The Siren Project (22 page)

“Except for the six little outbuildings,”
Christa corrected, sorting through the pile of photographs Mitch had taken on
their first reconnaissance. She selected a picture of one of the squat
windowless outbuildings at the end of a narrow concrete path and placed it on
the blueprints. A single metal door on the side of each building was the only
distinguishing characteristic of otherwise featureless concrete blocks.

“No windows,” Mitch observed. “There’s a
good chance no people work there.”

“Unless it’s lined with computer screens,”
Mouse suggested.

“Or maybe they are prison cells,” Christa
said, “Holding people until they're ready to condition them.”

Mitch shook his head slowly. “Too easy to
spot prisoners being taken to the main building. If they have prison cells,
they'd be in the main building, probably underground.”

“Maybe they are storage facilities,” Gunter
said, “Housing substances that require separate containment for safety reasons.
Explosives, chemicals, hazardous materials.”

“So how do we crack this nut?” Mitch asked.
“They’ve got video cameras covering the approaches, let’s assume three sixty
degree coverage. If it is a combined intel and military facility, they'll have infrared
beams, motion detectors and heat sensors. Possibly pressure sensitive floors.”

“And armed guards,” Mouse added. “Let’s not
forget them.”

“Internal generators will make the power
supply uninterruptible,” Gunter said. “Cutting external power to the building
will achieve nothing, but warn them of our approach.”

“The fence is probably not electrified,”
Christa said. “That would be too risky in an urban area. The last thing they
want is a child being killed by their fence.”

“The car park's full by day, empty by
night,” Mitch said, “So we go in after midnight. Mouse, how are you coming with
that data stream you recorded from the snooper?”

“The air conditioning system uses a simple
command and response syntax. No encryption, but then, all it’s doing is regulating
the temperature. Once I get twenty four hours of recordings, I should be able
to map the entire language. From there I can drop a worm in and see what the
box controlling the air conditioning system is connected to.”

“We’ll get the data and video recording
tonight.” Mitch turned to Gunter. “G, start researching all the latest gimmicks
the defense and intel communities are using. We’ll assume everything they have
in there is top shelf. Profile that place as if you were fitting it out
yourself, no expense spared.”

Gunter nodded.

“What do you want me to do?” Christa asked.

Mitch was thoughtful for a moment. “Knightly
told me your organization watched all other spook organizations. That was your
job, right?”

“Monitoring, yes.”

“How?”

“We observe their activities.”.

“I got that. But how do you monitor their
activities when they're all locked behind walls of secrecy?”

“We rely on informers, we track government
expenditures, we gather–”

“Christa,” he said soberly, silencing her
with a word. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. How do you penetrate what
they’re doing, the stuff no one ever gets to see? The hidden records, the
secret operations, the black projects. Knightly was surprised his people missed
Siren, even though it was a black operation. That means he’s used to knowing
what covert ops are going on. It’s been bugging me ever since he told me that. How
does he do it? How does he know?”

Christa looked uncomfortable, but said
nothing.

“What is it? A back door? A key that
unlocks the military and intelligence communities, so you can see what they’re
doing without them ever knowing?”

“There’s no such thing,” Christa declared
icily.

“Tell him we want it, whatever it is,
whatever passwords or machines you use. We want them.”

“I can’t.”

Mouse’s eyes bulged. “It exists? Freaking
awesome!”

“We can't crack that place without help,”
Mitch persisted. “Just four of us, with no way to contact our usual sources,
with Echelon on our backs and a bunch of highly trained spooks sniffing for us.
It's time to get serious.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I know exactly what I’m asking for.”

“If it got out, if you lost control of it,
the entire US military and intelligence system would be compromised.”

“It is already,” Mitch said simply.

Christa opened her mouth to speak, then
fell silent, realizing he was right.

“What exactly are we talking about here?”
Mouse asked eagerly.

“It's called Peter,” she said.

“Peter?” Mouse repeated confused. “P.E.T.E.R,”
he sounded the letters slowly, thinking. “What is that an acronym for?”

“It’s not an acronym. It’s short for Saint
Peter.”

Mitch smiled. “Because Saint Peter stands
at the gates of heaven and no one may pass without his permission. If you have
it, you unlock the gates. . . .”

“And gain entry to Paradise,” Christa added.

* * * *

Shortly after midnight, they returned
to the hills overlooking the Newton Institute. While Mouse and Gunter retrieved
the video and data recordings from the buried receivers, Mitch and Christa used
an infrared camera to study the Institute.

“There’s a hot zone in the center of the
facility,” Mitch said, taking several pictures of the glowing red blur
emanating from the ground floor. “The rest of the building is normal.” He
slowly scanned the length of the building, occasionally picking up man sized
heat sources, counting each one. “I make at least a dozen people in there,
probably guards this time of night. Plus the guy on the gate.”

“That hot spot might be the x-ray laser
lab,” Christa suggested. “Cooling off after tests today?”

“Take a look,” he said, passing the bulky
camera to Christa.

Mitch switched to a conventional night
scope to check the approaches to the Institute. He noted how the guard at the front
entrance sat inside the gate house reading, hardly ever looking up. “Gate house
guard is sloppy. I bet they haven’t had a break in since they set up here.” He
memorized how far the light from the main building flooded onto the surrounding
green lawns, certain they illustrated the field of view of the surveillance
cameras. The six bunkers behind the main office complex were not directly lit,
but stood out clearly in the fall off from the main flood lights. “Those block
houses don’t have their own lights. Mustn’t be much of value in them.”

Christa angled the infrared camera at the
block houses. “No heat signatures there. Maybe they are just store houses.”

