The Rock

FIRST BRIEFING

Hawkins checked his watch for the twentieth time in the past hour. He paced back and forth in the tiny cubicle they'd assigned him and then went back to the military issue desk. He snapped open the file folder he'd been given on arrival and studied the documents inside for the hundredth time.

The flight in the backseat of the F-14 Tomcat had left him none the worse for wear. He'd had nothing to do stuffed back where the flight officer normally sat, so he'd slept, the roar of jet engines a comforting and familiar sound. He'd awoken from a troubled sleep several times, usually when they'd slowed down to rendezvous high above the Pacific with a lumbering KC135 tanker for refueling.

He'd arrived here six hours before, been given this folder, and told to wait until the meeting. He'd bristled at the lack of information, but it seemed as if no one else around here knew anything more than he did. Having been in the Army fourteen years, Hawkins was used to "hurry-up-and-wait."

There was a lot of military activity going on-Hawkins's professional judgment estimated at least a battalion-sized Marine Landing Force was staging out of the immediate area of the tracking station. He glanced out a thick window as a CH-47 Chinook helicopter lifted in a cloud of sand and winged to the southwest carrying troops and cargo. It flew over the eight large dishes that were pointing at various attitudes into the early morning sky. Hawkins peered beyond the dishes toward the desert sands. There was something out there that was attracting a whole lot of attention, and Hawkins hoped this upcoming meeting would tell him what it was.

The file folder certainly didn't do that. The papers inside were brief biographies on personnel that a cover letter said would be attending the briefing. Hawkins couldn't figure out what someone would need this strange assortment of people for. Besides himself there were three civilians-two women and a man-along with an Air Force major assigned to the base here and the Marine full colonel who commanded the soldiers outside.

He scanned the picture of the older woman-Dr. Francine Volkers-implanting it in his memory. A professor at Columbia University in New York. Field of expertise: statistical projection, whatever the hell that was. Hawkins shook his head as he flipped the page.

The second woman looked much too young to Hawkins to be on any sort of classified operation even if it just involved thinking. Debra Levy. A physicist, specializing in quantum physics and a whole bunch of other things that Hawkins had no idea what they meant. Hawkins had to smile grimly to himself. So far he was 0 for 2 in understanding exactly what these people did.

He could figure out what the third civilian, Don Batson, did for a living, although why the man was here was as much a mystery to Hawkins as why he himself was here. Batson did consultant work for various mining corporations around the world. His specialty was geology, and in addition to the consulting work he was employed as adjunct faculty at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology with a secondary specialty of operations research.

The Marine colonel was next and Hawkins read his military data with a quick scan. Colonel Tolliver. Commander of Battalion Landing Team 2 out of Okinawa. Hawkins's mind snapped to professional considerations. What did they need a BLT out here for? And how were the Australians reacting to that many U.S. troops on their soil? Tolliver was here simply because he was the commander of the closest American forces.

The Air Force major-Spurlock-was a screen watcher from this station. Hawkins shook his head. He had an inherent antipathy toward someone in uniform, the same rank as himself, who normally got paid the same amount of money each month, but the most dangerous thing they did was use the stapler.

So what had they seen on the screens here that was so important? Hawkins wondered as he glanced outside again at the large dishes.

A Marine lieutenant tapped on the door. It was time. Hawkins stuffed his green beret in a side pants pocket and strode out of the room, the file folder under his arm. Stoic-faced marines with slung automatic weapons were spaced along the hallway and Major Hawkins responded to their snap to attention with a curt nod.

Hawkins showed his ID card to the guard at the door and entered the briefing room. He noted the other people seated at the table as he made his way to the seat that had an index card with his name on it, matching the photos and data in the folder with the actual people. They eyed him with equal curiosity.

Volkers appeared to be on edge, her fingers tapping on the desktop, her eyes flickering about the room. Levy sat perfectly still, her eyes only briefly sliding over to take in Hawkins, then returning to a point in front of her on the tabletop. Batson looked terrible-hungover and worn out. A stubble of beard didn't help his appearance.

The door opened and a man in an expensive three-piece suit walked in. The newcomer was in his mid-forties, a slight puffiness in both the face and body showing the effects of a current lifestyle seated behind a desk. His hair was pure white and thick, combed straight back, a contrast to the slightly red face. The left side of the man's face was slightly concave on the cheekbone-an unsettling abnormality that Hawkins knew was the result of that bone having been smashed in and improperly cared for.

Hawkins had immediately recognized him as Steven Lamb-the President's principal adviser in intelligence matters. Despite the suit and slack body Hawkins respected Lamb. He knew something that few others in the world of covert operations knew-Lamb had spent four years in the CIA running missions out of North Turkey into the former Soviet Union. He had been compromised on one of the missions and spent six years in a Soviet prison under horrible conditions before he was quietly exchanged back after the end of the Cold War. The broken cheekbone had occurred sometime during the first year and been allowed to heal on its own. Hawkins knew this because he had been tapped to plan a rescue mission into the prison-one of many potential missions his team-code named Orion-planned for but never executed because, as Hawkins's executive officer Richman liked to say, there was "a lack of intestinal fortitude on the part of the one who has to make the decision to go."

