Authors: R. J. Pineiro
01-01-00 (29 page)
Celina, also wearing headphones, lowered the small dish antenna of their eavesdropping equipment. Thanks to the incredible acoustics of the Mayan site, they could listen to the conversations while setting the receiver to the lowest setting, which pleased Strokk because it conserved batteries.
She also removed her headphones.
“What do you think?” she whispered in the murky bush.
“I'm not sure what to think. For now we must continue to wait. See how the situation develops.” The Venezuelan-Russian veteran knew the value of waiting and observing. By issuing a single command, Strokk could take control of the site in less than a minute, sparing the scientists and their equipment from the silent fusillade that would end the lives of the SEAL team. But he feared doing so would have adverse effects. Slater and Garnett were apparently making progress in the investigation. Strokk's intervention now would only slow down that process.
The former Spetsnaz officer had learned the hard way that patience was a weapon far more powerful than the Sig Sauer automatic strapped to his utility belt. In his lifetime, Antonio Strokk had to exercise extreme patience not just in the field, but also with his superiors at the KGB, which had dictated the missions of Strokk's Spetsnaz team during the Afghanistan campaign. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he had decided to become his own boss and contract out of his services, rather than offering them to the new Russia for slave wages and a small apartment in Moscow. In the ten years since he had gone independent, Strokk had amassed a large fortune, which he used not only to live like a king, but also to finance the deployment of a force like the one surrounding this bizarre Mayan site on this hot and humid afternoon. And it was getting hotter. Sweat poured down his face, stinging his eyes. The moss cape not only weighed down on him, but also felt like a furnace. But he endured it, just as he had withstood his nightmarish years in the Afghan mountains â¦
Afghanistan.
The rugged operative frowned, remembering the pain, the unmitigated terror. He tightened his groin muscles as his ears detected the high-pitched wail of the Afghan women, their faces veiled, hateful eyes burning him. Many hands reached down, lowering the pants of his fatigues, pressing his own blade against his testicles. Horror seized him as the blade ruptured the skin, like ripping Velcro, severing them.
The agony had been unequaled. He had shouted out in raw, savage pain, wrenching out bloodcurling howls, his arms and legs numb from the pressure he'd put on the restraining rope, blood jetting between his legs. Through his tears he had watched the silhouette of an Afghan woman, back-lit by the sun, one hand clutching the bloody knife, the other gripping his manhood high up in the air, all the while bellowing the same wicked cry that still chilled him with the power of a thousand Russian winters. Then she had thrown them on the ground and stepped on them.
Scourged, castrated, dying, Antonio Strokk breathed in short sobbing gasps, feeling hands securing his face, pressing it against the ground, fingers stabbing the sides of his jaw, forcing his mouth open. The women shoved his testicles in his mouth, shouting incomprehensible words.
He tasted himself; tasted sand, dirt, his own blood. His convulsing stomach forced bile up his gorge. He vomited, spitting them out. But the knife returned to his groin, pressed against his member as more hands shoved the dusty testicles back in his mouth. His pain-racked mind had understood the message, triggering the command to chew, to ignore, to accept, and to chew again, over and over. But his mind detected something else, the sound of nearing helicopters, the downwash of hovering craft, the screams of the Afghan women as machine guns came alive, as the ground around him exploded, as figures dispersed in the bright sunlight, as the pressure on his groin vanished.
Strokk blinked out of the flashback, breathing deeply, staring at his sister, who had put on her headphones and continued monitoring the camp. He fixed his headphones back over his ears and listened to the distant conversation, but mixed with the small talk he could still hear the Afghan women, shouting, laughing, cursing him.
Antonio Strokk knew he would continue to hear their voices until the day he died.
1
December 16, 1999
Cameron Slater had always been fascinated by ancient history. From an early age he had dreamed of becoming an archaeologist, losing himself in the history of a place, peeling back the layers of time, searching, digging, piecing together the ancient past, bringing back the legacy of past civilizations, saving the work of generation upon generation. His passion had driven him through school in UCLA, in Stanford, in Georgia Tech, earning degree after degree, slowly becoming an authority in the subject, traveling to distant places in search of the past, probing beyond the surface, formulating his own theories, however controversial and unconventional they may have seemed.
Cameron Slater was a diffusionist, believing that the ancient world was quite intercultural, cross-pollinated, with distant civilizations having been in contact at some point in their pasts. He had found evidence of this claim everywhere he had looked, in the graceful lotus motifs decorating the necks of Incan vessels, found not only on the frieze of the Great Ball Court at the Mayan city of Chickén Itzá, but also adorning the towering granite columns at Karnak, Egypt. Cameron had also found evidence in Mayan structures built in the shape of the Egyptian letter M, called ma, signifying country, the universe. In the practice of mummification, originating in Egypt, diffusing throughout the world, through India, Indochina, Polynesia, and the Americas. In the Egyptian god Horus showing a remarkable resemblance to Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent of ancient Mexico. In their daily lives, sharing passions for similar entertainment, like wrestling, phallic cults, respect for dwarfs, and building stepped pyramids. From linguistic parallels to burying rituals. Where Egyptians placed small strips of papyrus in burials, the Aztecs included a lot of paper with their dead. Or the bearded Phoenician oarsmen carved on a 700
B.C.
relief, striking an incredible resemblance to a pre-Columbian incense burner discovered in Guatemala. And the list went on and on, the parallels unending, mind-boggling, challenging, but also evident, undeniable.
