Darpa Alpha wi-11

by Ian Slater

  All Roberta could say, her voice cracked and dry, was, “It’s spotted.” Her dark eyes closed; she seemed to be asleep. Freeman stayed for a moment, gently taking her warm, flaccid wrist, and prayed for her and, if it be God’s will, help to catch those who had perpetrated the massacre.

  When he emerged from the IC unit, security, a short, overweight woman, perspiring heavily, was warning Johnny Lee that she’d called the sheriff.

  “You can come with us, ma’am,” Johnny Lee told her as the general emerged from the ICU. “We’ll take you to him.”

  Lee uncuffed the doctor, who was now vigorously massaging his wrists. “You’re fucking fascists!” the doctor shouted at both men. The security woman was standing by, openmouthed.

  “Get anything?” Johnny asked the general on their way out.

  “It’s spotted,” Freeman told him. “That’s all she said.”

  “One of the terrorists’ faces maybe,” Johnny ventured, “spotted with psoriasis?”

  “Hmm — it’s possible.”

  “You — fucking fascists!”

  When they returned from the far end of the lake below Bayview to the DARPA base, the sheriff had mustered the day staff together: seven scientists and their seven technicians who worked on the DARPA “Flow-In-Flight” project. He was told that there were more scientific personnel involved in ARD — Acoustic Research Development — as it related to submarines, but the people Freeman was interested in were those who had been working on the latest deep-water-moored DARPA ALPHA barge and the hut where the terrorists had shot the night staff. They had been added to the Acoustic Research Development complex here only in the years since 2007, when more research money had been freed for homeland-defense-associated projects. The money became a flood following the terrorist attacks in which shoulder-fired anti-aircraft rockets had brought down three American aircraft since 9/11.

  “Sorry for your loss,” Douglas Freeman told the visibly shaken chief scientist, a Professor Richard Moffat, head of the fourteen-person day shift. “But I need to know precisely what these scumbags stole.”

  “A disk,” said Moffat, a man around Freeman’s age.

  Though most of the day staff were dressed casually in jeans, like the doctor at the hospital, here in the open they were all wearing either heavy sweaters or Gore-Tex Windbreakers, the temperature having plummeted in the confluency of the Pacific Ocean front that had come barreling in from the northwest, slamming into a warmer Chinook wind driving northward into the Alberta badlands. It was getting cold. Moffat was the only one wearing a white lab coat, stained, it seemed to Freeman, with rust and grease, probably from working near the gantry and cranes of a second green-and-white-striped DARPA ALPHA barge where the staff had to haul in new large-scale test units from the deep, glacier-carved lake.

  “I know it’s a disk,” Freeman told Moffat, “but is there anything more specific than ‘Flow-In-Flight’ written on it?”

  Moffat was finding it difficult to focus, acutely aware that his laissez-faire attitude toward the security of his fellow scientists had been a disastrous mistake.

  “Professor,” repeated Freeman impatiently, “is the disk labeled in any other way?”

  Moffat was staring across the lake at the cold-looking mountains. Freeman knew that his SpecWar team had probably a half hour of reasonable weather before the churning gray clouds gave way to rain.

  “Professor, I know it’s tough on you at the moment, but time’s of the essence here.”

  “What — oh, sorry, General. The disk was simply labeled ‘DARPA ALPHA Flow-In-Flight.’”

  “What kind of data were on the disk?”

  Moffat had the zombie look of someone in shock. “That’s highly sensitive material, General.”

  Freeman shook his head in disbelief. Murphy’s Law was on the loose. Hadn’t Eleanor Prenty gotten through to Moffat and cleared the general of any D.S.R. — document search restriction? Or perhaps Eleanor had gotten through but Moffat couldn’t remember in the state he was in.

  “All right, now listen to me, Professor. I want you to focus. Your highly sensitive material has been stolen by terrorists, and my team is going to have to know exactly what to look for.” For a moment the chief scientist stared at Freeman as if he had no idea who the general was.

  “We need to focus,” Freeman reiterated.

  The professor’s eyes shifted from Freeman again out to the slate gray waters of the lake. “It’s a lot of diagrams and formulas, like so much technical literature. I don’t see how anyone without a degree in—”

  “Doc!” cut in Freeman. “I’ve been sent by the president.”

