Cesar’s face tightened. “Come to my office.”
Raisor jumped from the Aura control center north. Then twice more, until he was above the glass-walled building that housed the headquarters of the National Security Agency. It was shielded on the virtual plane. He knew he could wait until the bitch got off work-if she ever did, as he had seen her spend the night quite often-but then what could he do? He was in the virtual plane, without the power or programming of Sybyl to enter the real. He could watch, but that was all. And watching was not enough.
He felt rejuvenated, full of energy. Aura had recharged him, but he knew that the effect would not last. He would have to get back to Aura soon.
Raisor jumped west, to a spot he knew well.
He was above the Mount of the Holy Cross, where Bright Gate was headquartered. He could sense the psychic shield that surrounded the place and knew he could not enter. But someone was out. Raisor knew it, from the line of virtual power that came out of the mountain and arced southward, a connection from Sybyl to wherever the Psychic Warriors were.
And HAARP? Wherever it was, the information had been compartmentalized from him. He had no doubt, though, that his sister had discovered the existence of HAARP or something about HAARP and because of that she and the rest of her team had been cut off. But why had McFairn done that if HAARP was just another program like Bright Gate? Wheels turning within wheels, Raisor thought.
Raisor jumped, following the line south. Until he arrived above the villa in Colombia.
The bodies were in the walk-in freezer in the basement of the villa. Separated from the meat by a thick plastic sheet hung across the middle of the freezer, the three dead Special Forces men were hung on hooks. Dalton didn’t recognize any of them immediately. One’s head was half missing; another was lacking the lower half of his body-which Dalton had seen back at the ambush site. The other had taken several rounds, including many which Dalton knew from the lack of blood were inflicted postmortem, especially to his face. What remained of their uniforms had no markings-Dalton knew they had gone in “sterile” with no ID tags or insignia that could be traced back to the States.
“ Jackson,” he relayed through Sybyl.
“Yes?”
“I’ve found three bodies.”
“Damn.”
“You find anything?”
“Not yet.”
“Continue searching.”
Dalton came out of the virtual plane, into the real, assuming the form of his avatar.
“What are you doing?” Kirtley’s voice echoed inside his head.
Dalton ignored him. He went up to the first body and lifted it off the hook, laying it down on the ground. He took a long strip of brown paper and covered the dead man. He did the same with the other two.
Then he knelt next to them silently for a minute. He was startled when Jackson contacted him.
“I’ve found the others. Alive.”
Dalton went back on the virtual plane and moved toward her essence until he arrived in a dark room. Several men lay about in the dark, some of them wounded. Jackson was a glowing form in the corner.
“Should we show ourselves?” Jackson asked.
Dalton considered that. He knew what it was like to be held prisoner. Hope could be a good thing, but disclosing themselves could also compromise the rescue mission. He’d done what he had with the bodies to cause confusion among the ranks of the guards. No, check that, he realized, he had done it out of respect for the men who had died.
“Sergeant Major!” Kirtley’s voice was on a power setting unnecessarily loud and brought him out of his thoughts. “You will return immediately. You will not disclose yourself to those men.”
“A little hope wouldn’t hurt them,” Dalton argued, more for the sake of disagreeing with Kirtley than anything else. “To let them know they aren’t abandoned.”
“You’ve done what you were tasked to do,” Kirtley said. “I’m ordering you to return immediately.”
Dalton reached out to Jackson directly, touching her avatar on the shoulder. “Let’s go back. We’d have to explain who we are, and then we really couldn’t do anything to help them right now.”
Jackson turned toward him in surprise. Dalton put a finger over his lip, indicating for her to be silent. He counted-seven men. “Straight jump to the rally point.” He let the real world fade from view until he was completely in the virtual and prepared to jump.
Jackson reached out and grabbed his arm. “Jim.”
Dalton caught himself just as he was ready to jump. “What?”
“Someone’s here-in the virtual plane. Watching us.”
Dalton felt foolish as he craned his head and looked about. He saw nothing but featureless gray. “Who? This Droza?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Go. Now.” Jackson jumped.
Raisor caught their virtual essence as they snapped by, like a bird looking in the window of a supersonic jet as it flew past, catching just the tiniest of glimpses. He was pretty certain they hadn’t seen him, because he had no avatar, just a presence. He headed back to Saba.
He arrived over the island, looking down from the virtual plane. Then he descended, through the building to the underground chamber. Souris was waiting for him. Along with the Russian. And there was someone else with her. They had Aura turned on. Raisor tapped into the power.
Sergeant Lambier started. He rolled to his side, half expecting guards to come through the door firing. But there was only the sound of the others sleeping. His eyes darted about the room, searching for what had awakened him. Whatever had penetrated his sleeping brain was gone.
Barnes found the site of the battle without much trouble. He hovered over the rail line, noting that it had already been repaired, the derailed cars gone.
There was nothing on the virtual plane that he could pick up. No sign of the men of his team who had been “killed” by the Russian avatar.
Barnes jumped several times, in an ever widening circle, searching, but in vain. It was as if the men had never existed.
Hammond had one eye on the screen that showed the status of the three deployed Psychic Warriors and one eye on the lines of programming code and data files for Sybyl that she was slowly scrolling through. Her right index finger rested on the “up” key, tapping to reveal the lines one by one. She was working her way backward, trying to find the source of the virus and the exact nature of it.
Her finger paused in midair as something caught her attention.
“What happened to your predecessor?”
Dr. Hammond spun about in surprise at the unexpected question. Kirtley was right behind her and she had not heard him enter the control room. She had been alone with the three bodies in the isolation tanks, monitoring the data. She could read the numbers that Sybyl was displaying on the monitor and translate them into information. What they were telling her was that one of the Psychic Warriors-Barnes-was not with the other two. Indeed, he was a long way from them. And she knew that wasn’t what the mission called for.
“My what?” Hammond stammered.
“The person who ran Bright Gate before you,” Kirtley said. “What happened to him?”
“You mean Dr. Jenkins. He was killed in an accident.”
“Really?” Kirtley glanced at the computer monitor that showed Sybyl’s data files, then back at her. “Something wrong?”
“No. No. Everything’s going fine.”
“And the first team? What happened to them?”
“The first team?”
“The CIA team,” Kirtley amplified.
“I wasn’t here then,” Hammond said.
Kirtley sat down, steepling his fingers. “You’re not very inquisitive, are you, Doctor?”
“I do my job.”
“I’ve put safeguards in place,” Kirtley said, “to guarantee that if you do to my team what happened to the first one, you’ll be killed. I’m very serious about this. Do you understand?”