The Rock (13 page)

"Excuse me." Debra spoke for the first time.

"Yes, dear?" Pencak twisted in her seat.

"You've talked about only five of the six sites. You haven't said anything about the one in Russia. Is there a crater there?"

Pencak stood up. "Ah, yes. Russia. That is the one I've been thinking about ever since Mr. Lamb briefed me. Could you put the overhead with the Russian site on the screen, please?"

Lamb sorted through the slides and then slid the correct one on top of the glass and turned on the power. A map showing the central part of what used to be the USSR was lit up with a circle drawn in the south-center.

Pencak walked up to the screen. "You have narrowed this down to a diameter of what?" she asked Lamb.

"Four hundred kilometers."

She ran her finger along the map, below the top edge of the circle. "The Trans-Siberian Railway runs here along the southern edge of your circle. North of that--stretching for thousands of miles up to above the Arctic Circle--is the Central Siberian Uplands, one of the most least populated and most desolate places on earth. To the south, Mongolia and the Gobi desert."

She looked at Lamb. "I believe I know the exact spot that message was sent to."

"How do you know?" Lamb demanded.

"Because there is only one place out there that makes any sense."

"Where?" Hawkins asked.

Her finger stabbed the screen. "Here. Tunguska."

She nodded at Lamb. "You thought perhaps the Soviet facility at Semipalatinsk?"

Lamb was startled. "No. That's farther to the west."

"Yes." She pointed a few hundred miles to the left of the circle. "Semipalatinsk is where the Soviets used to test high-energy lasers and charged-particle weapons," she explained to the others in the room. "Also, quite a bit of underground nuclear testing went on there. I imagine it is still open for business by the new people in charge. But, no, I believe the message was aimed at Tunguska."

"What's at Tunguska?" Fran was impatient with Pencak's sparring with Lamb.

"It's not so much what is at Tunguska--it's more what happened at Tunguska and what may have been there," Pencak replied cryptically.

"Please tell us," Debra asked.

"This is crazy," Batson said. "I don't think we need to sit here and--"

"We need to explore every possibility," Hawkins quietly interrupted. "If you don't want to listen to it, you can leave."

"I'll listen," Batson grudgingly said.

"Go ahead," Hawkins said to Pencak.

Pencak sat down with a sigh and was quiet for a moment. When she started, her gravelly voice was very low and Fran had to lean forward to hear her over the rumble coming from the mine tent a hundred meters away. "The Trans-Siberian Railroad was completed in 1906. Four thousand miles long, it opened up perhaps the loneliest place on earth. Siberia is half again as big as the United States and in the first decade of this century the population in that area was well below one million people.

"In 1908, on June thirtieth, a little after seven in the morning local time, passengers on the railroad saw something sear across the sky and disappear below the horizon to the north. There was an explosion. Thirty-seven miles from the epicenter, at the trading station called Vanavara--the nearest populated location--the shock wave knocked buildings down and people in the open were dosed with radiation. At the site itself trees were obliterated for miles around and blown outward in a concentric pattern for dozens of miles. Herds of reindeer were blasted.

"In London, five hours after the explosion, instruments picked up the shock wave in the air-that was after it had already traveled twice around the world. They thought nothing much of it until that night, when there was a strange glow, bright red in the eastern sky. For two months afterward the night sky over England--indeed all of Europe--was much brighter than normal.

"Yet no one immediately made the connection with what had happened in Tunguska. The site itself was not formally investigated for twenty years. You have to remember that that was a turbulent time in Russian history. You also have to understand the remoteness of the Siberian tundra. It is the most godforsaken place on Earth. Miles and miles of pine trees growing in permafrost. You can travel for thousands of kilometers without any noticeable change in the terrain or any relief from the monotony. It is horrible!"

Fran was surprised at the rise in Pencak's voice and her strong emotion. "You sound as if you've been there."

"I have. I visited Tunguska in 1965 as part of an international team investigating the site. Although it was fifty-seven years after the explosion, the actual area still had not recovered. You could see the old deadfall blown outward with the new trees struggling to grow among it."

