Dragon Over Washington (The Third War Of The Bir Nibaru Gods) (3 page)

A soft explosion drowned out the engine noises, followed by a long, trailing, whooshing sound.

“Missed. Firing another.” This time the whooshing sound was followed by a loud explosion.

“I got it! I got it! The missile hit its upper torso! It’s burning! It’s falling down!”

“Very good. Vanya, Vanya? Are you there? Vanya!”

A moment later Pavel shouted “
Tvoyu Mat
!” ,but Andy did not translate the Russian curse.

“It’s getting up! It’s burning, but it’s still getting up.”

“Shoot it again.”

“I - the others are coming now! They are firing at me! Some kind of - ! I’m moving, trying to fire back!” Pavel shouted “
Tvoyu Mat!
” again before a loud explosion erupted, much louder than the previous one.

“I’m hit! I’m hit! Something entered the APC! It’s a dud, it didn’t explode! I’m firing back! I’m trying to move away. What - ? Something’s moving inside the cabin! Get out of the APC! Run! Try to -” Frantic shouting followed, but it was silenced almost immediately. A high-pitched voice shrieked triumphantly, shouting several syllables in a sharp, grating tongue that was definitely not Russian. Andy had not translated those words. The transmission from that BMP ended with a single click.

“Pavel. Pavel! Are you there? Pavel! Answer me!”

“Sir, I see smoke coming from the direction of the ridge.”

“Sergey, turn around. We’re going back.”

“What? They need us!”

“They are dead. We go back. Now. Command, we have encountered strong resistance on Hill 923, one large and dozens of smaller ones. No fliers this time. We lost two vehicles and we’re retreating five hundred meters to the south. Request artillery strike on Hill 923.”

Thorpe winced as gears ground together, the drivers pushing their vehicles far beyond their design parameters.

The recording ended. Thorpe removed his headset, slowly.

“Wow, dude, that’s awesome,” Thorpe said.

“Yeah, knew you’d like it,” Andy said.

“It sounds like they were fighting in a war.”

“It does, doesn’t it? But the boys at Langley say it’s only an exercise.”

“They were really frightened, Andy.”

“Yeah, that’s why we’re looking into it.”

“What was the thing at the end, the voice shouting after the BMP was hit?”

“No idea. It’s not Russian, that’s for sure. I turned it over to Languages.”

“Andy, it didn’t sound human.”

“You watch too many movies, kid.”

Andy clicked the Trailmapper NSA application. He opened a file, and configured the blue window of the application to display a host of communication networks. Andy pressed the “All Input” check box and additional trees of networks appeared on screen. Andy moved the ruler to the 00:30 hour mark and pressed the Play button. Nothing happened except the time indicator advanced slowly.

“Anyway, that’s not what I wanted you to see. This is,” Andy said, turning the screen towards Thorpe.

“Well? What am I seeing?” Thorpe asked, watching the screen.

“Didn’t your momma teach you some patience?” Andy said.

“I burnt my weekly allowance entering the base. Those stupid guards,” Thorpe said.

“They’re just doing their job, as you well know. Anyway, it starts now,” Andy said. Several of the communication networks began to blink, the green squares turning red. In a moment, half of the networks had turned red, indicating they were dead.

“Well?” Thorpe asked. His expression remained bored, but his eyes didn’t leave the screen.

“Wait,” Andy said and moved the ruler ahead forty minutes. The networks blinked into life again.

“Well?” Thorpe asked. Andy opened his mouth, but Thorpe interrupted him.

“Where is this?” he asked.

“Around Al Jaghbub, a major town in the municipality of Tubruq, northeast Libya, in North Africa,” Andy said and looked at Thorpe. The red-haired man looked right back at Andy.

“Shit for brains, what’s so interesting about a communications blackout in an Arab city? They probably didn’t pay the electric bill or something,” Thorpe said.

“This has been happening for the last several days. Almost every night at about the same time, around midnight,” Andy replied.

