Dragon Over Washington (The Third War Of The Bir Nibaru Gods) (8 page)

“Yes, sir. Err -” Tom said.

“What? Speak up, boy!”

“They say the storm front is concentrated right above us. The sky’s clear over Endicott, Binghampton and Ithaca.”

Hardy’s eyes narrowed. Daylight had completely disappeared and a strange kind of gray light filled the town. There was tension in the air and the world was holding its breath, waiting. Hardy saw a few children outside, gawking at the black cloud base hovering over the town like an impenetrable dome. Two women ran out, grabbed the children and dragged them inside, casting quick glances at the sky.

Hardy watched as the last few cars on Main Street left Owego hurriedly, speeding out towards Highway 17. The trees on the sidewalk were now completely still, though they had moved gently in a weak breeze just a moment ago. People closed the shutters on their windows and locked their doors. The heavy, stifling feeling intensified. The temperature was dropping rapidly.

“Tom!”

The deputy had managed to retreat out of sight. Tom sighed and approached the sheriff yet again. The sheriff hesitated, something he never did. He took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at the black cloud dome, descending rapidly, as if about to crush them into pulp. It had already swallowed the top of Beacher Hill, just outside of town.

“Get Chris on the horn. Tell him to head for cover.”

“Cover?”

“Tell them to get a roof over their heads.”

“Yes, sir.” Tom hurried away. Hardy heard him pick up the police department’s radio.

“Car 3, Car 3. Please respond.” Tom paused. There was nothing but static on the radio. “Car 3, Car 3. Please respond. Come on, Chris, I know you’re there. Pick up the goddamned mike!” Again, there was nothing but static.

“Chris! The sheriff says to stop patrolling and head for cover, anything with a roof on. Repeat, stop the patrol -” Tom’s voice was drowned by a huge booming sound.

Tom ducked instinctively, taking cover behind his desk. It was an incredibly loud thunderclap. Tom rose slowly. Hardy had remained standing in front of the window. Another thunderclap exploded, shaking the large glass window, cracking it. Tom grabbed his desk convulsively. The next boom shook the entire building. Tom ducked behind his desk again, watching his coffee mug fall to the floor and shatter. More thunderclaps followed while Tom huddled on the floor, his arms over his head.

Eventually, the mind-numbing barrage stopped. Tom stood up uncertainly, opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water. Sheriff Hardy watched the large front windowpane of Susie’s Diner crash to the sidewalk, filling the pavement with glass shards. His eyes followed a small dust devil as it crossed the street and picked up a newspaper, making it fly like a strange fluttering bird. Tom walked over on unsteady feet and joined Hardy near the station’s window, the pipe Hardy held in his hand for once ignored. The sheriff was looking up at the black clouds above.

The sheriff held his breath. The clouds were now moving restlessly, spinning and churning. A long, gyrating funnel was forming from the black, boiling dome hovering above the city. Then another followed, and then another. A roaring noise filled the town as several twisters touched down simultaneously. Hardy saw one wildly rotating funnel touch down somewhere near Evergreen Cemetery while another extended itself towards Marvin Park. Tom ran towards his desk. He turned just in time to see Hardy jerk in terror and move away from the window.

A black tornado had just touched down on Main Street. Hardy cursed silently as the dark monster sucked up and spit out a large pickup truck throwing it like a toy. The black, whirling giant, now surrounded by a circling mass of debris, lightly touched a house down the street, causing the sloping roof to disintegrate instantly. There was a rushing sound, making as much noise as seven freight trains, shaking the police station.

The tornado moved westwards towards Academy Street and Hardy cautiously approached the window once again. He counted five powerful black funnels moving over his town. Finally, they rose up, a giant five-fingered hand drawing away. A moment later, the roaring sound subsided and stopped, leaving ripped street signs, torn tree branches and the debris of everything that had not been bolted down scattered all over the street. The ravaged town looked as if it had gone through a war.

Tom looked at the house the tornado touched on Main Street. He cleared his throat twice before he could speak.

“We’ve - there’s - we’ve got to help them! We’ve got to help them!” Tom moved away towards the door, but a gnarled hand grabbed his arm. Tom looked back with tear-filled eyes.

