The Fusion Cage (Warner & Lopez Book 2)

  THE FUSION CAGE

  © 2015 Dean Crawford

  Published: 1st June 2015

  ASIN: B00YLNDJW8

  Publisher: Fictum Ltd

  The right of Dean Crawford to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  Dean Crawford Books

  Also by Dean Crawford:

  The Warner & Lopez Series

  The Nemesis Origin

  The Fusion Cage

  The Atlantia Series

  Survivor, Retaliator

  Aggressor, Endeavour, Defiance

  The Ethan Warner Series

  Covenant, Immortal, Apocalypse

  The Chimera Secret, The Eternity Project

  Independent novels

  Eden, Holo Sapiens

  Revolution, Soul Seekers

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  I

  Clearwater, Missouri

  Amber Ryan knew that there was something wrong the moment she reached the edge of the forest. She crouched down amid the sun dappled trees, the dark green and black disruptive pattern material of her camouflage smock blending in perfectly with the light from the setting sun shimmering through the long grass.

  The town below her was nestled deep within the confluence of three valleys and intersected by the silvery line of Hope Creek that wound its way down from the highlands of the Logan Creek Conservation Area. The high hills created a natural, shadowy haven surrounded by deep forests of pine and aspen within which the tiny town of Clearwater had lain since the gold rush of two centuries before. A population of just three hundred fifteen. One road in, one road out. The next town was more than ten miles away.

  Amber, her eyes shielded from the sun’s glare by her sunglasses, slowly lay down in the long grass. She shifted her position to avoid crushing the bodies of two grouse hitched to her belt as she slipped the rifle she carried off her shoulder and removed the protective plastic shields on the telescopic sights.

  Clearwater’s deep location within the surrounding mountains meant that it saw sunlight only in the very height of summer and by sundown was always deep in shadow. Amber had normally navigated her way home via the town’s twinkling street lights, an obvious and clearly visible marker in the wilderness as soon as one crested the ridge high above the settlement. But this time, things were different.

  The street lights were all out and there were blockades on both of the town’s exit routes. From her vantage point high in the hills Amber could not make out any details until she pulled the rifle into her shoulder and aimed it down at the blockade on the west entrance to the town, not so much a proper road as a logging track winding in from the deep forests.

  Amber’s heart skipped a beat. Two vehicles, both of them painted a drab green, were parked nose to nose across the road, and in front of them were a series of boards painted with vivid yellow and black hazard chevrons. Behind the boards stood four soldiers, all cradling what looked like assault rifles.

  Amber swept the rifle to the east and immediately tracked the position of a second barricade on the far side of the town, likewise manned by armed soldiers. Amber scanned the vehicles but saw no markings to identify which army unit they were assigned to, and the soldiers’ uniforms betrayed no patches or insignia that she could recognize from so far away. Concerned but not alarmed, it took a while for Amber to realize what it was that was truly bugging her, an out–of–place sensation that she could not shake off.

  As her sights swept slowly across the town she realized that the main street was devoid of either pedestrians or vehicles. Clearwater was a redneck haven, always filled with trucks and four by fours plastered with mud, burly loggers making their way either to or from Old Rigger’s, a crumbling joint that served the town’s only alcohol. An equally shabby Colonial style hotel on the opposite side of the town provided a place for them to live during the season, after which Clearwater’s population halved as the loggers left.

  But now there was not a single car in the town, and through her sights Amber could see that the businesses were closed and some of the windows of the houses were already boarded up. She slowly lowered the rifle and stared in amazement at the sight of her town completely abandoned. She’d left Clearwater four days before for a weekend camping trip in the wilderness, a country girl at heart who longed to escape the stifling routine of college. Amber’s father had stayed behind, the man who had taught her to love and live in the countryside too old now to venture far out across the rugged wilderness. Besides, he had been busy in his workshop, his head down on yet another crazy idea he’d had, something he’d wanted to build for …

  Amber saw movement, men emerging from a building near the west edge of the town where most of the residential homes were located up on the foothills, elevated away from the creek that in the winter could swell to twice its normal depth and width as rainfall on the mountains swept down into the myriad gullies and creeks that slashed across the forested valleys.

  Amber set her rifle down and pulled a small set of folding binoculars from her smock as she saw eight soldiers carrying something on their shoulders, some kind of pallet. Atop the pallet was something concealed beneath a camouflaged tarpaulin that rippled in the evening breeze gusting through the valley, and she saw the tarpaulin edges flapping as more soldiers hurried into view and began trying to tie it down more securely.

  As one soldier yanked down on one corner of the tarpaulin so the opposite edge was hauled upward, and in an instant a fierce flare of blue–white light burst from beneath the cover like a supernova, as though a new born star had blossomed into life. Amber saw the brilliant light fill her vision and she almost screamed as she jerked her eyes away from the optics and threw her hands instinctively over them.

