Chapter 21: Now What?

I sat there stunned and read the message once again. As best I could figure, Ana was claiming that Agent, Picket and all his companions were responsible for destroying the Earth! That there were no Berserkers or that they were the Berserkers. That her base in Brazil had been destroyed because the two aliens running it had tried to go rogue. That now caught, Agent had forced Ana to go back to the Amazon alone to keep the true facts of the attacks secret.

I wondered about the last part of the message where Ana had mentioned the hidden base and the location which was hidden in the knife handle. She must mean the machete! I recalled it had a leather cord wrapped handle and she must have hidden the weapon and location under the wrapping.

I read the message a final time and thought about how I was going to destroy it to keep Agent from finding it. Should I just use it as toilet paper and let the toilet mechanism have it? I did not know if Agent scanned all the shit passing through the toilet, so I dare not risk that. I considered eating it, but it was a lot of paper and I did not know what Agent had produced it from.

I ended up wadding the message back up and tossing it into the shower before wiping my ass with more. I got into the shower and turned on the water and spent ten minutes working the paper down to shredded pulp. I inspected the pulp carefully and could not find any trace of this charcoal message, so I tossed the wad into the toilet and finished my shower.

“Agent, did Ana get off to the Amazon from the Colombia base ok?” I asked when I dressed and entered my sleep chamber.

“Yes John. She is currently airborne, halfway to her destination in the southwestern Amazon basin. She will not be stopping at the Amazon River staging point so this portion of her flight will take over eight hours. She will have to swap out fully depleted ESUs while in the air and jettison them out the side hatch to save weight and increase the aircraft’s range,” Agent replied.

Tricky! I had never had to do that. I hoped she tethered herself while ditching the depleted ESUs. Agent had answered in a normal fashion. I was fearful that it would be suspicious of the long time I had spent in the toilet.

“Is she still awake?” I asked, curious to how Agent would answer.

“Yes, Ana is currently awake. Would you like to speak with her?”

I turned to the wall screen and nodded.

After a few seconds, Ana’s face appeared on the wall screen. I could see that she was seated in the pilot’s seat in the darkened aircraft cabin; her face lit by the glow of the screen.

“Hello John,” Agent translated after she spoke.

“Hello Ana.”

We just stared at each other. She had a curious look on her face. How to say what I wanted to say...

“Even though I barely got to know you, I find myself already missing you. I wish you the best in your new home and I am glad that we found you alive and were able to heal you from your injuries.”

“Thank you, John,” She answered carefully, showing a bit of emotion.

“Although we shared just a few days, I am a different person for having known you.”

“You have also affected me, John.”

“Thank you also for the gift of your machete. I hope I think of you every time I use it. I know how important it was to you over the past few months. I will keep it close to help remember you in the future,” I said with a tiny nod.

She caught the nod and returned a small nod of her own.

“I do not know how long I will remain awake when I return to my field base but if I can, I will try and contact you again to see how your new home is developing,” I said.

“Thank you, John. I look forward to it,” She said.

We said goodbye to each other, and her image vanished. Had it been the real her? I thought so, but I imagine anything is possible with enough technology. I hoped that if it had been the real Ana, that she had understood my implied hint that I had gotten her secret message. I laid down in my bed and extinguished the lights. I could not sleep as I replayed Ana’s message over and over in my brain. Could she have been wrong? Was there any way to verify the story without alerting Agent of what I knew? Ana had mentioned truth drugs, so I dare not make the machine suspicious. I finally fell asleep without coming up with a solution to the dilemma.

I awoke on Wednesday to find it was already well past dawn.

“Agent, has Shadow returned from Cuba?”

“The aircraft will be landing in twenty-eight minutes, John.”

Good, plenty of time to get dressed and eat.

“What did you prepare for breakfast Agent?” I asked.

“I made your special breakfast John, bacon, eggs, hash browned potatoes and toast.”

Great! “Thank you, Agent.”

After breakfast and a morning shower, I was dressed and out of the landing area waiting as Shadow landed. I quickly removed the six depleted ESUs and replaced them with eight fully recharged cylinders. After that was complete, I went aboard Flipper and made myself a large cup of coffee. While I did, I casually noted that the machete was still on board. A few minutes later, I was strapped into the pilot’s seat and headed for Cuba.

