0300 Book 3 - 14. Chapter 14: Mt. Zion

Chapter 14: Mt. Zion

USF Charleston
Intel Team Meeting

Knowing with certainty that there was a fourth telegraph network, and given the clue of Mt. Zion, the intel team identified what may have been the headquarters of the inquisitors: a mountain about 100 miles south of Denver. That is, the location in Colorado of “our” Denver. The Denver of the Reverend’s world was little more than a sheep station.

“The telegraph lines converge on this building, here,” Marty said, pointing to the display. “But, there is what looks like a trunk cable from that building. The cable follows this road, which runs into the mountain.”

Imagery put up an oblique taken from the east. “There’s a two-lane road leading into the mountain. It’s like a mine head, but it doesn’t go down. From here, it looks as if it goes straight into the mountain. After that, of course, we can’t tell,” Alex said.

“An underground headquarters. For what reason?” I asked.

“Absolute secrecy,” Cam said. “They’re doing something in there that they want no one else to know.”

“They know about us . . . or, at least, that we have broadcast satellites in space. What might they have inferred? Don’t underestimate their intelligence! I want a team that thinks like the Inquisition.”

I looked around for a team chief. I thought of Andrew, but he didn’t yet have the kind of training he would need. John Patmos?

“John? Would you accept the assignment as Team Chief? Danny will put you in touch with someone who can help you screen our personnel for members.”

I was pleased that John didn’t hesitate. “Of course, Commodore. I think I can do a very good job of that.”

Traffic into and out of the mountain tunnel was limited to a few people on foot, an occasional motorcar, and one truck each day. The truck appeared to be bringing in supplies and removing drums that might have held liquid. Speculation was rife; facts were few.

“Chemical weapons?” someone suggested.

“Could it be as simple as bringing in water in the drums, and the drums are empty when they leave?”

“The trucks appear to weigh the same, based on tire flattening and track depth the one time it rained, when they enter and leave,” Alex said.

“Could be bringing in water and removing waste,” he added. “If there’s no water in the mountain, there’s probably no sewer system, either.”

The clues we had invited speculation, but otherwise did not help.

First Earthquake Broadcast

Bobby sent word to the GWGs and all the intel teams that he was ready for the next step of the psyops offensive, and invited me to watch. George, Danny, John Patmos who was still part of Bobby’s psyops team, and I joined Bobby in the control room of the USF Charleston’s communication center.

A studio had been set up with a desk and backdrop that matched what we saw on the Reverends’ televisor network. A crewmember who was one of the players in ship’s little theater productions, wearing clothes and a haircut that matched those of the Reverends’ news readers, sat in front of a television camera. The camera fed a computer that converted our signal into the codec used by the Reverends, and then sent it by laser through the rift to the two broadcast satellites in synchronous orbit covering the North America of the Reverends’ world and the one satellite we’d positioned to cover Europe. A shuttle had already launched, and was standing by to activate the breakers that would block the main televisor signals from Lynchburg and Paris.

“A live broadcast is risky. Why didn’t you record him in advance?” Danny whispered.

“Because, he’s going to watch the Reverends’ broadcast, and will refer to something said during it. That will make him more believable, especially to the general population,” Bobby replied.

“Cool!” Danny said. Bobby blushed.

“Won’t they see the difference in the signal?” George asked. We had ramped up the power of our broadcast of the sea monster, and knew the picture and sound were of much better than normal quality.

“No,” Marty said. “At least I hope not. We’ve reduced power on the satellite signal, and have actually injected some noise into the broadcast. They’ll see and hear the noise as the normal ‘snow’ and static they get on their sets.”

John, who was directing the operation, shushed us. The Reverends’ broadcast had begun. The actor watched and listened. He gave the director a ‘thumbs up.’ At the end of the next news story, the director pressed a single button that resulted in the blocking of the Reverends’ signal and the beginning of our broadcast. There would be a slight speed of light delay, but given the usual quality of the Reverends’ broadcast, we didn’t think that would matter.

The actor began speaking. “We have received some new information. While the Scudder visits the people of Hammond to congratulate them on their bumper harvest of rice, the people of Klingman are cleaning up after an earthquake that devastated that town.”

The earthquake and the description of damage in Klingman, in fact, Klingman, itself, were figments of Bobby’s imagination. The actor described the plight of the imaginary inhabitants of this imaginary town, and said that they were praying that the Scudder would send aid, including food.

The actor gave the standard “end of broadcast” message followed by a recording, made months ago, of the Scudder’s benediction. We kept the signal blocked for the next hour, but there was nothing from Lynchburg to block. They had ended their broadcast.

Mt. Zion: Jewish Scientists
on Microwave Intercept

“Well, Lieutenant? Did they find anything?” the Colonel-General asked. It was the morning after the earthquake broadcast. The Lieutenant had been awake all night reading messages from Miami, Omaha, and Chicago.