“But, but. What should we -”

“No.”

Tom opened his mouth again, but before he could speak, the Sheriff, taking cover, pulled him down. The lights in the station dimmed and then a brilliant flash from outside flooded the station with light. Hardy, his hand shading his eyes, watched a lightning bolt streak down into town. He couldn’t see where it hit, though he guessed somewhere near the train station.

Another bolt followed, and then another, the flashes of blue-white light filling the town with an unearthly brilliance. A streetlamp was struck and exploded, leaving a melted stump of iron in its place. Several bolts hit the lightning rods on Courtbridge, filling the large metal-and-wood bridge with brilliant sparks. A fire had started at the Apalachin School.

A few moments later, the vengeful bolts stopped stabbing the town. Hardy saw occasional flashes of white and blue light inside the clouds above, but they gradually died down as well. Plumes of smoke curled up from the places where the lightning had caused fires. The smoke of the fires merged with the black cloud dome in the sky.

Hardy stood up, still holding his forgotten pipe in his hand. Tom stood beside him, both of them looking out in silence.

“- station - we - have you seen - to do -” Tom jumped at the voice coming from the station’s radio and ran over to it.

“Car 3? Chris? Can you hear me? Chris?” Tom shouted into the mike. The static noise receded. Hardy watched as a single drop of water fell on the window. His eyes followed it as it slid down. A moment later a torrential downpour washed over the debris in the street.

“Tom!”

“Sir?”

“Call the Tioga County Fire Department. Call State Police. Call Emergency Services in Newark Valley and Endicott. Get everyone down here,” Hardy barked.

Hardy looked down in mild surprise at the pipe still clutched in his hand. He lifted it up and frowned. It had gone out. He let his hand drop and looked outside again.

“Tom, get me the Mayor.”

***

Hardy stood outside the police station. He saw a few people walking around aimlessly, gaping openmouthed at the devastation the storm had caused. One woman was crying, looking at the remains of her grocery shop. A man stood near his car, trying to understand how it could have ended up upside down on the sidewalk. An elderly man walked across the street, holding his crumpled hat in both hands and staring around him with unbelieving eyes. Some of the town’s inhabitants opened their window shutters a tiny crack and peeked outside, their faces ghostly white.

A fallen streetlight hissed and spat sparks. The rain had stopped not long after it had begun, but rivulets of water still ran everywhere. Hardy looked up at the heavy, black cloud cover that still blanketed the town. It seemed the storm it had launched hadn’t even begun to drain its strength. Their troubles seemed far from over.

The tough sheriff had never experienced anything like this. The town had been ravaged in less than five minutes, and now everything was still and quiet, the town filled with a hazy, source-less light. The sharp smell of ozone was overpowering, and the air was heavy and stifling, pressing down on the town that huddled in fright, terrified of the sky above it.

A radio receiver was on not far away from Hardy, its transmission crystal clear in the deathly silent street.

“A freak thunderstorm broke out over the Town of Owego, folks. Strong winds and lightning strikes caused some damage and we don’t know how many people were hurt. If you need help, call Emergency Services at 687-8467, but we are told the lines are swamped so hang in there! Better wait a few days if you wanna visit Owego, people! Roads in and out of town are still hazardous. Our meteorologist says that storm fronts like that are very rare. This is why we have weathermen. They tell us what weather we were having yesterday and they are always one hundred percent right! No offense, Jerry! Well, have I got the right tune for you, Owego! Stay tuned, this is WMRV, 105.7 on your FM dial.”

A Sheryl Crow song, ‘All I Wanna Do,’ came next.

“Sheriff. Sheriff. Look! The cavalry has arrived. Help is here!” Tom ran out to Hardy and pointed north towards Highway 38.

The young deputy waved at the approaching convoy energetically, but Hardy stood still. A moment later Tom stood still as well, his smile gradually fading. Not a single emergency vehicle or police light could be seen among the long convoy of vehicles moving through the mist that still enveloped Owego. The vehicles stopped and their occupants started getting out of the cars. Hardy’s eyes were glued to the hood of the car closest to him. A crude symbol had been etched deeply into the metal, maybe with a blowtorch: an upside-down triangle with eyes, curving horns reaching all the way to the windshield.