“Well?” Thorpe asked. Andy sighed, loosened his tie, opened a button in his well-ironed, white-collared shirt and shook his head.

“I knew you were stupid. Why haven’t they fired you yet?” Andy asked the ceiling, spreading his arms wide.

“It’s because I wear glasses. Everybody knows that people with glasses are smart. Look, some networks are breaking down on regular intervals. So what, dude?” Thorpe asked.

“Look at the types of networks and their locations,” Andy said. Thorpe looked and frowned. He leaned forward.

“That can’t be right,” he said. Andy smiled.

“Unfortunately, it is. Satellite communications is down, UHF and VHP radios are down, and the pitiful cellular service they have over there is also down. Every kind of radio transmission on every band dies down for half an hour in more-or-less a twenty-mile radius around that town,” Andy said.

“That’s impossible. Nothing can block satellite communication,” Thorpe said. He tapped his finger on the screen and Andy slapped his hand away.

“Maybe your listening devices died down? A bird nesting in the antennas? Termites in the arrays?” Thorpe said. Andy smiled again.

“Hey, you think you’re the only one with a brain? The technicians have checked the array at Chicksands in England. Besides, this is integrated output. Our Menwith Hill station in England is combining data from the stationary radio interception array with the Trumpet satellites. They couldn’t all be malfunctioning,” Andy said. Thorpe adjusted his glasses.

“But that’s incredible. What on earth can block
all
radio communications? That’s awesome! Only a nuke can do that, and I sure as hell would have heard about nukes going off at regular intervals,” Thorpe said as he grabbed the mouse from Andy’s hand and replayed the log file. Thorpe watched as the networks collapsed and then returned to life. The landline phone network continued to work as did the single computer network monitored through its modem outlet, but those were the only networks that survived while every radio network in the area was failing.

“What on earth are we looking for in that area, anyway?” Thorpe asked. Andy smiled.

“I can’t tell you that. Let’s just say we were investigating some smuggling on the Egyptian-Libyan border,” Andy said. Thorpe yawned.

“Tired, aren’t you? It is hard coming to work at 11 a.m., isn’t it?” Andy sneered.

“Shut up, I am trying to have a life,” Thorpe said.

“You have a life? Since when? Lurking in social networking websites doesn’t count! Anyway, I’m glad I got your interest up,” Andy said.

“You sure did. Is anybody looking into it?” Thorpe asked.

“Nope. I told my boss, but he said that it doesn’t interest us and doesn’t interfere with our current operations. We’re now looking into that Russian thing and Libya has been deemed low priority,” Andy said. Thorpe grimaced.

“Typical agency response. Well, thanks for showing me this,” Thorpe said.

“Any time, flyboy,” Andy said.

Thorpe walked back to his cubicle.

                                                            ***

Thorpe sat down on his chair, thought for a moment and went to retrieve one of his two Coke cans. He opened it and sat in front of his computer again. He rubbed his eyes. He opened the file explorer on his computer and browsed the folder named ‘Iraq.’ He opened a thermal satellite image of a mountainous area, zoomed in and started to traverse it slowly, marking suspicious regions for a more detailed check later.

After several minutes, Thorpe stopped. He took one of his dinosaurs, a small green Tyrannosaurus Rex, and started moving it slowly on his desk. The small plastic creature walked across the desk, reached the computer mouse and attacked it savagely. The mouse, however, sent its cord around the dinosaur’s neck. The dinosaur managed to evade the first coils flying through the air, but it was finally caught, strangled and promptly returned to its place next to all the other dinosaurs.

Thorpe looked at the satellite image on his wide screen. He took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes again. He took a sip from his Coke.

“I hate Fridays!” He murmured. He put his glasses back on and closed the satellite image still displayed on his screen.

“Work will wait. I’m sick and tired of looking at Iraq’s deserts. Let’s see what Andy’s talking about.” He searched the agency’s network and found a computer called ‘Echelon Main,’ but after clicking it a password screen popped up.