Cameron Slater gazed at the dark temple, across the moonlit cenote, remembering his trips, his excursions, the mountains of Peru, the jungles of Venezuela, the mangroves of Guyana, inhospitable to all but those who had chosen to learn to live from the land. He remembered the primitive expeditions, the intense heat, the mixed rewards of sweet successes and the heartbreaking disappointments of failed excursions. He recalled the villages, the natives, their customs, their dances, their hospitality. His mind traveled back to his earlier archaeological days, the romance of the field drawing him with savage power, controlling his will, blocking out the outside world, just as it did tonight, possessing him with intoxicating force.
He had found a unique site, a virgin location, untouched by outsiders for millennia, surviving so many waves of invaders, of destruction, of subjugation. Cameron Slater took in the magnificent sight, the ornate roofs, the corbel arches, the geometrically perfect pyramid. He listened to the sound of the night, mixed with the incessant clicking of Susan's laptop as she put the finishing touches to her search routine.
Susan Garnett.
Cameron wasn't sure why he felt so attracted to this stranger. An attraction that went well beyond the short-lived relationships with females in the archaeological circle, or the occasional adventure with locals during an expedition, like the daughter of the coffee merchant in Venezuela, the adventurous sister of his Peruvian mountain guide, or that unforgettable dancer outside BrasÃlia, who taught him a thing or two about the most ancient of human pleasures.
Perhaps he should just keep it professional to make it easy for him to walk away when this was over. Cameron Slater, world traveler, noted author, distinguished speaker, had never entertained the notion of being tied down, of belonging to someone. His life had always revolved around archaeology, around his work. Even his own brownstone in Georgetown was nothing more than an extension of his office, a base of operations, easily moved to another school if the right grant came through for the right research project. In the twenty years since obtaining his Ph.D., Cameron had moved dozens of times, from the East Coast to the West, and back to the East Coast, and many places in between, living the nomad life of a modern archaeologist, living out of a suitcase, always going where the field research of the moment was, where the grants sent him, sometimes for months at a time, without having to pick up the phone and explain his sudden decision to anyone.
So what makes you so special?
He thought, shooting Susan Garnettâbusily tapping the keyboard of her laptopâa puzzled look.
God, she's lovely.
He looked at all of her, under the moonlight, at her delicate arms, bent at the elbows, long fingers tapping the keys with that familiar comfort that came from repetition. A thin neck, fine features, captivating hazel eyes that drew him in every time she locked them on him. And that smile, honest, welcoming, yet mysterious, with a secret past, which only kindled his feelings.
Inhaling deeply, Cameron shook his head, looking away, trying to let it go, forcing the Brazilian dancer into his mind, remembering her glistening body, soaked from swimming in jungle pools, cool water dripping onto him.
Let it go, Slater. You won't be able to give her the time.
Just let it go.
2
The electromagnetic meter on her screen began to move a few seconds before the event, almost imperceptibly, but strong enough for Susan Garnett to notice. The bars in the upper frequency range stirred into life, reaching the two-decibel level.
She had wondered if her system would freeze, and now she realized that it would not, perhaps because she stood in the center of this celestial force, like in the tranquil eye of a hurricane, safe from the storm, isolated from the winds, but still very much within the path of the virus.
Cameron Slater sat next to her, by the edge of the cenote, the gray light from an orange moon high in the sky casting a wan glow across the site, mixing with the off-white glow of her screen. Lobo stood behind them, peering at the screen over their shoulders.
The digital counter on her system kicked in, marking the start of the event, due to last fourteen seconds. EM activity flurried, particularly in the upper frequencies. The bar identifying frequencies between 900 MHz and 1 GHz peaked at the 20 dB mark. She noticed no changes in temperature or humidity. The hard drive in her system whirled, downloading a digital image of the EM noise, sampled once every millisecond, creating a huge file of binary code fourteen million lines long and largely reflecting the upper end of the selected frequency spectrum.
As the event ended, right before the EM activity vanished, the entire frequency spectrum bounced up to the 20 dB mark for a fraction of a second.
“Let's see what we've got.” She worked the keyboard, pulling up the binary file. Rows and rows of ones and zeroes filled her screen.
She activated her custom disassembler in an attempt to translate the huge binary file into assembly code.
The screen changed to:
“Great,” she said, hitting N before looking at Cameron. “My disassembler doesn't recognize it. Let me try something else.”
Susan remote-logged in to the FBI network using the Navy's dedicated satellite link and followed the path of the Sniffers, which, as on previous nights, had converged on the Hughes satellite and down to her current location. She launched her custom petri dish software to dissect the virus captured tonight by her software cocoons.
Susan reviewed the first six iterations of the mutation sequence of this virus, quite similar to the ones she had seen in previous days, with every replication showing a completely different signature.