Dragon Over Washington (The Third War Of The Bir Nibaru Gods) (17 page)

Thorpe stared at him.

“There was also something about ‘preparing for something that will happen in a few weeks.’”

“Another timeframe? Did she say exactly when?”

“No.”

“And why ‘mother’? Why Mesopotamian? What’s the connection to NY? What will happen in seven weeks?” Thorpe grimaced. He got up and paced the cubicle.

“Will you sit down? You’re giving me a headache. I have no idea why Mesopotamian. Maybe there’s some kind of rebellion, like in Chechnya. I don’t know,” Andy said. Thorpe looked up and stretched, his back cracking.

“That’s good news, anyway. Look, I have another thing for her, a message, written in some strange language. I’ll send it over. It could also be in a Mesopotamian language,” Thorpe said.

“Fine, no problem.”

“Have you managed to get some images of the enemy in Russia?”

“No.”

Thorpe stared at him, dumbfounded.

“We tried everything, every trick in the book. Whatever they are using, they don’t seem to have camps, or ammo convoys, or tanks, or even trucks or pickups with machine guns. Nothing. Our satellites pick up the Russian forces all right, but we can get no image of the enemy,” Andy said. Thorpe got up again, ignoring Andy’s look of indignation. He walked, circling the cubicle.

“Look, try another angle. Do you know where the lines of battle are?”

“Yeah, we can track the Russians. We know where they are. And we see the towns the enemy has trashed, every building destroyed.”

“Great. Find a village or a town or something that the enemy is
about
to invade. Take some images of it every satellite pass. I think it will show us some interesting things.”

“Another hunch, ha?”

“Call it my women’s intuition,” Thorpe said, smiling brightly.

“Funny you should mention women. How did it go with Shannon?”

Thorpe blinked, groaned and sank into the chair again.

“Why is everybody suddenly so concerned about my love life? Give me some space here, look at all the things I’m doing right now!” Thorpe whined. Andy looked at him, arms crossed over his chest.

“You little chicken. I knew you’d chicken out. I’ll call her for you. A date on Saturday night sound all right to you? Bring flowers.”

“No! No!” Thorpe waved his hands in panic. Andy scowled.

“Look, give me one more day, okay? One more day!”

“Well - Hey, leave that alone!” Andy yelled.

Thorpe froze. His hands had unconsciously picked up Andy’s stapler.

“Don’t touch it! Every time you play with it you change the settings and I ruin reports when I staple them together!” Andy yelled, getting up and snatching the stapler out of Thorpe’s hands.

“Okay, no problem. Anyway, I’ll call Shannon in a day or two. Promise. Got to run! Bye!” Thorpe fled Andy’s cubicle.

***

Thorpe returned to his cubicle and looked around for something to eat. Nothing. He scowled. He opened the image of a picture that NYPD took inside the apartment in New York. It showed a message scorched into the walls. The plaster had been singed through, exposing the bricks behind. The wall was full of sharp, triangular letters, and words or sentences divided by straight lines. The message was long, whatever it was. It was also densely packed. Someone had put a lot of effort into this. Thorpe printed it out and also sent Andy a copy of the image through the intranet.

Thorpe took the printout and put it on the map on his wall, pinning it on New York City. He wrote ‘Mesopotamian’ under Russia and added ‘No trace of enemy.’ Then he took a step back and surveyed the blackboard and the map. Nothing was making sense. “Let’s say the message in New York was written in a Mesopotamian language. What does that mean? A terrorist organization infiltrates the United States and then writes messages on the walls? Maybe it’s an ultimatum. They could be trying to - Wait”!” He looked at the word ‘“Biological???”’ written under Colorado and then he wrote “’No trace of enemy - no tanks, convoys or soldiers”’ under Russia.

Thorpe unlocked the KH11 control station. According to the Satellite Control System, he still had several hours to go before the pass. He sighed and got up, rubbing his eyes, then walked down the corridor, peeking into the other cubicles along his way. They were all empty. “It’s half past seven, everybody’s home. Everybody but me, of course,” Thorpe sighed again. He opened the refrigerator, but there was nothing there, nothing that he could use, anyway. He closed it, trying hard not to slam the door and walked back to his cubicle. Suddenly, something in one cubicle caught his attention: an apple resting on a plate on a desk. Thorpe glanced around him, darted in, grabbed the apple, and hurried back to his own cubicle.

