Bill opened his door and stepped out into the damp night air coming off the bay. His driver had already exited and run to the doorway. Then Bill saw a third floor window open and a leg jut out, followed by a man, who causiously traversed the adjoining roof.
Bill watched, but the man never appeared at the narrow alleyway to jump across to the next roof. Bill surmised that he must have slipped down the stairway of the adjacent building. Bill ran down the alleyway next to the building, figuring the man wouldn’t leave by the front door being guarded by BPD. Bill made it to the back of the building in time to see the man jumping the last eight feet from the rear fire escape ladder. Suddenly it was as if Bill were watching a movie. The Glock was in his hand and he was yelling, “Freeze!”
The man got up and was turning toward Bill.
“Freeze! Goddammit!”
But the man kept turning.
Then Bill’s ear stung as someone yelled, “Freeze!” He turned while wincing to see his Secret Service man, Moskowitz, in a full military-like crouch stance, his service weapon cupped in his upturned right palm. Bill turned back to the man he was chasing who was crouched and squeezing off a round. Moskowitz’s fired before that bullet hit him full in the chest. Both men went down. The secret service agent’s shot found center mass and crumpled the suspect. Bill ran to the downed man and kicked away the weapon. He ran back to Moskowitz. Bill was surprised he was conscious and helped him sit up. Bill saw the small hole in his shirt, but there was no blood. Kevlar vest, he thought.
“You okay?”
“I’m good; stop him!”
“He’s not going…” Bill turned and saw the man wobble to his feet and head for the gun. Bill took off as if he were escaping the pocket from defensive linemen, went low, and field tackled the guy. This time he pinned him down and called for help. “Hey, somebody give me a hand here!”
A BPD sergeant showed up, placed his knee on the man’s back, and slapped a pair of cuffs on him. Bill went back to Moskowitz. “Looks like everybody’s wearing a vest but me.”
“What the hell were you doing, Hiccock?”
“I saw the guy running and no one was going after him, so…”
“There’s an army of cops and Feds here; you were only here to observe,” he wheezed as he tried to catch his breath. “Hell, I turn my back for a second and there you go playing High Noon with a thug.” He winced through the pain that the punch of the bullet had transmitted through his vest.
“I guess ‘sorry’ is kind of weak, huh?”
Two EMTs came running. One checked Moskowitz while the other went to the man in the alley.
∞§∞
An hour after the take-down, Bill found himself playing the role of referee in a jurisdictional dispute in which he held all the cards: those that identified him as oversight chairman of the FBI, Secret Service, CIA, NSA, and DHS. All under the order of the president, who felt he and his authority had been ill-served by these agencies in the two previous affairs where Bill’s instincts had proved to be superior to that of the heads of the agencies. Since they all worked for the Executive Branch, President Mitchell rearranged the administration’s furniture, putting Bill’s seat closer to his and ordering all the agencies to answer to him before Mitchell got their attention. So here he was, a professorial academic, holder of three degrees in science, no political agenda and no favor bank credits or debts to repay, in the back of a Boston pub deciding who got to interrogate the seven men rounded up in the Boston pub raid.
The Secret Service wanted first crack because the helicopter that one of the group’s alleged members blew up was in their bailiwick. The FBI persuasively argued that this was domestic terrorism and totally within their mandate. Owing to the need for secrecy and to contain the entire affair because of its religious sensitivity, he decided on the Secret Service. Having made the decision, he briefed the special agent in charge and in no uncertain terms told him of the need for quick, actionable intelligence under a blanket of secrecy.
∞§∞
In the U.S. Embassy in Paris, when Joey received the first reports and got the gist of the Boston operation, his blood pressure began to rise. First was a feeling that he should have been there. His best friend was involved in a shootout while he was sitting behind a desk in France. Second was the upward pressure that was being exerted on him from the Bureau’s Boston office due to Bill’s decision to make Treasury the lead agency over the FBI. It was still Joey’s alma mater, albeit one that had jettisoned him from its active-duty ranks for his display of loyalty to Bill during the Eighth Day affair. Yet he was still a product of Quantico and the Bureau was in his blood, so it was with a sympathetic ear that Joey listened as the special agent in charge of the Boston office relayed to him that Joey’s new boss, Bill, had given them the cold shoulder on the investigation into the chopper shoot-down. Joey listened, but steered clear of agreement with the SAC of the Boston office, but commiserated nonetheless.
Now, Joey was about to meet with Father Mercado, so he put the Boston op behind him and wondered why Frank the priest had asked for this meeting.
One of the embassy staff led in the priest, who, to Joey, seemed overwhelmed.
“Father Mercado, it’s good to see you. Are you okay?”
“I must have gone through five security checks.”
“Sorry about that; I should have escorted you in myself. My apologies.”
“Mr. Palumbo…”
“Joey!”
“Joey, I know you are a government representative and your allegiance is to Uncle Sam, but I need you to talk to your superiors.”
“My superiors? They pay me to listen, not talk.”
“You know, back in Philly, and I’m sure it was like this in the Bronx, when the baseball cards came out, we’d flip ’em and the winner would take all the cards. But if the next card up was a Pete Rose, you panicked, because you could trade the whole rest of the team for one Pete Rose card.”