Six hours later, or around 14:00, we landed at the same former airbase in western Cuba that we had utilized on our way out. I took care of business first by removing the three depleted ESUs from each aircraft and replaced them with two ESUs from the cache Shadow had created yesterday. This left Flipper with five and ready to go for tomorrow. I delayed loading the last two cache ESUs on board Shadow as I planned to use that aircraft to do a bit of local sightseeing and wanted to keep the weight down.

I finished the stevedore chores around mid-afternoon. Agent planned to use a drone to survey plant and animal life in the local area and I planned to go to the beach and snorkel or fish. I grabbed my beach gear, a few snacks, the small cooler, and the machete, and took off in Shadow heading west towards the Cuban coast.

The beach was only ten kilometers away and we arrived in a few minutes. I found a wide sandy stretch of shoreline on a small peninsula extending into Guadiana Bay and brought Shadow down for a smooth landing. The weather was warm enough to forgo clothing, so I stripped to just my briefs and wide hat and went out to explore the beach. The plant growth away from the water appeared to be mangroves and other coastal species. The waves were rather gentle, and I detected no sign of a rip tide so I spent some time swimming up and down the beach.

Eventually I tired and returned to the aircraft. After drying, I grabbed my hat, boots and the machete and hiked up the beach to where the Mangroves crowded out the sand. I next explored the area where the mangroves ended, and the scrub plants of the island began. I found the foundations of an old structure, maybe a beach hotel or some other tourist attraction. There was a clearing here without much scrub from what must have been a paved parking lot ‘back when’. I returned to Shadow and decided to move the aircraft from the beach to the clearing by the ruins as the mangrove beach looked to be vulnerable as the tide rose.

Once the aircraft was relocated to the clearing on higher ground, I set about finding firewood for later. I found a few arm loads and deposited them near the ruins and took a break, enjoying a cold beverage from the small cooler I had brought from the other aircraft. I considered what to do next, either fishing or hiking and possibly getting a look at the machete. I chose the latter. First, I put on a pair of shorts and added a canteen. I told agent I was going to hike up the trail to the east and do a bit of scouting and get some exercise. I finished by saying I’d be back in an hour and left, leaving my tablet and goggles.

There was a straight berm heading inland from the peninsula which I figured was an old roadbed. I followed it which made my hiking easier. After walking a kilometer or so I came upon more ruins and took a break among the remains of a masonry wall. I checked the area for snakes or other hidden creatures before sitting in the shade of a palm tree by the wall. I took a deep pull off my canteen and used the motion to survey the sky for any drones. I saw no signs that I was under surveillance, so I unsheathed the machete and inspected it carefully.

The sharpened homemade blade of stainless steel had a narrowed end which was wrapped in leather cord forming a decent hand grip. I saw where the leather cord was knotted and tucked under the wrap and I set to work with my teeth working the knot loose. I then carefully unwrapped the leather revealing the steel tang underneath. Lying flat alongside the steel tang was an etched crystal-like thin rectangular module about the size of a stick of chewing gum.

I held crystal module up to the sunlight and it split the light like a prism. I could see etchings on the surface which reminded me of a computer chip circuit. One end of the shard had a diamond shape filled with dimples and small visible holes. I wondered if it were some sort of optical computer device or alien USB stick.

I then noticed that on the steel tang itself, under where the crystal module had lain, there were numbers scribed deeply into the steel.

06.88213 x 80.04864

Two seven-digit numbers; what could they mean? Latitude and Longitude would be my first guess because of the ‘x’ separator. I repeated the numbers a dozen times and tried to come up with a way to remember them in case I lost the machete.

The first number was easy. 688 was the hull number for the lead ship of a class of submarines (Thank you, Tom Clancy). The class was officially known as the Los Angeles class, but it was usually referred to as ‘the 688s. Further, 213 coincidentally happened to be the area code for Los Angeles. I’d just have to remember the decimal point between the 06 and the 88. The second grouping was harder, and I eventually worked it down to 800 followed by 48 and 64 ... all even numbers. I’d have to remember the decimal point after 80 for that part.

