Damage Control

by Gordon Savage

Chapter 16

  “Breaking news: Channel 15 has found additional footage of the explosion Monday. One of our ace cameramen, Ben Williams, who was killed in the explosion, shot the entire proceedings in slow motion. We are reviewing the final few seconds of the video in detail and hope to report on our findings at the end of this broadcast, but in the meantime take a look at the footage.”

  – Beverly Ha, Channel 15 News

  Day 6, 1:00PM

  After introducing Rebecca to Max and Kayla and downloading the USB drive to the station’s video server, my next stop was my condo. I wanted to show the video to Frost and Wells, but I knew that as soon as I brought the USB drive into the SCIF [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility for those who don’t know], I couldn’t take it out again. I had to make copies before I took it to work.

  I put a copy on my external hard drive and made additional copies on USB drives, scattering the USB drives in different hiding places and hiding my external hard drive where I kept my spare keys. That way I had secure copies in case something happened. It turned out to be lucky I did.

  ◆◆◆

  Day 6, 2:30PM

  Frost was impressed. “That is definitely conclusive. Any idea of how the explosion started?”

  I shrugged. “I haven’t had a chance to go over the police reports. Homeland scooped them up and ordered the officers involved not to talk. Fortunately I got to Officer LaMotte before Homeland did. Her observations correlated with what we’re seeing in the video. She thought the explosion originated on the ground floor.” Frost knew the demonstration was on the second floor.

  He stood. “Let’s take this to Wells. It should convince him to stop this nonsense.”

  I followed. I knew this was necessary, but I wasn’t looking forward to Well’s displeasure, or rationalization, when we showed him the proof that the explosion wasn’t caused by the portal.

  When we arrived at the office, Frost stopped in front of Wells’ administrative assistant Claudia’s desk. “Is he in?”

  She touched the intercom button. “Dr. Frost and Ms. Pederson to see you, sir.”

  The intercom coughed, “Send them in.”

  After viewing the explosion once in slow motion, Wells looked at me with a sour expression on his face. “So?” He paused. “You realize this is classified, don’t you?”

  I answered, “No. Actually I don’t. There haven’t been any notices labelling videos of the explosion as classified, and of course, all the other videos have been destroyed so I can’t check them to see if they were classified.”

  Wells harrumphed. “Well, they’re certainly a matter of national security,” he said.

  Wells had avoided addressing the classification, which satisfied me that it wasn’t classified, but I had to tread carefully, and I knew it. “That’s another matter. Why is it a matter of national security?”

  He glared at me. “Those devices will completely obliterate national borders. There will be nothing to keep terrorists out. You know that.”

  “But what has that got to do with videos of the explosion?”

  He sat there with his mouth open. Finally, he asked, “Are you questioning my decisions.”

  “I’m trying to understand your reasoning.” I hoped that statement wouldn’t get me thrown out of his office.

  He turned to Frost and acted as if our brief dialog hadn’t even happened. “As I was saying, so what’s the significance of this video?”

  “You can see that the explosion originated somewhere besides the portal,” Frost responded.

  “Again, so?”

  I watched Frost bite his tongue before responding, “So it couldn’t have been matter/antimatter.”

  Wells scowled at Frost. “As I said before, it doesn’t prove a thing. We’re dealing with wormholes and all sorts of things we don’t really understand. The two portals could have interacted in some way that displaced the interface.”

  I was almost apoplectic. I had heard that argument from him earlier. He was obviously reaching. “Sir, look at the video. The two portals couldn’t have interacted. Reid never touched the switch.”

  Well’s looked placid, as if we hadn’t proven a thing. “He probably had it on a timer. After all, this was a show for the TV audience. Things had to happen on schedule or the channels would switch back to regular programming.”