She sighed. "Ah--again they say it was a meteorite that caused the explosion. This time, though-no crater. So they say it exploded in the air instead of in the ground. The ice in the meteor head overheated and caused it to blow apart just before impact.

"Fools." Pencak shook her head. "Any ice would have been gone shortly after entering the atmosphere. Amazing how they will try to jam the data into the solution rather than find the solution that fits the evidence."

"What did you find?" Hawkins asked.

"We found the signs of an air-burst nuclear explosion. I would say the equivalent of a thirty-megaton blast. That is ten times the size of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

"We found traces of the radioactive isotope cesium one thirty-seven in the ring structure of trees on the outskirts of the blast that corresponds to the year of the explosion. We found no sign of a crater. In fact, the trees at the very center of the blast were found still to be standing-the shock wave propagated outward from there, knocking the trees down in concentric rings. It was impossible to do any sort of soundings in the ground with the instruments we had available because of the permafrost.

"But despite all that evidence my colleagues agreed that it was a comet. All the non-Russian scientists, at least. The Russians themselves said nothing. They had their own theories."

"What did they think?" Hawkins asked.

Pencak got up and walked over to the coffee machine and poured herself a cup. Fran caught Hawkins's eye and mouthed, What do you think? to him. In reply Hawkins shrugged and tapped his ear, indicating, Listen.

Taking a sip of her coffee, Pencak continued. "The Russians are a strange people. We look down on their technological and scientific capabilities, but they did quite well for themselves working under an intolerable system that did not promote innovative thinking.

"The Russians have always been very interested in Tunguska--especially in the years since the Great Patriotic War. In 1946, after seeing what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Gregori Kazakov said that the explosion at Tunguska must have been nuclear and suggested that it had been caused by the nuclear engine of a spacecraft exploding. He said that traces of metallic iron found in the area were fragments from the skin of the spaceship. Other metals found there were from the ship's wiring. He based his theory on the fact that a spacecraft exploding in midair would leave no crater and form the effect that was noted in the area.

"In 1959 Professor Felix Zigorski, an aerodynamics expert from the Moscow Aviation Institute, also said the explosion must have been nuclear." She looked over at Lamb. "As you probably know, Felix was the head of the Russian team that went with us to the site in '65. Later on he was one of the men in charge of training their cosmonauts. He continued to claim, until his death four years ago, that there was no doubt but that extraterrestrial spacecraft have been active in the skies over Russia.

"Korkorov, a Russian aircraft designer, introduced a new angle on the Tunguska incident. He examined eyewitness reports of the object that had been moving across the sky and concluded that it had to have been under intelligent control. His calculation based on the reports show it slowed to around point six kilometers per second prior to the explosion, indicating an attempt to perhaps land--a meteorite would have continued to accelerate and been going much faster than that. Also, he laid out the route according to the various accounts and it appears, if the accounts from 1908 are to be believed, that the object actually made a significant course change prior to exploding."

"I'm a little confused," Hawkins said. "What does an explosion in 1908 have to do with these craters that you say are at least five thousand years old?"

Pencak regarded him for a few seconds. "I would say the likelihood that whatever is in the Rock has tried to communicate with Tunguska ties them together. Obviously, they are all part of some sort of alien system. I suppose we will find out what kind of system when we complete the tunnel and come face to face with whatever is down there."

"Unless we communicate with it first," Debra said.

"That's another thing that makes me think we are dealing with aliens," Pencak commented.

"What's another thing?" Hawkins asked, the confusion plain in his voice.

"The frequency the initial transmission from the Rock was sent on. Fourteen twenty megahertz, correct?"

Lamb flipped open a file folder to check. "Right."

"Zigorski investigated material he called 'angel's hair' found at the sites where UFOs were reported in the former Soviet Union. These were metal needles about twenty-one to twenty-three centimeters long, wrapped together in a strange pattern. The needles were extremely thin and usually disintegrated or were blown away shortly after the sighting. Needles twenty-one centimeters in length, if used as antennas, would be broadcasting and receiving on a frequency around fourteen twenty megahertz."

"When and where were these needles found?" Lamb wanted to know.