“Let's see if that idiot Dmitry ever changes his password.” He typed ‘M62Rouganov’ for the user name and looked up the password from an encrypted file on his own computer. ‘@a!984.’ It worked. Thorpe opened a folder labeled ‘Integrated Echelon Outputs.’ There were several directories with transcripts inside, but Thorpe ignored them. He opened up ‘Integrated Network Surveillance.’ There were thousands of files, each from a specific area and date. He selected all of the files and copied them to a folder on his computer. The computer network icon on his system tray lit up while the files were being copied. He leaned back casually and looked at the row of cubicles next to his. Nobody was coming his way. Just in case, he called up the Iraq satellite image again to cover the file copying.

It took a few minutes to copy all the files to his computer. He made sure the total size of the files he copied to his computer was the same as that on the Echelon computer and then cut the connection. He opened the Trailmapper application and fed it one of the copied files. The Trailmapper showed him the various communication networks monitored in South America. Thorpe moved the time slider and several networks died as their operators switched their radios off. The file was dated six months ago.

“Well, let’s find the area Andy showed me”.” Thorpe pushed the ‘Select’ button in the application and smiled. Finding the area in the logs he copied should be easy.

He thought for a moment and wrote a query.

‘Select networks from File * Which Downtime > 10 minutes.’ He pressed the ‘Run Query’ button and a list of hundreds of networks began to appear on his screen as the Trailmapper application searched the log files for networks complying with the query. He tried running another query, adding date sorting, but the date sorting wasn’t much help.

“Doesn’t anybody manage to keep his network up? How is an honest analyst supposed to work like this? Wait. Andy said that all the radio networks in the area died for half an hour. Let's try this.” Thorpe typed a new query, adding a specified time window of thirty minutes. Once again, there were too many results.

Thorpe drummed his fingers on his desk. The dinosaurs were walked back and forth. A fierce Stegosaurus managed to fend off a vicious attack from the bright green Tyrannosaurus. Thorpe removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He was about to put them back on when he saw a smudge on the left lens. Thorpe got up, cursing. He locked up his workstation and traversed the length of the cubicles. He carefully washed his glasses, using soap and tissue to wipe them clean. Thorpe lifted up his glasses to look through them at the neon light, making sure that the smudge had disappeared.

He returned to his cubicle and took another sip from his Coke. He made a face and threw the can into the trashcan. The Coke was warm.

“Okay, okay, one step at a time. Trumpet satellites and listening stations intercept every radio, microwave, phone, cellular, satellite communication, and computer transmission they can. The intercepts are run through voice recognition software and the transcripts are stored in the Echelon mainframe for analysis. The network information is also stored to track and pinpoint location and type. All I need to do is write the right query. That shouldn’t be too difficult.”

Thorpe rubbed his hands together and looked at the query he had typed earlier and scrolled up and down. There were tens of thousands of networks that had gone down for more than thirty minutes. Thorpe rubbed his cheeks then suddenly snapped his fingers and grinned. He ran a new query that returned geographic locations instead of networks. Sure enough, a list of locations now flooded the screen.

“Okay, now to sort by area. Since every radio communication network died within the area Andy showed me -” Thorpe typed another query and this time an orderly list of networks appeared. Every network was within the area around Al Jaghbub, Libya.         

“Yahoo!” Thorpe shouted, raising his arms.

“Shut up over there! People are trying to work!” came the call from a distant cubicle.

Thorpe rolled his chair to the edge of his cubicle and peered out.

“Does your boss know about it? This is the Agency. Work is against regulations!” Thorpe called back.

“Since when have you become familiar with the Agency’s regulations?” a female voice shouted back. Thorpe grinned and rolled back to his computer.

“Okay, now what? Let’s look at a log file.” Thorpe watched the radio networks in the Al Jaghbub region die out and come back on forty minutes later. Thorpe played the log file several times.