tracking which border crossings they’re using, we need to bring the Austrian, German and Czech police and customs agencies into the loop.’
‘And the next thing we’ll be up to our armpits in alligators, trying to explain to Congress and the White House why we blew up a garbage truck in a foreign country!’ Wiley turned back to his chief of staff. ‘What information do we have on their destination?’
Davis looked uncomfortable and raised his eyebrows at Rodriguez.
‘My guess is they’ll try for Guatemala, probably Tikal, as soon as they can, since that’s where the Maya Codex is rumoured to be,’ she said. As per your instructions, I’ve alerted the Guatemala station. They’ve got the airports and major border checkpoints covered and they’re working on possible locations for the codex.’
‘Trains?’ Wiley demanded.
Rodriguez took a deep breath. ‘Guatemalan railways were shut down in 2007.’
Wiley glared at her. ‘Be that as it may, I want these two found and eliminated before they cause any more problems for us in Germany or the Czech Republic or wherever the fuck they are at the moment. In the meantime, I want every border crossing into Guatemala covered, and that includes Mexico, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador, as well as the ports. And I want that codex!’ Wiley motioned Davis into the little room known as the ‘cone of silence’ to one side of the operations room.
‘Rodriguez is becoming a pain in the ass, and she’s far too cosy with the White House for my liking. There’s a briefing on HAARP in Alaska the day after tomorrow. Fuck her off up there as the CIA representative until I can arrange to get her out of here – permanently.’
45
T he fresh snow drifts outside HAARP’s operations room sparkled under the cold early-December sun. The Director of Gakona, Dr Nathaniel B. Hershey, was very solidly built. In his younger days, the nuclear physicist had played quarterback for the Washington Redskins, and he still worked out every day, but not today. Today he was providing a personal briefing on the capabilities of HAARP to the vice chiefs of the navy, army and air force, as well as the assistant commandant of the Marines, the CIA and a brace of high-powered civilians from the Pentagon.
‘Here at HAARP, we’re at the cutting edge of science,’ Dr Hershey began. ‘Within a few short years we’ve got to the stage where we can generate 3.6 million watts on the ground, and because we have very large phased-array antennae that cover nearly fifteen hectares, we can direct that energy into a narrow beam wherever we want to aim it, blasting the ionosphere with over three gigawatts, or three billion watts, of electromagnetic power.’
Ellen Rodriguez’ eyes widened. Rodriguez was not only fluent in Spanish and German; as a teenager, she had graduated summa cum laude from a little-known college in the Bronx and won a scholarship to Columbia University, where she’d majored in environmental physics. She had done as much research on HAARP as she could in the short time before she left Langley, and she had already reached the conclusion that messing with the earth’s delicate balance was madness.
Dr Hershey flashed up a display of the ionosphere, the upper part of the atmosphere that stretched from eighty to 1000 kilometres above the earth and consisted of electrons and charged particles or ions. ‘As most of you are aware, the ionosphere plays an important part in communications, acting as a mirror for radio waves, enabling us to communicate over long distances. What is not so well understood is the effect that it might have on intercontinental ballistic missiles fired from Russia, China, or, in the future, from rogue states like North Korea or Iran.’
‘Can it be used to deflect them?’ asked the nuggetty little four-star commandant from the Marine Corps.
‘That’s one of the things we’re aiming to find out, General,’ Dr Hershey replied, flashing up another PowerPoint slide. ‘By aiming three billion watts at a single point in the ionosphere, we believe we can actually lift it by up to eighty kilometres at a particular point, and it’s quite possible that could be used to deflect any incoming missiles off course.’
‘If you blast the ionosphere with three billion watts, Dr Hershey, and hold a piece of it eighty kilometres out to space, all that energy has to go somewhere, and that somewhere will be into the particles that make up the ionosphere itself, am I right?’ Rodriguez was up the back of the small briefing room, but her voice held an authority that turned the heads of those far more senior in the front row.
‘I’m not sure where you’re going with this,’ Hershey countered, his blue-grey eyes suddenly steely. He had answered questions like this on open days, but he hadn’t expected one in the middle of a top-secret briefing.
‘If I’m right, three billion watts of energy will throw huge amounts of heat into the ionosphere, way past the normal balance. Isn’t there a chance that all of that energy might discharge back? Much the same way as a lightning bolt discharges energy, only in this case, hundreds of times more powerful?’
Dr Hershey smiled through pursed lips. ‘I would draw the analogy of putting your finger in a bucket of water; you take your finger out, and the hole is repaired immediately.’ Hershey glared at Tyler Jackson, the CIA’s most senior scientist at HAARP, silently asking how someone like Officer Rodriguez had been allowed into the briefing.
‘I couldn’t have put it better myself, Dr Hershey,’ the Marine Corps general drawled. ‘Now, if the handbag brigade up the back doesn’t mind, I’d like to hear the rest of what you’ve got to say.’
Hershey smirked. ‘Thank you, General. As part of this program, we intend to conduct three major experiments. The first, which I’ve briefly outlined, will involve a ten-minute burst of extremely high energy aimed at a point above the northern Pacific. Prior to the beam firing, the air force will launch a long-range missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, which we will then deflect off course, towards the Arctic Ocean.’
The Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force nodded enthusiastically. ‘In the past, as part of the National Missile Defense program, we’ve launched interceptor missiles from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, but they haven’t been one hundred per cent effective. This will add another string to our bow.’
Rodriguez shook her head, convinced that no one in the room had any idea what they were playing with.
‘The second experiment will involve the generation of extremely low-frequency electromagnetic waves, or ELF,’ Hershey continued, pointing to the screen showing layers of the earth’s atmosphere. ‘At altitudes of between a hundred and 150 kilometres above the earth, we have what are known as electrojets. Essentially these are rivers of electrons or electricity running through the ionosphere above the earth. We intend to blast beams of extremely high energy into them, which will change the nature of the electrojets and generate beams of ELF that can be used to communicate with our submarines over very long distances.’ It was the Vice Chief of the Navy’s turn to nod his approval.
‘ELF waves can also be used to effectively X-ray the earth, and this, we hope, will assist us to find tunnels in countries like Iran, which is burying its nuclear plants so deep even our satellite-based sensors are having difficulty picking them up.’ Hershey paused to let HAARP’s potential sink in. Rodriguez seized her chance to get the people in the room to think beyond the parade ground.
‘Seismic tomography has long been in use, Dr Hershey, to search for oil and gas deposits, for example,’ she began, ‘and for the benefit of those in this room who may not be familiar with the technique, crude oil and natural gas will return sounds at different frequencies that enable geologists to identify the substance and its location. But those techniques employ energy in the range of thirty to forty watts, which is more than sufficient to get through solid rock. We’re talking here about pounding the earth’s surface with three billion watts. Do we have any idea what might happen to the earth’s delicate balance if you unleash that sort of energy?’
Dr Hershey took a deep breath and raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘That’s why we do experiments, Dr Rodriguez – to find out,’ he replied icily. ‘And if you think the Russians, the Indians and the Chinese haven’t built research stations similar to this one, think again.’ He grabbed the remote and thumbed through a number of slides, stopping at a satellite image of an aerial array in the province of Nizhny Novgorod in central Russia. ‘Taken from one of our KeyHole satellites just last month,’ Hershey explained. ‘We’ve got resolution down to half a metre, and you can clearly see the streets and buildings in the small town of Vasilsursk on the River Volga, close to which is the Russian ionospheric heating facility, Sura… here.’ Hershey glared at Rodriguez and aimed his laser pointer at the
