The God Particle

by Tom Avitabile

  “That sub was here to destroy the evidence.”

  “Well, he’s not going to be doing anything but becoming a reef.”

  “How do you know they haven’t set charges or…”

  ∞§∞

  The driver of the DSRV nearly jumped out of his harness as another DSRV entered his field of view. “Henhouse, we got company. Holy shit, another DSRV!”

  ∞§∞

  “Little Chick, this is Henhouse; they must be from the Akula!” He threw the switch to relay the news to Brooke’s spy ship, “McDonald, we got more company.”

  ∞§∞

  “Son of a bitch,” the Commander on board the American control ship uttered. “Have they seen your Little Chick yet?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Tell ’em to go dark, play possum, and let’s see what happens.”

  “Roger that.”

  Brooke couldn’t help but interject. “Commander, that Russian DSRV is now an orphan. They could alert the trawler.

  “Not likely, for the same reason we cannot speak directly to ours; because they don’t carry powerful RF so as not to waste battery. For all the trawler knows right now, the Akula went off the air.”

  “The men in the Russian DSRV had to hear the implosion; they are on the same side of the thermal layer,” Brooke said.

  “So what are you saying?”

  “That they’re as dog-headed as you, and are out to complete their mission if they can still breathe.”

  “And you think their mission is seek and destroy?”

  “Why else haven’t they tried to surface after their “Henhouse” sank?”

  Brooke could see the commander was an agile thinker as he judged her words purely on their merit and seemingly with no baggage left over from the tug of war they’d been playing for the last few minutes.

  He keyed his mike, “Henhouse, can you disable the other DSRV?”

  ∞§∞

  Aboard Little Chick, the two-man crew looked at each other as they heard the request. They immediately engaged their thrusters and advanced toward the Russian submersible, ready to attack with nothing more than claws — and balls. They switched on their HD video feed but not their lights, so as to not give away their approach. The Russian’s lights were on and the Little Chick crew could see they were carrying a five-foot wide container that was roughly the shape of a beer cooler in the arms of their machine.

  ∞§∞

  Brooke was watching the feed along with everybody else aboard the ‘fishing boat.’ “Commander, that’s a bomb right?”

  “Yes, it definitely could be.”

  She turned to the seaman watching the radiation monitor. “Sailor, could the small trace of radiation you’re getting be from that device?”

  The commander turned, “Agent Burrell, are you suggesting that that’s a tactical nuke?”

  “It makes sense. Small yield, immediate obliteration of the evidence plus a hot debris field for years to come, thwarting anyone from picking through the rubble.”

  “I better get our guys out of there…”

  “Hold it, Commander, not so fast,” Brooke said in a voice usually reserved for “Freeze.”

  The commander’s first instinct was to tell her in no uncertain terms that he didn’t take orders from her. But Brooke had anticipated his objections.

  “Commander, I am responsible to the President of the United States for the ultimate outcome of this mission. So far, events have taken us off our game plan, which was how you charted your course. Now we are in uncharted waters and nuclear weapons are in play. I am going to do you a favor and relieve you of responsibility for what happens next.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning under the authority granted me by the Commander-in-Chief, I order you to do nothing and let the Russians plant the device.”

  “You want what now? A minute ago you were all, ‘let’s abort,’ and now you are all gung ho. With all due respect ma’am, you want to rethink what you are suggesting here?” the commander said, with a slight tinge of patronage.

  “Stop the attack.” Brooke was dead serious.

  “Henhouse, have Little Chick immediately break off the attack and hold for further orders.” He turned to Brooke with an expression that asked, “What now?”

  The crew was riveted; this woman had balls.

  “Okay, here’s how I see it. If the Russians are on a suicide mission then our guys are already dead. They’ll never get away in time. But either those guys in the Russian craft don’t know their sub is dead, or they plan to surface and make it to the trawler.”

  “Once they are on the surface, they could cell phone the trawler,” the sonar man said, then quickly pulled back when his commander glared at him.

  “Exactly, sailor, so I am going to bet that they are going to plant the bomb and then either trigger it remotely or set a timer to get them clear. Either way, that’s our chance to tie this up and cover all our tracks.” Brooke said.

  The commander kept an open mind and said, “Go on, I’m listening.”

  ∞§∞

  “You want us to what?” was the Little Chick’s response to Henhouse. Then they proceeded to watch from the inky black as the Russian unit planted the bomb atop the hull of the Vera Cruz, then turned and began the long, slow ascent to the surface, presumably to alert the trawler of its fallen mother ship and the success of its mission.

  As the machine was swallowed up in the jet-black cold, Little Chick moved in. Making for the bomb, they gingerly closed their own articulated arms around it turned in the direction of the Akula. Six minutes later they were back at the Vera Cruz. They used their beacon locator to find a prepositioned tool locker. The GPS Auto Nav took them right to it, some fifty yards from the hull. They retrieved the diamond-tipped self-powered cutting saw.

