Trifariam, The Lost Codex (2012) (52 page)

“Good afternoon, officers. From what I have been told, you are the Marines chosen for the mission.”

Richard gave them the once over. The woman must have been about thirty years old, while the men seemed around forty. The three of them were of slim build but with a powerful, muscular physique which gave them a well-defined body and facial features. Several backpacks were lying on the ground, along with a box which was approximately ten square feet and made of polyurethane foam, making it clear that whatever was inside was fragile.

“We’re ready, sir. We have everything we need.”

Richard frowned. He was slightly disappointed.
Just a few bags and a ten feet square box to carry out the mission? I was expecting something a little more impressive.

The Secretary caught a glimpse of doubt on Richard’s face and addressed the three Marines. “Mr. Matheson is a prestigious paleographer. He will be accompanying you on this mission and will go down to the seabed with you, where he will confirm the nature of our discovery.”

“What…?! I… I thought I’d be staying on the boat and checking what they found from there.”

“That’s impossible! We only have one chance. If they don’t bring back the object first time round, we won’t be able to try again for weeks. That would be completely out of the question given the situation we are currently in.”

“Why?” asked Richard, awash with concern and staring him straight in the eye. “I can’t swim!”

William barely looked at him. “You won’t need to. Everything will become clear in an hour.”

Without further delay, the three Marines loaded their belongings and the polyurethane box onto the boat previously used by Richard and the Secretary of the Navy. This would be their means of transport.

Meanwhile, Richard was going over and over the words of the Secretary.
Why won’t I need to swim? How does he think we’re going to get down there?

Several thousand miles away, on the landing strip on the other side of the world, the SR-91 Aurora remained stationary but with the engines running in anticipation of having to soar through the skies once more. The pilot had already received the go ahead from the control tower and was waiting for confirmation from his companion, who was still talking on the phone. He wasn’t able to hear the conversation due to his headphones being activated to allow communication with air traffic control, but James’ face seemed to show that something wasn’t going well.

“Dad, I’m scared.”

“Don’t worry darling. They won’t hurt you, they need you. Are they in the room?”

In an act of bravery, the girl opened the door slightly and scanned the room through the gap of a fraction of an inch. Her heart suddenly leapt into her mouth when she saw two men coming through the doorway. They were armed with assault rifles.

James was very nervous. “Are they there? Lily, can you hear me?!”

The girl was unable to make a sound. She had froze the second she spotted the weapon of one of the attackers.

They walked around the room, looked inside the bathroom, behind the curtains, under the bed, but they didn’t find what they were looking for. One of the men started to open the closet doors, each of them comprised of four sections with two doors apiece. Lily had a feeling that they were going to find her; it was just a matter of time. He opened the first door and rifled around, but he didn’t find what he was looking for and moved onto the second. It was then that the girl smelt how his nauseating body odor was beginning to filter through the gap between the two doors which she had created to see around the room. Third compartment… Lily began to cry.

“Quick! Come and look at this!”

Another of the attackers who Lily had not seen until then, called them over to the living room and the two of them ran out of the room.

The girl picked up the phone again. “Dad, I think they’ve gone.”

James had been expecting a horrific ending and breathed a sigh of relief at his daughter’s words.

The girl drew closer to the crack in order to have a wider field of vision when she suddenly screamed in fright, scaring James on the other end of the phone.

“Lilyyyyy! What’s going on?! Lilyyyy!”

A dark, emaciated face with several scars and tattoos appeared on the other side of the door, looking in through the crack. It smiled, showing off graying teeth and a blood red tongue. He was happy, he had found what they were looking for.

He violently pulled open the doors two by two. The girl tried to scramble between his legs but his strong hands grabbed her and lifted her up as if she didn’t weigh a thing.

Her screams were like daggers tearing into James’ heart. The pilot wasn’t aware of what was going on, he couldn’t even see the tears streaming down his face.

“Let me go!” screamed the girl while her limbs flailed about in the air, trying to use her arms and legs to hit anything in her reach. “Leave me alone!”

The man raised one of his arms and delivered an unexpected slap to her face. It was intended to shut her up and keep her quiet. It worked, but the girl began to sob.

“Leave her alone! You bastards! Son of a bitch! Do it to me! She’s only a little girl!”

Even though the telephone was on the ground, the attacker could hear James’ voice loud and clear. He picked up the handset and answered in a menacing voice. “If you want to see you daughter alive again, you’d better complete the object. When you do, we’ll get back in touch with you.” Then he cut off the call without warning, ignoring all the obscenities and threats that James was shouting over the phone.

Although the call had finished, the professor was unable to tear the phone away from his ear. His daughter’s screams had disturbed him. He didn’t know what to do.

“Shall we take off?” asked the pilot after he saw that he had finished talking on the phone.

There was another silence. After surreptitiously wiping away the tears from his eyes, he gave a thumbs up sign. He couldn’t even speak. He had to complete the
Trifariam
as quickly as possible to save his daughter.

A
tall, thin man with Afro-American features entered via the northeast door which led to the office of the President’s secretary. He was wearing a smart dark suit and carried a briefcase in his right arm. He quickly walked towards the curtains and pulled them closed, making the room slightly darker. He hastily brushed aside the piles of paperwork which had been mounting up on his Resolute desk over the last few weeks and set the briefcase down on top.

The President of United States of America punched in the secret code into the lock on the briefcase previously given to him by his secretary. He was confused - everything had been extremely unusual that morning.

He was in a meeting with his Cabinet in the White House Situation Room when an unexpected call disturbed them. Despite being the conference center where the leader and his counselors dealt with all the country’s issues and therefore equipped with the latest in communications technology, the call required a much more private place where the president would be alone. At any other time the call would have to wait, but it was the Secretary of Defense who interrupted them, the same person who should have been present at that meeting but was absent for reasons unknown.