“Yes sir,” he said. “They reiterate their belief that the signal comes from space.”

He continued. “The Jewish scientists set up directional antennas in three locations: Miami, Chicago, and Omaha. The instant the Reverend’s broadcast was interrupted the Chicago and Omaha locations received a telegraph signal from Miami. Each site detected signals on the standard televisor frequency from two strong sources. They triangulated the signals. They come from the equator on the same meridian of longitude as Las Vegas and Lynchburg. But, since the signals are line of sight, that cannot be true, so they believe them to come from space. There may have been another signal from a source over the Atlantic, off the west coast of Africa. We will not hear from Europe for several weeks, however.”

“Can they be no more certain of the locations?” the Colonel-General asked.

“The antennas were designed to triangulate in the horizontal plane, only. It’s a tribute to their ingenuity that they were able to get that much information, sir.”

Inwardly, the Colonel-General smiled. This one, too, is bold. Perhaps there is hope for us. Enemies who can position a broadcast antenna in space? The Pan-Asians have a space program, but is it this sophisticated? This does not bode well for the Reverends. It is not too soon to plan for the future of the Inquisitors after the Reverends are defeated.

“What can we do with this information?” The Colonel-General asked the lieutenant.

“For the moment, tell no one. Caution the Jewish scientists to secrecy, but reward them, as well. If they do not think of it themselves, have them build accurate vertical measuring into their antennas. Ask them if they can determine signal strength,” Lt. Riggs replied.

He then added, “Determine why they broadcast the story that they did. Of what significance is an earthquake—a fictitious earthquake in a fictional town? It suggests that the Scudder is not paying attention to the needs of the alleged victims. However, is there more to what they’re trying to do?”

“Lt. Riggs, task the Jewish scientists in Miami to do one more thing: find a way to communicate by televisor with our people in Europe, on a different frequency. It’s no longer good enough to take weeks to communicate with them.”

USF Charleston:
We’ve Been Had

“Traffic on the Inquisitors Net was unusually heavy during our broadcast. There was a message only seconds after we cut into the Reverends’ broadcast. Someone was watching for it, and detected the break in the signal. There was heavy, unencrypted traffic among Mt. Zion, Chicago, Omaha, and Miami. Chicago, Omaha, and Miami’s reports indicate that they have triangulated our signals to two points on the equator, but they know that’s not possible. They’ve caught on that our broadcast comes from space. They don’t know exactly where or how, but the next time we broadcast, they’ll almost certainly pinpoint our satellites.”

Marty’s news was not good. We weren’t expecting anything of that sophistication.

“Chicago, Omaha, and Miami. Can you pinpoint the locations, and get imagery?”

“Already working, but nothing, yet.”

“Any good news from this?” I asked.

“They probably do not know we’re monitoring them,” Cam said. “Especially since the messages were not encrypted. No one but us would have any idea what they meant.”

“And,” Marty added, “more important, this news has not been put on the telegraph net used by the Reverends and the Scudder, or the ones used by the Sheriffs and the Army.”

“What does that mean?” I prodded.

“The Inquisitors see themselves as a separate power from the Reverends, the Army, and the Sheriffs,” John Patmos suggested. “They may have different goals than the Reverends.”

I wasn’t reluctant to tell Admiral Davis about the Inquisition’s seeming understanding of the source of our signal. We had again “pressed to test,” and we’d learned a lot. I just hoped it was more than the Inquisitors learned.

* * * * *

Besides overseeing operations, and biting my fingernails whenever one of the teams left the ship, I had daddy duties. One was worrying about Artie. Since George and Danny had insisted that Artie and I become boyfriends, we had grown close enough that I knew something was bothering him. A quick thought to George, Danny, and Cam ensured that I would be free that evening. I then sent a short message to Artie inviting him to supper and to spend the night with me.

“Artie, I know something’s wrong. I know that you’re upset about something.” That’s all I said. I left it up to him to fill in the blanks.

“Daddy, when I asked you to be my boyfriend, I thought I was so far away from my world I would never get back. But I’m sure, now, that I will return someday and I hope, I dream that my boyfriend will be waiting for me.”

“I didn’t know,” I whispered.

“No one knows. Not even Danny and George. Some of my troops may have known, but they’ve probably forgotten it.

“There was a boy, a private named Martin. We had just become boyfriends.”

Artie blushed. “We’d not done sex stuff, yet. Martin was too young, and we were mobilized for the attack on Las Vegas before . . .”

Artie became quiet, still, and sad. I saw tears form in the corners of his eyes, and held out my arms. He slid into a hug, and put his head on my shoulder.

“We were called up so quickly, I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. I didn’t get a chance to ask him to wait for me, but I know he will. Or would, if he knew I was still alive. I’m afraid, I’m so afraid that he thinks I’m dead.”

“Artie? Didn’t we learn that your leader, the Don, watched the Reverends’ televisor? Wouldn’t he have seen your speech? Wouldn’t he have told the others, including Martin, that you were alive?”