“Well, it
is
a matter of national security.” He bit into it. He looked at the blackboard for a while and then turned to his own computer, opened the Trailmapper application, and searched for Radio Blankets. There were no new ones, except in Libya. Thorpe suddenly discovered he was typing on the computer for some time with his left hand, because his right was still holding the remains of the apple, half an hour after finishing it. He threw it into the trashcan, sighing.

It was finally time. Thorpe turned to the KH11 station, his hand caressing the big, black joystick. The Satellite Control System program was blinking. He had a few minutes to decide on the placements of the targets coordinates for the satellite to aim its camera at.

“Let see. They are out there, whatever they are. They hide, somehow, right after I start taking images of them. By the time I pinpoint one and take a high-resolution image, its invisible. Let's try something else this time,” Thorpe murmured. He slowly slid his hand over the joystick, accustoming it to the joystick’s contours and buttons. He then programmed a target into the Satellite Control Computer. It was a medium-resolution thermal image, large enough to capture the area where he had last found the hotspot. The satellite was five minutes away from rising over the horizon of Bellyache Mountain. Thorpe grinned expectantly, eyes glued to the huge LCD screen, hand around the joystick.

A soft beep sounded and Thorpe took a deep breath, fingers poised. An image began forming on the screen. Thorpe’s grin began to fade. More than half the image formed, but it was devoid of any hotspots. Thorpe began scowling. He started programming another target when he caught his breath. A hotspot appeared, right near a craggy valley below the mountain’s slopes. Thorpe moved, lightning fast. The satellite switched mode, moving to real-time TV function. A high-resolution video image appeared on the screen, controlled by Thorpe’s joystick.

He moved the joystick delicately, centering the image on the hotspot’s location. The image stabilized an instant later. Thorpe froze. The thing on the screen was a four-legged animal of some sort with a long tail and a triangular head. It was armored, thick scales giving it a bulky appearance. It measured more than twenty feet long and it moved slowly with an undulating movement. An instant after the image formed it stopped moving and turned, snake-like, head turned upward, staring at the sky. Thorpe could see its hot, scalding eyes and mouth, and a clear indication of long teeth in its huge jaws. But then the monster somehow started to vanish, turning transparent. Ten seconds later it was gone; the rocks were barren, devoid of anything hostile.

Footsteps suddenly materialized behind Thorpe. He screamed and jumped up, almost pulling out the joystick he was holding so tightly. Thorpe breathed hard. He picked up the headset with trembling fingers, glad of any distraction. He moved his eyes away from the screen with the barren rocks.

Agent Winder was standing behind him, staring at Thorpe’s blackboard. Thorpe looked at the agent and at his big, red hands. Then Agent Winder turned to Thorpe.

“Yes?” Thorpe panted.

“My team, working through the African local police authorities, managed to locate three incidents that might be connected to your investigations.”

“Well?” Thorpe said, jumping out of his seat and going to his blackboard.

“Three villages have been attacked by unknown forces. The authorities there attempted to determine the identity of the attackers but were unsuccessful. In every case, the villages were completely deserted, without any sign of resistance. Whatever attacked these villages left no evidence. The authorities there are baffled. Villages are sometimes deserted because of drought, disease or robbers, but none of these seem to be the case here.”

Thorpe blinked. Agent Winder had continued without pause, speaking in an even tone. Now he calmly waited for Thorpe’s reaction. “Where were the villages?”

“The incidents were in Chad, Angola and Namibia over the last twenty-four hours. The largest village to be attacked was in the east of Angola, near Aranos, on the banks of the Nossob River.”

Thorpe got up, searched for and marked the places on his map. “What about Al Jaghbub?”

“What about it?”

Thorpe turned to the much bigger agent and stared at his emotionless eyes. “Didn’t your team find anything there?”

