Black Sun: A Thriller (31 page)

As it passed in front of them, Yuri tried to pull free from Danielle; he wanted to touch it. She held him back, but the bearded man had seen his reaction.

“Is this your child?” he asked.

“He’s adopted,” she said. “And he has special needs, so if you don’t mind …”

The bearded man handed the stone back to the underling who’d found it. Yuri tracked it as it went, relaxing only when it had been placed in the sand-filled, lead-lined container.

“So many lies,” their captor said. “I think you might need to see a priest.”

He turned and began marching back toward the forest.

“Bring them,” he said.

L
ed by the armed group and their bearded leader, Hawker, Danielle, McCarter, and Yuri hiked through the tropical foliage. The trees and ferns and brush had a junglelike feel to it, but more sparse and reduced in scale because of the altitude. As they neared the end of the two-mile hike the terrain became flatter and the foliage was replaced by tilled land, fields, and pastures.

Beyond the fields lay a small town made up of whitewashed stucco buildings. Children played in the unpaved streets while livestock, mostly chickens and goats, moved about in various gated yards.

It was not what Danielle had expected. Certainly it didn’t look like a hideout of some criminal gang. But they remained under armed guard, and as their captors walked them blatantly down the main street, activity in the town around them came to an abrupt halt. Onlookers gawked in their direction.

The man with the beard walked ahead of them and waved to a handsome woman of about thirty, dressed in plain, simple clothes. She came to greet him and, after a brief conversation, looked at Danielle and then Yuri, who walked beside her.

Danielle guessed what was about to occur and held Yuri’s hand tightly.

“Do not worry,” the bearded man said. “Maria will take care of him while we talk.”

The woman led Yuri to a small adobe house.

Danielle turned her gaze forward, ready to argue with the man, but he had stepped through a gate in front of a mission-style church. Writing beside the doorway dedicated the church to San Ignacio, the founder of the Jesuit order and the patron saint of Catholic soldiers.

They were forced inside and the doors closed behind them. Once the bearded man had genuflected and crossed himself with holy water, he pulled off his poncho, hung it on a peg, and turned to face them.

He wore a black cassock and the white collar of a Catholic priest. “Welcome to San Ignacio,” he said. “I’m Father Domingo.”

“You’re a priest,” Danielle said.

“Sí,”
he said. “I’m sensing you feel differently about the lies you told now.”

He seemed amused with himself, but Danielle didn’t share the feeling. “Has the church taken on a new role that I’m unaware of? Beginning with kidnapping people at gunpoint?”

Beside her McCarter stumbled. Hawker moved to support him and then led him to a bench that sat against the church wall. Father Domingo watched Hawker sharply.

“Don’t worry,” Hawker said. “I’ve got enough going against me already.”

Father Domingo turned back to Danielle. “My actions are necessary to protect the citizens of this town.”

Danielle could feel her anger beginning to burn. Of all people to deny them help, a member of the clergy seemed to be the least appropriate. “I asked you to help us. Did that seem like a threat to you?”

“We did not exactly act the Good Samaritan,” he said. “But there are reasons for this.”

“And what might those be?”

“Drug smugglers.”

“Which we are not,” she explained.

“Yes,” he said. “It seems to be the case, but we needed to be sure. Several years ago, some men came here with money, trying to buy our silence, while they cut down trees for a dirt runway and took over good lands to grow their drugs.

“As soon as they were entrenched, the kind talk and the money ceased and they became tyrants. But the spirit of the people here is strong. We decided to run them off but it was not easy. Threats were made; some people were harmed,” he said, catching the look in her eye. “Blood was spilled on both sides. We vowed to never let them come back; it is always easier to keep the predator out than to deal with it once you’ve let it through the gate.”

He nodded toward a window, through which blue sky could be seen. “Your plane circling for an hour in the middle of the night and then landing on the lake was very suspicious to us. We had to be sure. Even Saint Ignacio was a soldier before he became a priest. Sometimes that is what we must be as well.”

Danielle relented. Now she felt the fool for judging too quickly. With a history like that, she could guess how their actions might have appeared.

“I understand what you’re saying,” she said.

“And knowing how things looked from your side,” he replied, “I can understand why you lied. But that doesn’t tell me what you’re really doing here. Would you like to explain?”

Danielle uncrossed her arms and sat down. “You probably wouldn’t believe it.”

“Try me,” he said. “Belief is my business.”

“We’re looking for an ancient Mayan ruin called the Temple of the Jaguar. We believe it might be located nearby. And our suspicious”—she glanced at Hawker—“and somewhat foolhardy flight out here was part of that search process.”

“Why didn’t you go back?”

“By the time we’d figured out where we needed to be,” she said, “we were too low on fuel to get back, so we landed on the biggest lake we could find.”

“I see,” Father Domingo said. “And why would you feel it necessary to keep such a thing secret?”

She hesitated, not wanting to lie to the priest again, but not wanting to tell him, either.

It was Father Domingo who spoke first. “Perhaps,” he said, “because you’ve brought something with you that you don’t understand, and you fear both using it and failing to use it. But your greatest fear is what other forces might do if they found it first.”

T
he Situation Room of the White House was more crowded than the president had ever seen. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the CIA, the secretaries of state and defense and their aides had filled the sitting areas. Other cabinet members stood in the space around the main table.

The world situation had deteriorated harshly in the past twenty-four hours. In response to the downing of their fighter plane, the Chinese had captured a pair of Russian spy boats in disputed waters and now troops were building up on the border between the two countries.

Because an American vessel had been approached in the same area but had managed to leave the vicinity and escape capture, the Russians were claiming U.S. duplicity. They were lashing out at both nations through every available channel.

The Chinese, on the other hand, wanted to know why U.S. and Russian spy boats were in its waters and operating together, as a second round of finger-pointing and paranoia got into full swing.

