Tom Clancy Firing Point

by Maden, Mike

  “Okay, you win. Let’s get the hell out of Dodge.”

  Dellinger grinned. “Smart boy.”

  He pounded on the steel door with the palm of his hand, telling the guard to let them out.

  In a few hours, Jack would be somewhere over the Atlantic, far from Spain, a free man.

  54

  True to his word, Dellinger got Jack out of jail almost as fast as he could walk him through the front doors and into the fresh air and sunshine.

  An unmarked Guardia Civil Nissan SUV stood at the curb with the rear door opened. The international business intern Jack had spooked earlier stood by it holding Jack’s leather satchel stuffed with his clothes and his laptop bag.

  “Who told you you could break into my place?” Jack said, still reeking and disheveled like a man who’d just broken out of a dumpster.

  The college-age kid blanched at Jack’s tone and pointed at Dellinger. “He sent me.”

  “We didn’t have time to waste,” Dellinger said, motioning for Jack to get in the car as the Guardia Civil plainclothes detective climbed into the driver’s seat.

  “How’d you know I’d take your offer?”

  “Because I figured you weren’t stupid. Get in. We’re late for your flight.”

  Jack snagged his satchel and laptop from the intern and fell into the backseat next to Dellinger. They slammed the doors behind them as the Nissan rocketed toward the airport.

  * * *

  —

  Dellinger and the Guardia Civil detective-driver both escorted Jack into the giant glass and steel Barcelona–El Prat airport southwest of the city. Thanks to his Spanish escort, Jack and Dellinger were both passed through to the front of the long check-in and security lines. Their movements were tracked by the angry, jealous eyes of the passengers lined up like cattle in pens waiting for slaughter.

  Jack was then led to his departure gate and ushered to the gate agent’s desk. The agent was forced to reopen the jetway when the detective flashed his badge, though it was against company policy to do so.

  Dellinger offered Jack a firm hand that was as much a warning as a pleasantry along with “Good luck, son,” before Jack disappeared into the jetway.

  The Spanish detective escorted Jack to his seat, turning curious heads as they strode through the wide first-class aisles and back to the narrow ones in coach. Jack stuffed his carry-on into the crowded overhead and shoved his laptop under the seat in front of him. He then fell into his chair and buckled in. The detective flashed Jack one last angry glance before he turned around and marched back off the plane.

  The middle-aged flight attendant for Jack’s section was a real pro. She hid her concern over Jack, unlike the passengers near him who squirmed uncomfortably in their narrow seats, trying desperately not to look at—or smell—the large, bearded man suddenly thrust into their presence by a police escort.

  Jack perused the drink card, searching for something hard.

  It was going to be a long damn flight.

  * * *

  —

  After three glasses of Jameson Irish whiskey, Jack was finally numb to his frustration and grief.

  He felt like shit that Brossa had died but at least he’d killed the asswipe that did it. How he killed the man with a single punch to the face still confused him. According to Dellinger, the Spaniards would get around to an autopsy in the next few weeks, and he promised to let Jack know what the results were as if that was some sort of consolation over Bykov’s death. It wasn’t.

  Jack didn’t need any.

  Now winging his way back home, Jack was leaving both physically and emotionally drained. Renée was dead and nothing would change that but at least the people who claimed responsibility for her death were all dead, along with the man Jack believed to be the real bomber, even if he wasn’t with Brigada Catalan.

  He hated to admit it but the case really was closed. It felt like a betrayal of Renée and especially Brossa but he had done everything he could in the short time he had. His heavy eyelids began to flutter. He reclined his seat as far as it would go and gave in to the sleep that had eluded him for the last twenty-four hours.

  Maybe it was the booze or something else that fueled his dream but Jack found himself back inside L’avi. This time the crowded restaurant was full of street protesters jammed in so close that Jack could hardly breathe. He fought his way toward the exit, desperate to escape the suffocating mass of flesh. Just as he reached the cool, fresh air pouring in at the doorway, he bumped into a long-haired Runtso, only this time, it was Jack who said, “Sorry, man,” instead of the shorter, hapless man. Runtso said nothing but only stared for a long moment at Jack with eyes full of unspeakable sadness, then finally he turned away, trudging in slow motion—not into a crowded restaurant,but instead into a shrieking wall of fire, his body vaporizing in flames so hot that it made Jack’s skin tingle.

  55

  KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE

  Parsons was beside herself. She rubbed her bare arms, her skin literally tingling with anticipation.

  In eleven hours and forty-eight minutes, she would make history.

  She couldn’t stop smiling. She felt like the yearning, libidinous gymnast she’d once been, waiting by her locker for the high school quarterback to whisk her away in his cherry red Camaro.

  She blushed at the memory. That was a hell of a good day, too.

