Critical Effect

“Sorry,” she said, smiling as they filtered past her and through the open doorway. “We’ve got a situation and Hal needs you guys to hoof it over to the Annex ASAP.”

“We got time to clean up?” Blancanales asked.

“After.”

“Okay,” Lyons said, “but I don’t want to hear any complaints about how we left the place smelling like a used gym sock.”

“I’ve been told you do that without P.T.,” Schwarz cracked.

“Up yours,” Lyons grumbled.

The three men made their way through the farmhouse to the elevator, then stood and waited expectantly for Price to join them.

Price flashed a wicked grin as the door began to close. “Um, I’ll wait for the next one.”

They rode the elevator to the basement in silence, crossed through the War Room to the hallway, and continued on to the end until they reached a wide corridor perpendicular to it. A walkway ran parallel to an electric rail car that could take them the 250 yards to the Annex, but Able Team opted to walk. They reached the end of the tunnel in no time flat and gained entry to the Annex via a coded access panel. Built beneath a wood-chipping facility, the Annex had become Stony Man’s operational nexus. It warehoused the most advanced cybernetic and communications systems available—under constant monitor and upgrade by Aaron Kurtzman’s unit—as well as an operations center for Stony Man Farm security.

Able Team took concrete stairs to the Computer Center, where they found Brognola and Kurtzman staring at a screen. The Stony Man chief turned at their arrival, greeted them with a nod and a grunt, and then returned to perusing the data on the screen.

“What’s up?” Lyons asked.

“Whew!” Brognola said, whipping an unlit cigar from his mouth and wrinkling his nose. “Couldn’t you guys have showered first?”

Lyons tossed a bland look at his cohorts, who shrugged, and then returned his attention to Brognola.

“Never mind,” the big Fed stated, directing their attention to a large screen that spanned an entire wall of the center. “Bring it up there for them, will you, Bear?”

Kurtzman nodded and punched a couple of keys.

As the three Able Team warriors turned, a man’s face filled the screen. He had pale skin and wide blue eyes that looked magnified behind his large glasses. A hawk’s-beak nose protruded from between puffy red cheeks. Lettering below his named read: U.S. Department of Defense, CL: Q, DoDID#: 176243-SD.

Lyons emitted a low whistle and remarked, “Geek city, gents.”

“Maybe,” Brognola replied, “but I wouldn’t underestimate him for a moment. His name is Simon Delmico. Age, forty-three. He was one of the youngest and brightest in his graduating class from Stanford. He holds a doctorate in medicine with a specialty in microbiology. Up until five years ago, he’d served with the DOD as a specialist in countering biochemical warfare agents. Since then, he’s worked as an associate professor with Washington University in St. Louis.”

“He left voluntarily?” Blancanales asked.

Brognola snorted. “Hardly. Against orders from a superior, he violated experimental protocols and damn near blew up part of ST-2 at the Pentagon. As it was, he lost a foot. To keep things quiet, the government decided not to charge him criminally. They set him up at WU and that was that.”

Schwarz raised his eyebrows. “Until now?”

“Precisely,” Brognola said. “A few hours ago we had to divert Phoenix Force to search for a plane that went down somewhere over the Federal Republic of Germany. We’re still waiting for them to report back. But before that, there were some interesting outbreaks of a mysterious illness in St. Louis, which has local physicians puzzled enough to call the CDC. That sent off all kinds of alarms for us, given Delmico’s background in microbiology.”

Schwarz chuckled and looked at Kurtzman. “Why, I’d say your new program’s doing a heck of a job, Bear.”

“I can’t take all the credit for it,” Kurtzman replied in his deep, booming voice. “My crew certainly did their part. It’s amazing what they’ve accomplished in these few short years.”

Lyons knew the men were referring to Kurtzman’s new cyberscanning application, codenamed Postulate. The Able Team leader didn’t even begin to pretend he understood it all, but he did have some idea of how it worked. Rather than query specific data sets through the use of keywords, Postulate would search for situations based on an incalculable number of different scenarios, partly through the use of key phrases, partly through mathematical theorems and hypotheses. In short, Kurtzman and his team had spent years programming different scenarios based on everything from mission reports and briefs to the core intelligence of foreign nations. Then, Postulate had begun to rework the scenarios on its own and built a dictionary database with millions of terabytes of information.