“No.”

“What?”

“Mister Thorpe, Al Jaghbub is a small town. My team is well integrated with the local police and various other elements. There were no reports of attacks, cults or anything of interest,” Winder said. Thorpe found it hard to look into the big agent’s unblinking eyes.

“We will keep looking. My team will try to find survivors from the village attacks. I will instruct them to scour the villages for any clues as to the perpetrator. I will be in touch.”

Winder left without saying anything else.

Thorpe, slightly breathless, sank down into his chair, removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He had no idea what time it was and he couldn’t concentrate. He pointedly refused to look at the frozen image on the KH11 control workstation. The satellite was over the horizon anyway and had no way of seeing Bellyache Mountain. He still didn’t look at the screens.

“How come they didn’t find out anything about Al Jaghbub? There must be something there. The Radio Blankets are there every night!”

Thorpe looked at his green tyrannosaur, but the little plastic animal was as mystified as he was. Thorpe picked up his smartphone, browsing its screens idly. He opened a few emails from friends and watched a clip one had sent which was supposed to be funny. It wasn’t. Thorpe was about to put the smartphone back down but stopped. “Well, why not?”

He opened the smartphone’s web browser again. Thorpe had a smartphone with a 4.3-inch screen. It had cost quite a lot of money, but was worth every cent. He googled ‘Libya Al Jaghbub,’ and got several hundred results. Nothing seemed interesting at first. He tapped his screen lightly, going over the results. “Now, here’s something!” He opened and zoomed in on the Tubruq Times.

“So, they do have Internet news papers over there. I thought they only had camels.”

There was a short piece in the tourism section. “’Aurora Borealis in Al Jaghbub”?’ Thorpe read it quickly, starting to grin.

“Hmm, how very interesting. Strange lights in the sky for the last week above the town of Al Jaghbub. At night, at the same hours as my Radio Blankets. No other explanation. Maybe a metrological effect. No previous precedent.”

Thorpe’s grin started to fade. “It’s in the paper and Winder’s team didn’t see it? What the -? Well, who needs them. I’ll find out what’s going on there without them.” Thorpe put his smartphone down, made himself comfortable and got to work.

“Let’s see. Let’s search blogs.” He found several dozens blogs in Libya, several from Al Jaghbub, but most were in Arabic. “Let’s search videos. Maybe someone even filmed the lights.” He found hundreds of videos and narrowed the search according to date. “Now, that’s interesting.” He clicked a film called ‘“Weirdness in the Libyan Desert”’ that had been posted three days ago. Thorpe watched the clip, holding his smartphone sideways. The video showed two cats running through the desert. Above them were some birds, perhaps ravens. The camera panned from the cats to the birds, focusing on one particular raven, with an abnormally large beak and yellow talons, that led the others. They dived down on the cats repeatedly, trying to pin them down. The cats, long red scratches on their backs from the ravens’ attacks, ran on and the camera followed them till they disappeared from sight.

“I thought cats ate birds and not the other way around.” Thorpe looked at the clip’s description. Apparently, its maker thought it was odd too. Thorpe smiled. The clip’s maker was heading to Al Jaghbub.

Thorpe logged on to his social networking site, opened another browser window and searched for pictures on the web. “Shirley or Tanya? If it’s a blonde it must be Tanya.” He created a new user for himself, using a picture of a blonde girl for his profile picture, and then searched for the clip maker. He found him easily enough: Roger from New Zealand, nature enthusiast, filming wild animals in the Libyan Desert. “Hi Roger,” Thorpe twittered, batting his eyes at Roger’s picture. He sent him a friendship request.

Thorpe put his smartphone down and went excitedly to his blackboard. He added “‘Lights above Al Jaghbub”’ under Libya. Thorpe kept looking at the blackboard even though it swam in his view. It was late, very late. “It still doesn’t make any sense. There are things in Russia talking in a Mesopotamian language. A storm comes out of the ocean, hovers over New York and then goes straight to a little town in New York State. And now there are lights in Libya but attacks being reported in other places in Africa?” Thorpe sighed. Nothing made any sense.