Crawl. Walk. Run.
Hastings, just like his push for Alpha-B, was definitely running again, and in doing so, he was jeopardizing the entire Project Phoenix. But even when a program was launched successfully, like the original space shuttle, the level of complexity of space operations required careful adherence to scientifically derived rules—rules, which often conflicted with schedule pressures, and which could result in disaster, as was the case with Challenger.
But still, nothing that she saw in this Web site so far told her anything new, anything that could explain what had happened to her husband.
“These guys already have over one hundred suits made,” Art-Z said, pointing at the production schedule. “Plus twice as many in various stages of assembly.”
“Yep, they’re definitely going to have to modify all those suits—or maybe even scrap them,” she replied. “But what I still don’t get is why the hurry to productize this particular suit. The current version of the OSS is only good for suborbital jumps. It can’t withstand the stress of a true orbital jump, like from the International Space Station. That version’s still in the drawing board and up here.” She touched the tip of her index finger against her temple.
“So what do you think he’s trying to do by building so many suits that can’t be used from orbit?” asked Dago.
“Not sure. Maybe they’ve figured out a way to use them … I don’t know yet. At the moment it all looks like a huge waste of money.”
“In that case, here’s to my tax dollars at work,” Dago replied, lifting his Corona. “At least the beer is free.”
“And we still have no idea how your husband vanished,” Art-Z added.
“Nope,” said Angela.
“So, what do we do now?” asked Dago.
“Now we browse through another section of their Web site. But the more sections we open, the bigger the chance of getting caught,” she answered, before asking Art-Z, “You’ve got everything you need from the flash card?”
“Not quite,” he replied. “The general used a military version of Invisible Text, so reading his text messages will be a little tricky.”
“What happened?” asked Dago.
“Hastings has a safety feature in his phone that basically deletes text messages after he sends them,” Angela explained. “And it also deletes the ones he receives after he’s read them. That, plus the fancy encryption algorithms, keeps the average phone hijacker from reading his private conversations.”
“But we’re far from average,” Art-Z said.
“You’re certainly far from something,” the biker commented.
“So, Art, can I get in there or not?”
The hacker gave her a thumbs-up before using another finger to reply to Dago.
“See what you can learn, Bonnie,” Art-Z added. “I’ve replicated the flash content in this machine,” he said, pointing at the third laptop on the table that contained their getaway potion. If something goes wrong, I’ll pull the plug and release this bad boy to cover our tracks.”
Angela returned to the Web site’s main menu and stared at it again.
TRAINING
SUITS
TECHNOLOGY
PROGRAM MANAGEMENT
If she assumed that an alarm would be triggered by opening another section—meaning she may only get a quick look at it before having to unplug—which should it be?
She felt she had a pretty good idea of the contents in the Suits directory given that she had designed the prototype, and she also felt that Training would reflect what Jack had gone through to get ready for the jump.
Slowly, she ran her finger across the touchpad and brought the cursor over to her original choice, Technology, and clicked on it.
The screen dissolved and changed to a set of menu options that made her blink.
“What’s this, Bonnie?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” she said, reading through what looked like more particle collider experiments, though they weren’t conducted at CERN.
“I don’t get it,” said Art-Z. “I thought that CERN is the big kahuna of particle acceleration and collision.”
“They are … except that these experiments aren’t using copper as the conduit, but … glass…”
“You lost me there.”
“All right,” she said, recalling her limited knowledge of quantum physics. “A modern accelerator, like the one in CERN, consists of a large number of cavities through which particles, normally electrons, are accelerated by alternating the voltage in the cavities to either repel the electrons with negatively charged cavities or attract them with positively charged cavities. The object is to switch the voltage of a cavity just as an electron passes through it to accelerate it. Each cavity, therefore, injects more energy into the electron, kicking it faster. In the case of CERN, the particles get accelerated through its entire circumference, which has a diameter of around five miles. Higher frequency of voltage flipping, combined with a higher electric field, and smaller cavities packed together one after the other, translates into faster speeds, which in the case of CERN, can get close to ninety-nine percent the speed of light.”
“That’s pretty fast,” said Art-Z
“Yeah, but it takes this mammoth of a facility, and a hell of a lot of electricity, to accomplish it. These cavities are surrounded by a conducting metal, which in this case is copper. The problem with copper is that it puts a ceiling on the amount of frequency and electric field levels it can take before melting. Now glass, which last time I checked was still on the drawing boards, has the potential to take the particle-acceleration game to a new level because the alternating electric field can be supplied by light, which is electromagnetic radiation, and that means much higher operating frequencies. While copper can probably handle about one gigahertz, glass allows frequencies in the thousands of gigahertz.”
“That’s terahertz,” commented Dago.
Angela and Art-Z looked over their shoulders at the large biker calmly nursing his Corona.
“What?” he said. “You don’t think Harleys are pretty high-tech these days? I’ll have you know I’ve got an associate’s degree in electronics.”
“From where?” Art-Z asked, “Devry?”
“Fuck you, little scooter man.”
