Jubilee Year: A Novel (Erelong Trilogy Book I) - An Extended Sample

Chapter 1: DESERT TARGET

Chile, 2012

Jenkins struck the butane lighter and stared at the perfect form of the blue spearhead. The flame raised a faint glow in the dark interior of the cab. Ain't nothing like watching a fire burn, he thought. It's so damn pure. He glanced across at his team leader, sitting as still as stone in the driver's seat.

"What time you got?" Jenkins asked the man.

He was hoping for a little repartee to break the monotony. For Jenkins, the wait was always going to be worse than the struggle it took to get a lung full of air at high altitude. It was his regular routine to agitate just enough to get a bite, and maybe raise a giggle, and he knew Carlston could handle it.

In the close confines of the SUV, the team tolerated the man's impatience because in all other respects he was a professional.

The Atacama Large Millimeter Array had ceased to be of interest to the three men long before the Sun slid below the horizon. The grid of radio telescopes, scanning the sky beyond the visible light of stars not yet risen, sat in the middle of a desert in northern Chile, five thousand feet above sea level. There was always a wait, and this one was not going to be long, but the empty parking lot and the plain strangeness of their location had begun to play on their nerves.

"Quit messing with that fucking lighter!" Carlston hissed, pulling off his headset. "That's all I hear! And you're lighting up the truck!"

The team leader's face was little more than a smudge in the dark, but there was no mistaking the edge in his voice. Jenkins dropped the hot metal inside his jacket pocket.

"What time we got?" He asked once more. "You know I don't wear a watch on the job."

Carlston switched on the backlight in his Rangeman and squinted at the digits. "Twenty-twenty-one," he replied. "He's working late tonight."

He turned his attention back to the side window and his view of the path lit by a row of bright lamps. There was no telling how much longer they would be playing the waiting game.

Jenkins snorted. "Freaking scientists. They just can't leave their desks, can they? Doesn't he have a bitch to go home to?"

"Lives alone," Carlston said. "Probably got a boyfriend."

Jenkins laughed softly. "I remember, back in the day. When I was in the Eighty-Second Airborne, it was illegal to be homosexual. Now it's considered optional. Did you know that?"

"Good thing you got out before our beloved president made it mandatory," Carlston sniggered.

Then he sat up and adjusted his headset.

"Okay, I've got him. He's on his cell phone—and coming through the doors."

A side window slid open behind the two men sitting in the cab.

"Stand by," Mackenzie said in his raspy growl of a voice.

Jenkins turned his head to catch a glimpse of a grim face illuminated by the green glow from the scope's thermal display. The sniper pressed his cheek against the eyepiece and the light vanished. Jenkins grinned at the thought of Mackenzie's nickname for the stumpy block, the stand-in for a more conventional gun barrel. 'I-Fuck-You'. Yeah, sure, it was crude but it was suitable.

The weapon was noisy too. In the confined space of the vehicle, the thin whine the thing made when it powered up sounded as noisy as hell. He turned eyes front again and rested his hand on the door release, anticipating the go signal from Carlston.

During the day, an unseasonable wind off the desert whipped the gardens, blowing tiny chips of volcanic rock across the sidewalk. Now, the three men heard the crunch of scoria as the scientist walked down the path toward the parking lot.