“And now it’s sitting at the bottom of a lake,” Kurt noted. “And those containment units are running on battery power. What happens when the batteries run out?”
“You know what happens,” she snapped. “A very large explosion.”
He did know that. He just wanted to hear her say it. “How large?”
She spoke without emotion. Clinical and cold. It was the dry tone of a distant scientist, not someone who might be vaporized at any instant. “Eight ounces of antimatter exposed to an equal amount of matter will cause an explosion the equivalent of a ten-mega-ton bomb detonating. Our best estimate puts the load on board the Nighthawk somewhere in the range of two hundred kilograms. Almost four hundred pounds.”
“Four hundred pounds!?”
“Approximately,” she said. “If it all reacted simultaneously—and once some of it reacts, it will all react—the explosive force will be nearly eight thousand mega-tons, or eight giga-tons. The blast will be five times larger than the combined effect of detonating every nuclear weapon in the world’s combined arsenal in the same place at the same exact time.”
Kurt just stared at her. He didn’t know whether to laugh at the stupidity of what they’d done or curse them for their arrogance. “And you brought this material to Earth willingly? Compiled it all in the same place? Are you people insane?”
“What would you have us do?” she asked. “Once we figured out this material was up there, it wasn’t going to be long before the Russians and the Chinese made the same discovery. Would you rather they had it? Do you want the designers of Chernobyl playing around with this stuff? The builders of the already crumbling Three Gorges Dam?”
“Of course not,” Kurt said. “But what’s to stop them from retrieving their own supply?”
“The fact that we took it all,” she said. “It accumulates very slowly. It’ll be a thousand years before there’s a harvestable amount floating around up there again.”
“Great,” Kurt said. “Maybe civilization will have dragged itself back from the Stone Age by then.”
“You think I don’t know the danger?” she said. “Do you think it doesn’t weigh on me?”
He looked up at the dark night sky. The stars were bright out here, so far away from the nearest city. Tiny balls of fusion, which the Earth would become for a brief instant if they didn’t find the Nighthawk and keep the containment units functioning.
He turned back toward her. “At least I finally understand why you were all so certain the Nighthawk came down in one piece.”
“We knew the core had to be intact or we’d have all seen the results already.”
“How much time do we have?”
“Seventy-two hours,” she said. “Maybe less. It depends how much light is reaching the solar panels on the wings.”
“And if the containment units or the cryogenic system fail early?”
“A Nebraska-sized hole in the Andes,” she said. “A hundred trillion tons of rock instantly vaporized and blasted into the atmosphere. A ninety percent reduction in photosynthesis and biological activity. No one will have to worry about global warming anymore because the Earth will be in frigid darkness for at least five years.”
Not a pleasant scenario, he thought. “And if we get it back to the United States?”
“The material will be split up into thousands of tiny samples, each no more than half an ounce. They’ll be stored in a labyrinth of underground facilities that the NSA has been building for the last three years. A failure at one site will be no worse than a small bomb going off in an underground test location because there will be no other material for it to react with.”
All emotion had left Kurt. There was only one thing that counted now. “Then we’d damn well better find it and get it locked down.”
“My thoughts exactly,” she replied.
34
A staccato thumping echoed through the high mountain pass. Ground-dwelling animals looked up nervously and then darted away as a thundering orange machine flew between peaks and its great whirling shadow passed over them.
Joe Zavala was at the controls of the Air-Crane once again. The big helicopter was slow and stable, but it wasn’t the easiest bird to control in a crosswind. As a result, he was more focused on the flying than the scenery. At least his passengers were enjoying the view.
“Now, this is a view fit for the gods,” Urco’s voice called out over the intercom.
Joe glanced back for an instant. The cockpit of the Air-Crane was packed. Kurt sat in the copilot’s seat while Emma, Urco and Paul Trout sat on the jump seats behind them.
“It’s too bad we couldn’t see it at sunrise,” Urco added.
In fact, Joe had seen plenty of the mountains at sunrise, making another run that only he, Kurt and Paul knew about. It had pushed back their arrival at La Jalca. “Sorry about that,” Joe said. “We were slightly delayed.”
“Are we trying to make up time by flying through the mountains instead of over them?” Paul asked.
“Talk to Kurt,” Joe said. “I just go where I’m told to.”
“The Chinese agent claimed she had more support out here,” Kurt said. “If so, the Air-Crane slowly crossing the sky in a nice straight line would be like a big orange arrow pointing to the crash site.”
“Not to mention a tempting target,” Emma said.
Joe banked to the right, rounding another peak and taking them out over the plunging valley on the far side. “Besides,” he added, “this is a lot more fun.”
The mood in the helicopter was upbeat. They were close to finding the missing craft and averting disaster. That hope had given everyone a burst of adrenaline and a second wind.
“Even if they did spot us, it would take forever to get here,” Urco promised. “The road to the lake is very poor; it makes a goat path look like the German autobahn. It was built by the Inca seven hundred years ago and hasn’t been resurfaced since.”