Angela smiled and added, “Easy, boys. It’s not the size of the bike that matters.”
“Ha!” said Art.
“Right,” Dago replied, taking another sip.
Her eyes went back to the screen. “Another benefit of glass is that the higher the frequency, the smaller the wavelength, which means the shorter the distance the particle has to travel. Now this place, wherever it is, claims to have run particle acceleration experiments using glass. Impressive.”
“It’s fifteen minutes outside of Melbourne,” Art-Z said. “I’ve got the address.”
“What … how do you know that?” Angela said. There’s nothing on this Web site that—”
“Please, Bonnie.”
“Very impressive, Art,” she said, leaning back. “So, Hastings had a production operation running just down the road all this time?” she asked.
“Looks that way,” Art-Z said, before looking over at Dago. “Not bad for a little scooter man, huh?”
The biker’s goatee shifted up as he grinned and raised his longneck at the hacker, tapping it to his can of Red Bull.
Just like at CERN, Angela dug in, pulling up the results of several experiments, which included particle collision events using gamma rays as the accelerant, which had the highest frequency in the electromagnetic spectrum right at 1012 hertz.
“That’s twelve terahertz,” she mumbled to herself, recalling the last set of telemetry from Jack’s jump.
What the hell does that—
“Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit!” Art-Z screamed, typing furiously before the SkyLeap site went black.
“What just happened?” Dago asked.
“Bad shit, man. Bad shit just happened,” replied Art-Z.
“Just the opposite,” Angela said. “I think we’ve just got handed an amazing opportunity.”
She stared at her friends and smiled, her mind converging on a new plan of attack while her former mentor kept cursing while working the keyboard with intensity for a few more seconds, finally releasing what had to be the most virulent piece of code she’d ever seen.
6
THE RETURN OF THE WARRIOR
But the Lord is with me, like a mighty warrior, so my persecutors will stumble and not prevail. They will fail and will be thoroughly disgraced; their dishonor will never be forgotten.
—Jeremiah 20:11
He moved swiftly, quietly, with purpose, the armored battle dress blending him with the night as he made his way across the backyard and up the side of the house opposite the detached garage.
The MK11 semiautomatic sniper rifle in his gloved hands felt right, balanced, just as he remembered, even with the QD sound suppressor also designed to attenuate muzzle flashes for the seven shots he expected to fire tonight.
One for each of the soldiers that had exited those Humvees.
Seven shots. Seven kills.
That was the SEAL way, precisely what his training—which surfaced with unparalleled clarity—commanded him to do as he advanced in a deep crouch, camouflage cream darkening his features, a black bandanna concealing his hair, hiding him perfectly with his surroundings under a blanket of stars in the wrong world.
Jack pushed those thoughts aside as he neared the corner, the warrior in him tempering the adrenaline rush, eyes focused on his prey, his hands in perfect position, shooting finger resting on the trigger casing, feeling the deep gauge bitten out of the metal by a ricocheting Taliban round a lifetime ago.
But this couldn’t possibly be his old rifle, the one he had lost in Colombia.
Still, a part of him felt a strange sense of joy at being reunited with the MK11.
He paused by the front corner and dropped over the cool lawn, setting the long barrel on the Harris swivel-based bipod, eyes scanning the street through the Leupold riflescope, easily locating the first three targets, two across and one on the sidewalk just forty feet from him. Three more covered the other side with identical deployment. The last one stood by the middle Humvee next to Pete, who was on the phone. All seven soldiers were armed with standard-issue M17 SCAR-H rifles that fired the same 7.62 mm NATO rounds in Jack’s twenty-round box magazine.
And that realization made him pause, reassess what he was about to do: open fire on American soldiers.
But what choice did he have? Through his actions, Pete had already telegraphed his intentions loud and clear.
This blood is on him.
And besides, what would happen to Angela if Jack was either captured or killed? She was now a liability.
Seven shots. Seven kills.
That was his best option—the only option that Pete had left for him.
Pete Flaherty.
He watched him for a moment, still talking on the phone. The retired SEAL commando had something completely different reserved for his former best friend.
Jack shifted sights between targets, for a moment wondering why they hadn’t yet moved on the house. The only thing that made sense was that Pete could just be holding the area while waiting for reinforcements, even though it was already eight against two.
If so, then time was of the essence.
Jack could easily disable the closest three in rapid succession, but the other four soldiers—plus Pete—required at least one more SEAL firing in unison.
Lacking that, he needed a distraction for just a few seconds, something to keep the other soldiers from looking in the direction of their fallen comrades, realizing they were under attack, and scrambling to return fire.
He reached into a Velcro-secured pocket next to his SOG knife and produced the one gadget that was not military-issued on his persona, and lining up his closest target, he tapped it once.
The garage door started to open on the other side of the property.
All heads shifted in unison toward the source of the noise—and most important, away from his immediate kill zone.
