Project Aura (5 page)

"Is Dr. Hammond working for the Priory?"

"Not that we know."

Something clicked then for Dalton, an unresolved issue he had puzzled over. "The first Psychic Warrior team that was lost Raisor's sister was your agent, wasn't she?"

Eichen nodded. "We got her in there after Souris left and the Priory's attention had shifted to HAARP. We wanted her to use Bright Gate to check out HAARP and gather more information on it. Apparently someone didn't want her to. Hammond's predecessor, Dr. Jenkins, pulled the plug on her team. Jonathan Raisor pulled the plug, so to speak, on Jenkins."

"Did Raisor know his sister was your agent?"

"No."

"But Jenkins worked for the Priory?"

"We’re not certain. He was Souris's replacement. The one who took her theoretical work and made it practical in the form of Psychic Warriors. When he was killed, we managed to get Hammond into the slot there before the Priory could send someone they had corrupted. It's like playing a chess game in the dark each side trying to take control of a square before the other can."

"And sometimes pawns have to be sacrificed, right?"

"You're a soldier. You know how it is."

Dalton had no doubt about his status as a piece on the board. "So the Priory doesn't have control of Bright Gate right now?"

"There isn't much left there," Eichen noted. "But I have no doubt that a new Psychic Warrior team will be reconstituted. And it's very likely someone on that team will be working for the Priory."

"Geez," Dalton muttered. "What a mess. We're fighting ourselves."

"Not just us," Eichen said. "This is worldwide. We have members in Nexus from other countries. It turns out Eisenhower wasn't the only world leader threatened by the Priory. Most go along, but some, men and women in positions of power who see the threat from the shadows, are putting everything they have on the line."

"But you don't even know exactly what the threat is or what the Priory's goal is," Dalton noted. "For all you know, the Priory might have a good reason for doing what it does."

"I doubt that," Eichen said.

"Why, sir?"

"Why hide if their motives are good?" Eichen asked in turn. "Trust me on this. The Priory is our enemy. I've looked at your service record, Jimmy," Eichen said. "You’re a good soldier. You've served your country a long time, and now we're asking you to serve once again."

Dalton didn't take the bait. "You know more than you just told me."

"Not much more. And you're going to be out there, exposed. What I have told you won't compromise much of our organization. The Priory knows Nexus exists, as we know it exists. I'm your cut out"

Dalton knew what the general was saying: If he was compromised, he could only give up the little he knew, which was basically his cut out or intermediary-the general who was his only link to Nexus. The rest of the organization would be safe.

"What is Nexus's agenda?"

"We fight the Priory, try to stop it from taking actions that harm our country."

Dalton thought that overly defensive and reactive, but kept that opinion to himself "What do you want me to do, sir?"

Eichen stood. "Go back to Bright Gate. I want you to see if you can find out what Eileen Raisor discovered before she was cut off."

"How will I do that?"

"Use the master computer there—Sybyl. There should be some sort of record of Ms. Raisor's mission. There might be nothing. I don't know. But I'd like to know as much as possible before I go to Alaska. Then try to find out who was running things there; who was behind Jenkins and Souris before him. Find
their
cut out if you can. Maybe we can work our way up their organization. Anything you find out you report back to me."

"What happened to Souris?" Dalton asked. "Is she still at HAARP?"

"That's another strange thing," Eichen said. "She disappeared two years ago. We haven't been able to find her since."

"Killed?"

"Perhaps. Or maybe she's working on something else for the Priory now. We don't know."

Dalton had worked in the gray world of covert operations for most of his career, but this was the most bizarre thing he’d ever heard.

"Are you with us, Sergeant Major?"

Dalton didn't ask the question that popped into his mind: what would Nexus do to him if he said no? "Yes, sir. If you don’t mind me asking, who is number one on the speed dial?”