They could see the path from where they were. A long, thin pencil line scraped into the side of the highlands. It curved in and out of the various hills and then began to drop, leading from the high plateau down to the valley and eventually to the lake.
Lake of the Condors sat at the foot of a plateau. It was fed by a river that snaked down from the mountains, entered a gap in the bluff and then shot forward over a ledge and down into the lake.
The drop was two hundred feet, not particularly high for a waterfall, but it poured out of the overhanging rock with substantial force, filling the narrow upper end of the pear-shaped lake.
From the air, it appeared static, a standing wave covered by a veil of spray that sparkled in the sun. Cliffs surrounding it stood like battlements, and the hills sloped downward from there.
“Get your cameras out,” Joe said. “I’m going to buzz the falls while I look for the best spot to set us down.”
They crossed the lake at an angle, giving everyone a great view of the waterfall. Down below, the mirror surface of the lake reflected the blue sky, the green of the hills and white of the clouds, but the water itself was a dark, inky black.
“The water level is fairly low,” Paul said. “There’s a lot of empty beach around the lower half of the lake.”
Joe saw what Paul was describing: dried silt and stones fifty feet wide encircled that section of the lake. Beyond, a rushing stream took the outflow of the lake on its continuing journey toward lower ground and the Pacific Ocean.
Urco pointed out several features, having been to the lake before. “You cannot land over there,” he said, pointing to a flat area. “Too soft. Sometimes a swamp. Best to land up high on the rocks.”
Joe nodded and turned back toward the hills. He found a raised section that looked solid and flat, circled once and put the Air-Crane down on top of it.
Thirty minutes later, they were on the water, cruising across the lake on an infl
atable Zodiac. A compact sonar emitter trailed out behind them while a receiver designed to pick up the Nighthawk’s beacon—if it was still transmitting—dangled over the side.
While Joe drove the boat, Kurt kept his eyes on the sonar display. The scan showed a flat-bottomed lake filled with sediment and averaging about sixty feet deep. Here and there, small outcroppings of rock appeared, though nothing to indicate a city had ever existed at this location.
“I’m not seeing any skyscrapers,” he said to Urco.
“The ruins lie beneath the silt,” Urco explained. “As we get closer to the waterfall, you’ll see some of them jutting out where the current has scoured the sediment away.”
“Have you been down there?” Kurt asked.
“I don’t dive,” he said. “But some of my people do. I should learn, though. Up on the surface, grave robbers and the elements have taken away so much of what we could discover. But down there, preserved beneath the mud, lie untouched treasures from the past.”
Kurt nodded. He was more interested in an untouched aircraft from the present, but he understood Urco’s excitement.
While Kurt and Urco kept their eyes on the sonar scanner, Emma and Paul were working with the underwater receiver. She wore a headset and was listening for a signal. Paul was directing the receiver by hand.
“Anything?” he asked, operating with the skills of a man who’d grown up adjusting the rabbit ears on his TV.
Even with the headphones on, Emma was straining to hear a tiny electronic beep over the wind and the outboard motor. “Not yet.”
Paul held the unit steady, twisting a lever that turned the submerged receiver five degrees at a time. “How about now?”
She shook her head.
Kurt stole a glance her way. Tension lined her face. If the Nighthawk wasn’t here, they were in major trouble and all but out of time.
He looked back at the sonar display. For the first time, the underwater profile of the lake had begun to change. Small mounds became noticeable and then block-like structures protruding through the silt. The depth was increasing as well.
Kurt looked up; they were nearing the waterfall. The force of the drop and the outflow of water had carved a deeper pool at this end as the current scoured away the sediment and deposited it farther out in the lake.
“You see?” Urco said, pointing to squared-off sections of the screen. “Streets, avenues, buildings—it’s a city. A drowned city.”
Kurt wasn’t so sure. He’d seen rock formations that looked man-made before. The Bimini Road off the Bahamas came to mind, as did the Yonaguni ruins near Japan, a place that many thought was a submerged temple complex even though geologists insisted it was nothing more than a formation of stratified granite.
He chose not to burst Urco’s bubble, at the moment. “We’ll have to dive on it to get a better look,” Kurt said. “But I won’t deny it’s plenty interesting.”
Urco grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him with appreciation. “You won’t be disappointed.”
By now, they’d come close enough to the waterfall that the overspray was drifting across them. Kurt wiped the screen of the laptop and covered the keyboard.
He glanced at Joe. “Nothing on this pass. Take us back around.”
Joe nodded and turned the wheel. But instead of turning in front of the falls, he guided them in behind it. Because of the overhang of rock high above and the speed with which the water was traveling when it flew off the edge, there was a thirty-foot gap at the bottom.
The Zodiac cruised into that gap and sped between the curtain of water and the cliffside. The rock wall was dark and wet and pockmarked with caves.
“More burial chambers,” Urco said, pointing. “I would like it if they remain undisturbed.”
Kurt studied the dark caverns as they sped past. “Understood,” he said.
The next leg took them down the middle of the lake. They hadn’t gone far when Emma held up a hand. “Slow down,” she said. “I’m picking up something.”