To many not in the know Lamb was simply the President's hatchet man. The one who took the hard jobs and got them done. Of course, he got them done by using other people to do the dirty work and that sometimes caused resentment in the covert community, but as far as Hawkins knew, Lamb had never shirked responsibility for anything he ordered, even when it had turned bad. That was rare in the world of government, from what Hawkins had seen over the past several years.

Lamb and Hawkins had worked together several times during the course of the past four years while Hawkins had been commanding Orion. Lamb more often than not had been the one giving Hawkins the missions for Orion. He'd been the one who'd supplied the questionable intelligence placing one of the bombs in Colombia and, using his call sign Angel, had given the final go.

Lamb moved directly to the front of the room and looked at each person for a few seconds, gaining eye contact before moving onto the next, as if he were judging their capabilities with that look.

"Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Steven Lamb. I'm executive director of the President's National Command Crisis Team. Some of you know me from your work on the Hermes Project." He glanced at Hawkins. "Some from other operations.

"All of you had or have been given interim top secret Q clearances, so we can speak freely in this room. I am glad each of you was able to make it here in time and-"

"I didn't exactly feel like I had much choice," Batson interrupted.

"I second that statement," Fran Volkers added. "I was told I was to be here because of Hermes Project, yet that doesn't seem to be the case." She pointed at the folder in front of her. Hawkins noticed for the first time that all the other people in the room had a folder similar to his. That meant they knew as much about him as he did about them, which bothered him.

Lamb dodged the question for the time being. "Dr. Volker and Mr. Batson are both members of a group called the Hermes Project and they were told that their presence here was because of that project. However, that is not quite true. The Hermes Project has over eighty members, but as you can see, there are only two of you here. I apologize for the slight subterfuge, but we felt it was the easiest way to get you to come here. This matter does fall under the scope of the contracts you signed with Hermes. I will explain in a little while why we had to bring you here, but let me start at the beginning."

Lamb gestured about him, taking in the room. "This installation is called Deep Space Communication Complex 14. Two days ago this station-and other tracking stations around the globe-picked up a high-frequency transmission that disrupted all normal communications for over three hours. Tapes were made of it at all affected stations and sent to Goddard Space Center in Maryland, which began the process of trying to determine several things: first, where the message originated from; secondly, where the message was being sent to; and third, what the message was. The answers to some of those questions were determined just eighteen hours ago and I will share them with you shortly, but bear with me as I stay in the order of events as they occurred.

"Initially, it was suspected that either a civilian or military radio was broadcasting somewhere to the southwest of this location. A helicopter was sent out to locate the emitter."

Lamb picked up a remote and clicked. The screen showed a massive red rock standing alone in the middle of what appeared to be a desert. "That is Ayers Rock. Located two hundred miles to the southwest of this station. The interfering radio waves were coming out of the rock."

"What do you mean, out of the rock?" Batson leaned forward. "You mean someone inside is transmitting?"

Lamb looked at Batson with a blank expression. "We don't know. Ayers Rock is the largest homogeneous rock in the world-there are caves along the face, but the rock itself has always been thought to be solid. It is 1,131 feet high, a mile and a half wide, and two miles across. Using sonar and magnetic resonance imaging equipment, we have narrowed down the source of the emitter to be center of the mass, approximately six hundred feet in from the top."

Batson ran a slightly shaking hand through his hair. "No sign of a mine entrance or tunneling?"

"None. As far as we can determine from sonar readings, there is a chamber of presently indeterminate size in the center of the rock with no tunnels leading to it. We assume that is where the transmission originated."

Hawkins spoke for the first time. "What's it transmitting?"

Lamb pointed at the Air Force officer. "Major Spurlock was on duty when the radio waves were first received. I’ll let him explain what happened and what he discovered."

Spurlock took a quick drink from a glass of water and then stood. "We picked up the transmission here only because of our proximity to the transmitter. It was picked up by other stations and satellites because the transmission was an up link to a meteor bounce. There were five directional down links.

"The transmission itself was digital-exactly the same mode used by some of our deep-space probes. Specifically, the same mode that Voyager uses. Despite that, at first I could not make any sense of it and thought it was just garbage. But then I ran it through the computer and saw that there was a repeating pattern. I isolated the core message from the repeats and discovered that the reason I couldn't decipher it initially was that the beginning of the message was musical."

He reached over and threw a switch on a tape recorder. The sound of classical music filled the air. He turned it off. "The music goes on for ninety minutes-a wide variety ranging from classical to rock and roll. At the end of the ninety minutes of music comes greetings in various languages. This part also threw me off until I had the computer analyze it. There are twenty-four languages represented."