Day 8 after Earth Barrier Breach.

Fort Meade, Maryland, United States. Monday, 08:04.       

Thorpe sat in his cubicle, his legs on the table. His Diet Coke can pyramid was demolished, empty cans strewn all over the floor. He chewed on a plastic pen and drummed on his desk. Then Thorpe leaned back casually in his chair, looking at the other cubicles. Nobody was outside his or her cubicle and nobody was coming his way. He turned off his smartphone’s voice alert, put it carefully in its protective case in his pocket and stretched his fingers.

He grinned and switched from the satellite images of Iraq he was supposed to be scanning to the Trailmapper application that was playing several sequences repeatedly. The radio network trees were dying and then coming back online.

Thorpe looked at a world map of the world he had hung on his cubicle’s wall two days ago. There were four pins stuck into the map. One was in Libya, one was in the ocean close to the eastern shore of the United States, the third was in Colorado, and the fourth was in Russia. He picked up a dinosaur absentmindedly but then put it back down. His gaze moved from the screen of his computer to the map.

“Okay. The game is on. I’ve checked with the metrological department. No sun-flare activity. The technicians swear that everything is working perfectly, that the reception satellites and ground stations have all been checked. So what’s left? Is somebody jamming the signals? How? How can anybody jam radio transmissions without his own jamming signal being detected?” Thorpe scratched his head.

The green tyrannosaur looked at the Trailmapper application as well, but didn’t come up with any new ideas. The plastic predator vented its anger on a peaceful herbivore, attacking it from behind.

“Wait. Andy might have something new. He did say he’s listening in on the Russian exercise in the Urals.” Thorpe got up.

He walked through the agency’s long corridors and entered Andy’s cubicle. Andy wasn’t in, though his jacket was hanging on the coat hanger. Thorpe sat down cheerfully and his plastic dinosaur walked around on Andy’s desk, somehow managing to scatter two unbound documents. The phone rang. He looked around once, cleared his throat and picked up the handset.

“You have reached Andrew Pearsons’ office. Please leave a message after -” Thorpe said in a deep voice, but he was cut off before he could finish. He listened. “How did you know it was me?” he whined. “Molly, come on. I did a perfect impersonation.” Thorpe listened while trying to unlock Andy’s workstation.

“Department meeting? When? At oh seven hundred hours? Is that some kind of time? When is that? My watch only starts at eleven,” Thorpe said. He tried several passwords, but none of them worked. Suddenly he froze.

“The Man noticed I wasn’t there?” Thorpe swallowed. “You didn’t cover for me? I don’t like you any more. I’m going to find another secretary to pester,” Thorpe said, trying to sound hurt.

Thorpe’s eyes roamed the spotless desk and then suddenly he sat up straight. “He wants to see me?” The freckles on his face became more pronounced as he paled. “Molly, you’ve got to help me out. I’m a nervous wreck for days after seeing him, totally. Just forget to set the meeting. I’ll make it worth your while. I’ll mail you a joke every half hour,” Thorpe said, some of the color returning to his face.

There was a small pause.

“Okay, in that case I’ll mail you a joke every half hour if you don’t forget to set up the meeting with him,” Thorpe said, grinning. He leaned back and put his feet on the table, his sneakers resting on a report. A moment later he choked and straightened up again.

“You’ll do what? You’ll talk to Shannon? On my behalf? How do you know I have a crush on her?” Thorpe demanded. He grimaced a moment later. “And you believed Andy? Just wait till I get my hands around his neck,” Thorpe growled. He listened a moment.

“Yes, I know you can talk to Shannon. No, I don’t want you to talk to her. I’ll make a pass at her myself. Honest,” Thorpe said. He twirled the phone cord around his finger. “Honest. There’s just one little thing I have to take care of first. I’ll do it this week, I swear,” Thorpe said quickly. A moment later he rolled his eyes. “Molly! This week! She won’t get away!” He looked up and saw Andy enter the cubicle.

“I’ve got to go. Important work has just entered the office. Don’t forget you promised to save me from The Man. I’m counting on you! Bye, Molly.” He hung up. Andy looked at him suspiciously.

