The Siren Project (20 page)

“Good, because it’s time we picked some
pockets.”

* * * *

Mouse parked the minivan below the
crest of the ridge overlooking the Newton Institute, shortly before midnight. They
had left the Winnebago in a trailer park, and switched to Mouse’s van, now
equipped with a new set of number plates. With no houses or street lighting on
the arid ridge, the van was lost in darkness to any observer in the valley
below. Gunter climbed out first carrying the remote control, followed by Mitch
with the drone and Christa with the crawler.

Mitch set the drone down, then used his
binoculars to study the well lit Newton Institute below. “The lights are
directed from the main building, covering the approaches. No easy way in. The
roof’s dark, except for a light over the fire stairs.” He swept the binoculars
across the roof slowly, taking in every detail. “There's bound to be a camera
covering the fire escape, but I can’t see it.”

“I say we put the scope on the south west
corner,” Mouse said, as he used his binoculars to conduct his own survey of the
roof. “That’ll give us coverage of the main entrance and the southern access road
to the rear. The crawler can look for cameras and tap one of the feeds.”

“Agreed.”

Gunter slid the strap attached to the
remote control over his head, balancing the device on his chest, freeing both
hands to operate the controls. “Mouse, you launch.”

Mitch took the crawler from Christa and
slid it into the drone's payload container. The drone was a miniature
helicopter mounted above a metallic box equipped with a remotely controlled
door panel that dropped down to form a ramp. When the crawler was snugly
inside, Mitch locked the door panel shut.

Mouse lifted the drone above his head. “Ready.”

Gunter started the whisper quiet engine
with the remote control, then the drone lurched into the night sky with only
the beat of its rotors marking its movement. Gunter turned it immediately
toward the Newton Institute, conscious of the fact the electric engine could
keep the drone airborne for only thirty minutes. A miniature TV screen was
mounted in the center of his remote, giving him a live feed from the miniature
video camera mounted on the drone. While he controlled it with a small
joystick, the drone had limited self guidance, only enough to keep it stable
while in flight.

Christa watched the toy helicopter
disappear into the night sky, with a wry smile. “I’m sure the CIA would love to
know how you stole one of their UAVs.”

“How
did
we get it?” Mitch asked
with a puzzled look.

“Mail order,” Mouse replied with a grin.

Gunter kept the unmanned aerial vehicle
high in the darkness as it passed over the Institute's lights. When it was
above the main building, he let it descend vertically onto the south west
corner, until the payload container touched down.

“Contact,” Gunter announced.

Mouse hurried back to his computer in the
rear of the van. It was connected to a small transceiver, which he used to send
a signal that popped the container’s metal door, forming a ramp down onto the
Institute’s roof. The crawler’s video camera came to life, which the computer
displayed in a small window surrounded by digital controls. He activated the
crawler’s tiny electric motor, which turned the vehicle’s eight wheels as one,
and sent the diminutive machine rolling down the payload container’s metal
ramp.

When the crawler stood safely on the roof, he
called to Gunter, “Payload's clear.”

“Dusting off,” Gunter said, sending the
drone and the empty container high into the darkness before summoning it back.

“Thunderbirds are go,” Mouse grinned,
remembering a TV show he used to watch as a kid.

“Lay the scope in first,” Mitch said.

Mouse maneuvered the crawler around to the
south west wall. “F.A.B. Virgil.”

Christa gave Mitch a curious look. “Who’s
Virgil?”

“It’s a cult thing,” Mitch said.

When the crawler was properly oriented,
Mouse directed its telescoping arm to attach a small clamp to the top of the
wall. Mounted inside the clamp was a miniature video transmitter assembly,
which now looked over the outside of the building toward the main entrance. He
checked the reception from the spy camera, before instructing the crawler to
release the clamp and retract the arm.

“We got pictures,” he informed them as he
rotated the crawler to get a complete view of the roof.

Mounted on the fire stair’s concrete
entrance was a small camera, high up and angled down toward the door. Mouse
sent the crawler sneaking on a wide arc around behind the security camera,
studying its installation.

“The security camera cable is ducted. It
enters the building where the camera is mounted. It's too high for the crawler
to reach.”

Mitch climbed into the rear of the van, to
see the screen. “What else have we got up there?”

Mouse moved the crawler past the fire
escape entrance, behind the security camera to where it had a clear view of the
rest of the roof, and several wide metal tubes emitting vapor streams.

“Are they air conditioning vents?” Mitch
asked

Mouse zoomed and panned the crawler’s
camera. “Looks like it.”

“Can you climb them, with the arm?”

Mouse grimaced. “Tricky.” He steered the
crawler to the first vent, a snorkel shaped structure several feet high, then
extended the crawler’s arm until it could clamp onto the lip of the vent. “I
think we’re about to exceed the design parameters on the arm. This could snap
it off.”

“We have to risk it,” Mitch said. “We’ve
got to tap their security system.”

Mouse ordered the arm to retract. The image
on the computer screen wobbled as the arm lifted the crawler off the ground and
performed a slow motion back flip that landed the crawler inside the curve of
the vent’s snorkel with a shudder. He angled the camera down into the dark vent
tunnel, revealing layers of flickering light where air conditioning outlets let
in light from each floor of the building below.

“That's a long way down,” Mouse said.

“Would it survive a jump?”

“The optics wouldn’t, and I’d lose remote control.”

They heard the drone land outside the van,
then a moment later Gunter and Christa climbed into the minivan and locked the
doors.

“There’s a lot of moisture inside that
vent,” Mitch said without looking up. “The rubber wheels may get traction if they
can get enough pressure. How about using the arm to push against one side of
the vent, and let the crawler walk down?”

