable knowledge. What she had come up with had been quite astonishing, Lakesh agreed, assuming that it was accurate.

“The main files on the recovered computer dealt with information from one of the U.S. spy networks,” Lakesh explained as Grant poured everyone water from a large jug in the center of the table. “From what we can divine, this network was a crucial player in the days leading up to the Cold War, when the U.S. was focused on the growing threat of Russian military might. They kept files on a variety of military projects that were being researched behind the iron curtain, some of more questionable value than others.”

“Watching folks through gaps in the drapes.” Kane smiled. “Nice work if you can get it.”

“Now, the vast majority of this information is bitty and of very limited use over two hundred years after it was amassed,” Lakesh continued, “but we’ve found one item of exceptional interest. Brigid has been concentrating on going through and deciphering all of its related notes.”

Lakesh turned to Brigid and she picked up the explanation after stifling a tired yawn. “According to the U.S. report, it seems that the Russians had developed a project dubbed Chernobog. Chernobog is the name of a Slavic god known as ‘the bringer of calamities.’”

“Sounds like a honey,” Grant chirped.

“Now, the mythology behind the name isn’t important,” Brigid continued, “but the threat that it implies may very well be. From what the intelligence network could piece together, Project Chernobog was set up as a subsection of the Cheka Agency. The Cheka was the government division that ultimately became the KGB, a lethal secret police force at the beck and call of, at the point of its inception, Lenin. In 1920, with the First World War just behind them and growing alarm at the potentially disruptive influence of outside forces on their then nascent communism, the Russian Communist Party set things in motion to create a weapon so powerful that it could eradicate all forms of life from a specified area.” She drew a long breath before continuing. “Furthermore, this weapon was apparently proposed as a fail-safe not for the ‘evil’ outside forces of America and Western Europe, but for something conceived as a far more insidious and dangerous threat—the Archons.” She stopped, her emerald eyes skewering each of the three people sitting at the table. “Aliens,” she said finally.

“Kind of stands to reason,” Kane admitted after a moment’s thought. “Our boys are spying on them and they’re spying on us. They see the U.S. government getting pally with the Roswell day-trippers and they start to think, ‘Hey, maybe we need one of those ultimate-weapon-type things just in case.’”

“The Roswell visitation was in 1947,” Brigid told Kane, “over twenty years after Project Chernobog was initiated.”

“Well,” Kane responded, “the point is there has been a lot of alien activity over the years, and we’ve seen more than our share of evidence the visitors had their fingers in the U.S. government pie for a long time. If I was building up a society that stood opposed to that government, I’d make damn sure I could take out their benevolent, technologically advanced friends.”

Brigid nodded, conceding his point. “Now, and I must emphasize this, what we’re looking at here are spy reports. Which is to say, the veracity of this information is suspect, and it is almost certain that all of the facts are not present. Furthermore, given the general climate of the espionage divisions on both sides, it’s a given that any report will put the worst possible spin on a situation concerning the enemy.”

Grant poured himself another glass of water and gestured the jug around to see if anyone else wanted more. “So lay it on the line for us, Brigid,” he said. “What are we actually looking at?”

“At face value?” she asked, and Grant and Kane encouraged her to continue. “There’s a redoubt tucked away in Georgia, Russia, that’s the storage facility for a weapon so powerful that it could destroy the Annunaki once and for all.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from all parties around the table at that point, and everyone looked relieved, then increasingly uncomfortable.

“So,” Kane suggested, drawing a route with his finger over the shiny plastic table, “let’s say we mosey on over to Georgia and pick up this Chernobog device—”

Brigid stopped him. “The division is called Chernobog, a kind of statement of intent when they set it up, I guess. The weapon…Well, the best translation I can come up with is ‘the Call of Death. Death Cry.’”

Kane nodded. “So, we get ourselves this Death Cry and then what? The Annunaki have been a thorn in our sides for a long time, using it against them would send a message and potentially…potentially what?” he asked.

“Kill every last one of them,” Lakesh said solemnly.

“Assuming the information is correct and that the weapon was ever actually constructed,” Brigid added. “This is information from the people watchers, remember?”

Kane looked at Grant and, after a moment, both men smiled gravely.

“This is too good an opportunity to pass up,” Kane stated firmly.

“Seconded,” Grant added.

Lakesh and Brigid were nodding, too. “That’s what we thought when we first deciphered the report,” Lakesh admitted. “But there is another question.”

“Yeah,” Kane said, “and we all know what it is. Even if we obtain this Death Cry, do we dare pull the trigger?”

Grant rubbed his jowls thoughtfully, brushing down the edges of his mustache. “The Annunaki have pushed humanity around for at least five millennia,” he told everyone. “If there’s the slightest chance of getting rid of their lizard faces once and for all, we have to take it.”

“Yeah,” Kane agreed, “that’s pretty much the way I see it, too.”

Brigid looked at the notepad that rested before her, its pages full of notations in her tidy, precise hand, before looking back at Kane and Grant. “If only we’d had this thing when they first revealed themselves,” she said quietly.

Kane reached across the table and placed his hand over hers, looking her in the eye. “Yeah,” he said quietly, the single word holding the weight of meaning that all four adventurers felt at that moment, survivors in a seemingly unending battle against an almighty evil.

