Authors: Matthew Reilly
He wanted to read it immediately, but no, that would have
to wait. There were some other things he had to settle first.
'Van Lewen,' he said.
'Yes.'
'Tell me about Frank Nash.”
'What?'
'I said, tell me about Frank Nash.'
'What do you want to know?'
'Have you worked with him before?'
'No. This is my first time. My unit was pulled out of Bragg to come
on this mission.'
'Are you aware that Nash is a colonel in the Army's Special
Projects Unit?“
'Yeah, sure.'
'So you knew it was a lie when Nash came to my office yesterday
morning with a DARPA ID and a story saying that he was a retired
Army colonel now working with the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency?'
'I didn't know he said that.'
'You didn't know?'
Van Lewen looked at Race honestly. 'Professor Race, I'm just a
grunt, okay. I was told that this was to be a protective
assignment. I was told to protect you. So that's what I'm
doing.
If Colonel Nash lied to you, I'm sorr but I didn't know.'
Race clenched his teeth. He was pissed as hell. He was furious at
having been tricked into coming along on the mission.
In addition to being angry, however, he was also determined to know
everything, for if Nash wasn't really with DARPA then it raised a
whole lot of other questions. For instance, what about Lauren and
Copeland? Were they with Army Special Projects, too?
Even closer to home were the questions regarding how Race himself
had come to be a part of the mission. After all, Nash had claimed
to have been put onto him by his brother Marty. But Race hadn't
even seen his brother in almost ten years.
Strangely, Race found himself thinking about Marty.
They'd been close as kids. Although Marty had been a good three
years older than him, they had always played together— football,
baseball, just plain running around. But W'tll had always been
better at sports, despite the age difference.
Marty, on the other hand, was easily the cleverer of the two boys.
He'd excelled at school and been ostracised for it.
He wasn't handsome, and even as a nine-year-old he was the image of
his father, all hunched shoulders and thick dark eyebrows, with a
permanently severe expression that was reminiscent of Richard
Nixon.
Conversely, Race had his mother's easy good looks— s.andy brown
hair and sky blue eyes.
As teenagers, while Will would go out on the town with his friends,
Marty would just stay at home with his computers and his prized
collection of Elvis Presley records. By age nineteen, Marty hadn't
even had a girlfriend. Indeed, the only girl he'd ever liked—a
pretty young cheerleader named Jennifer Michaels—had turned out to
have a crush on Will. It had devastated Marty.
College came and while his schoolyard tormentors went off to become
bank tellers and real estate agents, Marty had headed straight for
the computer labs at MIT—fully paid for by his father, a computer
engineer.
Race on the other hand—intelligent for sure but always the lesser
academically—would go to USE on a half sports
scholarship. There he would meet, court and lose Lauren
O'Connor and, in between all that, study languages.
Then came their parents' divorce.
It happened so suddenly. One day, Race's father came home from the
office and told his mother that he was leav ing her. It turned out
he'd been having an affair with his
secretary for almost eleven months.
The family split in two.
Marty, then twenty-five, still saw their father regularly— after
all, he had always been his old man's son both in looks and
manner.
But Race never forgave his father. When he died of a heart attack
in 1992, Race didn't even go to the funeral.
It was the classic American nuclear family—nuked from within.
Race snapped out of it, returned to the present, to a sea plane
flying over the jungles of Peru.
'What about Lauren and Copeland?' he asked Van
Lewen. “Are they with Army Special Projects too?”
'Yes,' Van Lewen said solemnly.
Son of a bitch.
'All right then,' Race said, changing tack. 'What do you know about
the Supernova project?“
'I swear I don't know anything about it,' Van Lewen said.
Race frowned, bit his lip.
He turned to Ren6e. 'What do you know about the Ameri-
can Supernova project?'
'A little.'
Race raised his eyebrows expectantly.
Ren6e sighed. 'Project approved by the Congressional Armaments
Committee in closed session: January 1992. Bud get of $1.8 billion
approved by Senate Appropriations Committee, again in closed
session: March 1992. Project was intended to be a co-operative
joint venture between the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
and the United States Navy. Project leader's name is—'
'Wait a second,' Race said, cutting her off. 'The Super nova is a
Navy project?'
“That's right.'
So Frank Nash had told more than one lie to get him to come along
on the mission. The Supernova wasn't even an Army project at
all.