The president sat in his chair quietly. He glanced
through a situation report while the head of the Joint Chiefs explained the particulars using a flat screen monitor.

“… and in addition to that the Chinese have deployed forty divisions on the Russian border; strategic aircraft have been dispersed or launched and parked in racetrack patterns a hundred miles from the borders.”

He clicked the screen and a new satellite photo appeared: a Russian ICBM silo. What looked like steam could be seen escaping from hoses attached to a large, odd-looking tanker truck. “The Russians are making serious preparations, but their activities are balanced, half in Asia, half on the European side.”

A new photo showed mobile SS-20 launchers being dispersed into the countryside. The following one showed the Russian port at Murmansk. The docks were empty, and the channel, normally frozen solid at this time of year, had been cleared by a flotilla of massive icebreakers.

“From our point of view this is the bigger problem,” the chief said. “In twenty-four hours, in some of the worst conditions of the season, their entire ballistic missile fleet has put to sea. Not only did we believe this could not be done so quickly, it hasn’t been done since the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

He turned to look at Henderson. “This is a grave sign, Mr. President. The Russians are very serious about things. And I think we should be, too.”

These latest actions were highly unwelcome. And they left the president with a growing dilemma. He believed the Brazil stone was secure and no longer an immediate threat as long as it remained in the Yucca
Mountain depository. Sensors placed on and around the mountain had detected no emissions of electromagnetic energy escaping the complex. But neither the NRI staff, the CIA’s newly involved experts, nor Nathanial Ahiga could say for sure what would happen if another super-spike occurred.

Another event like that, in the current state of heightened readiness, might be more than they could afford.

In that sense the incident had been terrible luck. It had led directly to the current predicament—spy satellites destroyed, tensions flaring. One more hour and the stone would have been safely ensconced in the depths of Yucca Mountain and nothing would have occurred.

But in a different sense, he felt it might have been good luck. Had the stone sent forth this burst while still housed at the NRI headquarters in Virginia, or, worse yet, at the beginning of the journey, on the road to Andrews Air Force Base, all of D.C. and most of the eastern seaboard would have gone dark—including the Pentagon, the White House, and Congress, not to mention CIA headquarters in Langley and Andrews itself.

The pulse had fried almost every circuit and backup system at Groom Lake, and even the backup systems at Nellis Air Force Base, eighty miles away, had been inoperable for almost five hours.

The president had served in the military and he believed in their professionalism and training. But he feared what the reaction would have been if Washington and most of the East Coast had gone suddenly, utterly dark. It would not have been like the blackout in 2003, where the grid went down but phones still operated, with places with backup power remaining functional and
military communications online. It would have been complete darkness, complete silence.

To the western command, five hours without communication would have been incomprehensible. All public television, radio, and Internet feeds gone, nothing but static on the box, no response to calls, no word from either military or civilian personnel, no flights arriving from eastern airports. To any rational person, and especially those charged with the task of protecting America, the sudden loss of contact with anything and everything from New York to Washington—all without any warning—could have only seemed like a nuclear strike of some kind.

He wondered privately if that scenario would have caused the western command to launch some type of counterattack, firing back against anyone anywhere who might have been responsible.

The president was thankful that burst had happened so far from civilization. But it had caused a shift in his position. He’d begun coming around to what the director of central intelligence had been pushing all along: that these stones, these devices of unimaginable power, were incredibly dangerous instrumentalities. If the men who studied them did not understand them, or even know what they were capable of, how could anyone accurately predict their intended or even unintended consequences?

For the past month, he’d been swayed by the opinion of his longtime friend, Arnold Moore. But for all his well-known gifts of discernment, Moore didn’t seem to feel the danger.

“Mr. President,” the head of the Joint Chiefs said, “in
the interests of national security I must formally request we move the military readiness status to Defense Condition Two.”

“Two?” the president asked, stunned.

“Yes, Mr. President. I feel in light of the Russian and Chinese actions it’s necessary.”

Escalation, the predictable result of itself
. Certainly Moore had been right about that. Even if he was blind to his own part in the cause.

The president looked down at the photo in the briefing folder.
Russian ICBMs fueling up
. For the first time in decades. He felt a thin sheen of sweat on his palms. Things were beginning to come unglued. Prior to this moment he’d felt a conviction that he could do what was needed and keep everything and everyone reined in. Now he knew that was beyond his grasp. And he also knew with certainty that he could no longer protect both his old friend and the American people at large.

“Mr. President … I’m afraid we need an answer.”

Henderson closed the folder and looked up.

“No,” he said. “DefCon Three only. Take all defensive measures, but I don’t want any ships going to sea early, bombers on airborne alert, or ICBM activity. Do one damned thing to make them more afraid and I’ll fire your asses on the spot. You understand me?”

So forceful was the president’s voice, so unexpected, that the entire room shrank back. Henderson considered that a good sign. He knew there would still be visible signs of the upgrade but they would be minimal and perhaps it would be the start of a de-escalation.

“Yes, Mr. President,” the head of the JCS said.

As President Henderson stood, the room came to attention.

“I want updates in two hours,” he said, then glanced over at Byron Stecker. “Come with me.”

Henderson strode from the Situation Room and down the hallway. The glare on his face was dark enough that staff members who’d been waiting hours to speak with him pulled back into the shadows and let him pass.

Stecker caught up with the president halfway to the White House elevator.

“What’s your take on Moore?” the president barked.

Stecker fumbled for a moment, and then spoke. “He wants his way,” Stecker said, struggling to keep up. “Wants to win his argument.”

That wasn’t Moore’s style, the president thought. Moore could be obstinate but not for the sheer sake of it. If the facts were plain he would surrender his case. There was something else.