“At least the outer fences aren’t directly
lit,” Mitch said, studying how the floodlights from the main building were
carefully aimed so as not to spill light beyond the fence. “I guess they don't want
it to look too much like a fortress, or they'd draw the attention of the local
authorities.”

“That’s strange,” Christa murmured, her eye
glued to the infrared camera. “There’s a faint heat signature coming from the
path leading to one of those block houses. It’s moving slowly toward the main
building.” She handed Mitch the camera. “Fourth building along.”

Mitch set his night vision scope down and
studied the path leading to the building she'd identified with the camera,
taking several shots as he detected the localized infrared signature. “Looks
like an ordinary concrete path, no reason for it to have any heat signature at
all.” The heat blur moved from the path to the road, and continued on toward
the building. “Wait a minute . . .”

“You see something?” She said, picking up
the night scope and studying the road.

“That heat signature isn’t coming from the
path.” Mitch said, taking photographs every few seconds, tracking the heat
bloom. “It’s coming from underneath it!” He followed the thermal blur as it
edged towards, then vanished beneath, the main building. “Now what do you think
they’ve got hidden under those paths?”

“It’s got to be hot for us to read it
through the concrete.”

Behind them, Mouse and Gunter had finished
reburying the recorders, and were now waiting at the van. “Time to go,” Mitch
said, already considering the possibilities.

* * * *

Gunter sifted through hours of video
recordings of the Institute taken by the roof top spy camera, building profiles
of the people who inhabited the Institute, how many civilians, how many guards
and when shifts changed. He enhanced images of vehicle license plates and
people’s faces for later reference. Eventually, he invited Mitch to join him in
front of the television screen.  The screen filled with an image of the
Institute in mid afternoon. The car park was full as a shadow passed over the
lawn and a helicopter dropped into view, settling on the grass.

“It's an army Blackhawk,” Gunter said.

Several soldiers jumped out to stand guard beside
the chopper, then an officer and a civilian climbed out and walked toward the
main entrance. When they were in the middle of the screen, Gunter froze the
frame and enhanced the image until the two blurred faces were in close up. He
held up the photograph Mitch had taken of Richard McNamara, the ex-NSA officer,
and compared it to the image on the screen. Even though the civilian’s face was
blurred, the resemblance was undeniable.

“Echelon must have voice matched me when I
called from the airport,” Mitch said uncertainly, looking for a reason why
McNamara was back on the West Coast.

“I do not believe he returned for you.” Gunter
enhanced the image again, removing McNamara from the picture, focusing on the
military officer he was with. The officer was wearing a gold braided cap, the
visor concealing his face from the high angle camera.

“We can’t ID him from that.”

“I’ve gone over every frame. There is no
clear image of him. But there is this.” Gunter expanded the blurred image,
reorienting it until the man's shoulder was center frame. “Do you know what
that is?”

Mitch looked perplexed. “Photo
reconnaissance was never my strong point.”

“Watch this.” Gunter imposed a green
wireframe outline over the image, rotating it to match the angle of the
shoulder.  The wireframe formed into three stars.

“A lieutenant general?” Mitch said
incredulously as he stared at the wireframe insignia. It could mean only one
thing.

Treason.

* * * *

While Gunter analyzed the roof top
camera’s recordings, Mouse studied the crawler’s pictures of the weapon test
beds while Christa looked on. Mitch edged around behind her to watch.

“There's some weird shit going on in that
lab,” Mouse said. “Check this out.” He replayed a section of recording he'd
already watched a dozen times. “Those three big mothers on the left are older
prototypes. I’m three quarters of the way through the recording, and so far, no
one has touched them. The fourth machine, the smallest one, gets all of the
attention.”

Two scientists in white coats took up
positions at the computer consoles to the right of the machine, while three
others worked on the machine itself. Two more men in lab coats carried a cage
with a chimpanzee to a metal table at the end of the long glass tubular
focusing unit. They gently eased the chimp out of the cage and strapped it to
the table. The animal was placid, until its movements were restricted by the
straps, then it began to actively scream complaints at them. The scientists
ignored the animal’s protests as they strapped its head into a brace,
hydraulically orienting the table to the end of the focusing unit. The three
scientists preparing the main machine now positioned eight small white spheres
around the chimp’s head, each sphere suspended on its own white metal armature.
Each sphere was connected by glass tubes to the focusing unit. One of the two
animal handling scientists took an electric cattle prod from a table and jabbed
the chimpanzee with it multiple times. The animal screamed wildly, struggling
futilely against its bonds.

Mitch noticed Christa was deeply disturbed
by the video, but said nothing.

The chimpanzee continued screaming in
remembered agony, even after the cattle prod had been withdrawn. The second
scientist ignored the screaming, giving the animal an injection that caused its
body to go limp.

“I don’t get it,” Mitch said. “He tortured
the monkey, then sent it to sleep. What’s the point?”

“You’ll see in a minute,” Mouse said,
motioning for Mitch to continue watching the screen. “Notice the monkey isn’t
asleep, it’s paralyzed. Its eyes are open. They want it conscious, but
incapable of physical movement.”

Machine number four sparked to life as the
glass focusing unit filled with a bright white light. An electrical haze formed
around the rectangular brass object at the source of the focusing unit, where
the energy field was generated. In front of the two scientists at the computer
console were eight television screens. The screens turned from gray to an image
of the chimp skull with finely graded color differences defining different
levels of brain activity. Each screen showed the brain and skull structure of
the chimp from different angles, then computer generated lines formed on each
screen in a complex overlapping pattern.