The Alignment Ingress (4 page)

Except maybe monsters.

While he could laugh at poor Garamba’s superstitions, he did harbor his own suspicions about unseen threats. Exotic matter portals—even the old, weak ones, or maybe especially the old, weak ones—not only drew artists, scientists and shamans of different stripes, but they also drew guardians, predators and vultures. As he had discovered in Afghanistan, XM portals have their own ecologies, and they are sometimes extremely dangerous.

So far this morning he’d counted two sets of eyes in the lushly vegetated hills surrounding him, and maybe three.

One was Rosier, the agent attached to Niantic project security who had been sent to shadow him—a little spying, a little protection. Hank could give the noob the slip any time he wanted, and the sad thing was that Rosier knew it. Hank was going to have to ditch him, but he’d make it look good. Didn’t want to hurt the kid’s career. Didn’t want to piss off the kid’s boss either. There weren’t a lot of people whom Hank feared, but Niantic’s security chief J. “call me Jay” Phillips was one of them. Phillips was steely, crisp and missing at least one screw, maybe more. Messing with Phillips could get you dead.

His second audience consisted of a pair of local “security agents.” Friends or more likely relatives of Garamba. Hank couldn’t figure out whether they were utterly incompetent, or they wanted him to know he was being watched.

Now there was a third audience. At least he thought there was. That’s what made him nervous. He couldn’t tell. He had to figure it out before he located any portal here.

“Hey, throw up a scrim, Michaels!” he called out to his second assistant.

He wanted it up there partly to block the sun, and partly to block the view from his third observer, forcing him to move to a better vantage point. He watched in a mirror. He saw something move. He’d confirmed somebody was watching, he just didn’t know who it was.

“OK, I want to get two takes. One is for the teaser and one is for the show itself,” he said, keeping up the charade and keeping his eyes open. “Is this structure behind me part of the legendary kingdom of the Queen of Sheba, or is it the remnant of some long-lost civilization we know nothing about? And if this is the kingdom of the Queen of Sheba, why here in the Congo and not Ethiopia or Zimbabwe like so many have claimed? The curious thing about this site is that it seems to stand as alone in history as it does in the heart of Africa.”

Hank paced around, secretly signaling his crew. Dow took his place behind the camera, pretending to adjust it. Michaels positioned another scrim, trying to see if he could get more movement from the watcher.

Dow actually looked like he knew what he was doing with the film equipment. Hank liked it when operatives took their covers seriously. Back in the States, Dow had gone out and made his own videos and posted them on YouTube. He’d even subbed in as a P.A. on a low-budget film. His videos weren’t bad. From the conversation they had on the plane, Hank got the impression that Dow had half a mind to give real filmmaking a shot. More power to him. Covert ops survival skills would be very useful in Hollywood.

Suddenly a cry in the jungle brought him back to the present. It was primal. Something had just done another lap in the great circle of life, and the “something” sounded human.

Hank looked over at Dow. “You actually have that miked?”

“Yup. I got it.”

Hank stepped over as Dow handed him the headphones and rewound back to the scream-blip on the sound chart that he had been capturing as “sound bed” for the documentary with the idea that it could also sell as ambient background stock for films, themed restaurants and home “mind spas.” Dow was big into never letting things go to waste.

Hank listened to the scream. It sounded human, but there was another sound in there too. It may or may not have been human. The jungle was alive. He listened more closely.

Something about the scream sounded like speech. Ordered information. Like it was a word.

Hank passed the earphones to Michaels. “You’re the language guy. Is this a language?”

Michaels listened and nodded. “Chinese,” he said. “Probably Mandarin, but it’s hard to tell with death screams.” Michaels smiled. He was a dark guy.

It made sense to Hank that the third watchers were Chinese nationals. They were here in Africa for the three T’s: titanium, tin and tantalum, and, of course, the maximum C: coltan. These metals were vital to the manufacturing of mobile phones and key military tech, and more than 80 percent of the world’s deposits were here in Africa. In many ways these rare earth minerals were far more valuable than gold.