When I thought I could remember the number, I replaced the crystal optical device along the steel and rewrapped the leather thong around the handle. I carefully retied the knot and tucked the end of the thong under the wrap to match its original position. I replaced the machete in its sheath and started walking back to the aircraft, stopping along the way frequently to use the machete to cut firewood for tonight’s fire.

I had a campfire supper and sat on a tarp near the fire watching the stars and thinking about recent events. I could still remember the two numbers... 06.88213 x 80.04864 but I was not sure how I could safely research them without Agent becoming aware of the location. Using my tablets mapping function was out of the question and I did not know enough about geography to narrow down the location without assistance. I was pretty sure that the location was in the northern hemisphere and was fairly close to the equator as the Latitude was not negative. I also suspected that the longitude was in the eastern hemisphere somewhere east of Africa as North and South America would have been a negative longitude number.

Where could I find a decent atlas or map still in good enough condition to research the numbers? Also, say I did find the location, how would I get there without Agent’s help or knowledge, especially if it was in Asia somewhere? I thought for a while of making a raft or boat large enough to cross an ocean alone. I’d have to spend years in a ruined city or other developed area to have hopes of finding enough salvage to even think of building something that could get me from Cuba to Florida. Could I survive and evade Agent’s presences for the time it would take?

As far as maps or an atlas, maybe I could search out the ruins of a library or something. That search could also take years and who knows if a book could still be found in good enough condition to use. No, I’d have to find a way to use Agent’s database to do the searching. Maybe if I spread the search over a long period of time.

I remembered playing with Google Earth back in the day and spinning the globe around looking at various places on the earth. Maybe I could do something like that with Agent’s map views? I could just spend a few hours playing with the map, looking over the route of the trip while randomly searching until I could narrow down the rough latitude and longitude. I decided to try that a bit while on the flight tomorrow to Florida.

The next morning, (Thursday) I asked Agent if we had time to do a bit of fishing before leaving for Florida. She said that if we left before noon, we would be able to make it to the Florida landing depot before dark. I packed up my camp site and grabbed the fishing gear and walked back through the mangroves to the beach. The tide was in, so I waded a bit to find room to cast and spent the next hour fishing. I caught a few fish which I released but spent most of the time in thought, using the fishing as a cover. Finally, about mid-morning, I returned to the aircraft, showered, and dressed in my normal attire and flew back to where Flipper was waiting.

There, I loaded the final two cached ESUs on board Shadow leaving that aircraft with seven fully energized units. Both aircraft were now ready for the journey over the gulf to western Florida. I had stowed the gear equally on both aircraft and had even stowed the machete on Shadow instead of Flipper hoping to lower its apparent value and reduce suspicion. Agent had finished its biological survey of this part of Cuba this morning and we were ready to leave. I ate a quick lunch and made myself a coffee for the flight and soon we were off heading north.

Once we were at altitude and cruising north, I began to play with the mapping functions on the big screen. I spent some time browsing Cuba and up into Florida. After ten minutes, I found a setting for a coordinate grid and saw that the map now displayed latitude and longitude numbers. I noticed the numbers only showed two decimal points beyond the whole degree but that would be close enough to narrow down an area for now. I left the grid on and continued panning the map.

I backtracked our trip route to the field base in Nicaragua and read the degree coordinates there as 12 x -84. I found the latitude 06.88 which matched the first number on the machete and saw that the -80 longitude was out in the ocean about seventy-five kilometers south of the Azuero Peninsula in Panama. I spent a few minutes looking around the ocean there but did not see any islands. This confirmed that the number on the machete was not actually near 06.88 x -80 unless the hidden base was under the ocean.

From that ocean location I scrolled the map east until I hit the Colombian coast. The coordinates here was 06.8 x -77. Scrolling down the map, I found the location of the field base northeast of Cali. This location had the coordinates of 03.5 x -76. The Amazon River staging point was -03.7 x -70.3 and the area on the Purus river where we found Ana was near -9 latitude and -68 longitude. So, after all these locations I was pretty sure that the hidden base was in the eastern hemisphere, just north of the equator.