“We have been at war for millennia. Can you conceive of that? And soon, very soon, the war will be over. So don’t whine to me about your country. Get me the code!”
He slapped his hand down on the phone, cutting the connection.
McFairn stared at the now silent phone. There was only one possible way she could get the code, and that was to go to Cheyenne Mountain. She picked up the phone and ordered a jet to be ready at Andrews Air Force Base.
She tucked her dog-eared copy of Sun Tzu in her overnight bag and walked out of her office.
They’d done the best they could setting up Sybyl III and the rest of the equipment, but there were some things lacking. One was the crane they had used to lift and lower people into the tanks. Dalton, Jackson, and Barnes had to stack cartons of supplies next to their tanks and clamber up the makeshift platform. Then, making sure their lines weren’t tangled, Hammond sealed their TACPAD helmets on each, one by one. Then they blindly eased themselves down into the ooze.
Dalton resigned himself to the discomfort as the tube slithered down his throat and filled his lungs with liquid. His diaphragm fought and lost the battle as his body was slowly chilled. The white dot appeared and he focused on it. Soon he had assumed his basic avatar and was standing in the virtual world as Barnes and Jackson appeared.
Dalton was ready for action. “Jump,” he ordered and he visualized their next point. They were at the ambush site in Colombia. Their target was a compound twenty miles down the road. They proceeded there by the process of jumping along the road, staying in the virtual plane high above it, using it for guidance. The intelligence that Mentor had given them indicated the villa was home to one of the inner members of the Ring, a man named Naldo.
Dalton halted directly above the house in the center of the walled compound. Jackson and Barnes flanked him.
“Dr. Hammond?” Dalton projected the message back to the Ranch. “I’m here.” “Were you able to do what I asked?” “Yes. Sybyl’s programmed. You should be able to access it.”
Dalton checked the data stream. “All right, I see it.”
He heard Jackson ’s voice. “We’ll find him. You wait here”
Before Dalton had a chance to agree, both Barnes and Jackson were gone, jumping down inside the building. While they were gone, he accessed the new program he had asked Hammond to construct.
Jackson popped into the virtual plane next to him.
“Geez. If you weren’t floating here, I wouldn’t know it was you.”
“Looks good?” Dalton asked.
“Spitting image.”
“Did you find Naldo?”
“This way. Barnes is waiting for us, keeping an eye on him. He’s in his office. Alone”
Dalton followed as Jackson swooped down on the building. He passed through the roof right behind her. They dropped through a room, through the floor, and into a room paneled with expensive wood. An old man sat behind a large desk-Naldo. Dalton saw Barnes’s avatar in the corner of the room.
“I’ll come through the door,” Dalton said.
“All right. I’ll wait here,” Jackson replied.
Dalton passed through the door to the office, then stopped on the other side. He was in an empty corridor. He began forming on the real plane, his avatar gaining substance, using the power from Sybyl.
When he was completely in the real plane, he turned around and opened the door and stepped through.
Naldo looked up and surprise raced across his face as he jumped to his feet. “Cesar! What are you doing here? When did you arrive? Why didn’t my guards let me know?”
The only thing Dalton wasn’t sure about was the voice, but they had accessed an NSA interception of Cesar on the radio and Hammond had programmed that into the avatar as well as the appearance.
“I wanted to talk to you alone,” Dalton said, impressed with the accent and flawless Spanish. He walked across the room and sat down on the other side of the desk. Through the link with Sybyl, he knew that Barnes and Jackson were still in the room, although now that he was completely on the real plane he could not see into the virtual.
Naldo slowly sat. “It has been a long time since you have honored me with a visit.”
“The situation is becoming critical,” Dalton said.
Naldo nodded. “Have you been thinking about what we talked about last?”
“I have,” Dalton said, having no clue what the old man was referring to.
“I do not think we should anger the Americans further,” Naldo said. “I have talked to the others and they agree.”
“Why did they not come to me themselves?” Dalton asked.
Naldo frowned. “They just left the island two days ago. I told you that is what they were thinking. Are you all right? You do not look well.”
“I have to get back to the island soon,” Dalton said, picking up the cue. “Why don’t you come with me?”
“I just left there,” Naldo said. He cocked his head. “Is everything all right? Has that American gone loco on you?”
“Souris is all right,” Dalton said. “I left her on the island.”
“And the ship?”
Ship? Dalton thought. “As planned.”
“That was a lot of money.”
“It was worth it.”
“It wasn’t our money anyway.” Naldo leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “So what did you want to see me about?”
“I’ve been thinking about the island,” Dalton said.
“ Saba?”
Jackson ’s voice was immediately inside Dalton ’s. “ Saba Island . In the Lesser Antilles.” An image relayed from Sybyl also appeared. A small volcanic island resting in a deep blue sea.
Dalton stood. “I am sorry. Things are uncertain. I should not have come.”
Naldo also stood, confused. “What is wrong?”
Dalton couldn’t have Naldo checking on things or perhaps giving Cesar a call and finding out he’d been duped. He also remembered the bodies of the Special Forces men hung in the meat locker at the other villa.
He accessed his original avatar program. Naldo’s eyes widened as the figure in front of him changed from Cesar to that of a featureless, white-skinned form. Dalton ’s left arm flowed into a power tube and he aimed.
“Who are you?” Naldo was fumbling for a gun.
“What ship?” Dalton demanded.
Naldo fired but Dalton was a step ahead, re-forming behind the old man. “What ship?”
Naldo’s face was red, his breathing labored as he turned, trying to bring the gun to bear. Dalton grabbed it, ripping it out of the old man’s hand. Naldo staggered back, hit his desk, then fell to his knees, hands grabbing his chest. He fell over on his side.
“Damn,” Dalton muttered as he knelt next to the old man. He checked the pulse. Nothing. Dalton stood.
“Let’s go,” he ordered as he slipped from the real to the virtual.
“Where to?” Jackson asked.
“ Saba .”
“I thought we were going to adjust the frequencies to affect only the virtual plane,” Dr. Woods, the man in charge of the HAARP machinery, said. He had the latest data from HAARP in his hands and he spread it out on the desk in front of his supervisor. “This is the same frequency we used to kill those people on the helicopter. We can’t transmit that via MILSTAR.”
“There isn’t time to tinker with it,” Boreas lied.