Eichen grimaced. “Let’s hope you never have to use that. Because if you do, that means I’m dead.” He turned for the door, but paused, hand on the knob. "I am sorry about your wife. I know this is a difficult time to ask this of you."

The door swung shut behind the general. Dalton saw the headlights go on and the car drove away, leaving Dalton once more alone in the dark in the house filled with memories.

*****

Henry Kissinger had once stated that power was an aphrodisiac, but Deputy Director of the National Security Agency Linda McFairn thought that too narrow and foolish a definition. She cared little about bedding younger, good-looking men, unlike the majority of her male colleagues high in the echelons of government, who spent much of their free time pursuing young, nubile women, or, in many case, young men. To McFairn, power was a lever that could be used to produce desired results. Sex, unless it served a specific purpose, was a waste of energy and, in a town where slander was thrown about with ease, a potentially damaging act, more so for a woman than a man, naturally.

She'd learned that over thirty-eight years ago when she started as a Russian linguist at the National Security Agency. She spent twenty years working her way in various slots in the Operations Directorate then got her big break as Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director. It took another eighteen years of more assignments and a lot of politicking for her to make it from the outer office to the inner office.

As Deputy Director she was second only to the Director, a three-star Air Force general. In reality, her decades in the Agency, as opposed to his recent assignment, made her more experienced in the power workings of Washington and inside the Agency. The Director was always a military man, as the NSA fell under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense, which meant she had gone as high as she could possibly could in the Agency. The fact that she had never married had produced more than a few subtle and not so subtle charges that she was a lesbian, something she found typical of male thinking. She'd discovered there were two basic reactions by most men to women in power: if they could screw her, they'd tolerate her but not respect her; if they couldn't bed her, then she was a lesbian and they still wouldn't give her respect. She had decided that while they might not respect her as a person, they would respect the power she wielded. The NSA was in charge of all electronic intelligence activities for the United States, which meant its domain was information. And information, used properly, was power.

Her office was on the top floor of the "Puzzle Palace" at Fort Meade, a large glass building that dominated the landscape. It was at one end of the main corridor, the Director's at the other end. She made the trip to his office once a day to sit in on the daily intelligence briefing, if both he and she were in town. He was currently overseas, leaving her in charge.

Her desk was teak and quite large, over eight feet wide by four across. A twenty-inch flat-screen monitor was perched to her left, the keyboard and mouse on a moveable shelf just under the desktop. The in-box was to the far right, the out-box to the far left. Her policy was never to leave anything in the in-box when she locked up to go home, which had caused her to spend many a late night in the office, once in a while forcing her to catch a nap on a plain leather couch on the far side of the room and not go home. The fact that she was here at two in the morning was not an unusual occurrence.

On the wall next to the door, directly across from her desk, a quote was framed:
all warfare is based on deception.
It was from the
The Art of War
by Sun Tzu, a book that McFairn kept in the top drawer of her desk and read from every day.

Double doors led to the main corridor. Behind her, thick bulletproof glass windows overlooked acres of parking lots surrounding the building and the main post of Fort Meade. Two pieces of paper rested on the desk in front of her. One was a transcript of a SATCOM transmission that the NSA had intercepted. The other was an internal classified Defense Intelligence Agency memo.

She turned slightly as one of a row of phones inlaid to her right buzzed. She knew from the distinctive sound that it was her personal secure line. Only a handful of people had that number, but she knew even before she answered who would be on the other end.

She hit the intercom. "Yes?"

"This is Boreas. HAARP picked up an anomaly on the virtual plane. It lasted about fifteen minutes and then it disappeared."

She glanced down at the two documents and leaned forward slightly. "Bright Gate?"

"No. Bright Gate wasn't active."

"The Russians?"

"Since SD-8 was shut down, things have been quiet on that front."

"Then who?"

"I believe it was the same source as last time. Our friends from south of the border. The Ring, using Aura."

McFairn knew about the Ring: a group of drug lords from Colombia who had banded together to form a coalition. "Were you able to pinpoint the source?"

