Project Aura Page 5

  As Deputy Director she was second only to the Director, a three-star Air Force general. In reality, her decades in the Agency, as opposed to his recent assignment, made her more experienced in the power workings of Washington and inside the Agency. The Director was always a military man, as the NSA fell under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense, which meant she had gone as high as she could possibly could in the Agency. The fact that she had never married had produced more than a few subtle and not so subtle charges that she was a lesbian, something she found typical of male thinking. She'd discovered there were two basic reactions by most men to women in power: if they could screw her, they'd tolerate her but not respect her; if they couldn't bed her, then she was a lesbian and they still wouldn't give her respect. She had decided that while they might not respect her as a person, they would respect the power she wielded. The NSA was in charge of all electronic intelligence activities for the United States, which meant its domain was information. And information, used properly, was power.

  Her office was on the top floor of the "Puzzle Palace" at Fort Meade, a large glass building that dominated the landscape. It was at one end of the main corridor, the Director's at the other end. She made the trip to his office once a day to sit in on the daily intelligence briefing, if both he and she were in town. He was currently overseas, leaving her in charge.

  Her desk was teak and quite large, over eight feet wide by four across. A twenty-inch flat-screen monitor was perched to her left, the keyboard and mouse on a moveable shelf just under the desktop. The in-box was to the far right, the out-box to the far left. Her policy was never to leave anything in the in-box when she locked up to go home, which had caused her to spend many a late night in the office, once in a while forcing her to catch a nap on a plain leather couch on the far side of the room and not go home. The fact that she was here at two in the morning was not an unusual occurrence.

  On the wall next to the door, directly across from her desk, a quote was framed: all warfare is based on deception. It was from the The Art of War by Sun Tzu, a book that McFairn kept in the top drawer of her desk and read from every day.

  Double doors led to the main corridor. Behind her, thick bulletproof glass windows overlooked acres of parking lots surrounding the building and the main post of Fort Meade. Two pieces of paper rested on the desk in front of her. One was a transcript of a SATCOM transmission that the NSA had intercepted. The other was an internal classified Defense Intelligence Agency memo.

  She turned slightly as one of a row of phones inlaid to her right buzzed. She knew from the distinctive sound that it was her personal secure line. Only a handful of people had that number, but she knew even before she answered who would be on the other end.

  She hit the intercom. "Yes?"

  "This is Boreas. HAARP picked up an anomaly on the virtual plane. It lasted about fifteen minutes and then it disappeared."

  She glanced down at the two documents and leaned forward slightly. "Bright Gate?"

  "No. Bright Gate wasn't active."

  "The Russians?"

  "Since SD-8 was shut down, things have been quiet on that front."

  "Then who?"

  "I believe it was the same source as last time. Our friends from south of the border. The Ring, using Aura."

  McFairn knew about the Ring: a group of drug lords from Colombia who had banded together to form a coalition. "Were you able to pinpoint the source?"

  "Pinpoint? No. You know we don't have that capability without a second receiver."

  "I think I know the location where the transmission was received, but not the source," McFairn said. This time it was Boreas who waited on her. "Off the southeast coast of Florida. We intercepted a satellite transmission from a Coast Guard cutter-the Warde. It was chasing a vessel when its transmission was abruptly terminated and the ship couldn't be raised again. Just thirty minutes ago, the same cutter was discovered run aground on the coast of Florida, on Key Largo. The crew was dead. Cause of death currently unknown but the initial report indicates bleeding from the nose, eyes, ears, and mouth. The scene has been sealed."

  "That means Aura works," Boreas said.

  "We knew it would work" McFairn snapped. "Yours works, why wouldn't theirs? They got it from your group in the first place. From Professor Souris."

  "But if your information is correct, that means Aura is directional. And we don't know how far the transmission was sent if we can't lock down the source."

  "It's got to be line of sight," McFairn said.

  "HAARP is line of sight," Boreas corrected. "What if Aura isn't? What if Souris has improved it? She's had the time and the support to do a lot of work. It might even be mobile, which means she's cut down the size of the antenna and the transmitter. She was working on all of that before she left."

  McFairn leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes as she thought. "What do you want me to do?"

  "You have to target and terminate the Aura transmitter field, wherever it is. And eliminate Souris."

  "We already agreed on that course of action. The problem is, how do we find it and her? I've had my people searching but no luck so far."

  "Psychic Warriors out of Bright Gate ought to be able to help us pinpoint Aura if it activates again."

  "You tried that once. You screwed it up and I had to clean up the mess."

  "I didn't screw up," Boreas argued. "That was Ms. Raisor. From your end."

  "Ms. Raisor wasn't one of my people. She was from Nexus."

  "Nexus." McFairn could hear the disgust in Boreas's voice. "Children running in the dark, looking under rocks for the truth. There's an old saying: Look under enough rocks and you eventually find a snake. They've looked under too many rocks and now it is time for them to get bit."