  The huge thirty-six-inch saw blade sliced through the hull of the ship at exactly the spot along the hull where the forward hold was. They made a ten-by-ten-foot square hole in the steel plate between the steel ribs of the hull. The metal started to bend as they made the last cut. They stopped just short of freeing the piece for fear it would fall onto the crucibles. Just as in the rehearsals on the shipwreck off of Puerto Rico, the weight of the newly cut plate hinged down under its own weight like a trap door. They freed the saw, let it fall to the ocean floor, and then headed for locker two. There they retrieved a grappling-hook-like device into which they slid the machine’s arms, then headed back to the Vera Cruz.

  ∞§∞

  “How much longer, Commander?”

  “So far they are on track for our best time trial off Vieques, so just ten more minutes to ascend back to Henhouse.”

  “It’s amazing, Commander, after all that’s happened and all that the crew has been through, they are still so focused and so on schedule.”

  “Good men, good training, and good luck, ma’am.”

  “I don’t know if you could call colliding into an Akula luck, but I’ll give you the other two.”

  ∞§∞

  Their first try to snare a crate with the grapple claw almost killed the mission. Like a carnival midway claw machine, the crate “kewpie doll” dangling on the end of the claw broke free and wedged itself between the load and the bulkhead. The DSRV bounced up and down on the crooked crate to dislodge it.

  On the second try, the grapple hit pay dirt and they worked the controls and retrieved a crate, which fit the same size and shape outline as a crucible shipping crate. They rested it atop the hull, maneuvered around and turned their craft’s Halogen lights on the stenciled crate.

  ∞§∞

  “We are getting a feed now, ma’am,” the video operator announced.

  Brooke opened her iPad, pressed her right thumb onto a green square on the screen which scanned her fingerprint, and typed in the file name for the Vera Cruz manifest.

  The Vid-Op read the numbers. “One, four, five, two, nine, Cyrillic E, C, P.

  Brooke read down the list, “Roger that. We got one
.”

  A cheer went up in the compartment as the commander ordered, “Henhouse, get Little Chick and her Egg back to the barn on the double.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” was the response.

  ∞§∞

  Thirty minutes later, Little Chick was nestled safely in the Henhouse hanger as she sailed as fast and as far from Chicken Coop One as the flooded bow would allow.

  ∞§∞

  Aboard the faux fishing boat, Brooke reported to Hiccock on the mission over secure satellite link. Bill had patched in Kronos, his high tech ace-in-the-hole, who asked the commander if the trawler was still emanating Electromagnetic Emissions. He then informed Brooke and the commander that the trawler would have all electronic equipment switched off right before the blast. He recommended that Brooke’s vessel also shut off everything at the breakers, everything that could be unplugged, unplugged, and all power switches off. Otherwise, the electromagnetic pulse that a small yield nuke might emit would fry everything plugged in. With that, all agreed to shut down their link and all non-essential equipment on the boat, the last being the EE monitor.

  Twelve minutes later the sailor monitoring the Russian trawler’s EE reported, “Target Lana’s gone dark, sir.”

  The commander immediately barked, “Kill the electronics at the breakers. Everybody brace yourselves.” Less than a minute later, they felt a crescendoing rumble that rose in seconds to full-blast shock wave, followed by the low, raspy sound of the blast.

  The commander turned to Brooke and said, “Smart play, Agent Burrell.”

  “Nicely executed, Commander.”

  “Archie.”

  “Archie.”

  Brooke’s gambit killed two birds with one nuclear blast — provided by the Russians. The Akula — and any clue that the U.S. was now holding the evidence — was vaporized. The world would believe, and the Russians would not deny, that the Akula suffered a nuclear event, exploded, and went down with all hands. Even the Russian DSRV ops could only report that they heard a bang and the Akula went dark, well before they finished their mission. Brooke guessed they would, of course, be summarily executed to contain the story, then awarded the Hero of the Russian Federation medal posthumously.

  All in all, a neatly tied, no-loose-ends finish to what was shaping up to be a busted play in the depths of the Indian Ocean. In fact, the first time the Russians would even realize they had lost the game would be when the Secretary of State presented the actual crucible, with its serial number intact, to the World Court in The Hague.

  XVIII. FREE AGENT

  A week later, with the Russian Crucible Affair wrapped up in a tight bow by Brooke, Hiccock was able to focus on the many elements stemming from the murder of Professor Landau. Top of the list was the discovery that a priest had brought down the helicopter. Next, that he, Bill, had obtained the Vatican’s joint statement designed to lower the temperature of rhetoric on the research programs the U.S. was a vested partner in.

  The third item on the list still nagged at him. Parnell Sicard had known of his entire secret mission’s particulars, and now Joey had connected him with the Vatican. As a Catholic, Bill had never thought he’d have to choose loyalties between his country and his religion. And what did electric ice have to do with any of this? He’d review all of this with his team. He looked at his watch, and right on time, Cheryl entered with the velvet blue box.

  “Everyone’s outside,” Cheryl said as she also handed him a folder.

  “The boss?” Hiccock asked as he flipped it opened and checked that all was in order.

