“And there it is,” Bill said.
“Okay, help me here, Kronos. Was he trying to figure out how to make the thing go boom or trying to stop it from going all blooey?” Brooke asked as she stood behind him looking at the lines of code, which meant nothing to her, but was clear as day to the human robot.
“That I can’t tell without the master program at the Hadron that he was tied into,” Kronos said.
“And there it’s not,” Bill said, surprised for the first time that Kronos didn’t know everything.
“But he was playing with destroying the rings, right?” Brooke said.
“He ran a program in which various paths to destroying it were simulated. But again, you’d do the exact same thing whether you’re trying to destroy them or stop their destruction,” Kronos said.
“So you can’t tell intent? Is that what you are telling me, Kronos?” Bill said.
“That’s pretty much the story, Hick.”
“Keep digging, see what else you could find,” Bill said, more as an order than a suggestion. Then he turned to Brooke, “University of Xenia? Ohio?”
“Sorry, it was just the first thing that came to my head,” Brooke said. She grabbed a set of the note photos, and flopped down on the couch in the conference room. She was up again like a jackrabbit in one second. “Wait a minute. Kronos, he has made no connection to the Internet for weeks. So how could he interface with the computers at Hadron?”
“Here it is, it’s a whole compiled routine under another program called Wedgestone. Hey, this is brilliant work. Didn’t you say this guy got an award or some shit?”
“Yes. He received a new car for a program he wrote,” Captain Lustig chimed in as he flipped his notes. “Here it is, stabilization of accumulated data during sensor input lag.”
“Sure, that explains these polynomials and all the variable fractals this bad boy draws on. Saaweet hunk of code here, Billy boy.”
“So, now can you determine what he was doing with this program?” Bill asked.
“I can try, but his ultimate reason for doing this may not be apparent just from this one program.”
“What does that mean…” Bill’s question was interrupted by a loud signal emanating from the clone phone system that the FedPol techs had set up. It had been silent since its establishment a week ago. Everybody froze. The tech held up his hand as he hit record, but nothing happened.
“False alarm?” Kronos asked.
“Pocket call or wrong number maybe,” Brooke said.
Then it rang a second time. This time they heard Raffey pick up.
“Hello?” It was Juth, tentative and cautious as he spoke.
“The authorities were in your house today.” The voice on the other end said flatly.
Bill shot a glance to Brooke, who closed her eyes; her ruse didn’t work.
“What? No. There was no one in this house. When?”
“Today, during the gas leak.”
“What gas leak? I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Do we need to send you Kirsi’s left foot?”
“No, no. Don’t do that. I’m sorry, I’m sorry I didn’t know. But my door was locked and nothing here has been touched. Are you sure they were in this house?”
“It does not matter. If you even think of going to them, your sister will regret ever bringing her daughter into this world. Do you understand?”
“Yes, of course, I’ve done everything you’ve said, please just don’t hurt them. Please.”
“You will perform your task tomorrow during the first test. Do you understand?”
“Yes. During the first experiment. Then you’ll let them go?”
“If you perform well, yes.”
“May I speak to them? Please, I beg you, let me just know…” The connection was ended but Raffey continued, “No…No! Just let me know they are okay, damn you!” Then he sobbed and eventually hung up.
“Did we get a location?” Joey ran to the tech. He held up his hand as he was in communication with the signal tracers on another floor. “We got the cell tower. North of the city. That’s as close as we got.”
“I want a map now! And start scrubbing the audio, I want voice print, background amplification and any other electronic test that can lead us to a twenty on these people, er — location.” Joey used the common American radio code ‘twenty’ from the ten-twenty signal used almost universally by cops and later Civilian Band radio code used by truckers as a request for or statement of one’s location.
“Boss, I want in on this. I want to get those people back safe,” Brooke said.
Bill looked to Joey. “Joey’s call.”
“Brooke, get ’em back alive, girl.”
Brooke ran from the room, headed down to the ready room to suit up for battle.
“Kronos, anything else?”
“I think he’s planning to do something with the power frequency.”
“Why do you say that?”
“All the simulations I have found seem to deal with overheated magnets in the rings. As far as I know, the only way to get them to heat up would be to throw them out of their efficiency peak.”
“Couldn’t that also happen with a surge?” Bill said.
“Harder to do because the circuit breaker would trip. But amperage-or wattage-based breakers would be impervious to frequency shift. In fact, the result of the counter-EMF inductive forces within the magnet would actually decrease the draw.”
“Because the hysteresis curve starts trading frequency for I squared R losses very rapidly,” Bill reasoned as he looked over Kronos’ shoulder at the screen.
“Whoa! Hey, English only here…” Joey protested with his hands up.
“Or at least German,” Captain Lustig said.
“Let’s just say he can melt the rings in a few milliseconds.”
“So that sounds like he breaks the thing. How is that a black hole event?” Joey said.
“It depends when he does it. If he does it before the collision, it’s just a broken machine. If he does it at the point of collision, then no safe-guards.”
“One more time for the slow of thinking, please?”
“Magnetic bubble or jar. The whole Landau experiment depends on the suspension of the collided matter floating or suspended in a magnetic field, not touching any other matter.”
