Wormhole - 03

by Richard Phillips

  The breakout room was normally used for occasions when the president wanted to pull a couple of key staff members out of the Situation Room for a private side discussion, while the rest of the staff cooled their heels and waited for the president’s return. To be brought here directly, while the Situation Room sat empty next door, raised Rodger’s hackles, making him feel like closing himself inside one of the nearby high-security Plexiglas phone tubes.

  “Rodger. Glad to see you,” the president said.

  “Always a pleasure, Mr. President.”

  “I imagine you’re curious as to why I had you brought down here.”

  “The question came to mind.”

  President Jackson leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head. “You understand that what we are about to discuss is top-secret SCI?”

  Rodger nodded.

  “You’re not to discuss anything we talk about with anyone but me. Is that clear?”

  Once again Rodger felt the uncomfortable tensing of muscles between his shoulder blades. The president did tend to repeat himself. “Yes sir.”

  The president smiled that broad smile that had eased his ascension into the political stratosphere, and leaned forward to rest his forearms on the table. “Good. Then let’s get right to the meat of it. You know Jim Nobles and Cory Mayfield. They have come to me with a proposal that impacts the construction being done at the ATLAS site. As chairman of my council on science and technology, and since you were the first American to be briefed on the November Anomaly, I wanted to get your opinion before I make a final decision.”

  Rodger glanced at Cory Mayfield, but the intel man’s gray eyes betrayed no hint of emotion. But James Nobles’s mouth held a tension that matched Rodger’s.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Go ahead, Cory.”

  “I’ve recommended to the president that, through our ties with the Geneva-based construction company Dietrich and Hoechner, we install some tactical nuclear weapons within some of the prefabricated supports destined for installation in the ATLAS cavern.”

  Rodger’s jaw dropped as he struggled to parse the words he’d just heard.

  Regaining his voice, Rodger consciously released the pressure in his clenched fists. “Mr. President, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Motioning for the other two to remain silent, the president looked directly into his eyes. “OK, Rodger, make your case.”

  Rodger struggled to bring his thoughts to bear on the problem. It boggled his mind that the president of the United States had even entertained the proposal, much less give it enough credence to warranted Rodger’s debunking it. He inhaled deeply.

  “Mr. President, I assume the purpose of these devices would be to form some sort of backup plan whereby they would be triggered in order to destroy the nascent black hole?”

  “That is correct.”

  “That’s just wrong. As I already briefed you and the entire staff, the anomaly exists at an inflection point and is gradually tilting into a state where it is likely to become a black hole. We’re struggling to slow that process by surrounding it in as perfect a low-temperature vacuum as can be created on Earth, all in an attempt to keep the thing from absorbing additional matter and energy, just trying to give the November Anomaly Project time to build the Stephenson device. Any explosive addition of energy to the anomaly will greatly accelerate its progress in becoming a black hole. If you set off a nuclear explosion, you’ll be destroying the Earth as surely as if the sun went supernova.”

  “You’re certain of that.”

  “As sure as I’m sitting here.”

  “Cory?”

  “I understand Dr. Dalbert’s scientific analysis. But Mr. President, the fact remains that something might go wrong with Dr. Stephenson’s device. It might not work as his theory predicts or it might not get done in time. There’s also the side issue of how much we trust Dr. Stephenson. There’s no doubt he’s a genius, but our sources say he’s rolling out theoretical applications that he never revealed to others at Los Alamos or to the rest of the government team. If something goes badly wrong, we can’t afford to go without a fallback plan.”

  “Fallback plan?” Rodger sputtered. “Didn’t you hear anything I just said? If you nuke it you get an instant black hole. No need to add water or stir.”

  “And if we do nothing, we get a black hole anyway. Isn’t that right, Dr. Dalbert?”

  Rodger felt beads of sweat pop out on his brow. “Probably, but not as quickly. We might have time for another try.”

  Cory Mayfield laughed, a harsh, guttural rasp that hurt Rodger’s ears.

  “Another try? There’s not going to be another try. The world is committing every bit of its scientific and engineering might into Dr. Stephenson’s plan. Not that we wouldn’t spin up a backup project if someone came up with a competing idea, but the sad truth is that nobody’s got another reasonable idea. We’ve been all through the launch-it-into-space thing. All the top minds say that’s a no-go for a host of reasons, chief among them the problem of maintaining the isolation and containment field throughout the launch process. Then there’s the issue of this approach being incompatible with our best bet, which is building Dr. Stephenson’s Rho device around the thing. So, unless some religious group manages to pray the anomaly away, we’re left with Stephenson’s Rho device or bust.”