It was a Navy project.
And then, suddenly, Race found himself recalling something he had
heard the previous night, when he had been imprisoned inside the
Humvee, before the cats had attacked the BKA team.
He recalled hearing a woman's voice Ren6e's maybe saying something
in German over the radio, a sentence that he had found quite
incongruous at the time, a sentence which he hadn't translated for
Nash and the others.
Was ist mit dem anderen amerikanischen Team? We sind die
jetzt?
'What about the other American team? Where are they now?'
The other American team…
'I'm sorry, Ren6e,' he said, 'who did you say was the Supemova's
proiect leader?'
“His name is Romano. Doctor Julius Michael Romano.'
And there it was.
The mysterious Romano, revealed at last.
Romano's team was the other American team. A Navy team.
Christ…
'So let me just get this straight,' Race said. 'The Supernova is a
Navy project led by a guy named Julius Romano, right?'
'That's right,' Ren6e said.
'And Romano and his team are in Peru right now, searching for the
thyrium idol?'
'That's right.'
“But Frank Nash has an Army team down here as well, also going
after the idol.'
'That's correct,' Ren6e said.
'So why? Why is a team led by a colonel from the U.S.
Army's Special Projects Division trying to beat a team of U.S. Navy
people to an idol that is the key to a weapon that the Navy
owns?'
Ren6e said, 'The answer to that question is a little more
complex than it would at first appear, Professor Race.'
'Try me.”
'All right,' Ren6e said, taking a deep breath. 'For the last six
years, German intelligence has been looking on silently as the
three branches of the United States armed forces—the Army, the Navy
and the Air Force -have engaged in a very bitter but very secret
power struggle.
'What they fight for is survival. They fight to be the pre eminent
armed service in the United States, so that when the U.S. Congress
finally removes one of them—as it intends to do in the year 2010—it
will not be their branch that takes the bullet. They fight to make
themselves indis pensable.'
'Congress intends to remove one of the armed services by 2010?'
Race said.
'By a secret Department of Defense minute dated 6 Sep tember 1993
and signed by both the Secretary of Defense and the President
himself, the Department of Defense rec ommended to the President
that by the year 2010, one branch of the United States military be
made redundant.'
'Okay…' Race said, doubtfully. 'And how is it that you know all
this?'
Ren6e offered him a crooked smile. 'Come on, Professor.
The U.S. Navy isn't the only navy in the world which secretly
taps into other countries' undersea communications cables.'
'Oh,' Race said.
'The basis of the Department's decision was that war has changed.
The old land-sea-air division of a country's armed forces no longer
applies to the modem world. It's an anachronism from two world wars
and a thousand years of hand-to-hand combat. The decision then
becomes which ser vice goes?
'Ever since that time,' Ren6e went on, 'each branch of the armed
services has attempted to prove its worth, at the expense of the
other two.'
'For example?' Race said sceptically.
'For example, the Air Force claims it has the Stealth Bomber and a
unique expertise in air superiority fighting.
But the Navy counters by saying that it has Carrier Battle Groups.
On top of that, it claims that not only are its regular fighters
and bombers as stealthy as the B-3 anyway, but also that they have
the added advantage of a transportable land ing strip. With a dozen
Carrier Battle Groups, the Navy says, who needs an Air Force?
'The Army, on the other hand, claims it has specialised
ground troops and mechanised infantry forces. But both the Navy and
the Air Force counter this by saying that modem warfare takes place
in the skies and on the world's oceans, not on land. They say to
look at the Gulf War and the Kosovo conflict—battles that were
fought from the sky, not the ground.
'Add to that the Navy's close affiliation with the United States
Marine Corps. Since the Marines Corps' existence is guaranteed by
the American Constitution, they cannot be eliminated. And they have
both ground and mechanised infantry capabilities, thus putting even
more pressure on the Army to justify its existence.
'Hell, look at ICBMs. All three armed services maintain missile
launch facilities: the Navy has submarine-launched systems; the Air
Force air- and land-launched systems; and the Army land and mobile
systems. Does a nation seriously need three separate nuclear
missile systems when really only two—-or even one—would do?'
'So who looks like being the loser?' Race asked, cutting to the
chase.
