A-Sides

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  The preliminary test results on the specimens were done in a week. During that time, a great deal of the complex had been explored and documented. Cassandra and Sarge had been checked out by a Turkish military doctor and given a clean bill of health. They seemed to have been exposed to an elevated level of radiation, but nothing that a good shower and scrubbing wouldn’t cure. Cassandra wasn’t so sure.

  She herself felt okay, but Sarge seemed a little pale, not quite as energetic as normal, and spent a lot of time hugged up against the heaters. Someone who didn’t know him as well as she did probably wouldn’t have noticed, but he never complained and would have lied to her had she called him out on it.

  The bones had been dated to older than fifty thousand years. Diffusion had upped the probable age to around seventy thousand years, but was unreliable. Only aspartic amino acid racemization would give them a conclusive answer. Intact DNA and intact, though dead, cells had been recovered from both normal and abnormal specimens and the age of the bones had been conclusively pegged at around seventy thousand years.

  Of greater interest was the actual DNA analysis. The DNA from the normal specimens was essentially identical to modern human DNA. Not so for the anomalous specimens. Technically, the DNA was human, but with some glaring differences, most notably that the genes for the production of Human Leukocyte Antigens were completely missing from all the anomalous samples. The humans from which these samples came would, effectively, have no immune response. Great, if you happened to be a transplanted organ, not so great if you had to live on planet earth.

  She had revisited the underground complex several times between running her lab tests and writing up the results, but the bulk of the exploration had been left to her team. She would, she hoped, be able to explore the huge complex more fully once it was all safely documented.

  But on the few times she had returned underground, she had noticed disturbing things.

  Armed members of the Turkish military had begun to accompany the exploration teams and the sappers had wired the whole place for detonation. Whether as a precaution against discovery, or part of a deliberate plan already set in motion, she didn’t know. They thought they were being cagey, disguising themselves as technicians installing a lighting system, but Cassandra saw them for what they were. Reports from her team now had to be cleared through an “information officer” before Cassandra could write them up. She had expected as much, but hadn’t expected the hammer to fall so hard and so fast.

  Two weeks after her first foray into the complex, she fell hard asleep after an eighteen hour day. So it took a few moments for her head to clear when Sarge abandoned protocol and barged into Cassandra’s tent unannounced as she slept. He shook her less than gently to rouse her. As she opened her sleep-bleary eyes the first thing she noticed was the pressing look on his beard-stubbled face.

  “Wake up, Cass. We gotta jump.”

  It took her only another second to assimilate the sounds of revving engines, the high-pitched whine of low-geared transmissions, and the urgent shouting of men directing a full scale bug-out. She was fully awake almost instantly. Moving headlights slashed through the thin walls of her tent in the darkness as vehicles wheeled by in a hasty procession.

  “What’s going on?”

  Sarge had already started stuffing things into duffel bags as Cassandra got up. He alternated packing the bags with glances at her as he spoke.

  “Intel says there’s an air strike coming out of Incirlik. Turkish Air Force is gonna turn this place into a table top.”

  “What?”

  “Would you just get your shit together and save the questions for later?”

  Cassandra quickly pulled on her clothes and gathered up her notes and laptops as the exodus of vehicles continued all around them.

  “Ankara’s got it in their head that this is a Kurdish FOB,” Sarge was saying as Cassandra put on her coat and gloves. “No way they’re gonna let the PKK establish a new base inside Turkish Territory.”

  “That’s crazy,” Cassandra said. “This is no PKK base.”

  Sarge looked at Cassandra irritably and she noticed that his unacknowledged illness had progressed. He seemed to have lost weight and his hair had grayed slightly. “You wanna wave the bombers off with your white hankie? You think everything is tickee babu? This is going down, and unless you want to ride this rocket to the moon, we have to get off the X now!”

  They flagged down a dual axle troop transport just outside the tent and hopped in, joining the fleeing line of ten or twelve vehicles slowly winding their way down the nearly non-existent mountain road. They were less than two miles from the site and the sun had just broken over the Iranian border when they saw the three fighter jets armed with precision guided munitions streak in from the west. They were less than six hundred feet above them and the newly risen sun reflected off of them in a soft, yellow-gold glow.

  Cassandra turned her head to look behind them and saw the first of a barrage of missiles fire off from the jets. With not the explosive power of heavy munitions, the smaller rockets would serve to root out any “defenders” so that the demo teams could come in and mop up. No need for heavy bombers or missiles. The booms were less impressive than she would have imagined, but the barely litten sky at the mountain top burst into fiery yellow and white light and rolling smoke. The surprise and rush of the air raid had all been contrived to keep anyone from grabbing too much in the way of evidence. It was all Kabuki, and Cassandra knew it. There were no defenders, no forward operating base, no real threat. Except to the status quo. She didn’t know when the decision had been made, or who had made it, but Kiringiru would be left just as they had found it: a myth. Six months from now, if she had any reason or opportunity to return, she would find, if not a ten foot fence around the site, cameras and motion sensors embedded in the rocks, roving patrols of armed sentries authorized to use lethal force, and satellite overflights every day. The entrances and exits would be carefully re-concealed and any type of research or excavation would be under the tightest security. Kirinjiru would become an information black hole; an open secret discussed fervently by conspiracy nuts and denied by the Turkish authorities. She had, Cassandra thought, become her namesake: Cassandra, given the gift of knowing by Apollo, and cursed to have no-one believe it.