  In other words no amount of solid evidence that a matter/antimatter couldn’t have happened was going to change his position. He probably understood how shaky his matter/antimatter thesis was but stubbornly refused to give it up because he was using it to present a case for outlawing teleportals. I was so angry I had to call on discipline from four years at the Naval Academy and five years in the Marine Corp to keep from saying something I would regret. I was convinced the explosion was deliberately set, so it was clearly murder. But Wells seemed so hell bent about suppressing teleportal technology he could ignore a murder. I almost doubted he would admit portals weren’t the cause of the explosion even if I proved murder and got the murderer to confess.

  I was beginning to wonder if that was my only option, but how could I go about it? The only thing I had to work with was the confrontation with Reid before the explosion. In it Gardner looked angry enough to have strangled Reid if there weren’t so many people watching. Could he have set off the explosion? If so, how could I prove it? I was having serious doubts about being able to prove anything to Wells, but this was too important to screw up.

  I took one final shot. “We may not be experts on wormholes, but Dr. Kim is. Why don’t we get her opinion on the explosion?”

  Well’s scowled at me. “That woman would say anything to take our scrutiny off that devil’s machine. There’s no way I’d believe her.”

  Actually, I was pretty sure she wouldn’t rule out the possibility, slim as it was, so maybe it was a good thing Wells didn’t trust her.

  Frost and I got up to leave. When I reached for the USB drive, Wells said, “Leave it. We can’t have that getting leaked to the public.”

  I smiled to myself. Why not? Channel 15 already has a copy that Wells doesn’t know about, and he essentially admitted none of this stuff had been classified.

  As Frost and I walked away from that unproductive meeting, I thought about the confrontation on the video. At that time I didn’t know who the fight was with, but it was clear I needed to find out.

  Back in Frost’s office I vented. “He has what he wants with teleportal work shut down, and he’s closed his mind to other possibilities. He’s still convinced teleportals are a major threat to national security, and he’s not going to change his findings for all the scientific evidence in the world.”

  Frost agreed. “And for now there are enough people either afraid of the device or what it represents to give him the support he needs. Even the president is on the fence.”

  I thought about that. “We could show him the video. I think he’s smart enough not to fall for Wells’ phony logic.”

  Frost looked down. “That would be going over the boss’s head. Besides, he kept the drive. As much as I hate to say it, I think we just have to admit defeat for now.” He paused, his eyes widened, and a faint smile played on his lips as it dawned on him. “That wasn’t the only drive, was it?”

  With a straight face I said, “You didn’t really think I’d bring my only copy and present it to Wells as a gift, did you?”

  He chuckled. “You don’t have anything else up your sleeve do you? Don’t answer that! I don’t want to know. I gather you aren’t ready to give up.”

  No, I wasn’t ready to accept defeat, even while I was questioning my own ability to find the truth. “We can’t! We’ve contacted a whole other universe, and if Wells pushes a law through congress outlawing portals, we’ll have to give up everything that contact means. Even if the Alternates really are in an antimatter universe and we can never go there, we have so much to learn from them. But I don’t believe that right now Wells would settle for any solution that includes using teleportals.
He’d think of it as opening the door to disaster. Frankly, I’m wondering if there is any way to convince him that we don’t have a choice.” I stopped to take a breath. I was really worked up.

  “So what do you propose to do about it?” Frost asked.

  What was I going to do? Could I prove murder? “I guess we have to pull the rug out from under him. Consider this: what if the explosion was set by someone?”

  “You mean outright murder?” He leaned forward in his chair, looking interested.

  “That’s what it looks like to me. As far as I can see, the explosion had to either be deliberate or something like a natural gas explosion. Natural gas has an added odor that’s pretty distinctive, but Capt. Weigner reported the odor reminded him of C4, not natural gas. That may not rule out gas, but it certainly suggests it wasn’t.”

  I paused to think whether there was anything else before adding, “Also, I have a lead on a possible suspect. The beginning of the video has a heated argument between Reid and somebody else. Maybe the guy was giving Reid an ultimatum and set off the explosion when Reid didn’t comply. He looks to be Reid’s age, and I’ll bet he’s going to the same school Reid was in. That gives me a place to start looking. … And it shouldn’t be too hard to check whether it was a natural gas explosion.”