'The Army7 Ren6e said simply. 'Without a doubt. Espe cially when
the Constitutional guarantee for the Marine Corps is taken into
account. In every analysis I've seen so far, the Army has always
come in third place.“
'So they need to prove their worth,' Race said.
'They desperately need to prove their worth. Or diminish one of the
other service's worth.'
'What do you mean, “diminish one of the other service's
worth”?'
'Professor,“ Ren6e said, 'did you know that late last year
there was a break-in at Vandenberg Air Force base?'
'No.'
'Some top-secret plans for the new W-88 nuclear war head were
stolen. The W-88 is a miniaturised warhead, state of the art. Six
security staff were killed during the theft. The official
investigative report into the break-in—and the sub sequent media
coverage of it-claimed that it was the work of Chinese agents. The
unofficial report into the break-in,
however, says that upon examination of the kill and entry
techniques used, only one unit could have executed the crime. An
Army Special Forces unit. Green Berets.'
Race shot a look at Van Lewen. The Green Beret sergeant just
shrugged helplessly back at him. This was news to him.
'The Army broke into an Air Force base?' Race said in dis
belief.
Ren6e said, 'You see, Professor, the Army are working on a new
miniaturised warhead of their own. The successful completion of the
W-88 would have seriously undermined their own project—and provided
one less reason to keep them around in 2010.'
Race frowned. 'So how do we apply this to the Supernova
project?'
'Simple,' Ren6e said. 'The Supernova is the ultimate weapon.
Whichever armed service controls its use will ensure its survival
in 2010. Quite obviously, although the Supernova is officially a
Navy project, the Army has taken it upon itself to build its own
devicein all likelihood using information that they have managed to
obtain from a source inside the Navy project.'
'But no-one has any thyrium yet,' Race said.
'Which is why everybody's down here looking for that idol.'
'Okay, so let me get this straight,' Race said. 'Even though the
Supernova is officially a Navy project, the Army has been secretly
constructing its own device. Then, when it discovers that there
might be a source of thyrium out there, it gives Frank Nash and the
Special Projects Unit the task of
finding that thyrium before the Navy does.'
'That's correct.'
'Goddamn,' Race breathed. 'How far up does a thing like this go?'
He was thinking about yesterday's motorcade out of New York. For
someone to make that happen required some serious rank.
'All the way up,' Ren6e said in a low voice. 'All the way to the
highest-ranking officers in the U.S. Army hierarchy.
And that's what really scares me. I've never seen the Army
so desperate. I mean, God, look at this mission. This is it.
This is the home run. If the Army gets that stone'—she nodded at
the idol on the empty seat next to Race 'they guarantee their
future existence. And that means that Frank Nash will do anything
to get it. Anything at all.'
Race picked up the idol. It glistened in his hands, the rapa's head
snarling with menace.
He just stared at it sadly, looked at the newly hollowed- out
section in its base.
'Then I guess there's really only one problem, then, isn't there?'
he said.
'What's that?” Ren6e said.
“This idol.'
“What about it?'
'You see, that's the thing,' Race said. 'This idol isn't made of
thyrium. This idol is a fake.'
'It's a what?' Ren6e gasped.
'It's a fake?' Van Lewen echoed.
'It's a fake,' Race confirmed. “Here, take a look.' He tossed the
gleaming black idol to Van Lewen. 'What do you see?'
The big sergeant shrugged. 'I see the Incan idol that we came here
to get.'
'Do you?' Race leaned forward, grabbing a water canteen that hung
off Van Lewen's belt. 'Can I borrow this?'
He quickly unscrewed the lid and tipped the contents of the canteen
onto the idol.
Water splashed all over the rapa's head, ran down its
face, dribbled down onto the floor of the plane.
'Okay, so… ?' Van Lewen said.
'According to the manuscript,' Race said, 'when the idol gets wet,
it's supposed to emit a low humming noise. This
one isn't making a sound.'
“So?”
'So it's not made of thyrium. If it were made of thyrium, the
oxygen in the water would make it resonate. This isn't the real
idol. It's a fake.'
'But when did you know?' Ren6e asked.
Race said, “When I took this idol off the workbench a couple of
seconds before the cabin blew, the sprinkler sys tem inside the
control booth was dousing the whole room with water. It splashed
all over the idol, but ever since that time it hasn't hummed at
all.'