“I once had five Mickey Mantles and later three Reggie Jacksons! I was the king of 213th Street.”
“So if a Mantle came up, would you flip it? No, too big of a risk, right?”
“Yeah, sure, but where’s this going, Frank?”
“I am no scientist; heck I’m in the anti-science uniform,” he pulled at his black shirt, “but the stakes here are the highest ever. If your science men are wrong, then everything, all creation, is gone. The Church is not willing to take that big of a risk with God’s creation. Why is your government willing to flip all the cards?”
“Frank, I can’t answer that. But my friend, my boss, Hiccock, he is as good a man as I have ever met. I don’t think he’d walk us all off a cliff to oblivion. I know he would seek every assurance that each step was safe.”
“Joey, your man Hiccock may be a virtuous and inscrutable man, but in the end he is just a man. Fallible and unaware of God’s plan, as are we all. And the same is true of whomever he would get these assurances from. Joey, your greatest military commanders, all the armies and planes and bombs you could ever amass, can be wiped out by one tsunami. An earthquake can render a nuclear plant a radioactive catastrophe. All of the accomplishments of man pale in comparison to God’s power and that which he gave to the earth, the planets and the universe.”
“No argument from me.”
“Then you have to realize the United States government is talking about allowing a small group of people to take a flip on all the cards that exist. Every living thing on earth is at the mercy of this decision, with no ability to object or even understand the power that might be unleashed. Is it right for just a few people to sign the potential death warrant of seven billion people, not to mention the untold trillions yet to be born?”
Out of reflex, Joey was about to speak, but didn’t know how to respond. The priest made some sense. What gave the president, Bill, and an egghead scientist the right to risk the lives of every living thing on earth on a scientific bet?
∞§∞
Bill’s G5 was late l
eaving Logan. He had delayed the flight so he could transport the two leaders of the Boston cell to D.C., to give the FBI, CIA and NSA a crack at them. It was a small sign of contrition from Bill, after the blistering phone call he had gotten from his friend, Joey. When Bill interviewed the leaders on the plane, he came to understand that they were convinced the government was acting in direct opposition to God. Unfortunately, he was not able to discern where their counterpart who blew up the chopper got the shoulder-fired missile, but suspected the various agencies would connect the dots in short order.
He was met at the airport by a replacement driver, since Steve Moskowitz was being held for observation at Massachusetts General overnight. Although the bullet had been stopped by his Kevlar vest, a blood clot arising from the deep bruising caused by the impact of the bullet was always a concern. Bill remained silent for the forty-minute trip through Maclean, past the CIA to his home. As he emerged from the car, he took a long moment to just look at his house. It looked like a postcard, with the bluish cast on the house from the moonlight, the reddish glow from the downstairs den light filtering through the sheer curtains, and the whole scene set against a starry night backdrop. He walked toward the front door, grabbed Richie’s toy fire engine off the lawn, and brought it into the house.
He tiptoed in well after 11 p.m. and went right to Richie’s room. He placed the toy on top of the Star Wars toy chest and stood looking at his sleeping son. In the crack of hallway light coming through the door ajar, he studied the little boy’s features. He had never realized how long his eyelashes were; how he had the beginnings of a well-defined jaw line emerging from baby fat. He got real close, stroked his son’s head, and spoke in low tones. “You father did something really stupid today, son. I acted without thinking. I didn’t think of you or your mom. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, son.” He lingered a bit longer, then bent over and kissed the boy’s forehead, breathing in a hint of baby powder. He backed away and silently closed the door.
∞§∞
Joey didn’t sleep all night, as he couldn’t heal the rip down the middle of his brain between his duty to country and his obligation to humanity. The rift was freshly revealed because up until now he hadn’t doubted for a minute that his duty and humanity were one and the same. Suddenly, science was emerging as the perpetrator-in-waiting of a potential crime, and he worked for science guy number one. But Bill was also his best friend. They had grown up together, and Bill had saved his bacon when Joe’s sense of right and wrong got him on the bad side of the FBI director. Plus a million other things that friends consciously and unconsciously do for one another. No matter how much he turned and tried to rinse his brain, the dilemma was inescapable. He finally found peace at 4:30 a.m. when he remembered that the first thing he had done upon entering the Cathedral at Notre Dame was to pray for, among other things, guidance in the work he and Bill were doing. Next thing he knew there was Father Frank Mercado preparing mass and engaging him on the priesthood and choices in life. Could it be? The tantalizing nature of the situation also brought calm and allowed him to settle on a plan.
∞§∞
There was a stain on her uniform skirt. Damn it. She went to the hall closet and pulled out a duffle bag that had rested undisturbed in the corner of the closet for nine years. The smell of mothballs brought thoughts of her mom front and center. If her mother were here now, she’d know. She’d break right through Brooke’s gung-ho attitude and disarm her with soft words like, “What’s the worry on your mind, dear?” Brooke knew she would reflexively answer, “Nothing.” But Mom would go right by that, right to the heart of the matter, as she always could. Brooke heard the internal dialogue in her head as she gave in to the only person she could never defend against. Her mom knew her and still saw her as a ten year old, as though she never survived high school, college, her training at Quantico, and the Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape course at Fort Bragg.