Grant clapped his hands loudly, breaking the somber mood with his wide smile. “Well, kids,” he announced, “looks like we’re going to Georgia for the holidays!”

T HE FIRST RAYS of sunlight streamed over the horizon, turning the bronze-hued metal hulls of the twin Manta aircraft into twinkling, golden stars as they cut through the skies over the Pacific.

Kane and Grant took piloting duties in their respective vehicles, and once again Brigid took the passenger seat behind Kane. He sat before her, wearing a helmet that enclosed his whole head, forged from the same strange, bronze-hued metal as the Mantas themselves. Within the helmet, a heads-up display fed Kane vast streams of detailed information concerning wind speed, air pressure and a dozen other factors that might affect the pilot’s decisions. But for the purposes of this trip, dusting the clouds as they flew west, the Mantas would pretty much fly themselves. Which suited Kane and Grant just fine, well acquainted as they were with the concept of point and shoot from their previous lives as Magistrates.

The Cerberus field teams had been to Russia before, had encountered their local equivalent known as District Twelve. But for the purposes of this mission, Lakesh had agreed that keeping a low profile was for the best. If this Death Cry superweapon turned out to be a dud, bogus surveillance information or a theoretical project that never got off the drawing board, Kane’s team could potentially look very foolish to their Russian contemporaries. And, by contrast, if this Death Cry really did exist, there was no question that District Twelve would stake a claim on it, despite the actual discovery work being the province of the Cerberus people.

“We’ll take the Mantas in low,” Kane had proposed before they set off, “fly in via China and sweep up toward the location so we don’t spend too much time in Russian airspace. Chances are good they won’t spot us, and they’d expect us to come at them via the Atlantic route anyhow.”

Now, having passed his eyes across the various readouts to make sure that things remained steady, Kane tilted his head back and spoke with Brigid. “Any idea what this place is like?” he asked.

Brigid had been checking through the notes she had made the day before, refamiliarizing herself with everything she had uncovered. She glanced up at Kane, at the strange bronze helmet propped atop his neck, and watched as rain-heavy black clouds zipped past through the exterior view port. “The coordinates place the redoubt in the Caucasus Mountains, about seventy clicks from the Black Sea,” she replied. “A temperate area, the closest big settlement on the old maps would be Pyatigorsk, but satellite pictures show that’s long since gone.”

“Huh,” Kane grunted. “Probably bombed back to the Stone Age like most everything else during the nukecaust.”

“The state of Georgia was about as far west as you could go in the old Soviet Union,” Brigid continued. “It was actually one of the last states to be incorporated into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, remaining a semi-independent satellite district for the first twenty years of rule by the Communist Party.”

“That’s pretty strange,” Kane said thoughtfully. “Constructing a doomsday device outside your borders.”

Brigid shook her head, even though she knew that Kane couldn’t turn to see her while he wore the bulky helmet. “Not that unusual really,” she explained. “There are political benefits to keeping the really nasty stuff out of your own country, especially in a climate of worldwide hostility. The U.S.A. and other countries used similar tactics, storing nuclear missiles and the like in territories that were sympathetic to their political ideology rather than inside their own borders. Makes it less easy to get caught, and if you do, your government can simply deny all knowledge.”

“Ah,” Kane responded. “You’re talking that diplomacy speak again, Baptiste.”

Kane scanned the heads-up displays for half a minute before continuing. “It’s funny,” he told his flight companion, “I never gave much thought to the location of the Cerberus redoubt up to now. It’s kind of interesting that the military brass stuck the crucial development arm of their mat-trans system close to the border between the U.S. and Canada. Guess they didn’t want it too close to Washington, just in case something went askew.”

“Yup,” Brigid agreed, “there was certainly a time when the mat-trans was new—and potentially unstable—technology. Lakesh could tell you more about how things were in those days.”

“I’m sure he could.” Kane nodded. “So right now we’ve left one out-of-the-way mountain installation to go visit another.”

“That’s about the size of it,” she confirmed. “You were hoping for something else?”

Kane sighed. “Just once,” he told her, “I’d like to get a nice mission in the sun somewhere. You know, grab a few rays, maybe a spot of surfing, some fishing, build a sand castle.”

“The last time we tried that, I wound up a hostage for pirates in the Florida Keys,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, but at least you got to work on your tan,” Kane grumbled.

At that moment, the Commtact units that were attached behind the ears of Kane and Brigid clicked and Grant’s voice could be distinctly heard by both as though he were there in the cockpit with them. The Commtacts were top-of-the-line communication devices that had been found in Redoubt Yankee years before. They featured sensor circuitry incorporating an analog-to-digital voice encoder that was subcutaneously embedded in the mastoid bone. Once the pintels made contact, transmissions were picked up by the auditory canals, and dermal sensors transmitted the electronic signals directly through the skull. Theoretically, a deaf wearer would still be able to hear normally, in a fashion, using the Commtact.

“Just coming up on the East China Sea now,” Grant said. “We’re at about the halfway point.”

“Let’s just fly steady,” Kane responded, “keep it nice and smooth.”

“That’s a roger,” Grant acknowledged before signing out.

The Mantas dipped below the clouds for a moment, and Brigid took in a sharp intake of breath as she saw the huge landmass that encompassed Asia and Europe stretching out before them. They were on their way.