Neutron Force

“Do you know about the crash of VC-25?”

He frowned. “No.” The 747 had crashed? Obviously the President was okay because Hal hadn’t called the plane Air Force One. “Was it shot down? Rammed in midair?”

“There’s no mention that anything happening to the jumbo jet on the news services,” Huntington “Hunt” Wethers announced. A pipe jutted from his mouth, but no smoke rose from the briarwood bowl.

“Nobody knows about the incident other than a select handful of people in the American and Canadian governments,” Brognola stated, extracting a disk from the laptop. “And it’s part of this mission to make sure that nobody ever learns the truth.”

“Why not?” Carmen Delahunt asked.

“We’d never be able to handle the riots,” the big Fed said, passing the disk to Kurtzman.

At the fourth console, Akira Tokaido vaguely heard the conversation. He was slumped in his chair, apparently sound asleep. Both Brognola and Price knew that the young man was hard at work. Tokaido would rather be running the massive Cray Supercomputers located on the refrigerated floor below than doing anything else in the world. Even breathing and eating. The Japanese American was a modern-day Mozart with computers, a natural hacker. There was very little Akira couldn’t get done online, and he pushed the envelope further every day.

“Riots?” Kurtzman asked, taking the disk and sliding it into a slot on his console. The center screen came it life and Top Secret seals flashed by in a blur like a diesel-powered rotoscope.

“See for yourself,” Price stated, looking at the wall monitors. According to the computerized maps, the world was at peace. There were a few scattered battles here and there, but nothing major. She wondered how long that would last if the news of the neutron satellite got out. That underwater arcology Japan was building would be overrun with people fighting and killing to get inside.

Kurtzman leaned closer to the monitor. The encryption on the disk was fantastic, the only data file he had ever encountered that had more was the dossier on the Farm. As the files grudgingly opened and slowly loaded, he grabbed a ceramic mug and took a fast swig of hot coffee. A neutron cannon in space? Sweet Jesus…

Running his slim fingers across the keyboard like a concert pianist, Akira Tokaido continued his Internet search. There were a lot of heavily encrypted transmissions going out these days, t-bursts they were called, and every one of them had a fake ID and source code. A t-burst was the newest scourge of the Internet, a computerized version of a blip transmission over a radio, a massive amount of information condensed into a small tone that lasted for only a second, sometimes even less. So far, the young hacker couldn’t trace where they were coming from, or worse, where they were going. Obviously something big was going down in the cyberworld, and that was always trouble. Twice he had caught the garbled word “tiger” inside a picture code and logged it for further investigation.

“Everybody stop whatever you’re doing and access these files,” Kurtzman commanded. “And do it fast, people.”

The members of the cybernetic team did as requested, their curious expressions quickly turning grim.

“Help yourselves to coffee,” Kurtzman told them, reading the incredible material scrolling on the monitor.

“Ah…did Carmen make the coffee, or you?” Price asked warily.

“Me, of course.”

“Pass,” the woman snorted, crossing her arms. Strong wasn’t the word normally used for Kurtzman’s hellish coffee.

As they started reading the files, Wethers and Delahunt began to scowl deeply. Typing while he read, the former professor pulled up the passenger list of the crashed plane, while Delahunt fondled the air with the cybernetic gloves she wore, opening files. At the front of the room, one of the wall screens began to display reports on boronated armor, while another blossomed into a vector graphic of satellites orbiting Earth.

There were thousands of them, Price noted dispassionately. Needle in a haystack? she thought. Try a drop of water hiding in the ocean!

Skimming the pages, Kurtzman had trouble believing what he was reading. It would take a major world power to muster the resources to build a neutron cannon. The question was which one, and did it have control of the cannon now? If some terrorist group like al Quaeda, or Hamas, had control of the weapon, Washington would already be a death zone.

“A focused beam of neutrons,” Wethers muttered, taking the pipe from his mouth and tapping his chin with the stem. “Amazing, simply amazing.”

“And we have no idea who might be behind this?” Delahunt asked.

“Aside from the usual suspects, none at all,” Brognola admitted honestly.

“I’ll start a search for any other incidents of people dying without signs of violence,” Delahunt said. “Now that they know the weapon works, the thieves will start using it.”

Just then, a picture of Dr. Himar appeared on a wall monitor. A middle-aged man, short gray hair, black suit and a bolo string tie. The newspaper shot was of Himar receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics.

“Hunt, check the records of the public dossier,” Kurtzman commanded, slaving his console to the others. “Find out who might have accessed any data about Himar under the Public Information Act.”

