The Burning Skies

The jet-copter soars above the level of the bridge just as a train emerges from one of the tunnels that the bridge connects. The train’s maglev. But it’s operating at almost a crawl—scarcely thirty klicks an hour. Freight cars fill the bridge, slowing all the while. The copter settles down toward them. Sandwiched between freight cars, an empty flatcar slides from the tunnel—the copter wafts in, touches down upon it. No sooner has it done so than the train speeds up. Mountain disappears as tunnel wall kicks in. The jet-copter’s engines die. Only stone’s visible outside the windows now.

But there’s a lot more than that going on inside Spencer’s mind, now that there aren’t a thousand tons of rock separating him from this train’s systems. Now he can see where this thing’s going. The train accelerates, racing ever deeper into the mountain. Spencer sees the rail it’s on as one smooth line of light. He becomes aware of more rails sprouting off from this one—and of still more rails sprouting off from those …

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he says.

“What’s the story?” says Sarmax.

“The story is this place ain’t small.”

The train’s slowing again, coming through into a gigantic railyard-cavern. Electric lights hang from a ceiling far overhead. Activity’s everywhere. The far side of the cavern lights up in the zone in Spencer’s mind. As do vast grids of light beyond that …

“We’re close,” he says. “We’re real close.”

“Are we trying to get to where this train’s going?”

“I have no idea where this train’s going.”

“Well, try hacking the drivers.”

“Already did. They don’t know either.”

“This place is that compartmentalized?”

“It’s not just one place. They’ve dug out half the goddamn mountain chain as far as I can tell.”

“What’s down here?”

A better question would be what isn’t. It’s almost like a series of cities. There’s that much activity. It stretches on for scores of klicks, all the way beneath Tibet and then some. Spencer can see why he had so much trouble getting a fix on it. Because the infrastructure he was getting a glimpse of beneath the Himalayas is actually above what they’ve now reached. And the way this place is organized, it’s as though the whole thing is …

“Counterforce,” he says.

“What?” Sarmax glances at him.

“This place is counterforce. It’s intended as reserve. We barely know about any of it. Which is the way they want it. They’ll commit it in the later stages of a war.”

“Which could be ten minutes after it kicks off.”

“Sure.” Spencer’s downloading more data into Sarmax’s head. “But the point is that even if the Eurasians strike first, I’ll bet they don’t strike with any of the shit that’s in here.”

Sarmax says nothing.

“How else would you explain it?” asks Spencer.

“I wouldn’t,” says Sarmax. “You’re right.”

“We need to get word of this back—”

“No we don’t.”

“What?”

“They already know it.”

“They do?”

“That the East has hidden reserves? Absolutely.”

“But they don’t know the extent of this.”

“If you send word back to the U.S. zone, you risk compromising our position.”

“It’s worth the risk.”

“Not if there’s something else in here we haven’t found.”

“Maybe this is what we’re looking for,” says Spencer.

“And maybe it’s not.”

“You know something, Leo.”

“I know a lot of things.”

“Including what was in the book you found at Jarvin’s safe house?”

Sarmax stares at him. Says nothing. Just smiles.

“So you do have it,” says Spencer softly.

“Of course I have it.”

“What’s it say?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“That’s why we’re having this conversation,” says Sarmax.

“But where the fuck did you hide it?”

“I didn’t. I burned it.”

“But not before you scanned it.”

“Can’t afford to be as risk-averse as Jarvin was.”

“Christ, Leo. Not filling me in is a risk in itself.”

“Not at all. If you were going to be of any help, you’d have been able to figure out the file’s existence from the rest of what you’ve got. Which apparently you’ve done.”

“Which was easy enough once I knew I was looking for what wasn’t there. Jarvin’s files are littered with coded references to an overall master file. One that was written down on paper. Making it impossible to hack.”

“He was the last CICom handler in HK. Every intelligence organization on the planet was hunting him. He had good reason to be paranoid.”

“Said the guy who killed him. So where was it?”

“Under his floor.”

“And how’d you know it was there?”

“I didn’t, Spencer. I just tore the place apart while you were ransacking his data.”

“You got a tip.”

“So what if I did?”

“You were going to let me know eventually, right?”

“Depended how frustrated I got with it.”

“How much progress have you made?”

“Nowhere near enough. All I can make out is the first section. It talks about the Eurasian secret weapon being an ultimate one, Spencer. It leads straight into several layers of cyphers. It’s—”

“Something you need to give me right now.”

And Sarmax does. Spencer stares as the data clicks through.

“Jesus Christ,” he says.

“Yeah,” replies Sarmax.

“This is more than a thousand pages.”

“Yeah.”

“What the hell are all these symbols?”

“I don’t fucking know.”