  “Yes.” He paused. “I’ve been told that.”

  “So what’s on the fucking disk? Is there a diagram, something we can key onto should we see it?”

  Moffat thought for a moment. “Doreen?” he called out, and a thin woman in her twenties, chestnut curls wreathing her face, walked over from the gaggle of DARPA ALPHA scientists who were talking to the FBI and DHS agents. Moffat introduced her as Dr. Wyman and told her what the general wanted, assuring her that Freeman was “cleared to the max.”

  “Well,” she told the general, “we’ve been recording data from trials of a super-cavitating, that is, super-spinning, torpedo. These super torpedoes were originally pioneered by the Russians. One of them, a Shkval class, could run at two hundred miles an hour and was aboard the Russian Kursk.”

  Freeman told her he remembered the Kursk, an Oscar II class sub that sank in the Barents Sea in the summer of 2000.

  “It was because of the presence of this super-spin torpedo on board,” Doreen explained, “that the Russians refused offers of help from other countries to rescue the Kursk. They were afraid that either we or the Brits would get our hands on the technology.” Doreen paused, glancing about to make sure that no DHS or FBI agents could overhear. “Our intelligence community got it anyway,” she told Freeman. “And we’ve solved problems the Russians couldn’t because since Russia went belly-up, we’ve outpaced anything the Russians had. We’ve gotten up to super-cavitation at a mile a second.”

  Freeman was impressed, but Moffat’s downcast look was that of a man who knew his career was over unless his scientific brilliance could trump his appalling failure in security. He stared out at the lake again as Doreen asked him whether she could tell Freeman about “the Torshell.”

  “Yes,” said Moffat softly.

  Quietly, her face strained because even with her boss’s permission she was still reluctant to explain the enormity of what America had lost, Doreen explained the secret. “A Torshell,” she told him, “is a super-cavitating — that is, super-spinning — fifty-caliber torpedo-shaped rifle round that we’ve developed from our research on the super-cavitating torpedoes. We’ve drilled a wire-thin hole through the bullet. Think of the thin wire in one of those bag ties you pick up at the grocery store to twist-lock a plastic bag of vegetables or bread rolls, stuff like that.”

  “Will this take long?” the general asked, glancing up at an increasingly morose sky and flicking up the leather cover of his watch.

  “No,” Doreen said, “it won’t take long but you need to understand how it’s very new, this technology. Revolutionary, in fact.”

  “Go on,” said Freeman, trying to contain the legendary impatience that had ironically also led to some of his greatest military breakthroughs.

  “Well, as I said, because of the research here, we’ve been able to apply super-cavitating, super-spinning technology to what has been the usual fifty-caliber ammunition rounds. What we’ve done is drill into a tungsten-core bullet a nano-thin lining of incendiary chemicals. The bullet, as in the case of the much larger torpedo, cavitates or spins at super speed because a gas shoots out in front as the chemical inside morphs from a solid to a gas because of the heat from the torpedo’s, or in this case the bullet’s, propellant. This jet of gas shooting out the front forms a protective bubble around the bullet in air — or in water, in the case of the torpe
do — and so the bullet or torpedo has next to no resistance.”

  Freeman had understood five minutes ago. “You’ve developed a super-fast bullet.”

  “Faster,” said Doreen, “than anything ever produced — except, of course, the speed of light.”

  “How fast?”

  “Well, the Russians, with their Shkval torpedo, have reached two hundred miles per hour in water. Slow compared to what we’ve been able to do. It’s largely a matter of who has the best computer-governed lathes. The tolerances are incredibly small.”

  “So,” asked the general. “What speed has DARPA ALPHA been able to reach?”

  “NUWAC,” Doreen told him, “our Naval Underseas Warfare Center, has already broken the sound barrier with a torpedo.”

  “At DARPA ALPHA,” added Moffat in a voice so lifeless he might as well have been doing nothing more than giving Freeman the time of day, “we’ve developed a projectile, a bullet if you like, that’s reached Mach 10.”

  “Son of—” exclaimed the general. “You’ve got my attention!”