  “No, the president is in Ohio. You got the Veep.”

  “Okay. In here?”

  “Yes, the Roosevelt Room has Boy Scouts in it.”

  “Fire up the monitor and let’s start.”

  Cheryl turned on the video conference monitor that connected the White House to Joey’s set-up in the Paris Embassy, then went outside and returned seconds later with the vice president, the heads of the FBI, CIA, NSA, ONI and the woman of the hour, Brooke.

  Bill spoke first. “It is necessary from time to time to acknowledge the extraordinary accomplishments of patriots who risk it all to protect, defend and preserve our American way of life, and insure that the good America does for the rest of the world remains uninterrupted. Mr. Vice President, if you will, sir.”

  “Someone once said the job of the vice president is to break the tie in the senate and to inquire as to the health of the president every day. My job today however, is a great pleasure and a defining moment for me as much as it is for you, Agent Burrell. In the ‘house’ here, we know FBI stands for Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity. We are here because you have exceeded those noble standards. Before I read your official commendation, the president has asked me to relay this personal message: he is sorry his schedule didn’t allow him to be here, but he requests your company tomorrow morning for coffee at oh-seven-hundred hours in the residence.”

  On the monitor, they saw Joey’s eyes widen as a toothy white smile escaped his “standing at attention” demeanor. Face time with the president was an incredible coup.

  The Veep read from the scroll, which would be locked away in a vault as soon as the ceremony ended. “As Commander-in-Chief, I do hereby commend the actions and recognize the valor of Special Agent Brooke Burrell, attached to the White House Quarterback Operations group, by awarding the Medal of Valor for extreme bravery in the execution of her duties, and for her successful capture of invaluable evidence for the United States at extreme risk and peril to her person. Her actions to complete the mission at all costs represent the finest traditions of the service and law enforcement. I express the heartfelt gratitude of millions of Americans who will never know of Agent Burrell’s sacrifice and commitment, but whose security today is more assured due to her unselfish actions. Signed this day, by James Mitchell, President of the United States.”

  The vice president looked to Bill, who opened the velvet box and extended it for the vice president to remove the medal, which was on a ribbon to avoid the uncomfortable act of pinning it on the chest of a woman, and slipped it over her head. He shook her hand and said, “Thank you.”

  He stepped back and said, “Gentlemen.” On cue all the others in the room snapped a sharp salute to the recipient. A man from the White House library entered. He took the medal on the ribbon, placed it back in the box and sealed it. He then wrote out a receipt for “property” and handed it to Brooke. The medal, awarded in secret for an act of extreme bravery on a secret mission, would go in the vault of the Mitchell presidential library, ostensibly to be opened in seventy-five years. Until then, all Brooke had was a commendation in her file and the receipt for her grandkids to claim in three quarters of a century.

  Joey chimed in from Paris. “Brooke, congratulations on getting the recognition I always knew you deserved.”

  “Thanks Joey.”

  “Take care.” Then Joey leaned forward and the screen reverted to the State Department logo.

  As the room cleared, Bill asked Brooke to remain. “You are an outstanding member of the team, Brooke. The meaning of this will only be known to a few, so here.” He handed her a red velvet pouch.

  She opened it and found a five-pointed star, exactly like the two on Bill’s desk. She gasped and clutched it to her chest, now understanding the meaning of the “paperweights” on his desk. When she choked up, Bill thought she had been overcome by emotion, but that wasn’t it.

  “You okay?”

  “Bill, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Getting blown into the ocean makes you start to see things a little differently. I never thought I would ever say this, but I think it’s getting to the time I should do something else.”

  “Whoa. Sounds serious, Brooke, but you’ve earned the right. What do you want, Brooke?”

  “I want a shot at some kind of normalcy in my life. I want a home and someone to live there with me who would care if I got blown off a ship. I want what most everyone else takes for granted.”

 
; Bill listened and understood. Brooke had paid her dues many times over. After some silence he spoke from his heart. “When I met Janice, nothing else mattered. Not school, football, the NFL or my doctorate. I just knew what I wanted, and I wanted her.”

  “You were lucky she wasn’t a thousand feet under the ocean six months a year.”

  “I won’t deny I was lucky, but I was also stupid.”

  “What are you saying, that it was wrong for you to want her, or me Mush?”

  “No, no, not at all, I was stupid to allow those very things I didn’t care about then to get between us later.”

  “But you two are like Mr. and Mrs. America. With a kid right out of central casting.”

  “Yeah, but Brooke, I stumbled big time, and then got super lucky when she gave me a second chance to marry her… again.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I guess I am saying that it’s not only about you wanting him and the life, but that you continue making that life your number one priority. Otherwise, like me, you’ll wind up just putting off all those same things that are stopping you from doing it now till later. And that could screw up a good thing. So, as much as you want him, you have to also not want the life you are currently living; otherwise it will creep back in and screw it all up.”

  “Okay, I think I got that.”

  “Brooke, I don’t mean to pry, but as the head of the team, I’d like to know if you have expressed your plans to Joey?”