“What are you doing here?”

“Why, I’ve come to visit my best friend, of course,” Thorpe said.

He got up, brushed off Andy’s chair a few times and gallantly offered it to Andy. The neatly dressed analyst sat down and stared suspiciously at the red-haired man standing in front of him.

“It’s half past eight. I thought you don’t even wake up till eleven, especially on Mondays,” Andy said, the glint in Thorpe’s eyes making Andy scowl harder.

“Andy, my man, dude, my good buddy. I was just wondering what’s up with that weird Russian exercise,” Thorpe said innocently.

Andy continued scowling at him.

“You know, just healthy curiosity. I’m going over Iraq’s northern desert looking for disguised insurgent camps. I needed a break,” Thorpe said, his fingers crossed behind his back. Andy stared at him for another moment, then leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin.

“Okay, I suppose I can tell you some things. We still don’t have a lot of information, we are just not getting enough radio transmissions. What we do know is that they are sending in a sizeable of force now. The Ural Military District is mobilized, the 71st Motor Rifle Regiment is already engaged, and the 291st Motor Rifle Regiment out of the 42nd Rifle Division is already en route. That’s more than ten thousand troops. Two airborne brigades are inside the area. They’re using a lot of aircraft, mostly attack helicopters for ground support. We also picked up transmissions from three tank battalions out of the 21st Guards Tank Division on their way to the area. It seems easier to pick up radio transmissions outside of the Ural region,” Andy said.

Thorpe suddenly became very busy checking one of his dinosaur’s legs. A moment later he looked up. “So, what’s going on over there?”

Andy hesitated. “Look, we still don’t know enough, but I don’t think it’s an exercise, no matter what those geniuses at Langley say. It’s just too many troops, it’s costing too much. And there’s one other thing.” Andy paused for dramatic effect.

“Yes?” Thorpe said.

“They are evacuating civilians near Kurya. That’s confirmed.”

“So, it’s not an exercise,” Thorpe mused. “There’s no way they’d move civilian populations just for an exercise. That leaves one question. Who are they fighting?”

Andy grimaced. “You’ve hit the nail right on the head. We don’t know.” He raised his hand and extended one finger: “State Department says they don’t know anything. It’s not a Chechnya-like thing, a republic fighting for independence.” He extended a second finger: “CIA doesn’t know anything. No organization has taken responsibility.” He then extended a third finger: “There’s some kind of heavy radio jamming there, we can barely get any interceptions. However, every transmission we get is coming from a Russian unit. No one else is transmitting over there.”

“We did get one interesting interception, the one you heard a few days ago. It baffled Languages and that’s not easy to do. They turned to the Academy for help,” Andy said. He looked at his fingers and then turned to Thorpe. “We’re trying to get some satellite images of the battles, but we haven’t had any success so far. They keep moving too fast. Right now, we don’t have any idea who their enemy is,” Andy sighed and then scowled when he saw Thorpe grin. “What?” he barked.

“There’s nothing like a good mystery to solve!” Thorpe’s grin became wider, but he took a step away when he saw Andy’s expression darken.

“Well, I can see you’re like, a very busy man, so I’ll be going back to my Iraqi images now. Bye!” Thorpe left Andy’s cubicle. Andy shook his head and turned back to his desk.

“Hey! You messed up my table!” Andy screeched an instant later.

***

Thorpe was back in his cubicle. “This sucks. Now I’m in trouble with The Man,” he thought. “Hope Molly can pull something out of her hat. He was already pretty irritated last time we talked. This time he might even yell.” Thorpe shivered and shook his head, trying to clear away black clouds. Thorpe looked up at the large map on his wall and brightened.

“Anyway, back to the game. We have an unknown enemy in Russia and four Radio Blanket sites. That’s two points for the bad guys. I have - hmm - well, nothing. That sucks. That’s no way to win games.” Thorpe got up and walked the length of the corridor once, passing the other cubicles on his way. Then he returned to his cubicle and sat down, staring at the map on his wall.

“What’s going on with those Radio Blankets?”

Thorpe switched to the Trailmapper application again and watched carefully for updated logs. He matched dates, blanket time lengths and locations.

