The Siren Project

by Renneberg, Stephen

  “What kind of data?” Mitch asked.

  “Exactly what you see. Brain pictures going out, and a lot of binary stuff coming back.”

  “Targeting information,” Gunter concluded. “They miniaturized the ENP device, so it can fit in a truck, but perhaps there is no room for anything else. The control facility may be at the other end of the signal.”

  “They’ve got a small generator truck around the corner for power,” Mitch said, “And this truck to get instructions. That's how they can pluck people out of their homes Sunday night, and have them ready for work Monday morning.”

  “That’s if they don’t kill them in the process,” Christa reminded him.

  “Can you can track down where Sincom One is?” Gunter asked.

  “It's right there,” Mouse said, pointing to the satellite alignment screen. “Those numbers are Sincom's latitude and longitude.”

  Gunter immediately recorded the coordinates, while Mitch double checked what he wrote, ensuring it was correct.

  When Gunter had finished, Mitch said, “Let's pull the plug on this thing. We can’t help that security guard in there, but we can stop this from happening again.”

  “What did you have in mind?” Gunter asked.

  “This truck’s sound proof, right?”

  Gunter listened, unable to hear any noise from outside. “Ya, I expect so.”

  “Good,” Mitch said, then fired into the console.

  Mouse fell backwards out of his chair in his haste to get out of the way. “Hey! Warn me when you’re going to shoot that thing!”

  “This won't be of any use to Lamar, if you destroy it,” Christa said.

  “Change of plan. If this is the only satellite truck they’ve got, and we knock it out, they can’t melt anyone else's brain, for a while.” The control panel flickered and sparked as he aimed to fire again.

  “Wait, wait!” Mouse shouted. “G, your pen, quickly.” Gunter handed his pen to Mouse, who hurriedly copied down a long string of numbers.

  “What’s that?” Christa asked.

  “The access code and coordinates of one NSA satellite,” Mouse said with a mischievous grin. “You never know when you’re going to need a spy satellite, for ordering take out, or reading the President’s mail.”

  When Mouse finished, Mitch fired several times into the console, destroying the electronics, and causing the screens to go blank.

  Mouse picked up the chair and smashed the video screens. “Might as well destroy everything.”

  Mitch nodded approvingly. “Time to bug out. This place will be full of people with bad attitudes real soon.”

  They jumped out and hurried away from the satellite truck, mixing into the crowd. Less than a minute later, half a dozen men in red security coats came running from the direction of the convention center. Mitch watched them investigate the interior of the satellite truck, then one of the security men hurried into the side street past the unmanned FBI barricade.

  “All of them were conditioned,” Christa said, confirming Mitch's suspicions.

  They headed back around the corner of the building toward the convention center. “Now it’s time to call Lamar.” Mitch switched on his radio, “Lamar, you there?”

  “Where else would I be?”

  “Any news on those security guards?”

  “We’re still checking. No one knows anything about alpha waves, although there was some kind of weird psyche test involved. We’re still trying to find out what it was.”

  “If you check the alley off the side street, south of the main entrance, you’ll find a large white truck. Grab it and everyone in it. Got that?”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Unfriendly people with high tech toys. Try to get the equipment intact, it’s important.”

  “I’ll send someone around.”

  “Send a SWAT team. Send two. Expect resistance.”

  Lamar paused in thought. “Okay Mitchell. You better be right about this.”

  “When are you moving on the security guards?”

  “When I have something to give me cause to!”

  “Lamar, there's no doubt. The security guards are compromised.”

  “So you said. We’re watching them, but so far they look clean.”

  Mitch switched off, irritated. “He’s watching them! I feel safer already.” He slid the captured gun into Gunter’s hand. “Hold this. I’m going to take a look inside. I’ll never get it through the metal detectors.” Gunter pocketed the weapon. “Keep an eye on the FBI. Let me know if they do anything other than sit on their asses and shine their shoes.”

  Gunter and Mouse crossed the street in search of a good vantage point, while Mitch and Christa strolled toward the entrance. When they passed through the metal detector, Mitch’s radio set the machine beeping. One of the security men quickly descended on him with a hand held detector and found the radio.

  “I’ve got to keep in touch with campaign headquarters,” he explained. “My cell phone batteries are flat. This is all they had.”

  The security man accepted the excuse, letting them pass through into the lobby, where several pairs of FBI agents patrolled with sniffer dogs. Once past the dog squad, they made their way into the convention hall where they blended into the crowded arena. Some lesser known party man was giving an enthusiastic speech, although there was so much talking, shouting and general schmoozing it seemed as if no one was paying attention. Rather than descend onto the floor, they worked their way up to the higher galleries, where they could get an unobstructed view of the cavernous hall. Red jacketed convention security men were scattered around the crowd, doing nothing more than standing around, looking bored. Mitch knew Christa was examining the nearer guards, and from the look on her face he knew, they were all conditioned. He studied the positioning of the security men, looking for a pattern, which soon became apparent.

  He leaned close to Christa’s ear. “The red jackets are covering the exits.”

