BRAINRUSH 02 - The Enemy of My Enemy (32 page)

Jake smirked.

The man’s glare was the last image Jake saw before one of the guards placed a hood over his head.

**

It was bad enough that the black hood over his head blinded him. But the fact that the stifling fabric smelled of someone else’s sweat just pissed him off. As he was escorted out of the helicopter, one of the guards said, “One more step.” 

There were two more steps.

Jake stumbled.

The guards chuckled.

“Bastards,” Jake mumbled.

The guard gripping his left arm pushed him forward. “Shut up.”

After thirty paces, the heat of the sun on the back of his neck suddenly disappeared. They’d moved indoors. The group’s footsteps echoed off the walls, signaling that the space was large. As they continued forward, there was a deep motorized rumble that culminated in a resounding metallic thud, as if a massive door had been closed behind him. The air tasted familiar. It was earthy, moist.

A shiver slithered up his spine when he realized he was underground.

**

Claustrophobia had become a recurring companion ever since he’d been imprisoned in the crushing confines of a collapsible torture box during USAF pilot-training POW camp. Regulations restricted the use of the box to no more than an hour, but Jake had been intentionally left there overnight by a particularly nasty guard he’d outsmarted during training. Jake had flipped out. It wasn’t one of his proudest moments, and he’d hoped to put it behind him. Then he’d nearly died in a cave-in during the assault on Battista’s underground mountain complex. That had sent him over the edge. Ever since, the panic was quick to return whenever he found himself in cramped spaces.

He forced himself to control his breathing. Oddly, even though he was blinded under the hood, closing his eyes seemed to help. He thought of Francesca and Sarafina and took comfort in knowing they were safe. If only he could say the same for Tony’s family.

The texture of the ground changed and he sensed the group bunch together as they came to a stop. Doors slid closed and the floor dropped. They were in an elevator. Descending. Fast.

Terrific
.

After twelve long breaths, he figured they’d sunk fifty to sixty stories into the earth. He adjusted his jaw in order to equalize the growing pressure on his eardrums. The car slowed to a stop. The doors slid open and a cacophony of voices and conversations in the space in front of them suddenly came to a halt. Footsteps approached.

An angry voice ordered, “Take that thing off! The cuffs, too.”

The guards obliged and Jake squinted at the sudden brightness. He massaged his chafed wrists and found himself standing before two men who couldn’t have looked more different. The shorter one wore a camo utility uniform with a sewn-on name tag that read
brown
. Silver oak leaves on his lapels indicated a rank of lieutenant colonel. He was thickset, with a bald head that reflected the overhead lights. His ramrod bearing told Jake that he took his military rank way too seriously. The tight jaw and narrowed eyes weren’t welcoming.

On the other hand, the bespectacled older man standing beside the colonel was beaming. He reached out, clasped Jake’s hand in both of his, and shook it vigorously. “Mr. Bronson, I’m so glad you’re here! The name’s Albert Finnegan, but please call me Doc.”

Jake blinked back his surprise. He’d expected a prison cell. Instead he found himself in a cavernous underground research facility that reminded him of a NASA launch room. A score of scientists and techs turned from tiered rows of high-tech consoles to stare at him. Eagerness shone on their faces, as if they’d expected him to provide the ultimate answers to mysteries of the universe. The older man was still shaking his hand. His enthusiastic expression was infectious, and Jake couldn’t help but return the smile.

“Uh…thanks, Doc?” he said hesitantly, allowing himself to relax a bit. “I’m Jake.” 

Doc appeared to be in his early sixties. He had a warm face, and blue eyes that sparkled with curiosity. His partially gray hair curled loosely onto the bunched-up hood of his black sweatshirt. The slogan that stretched across the front of the sweatshirt read
e.t., call, dammit!
With that, Jake realized the people in this room knew that the massive explosion in the mountains of Afghanistan involved much more than a firefight with terrorists.

He fought the urge to tense at the revelation, because a bigger part of him was relieved. Had he finally encountered someone who could truly share the burden of what he’d learned from the alien obelisk? After all, it couldn’t hurt to have the power of the US government and its top scientists focused on the problem. Of course, in the end, he suspected there wouldn’t be a damn thing they could do about it.

“This is all sweet and tidy, Dr. Finnegan,” Colonel Brown said as he signaled the men standing at Jake’s back. They moved forward and resumed their escort position around him. “But Lt. Bronson needs to come with me for a lengthy debrief. He’s got a lot of questions to answer.”

“Hold on, Colonel.” Doc stepped forward. “For every question you have, I have ten. No, make that a hundred.” He took Jake’s arm and pulled him away from the goon squad. “You’ll get your turn. But not yet.”

Brown hesitated. He obviously didn’t appreciate having his orders countermanded—by a civilian, no less—and especially in front of his men. But it appeared to Jake as if these two had butted heads before, and Doc must have carried the bigger stick because the lieutenant colonel backed off.

“All right, Doc,” he said. “You keep him for now. But my team remains here to keep an eye on him. And tomorrow morning, he’s mine.”

Jake didn’t like the sound of that, but it didn’t worry him. By tomorrow he planned to be long gone.

**

“This is quite the setup, Doc,” Jake said after Brown left. The guards had positioned themselves at each of the three exits in the large space.

Doc pulled a key that was suspended on a chain beneath his sweatshirt. “As they say back home, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Follow me.” 

They walked down the steps that bisected the tiered rows of consoles and computer stations that surrounded an unusual steel enclosure.

Nods and smiles greeted Jake, distracting him from a growing sense of unease regarding what might be hidden beneath the steel jar. A young technician who looked more like a punk rocker than a research assistant offered a high five. Jake obliged and slapped the young man’s hand.