  “That’s more than eleven thousand feet a second,” Moffat continued in his monotone. “Faster than anything in the history of warfare.”

  “Inside the usual cupronickel,” Doreen Wyman added, referring to a normal round’s copper-nickel jacket, “the bullet would melt and break up, even with the gas bubble reducing most of the drag. But in conjunction with NUWAC, we’ve developed a metal-carbon resin jacket that will remain intact until point of impact.”

  Freeman instantly recognized the enormous implications, how such a round developed by DARPA ALPHA in this long, landlocked lake more than a thousand feet deep would change warfare forever. They were at a turning point. At Mach 10, such a round could penetrate a tank, the bullet’s superheated molten jet raising the temperature so high inside the tank it would explode.

  “How long would it take,” asked Freeman, “to manufacture this supersonic round?”

  “Hypersonic,” Moffat corrected him. “Mach 1 to Mach 5 is supersonic. We’re talking hypersonic, General.”

  “All right, how long would it take to lathe a hypersonic prototype of one of these rounds?”

  Doreen Wyman, Freeman could see, was going to take the Fifth on this one.

  “Professor Moffat?” Freeman pressed. “How long?”

  “A week — if you had the right state-of-the-art computer-controlled lathes, et cetera.”

  “And the disk!”

  “Yes,” admitted Moffat sheepishly, looking out at the slate gray water again.

  “Do you agree,” Freeman asked Doreen Wyman, “that they could have prototypes in a week?”

  “From the time they get the disk, yes. A week.”

  It was time to move out.

  Prince had gotten a good scent from the abandoned bikes and had led the team to a large jetty, farther down from the DARPA ALPHA shore, from where it was assumed the terrorists had escaped by boat. But which way? The lake was twenty-five miles long and five miles wide. Freeman stuck with his and the sheriff’s Canada-bound idea. With all road and air corridors closed, there simply weren’t that many ways out, and Canada, sixty-four miles to the north beyond Lake Pend Oreille and Priest Lake, seemed not only the best escape route because the rugged, heavily forested terrain would provide great cover but because there was always the added enticement of Canada’s long, undefined border, and the fact that Canada simply didn’t have the manpower to field effective patrols.

  The sheriff, overwhelmed by the catastrophe, walked forlornly down to the jetty.

  “Any leads at all?” asked Freeman.

  “Nothing very concrete,” replied the sheriff. “Dr. Moffat has asked the navy to send up one of their Hawkeye aircraft to help you with communications in this area. And an FBI guy told me a blood-soaked note was found in one of the victims’ hands.”

  “A note?” mused Aussie. “What’d it say?”

  “Hard to tell,” the sheriff replied. “One of the DHS guys told me all they could make out was a few letters — looked like ‘RAM’ and ‘SCARUND,’ whatever the hell that means.” He spelled it out for them, and Aussie wrote it down.

  “RAM. Computer capacity: random access memory?” ventured Freeman.

  “Or people’s names?” suggested Johnny Lee.

  “Perhaps,” said Freeman, recalling his visit to Roberta Juarez at the hospital, “the words have something to do with Roberta saying, ‘It was spotted.’” No one could see any connection whatsoever.

  “All right,” said the general. “No leads but Prince’s nose at the moment. We have to assume the terrorists have had ample time to reach the northern end of Pend Oreille, where they’d have to leave their boat and hoof it up to Priest Lake. And if the bastards know what they’re doing, which it seems they do, they’ll be avoiding any known back roads because the sheriff’s boys are out in full force. So, let’s see if Prince here can regain the scent up at the north end of Pend Oreille.” The general knelt down, the team doing likewise, Prince sitting as if waiting for his best in show ribbon. “Dear Lord,” began Freeman, “we praise You, we thank You for this world, and we here ask that You watch over us, guide us, so that we may do Your will in the battle against evil.”

  “Amen,” they said in unison, and a group of DHS and FBI agents looked variously astonished, embarrassed, and humbled. Prince panted in anticipation of the hunt.