“I am not crazy about going back to the Indian Ocean, okay?”
“I know, dear,” she could hear her mom say. “You are afraid.”
“No, Mom, I’m not…”
She couldn’t lie to her mother, even when her mother wasn’t there.
She was afraid. In a recurring nightmare, the sharks were out there, circling, waiting for her, the one that got away.
She unhooked the clip and opened the top of the bag. She pulled out all her old dress shirts and dug down deeper through the khaki slacks and finally got to three skirts. She examined them quickly, eliminated the one with the pull, and weighed the two she now held in her hands. The one in her right seemed fresher; she placed the other in the suitcase next to the Navy regulation shoes. She closed it, hauled it off the bed, and rested it by the front door. On a hanger on the hook over the door, she hung the newly dug out skirt next to her uniform blouse with her cap resting on top.
It had been a while since she deployed on a Navy ship. I’ll be on a Navy ship. I won’t be alone — like last time. She found reassurance in that last thought, then struck the entire conversation from her mind as she decided to open the suitcase again to hit the shoes with the shine cloth one more time and run an iron over the skirt. Be Neat, Be Clean, Be Navy.
XVII. LITTLE CHICK
Brooke had never been too bothered by seasickness, but tonight was woozily different. She had choppered out to a U.S. sub tender in the Indian Ocean and then transferred by launch to a commercial fishing trawler. Although sailing under a Japanese flag, it was actually a U.S. Naval command and control ship, under the helm of Commander A.E. Randell.
Below deck in the operations hub of the boat, a whole lot of equipment including sonar, radar, satellite, and something called VLF was being used to track the progress of an ancient atomic-powered submarine. It was one of the first and was now deeper than deep and dispatching a deep-sea submersible to the site of the ship Brooke had been blown off of two months before. There were live video streams from the submersible on one of the screens in the hub. “Commander, how sure are we that we are in the right area?” Brooke said.
“The Halibut’s magnetometers have indicated a high deviation in this sector, and as best as can be reckoned from maritime logs, no recent shipwrecks besides yours happened here. Of course, it could be some non-recorded wreck or from a time before they kept such records.” Commander Randell said.
“That blip on the radar?”
“That’s target designate ‘Lana.’ We know all about her; she’s a Russian trawler not unlike us. We figure it’s a good sign, ’cause it means the Russians think this is the area also.”
“How do you know the Russian captain isn’t saying the same thing about you?”
“That’s the rub. You live and die by what you think the enemy knows about you, until somebody fires a torpedo up your a… rudder. That’s when you’ll know he said exactly what I said. Besides, the Russians have been using trawlers since the ’50s. We aren’t known for using a boat like this, and because we have more sensitive equipment, we can be far enough off so as not to raise suspicion.”
Brooke didn’t look convinced. The commander turned to his chief, “Wags, show me the EE of the trawler.”
Brooke watched as a cloud suddenly appeared over the blip of the trawler.
“That cloud is a representation of the boat’s electronics emission, the sum total of every piece of equipment that is using electricity, plus the transmitters and receivers operating at this moment. Now, Wags, scan us.”
Brooke watched as the scale expanded on the scope and the blip was joined by a new blip, which she knew was the “fishing” boat she was on. There was a small set of lines hardly noticeable.
“Our cloud is consistent with a standard ship-to-shore radio, loran radar, fish finders, and crew personal equipment like iPods, a TV or computers.”
“Impressive; how do you do that?”
“PFM. The specifics are classified, but in broad strokes, every emission from this room is first shielded by Mu metal, which is a little like lead to Superman; you can�
��t see the majority of EE through it. Then we have EE monitor/transducers on this ship. They send out exact, but oppositely phased, signals of our emissions, in effect canceling out each and every wavelength that might escape from this room.”
Brooke was aware that the Navy term PFM stood for “pure fucking magic,” and after his explanation she agreed it was. “So that is what the Russians see electronically when they look at us?”
“As far as they know, a bunch of Japanese fisherman on this here boat are watching sumo wrestling right now.”
∞§∞
Deep below the Indian Ocean, eighty-five hundred yards off from the Russian trawler and fifteen thousand yards from the U.S. control ship, the crew of the submarine USS Halibut, not one of whom was close to the age of the boat in which they were submerged, were focused on the “vid” feed from the Deep Sea Recovery Vehicle as it plumbed through eighteen thousand feet, a depth which could have crushed the Chrysler building, to slowly descend onto the magnetic anomaly on the floor of the ocean another two thousand feet below.
Like her sister ship Growler in the 1950s Pegasus missile system, Halibut had two giant structures on her bow that were originally hangers that held two cruise missile type nuclear tipped rockets. From the bridge, the pregnant bulge on her foredeck resembled a large double-barrel shotgun with two giant cue balls sticking out of the end — the curved shape pressure doors. These hangers now housed the DSRV and its support equipment. It made the perfect delivery platform to silently and secretly deliver the ability to plumb the deepest depths, in many cases right under the nose of the Russians or any other adversary.
The God Particle Page 21