“Dude!” the kid said, unable to hide his excitement. “I can’t believe you’re actually here. I gotta question for you.”

Jake hiked an eyebrow. “Yeah, I figured.”

“How’d you do it? How’d you snap that beer mug right out of the air?”

Jake felt his shoulders slump. The kid was referring to the YouTube video that had captured Jake’s seemingly superhuman speed at Sam’s Bar. He dodged the question. “So, you’re a DDP fan, huh?” he said, pointing to the kid’s black T-shirt. It was emblazoned with a photo of the heavy-metal band Dublin Death Patrol.

“You know DDP?” The kid looked astonished.

Jake flashed on the article he’d glanced at, one of thousands that now resided in his mental library. “Sure. Chuck Billy, the vocalist from Testament, heads the bill. The boys all went to Dublin High School together in northern California. Their drummer, Danny Cunningham, is unstoppable.”

Doc interrupted them. “Not now, Timmy. We’ve got work to do.”

The tech ignored his boss. He broke into a huge smile and his fist shot into the air. “DDP for life!” he said, referring to the band’s slogan. “You’re the man, Jake Bronson!” 

Jake couldn’t help but like the kid.

Doc shook his head and mumbled something under his breath. He stepped forward and inserted his key into a slot at Timmy’s console. That simple act seemed to galvanize everyone in the room. Several of them cast furtive glances at the steel shroud. Doc turned the key and nodded to the kid. “Enter the code.”

Timmy tapped an alphanumeric string into the keyboard.

There was a hydraulic hiss, several clicks, and a brief whir of electronic gears. “Locks disengaged,” Timmy reported. There was an edge of excitement in his voice. “Standing by.”

“Dump the shield.”

The kid keyed the entry. “Electromagnetic shield deactivated.”

A deep thrumming pulse assaulted Jake’s senses. Instinctively, his palms flew up to cover his ears. To no affect; the sound wasn’t diminished. He felt it in his bones, as if he stood beside an immense turbine that shook the room.  His senses were overwhelmed, not by the volume of the all-too-familiar sound, but by the memories it invoked. It was the same vibration that had drawn him into the sacred cavern of Battista’s mountain fortress, a sound that only he had heard because of his enhanced brain, a sound that had ultimately led to the premature triggering of an alien device that could ultimately bring about the end of the human race.

Jake pressed his palms harder against his ears, his arms quivering from the effort, his body doubled over in denial, his jaw clenched tight as a vise.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. “What’s wrong?” Doc said, his voice filled with concern. “Are you okay?”

Jake shook his head repeatedly and rose slowly. After a brief struggle between mind and body, he exiled the insistent hum to a corner of his mind and eased his hands from his ears. There was little choice but to accept the inevitable. The anger and frustration he felt must have been evident on his face because both Doc and Timmy seemed to edge backward when he looked up at them.

“You don’t hear it, do you?” he said, already knowing the answer.

“Hear what?” Timmy said.

Jake blew out a huge sigh. “Never mind.” 

It made sense now, Jake thought. Why else was he here with a bunch of scientists rather than in prison? He knew what was hidden behind the curtain. Hell, he knew more about it than anyone alive. Or at least anyone from planet Earth. It wasn’t a huge surprise that a second device had been found. The ancient visitors must have planted them all over the planet. He just never expected to confront one again.

His gaze went from the steel shroud to a point in the reinforced concrete ceiling thirty foot above it. A few wrong moves and the alien artifact would blast a hole clean through it—and the hundred feet of rock above it—like a hot poker through butter. In minutes it would be deep in space, on its way—

A thought suddenly occurred to him. What if this device could be used to send a different message, one that explained the first one was triggered prematurely because of the anomaly of Jake’s brain? Could he correct his mistake and delay mankind’s extermination for a hundred years? Or a thousand?

 “Let’s get that thing open,” he said. “We’ve got work to do.”

Chapter 57

Area 52

T
wenty pairs of eyes watched in hushed silence as a heavy-duty ceiling winch reeled in the thick suspension cables hooked to the top of the steel bell jar. The shroud lifted from the platform to reveal its contents. From the anxious looks on the faces around him, Jake suspected that only a few of the scientists and technicians had ever seen the obelisk up close and personal. Several of them stood up at their control consoles to get a better view.

Jake shook off an involuntary shudder as the inverted black pyramid came into view. Someone threw a switch and spotlights flicked on to illuminate it from multiple angles. Its tip was cradled in a steel frame; its square top surface shimmered under the lights. He approached it on unsteady legs, with Doc and Timmy beside him.

“An exact duplicate,” Jake said as he studied the pictograms and symbols on its surface. “What have you learned about it?”

“We found a pattern,” Timmy said. He pointed at the area surrounding the three-inch square etched in its center. “In the symbols.”

“Really?” Jake said, testing him. “So which three are wrong?” It was the same phrase Sarafina had used when she’d revealed that three of the eleven symbols emitted a harmonic tone that was inconsistent with the other eight.

Timmy hesitated only a second before identifying the three. “These are non-factorial primes. The others aren’t.”

Jake hiked an eyebrow. A different approach to solving the same puzzle. Impressive. “What else?”

“Not a hell of a lot,” Doc admitted. “It’s impervious to virtually every scan we’ve attempted. Material unknown. Origin unknown. Surface hardness beyond our means to measure. The only thing we know for sure is that it emits a subtle type of radiation our instruments can’t identify. But whatever it is, we discovered it could be shielded with electromagnetics—just as you did.”

“Like I did?”

Doc motioned to one of the techs. He reached under his console and pulled out the tackle box from Jake’s apartment.

Son of a bitch.
The goons who had picked him up must have ransacked his place. Well, the joke’s on you, boys, he thought, because you just provided me with my ticket out of here. He hid his satisfaction and said, “Anything else?”