  The darkness behind her hands was scorched by the afterglow of the infernal brightness and Amber realized that she was weeping, that she may have permanently damaged her eyes. The vicious light had seemed so intense that it had imprinted upon her eyes a bizarre negative image of the town below, cast in shades of gray and black, the brilliant orb blazing at its centre. Amber tried to open her eyes and whimpered as she saw her vision marred, clear around the edges but filled with blackness at its centre. She turned her head to one side, wiped the tears from her face as she tried to get a last glance at the mysterious object being hauled onto a small truck that had appeared on main street. Through the periphery of her blurred vision she watched as the object was properly secured and concealed, and moments later the barricades were removed and the object was driven out of Clearwater.

  Amber reached out with one hand for her rifle and by touch alone she slung the weapon on her shoulder, remaining prone amid the tall grass for fear of being spotted by the troops still in the town. Her vision sparkled and pulsed with kaleidoscopic colors orbiting the blackness, and she stifled her sobs as she withdrew back into the cover of the trees and lay down on the cool grass with her eyes closed. She reached down to her side for a canteen of water, and after drinking from it she poured the cold water across her face in the hope that the damage to her eyes might somehow be mitigated.

  She tried to relax as she set up a small camp, more by touch than by sight, relying on her experience and skills to build a simple makeshift shelter on which she laid down, and the soft caress of the warm evening breeze and the whispering of the wind through the trees lulled her into a doze.

  Amber did not know how long she was out for, but when she was awoken by the cold air she opened her eyes and for a moment panicked as she saw not
hing but absolute blackness.

  Amber sucked in a deep breath of air and rolled onto her back, and there above her appeared a sky filled with a panorama of glittering stars. Her gaze swept the dense star fields and she almost wept again as she realized that her blindness had been temporary, the brutal glare of whatever she had seen now nothing but a memory. Amber rolled onto her side once more and looked down into the valley and saw nothing but an absolute and impenetrable blackness, the mountains around her dark against the pale glow of a new dawn, the sky to the east tinged with its light.

  She got to her feet and once again used her binoculars to scan the town, but under the faint starlight the only thing of which she could be sure was that the barricades were gone from the tracks and that the power was still off.

  Amber strode out of the treeline and descended the hillside toward Clearwater, passing through thick forest glades and hearing the first waters whispering through the creek as she approached the town. She slowed as she joined the logging trail that crossed the base of the foothills before her, cautious of her approach to a town that she had called home for all of her seventeen years. In the dim light she could make out the narrow bridge that crossed the creek onto Main Street and she hesitated for a moment before she crouched down, enshrouded in inky blackness.

  Amber pulled a flashlight from her smock pocket but refrained from switching it on, cautious of revealing her presence. She searched the darkness for some sight or sound of humanity but found nothing. Instead, she waited in the cold as the light to the east grew stronger and cast its glow down the valley toward Clearwater and finally brought enough illumination to the town for her to see her way.

  Amber crept forward across the bridge toward Main Street, and as she reached it so she slowed as her jaw hung open and her grip on the flashlight failed. The flashlight dropped onto the wooden bridge with a crack that sounded deafeningly loud in the absolute silence around her.

  The old barber’s shop opposite her still stood alongside the former mine shop that was now a tannery, horses still a popular mode of transport on the more rugged local trails. Both properties were silent and dark, as was the rest of the town, but what stunned her was that they both also appeared to have been untouched for perhaps decades. The paint on the walls was peeling, exposing old woodwork beneath, and the windows were caked in filth. Amber paced forward onto Main Street and stared in disbelief as she realized that debris was strewn across the street, old newspapers and pieces of junk scattered as though nobody had cleaned the streets for weeks or even months.

  Amber turned left, heading instinctively for home. Her footfalls sounded unusually loud in the absolute silence as she walked past the small chapel, the white clapperboard building decayed and the roof collapsed. She quickened her pace, hurrying past vacant lots and houses stained by decades of disrepair, and then she began running up the old road that led to her home.

  Amber was out of breath by the time she reached it, and she stared in silence as the rising sun cast shafts of golden light through the faint mist hanging in the air. The glow bathed her home in its warm light, the house that she had grown up in, the one that she had left just days previously. The dawn light passed through the skeletal remains of the property, piercing old roof timbers and broken down walls as Amber’s legs gave way beneath her and she sank to her knees on the stony track.

  Like the rest of the entire town, her home looked as though nobody had lived in it for half a century.

  ***

  II

  Defense Intelligence Agency,

  Joint Base Anacostia, Washington DC

  ‘Any news on where the fire is?’

  The driver of the unmarked sedan glanced in his rear–view mirror at Douglas Jarvis and gave a brief shake of his head, his face cast into sharp relief by the brilliant light of the sun rising above the city. The vehicle was moving between lanes of light morning traffic on the 295 just east of the base, heading for the off ramp that would take them into one of the United States’ most secretive locations just inside the District of Columbia: Anacostia–Bolling Air Force Base and the home of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s DIAC Building.