“It’s all different,” Thorpe complained. “The Colorado Blanket was a huge one, but there was only one, eight days ago. The Russian Blanket keeps appearing sporadically and the Libyan Blanket was sporadic at first, but now it appears every night, for twenty minutes, like clockwork.”

Thorpe looked at the results. It didn’t make much sense.

“Let’s look at the Colorado Blanket again.” Thorpe brought it up and searched for downed networks. And then he widened his search for things he hadn’t looked at before.

“Wow. The Colorado Blanket brought down mobile networks, land-line phones, everything. Even Internet land lines.” Thorpe shuddered, glancing at his smartphone, checking the icon telling him whether he had any notifications on his social networking website or his email. “How could they survive without Internet? Lucky for them it was only for twelve hours.”

Thorpe switched for the Libyan Blanket. “That’s interesting. For the last two days it’s getting stronger, bringing down more networks.”

Thorpe kept searching in the Trailmapper application, but he could find nothing new. He got bored.

“Let’s see whatever there is to see at the Libyan and Colorado sites. Maybe something will turn out - a power station or something else that creates strong electromagnetic fields. Maybe they hid a jammer inside a large building or something.”

He rubbed his hands and swiveled towards his PC, unlocked it and opened the NSA intranet portal. Thorpe ignored the NSA director’s ‘Words for the Month’ message displayed prominently and dived into the intelligence section. The NSA routinely buys Earth coverage images from various commercial organizations. Although these organizations use satellites with a much lower resolution than the specialized USA reconnaissance ones, their numbers and their orbits enables the NSA to maintain almost complete coverage of most of the regions of the world.

Thorpe selected the SPOT satellite intranet portal. These images were catalogued by coordinates and Thorpe looked up his notes and entered the coordinates for Colorado White River National Forest, 40 degrees 07 minutes north, 107 degrees 03 minutes west. These were exactly the coordinates that the Trailmapper software had produced: the center of the Radio Blanket effect.

The SPOT satellite’s camera produced images two thousand pixels wide, covering a seven-mile square area. The images were taken about four months ago, and Thorpe looked at them carefully but nothing out of the ordinary appeared on them. The mountainous area was covered in trees and vegetation clinging everywhere the rocks permitted. Occasional flat green surfaces indicated the locations of ranches. There were few roads through the area and only several small communities, the biggest in the area being Yampa town.

Thorpe enlarged the images to thirty feet, enough to enable him to spot vehicles, though not recognize the type. He traversed the images carefully and after some intensive browsing, leaned back in his seat and wiped his brow. Nothing. He saw nothing that did not belong in the Rocky Mountains. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Thorpe looked at images corresponding to his Libyan coordinates. He searched along the road shown on the images; he searched in Al Jaghbub itself for any buildings big enough to house something that could generate a jamming signal, or anything sporting a large transmission antenna of any kind; he searched through the desert trying to make out vehicles or camouflaged buildings. Again, there was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to explain the cause of the jamming. He even tried to search for makeshift roads or vehicle trails leading into the desert, but the resolution of the images was much too low for that. Nothing.

Thorpe leaned back and took off his glasses. He looked at his dinosaurs and made every one of them fall onto his desk. He rubbed his eyes. Finally, he looked up the coordinates of the phenomenon in the ocean. He couldn’t find any images that corresponded to these. Thorpe blinked, not understanding. Then he snarled.

“Cheap, rotten, skinflint bureaucrats! They didn’t buy the images over the ocean!” Thorpe said, fuming.

A moment later he relaxed and chuckled.

“Well, it’s the ocean. What’s there to see?” Thorpe sighed and looked at his computer’s watch and whistled. It was half past five. Time flies when you’re having fun. He locked his workstation, picked up his backpack and left.

He walked the long corridors without really seeing them, moved into the administrative section of the building and approached the entrance. A woman hailed him, but he paid her no attention. Finally, he looked up from the floor and found himself at the security checkpoint at the entrance to the building. Big green eyes looked into his. Thorpe was painfully aware of soft, slightly open unpainted lips and a long curving neck, made more entrancing by a black suit. He stood there, unable to move, staring into Shannon’s eyes. Finally, he blinked. She was talking to him.