  The general, Aussie, Sal, Choir, Ruth, Lee, Gomez, and Mervyn grabbed their weapons and MOLLEs and boarded the Chinook. Already Freeman could see the Hawkeye that Moffat had requested. If the terrorists, with their head start, reached Priest Lake forty-six miles north of DARPA ALPHA, following the general direction of secondary logging roads through the deep forest, they would have a straight twenty-five-mile south-to-north run up the full length of Priest, where they could then pass through a two-and-a-half-mile-wide connecting channel to another three-mile stretch of water. Had they planted a boat? The map showed that along the edge of Priest Lake’s primeval forest there was a smattering of “Mom-and-Pop”-type cottages and a tiny marina, but not much else.

  Aussie Lewis, seat harness on, using his MOLLE as a footrest, wondered aloud, and loudly, “Hope we’re not heading in the wrong fucking direction.”

  It was unlike Aussie to start the game with a pessimistic prognosis, and the general wanted to counter it immediately. For most of the team, Aussie’s question was nothing more than that, but Freeman, knowing Tony Ruth was a relative newcomer to the team, wanted to stanch any possible pessimism. “Sometimes,” he shouted to Aussie over the noise of the Chinook’s rotor slap, “the most obvious route is the correct one. The scumbags who stole that disk’ll be in a hurry to get that information back to their masters in the Mideast, Chechnya, wherever.”

  “They don’t have to do it in person,” said Johnny Lee. “How about them using a landline? With a computer and modem they could set up and transmit the disk’s contents from anywhere they like.”

  The general shook his head, and Prince looked concerned. “Sheriff and DHS have all the landlines, public phone booths, et cetera, covered,” answered Freeman. “Besides, now the story’s out, the terrorists are going to know that anyone seen using public landlines with a modem and the like is acting suspiciously and should be reported. Anyway, NSA is going to be picking up all private transmissions.”

  “How about satellite phone?” asked Eddie Mervyn.

  “Too insecure,” Freeman replied. NSA’d be all over it like the measles. No, the scumbags are heading for the Canadian border; I know it in my gut. Somewhere along the line where there’s minimal surveillance, manpower problems. Canada’s a huge country, bigger than the U.S., and the whole country’s population is only equivalent to California’s. It’s as if every other state in the union were empty.” The general grabbed Prince affectionately by the ears and spoke to him as if the dog understood every word. “Prince, you tell Aussie here that you and I know. Right? We just feel it in our bones, don’t we, boy? Those bastards
are headed for British Columbia, and we’ve got to get them before they reach it. ’Course you and I know by now they’re no doubt in civilian garb. Probably look like a bunch of Greenpeacers out to see the flora and fauna.”

  “They better watch out,” said Sal, as Prince, sitting up close to Choir, looked on, “otherwise a grizzly’ll bite them on the ass.”

  “You be careful,” joshed Aussie, “otherwise—”

  “General?” It was the Chinook’s loadmaster sergeant. “Radio call for you from a Richard Moffat.”

  For a second, Freeman was wearing what Aussie had long ago dubbed his Patton frown. He took the phone, cupping the mouthpiece. “Richard who?”

  “Chief scientist,” Choir reminded him. “Richard Moffat.”

  “Hello, Doctor. Freeman here.”

  “General, we think we might have an answer for you regarding Dr. Juarez’s ‘It’s spotted’ comment.”

  “Oh yes,” answered Freeman.

  “First, I should tell you Roberta Juarez didn’t survive.”

  “Oh, shit!”

  Prince’s head shot up, worried by the general’s sharp tone.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Freeman told him.

  “Thank you, General,” Moffat acknowledged.

  “Anyway,” continued Moffat, “about her ‘it’s spotted’ comment. Apparently, for security reasons, only one person — who I found out was off sick today — knew about an arrangement that was insisted upon by the chief of naval operations—”

  “Yes?” said Freeman, fighting the temptation to say that it was a damned pity that the CNO or somebody else hadn’t paid more attention to damned perimeter security in the first place.

  “Well,” continued Moffat, “the arrangement, which was deliberately withheld from DARPA directors — as an added security measure should a director ever be taken hostage and interrogated under duress — was that two scientists here at DARPA ALPHA, one on the day shift, one on the night — the night shift person being Roberta — had agreed to ‘spot’ the disk.”