"Zigorski investigated several reports all over the Soviet Union in the late sixties and early seventies."

"Maybe it was chaff used by their Air Force," Hawkins suggested. "Designed to throw off radar tracking at various frequencies. Maybe the UFO itself was an experimental aircraft. Like our Stealth fighter that was spotted out West for several years before the Air Force went public."

"Possibly," Pencak acknowledged. "I don't know. But I find it very interesting that it is the same frequency as that used by the Rock. Also, angel's hair has also been found at reported UFO sites in the United States."

"So now we have UFOs," Batson commented. "And prehistoric nuclear explosions combined with one in 1908 in Siberia. Come on, people. Let's get real here."

Lamb stood. "All right--that's enough for now. We have a lot of theories but no real answers. I've requested permission for us to transmit to the Rock. I haven't received an answer yet, but if it's a go, I want you people to give me a message to send. It has to be nonthreatening and non-informative. Basically we need to know if we can communicate with it. Is that clear?"

"Clear," Hawkins answered for the team.

TUNGUSKA 

Ayers Rock, Australia

22 DECEMBER 1995, 1030 LOCAL

22 DECEMBER 1995, 0100 ZULU

After Pencak was escorted away by a marine to get some sleep after her long journey from America, the team was left to consider the information and theories she had imparted. Hawkins looked around the room, trying to judge by the expressions where each stood. Levy maintained her wide-eyed, deep-in-thought look. Fran's face intimated nothing. Batson was shaking his head to himself slightly. Lamb was looking at a file folder with a secret cover sheet he'd just been handed by the marine, ignoring everyone.

"Any comments?" Hawkins asked.

As he'd expected, Batson was the first to voice his opinion. "I don't buy it."

"What don't you buy?" Lamb looked up from his papers.

"The conclusion Dr. Pencak has drawn from the available data. To begin with, a lot of her analysis is flawed." Batson walked over to the map on the wall. "She's linking together these sites because of the transmission. Then she's explaining the craters at or near the sites as having been caused by nuclear explosions. But it is just as likely that they were caused by meteors, based on the scientific studies made of each site. I should know that-geology is my field of expertise and I've studied several of those sites."

His finger slid across the map. "Campo del Cielo is estimated to have been formed a good twenty thousand years before Meteor Crater in Arizona. And Ries Basin and the Vredefort Dome complex well before that. We're talking a span of many millennia."

"Thousands of years to us might seem like just a few years to an alien culture," Levy quietly replied.

Batson snorted in irritation. "If you think that way, then you can say any damn thing you want to. If extraterrestrials had built something on Earth so long ago, don't you think we would have had some sort of contact with them before now?"

"Maybe we have," Levy said. "The data on that is incomplete. Certainly there are a multitude of reported sightings of--"

"Hold on." Lamb held up a hand. "Let's not get too far astray and start discussing whether UFO's exist."

"I agree," Batson said. "I think everything we need to know to understand what is going on is here right in front of our noses but we aren't looking at it from the proper perspective. People always have a tendency to make problems much more complicated than they really are."

Fran spoke for the first time. "So what perspective should we take, Don?"

Batson shrugged. "I'm not sure. Let's assume the six locations are connected, but not in the way Dr. Pencak said they were."

"You mean no aliens?" Fran asked. "But who would have put something in the Rock, then? We're back to square one."

"Not really," Lamb interjected. He flipped open one of his ever-present file folders. "I think for the first time we may have a line on who is behind all this."

Hawkins frowned. As usual they hadn't received all the necessary information up-front. "What have you got?"

Lamb gave a thin-lipped smile. "Dr. Pencak visited the former Soviet Union six times. She had a relationship with this Felix Zigorski fellow she mentioned. A relationship that spanned twenty years with quite a bit of communication between the two."

Hawkins couldn't quite imagine Pencak having a "relationship" with anyone-at least not in the way that Lamb's tone of voice indicated. But he had to admit that the Earth bogeyman was a lot more credible than an alien one. "So you're saying this is a setup?"

"It's possible-in fact, likely," Lamb replied.