  The last staff meeting had just concluded. All of the department heads showed up, eager and grinning—always a good sign. Every department reported in as ready. Each division head guaranteed that every hardware and software system had been stress tested and double-checked, and that all personnel were ready and in place. Everything had gone according to plan. Everything was on schedule.

  To hell with RAPTURE.

  TRIBULATION was about to change the world.

  * * *

  —

  “And to hell with you, Dr. DAVID Rhodes, you worthless, back-slapping, glad-handing, thieving prick,” Parsons said in a quiet whisper.

  Rhodes took RAPTURE from her. He had talent enough for that. His soft, manicured hands were strong enough to stab her in the back and twist the knife. He’d stolen all the credit for her work, her genius. He’d stolen her baby.

  Sure, it was just another case of politics and patriarchy biting her in the ass again. But it was his name that would have gone down in the history books. Would have. She laughed to herself.

  But nobody remembers second place. That’s just first place for losers.

  RAPTURE wouldn’t be first.

  TRIBULATION would have that honor.

  She would have that honor.

  And Rhodes would be standing around with his tiny dick in his even tinier fingers wondering how she had stolen it from him.

  Parsons crossed over to the Viking refrigerator in the break room and pulled out a cold Fiji water, savoring her moment to come.

  Rhodes would look like the biggest idiot in the world. The ultimate dupe. The completely clueless chucklehead that let a woman kick him in his diminutive nutsack.

  She cracked open the bottle and took a long pull of cold, clear water.

  And to think she’d nearly walked away from it all.

  “You’ll never make a good decision while you’re angry,” her Sunday school teacher mother had always said.

  For once, the old bag had been right.

  Parsons was practically out the door—already circulating her incredible CV—when the call came that changed her life.

  She could hardly believe it. At first, she thought it was a test. Maybe even a trap laid out by the Feds.

  It wasn’t.

  It took some time for him to prove himself and to earn her trust. But he did. He proved that he had the funding. He showed her that he was risking as much as she was, if not more. He certainly had the motivation. And he had a plan.r />
  A hell of a plan.

  But most important of all, he believed in her. He told her how significant she was, and he wasn’t just blowing blue smoke up her skirt. He’d followed her research and knew about RAPTURE, and all about Rhodes and how he had played the Jacob to her Esau and stolen her birthright. How he’d known about all of it she could never figure out. But that just spoke to her about the power of his reach and his incredible resources.

  Her patron clearly understood her contributions to the work. He was no scientist but possessed an impressive command of the subject for a civilian. He told her how her name would rank in the pantheon of all great scientists—not just women scientists, but all scientists. He appealed to her vanity, no doubt, and she was vain. Except it wasn’t vanity because what she believed about herself was absolutely true.

  And it was. She was a genius.

  So she finally agreed to the plan. He would build an alternate facility, not too close to Oak Ridge, but not so far away that she couldn’t be there on a regular basis to oversee the work. He would provide a list of vetted scientists, programmers, and engineers but she would have the authority to hire and fire them. He would provide all of the security, and all of the materials, and all of the resources needed. All she ever needed to do was send him her list of needs, human or material, and he would provide it.

  Her contributions were materially minimal but the most significant. She would continue to plow ahead at Oak Ridge and push the RAPTURE project forward, extracting every ounce of information and insight from it that she could and then bringing it over to the TRIBULATION program. Of course, there were certain expectations he put upon her. But they were reasonable, given the outcome.

  First, he told her, TRIBULATION must be completed and ready to deploy on a certain date and time. No exceptions. He named both.

  “Do you agree?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you believe it’s absolutely possible?”

  “I do.”

  “Are you willing to bet your life on it?”

  “I am.”

  “Then you just did.”

  The threat was neither unexpected nor particularly frightening. It also showed that he was serious, which she admired. Parsons was certain she’d meet the deadline, as certain as she was the sun would rise in the morning, or that energy could be neither created nor destroyed.

  * * *

  —

  She expected to get paid something at some point but was surprised that thirty million had already been deposited into an encrypted account for her. This was immediately available for transfer to another account of her own choosing, and in any denomination or medium of currency she preferred.

  If for whatever reason he decided to cancel the project, she would keep the money without condition.

  It was also expected that she would say nothing about TRIBULATION to anyone outside of the lab where it was being built. After TRIBULATION was launched, she still couldn’t reveal her involvement for exactly three hundred and sixty-five days.

  “Why?”

  “For your protection, and mine. Time to allow us to find places to hide in the world where we can never be found.”

  She didn’t question it further. A year wasn’t much of a delay in relation to the fame that would accrue to her forever afterward. Her brilliance would be her defense if she decided to come back into the world. And if she decided to remain in hiding? Well, she wasn’t looking for celebrity anyway. Only the universal acknowledgment that she had won, and TRIBULATION would prove that.

  A final expectation was that she would carefully and surreptitiously sabotage progress on the government’s RAPTURE project. The reason was obvious. The only possible threat TRIBULATION faced would be the launch of RAPTURE, the only other true, universal quantum machine on the planet.