  Jarvis had not really expected the driver to have any real knowledge of what was awaiting him inside the building, although on occasion in the past his former boss at the DIAC, General Mitchell, had forwarded files out to him to peruse on the way in and bring him up to speed. These days, however, security was more paramount than ever – what happened inside the DIAC, stayed inside.

  Jarvis had been summoned by the Director of National Intelligence, Lieutenant General J. F. Nellis, a former United States Air Force officer who had recently been appointed DNI by the current president. Jarvis, a former career Marine Corps officer and later an intelligence analyst with the DIA, had been selected by Nellis to run a small, almost invisible investigative unit designed to root out corruption within the intelligence community while remaining beyond the prying eyes of senior figures on Capitol Hill. Jarvis had been chosen due to his prior success in operating a similar unit within the DIA that had conducted five investigations into what were rather discreetly termed as “anomalous phenomena” and attracted the attention of both the FBI and the CIA before being shut down. Jarvis had spent some twenty years working for the DIA and been involved in some of the highest–level classified operations ever conducted by elements of the US Covert Operations Service. Most of them he would never be able to talk about with another human being, even those with whom he had served. Jarvis knew the rules and had obeyed them with patriotic fervour his entire career.

  What bothered Jarvis was that since the formation of the new unit most of his meetings with Nellis had occurred at the DNI’s own office in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, and not here in the district and within a stone’s throw of both Capitol Hill and the White House.

  The driver eased the vehicle toward the heavily guarded entrance to the DIAC, modern silvery buildings that glowed a burnished gold in the sunrise, and passed through numerous checkpoints and bomb–sweeps before being allowed to continue on toward a parking lot shielded from scrutiny beneath one of the array of buildings before him. Whatever the reason for Jarvis being brought here, Nellis was still keeping his presence under wraps, the buildings were ringed with vast open–air lots that could have been used, but all of which would allow Jarvis’s arrival to be observed.

  The car came to a halt near one wall of the lot, which was virtually empty at this early hour, and the driver indicated an elevator door close by.

  ‘Access code number seven–zero–four, select level five, room two–zero–one.’

  The driver spoke the words mechanically, having clearly memorized them, and looked at Jarvis to ensure that he had understood. As soon as Jarvis had climbed out and closed his door the car slid away again toward the exit. Jarvis accessed the elevator and stepped inside, selected level five, and took a deep breath.

  Room 201 was a non–descript briefing room on the fifth floor, and the only one that Jarvis encountered on his journey that was open. Furthermore, it had not escaped his attention that the floor in the immediate area was entirely empty: for whatever reason, Nellis had seen fit to ensure that no DIA staff would witness whatever was about to take place in the room.

  Jarvis approached the open door cautiously and knocked once.

  ‘Enter.’

  Jarvis felt a brief moment of relief as he recognized Nellis’s voice and entered the room, the DNI standing from behind a bare desk and extending a hand.

  ‘My apologies for the unusual choice of location,’ Nellis explained. ‘I have a briefing with both the president and the Director CIA in an hour in DC.’

  ‘No problem,’ Jarvis replied as he closed the office door and took a seat opposite Nellis. ‘What’s the story?’

  Nellis was just one year into the role of DNI and he had already aged visibly, swamped by the sheer volume of information he was required to process as a matter of daily routine. Nellis sat back down and retrieved from a bri
efcase by his side a slim file that he slid across the table to Jarvis.

  ‘Classified Cosmic, naturally, and cannot leave the room,’ Nellis said. ‘We need to be quick and develop a strategy rapidly before we both leave the building separately. I have a car waiting and my staff think I’m up here revising the presidential briefing, not talking to you.’

  ‘Understood,’ Jarvis nodded as he opened the file and began scanning the contents as fast as he could.

  Speed–reading was an advantageous skill to any intelligence agent, the very nature of the business governed by how much information an individual could absorb, process, analyse and utilize in as short a time as possible. Jarvis’s eyes swept across the pages and words leaped out at him as others poured into his sub–conscious.

  Disappearances. Nigeria. Specific excess heat anomaly. Siberia mass murder. Viktor Schauberger, Austria, implosion research. Zero point. Neutron pulse detection. More words flashed by his eyes as his brain soaked in the information on the pages before he reached a final line.

  Clearwater, Missouri.

  ‘What happened at Clearwater?’ Jarvis asked.

  ‘Four days ago, a B–2 Spirit Stealth bomber of the 509th Bomber Wing operating out of Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, landed after a routine training mission and downloaded data from its reconnaissance computers to servers at the DIA for analysis. Most of what was there held little interest other than to confirm that the aircraft’s sensors were working correctly, however just before sunset as the aircraft was turning for home it detected an anomalous energy burst from the mountains down in the south east.’

  Jarvis raised an eyebrow. ‘And that’s the big deal?’

  ‘The big deal,’ Nellis replied, ‘is that the energy burst registered on the aircraft’s systems as being equivalent to around fourteen thousand pounds of TNT.’