“Let’s hope the CIA’s subcontractor makes
strong arms.” Mouse retracted the arm, then swiveled and extended it until it
was pressing firmly against the upper curve of the vent. He experimented with creeping
the crawler fractionally forward but it failed to move off the bend in the
inverted snorkel, so he tweaked the pressure of the arm. “It’s either going to
walk down the vent, or fall to a painful and noisy death.”

“Do it.”

Mouse sent the crawler inching into the
vertical shaft, while the arm pressed against the opposite wall, forcing the
rubber wheels against the vent walls for traction. When the crawler was three
quarters of the way over, it began to slide slowly down. “I’ve lost traction! The
vent walls are too slippery.”

They watched the screen as the crawler slid
slowly down the shaft toward light emitted from a lateral vent.

Mitch realized why the light appeared to be
flickering. “Exhaust fans! Those vents are pumping heat out of the building.”

“Increase the tension on the arm,” Gunter suggested.

Mouse transmitted the instruction as the
crawler reached the horizontal vent. Its wheels slid off the shaft wall and the
arm expanded like a compressed spring, pushing the crawler into the lateral vent.
The little machine skidded a few feet before landing upside down. The video
picture distorted and hissed, threatening to vanish, then came back with
periodic flickers of static.  “I don’t think the transmitter liked that tumble.”

“You must deliver my package before you
lose control,” Gunter said.

“I know, I know, but I wasn’t planning on
this thing skating down an air shaft.” Mouse used the arm to right the crawler,
then rotated the camera to observe the shiny metal sides of the tunnel. “It's
just a ventilation shaft. No conduits in sight.”

The crawler moved to the nearest grill, and
looked through the slats. Below, was a large room, crowned with orange
ventilation pipes that carried hot air away, while other pipes at floor level pumped
in cool air. In the center of the room were four large machines, each similar
to the other, except that each version was progressively smaller than its
neighbor. Heavy power cables supported by huge glass insulators ran into each
machine. Extending from each was a long chamber that ended in successively
narrower tubes made from highly reflective glass. Beyond the long chambers were
enormous stone blocks facing the complex glass structures, each block twice the
height of a man and several times as thick. The surface of each block facing
the machines was charred black, and deeply cratered.

“Man! They've got phasers in there!” Mouse
exclaimed. “Look at those freaking blast burns!”

Gunter grunted agreement, adding, “They
appear to be miniaturizing the technology.”

“They’re x-ray lasers,” Christa said.

“You recognize them?” Mitch asked.

“I’ve seen photographs. The glass tubing
acts as both a focusing device and a vacuum simulator.”

Gunter grasped her meaning at once. “Ahh,
so they are test beds for orbital weapons. They are simulating effects of
firing in the vacuum of space.”

“Orbital weapons?” Mitch said, surprised. “You
think this is a Star Wars research center?”

“Maybe once it was. Not now.” Christa looked
closely at the image on Mouse’s screen. “There’s no way to tell when they fired
those things last. The x-ray laser was never perfected. They had to blow up a
satellite to generate enough energy to fire it, which hardly made it a
practical weapon.” She studied the image of the four machines. “They could be
leftovers from SDI, the star wars program, which they’re adapting for a new
purpose.”

“Like brain melting,” Mouse said. “I wonder
if that’s what made the sound G recorded?”

“We know they’ve got an energy weapon,”
Mitch said with growing conviction. “I’ve got two fried cell phones to prove
it. And that weapon I saw in the helicopter outside our hotel in Washington was
a lot smaller than those machines, so they’re far ahead on the miniaturization
path.”

“That device they used on us wasn’t an x-ray
laser, not powerful enough,” Christa said. “If it was, they'd have cooked us
alive. It must be a spin off, a low power weapon that shorts out electrical
devices.”

“Low power?” Mitch sounded incredulous. “It
killed our car and sent you spinning.”

Christa smiled, rubbing her temple. “I
remember, but that was from twenty feet away. No way it would take out an ICBM
at five thousand miles.”

Mitch blinked. “Hmm, guess not.”

“Want me to deploy the minicam here?” Mouse
asked.

“Can it watch those machines down there?”

Mouse swiveled the crawler’s camera back
and forth. “Yeah, if I hook onto the louvers.”

“Do it.”

Mouse activated the robotic arm again,
extracting a small battery powered camera from the crawler’s cargo bay. After
ten minutes of painstaking tweaking, the minicam was in place, with a clear
view of the laboratory below. He switched to the minicam’s signal to test it,
then rotated the crawler and started it along the ventilation tube. After
twenty feet, the tunnel turned to the left. When the crawler rounded the bend,
the shaft angled downwards at forty five degrees.

Mouse halted the crawler. “It’s going to be
slippery. If the crawler rolls, it’ll be noisy. You sure you want to risk it?”

“If we don’t get Gunter’s package in there,”
Mitch said, “This will have been for nothing.”

“You’re the boss,” Mouse said, as he eased
the crawler forward onto the incline. The little machine crept down, silently
skidding a few inches at a time, every few seconds. After several minutes, the
vent leveled off, allowing them all to breathe a sigh of relief. He crept the
machine forward more confidently until it reach an intersection, where four
vents joined at right angles.

“Which way?” Mouse asked.

Christa leaned forward. “Can you get the
minicam’s view on screen again?”

“Sure,” Mouse said as he switched back to
the camera he'd mounted on the louvers. The extreme right of the picture showed
where four orange tubular cooling vents intersected some way below, still well
above the floor of the laboratory.

“It's there,” she said.

The right shaft disappeared off screen
while the central vent stretched across the room, curving around parallel to
the far wall. The left shaft ran straight across the lab, disappearing into the
distant wall.