Extinction Machine

Chapter Forty-six

VanMeer Castle

Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Sunday, October 20, 10:11 a.m.

The golf cart’s top speed was twelve miles an hour, and Mr. Bones tried to will it to go faster. The labyrinthine underground structure of basements, subbasements, laboratories, warehouses, firing chambers, and other rooms was more than triple that of the massive castle above. They had to endure two freight elevators and more than a mile of tunnels in order to get to Howard’s design lab. It was a ponderous distance at the best of times, and now it was excruciating.

“Why don’t you move the f*cking lab closer to the elevators?” Bones growled.

“Why don’t you stop whining and steer? Nearly clipped my elbow back there.”

The sniping war continued all the way to the big security door. Then they piled out and went through the steps necessary to open the airlock door. It required two palm prints simultaneously applied. There was a secondary entry method for those times when Mr. Bones was not at the estate, but that had a number of extra steps and many safeguards in case Howard was being made to access the lab under duress.

The airlock hissed open, belching refrigerated air at them. Despite the nervous hostility during the trip, they weren’t mad at each other. They were terrified. The disaster at Dugway was dreadful.

Beyond the airlock was a large laboratory with state-of-the-art computer systems lining three of the walls. The fourth wall was completely covered by a line of heavy gray drapes.

Once inside they hurried to the central Ghost Box station, which was a massive affair with over twenty networked screens built in a semicircle around a console with two wheeled leather chairs. Mr. Bones held the chair for Howard and paused to feel the old man’s pulse and press a palm against his forehead. Howard was flushed, but the blood pressure medicine seemed to be keeping him stable. His pulse was elevated, but not dangerously so.

Howard waved him away with mock irritation.

They logged onto Ghost Box and immediately called Yuina Hoshino. A hologram of her appeared above them, almost life-size but just her head and shoulders. She wore her glasses and peered owlishly at them.

“Howard? What is it? I’m in the middle of—”

“I tried to call you, damn it.”

“I turned my phone off,” she said. “We’re working on the slave circuit and—”

“To hell with the slave circuit. Never turn your goddamn phone off,” snarled Howard. His voice carried such savage emotion that Yuina straightened and removed her glasses. “Look at this.”

Howard replayed the last few seconds of footage from Dugway.

Her face was a total blank. No expression, no emotion.

“Again,” she said. “Play it again.”

They played it twice more and then a third time in slow motion. Mr. Bones opened some video-editing software, froze the best image and blew it up, but as good as the senator’s lapel cam had been it was still not sophisticated enough. As the picture expanded it began to blur and then to fragment into blocks as the computer isolated individual pixels and assigned them colors. Annoyed, Mr. Bones reduced the magnification until they had the largest clear picture.

“They’re back,” said Howard. “Holy mother of God, Yuina, they’re back and—”

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” said Yuina slowly. She put her glasses back on and bent over her keyboard for a few seconds. Then a second image appeared in an inset box. The craft in this picture was a triangle of unreflective black metal with one bright light near each of its three points and a larger light in the exact center. The sides were dark, alternating black and smoke gray. The top and bottom of the machine were slightly larger than the center section, creating an eavelike overhang all the way around. In the second picture, the craft stood on three metal legs made from steel struts. The vehicle was apparently in a cave with rough walls but on the closest wall there appeared to be some kind of rough structure. When Yuina increased the size of the inset box it became more evident that the structure on the wall was the reconstructed skeleton of a dinosaur.

The craft in the inset and the craft at Dugway were a perfect match.

“Wait, wait,” said Shelton. “What are you saying here?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” answered Yuina. “The ship in the cave is the one found at the Dadiwan dig in the excavation site in Zhangshaodian Village, in Tianshui City. The one they found in 2013.”

“Bullshit … that ship was trashed,” Howard fired back. “Tull got in there. He took photos of everything.”

Yuani gave him a pitying look. “Haven’t you ever put used parts from one car into another? Or am I the only tomboy in this group?”

“Son a bitch,” breathed Mr. Bones. “The f*cking Chinese did repair it.”

“Are you sure they’re the same?” demanded Howard. “Look, the lights aren’t exactly—”

“If there are differences it’s because the Chinese rebuilt or remodeled the craft,” said Yuina.

“This craft just shot down the Locust bomber they’re testing out at Dugway,” said Howard. “That’s an act of war, Yuina. You actually think the Chinese are looking to declare open war on the U.S.?”

Her face was impassive. “I’m not so sure I’d call this war, Howard.”

“Then what?”

“A war is two-sided. The DoD has been hoping to use the Locust to put us way ahead in the international arms race. Much like we’re hoping to do with Specter 101. But if that vehicle is Chinese, then they’ve just told us in no uncertain terms that the arms race is over.” She leaned toward the screen, dark eyes intense. “And they just won.”