I, Judas the 5th Gospel (6 page)

The last word and the red envelope drew a reaction from Hyland. She had been told it might come some day, but she had never really believed it would. She took a few deep breaths. Then she grabbed the old text off the table where she had been working and tucked it into her bag.

“Arabic?” The Israeli soldier inquired, getting a glance at the leather-bound book.

“Aramaic. Seventh century.”

“You’re a historian?”

Hyland’s mind was still on the implication of the envelope. “Yes. And archeologist.”

“What were you looking for here?”

“Ever hear of the Fifth Gospel?”

“That’s New Testament, right?”

“Yes.”

“Not my religion,” the lieutenant said. He glanced at the ancient text in her arms “Are you an expert on the seventh century?” the soldier asked as they walked up the stone stairs out of the monasteries basement.

“No. It’s a historical text referring to an earlier time. It mentions the Fifth Gospel. My area of interest is the person who is supposed to have written that particular Gospel.” She could hear the sound of an idling helicopter waiting for them.

“And who might that be?”

“Judas Iscariot.”

“Him, I’ve heard of,” the lieutenant said as they exited the building.

New York City

“The Mission will be destroyed,” Thornton announced. “I’ve got Central Command out of Afghanistan moving the military forces that will be needed.”

Brunswick nodded in satisfaction, but there was no reaction from Pierce. Each had their own offices in this building from which they could control their empires. Brunswick had called the other two in for an update, of which the plan for the Brotherhood’s array on the island of Moheli in the country of Comoros was only the first part. He turned to Thornton.

“What are the options regarding the Intruder?”

“The problem is one of time,” Thornton said.

“It always is,” Pierce said.

“Scientists at Lawrence Livermore, which I own” He gave a sharp glance toward Pierce. “ave been studying the issue of comet and asteroid strikes for quite a while. Especially since ninety-four, when the comet Shoemaker-Levy hit Jupiter producing fireballs that we could see here on Earth.

“There are only two options. Vaporize it or divert it. The first is more difficult than people realize. You can’t just lob a nuke at it. Comets and asteroids, whichever this is, are very fragile. Yes, the explosion would break the object apart, but it wouldn’t vaporize it. In fact, it would simply break down one really big threat into a lot of smaller, but equally deadly threats. Instead of one major impact, we’d end up with dozens of smaller impacts that in sum would equal the single impact, but over a wider area of the planet’s surface.”

Pierce glanced at some notes inside a binder. “A proposal has been floating for several years at Livermore called the cookie cutter approach. A lattice of wires and tungsten bullets—” he paused and sighed. “There’s no point talking about something that can’t be done in the next three days.”

“What
can
be done in the next few days?” Brunswick asked.

“Divert the Intruder via standoff thermo-nuclear bursts,” Thornton said. “It’s the only option given how close this thing is and how little time we have. We send a nuke up and have it explode in the vacuum of space some distance away from the Intruder. The heat from the radiation vaporizes one side of the object. Given Newton’s Third Law of Motion, every action must have an equal and opposite reaction, the asteroid should be pushed in the opposite direction from the vaporization. The standoff would keep the Intruder from breaking into smaller pieces, and give it what my people call a ‘gentle push-off.’ Because the Intruder is coming so fast and is so close, one blast won’t do it. We’ll need a sequence of blasts, one after another, each one slightly altering the Intruder’s path until it’s angled enough to bounce off the upper atmosphere.”

“How many?” Brunswick asked.

“Twenty, at least,” Thornton answered. That brought a moment of silence as all three considered the logistics involved.

“Are the assets available?” Pierce asked. “The lift capability that can be launched that quickly? I know we have enough nukes.”

“The United States has six Atlas five and four Delta four launch vehicles that can be used. The Russians have a variety of launch vehicles. NASA is still trying to get the exact number that are in working condition, but best guess right now is about ten working among their Soyuz, Zenit and Proton lifters.”

“Twenty.” Pierce did the math.