Joe cut the throttle back, the boat settled and all eyes fell upon Emma.
“Ten degrees to the right,” she requested.
Paul turned the lever and stopped.
“Ten more?” she asked, and then, when he’d done that, added, “Back five.”
Emma held both hands against the headphones, pressing them to her ears. She looked out over the water and pointed. “That way. Slowly.”
Joe nudged the throttle and the Zodiac moved forward at a speed just above idle. At Emma’s direction, they made a wide circle and then a narrower one, homing in on the signal.
Finally, Emma held up her hand once more and Joe brought the Zodiac to a stop.
As the boat settled, Emma pulled the headphone jack out of the receiver so everyone could hear the signal . . . Beep . . . Beep . . . Beep . . . Steady and low.
“It’s here,” she said, a wave of relief washing over her face. “The Nighthawk is here.”
35
With their dive gear on, Emma slipped into the water with Kurt and Joe. They would make the first dive together, though once the Nighthawk was physically located, Joe would dry off and prep the Air-Crane for the big lift.
As she descended into the water, Emma noticed the chill in her bones. The water came mostly from snowmelt and the temperature was a frigid fifty degrees. Even wearing heavy, 3:5 wet suits with attached hoods, full-face helmets, boots and gloves, it could be felt.
While the cold was something planned for, dealt with and otherwise ignored, the visibility was a different problem. The water was full of floating sediment stirred up by the waterfall and decomposing plant matter washed down from higher elevations. There was perhaps ten feet of visibility and, at thirty feet, even powerful lights looked as if they were nothing more than glowing candles.
Emma used a light meter to check the incoming energy from the sun. “This isn’t good,” she announced over the helmet-to-helmet communications system. “With the water so murky, the system will be charging at fifteen percent efficiency. That won’t do much for the batteries. The sooner we raise it, the better.”
“We have to find it first,” Joe said. “Which wouldn’t be too difficult, except we’re looking for a black aircraft, sitting at the bottom of a black lake.”
They were kicking lazily and descending slowly.
“The upper surface of the wing has a reflective strip built into it,” Emma said. “Hit that with your light and you’ll have no problem spotting it.”
The lake was eighty feet deep in the center and at least seventy feet beneath the Zodiac. Emma was two-thirds of the way down before the beam of her diving light reached out and found the bottom.
The silt was dark, the color of coal, but flecked here and there with just enough quartz to sparkle like a black gemstone. Tiny rills in the sediment looked like the ridges of a huge fingerprint.
“Spread out a little and drift with the current,” Kurt suggested. Most of the lake would be free of any appreciable current, but they were still getting a little push from the waterfall and for that reason had gone into the lake upstream of the target area.
Emma did as Kurt suggested, feeling a surprising pang of isolation as Kurt’s and Joe’s lights dimmed with the distance.
She concentrated on the task at hand, scanning back and forth, looking for any sign the Nighthawk’s tail or the reflective strips glued to the upper surface of her wings. But the first item of consequence was a blur of color, orange and white, billowing gently along the bottom.
Emma felt her heart rate quicken. “Contact,” she said. “Parachute.”
She moved toward it and found both of the Nighthawk’s parachutes lying on the bottom, half buried in the silt. The free sections were wafting like sea grass as the water flowed over them.
As Kurt and Joe converged on her, she grabbed ahold of the settled nylon and ha
uled on it. The line was taut.
“Still attached,” she said. She pulled herself forward, making her way down the line arm over arm, until a bulky shape came into view. Kurt and Joe swam in behind her. Their lights played across a midnight black curve. Stamped on the side in low-resolution gray were the letters USAF.
With all three of their lights pointed down on it, the craft came into view. It was resting solidly on the bottom, its belly and the lower half of its wing touching the silt. Though she’d seen it plenty of times before, it still appeared surprisingly small.
“Finally,” she said.
“How’s it look?” Kurt asked.
Emma drifted over the top of it, checking for damage. “The fuselage and payload bay are still sealed,” she said. “The wings seem to have some gouges where the Russian clamps locked onto it, but nothing catastrophic.”
She swam forward, arriving at the nose. With her gloved hand, she brushed a layer of silt from a panel on the side of the aircraft. It revealed an electronic touch screen display protected by a scorched plate of transparent Kevlar.
Tapping the panel, she brought it to life. It offered a bright glow in the dark water. Three bars indicated the condition of the cryogenic system: all were solidly in the green. Another section of the screen indicated that containment units were operating as planned while the final part of the display indicated the power supply in a yellow condition.
“One battery pack has already failed, but the others are compensating,” she said.
“Is this a problem?” Kurt asked.
“Only if another pack goes down. Even as is, we should have at least twenty-four hours to get this thing topside, get the containment units out of it and plug them into the portable fuel cells.”
“No reason to wait,” Kurt said.
Joe floated over beside them. “What about opening the cargo bay and removing the containment units without ever lifting the aircraft? It would save time and eliminate the danger of something going wrong with the lift. Not to mention prevent any satellite from spotting the Nighthawk once we get it up on the surface.”