Artie sat back abruptly. I’m so stupid! I heard, and knew he knew I’d heard him.

“Not stupid, son,” I said. “Human. Like us all, you’re sometimes overwhelmed with your emotions.”

“Um, hmm,” Artie mumbled into my shoulder. And then showed me what other emotions were coursing through his mind. He was able to compartmentalize his emotions, something we were all learning, and which had helped form our understanding that love shared is love multiplied.

Breaking the Inquisitors’ Code

Marty led the briefing. “We have accumulated enough traffic on the Inquisitors network that members of the team were able to break the code.”

There were people present who were not part of the GWG “inner circle,” so Marty could not say that the code-breaker was Tobor. Tobor had discovered that the Inquisitors were using a book to encode messages: the old Bible. They would find the word they wanted to transmit in the book, and code the word as the page number and order of the word on the page. If the Bible didn’t contain the word, they spelled out that part of the message letter by letter. It was no surprise that traffic was sparse: decoding was tedious; encoding was even more so.

Knowing that the Reverends used a different Bible—one without a key book of the Old Testament as well as the final book of the New, George and one of the kidnap teams visited a small town in Alabama, broke into the local Reverend’s house, and stole his Bible. It was easy after that.

“Marty? You said you had some thoughts on a fallback position for the Reverend’s televisors,” I said. “Are you ready to present that?”

I caught a bit of an uh-oh thought from Marty—and from George.

“Okay, what have you two been up to?” I asked. “George? My guess is that you were the instigator, so maybe you should take that question.”

George wasn’t afraid. I was glad to feel that. On the other hand, he had a seriously wicked grin on his face and, at least in my imagination, an awful lot of canary feathers around his lips. The cat who ate the canary, I thought. And he knows it.

“Sir, imagery showed that local televisor broadcast stations are usually collocated with the local Army barracks. There were plenty of places, however, where that wasn’t practical. Places where terrain dictated that the stations and antennas be located on hilltops.

“We monitored a bunch of stations, both near Army barracks and isolated, and determined that they were usually unmanned, and seemed to have someone there only when a broadcast was scheduled. Our guess is that they simply turn on and off the transmitter. It was a good guess.

“We went down and checked them out. A dozen of the isolated ones. We didn’t check any at Army barracks, ’cause I figured that was too dangerous. Marty can tell you the rest, better than I can.”

Danny and George and I had had a couple of talks about whether it was easier to get permission or get forgiven. The first time had been when they’d disregarded my instructions against headshots, and they’d each put three bullets in the head of a guy who was trying to harm us and Alex. They had been wrong, then, but it took a bunch of tears (and hugs) to get over that. We’d come to an agreement: I would forgive anything as long as they didn’t disobey direct orders and as long as they had thought through their decision. I figured that at least from George’s perspective this was one of those times.

However: “I don’t recall getting any after action reports on these events. Perhaps they were misplaced. Would you re-send them?”

George nodded. I cannot easily describe what passed between us. There was a little bit of I’m sorry, Daddy, but that was just George playing his daddy like a fiddle. There was a bit of I wasn’t sure how to tell you, and my saying, Just tell me, it’s not hard. There was some, We weren’t really sure mixed with my That’s why we have these meetings. Now pay attention, Marty’s talking.

“We visited twelve isolated broadcast facilities in locations ranging from New England to North Carolina to Banff to Newfoundland. They were essentially the same: stand-alone, remote broadcasting facilities. A microwave feed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes nearby on a tower, provided input from the Reverends’ net. Electrical power came from the same local, coal-fired plant that provided electricity for a few hours a day to the Army, the Sheriffs station, the chapel, and, in most cases, the Reverend’s quarters which were usually adjacent to the chapel. That same power goes to each home, but as far as we know, only to power their televisor.

“There were no facilities to initiate a broadcast of anything that did not come over the microwave. No cameras, no studio, nothing.”

Marty looked at Cam, who picked up the briefing. “The equipment was a product of the Pan-Asians. The Reverends’ people are operating it by rote. They have no capability to stop our broadcasts other than telling people not to turn on their televisors . . . or cutting power to them.”

“What happens when one of these broadcast stations goes down? Does a repair crew come in? Do they repair or simply replace?”

Marty paused, looked at George, looked at Cam, and then said, “No idea, sir. But we’ll get on it right away.”

“Do you suppose you could get a look at a few of the power generating stations while you’re at it? Are they as automatic as the televisor stations? What happens if one of them breaks down?”

George was a little reluctant to accept my invitation to come to my bed that night. I guessed that he was a bit embarrassed at what had happened at the briefing when I caught him out. It took only a little mind-to-mind, wide-open to show him that I was not angry, but rather that I was proud of his initiative. That earned a big hug—which was the prelude to my little leopard’s favorite bedtime activity.