The briefcase opened to reveal a small screen with a button which was lit up. He didn’t know what to do at first until he noticed a kind of post-it stuck on one of the sides. It read, “Press the button”. He did so with no hesitation whatsoever. The monitor switched on and a program began to run in the main window without the President having to move a finger. After several seemingly eternal minutes, the face of the United States Secretary of Defense came into view on the screen.

“Mr. President! At last I can talk to you.”

“Peter, you’ve taken me out of a very important meeting which you should be attending. We are in the middle of a world financial crisis and the opposition wants to slit our throats. We have to find a solution urgently. Where the hell are you?”

Peter nodded. The President could never have imagined what was about to be revealed to him. Calmly, the Secretary set about explaining everything: the discoveries made in Cairo and the Pyramid of the Sun, the route the investigation had taken, the operations which were being carried out at that time and, finally, he showed him a recording which detailed what their scientists had found just a few hours before. The video was made up of real images, captured by the Department of Defense, which gave details of everything that was to come and a graphic simulation of what would happen on Earth if it could not be averted.

When he saw it, the President’s face turned red and he couldn’t help but stutter when he spoke. “How long do we have?”

Peter bit his lower lip and breathed in as much air as he could. “Days, Mr. President. Just days.”

T
he Bermuda Triangle is also known as the Devil’s Triangle. It is a geographic area between Miami, Puerto Rico and the Bermuda Islands, each of which is a point of the imaginary triangle.

The boat arrived at the established coordinates much earlier than Richard had imagined. The ship slipped through the water at breakneck speed, using a hydraulic system which enabled it to penetrate the waves rather than navigate them. On more than one occasion, Richard became frightened and grabbed the first thing he found when he saw the boat dip beneath the waves only to reappear on the surface a few seconds later.

“We’ve arrived,” said the woman.

In record time, they had carefully selected the fewest number of qualified professionals required to carry out the mission successfully. It was imperative that the operation be kept secret.

The Marine, Alexandra Jordan, was in charge of steering the boat to the indicated coordinates; she would control all the computer equipment onboard and follow the operation from outside. She seemed to be a very cold and calculating person. Her face did not show any trace of emotion and she had barely exchanged a word with the crew during the whole journey. She was an excellent telecommunications engineer, the best of her peers and an absolute authority in her field. However, her skills were not limited to intellectual ability; she was considered to be a thrill seeker and total speed freak, having recently broken the AUTEC water speed record.

The other two people who were present were the Marines Will Farragan and Scott Marcus. They were without a doubt the two best submariners with the most experience in the U.S. Marines. Will was famous among his colleagues for being the only survivor in a disastrous project which claimed the lives of ten Marines on an area near the base, at a depth of one hundred and sixty feet. He was the only one able to go without breathing for the six minutes it took for them to be rescued. Meanwhile, Scott held the Marines record for no-limits freediving to almost seven hundred feet. He went down with the aid of a weighted sled and used an inflatable bag to come back up again.

Although the outside temperature was warm and there was barely any wind, Richard was extremely worried.

The young woman turned off the engines and activated all the radars, sonars, communication and positioning systems among many others, as well as the highly advanced computer systems which were installed on the boat. Some of them started to take readings of the water temperature, sea currents, depth…

“Over here!” shouted Will.

How do they intend to go down to the seabed and look for the source?
Richard thought.

He just followed them to the rear part of the vessel. One of them pressed a button and an automatic trapdoor opened on the ground, revealing a second floor which Richard hadn’t even realized existed. A staircase led down to a rectangular space around forty feet long and twenty wide, in the middle of which was a kind of mini-submarine designed with the most sophisticated technology. It was small in size, around twenty-five feet long and ten wide, gray and with a huge logo along one of its sides which read “DSV AUTEC”. It was chained to a mechanical crane which was keeping it suspended in the air.

“Is it a mini-submarine?” asked Richard, astonished.

This time it was Scott who replied. “Yes, you are looking at the most fascinating mini-submarine you will ever see. It will be over thirty years before companies will be able to build something similar. There are currently two which have managed to win public admiration more than the rest; the Nautile is property of the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea and was able to achieve a depth of almost 20000 feet to film the remains of the Titanic. The DSV Shinkai belongs to the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and could reach a depth of over 21000 feet. However, neither of them offers the maneuverability and safety which comes with the DSV AUTEC. It reproduces the same feeling of speed as when a car is traveling on a freeway.”

“What does DSV mean?”

“Deep Submergence Vehicle. It was originally created to rescue possible survivors from shipwrecks in deep zones, but we have put our own spin on it. We created a submarine vessel which is able to move like a fish in water. If anybody saw it, they would think it was a USO.”

Richard knew only too well that those initials stood for “Unidentified Submerged Object”. It was something like a UFO but in the sea. “Is this vessel able to withstand the high pressure of the ocean?”

The question seemed to offend Scott slightly, who simply answered him with a serious expression on his face. “Of course! The shell is made with a titanium alloy which is able to travel to the deepest part of the ocean and operate with unimaginable ease. It can withstand over eight atmospheres. It has two telescopic arms which are operated by hydraulics and allow us to manipulate them and take marine samples.”

Will interrupted his colleague in order to relay some more data he had omitted. “It also has several latest generation camera systems with a hard disk which allows us to film the whole operation, and inspection ports of over twenty inches in diameter which enable those inside to have a wider and more direct view of their surroundings thanks to the outer lighting which is supplied by the nine headlights. Anyway, there is no need to worry. According to the data from the sonar, this area is almost two thousand feet deep. Besides, with the computer equipment it has, the sensors, sonars and object detectors… the descent will be child’s play.”