Spurlock took another drink of water. "At that point it occurred to me that this message was very similar to something I knew about. I checked the data log for the Voyager space probe and found out that the ninety minutes of music and the greetings were the exact same as those appearing on a record built into the probe itself."

"Wait a second." Hawkins held up a hand. "You're saying that something in Ayers Rock is transmitting the same message that was placed on board Voyager?"

Lamb fielded the question. "Yes. On the off chance Voyager might run into another interstellar traveler on its journey among the stars, the designers had placed on board a plaque with engravings depicting humans and the location of the sun. Also, there was a long-playing record that contained spoken greetings in various languages, a selection of various sounds found on earth, and ninety minutes of music. In the grooves of the record there are also common mathematical and scientific codes."

"You said there were five down link sites? Where was the message sent to?" Hawkins asked.

In reply Lamb pressed a button on the remote and a black-and-white outline map of the world appeared with five red dots superimposed. "The message was sent from Ayers Rock via very high-power meteor burst to five locations-one in each continent outside of Australia and excluding Antarctica."

Hawkins studied the overlay. There was a red dot in the southwest United States. One in Europe-someplace in Germany. One in the middle of Russia. One in Argentina. And one in the southeast part of Africa. That last dot-Hawkins leaned forward. "Do you have exact locations where the transmission was sent to?"

"We've triangulated the ones in the U.S. and Africa to within a hundred-and-fifty kilometer circle," Lamb answered. "It's rather difficult because we could only interpolate a best guess off what other tracking stations caught of each down link. The one in South America we've located down to within two hundred kilometers. The one in Europe we're within two hundred kilometers also. The one in Asia is down to within a four-hundred-kilometer circle in Central Siberia, and Russia is not cooperating in giving us any data."

Hawkins pointed. "Can you show us in greater detail where that one in Africa is?"

Lamb graced him with a slight smile, as if he had hit the jackpot. "Major Spurlock, you can leave now."

Lamb waited until the Air Force officer had departed the room before pressing the button on the slide remote. A strange domelike rock structure filled the screen. Hawkins felt a surge of adrenaline as he recognized the object-so this was about the bombs after all!

Lamb spoke. "The circle includes Johannesburg and Pretoria, but the center of the estimate is Vredefort Dome. As some of you know, a nuclear bomb was set off in a mine underneath that structure by terrorists three days ago. This occurred approximately four hours prior to the radio transmission."

Hawkins glanced at the other occupants in the room. He could tell by the expressions on their faces that Tolliver and Volkers had known about the blast, but that Levy and Batson were hearing this for the first time, and their faces showed their surprise. Hawkins wondered why Volkers had been told-as far as he knew, the incident was being kept highly classified and the media had no hint.

"The blast effectively destroyed the most productive mine in South Africa-the Red Streak." He paused briefly as Batson whistled in surprise, then continued. "That mine had produced almost two thousand tons of gold and an unknown amount of uranium over the past three years. The bomb was believed to have been one stolen from a Russian depot two weeks ago and set off by a radical splinter group of the Xantha freedom party opposed to the ANC. How the bomb got from Russia to South Africa we do not yet know. Because the blast was underground, the South African government has been able to keep it out of public scrutiny, although how long they'll be able to maintain that veil of secrecy is unknown. Our sensing stations around the world picked the blast up clearly and easily pinpointed the epicenter."

"How did they get a bomb into the mines?" Batson asked. "I thought security was very tight there."

"The security is designed to keep the workers from bringing gold out," Lamb briefly explained. "From what we can piece together, it was relatively easy for them to bring a bomb into the mine and detonate it once it reached the proper level. That is not the issue here and now, though.

"We do not know the connection between Ayers Rock, Vredefort Dome-if that is where the message in Africa went-and the other four locations. We also do not know if there is any connection between the bomb and the transmission. How Voyager fits into this is also a puzzle."

"Voyager gave them the means of communication with this station," Levy quietly remarked.

"Gave who?" Lamb asked.

Levy shrugged. "Whoever is sending the message."

"But how did they-whoever they are-get a hold of the information on Voyager?" Batson wanted to know.

Lamb held up a hand. "There are many unanswered questions. Let's not go jumping to conclusions. You will be given access to all the data we have, and hopefully we can start coming up with some answers."

"I still want to know why we were picked to be here," Volkers interjected. "I don't see why a physicist, a soldier, a mathematician, and a mining engineer make the best team to handle this. Surely you have people who would be better equipped to deal with it."

Lamb looked at her. "As we told you-the message from Ayers Rock consisted of three parts. The first was the music from Voyager. The second, the greetings also recorded on Voyager. It is because of the third part that you are here."

Lamb flicked the button and words showed on the screen. "This is the third part of the message when transcribed from the digital code."

"It took us a little while to recognize the names among the letters, as they were all just strung together." Lamb hit the forward and the message reappeared, this time broken down.

"The message repeats your four names six times and then the entire message starts over again with the music."

"Why us?" Volkers asked the question they all had.

Lamb turned off the screen. "I was hoping one of you could tell me that."