  McFairn remembered the thump on the top of her limousine the previous week; the marks left behind by an avatar. She knew whose avatar that was now-- Jonathan Raisor-- the brother of the woman who had made the initial discovery of the existence of Boreas and HAARP. Boreas had had Dr. Jenkins at Bright Gate terminate that team, abandoning them on the psychic plane. And then Raisor had terminated Jenkins. She wondered if Jonathan Raisor had worked for Nexus like his sister.

  Knowing Boreas was waiting for an answer, McFairn made her decision, not that she felt she had much latitude. "All right. We'll try to track down Aura and terminate Souris."

  "Bright Gate is not currently at an operational level," Boreas noted. "The recent events in Russia took their toll."

  "They still have some people left who can go over." She glanced at the other piece of paper on her desk. "We have to be careful. Someone is already starting to ask questions."

  "Who?"

  "Someone inside the Department of Defense. They're sending a representative on a fact-finding trip to your location. A General Eichen from the oversight committee on intelligence."

  "I can't allow that. We're too close to the final resolution."

  McFairn was tempted to ask what exactly that resolution was. "I don't think it's a coincidence. Could Eichen be working for your enemy?"

  "It's possible. Or he could be working for Nexus."

  The fact that Boreas didn't consider Nexus his primary enemy was something McFairn found interesting. "What are you going to do about him?"

  "I think this is a good opportunity to test HAARP."

  "Killing Eichen will draw attention."

  "Eventually," Boreas said. "At first it will look like an accident, which will gain us the time we need. And if he is from Nexus, it will send the proper message to them."

  "I don't think I can allow-" McFairn began, but she was cut off.

  "You have no choice in the matter."

  "Perhaps if you told me why you’re doing all this," McFairn said, "we could work together better."

  "You've gotten what you wanted from us," Boreas said. "Now we're demanding repayment. I assure you that HAARP poses no danger to your interests or your country's security. In fact it will add a very powerful w
eapon to your country's arsenal."

  "You just said you were going to use it against Eichen," McFairn noted.

  "To protect it for a little while longer."

  "How about telling me who your real enemy is if you find Nexus only a nuisance?"

  "For now, all you need to know is that the Ring is the face of my enemy but not the controlling entity." Boreas changed the subject. "We need to regain control of Psychic Warrior. I want a team. Destroying Aura might not be the best solution if Souris has made improvements over what I have here at HAARP. I want to at least get an idea what she's done, and Psychic Warrior would be the most efficient way to do that. Get your friends south of the Potomac to reconstitute another Psychic Warrior team."

  "Do you mean the Pentagon or the CIA?" McFairn didn't wait for an answer. "I think both are a bit leery of Bright Gate, given each one's respective team was decimated." She leaned forward, palms flat on the desktop. "I was prepared for this possibility. I have a better option closer to home, constituting a team from within the ranks of my own Agency. But it will take time to train another Psychic Warrior team," she noted.

  "Pick someone opportunistic to lead the team," Boreas said. "Someone like you, who understands the nuances of loyalty when weighed with self-advancement"

  McFairn didn't respond to the barb.

  "What forces does the Department of Defense have in Colombia?" Boreas asked.

  "Task Force Six," McFairn said. "The covert counter-drug team."

  "All right. Use them to draw out Aura. The more we make the Ring use it, the closer we can get to the transmitter and Souris."

  McFairn pressed her hands against her temples, trying to keep the pain she felt from building. "I'll contact the Pentagon and get things moving. I’ll let you know the schedule."

  She hit the Off button. She called the Pentagon and passed on the speculation about the attack on the Coast Guard cutter originating from the Ring.

  Then she checked her Fort Meade directory and found the name she was looking for. She made that call, getting the personnel she wanted moving. After hanging up the phone, she went to the wall to the right of her desk. Pressing the proper code in a keypad caused a panel to slide up, revealing a steel door and a retina scan. She leaned forward, placing her right eye against rubber.

  The safe door opened with a click. McFairn removed a thick three-ring binder with Top Secret stamped on the cover and carried it back to her desk. Taking a pad of paper, she wrote down a summary of the conversation she’d just had with Boreas. She three-hole-punched it and placed it in the rear of the binder, the most recent addition.

  She paused before taking the binder back to the safe. She flipped through the hundreds of pages until she was back at the cover page. Two words stood out against the white paper:

  The Priory

  She turned that page and looked at the first entry, which she had made over twenty-five years ago when she had first been contacted by someone representing that group. Despite the thickness of the book and the years between, she knew little more about the shadowy organization than she had in the beginning.

  What she did know could be summed up succinctly: It was powerful. It was international. It had existed for a very, very long time. And now for some strange reason, it wanted HAARP operational worldwide.

  She'd made a deal with the devil and now it was collecting.

  There was a second binder in the safe. It was much thinner than the first one. It too had a cover page: The Priory's Enemy

  Opening that binder, the most recent entry was labeled The Ring. She knew something about the consortium of drug cartels that had been formed in Bogota over twenty years ago. It had been the focus of much attention from the various American intelligence agencies through the years, although little had been discovered about it.

  The problem was, she knew that the Ring was just a front for the Priory's enemy, just as she, and her agency, were working for the Priory. The fact that the Priory's enemy used drug dealers made her feel somewhat better about her alliance with the Priory. The enemy of her ally was indeed her enemy.