  But what utterly delighted her was the fact that Rhodes’s reputation would be ruined.

  * * *

  —

  TRIBULATION would change the world because nearly every form of modern military and civilian operations, intelligence gathering, information processing, and communications all relied heavily, if not exclusively, on digital data.

  All of that data was the lifeblood of global human activity and, increasingly, of individual human activity, no matter how pedestrian or mundane. Whether it was Alexa on your kitchen table, the phone in your pocket, or the hearing aid in your ear, computers were proliferating at an alarming rate—tens of billions of ordinary items were coming online; the so-called Internet of Things.

  For all of the convenience, efficiency, productivity, and promise that the digital age was providing, the great sword of Damocles hanging over everyone’s head was the insecurity of all of that data. Data was the gold stored in every device. Relentless thieves, including governments, criminal syndicates, and individual hackers, hungered to steal that gold.

  Early on, cyberthieves succeeded. New defenses were raised. Cybersecurity was born.

  By the early part of the twenty-first century, an extremely secure form of cybersecurity had been achieved through sophisticated encryption algorithms. These algorithms were analogous to a passcode, like a three-digit number for a lock on a gym locker. A simple three-digit locker passcode only has one thousand possible combinations.

  But a 128-bit AES cipher passcode would require a conventional computer capable of a “brute force” attack of one trillion “combinations” per second for nearly eleven quintillion years (eighteen zeros) to break through.

  The hackers lost the “brute force” arms race because it was far easier to create more complicated software algorithms than it was to produce computer hardware fast enough to beat them.

  Thus, cybersecurity made the world safe for commerce and governments.

  Until TRIBULATION.

  * * *

  —

  TRIBULATION would soon be what RAPTURE could have been if the thieving politicians had left Parsons alone to finish the work she had started.

  But they didn’t, so she created TRIBULATION, the world’s first true, universal 128-qubit quantum computer.

  Google’s 72-qubit quantum machine Bristlecone recently solved one particular mathematical calculation in less than four minutes. The fastest conventional supercomputer would have required at least ten thousand years to solve the same problem. Impressive by any measure. Google claimed quantum supremacy.

  Google was wrong.

  TRIBULATION was far superior to the Google machine by orders of magnitude. And it wasn’t only about the quantity of qubits.

  Generally speaking, there were two types of quantum computers: annealing and universal. D-Wave deployed a 2,000-qubit annealing machine but despite the larger number of qubits, its architecture limited its range of operations.

  But universal quantum machines like Bristlecone and TRIBULATION were virtually unlimited in their applications. What made 128-qubit TRIBULATION exponentially more powerful than 72-qubit Bristlecone was that each of TRIBULATION’s 128 qubits was also quantumly “entangled.” This yielded more than 340 undecillion (2128) combinations of output states—a number so large it was nearly incomprehensible to the human mind. And TRIBULATION, unlike Bristlecone and other competitors, operated flawlessly, with a zero error rate.

  * * *

  —

  The significance of quantum computing was poorly understood outside of scientific circles. Sci-fi movie fans, doomsday preppers, and self-described “futurists” insisted that artificial intelligence (AI) was the greatest threat to humanity.

  They were wrong, too.

  In just over eleven hours and forty-three minutes, TRIBULATION’s quantum computer “key” could unlock any encrypted door on the planet.

  Nothing—absolutely nothing—that was digitized and stored accessibly would be secure once TRIBULATION came online.

  * * *

 
—

  Parsons shut her laptop and headed for the computer room located in the most secure building, which was also the cleanest and coldest.

  To function properly, TRIBULATION depended upon the controlled spin of superpositioned quantum particles, i.e., qubits.

  To maintain that controlled spin without interruption or interference, the machine required millikelvin temperatures to operate—temperatures approaching absolute zero, the point at which nearly all molecular activity ceases. If TRIBULATION was a juggler spinning plates—qubits—on the ends of her fingers, she couldn’t have a monkey—unwanted molecular movement, i.e., heat—jump on her arms and start grabbing her hands because she would lose control of the spinning plates and they would crash.

  Of the many breakthroughs Parsons’s teams had accomplished, stable, near-zero operations had been one of the most important.

  Parsons wanted to take another look at her machine. She could peer at TRIBULATION’s magnificent architecture through a pane of tempered glass. She knew she would feel the love and longing of a mother gazing at her newborn daughter lying in an incubator, unable to touch her. But it was worth it.

  Parsons knew that in all likelihood, it would be the last time she’d see her creation, at least for a good, long while. No matter. When the time was right, she’d be back to take full credit for whatever TRIBULATION had wrought upon the earth, for good or for ill.

  56

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  The Lufthansa/United Airlines Airbus A321 touched down three minutes ahead of schedule, the wheels hardly kissing the tarmac.