Thornton shook his. “And that’s if the numbers are right for the Russians. Their space fleet is in pretty bad shape. We doubt they can get ten off the ground in twenty-four hours, which is the limit for our launch window if we’re to catch the Intruder far enough out to make a difference.”

“So we need at least an additional five, if not more, for a little margin,” Brunswick said. “India has four GSLV—Geosynchronous Satellites Launch Vehicles—available and ready. The European Space Agency has three Ariane Five’s it says it can have ready.”

“So that’s twenty-eight, giving us room for the Russians and possible failures,” Brunswick said.

Thornton nodded. “Yes, I think we can get the launch platforms needed. But,“ he paused. “Contrary to what our companion said.” He glanced at Pierce. “The nukes are the problem.”

Pierce shook his head as he realized what the issue was. “We’d have to give India the four nuclear warheads.”

Thornton nodded. “We know India has plenty of nuclear weapons. Our best guess is somewhere between eighty and a hundred warheads. However, they refuse to part with any of them for this. They feel doing so would make them vulnerable to Pakistan.”

Pierce leaned forward. “The world faces annihilation and they’re still worried about their petty border differences? Over terrain only a goat could live in anyway?”

“You can argue about it all you want,” Thornton said, “but it’s a real problem. Not only are the Indians insisting we give them the four nuclear warheads, there’s the issue of what happens when Pakistan realizes we did it.”

“Not an issue,” Brunswick said succinctly. “Let’s get this straight, gentlemen. We just decided to kill a bunch of people at the Mission. Yes, we’re doing it by using the US Military and through cut-outs, but the job is being put together fast and there will be loose ends. It will eventually be tracked back to us. But you know what? I don’t give a damn. Because reality dictates these things are the least of our problems. This Intruder is going to destroy Earth in less than three days. If we fail, then none of this matters. If we succeed, then we’re the saviors of mankind. There is no third option or path to worry about.” He looked at Thornton. “Pressure our people on the NSC to convince the President to send the nukes to India. Let’s get this thing rolling.”

“And if diverting it doesn’t work?” Pierce asked.

“Then it will be destroyed with the Final Option,” Brunswick said. “As it enters the atmosphere, every ICBM we have, along with the Russians’, British, and French, will be fired from every launch platform.”

“You just said that wouldn’t work,” Pierce pointed out. “It would just give us multiple strikes instead of one large strike, but the cumulative effect would be the same.”

“It’s better than doing nothing,” Brunswick said. “We’d rather go down fighting back with everything we can.”

Afghanistan: The Commando

Cold wind whistled through the peaks carrying blinding snow with it. Captain Gates sat on top of his rucksack as still as the scant rocks he’d scavenged to build the small shelter two weeks ago. Mixed in with the wind, he could hear the rattle in the breathing of Sergeant Mumphries, the man with whom he’d shared this sparse location for fifteen days. They were located on the steep side of a mountain at twelve thousand feet, and it was approximately an hour before midnight.

Spotting something moving in the distance through intermittent breaks in the snow, Gates put down the night vision goggles with which he’d been observing the mountain trail they were above. In their place, he picked up a bulky .50 caliber Barrett 82A1 sniper rifle. The mountain straddled the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and according to his global positioning receiver, they were less than fifty meters away from being in the wrong country. Actually, Afghanistan wasn’t exactly the right country either. None of the other men on Gates’ team were happy to be here. The twelve men of his A-Team were deployed in six teams of two along passes on the border. It was a nasty place, and operating in the high mountains was not only difficult but dangerous. And not just because the Taliban and the various tribes that used these trails held no love for Americans, but also the altitude and weather, as Mumphries’ cough indicated.

Gates pressed his cheek against the stock of the sniper rifle, his shooting eye closed and resting on the rubber, his other eye open. It was a position he could hold for a very long time. He couldn’t see anything through the snow as the wind picked up once more. He closed his non-shooting eye as he turned on the thermal sight bolted on top of the rifle. He slowly opened his left eye and blinked, as it was flooded with a spectrum of colors. Ignoring the cold snow, the sight picked up heat images. He could see six red figures moving up the trail.