“Over how long a period?” the professor asked.

“Ever.”

“No problem,” Wethers replied, his hands moving across the keyboard.

“Akira, get me his DNA and run a match on the remains in the morgue,” Price directed. “Himar might not really be dead.”

“On it,” Tokaido replied, both hands busy.

“A duplicate?” Brognola asked in concern, coming closer. “You think that a Nobel Prize-wining physicist could be a traitor?”

“Let’s see if we can find him and ask,” Price stated roughly.

“Bear, how long will it take you to breech the firewall at the Department of Defense?”

“To get files on Himar, and—Prometheus? Is that what the President said?” the burly man asked. His monitor gave a beep. “They’re just downloading now.” The man scanned the scrolling images. “Okay, Himar has a home in Braintree, Massachusetts, but his DOD lab is on Wake Island. His research, code-named Prometheus, is based there.”

The other side of the world. Price nodded. It was a smart move to keep his private and professional life as separated as possible.

“Wake Island,” Brognola mused. “Isn’t that an old missile testing range in the South Pacific?”

“North Pacific. Guess Himar wanted the laboratory isolated and far away from civilization in case something went wrong.”

“Or else he wanted privacy,” Price retorted. “All right, send Able Team to his house for any private files or papers. Phoenix Force will recon the lab. Send the details to Jack Grimaldi, and have Homeland Security tell the ground crew at Dulles to start warming up a Hercules and a Learjet.”

Braintree was close enough for Able Team to use the Hercules so that they could arrive with their equipment van. But Phoenix Force had a long way to travel to reach Wake Island. The tiny landmass was so far away that it was only technically part of the United States.

“And remind our guys to be doubly careful,” Brognola told her. “The only way to survive a neutron beam is to not get hit.” With any luck, NORAD would locate the enemy satellite and the USAF would blow it out of the sky before a major city was destroyed. However, the top cop had a bad feeling in his gut that time was short, and that this was going to get real bloody, real fast.

CHAPTER FOUR

Calais, France

An unseen dawn arrived above the small coastal town. The overcast sky was dark with storm clouds and a torrential rain mercilessly pounded the sprawling array of homes, shops and hotels.

In spite of the early hour, the night’s festivities were still going strong in Calais, the numerous hotels filled with drunken, happy tourists. Lining the old town’s refurbished waterfront, hundreds of expensive yachts were moored at their slips against the inclement weather, and several cruise liners dominated the brightly illuminated public docks. Nearby restaurants were alive with colored lights and pulsating music. Old men and young women were laughing and singing, and the smiling waiters served a nonstop flow of steaming dishes from the kitchens to the tourists.

But on the outskirts of the city, the drab fishing docks were filled with a different kind of excitement. There was no singing or dancing, but hearts were light as calloused hands moved ropes and nets, preparing for the day’s hard work. The deep water report had just arrived and the sea bass were running.

Shouting orders, big men in yellow slickers moved around the sodden dock and trawlers, hauling ropes and nets. Powerful engines sputtered into life among the ranks of squat vessels, the dull exhaust pipes throwing out great clouds of rank diesel smoke. A bell clanged from the church tower in town, announcing the time. A man cursed; thunder rumbled. Somewhere a dog barked and oddly went silent. But nobody paid the incident any attention. Fishing was more than their business, it was their calling, the blood in their veins, and Frenchmen knew that the sea bass didn’t care if it was raining or if there were tourists in town spending money as if it was the end of the world. The fish followed the deep water currents and the fisherman followed the fish. Nothing else mattered. Unless there was a hurricane blowing, the fleet went out.

Chains rattled as heavy anchors were hoisted. Radar swept the storm from a hundred ships trying to map the roiling clouds above the choppy waves. Trucks arrived from town delivering ice to the poorer vessels, while the others started refrigerators in their holds, making everything ready for the day’s catch.

As the ice trucks pulled away from the docks, five large men appeared like ghosts from out of the torrential rain. Their boots thudded heavily on the damp planks, and the men appeared to be slightly hunchbacked in their black overcoats. The wide brims of their slouch hats drooped slightly from the unrelenting downpour, efficiently keeping the rain from their hard eyes, and also masking their features from the busy crowd of hardworking fishermen.

Marching in an almost military-like manner, the group of strangers moved past the trawlers until they reached the end of the dock. Moored at her usual place, a brand-new catamaran, the Souris, was rocking slightly from the force of the storm, her crew shouting through cupped hands at one another as they tried to be heard above the motors and thunder.