“That’s why inside the rings it’s a vacuum that equals deep space. The acceleration is done with the magnetism created by 9,300 super-cooled and superconducting magnets, and so is the containment of the mini big bang.”
“So if you disable the magnetic containment and the explosion starts to interact with the matter that makes up the rings and the supports and eventually the support concrete…”
“Then the earth it’s seated into, then the dark matter that surrounds us and eventually sucking in all the planets, galaxies, and then the entire universe till it’s all so compressed it becomes another big bang.”
∞§∞
Brooke had strapped on a Kevlar vest and had an MP-5 submachine gun, two Mark 7 concussive flares (stun grenades), a night vision goggle headset, her Glock model 17 tactical weapon 9 on her hip, and a Seecamp .32 caliber semi-auto in her ankle holster. She was driven by a Swiss SWAT sergeant in his civilian car to be less conspicuous. They cruised the streets in the area north of the city where the cell tower was, looking for a strategic rationale with which to spot a potential safe house. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but had to try to spot a place she would select if she were a bad guy.
∞§∞
Raffey started the day with the thought that this was the day he and his family would die in sacrifice for the continuance of all mankind and every other planet in the galaxy. Either that or his last-minute gambit would work. He prayed all night and into the day that his plan would work, and if it did not, that the death of his family would be swift and painless.
The first attempt at the collision was computer-timed and accurately set for 3:00:01:0000000
01 p.m., that is, one billionth of a second past one second after 3 p.m. Geneva time. He’d make his call at 1 p.m. in order to give the kidnappers two hours. As a mid-level-ranked chess master, he had played out all the gambits, moves, and countermoves. It was his riskiest play ever, but he knew that in the end, he had to risk it all.
∞§∞
Brooke had narrowed her mental list down to four structures which were the most favorable if you wanted to hide out with hostages, yet not be totally incapacitated as to means of escape or blindness to any approach. Of course, it didn’t mean the bad guys read the same tactical books she had studied at Quantico, but there was no other way to whittle down a list. She checked her watch: 10:32 a.m. Bill’s meeting at the Hadron should be starting.
∞§∞
“Dr. Hiccock, the claims you have made here this morning are fantastic, to say the least,” the head of the Large Hadron Collider proclaimed as he turned to his colleagues, who nodded in support.
“Sir, your own head of security concurs,” Bill said.
“Is this true, Jenson?”
“Yes, I am afraid the confidence is high that Mr. Juth may have an ulterior purpose.”
“Well, have we talked to him?”
Bill resisted the urge to say, it isn’t that simple; instead he tried to use a scientific rationale. “Sir, it is a matter of cause and effect. While Mr. Juth may be committed to this path, we don’t know what the effect would be of confronting him. It could be disastrous. Instead, I believe our plan to isolate and contain him will yield the greatest amount of actionable data which we can then use to get all the facts as to complicity and accomplices.”
“I see. Of course this means our entire Landau Protocol’s-worth of experiments, our most ambitious effort yet will be derailed. The delay could cost us weeks.”
“I am aware of your schedule and the incredible cost that disengaging from your schedule will bear. But erring on the side of safety, not only for you, but for the facility as well as the machine, is in the final analysis the best, and may I dare say, the only course of action.”
The men around the table, all multi-PhDs and esteemed men of science, held an eyes-only conference and wound up all nodding. “Dr. Hiccock, we will follow your directive. We will take Mr. Juth out of the equation by not actually running today’s centerpiece experiment.”
“Thank you, gentlemen. May I stress how essential it is that he not know that this is not a real experiment? If at any time he senses we are aware of him, I fear we will lose any hope of eliminating this threat and all its components.”
One of the men at the table, who had not spoken previously, stood. “His console will be disarmed at the hub, but I can have nominal critical feedback routed to his station so that up to the moment he deviates from his tasks he won’t suspect a thing.”
“Thank you. That is precisely what we need.”
Then the head of the LHC spoke again. “Of course Dr. Hiccock, what if his means of destruction isn’t digital? What if there is some other attack, a physical one in the works?”
“We have taken steps. As soon as Mr. Juth signed in, army forces secured the facility from the outside, so if he is merely going to open the door for others who would do the deed, they will be stopped by the security.” Bill motioned for Jenson to continue.
“Also we have physical examination of every part of the collider and its support systems being checked by hand and electronic surveillance, including bomb sniffing dogs and experts in detonation all along the seventeen-mile ring,” Jenson said.
∞§∞
The immense size of the collider facility and the hundreds of staff meant there was much distance between Juth’s desk and any of the security measures being put in place. No one in his section was aware of any army personnel or search dogs, those elements being at least a quarter-mile away and above ground.
The “spin up” procedure was progressing normally toward the fraction-of-a–second-past-3:00:01 p.m. collision. Raffey’s part in the scientific drama had been rehearsed to be easily performed on the actual day of a collision, so he had time to go over in his mind his ultimatum to the bad guys and to pray to the ultimate good guy a few times.