Jack exhaled and squeezed the trigger, feeling the recoil as the semiautomatic rifle ejected the spent cartridge while chambering another round from the magazine. The bullet hit the mark on the Kevlar vest over the soldier’s solar plexus at a velocity of nearly 2,900 feet per second, delivering a nonlethal but crippling blow guaranteed to knock him unconscious for several minutes.
Shifting targets before the first soldier had fallen, Jack aligned the Leupold crosshairs on the second mark, still looking in the direction of the garage.
Firing again, Jack scored another hit within two seconds of the first as the soldier also dropped from view silently.
He shifted again, firing a third round two seconds later, neutralizing the third target before bringing the soldiers at the other side of the house into view.
Lining up the one closest to the house in the crosshairs, Jack fired for a fourth time in eight seconds at a distance of roughly one hundred feet, hitting his mark just as the ground exploded several feet in front of him with the sound of thunder as muzzle flashes lit up the street.
He rolled back once, twice, retreating like a vanishing shadow, catching a glimpse of Pete jumping inside a Humvee before losing sight of his remaining targets.
Reaching for his utility belt while rising to a deep crouch, he curled his fingers around a cylindrical canister, freeing it from its pouch, pulling the safety ring, and throwing it hard around the corner, in the direction of the incoming soldiers, before hurtling back to the rear of the property.
Thousand one. Thousand two. Thousand three. Thousand—
The M84 stun grenade thundered, illuminating the street behind him like a bolt of lightning, its magnesium-based pyrotechnic guaranteed to inflict immediate flash blindness, deafness, and loss of balance from inner ear shock to anyone within a fifteen-foot radius.
He heard screams, shouts of pain, anger, and confusion as he reached the back corner, stopping, rolling into view, landing on his feet, the MK11 automatically leveled at the opposite end of the backyard, in case the soldier closest to the house had managed to escape the blast and anticipated his retreat.
But no one came.
He gave the waterfront a quick look, verifying no threat near the Boston Whaler in the boathouse, before sprinting across the back of the house, like a ghost, reaching the opposite corner and moving up to the front, in between the corridor formed by the side of the house and the detached garage.
Dropping to the ground by the front corner, behind a line of waist-high bushes, he used the MK11’s barrel to part the shrubbery, spotting his remaining targets, two rolling on the ground, hands over their ears, their eyes. The third soldier, on all fours, vomited on the asphalt.
His gaze shifted to Pete in the back of the lead Humvee, a hand over his eyes, the other holding a radio to his lips.
He was about to race across the pavement to deliver a dose of up-close-and-personal SEAL justice when three pairs of headlights turned onto his street, their beams stabbing the night, exposing the kill zone.
Help. But not for Jack.
He doubled back, tapping his voice-activated throat mike three times, signaling to Angela to come out.
Looking over his shoulder again to make sure no one followed, Jack reached the backyard just as she came out dressed in black jeans and a gray halter top while hauling two large duffel bags strapped over her shoulders, filled with his choice ordnance, while clutching one of Jack’s favorite weapons after the MK11: a loaded M32 grenade launcher.
“Get the boat ready,” he told her, swapping weapons. “This will slow them down.”
“Jack,” she said, holding his MK11. “The suit. I couldn’t carry it with all the ammo. It’s already folded back inside the—”
“I’ll get it. Start the engine. I’ll be right behind you,” he said.
“Please, be careful,” she said, her
eyes screaming, I can’t lose you again.
“I will,” he said. “But time is against us. Now go.”
She kissed him on his cheek, smearing her mouth with camouflage cream before taking off in the direction of the boathouse.
Relax, honey. I’ll be right back.
Inhaling deeply, he turned his attention to the street, hearing the next round of Humvees approaching, engines roaring.
Jack frowned, realizing what he had to do, hands gripping the M32, verifying all six chambered M406 high-explosive dual purpose rounds, each capable of engaging lightly armored, point, and target areas.
Rushing to the right side of the house, he lined up the M32’s reflex sight on the street a hundred feet away just as the lead Humvee shot by, followed by the second, and the third.
Jack centered the last Humvee in the reflex sight and fired two HEDP rounds in one second, the recoil pad of the modular butt-stock jerking twice against his shoulder as the rounds thumped out of their chambers.
Sprinting to the opposite side of the house, he faced the long corridor-like path between the detached garage and the brick structure once again, spotting the lead Humvee, soldiers jumping out just as the first two M406s detonated, their blasts shaking the house’s foundation, shattering windows.
He ignored it, popping two more HEDP rounds just as soldiers jumped back from the acoustic energy of the first two explosions, invisible fists punching them in the chest, propelling them against their armored vehicles.
Moving away, he scurried toward the sliding glass doors, still open, trained instincts arresting his momentum, forcing him to wait for the next two blasts, which came an instant later, deafening, stroboscopic—deadly—buying him the seconds he needed to retrieve the OSS, his ticket home.
Jack ran into a living room littered with broken glass, eyes focused on his target on the sofa, the long helmet—
Gunfire erupted from the street, peppering the house, puncturing the front door, demolishing furniture, picture frames. The dining room chandelier exploded as it crashed over the long table beneath it.
The Fall Page 14