"Pinpoint? No. You know we don't have that capability without a second receiver."

"I think I know the location where the transmission was received, but not the source," McFairn said. This time it was Boreas who waited on her. "Off the southeast coast of Florida. We intercepted a satellite transmission from a Coast Guard cutter-the
Warde
. It was chasing a vessel when its transmission was abruptly terminated and the ship couldn't be raised again. Just thirty minutes ago, the same cutter was discovered run aground on the coast of Florida, on Key Largo. The crew was dead. Cause of death currently unknown but the initial report indicates bleeding from the nose, eyes, ears, and mouth. The scene has been sealed."

"That means Aura works," Boreas said.

"We knew it would work" McFairn snapped. "Yours works, why wouldn't theirs? They got it from your group in the first place. From Professor Souris."

"But if your information is correct, that means Aura is directional. And we don't know how far the transmission was sent if we can't lock down the source."

"It's got to be line of sight," McFairn said.

"HAARP is line of sight," Boreas corrected. "What if Aura isn't? What if Souris has improved it? She's had the time and the support to do a lot of work. It might even be mobile, which means she's cut down the size of the antenna and the transmitter. She was working on all of that before she left."

McFairn leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes as she thought. "What do you want me to do?"

"You have to target and terminate the Aura transmitter field, wherever it is. And eliminate Souris."

"We already agreed on that course of action. The problem is, how do we find it and her? I've had my people searching but no luck so far."

"Psychic Warriors out of Bright Gate ought to be able to help us pinpoint Aura if it activates again."

"You tried that once. You screwed it up and I had to clean up the mess."

"I didn't screw up," Boreas argued. "That was Ms. Raisor. From your end."

"Ms. Raisor wasn't one of my people. She was from Nexus."

"Nexus." McFairn could hear the disgust in Boreas's voice. "Children running in the dark, looking under rocks for the truth. There's an old saying: Look under enough rocks and you eventually find a snake. They've looked under too many rocks and now it is time for them to get bit."

McFairn remembered the thump on the top of her limousine the previous week; the marks left behind by an avatar. She knew whose avatar that was now-- Jonathan Raisor-- the brother of the woman who had made the initial discovery of the existence of Boreas and HAARP. Boreas had had Dr. Jenkins at Bright Gate terminate that team, abandoning them on the psychic plane. And then Raisor had terminated Jenkins. She wondered if Jonathan Raisor had worked for Nexus like his sister.

Knowing Boreas was waiting for an answer, McFairn made her decision, not that she felt she had much latitude. "All right. We'll try to track down Aura and terminate Souris."

"Bright Gate is not currently at an operational level," Boreas noted. "The recent events in Russia took their toll."

"They still have some people left who can go over." She glanced at the other piece of paper on her desk. "We have to be careful. Someone is already starting to ask questions."

"Who?"

"Someone inside the Department of Defense. They're sending a representative on a fact-finding trip to your location. A General Eichen from the oversight committee on intelligence."

"I can't allow that. We're too close to the final resolution."

McFairn was tempted to ask what exactly that resolution was. "I don't think it's a coincidence. Could Eichen be working for your enemy?"

"It's possible. Or he could be working for Nexus."

The fact that Boreas didn't consider Nexus his primary enemy was something McFairn found interesting. "What are you going to do about him?"

"I think this is a good opportunity to test HAARP."

"Killing Eichen will draw attention."

"Eventually," Boreas said. "At first it will look like an accident, which will gain us the time we need. And if he is from Nexus, it will send the proper message to them."

"I don't think I can allow-" McFairn began, but she was cut off.

"You have no choice in the matter."

"Perhaps if you told me why you’re doing all this," McFairn said, "we could work together better."

"You've gotten what you wanted from us," Boreas said. "Now we're demanding repayment. I assure you that HAARP poses no danger to your interests or your country's security. In fact it will add a very powerful weapon to your country's arsenal."