The dead man was most likely a member of a “disruption group.” It was a catchall term for post-WTO or World Trade Organizations that operated terror, drug and contraband smuggling groups, trading in human trafficking, animal parts or illegally mined minerals. Their mutual interests had merged them into something greater than the sum of their parts. Some masqueraded as private military companies, some advertised themselves as terrorist groups, and some wore a criminal enterprise moustache, but once you kicked over the rock and analyzed the maggots, they were all pretty much the same.

Hank crossed off any local African groups. They take their curses dead seriously here. Nobody was going to hang in the bush watching Hank Johnson make a pilot while they thought a monster was hunting them. Someone or some thing very dangerous had killed the Chinese operative.

And he was going to have to find out what it was.

Hank closed the door to his production van and flipped the lock before pulling both sets of curtains fully closed. He reached into a storage locker and grabbed the handle of a large pelican case, carefully laying it on the small dinette table that took up the front half of the compact trailer. He clicked the latches and scanned the contents: a dozen items each carefully packed in custom-cut foam.

Inside were the components for three quadcopter drones. The batteries and payloads were packed separately from the airframes. Hank was not a newcomer to this kind of hardware. He'd been using low-cost micro drones to recon sites everywhere from Afghanistan to South America. The micro-drones were cheap and could be deployed from a suitcase, unlike their larger and more well-known brethren. With a digital SLR camera onboard, the cheap drones could capture shots over archaeological sites that surpassed the dolly and crane shots of Hollywood.

Back when he had first arrived at the Niantic Project, Hank had been happy to learn that drones were a sort of hobby for science chief Dr. Lynton-Wolfe. Hank later combined Lynton-Wolfe’s innovations in “special” payloads with IQTech battery technology, financed by Montgomery’s DARPA budget. The result was a fleet of custom Niantic drones modified for XM research, site reconnaissance, offensive ops and even counter-drone defense.

For this trip, he had packed three of his favorite unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs.

The first UAV was dual-purpose: Using a fairly traditional quadcopter configuration but with a special carbon fiber airframe, milspec electric power plants, and IQTech’s ultra high-density power packs, it could carry both a gimbal-mounted Canon EOS 4D Mark III, which would do a fine job of collecting HD video footage, and a compact laser target designator. A small forward-facing HD camera and wifi downlink would allow him to see exactly what the UAV was seeing on his Nexus 10 tablet.

Hank had used this bird before. He called it “Establishing Shot”—a play on the film term referencing a wide-angle shot that sets up a scene. It was a good term to be throwing around the set in case somebody was listening in.

The second UAV used the same basic airframe but did not carry a camera for film production work. In fact, it had nothing to do with the world of Hollywood. It carried two very special payloads, one Hank hoped he wouldn't have to use. The first was a heavily modified HK MP7A1 submachine gun firing mechanism, stripped of stock, scope, grip and trigger, leaving only an integral circular-shaped 40-round magazine and a barrel. It was fitted to a target control computer that could lock on targets via either a linked HD video feed or a laser designated target.

Using the drones together, “Establishing Shot” could light up a target with the laser, while this bird—which Hank affectionately called “Long Shot”— could shoot multiple rounds of silenced body armor-penetrating munitions into a target the size of a playing card at up to 50 meters.

The third UAV was “Close Up.” It had no armament or elaborate lenses. It was effectively a flying hand grenade, useful for assassinations. The inner core of the drone was built around eight ounces of explosive. Modeled on the hunter-killer satellites designed for the SDI program, this drone could turn into the closest thing Americans make to a suicide bomber. Hard targets would get a close-up they wouldn't forget, but Hank would lose one of his favorite toys, so he hadn't been eager to try detonating it. Its low cost made it useful for close-in reconnaissance missions where the drone could be lost.

He snapped together the remaining pieces of the drones and checked the battery charge. Then he set them on the table and glanced at his watch. Time for a little site recon.

It wasn’t an optimal environment, with the dense vegetation, vines and enormous spiderwebs, but Hank wanted to know who or what was out there. He powered up “Establishing Shot” and sent it aloft.

After an hour of fly time, Hank couldn’t see anything remotely human in the bush. The drone eventually got stuck in a steel-strength giant web.