During a briefing of the entire Stony Man group, Kurtzman had explained it this way: “For the most part, the data remains static until Postulate acts on it. Then it becomes dynamic, the computers start to hum and it starts to search around the world for incidents that could fit that scenario. This information might be anything from newswires and insurance claims up to police reports and military statistics. Whatever the information, Postulate will use it if she can, and over a period of time she grows smarter by dismissing what seems irrelevant in place of facts that fit the highest degrees of probability.”

The door opened and Price strode into the room.

Lyons shook his head. “Okay, I’m still not following. What the hell do sick students and one-footed scientists have to do with Phoenix Force?”

“Less than an hour ago, we logged a call placed to Delmico’s home from a public phone in Wiesbaden. The call was too long to be a wrong number. And twelve months ago, Delmico was in Germany as a guest lecturer on microbiology.”

“Too much to be coincidence, maybe,” Blancanales admitted. “But it’s hardly enough proof of collusion with terrorists by Delmico.”

“I’m with Pol on this one, guys,” Lyons said. “It sounds like you’re grasping at straws.”

“Are we, now?” Brognola asked. “You may not think so when you hear what was on that plane.”

“The information just came through,” Kurtzman said. “The plane that went down was a special operations cargo plane carrying six large dishes with magnets attached to them.”

Lyons made a show of yawning. “Magnets, eh? That’s what has our panties in a bunch? Magnets?”

Kurtzman shook his head. “I know magnets don’t sound like any great threats to you, Ironman, but given they’re attached to what the British are calling Low Altitude Military Platforms, you might want to reconsider. These dishes were being shipped from the CERN Particle Physics Laboratory in Switzerland. The magnets were remnants of pieces being assembled for their flagship project, the Large Hadron Collider.

“You see, elementary particles of matter are typically studied through the use of magnetism. The larger the magnet, the deeper the matter and energy can be probed. These magnets are particularly important because they operate under the magnetism between Earth’s polar opposites.”

“Basically,” Brognola cut in, “it means they can operate under self-propulsion for the most part. We now have evidence the plane that went down with these things aboard might have been sabotaged. Moreover, we think it wouldn’t be unlikely for a terrorist organization or other element to use these platforms to deliver chemical or biological contaminants to a large populace.”

“Or at least threaten to do so if their obligatory list of demands isn’t met,” Price said.

Schwarz looked at Blancanales and Lyons. His furrowed eyebrows chiseled lines of seriousness across his face. “What they’re proposing sounds damn plausible, guys. I think we ought to check it out.”

“All right, all right,” Lyons said, visibly irritated. “But if this turns out to be some wild-goose chase—”

“Then we bought you a wonderful two days of fun and sun in scenic St. Louis,” Price finished for him. “Jack’s on his way here, so you’ve got about an hour to clean up and gear up.”

“Jack’s feeling up to getting back into the game already?” Blancanales asked in a surprised tone.

Price smiled. “You’re kidding, right? Wild horses couldn’t hold him back.”

“I think he’s been chomping at the bit to get back into action,” Brognola added. “And since the doctors have cleared him for flight duty, I see no reason why this wouldn’t be the perfect job.”

“So what exactly do you want us to do out there, boss?” Lyons asked.

“Get to those kids and see if you can find any commonality between their illnesses outside the fact they go to the same school,” Brognola said. “I don’t think the doctors are looking hard enough for it. That’s part of your mission. The more important part will be to get close to Delmico and stay close.”

“You’ll be operating as FBI agents,” Price said. “You’re just there to look things over and ensure this isn’t an anthrax-related issue or something else that could evolve into a pandemic.”

“How clever,” Lyons grumbled.

“Aw, cheer up, Ironman,” Blancanales said, punching his friend in the shoulder. “It’s St. Louis, home of the Gateway Arch and Anheuser-Busch. You’ll have a great time!”

“Yeah,” Schwarz added. “What could possibly go wrong?”