At 12:57 p.m., Raffey left his station and headed for the employee smoking area. Most people in Europe had not read the American papers on the evils of smoking, so the place was packed. He decided to find a quieter place. There was an exit door in the hallway that afforded him quiet and seclusion to set forth his master plan.
He punched in the number that he had detangled from encrypted data strings he monitored at home when the kidnappers called. The phone rang three times. Raffey imagined them in shock, looking at the phone which they were sure was a secure one-way line.
The call was answered, but no one on the other side spoke. Raffey took a deep breath and read from the prepared speech he had written, rewritten, scrapped, and written again dozens of times since his plan emerged. “In two hours I will become an unnecessary appendage, and as such will be of no further use to you. Since I am the only one who can achieve your goal, you must comply with my demand. I want proof that my sister and her daughter are safe at a police station, or I will not carry out your plan. You can no longer pressure me. I know you will kill them as soon as I do what you ask, if they are not dead already. You have one hour and fifty-eight minutes to prove to me they are alive and safe. There will be no further communications.”
His hand was shaking, as he ended the call and crumpled the paper.
∞§∞
“Brooke, Kronos got a twenty! Juth just made contact with the bad guys. We got the address.” Joey said over the phone. “It seems like Juth has given them an ultimatum.”
Brooke immediately tightened the straps on her vest and seated a magazine in the machine gun on her lap as her driver headed to the address.
∞§∞
“How do we respond to this?” The Engineer asked.
“We must maintain our control over him. He cannot feel that he has any choice in the matter,” the Architect said.
Maya grabbed the cell phone and turned on the video camera.
“He wants proof of life; let’s send him proof of death.”
“How would that work to our goals?” The Engineer said dismissively.
“We only kill one!”
∞§∞
The hideout was an abandoned tire factory that had been one of the possible targets on Brooke’s quick list. From a safe distance, she used extreme-powered binoculars and spotted a lookout on the eastern end of the roof. She estimated the shot at about six hundred yards. “Get your sharpshooter team up here on the double,” she ordered the Swiss SWAT commander.
“As soon as the lookout is neutralized we go right through the front gate. On the way we’ll use the radar imagery scope and locate the outlines.” She took out of her breast pocket a copy of the picture from Juth’s desk. Even though every cop on the case had a copy and memorized the faces and body types, she held it up, tapping it, “Remember we got two hostages, an adult female and a little girl.” Three more SWAT members appeared. “You three, you are responsible for any opposition on the first floor. We are weapons-free, but somewhere in there is a person who can be a high-valued intelligence target. He is known as The Engineer or Architect, or it could be two targets. We’d like them alive if possible, but take no chances. Everybody gets to go home tonight, right?”
The eight SWAT guys and the commander answered verbally in unison, “Right!”
Thirty seconds later, the Swiss kill team was on the roof of a nearby building and drawing a bead on the lookout at the factory. A few seconds later, as Brooke was closing the door on the SWAT van that would ram the front gate, her radio crackled, “Target acquired.”
“Take ’em out,” she said into the radio mic, then turned to the driver, “Gun it.”
Through the scope of the GM6 sniper rifle, the police sharpshooter could see the lookout scanning the terrain. He saw the man stop his right-to-left pann
ing of the area that lay before him and swing his glass back to the sniper’s own position, where he surely thought he saw a glint. If he did, it was the last thing he saw, as the 50-caliber slug punched a hole in his forehead and blew the back of his skull halfway across the rooftop.
As soon as the spotter radioed, “Confirm one kill,” the van smashed through the rickety cyclone fence and darted to the entrance of the factory.
Brooke jumped out of the vehicle before it came to a full stop, shouting, “Go, go, go, go!”
In the hallway of the dilapidated factory one of The Engineer’s goons saw the van lurch. He ran to the front door and trained his weapon on the first person exiting the truck.
He squeezed the trigger, but was spun around as his shoulder exploded from another .50 caliber sniper round that made him grunt.
Upon hearing the grunt, Brooke raised her silenced Glock Model 17 and fired. The goon hit the floor dead. She was in full run and jumped over his body as she hit the lobby. She glanced at her phone, which was getting the video signal from the radar scanner, which finds warm bodies through concrete walls. It showed five targets on the second floor, then two in the corner of a room on the other side of the second floor. But what caught her eye was the outline of a lone figure headed toward the two distant outlines nestled in the corner of the distant room. The stillness of the other figures told her that the presence of her team was not yet known to the remainder of bad guys in the building.
∞§∞
At the Large Hadron Collider, Bill had taken up a position fifty feet from Juth in a room that was just off his area. The big clock on the wall read 2:57:08 p.m. He hoped Brooke was seconds away from rescuing the reason Raffey was following their unthinkable orders. That was the pivot point the whole operation rested on; namely Bill’s assessment that Juth was not the mastermind of the plan and was being pressured. Just in case, a Swiss army commando was seated next to Bill. If Brooke was unsuccessful, or Juth proved to be the real threat, hell bent on blowing up the LHC, the military man’s orders were to put a bullet into Juth’s prodigious brain. Bill was okay with this back-up plan because, in the end, he felt the universe was protected whichever way this turned out.
The God Particle Page 34