  That the Ring was developing a weapon along the lines of HAARP was very disturbing, but they'd known that would be a problem when Dr. Souris disappeared from the program two years ago and was rumored to be working for the Ring. McFairn didn't think it was a coincidence. She had a feeling whoever was pulling the strings behind the Ring had suborned Souris just as she herself had been suborned by Boreas and the Priory.

  She controlled the most powerful intelligence-gathering organization on the face of the planet and in the past three decades she had been able to even come up with just a rumored name for this group that opposed the Priory: Mithrans.

  Chapter Four

  At 14,005 feet in altitude, the Mount of the Holy Cross joined, by just sixty inches, the fifty-four peaks in Colorado known as fourteeners. South of Vail and Interstate 70, it was in the center of the White River National Forest and far removed from the nearest paved road. The mountain had gained its name from the cross-shaped snowfield on its north side, away from the sun, that was present year round.

  It was an impressive peak and Sergeant Major Dalton's new home. Two thirds of the way up the rocky east face, a camouflaged door was sliding up, revealing a metal grate that slowly extended outward fifteen meters from the side of the mountain. The pilots of the Blackhawk helicopter edged their craft perilously close to the rock face, blades less than a foot from striking, and did a perfect three-point landing on the grate.

  Dalton slid open the door and handed out several crates and boxes to the administrative crew who were there to greet the chopper. This was the only way in or out of Bright Gate, and every flight had to carry resupply.

  He threw the last box over his shoulder and headed into the dark cavern as the helicopter departed, going back to Fort Carson. The grate began to move into the mountain, causing him to almost lose balance for a second, and the door came down, cutting off the light from the outside.

  "Sergeant Major."

  Dalton nodded a greeting. "Lieutenant Jackson."

  She was standing next to the vault door that led to the interior of the mountain and Bright Gate. She wore a dull green one-piece flight suit. She was a tall, slender woman in her mid-twenties, and her blond hair was cut shorter than required by military regulations, a matter of practicality when operating as a Psychic Warrior in the isolation tanks that were their home during a mission.

  "Are you all right?"

  Dalton considered the question, knowing that it was more than just a pleasantry. Honesty dictated a long, involved answer, practicality a shorter, more direct one. "I'm functional."

  A look crossed Jackson's face, something he couldn't make out, and he didn't get a chance to see it again as she turned to the door and punched a code into the keypad on the side. The circular door was eighteen feet in diameter with rings of black metal on the polished steel surface. The rings were part of the psychic fence guarding Bright Gate and extended on either side of the door, and through the bottom floor and top ceiling, completely surrounding the facility.

  The door rolled sideways into a recessed port, revealing a corridor lit with dim red lights. It was cut out of solid rock and descended slightly. The admin personnel entered, carrying their loads. Once Dalton was through, Jackson used the keypad on the other side to shut the door. The psychic fence was engaged once more.

  "You can dump that here," Jackson told Dalton as they paused next to a cross corridor the admin personnel had turned onto. "We just received a call. Raisor's replacement is due in shortly."

  "'Raisor's replacement’?" Dalton repeated. "Is Raisor really gone?"

  Jackson didn't answer, leading the way toward the team quarters.

  Dalton stopped her. "I want to see my team."

  Jackson nodded and changed direction. The door she stopped at also had a keypad next to it. She punched in a code and it opened with a click. Dalton walked in slowly, taking in the bodies suspended in the tubes. Two
teams of Psychic Warriors: twenty people.

  "They're alive," Jackson said. "Hammond ran CAT scans and there is brain activity. Very low level and not normal, but since we're dealing with abnormal from the very start she doesn't know what it means. It might just be a reaction from the autonomic nervous system in response to the isolation tubes keeping the bodies alive."

  Dalton walked among the tubes, seeing the members of his Special Forces unit who had been "killed" on the psychic plane by Chyort/Feteror, the Russian avatar. And beyond them, the tubes holding the first Psychic Warrior team, the one he hadn't been told about when first recruited to the PW program. He stopped in front of one of them containing a woman. He could see the resemblance to Raisor, whose body floated six tubes further down. The nameplate on the front of the glass read Eileen Raisor. Where Jonathan Raisor had gone on the last mission, when he broke off from Dalton's team, was a mystery, and since General Eichen's visit the previous evening, something Dalton saw in a different light. The fact that Eileen Raisor had been recruited by Nexus and ended up being betrayed was something Dalton planned on keeping foremost in his mind to keep from suffering the same fate.

  "Does the first team have the same CAT scan signs?" he asked

  "No. They're flat."

  Dalton shook his head. He left the room, heading for the control center.

  Dr. Hammond was at her normal place, behind the main console, surrounded by computer terminals that gave her access to Sybyl, the master computer that controlled the entire facility and the Psychic Warrior program.

  "Sergeant Major." She nodded in greeting.

  "Doctor." He grabbed a seat and rolled it over next to her as Jackson did the same on the other side. "Anything on our people?"

  "Nothing. We're keeping the bodies alive, but their psyches..." Hammond trailed off.