Ten minutes later, he went after the drone in the jungle and entered the food chain, which was lingo for any environment where man is not the master. Animal sounds had returned. Cawing birds. Chattering monkeys. Croaking frogs. Moisture dripped from leaf to leaf. Somewhere he heard a snake slither away.

Hank followed the flies and spotted the blood trail on the ground.

He tracked the trail through the dense foliage, carefully pushing away the hanging leaves and vines. Something very dangerous was out here. Dangerous enough to take down a man without a fight, stealthy enough to attack without warning.

Native trackers could follow a man’s movements in the wild as well as Hank could follow a map, but Hank didn’t have that skill set. He had to look carefully to find the blood drops amid the ground cover, while at the same time trying to maintain what was called “total sensory awareness.” He wasn’t good at it. Under any other circumstances, he shouldn’t be out here.

But these weren’t other circumstances.

He had the feeling that he was being watched. He felt a tingling. An energy. He’d felt it before, and not only back at the Niantic Labs at CERN or on the field of battle in Afghanistan. Years ago he experienced the same thing at the Cahokia pyramids in the States, even in Manhattan and L.A. He just hadn’t known what it was until the Niantic Project.

I’m close to a transdimensional XM portal.

Hank didn’t know where it was, and he didn’t want to take a chance of lighting it up until the time was right, but that’s what it was.

And he heard the sound. A low hum. Fuzzy.

He looked around and saw a strange, amorphous shape drifting toward him. More like a shadow or a dissipating waft of smoke than solid matter. He turned to face it, and it stopped. That in itself gave him a jolt. The thing was aware of him, and now he was aware of it. Now he knew exactly what killed the watcher.

Why doesn’t it kill me too?

He remained silent, motionless, waiting.

This thing was not an enemy. He had long suspected the presence of portal guardians, but this seemed to be guarding him. No, it didn’t
seem.
It
was.
But why? And from what?

And then it simply vanished.

Hank stood there for a moment, not sure what to do, and then saw the trail of blood again. As he tracked it, the blood soon turned to a trail of bones and metal bits that ended at a crack in the earth that looked like it might lead to a predator’s den. In an hour there would be no trace of the poor bastard who’d been dragged down to hell. The flesh that hadn’t been devoured by whatever killed the guy would soon be picked clean by the minor mammals, flies and insects.

This rainforest is a full-service recycler.

At least the dead Chinese guy’s gun was still there. So was his phone. Whether he’d been using it as a camera or a GPS, or texting to others, Hank knew there would be a treasure trove of information inside. If he could get into it. Better yet, he’d turn it over to Montgomery for analysis.

He retraced his steps and snagged the drone from the pissed-off spider, which was the size of his hand, then headed back to the trailer. Once inside, he pinged Montgomery and told him to pick up the phone. An hour later, another drone showed up on site, this one designed for autonomous transport. Hank dropped the phone in the payload bay, and it shot up and disappeared over the horizon.

Pretty soon he might have to call on Conrad Yeats too.

For there be monsters here.

NIANTIC LINKS

Niantic protection

Jungle scream

Hank Johnson thesis paper

Meroe

M
ore than forty queens and kings were buried in the South Cemetery, the oldest of the Nubian pyramid sites in Meroe. Because the most honored and visible position in an ancient cemetery was occupied first, with succeeding burials arranged farther and farther away, Conrad Yeats could effectively drive his jeep back through time to the pyramid of King Arkamani-qo, the first ruler on record to be buried at Meroe.

The record, of course, was wrong.

Long before these royals rose and died, one legend said that the Queen of Sheba had built her palace here after her torrid affair with the great King Solomon in Jerusalem. Of course, he and Hank disagreed over whether there was ever any physical relationship between the two royals, let alone a torrid one at that. The Bible said only that she and the Lion of Israel discussed affairs of estate, with the Queen of Sheba gifting Solomon more than four tons of gold in exchange for his great wisdom. But what with all of Solomon’s foreign brides and concubines—documented into the hundreds—Conrad felt comfortable in his speculations about the nature of their relationship. And if the Queen of Sheba took any inspiration away from Solomon’s legendary Temple, then her own palace must have been extraordinary, greater than the ruins of the nearby Temple of Isis.