  “Looking for us?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Mitch scanned the exits he could see as they worked their way through the crowd. People entered the chamber, without the security guards showing any interest in them. He noticed two security men standing back in the shadows, paying no attention to anyone. They stood in front of a fire exit and a water cooler.

  “I want to try something,” he whispered, as he started toward the two security guards, who initially ignored him, but quickly cut him off when he suddenly darted toward the fire exit.

  “You can’t go through there,” one of the guards said. “This way is closed.”

  “I just need some air.”

  “This way is closed,” the guard repeated mechanically.

  Mitch extricated himself from the security man’s grip and returned to Christa. “They’re not trying to keep people out the auditorium, they’re here to stop them leaving.” He flicked on his radio. “Lamar, the security goons in here are closing up the doors so no one can get out.”

  Lamar’s voice was barely audible over crackling static. “Say again, I can barely hear you.”

  Mitch cupped his hand over his mouth and the radio receiver and yelled, his voice partially obscured by the noise in the convention center. “The security guards won’t let anyone out. Get your people in here. Ensure the exits are open.” He pressed the radio speaker close to his ear to hear the response, which was almost drowned out by static.

  “Say again! Identify yourself!” Lamar’s voice hissed back, barely audible.

  “Something’s wrong with the radio,” Mitch said, pocketing it. “I’m getting drowned out by static.”

  “Why go to all the trouble of finding, and conditioning forty or fifty guys, just to take hostages?”

  “Because . . .” he replied thoughtfully, “They'll do what they're told, like robots . . . And they're totally expendable.”

  “They don’t want to kill their own people!” Christa said, alarmed, “Which means, everyone here is going to di
e!” She looked around the room, saw the people and banners filling the convention floor, the balloons and streamers suspended high above, heard the music playing and saw the lights illuminating the stage. “This room is so crowded, someone could be carrying a case full of explosives and we’d never find it.”

  “It won’t be that simple. Those sniffer dogs in the foyer would have found explosives. It’s something else, something . . . unexpected. Something much bigger! Remember what EB said, there'd be extreme collateral damage.”

  Mitch continued his slow reconnaissance of the convention hall, squeezing through increasingly tighter presses of people. Off to the left, was a temporary media control area for managing cameras and lights, barricaded from the mass of people. The four sound technicians he'd accosted outside the convention center were standing by their sound equipment, the head sound engineer was yelling and waving his hands around furiously. Mitch realized it had been some time since he’d heard the speaker on the podium. In the din, generated by the boisterous audience, he hadn’t noticed the speech had stopped, nor had anyone else except the sound technicians. He looked down to the podium, where the speaker stood tapping the microphone and waving toward the media control area, trying to attract attention. As the speaker was not someone of great renown, the crowds on the floor were amusing themselves, ignoring the farce on stage.

  Mitch jumped the barrier isolating the media area, and slipped past several large control decks and monitors set up for the television broadcast. The screens were all blank while television technicians franticly ran checks on their electrical equipment. He stopped at the sound control area and tapped the angry sound engineer on the shoulder.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I told those people–” The sound engineer yelled as he turned, stopping suddenly at the sight of Mitch. “Not you again!”

  Mitch repeated his question. “What’s wrong with the sound?”

  “Who the hell knows! God damned equipment shorted out again.” The sound engineer turned back to his equipment.

  Mitch grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. “It shorted out this morning, and now again?”

  “That’s right. The vision guys too,” he said, nodding toward the camera control area. “We just got this crap set up and working, and bam, it’s down again. It makes no fucking sense.”

  “What caused it?”

  “Like I know anything. I just own this piece of shit!”

  Mitch pushed the engineer aside and leaned over the sound control console and yelled to the two sound technicians on their knees trying to figure if they could rewire the console in time. “What caused the short circuit?”

  One of the technicians looked up dejectedly. “A power spike. It blew right through our charge protectors. See?” The man held up a small white unit meant to protect the equipment from power spikes. It had been reduced to a twisted melted blob.

  Mitch studied the object in the technician’s hand for a moment. “Have you ever seen that happen before?”

  “Once, when a radio station I was working at got hit by lightning, but it’s a sunny day. There's no lightning out there.”

  The other technician rolled out from under the bench. “I told you, it’s those damn speakers. They’re sucking so much juice, the whole electrical system in this place is close to shorting out. I told them the circuits couldn’t handle those things.” He shook his head. “No one ever listens.”

  The second technician crawled back under the sound console as Mitch turned to look at the two giant black speakers positioned either side of the stage, each one standing several times taller than a man. The stage also had several speakers mounted on it, but they were much smaller units than the two mega speakers. Mitch signaled Christa to follow him as he pushed his way down to the convention floor toward the nearer of the two enormous speakers.

  She caught him before they reached it, yelling over the static. “What is it?”

  “Energy!” he shouted. “Electricity is energy!”