"Oh, come on, now!" Fran exploded. "Are we going to see the Soviet Union behind every tree? Hell, the country doesn't even exist anymore. Being paranoid is what's gotten us to the crappy state of affairs the world is in right now. Besides, the Rock--whatever is in the Rock-hasn't done anything threatening."

"It took out Voyager 2," Hawkins reminded her.

"All right." Fran ceded the point, then twisted it. "But how could the Russians have destroyed Voyager 2 and why?" She looked at Batson. "I don't agree that we have everything we need to know to figure this out. We need to get inside that chamber in the Rock. And even then I'm not sure we'll know what is going on."

"There's something else," Lamb said.

They all turned and looked as he laid out a large glossy photograph on the tabletop. "This is satellite imagery of Tunguska, taken less than ten hours ago."

They crowded around and peered down. Used to dealing with such enhanced photos Hawkins quickly made sense of what he was seeing. Large tarps were stretched over a piece of land in the middle of the pine trees that filled the photo. Snow covered the trees and earth but not the tarps, indicating they were recent additions. Fresh gouges in the snow showed where heavy equipment had torn new roads through the forest.

"You have thermal on this?" Hawkins asked.

In response Lamb slapped down another photo. In this one the forest was a mass of blue, but the area where the tarps were blazed bright red. "They've got heavy machinery under those tarps working very hard to be so hot," Hawkins explained to the others who were looking at him questioningly.

"Where is that exactly?" Fran asked.

"Dead center of where the Tunguska meteorite was supposed to have exploded." Lamb pointed at the normal-light photo. "If you look closely you can see old deadfall blown outward between some of the trees, just like Pencak described it. Also note the piles of freshly uprooted trees here, here, and here. And the pile of earth and snow here."

He put another photo down and looked at Hawkins. "We caught this at one point. What do you make of it?"

Hawkins leaned over and studied it. He could make out several vehicles-bulldozers, armored personal carriers, and dump trucks-parked around the tarp. Men were crouched on the sides of the vehicles away from the tarp. "They're blasting."

Lamb nodded. "Correct."

Fran was the first to verbalize what the others were realizing. "They've found their Rock!"

"And they're not wasting time digging through the frozen tundra," Batson commented. "They're blasting. They're trying to get to it as quickly as possible."

"We think they've already gotten to it," Lamb said. "Latest imagery shows the earth-moving equipment parked out from under the cover of the tarps. Thermals show numerous generators running underneath but no other equipment working."

"How large an area is covered?" Hawkins asked.

"Two hundred meters by a hundred and fifty."

Fran spoke slowly, sorting her thoughts out. "If the Russians are digging up something similar to what we have here in the Rock, then Pencak is right. The most likely source is extraterrestrial."

Lamb shook his head. "They certainly have found it quick enough. My analysts think they may have abandoned something out there and suddenly discovered a need for it."

"Oh, come on!" Fran shook her head. "You're grasping at straws so you can find a known enemy you can focus on."

Lamb eyed her coldly. "That's what I'm paid to do. Dr. Pencak says she was all over that area but they didn't find anything. Seems very convenient. Of course, the Russians were supervising the whole expedition, so maybe they steered them in the wrong direction. Or maybe she did see something and is lying."

"She also said that they didn't do any digging because of the frozen tundra," Batson noted.

Lamb stabbed a finger at the pictures. "They're digging now."

Hawkins held up a hand. "The critical question is, what have they found--or rediscovered?"

Lamb looked up and met Hawkins's eyes, and in that moment Hawkins knew what the other man was going to say next. He felt a churning anxiety begin in his stomach.

Lamb started picking up the folders. "We should know very soon what's under that cover."

"How?" Batson was perplexed.

"When did they go in?" Hawkins asked, his voice tight.

Lamb looked at his watch. "Four hours ago."

Hawkins quickly calculated in his mind. Several hours before dawn in Siberia. "How?"

"Combat Talon originating out of Pakistan. Low-level flight across western China. Over Mongolia and LALO almost on top of the target site."