  Frost leaned back and frowned. “Unfortunately, Wells has cancelled the charge number we were using. I was going to tell you when you came in, but I got caught up in your enthusiasm.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not about ready to give up. I have two weeks of vacation time coming, even after my stay in the hospital. I’ll use that if I have to.”

  “I’m not going to stop you. Let me know if I can help in any way.”

  I jumped on that. “You can help by getting me clearance to talk to Baker and LaMotte, and making sure Homeland lets the two of them know they’re cleared.”

  He laughed. “I didn’t expect you to take me up on my offer quite this soon. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Now if I could only find solid proof the explosion was murder. Well, Frost had once asked me if I was taking detective courses. I knew I was no private investigator, but I had a mission. I had to see what I could deliver.

  Chapter 17

  “This morning a guardian angel who asked to remain anonymous walked into a mugging in progress and foiled the attempt. One of the intended victims, Mrs. Grace Dominic, described it this way:

  [Video snippet]‘She walked right up to him talking about his gun like it was a collector’s item, and she acted like he didn’t even have the gun pointed at her. She grabbed the gun and kicked him in the *bleep* to get it away from him. Then she waited with us and guarded him until the police arrived.’”

  – Beverly Ha, Channel 15 News

  Day 7, 7:00AM

  By Sunday morning I was a wreck. Wells was stubbornly refusing to acknowledge what was right under his nose because it didn’t play well with the story he was trying to rationalize, and I had gotten so wrapped up in trying to find a way to unequivocally prove the explosion wasn’t matter/antimatter that I couldn’t get to sleep. Rather than have breakfast right away, I decided to take a walk to relieve my frustration, so I put on my sweats and running shoes and headed for the front door.

  The weather outside was cold and windy. I had forgotten to pick up my gloves when I put on my jacket, but I wasn’t going to be running so I stuffed my hands in my pockets and headed for the trail.

  Behind the condo the trail gets into some trees and bushes. I ran through there so often I had stopped thinking about it, but today was going to be different. I heard a voice ahead. It was so quiet I couldn’t understand it until I came around a dense clump of bushes … and stopped dead. A man stood on one side of the trail. He looked barely old enough to be in high school, average height, thin with sandy hair, and wearing jeans and a dirty jacket. What burned the image into my mind was that he was pointing a gun at an elderly couple. The older man was reaching into a back pocket, obviously going for his wallet.

  I knew the kid would see me any second, and the presence of the gun triggered a momentary flash of fear. But I also knew I couldn’t run, not with the oldsters facing a gun, and that meant I had to take action. I pulled my hands out of my jacket pockets and started toward them at a casual, non-threatening walk. “Hi there. Can I be of help?”

  The kid swung the pistol around to point at me – another flash of fear. That muzzle looked big and ugly, but I knew the gun. While I studied the kid’s face, I continued with my act, pretending to not be the least bit afraid of the pistol. “Hey, I recognize that piece. It’s a Walther P38. My dad has one of those. He got it while he was serving in Vietnam before he entered the Naval Academy.” I kept walking toward him. “I was always fascinated by it. Could I take a peek at yours? It looks like a beauty.”

  “What the hell?” he said. “Are you crazy?”

  The couple stood there, their mouths open like they couldn’t believe what was happening. The kid looked poised to run, but he swung the barrel of the pistol up and down as if trying to threaten me. His face showed confusion and a little fear, but I was focused on the loaded chamber indicator on the gun. It was retracted, meaning he had to pull the slide back to load a round before he could fire. “Stop where you are,” he demanded, his voice shaky.

  I ignored his words and continued forward, watching the gun carefully. As long as he didn’t pull the slide back … I kept talking, “You’ve got the plastic hand grip. That’s got to be one of the aluminum models. Dad’s was an earlier steel model. I bet yours is lighter.”