  As if that was all the explanation she needed, he pressed harder through the crowd, pulling slightly ahead of her. When he got close to the speaker, a prickling sensation combed his body. The hair on his arms and head stood up, contorted by the intense electrical field surrounding the speakers. The crowd had left an open area around the large black boxes, avoiding the uncomfortable sensation created by the immense build up of static electricity.

  The giant speaker was covered in black felt and had similar dimensions to the speakers used in stadium sized rock concerts, but it was excessive for the confined spaces of convention center. He worked his way to the rear of the towering black box, where he found a dozen heavy duty power cables feeding into it. Neat holes had been drilled through the convention center's wall, to allow the cables to be fed directly into the hall. From their thickness, it was clear they carried a lot of power. Mitch knew at once, he couldn't disconnect them by hand. It would require a team of experts with the right tools and control of the mains electricity supply to do it. He guessed the convention security force had been conditioned partly to permit the installation of this equipment. He darted back to the front of the speaker cabinet, where Christa now stood rubbing her arms.

  “This feels so weird,” she said, fascinated. “What does it mean?”

  Mitch strained to see the other speaker on the far side of the room. He couldn’t tell from that distance if there was an empty area around it too, but he suspected there was. “Have you ever been in a really bad lightning storm?”

  “Sure.”

  “That’s what this is. I bet it’s something from their Star Wars research program, some way to build up a massive amount of energy and release it, like a lightning bolt, from here, to the other speaker over there.”

  Christa gazed across the floor of the convention center to the other side of the great hall. “Oh my God,” she said, backing away.

  Mitch tried to remember everything he knew about lightning, how much damage a high intensity strike of electricity could cause. “People survive lightning strikes,” he said, puzzled.

  “What?”

  “It’s not big enough! I thought it was going to be much bigger than this.”

  “What do you mean? This will kill a lot of people.”

  “But it's not extreme collateral damage!” Mitch pushed away from the speaker and the irritating static charge building up around it. He hurried up the stairs to get a better view, followed by Christa. Half way up the stairs, he stopped and took in the scene. He imagined the artificial lightning bolt of raw energy arcing across the room from one speaker to the other, positive to negative, killing hundreds of people.

  “Let’s tell Lamar and get out of here!” Christa shouted as she joined him,

  “Give me a second.” Mitch turned to a man sitting on the nearest aisle seat and grabbed his coat's lapel. “What happens at midday?”

  The man looked surprised. “The main speeches.”

  “What else? What else happens at midday?”

  The frightened man leaned back. “I don’t know. Music, everybody shouts, people throw streamers.”

  “No, that’s not it. What about the lights. What happens to the lights?”

  “Nothing, I don’t know. They get brighter, everyone cheers and the balloons come down.”

  “What balloons?”

  “Up there,” the man said pointing up into the darkened heights of the convention center, where thousands of balloons were hidden in shadows, suspended by netting.

  Mitch released the man, and looked up slowly, studying the balloons above, which covered the length of the convention center. The nets that held the balloons were heavily constructed and supported by thick steel cables. They looked far too strong for balloons full of air, then he noticed how the balloons sagged through the netting under the weight of their contents.

  “Oh shit!”

  “What?” Christa said, following his gaze without comprehending.

  “The balloons! They’re not full of air
! It’s something else. Liquid maybe.”

  Christa strained her eyes. “Water conducts electricity.”

  “It’s not water! It’s a petrochemical. If I’m right, this whole building is the biggest fuel air bomb ever built!” Mitch switched on his radio. “Gunter, can you hear me?”

  He heard Gunter’s voice dimly, overpowered by the fiercely crackling static generated by the speakers. “. . .hardly hear. . .”

  “Tell Mouse to shut down the building’s power supply!”

  “ . . .you say. . .”

  “There is a fuel air bomb in here. Kill the power, and warn Lamar!”

  Static hissed. “. . .repeat . . .can’t. . ..”

  Mitch switched off the radio. Seeing the confused look on Christa’s face, he explained. “At midday, all the lights turn on, triggering the electrical charge from one speaker to the other. At the same time, the balloons come down, loaded with a liquid chemical explosive. The lightning charge cuts through the balloons, ignites the chemical, and boom, you have the most powerful non-nuclear explosion known to man. And there are thousands of balloons up there, which means this is bigger than a tactical nuclear weapon. You understand? There’s nowhere to run. It's more than an attack on the convention, it'll level downtown Manhattan. We're talking Hiroshima, without the radiation.”

  Her face paled as the horror of understanding dawned.

  Mitch pushed his way through the crowd, to the first landing, with Christa on his heels.

  “But they had that truck outside?” she yelled. “They won’t want to lose that.”

  “It’s either on its way out of the city now, or it’s expendable!”

  Two red jacketed security men stood in front of the fire stairs, ignoring Mitch until he made a bee line for the exit. One of the guards intercepted him with a blank look on his face. “This way is closed.”

  Mitch punched the security guard on the point of his chin, knocking him to the ground. The guard rolled and tried to come to his knees, reaching for his gun. He raced forward, tried to land a knockout blow, but the guard blocked him, taking his weight as he ran, pulling Mitch down to the floor into a wrestling match.