Hawkins knew that was the only way to get in there without getting caught: low altitude, low-opening parachute-drop out of the Air Force's deep-penetration special-operations' modified C-130. "Did you get an initial entry report?"

Lamb nodded. "They're on the ground in the proper place and everyone is all right."

"Who?"

"Richman, Brown, and Lee."

Hawkins winced--he and Richman had been the two original forming members of Orion. He was also the acting commander, with Hawkins spinning his wheels out here in the desert. On top of that practical consideration, though, was a personal one: Lou Richman was his best friend, the man who had seen him through the accident and all those years sitting in the hospital at Mary's bedside.

"What are you two talking about?" Fran demanded.

Hawkins turned to look at her. "We should know very shortly what is under those tarps. Three men from my team jumped into Tunguska to take a look."

Fran blinked. "Into Siberia?"

Lamb tapped the satellite photos. "Despite all our technology there are some things that only a man on the ground can do. One of them is tell us what the Russians have dug up under that cover. I had recon teams forward-based as close as possible to all transmission reception sites as soon as we triangulated them. I ordered the Tunguska team in when we saw that the Russians were working there. I've also got teams on the ground in Germany, Arizona, and Argentina. The one for South Africa is on board a carrier task force in the South Atlantic."

"When is Richman's estimated TOT? Time on target," Hawkins added for the benefit of Fran, Batson, and Levy.

"They went in four klicks away. They estimated two hours to get a visual sighting on the target." Lamb glanced at his watch again. "Anytime now."

Hawkins turned and pointed to Levy. "Tell him what you found about the previous transmissions after nuclear blasts."

Lamb looked confused. "What previous transmissions?"

Levy succinctly went through the information. When she was done, Hawkins leaned forward, getting close to Lamb. "Now, if there were transmissions out of the Rock in 1945, that sort of casts doubts on your Russian theory, doesn't it?"

"It doesn't matter," Lamb said. "If the Russians have uncovered whatever is there, we need to know."

Tunguska

"This is fucked, boss man," Lee whispered to Richman. Lee had his slight frame crammed under a dead tree, his MPS submachine gun pointing out, taking security on that side. His night-vision goggles were hardly necessary, due to the reflected glow from the high-power lights under the tarp less than fifty meters away. Brown was to Richman's left, covering the other side.

Richman didn't bother answering. He agreed, but telling his two teammates wouldn't do much for whatever little morale they might have left. The jump had been bad enough--letting the drogue chute of their parachutes suck them off the back ramp of the Talon at less than two hundred feet--barely enough time for the specially designed low-altitude main chute to deploy before they crashed into the upper branches of three pine trees.

Luckily their hazardous-terrain protective gear had worked as intended and they'd all managed to climb down to ground level and assemble without injury. It had been a nightmare moving across the frozen tundra to the target, climbing and slipping over snow-covered deadfall, the freezing night air clawing into their bones. They'd spotted the lights a half hour earlier and spent the time slowly working their way in closer. The thickly packed pine trees surrounding the target were great camouflage, along with the pitch-black night. They'd already slipped past two rings of security. Richman had had a Russian soldier almost step on top of him forty meters back. Fortunately, the Russians were not equipped with night-vision goggles.

Richman tried focusing his PVS7 night-vision goggles on what was under the overhead cover. There were several tents set up, smoke billowing out of their stovepipes at the edge of a large pit. Richman estimated the temperature to be about twenty below, which helped explain the lack of people moving around who absolutely didn't have to. He could see three guards armed with AK-74 automatic rifles standing near steel grating that sloped down out of sight into the hole the Russians had just recently dug.

"We're going to have to go in," he whispered to Lee, then Brown. It was a credit to their discipline and belief in him as their team leader that neither uttered a word of protest. He reached inside his white parka and flicked on the portable SATCOM radio strapped to his back.

Ayers Rock

"HOW ARE THEY GETTING OUT?" Hawkins asked.

"MH53 Pave Low helicopter," Lamb replied.

"Bullshit," Hawkins fumed. "They're in too far for the Pave Low." He pointed at the world map they'd been using to locate the transmission sites. "It's almost two thousand miles from Pakistan to Tunguska."