  My continued movement toward him must have confounded him. He kept waggling the barrel, but he kept glancing to either side like he was searching for a safe direction to run. He even took a tentative step backward, but he had let me get close enough. I made my move when he brought the barrel up again, jumping in and grabbing the pistol with my right hand and pointing it straight up. The cold metal stung my hand, but I held on. My kick caught him in the groin and he doubled over, letting go of the pistol. I stepped back and loaded a round. Pointing the pistol at him with my finger off the trigger, I took a fleeting look at the couple. “Could one of you call 9-1-1? I didn’t bring my phone with me.”

  Two cops in a patrol car that happened to be in the neighborhood arrived in short order. They took the kid into custody and bagged the pistol. They took our statements, mine last. When I finished, one of them said, “That was a dumb thing to do. You could have gotten yourself killed.”

  “I didn’t see I had a choice. There was no chance to back away without catching his attention. Besides the two seniors needed help. I couldn’t just leave them. And I saw the kid hadn’t chambered a round; otherwise, I wouldn’t have approached him. He was never a real threat. I was more concerned he might panic and do something stupid – hurt somebody. I figured if I could keep him off balance and get near enough without him chambering a round, he was confused enough that I could disarm him. But to be honest, I expected him to turn and run before I got that close.”

  ◆◆◆

  Day 7, 9:00AM

  When I got back to the condo, Kitt was in the living room dressed in fatigues. I stopped and stared at her. “Going to battle?” I asked. It was a Sunday morning after all. Even most of the Pentagon got time off on a Sundays unless something was going on.

  Kitt smiled. “Not battle, but urgent work.”

  “Classified I presume.” That meant I wouldn’t pry.

  She surprised me. “Actually no. After that matter/antimatter explosion last Monday, the top brass got to wondering if a person could smuggle a teleportal in and deliver a load of explosives through it. They made a last minute decision to spend today working up a defense exercise.”

  I thought about that. Unless the pentagon already had access to real portals whatever they came up with wouldn’t be very realistic.

  “I guess the first question I have is: how do you envision someone smuggling a teleportal into the Pentagon?”

  Sh
e gave me an isn’t-it-obvious look. “We get truckloads of shipments every day. From what I saw on TV, teleportals are just door frames connected to computers. They could box one up and ship it in as a door frame.”

  “Why not ship a box marked as a door frame but loaded with explosives? It would be a whole lot less complicated and just as effective. Come to think of it, why not hijack a truck of real office supplies and replace the hard to reach boxes with explosives in office supply boxes?”

  She looked a little surprised. “That’s an interesting question. I assume we have a protocol to prevent that sort of thing, but I see what you mean by hard to reach. If it’s a matter of opening random boxes, the hard to reach ones would be less likely to be searched and the dogs would have a hard time reaching them. I hope that wouldn’t be allowed by the protocol. Door frames on the other hand look like door frames.”

  I shook my head. “Teleportal frames have a major difference. They’re wrapped in a complex wiring setup – actually multiple antennas that act together to generate the interface.”

  Kitt’s jaw dropped. “How do you know that?”

  “As you know, I spent the past few weeks working with Dr. Kim and her team. I learned a lot about the nuts and bolts of teleportal technology.”

  She peered at me intently. “So in your expert opinion there’s no way someone could get a teleportal inside the Pentagon?”

  “I didn’t say that. Sloppy security procedures could let one in, but, more importantly, a teleportal doesn’t have to be doorway size. One set of portals we worked with consists of tori a foot in diameter. You could sneak one of them in a whole lot easier than a full-sized one.”

  She looked me up and down. “Get out of those sweats and into your clothes. I’ve got a job for you.”

  I must have looked confused. I certainly felt that way. She pointed toward my bedroom and said, “Move it!”

  Wondering what was going on, I rushed to change into jeans and a white blouse. With the weather as nasty as it had been I pulled out an ugly sweater to be safe and put it on.