Gates wrapped his left hand around the stock, forefinger inside the trigger guard. The heavy barrel was supported by a bipod. His right hand was on the scope, adjusting the sensitivity. He’d zeroed in the thermal sight just before infiltration. He’d fired the weapon in many different situations so he knew how the bullet would perform with the drop in altitude to the trail below. His nostrils flared as he sniffed. The wind would have to be taken into account. And the altitude. The air was slightly thinner at this height, and it did make a tiny difference in trajectory.

The gun was almost six feet long and weighed over thirty pounds. Thirty-two point five pounds without bullets to be exact. He had the number memorized the way he used to have verses from the Bible memorized. A ten round box magazine was fitted into the receiver, holding fifty caliber—half inch in diameter, over six inches long shells. The fifty caliber round had been invented by Browning during the First World War to be used as an anti-tank round.

The weapon was accurate out to two thousand meters, and effective out to seventy-five hundred meters (or more than four miles). In military jargon, “accurate” meant he could hit a target with a large degree of success; “effective” meant the odds of hitting the target decreased as the distance increased, but if the round did hit, it would do the job. The bullet carried such mass that it could penetrate an inch of steel. At two kilometers, or roughly just under a mile and a half, the round carried more energy than a .44 Magnum at point blank range.

There were only two groups of people who would be on these trails: Taliban or smugglers. The former were legitimate targets and Gates had free fire orders on them. The latter were also targets because they supplied the Taliban with weapons and ammunition. However, he didn’t have free fire authorization for them. But who was to know here? And often smugglers
were
Taliban.

Gates squinted. The thermal gave him the rough outline of the figures. They were walking relatively upright, which meant they didn’t have heavy packs on their backs. From the position of their arms he could tell they all had weapons in their hands. To Gates that was enough identification. They were Taliban, crossing back into Afghanistan from their safe havens in Pakistan, on their way to attack and harass the peacekeepers who were trying to build a country out of the mess that decades of war and revolution had produced in Afghanistan.

Gates removed his finger from the trigger and turned as Mumphries breathing turned into a hacking, drawn out cough. The sergeant rolled to his side, body in the fetal position, trying to expel the fluid filling his lungs. His hands were tight against his chest, and Gates could see the silver cross clutched in one of the sergeant’s gloved hands.

“Resupply chopper will be here today,” Gates told Mumphries. “We’ll get you out.”

Mumphries struggled to a sitting position, pulling the sleeping bag tighter around his shaking body. He squinted as he peered out the narrow opening. “I ain’t stupid, Captain. They’re not flying in this, just like they haven’t flown in the last three days.”

“I sent in a priority medevac,” Gates said.

Mumphries coughed, then spit out a gob of yellowish liquid. “It ain’t that they don’t want to fly, Captain. They can’t. Not in this weather. Especially not at night. You know that. Don’t bullshit me.” He finally saw the gun in Gates’ hands. “You got targets?”

“Six.”

“Take care of business, sir.”

Gates ran a gloved hand across the stubble on his chin. His skin was dark from the fierce rays of the sun at this altitude, and blistered from the cold. He was a lean man of average height, his body encased in a heavy Gore-Tex parka and outer pants of the same material. His hair was prematurely gray, making most who met him assume he was ten years older than he actually was.

They’d snuck in here just over two weeks ago on a Special Operation Chinook flown by the Nightstalkers of Task Force-160. Getting in had been hard, and they’d known getting out would be just as difficult. There was no place to land, so the pilots had put the rear of the helicopter toward the steep mountainside, the massive blades of the rear rotor mere feet from biting rock, and lowered the back ramp. Gates and Mumphries had tossed their supplies onto the four-foot-wide ledge they’d chosen as their new home, then jumped off the ramp and watched the chopper fly away to the north. The only way on or off the ledge was by helicopter, as there was a sheer drop directly below them and the ledge only extended about five meters in either direction before disappearing.