  Rodger opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again.

  “So,” Mayfield continued, “if all else fails and the thing’s getting ready to eat us anyway, it won’t hurt to roll the dice.”

  President Jackson turned to face his national security advisor. “James?”

  “I don’t see a better alternative.”

  “Mr. President! Give me a month. I’ll assemble another team, give it one more look, see if we can come up with another fallback option.”

  President Jackson smiled a sad smile. “I don’t have another month to give you, Rodger. If we want to get nukes put in the prefab construction, I have to make a decision now. I’m sorry, but I’m giving the go-ahead for Director Mayfield’s approach.”

  Turning to his smiling DNI, the president nodded.

  “OK, Cory. Make it happen.”

  The click-clack of retreating footsteps echoed down the long empty hallway, picking up a sympathetic vibration from the steel bars that locked Mark in his cell. He sat cross-legged and naked on the cold concrete, deep in the meditation that gave him respite from that lonely place.

  Surprisingly, his situation had improved. Immediately after killing Dr. Krause and the two guards, Mark had waited in the closet to be recaptured. His intuition had told him that Heather should be the one to initiate their escape, that she would know when the time was right. So he had just uploaded instructions to Jennifer’s worm, destroyed the cell phone, and waited.

  He had been moved to a different cell, still inside the same supermax unit, but without the chains and waterboarding table. Except for food trays pushed through a floor slot, his captors appeared to have forgotten about him, leaving him to deal with his own demons here in solitary confinement. He shared the ten-by-twelve-foot space with a sink, a toilet, a showerhead, and a drain. The water came out of both the sink and the showerhead at the same temperature. Cold.

  Except for the prison-issue orange pj’s and a single pair of briefs, Mark had nothing. On the days he washed his clothes in the sink, he waited naked for them to dry. At the cell’s constant sixty-two degrees, that drying process took a good while, even after he’d hand-wrung them. Today was one of those laundry days.

  Despite the way Mark tried to keep himself busy working out and meditating, the oppressive loneliness was working on him in a way the torture hadn’t. He tried not to think of Heather, but she crept into his thoughts, and with her came a longing that tugged him irresistibly toward a black pit of despair.

  And Heather wasn’t the only thing messing with his mind. Increasingly, the faces of the men he’d killed came back to haunt him. Not D
on Espeñosa and his assholes, nor even Dr. Krause. It was the faces of the two guards that robbed him of peace. Did they have wives? Children? Mark thought he knew the answer. But in a moment of violent action, he’d destroyed those little families, as surely as the US government had destroyed his. No more birthdays or Christmases with Daddy. No more family barbecues in the backyard. Thank you, Mark Smythe. You’re a real badass hero.

  With a start, Mark realized he’d completely lost the meditation, having allowed the rogue thoughts to entice him onto the shoals of that depressing shore. He shook his head in attempt to clear it.

  Somewhere in this hellhole, his captors had Jennifer and Heather. Mark had little hope that they were receiving kinder treatment than that afforded him.

  The picture of Heather sleeping beside him in that Las Vegas motel formed in his mind so clearly that he could reach out to hold her tight and safe in his protective arms. He breathed in the pleasant scent that wafted up to his nostrils from her freshly showered body. It was only the smell of a motel soap bar, but anointing Heather’s skin, its aroma surpassed that of the finest perfume.

  Again Mark fought to clear his thoughts. He stared up at the camera in the upper right corner of the cell, letting his frustration and rage boil up. Rising to his feet, Mark coiled his leg muscles and, with a two-stride jump, ripped the camera from its mount, landing on the floor amid a shower of electrical sparks, the short plunging the entire corridor into darkness. Mark stood there for several seconds, listening for an alarm that never sounded. Then, tossing the small camera through the bars, he resumed his former meditative pose.

  In his office, General Wilson picked up his phone on the second ring.

  “Yes?”

  “Smythe just ripped down the camera in his cell. Blew the D13 circuit breaker. Should I send in a crew to repair it?”

  “No. Reroute power but leave the lights in that corridor off.”

  “So you want us to ignore the camera?”

  “That’s the point.”

  “Yes sir.”

  As he hung up the phone, a slow smile spread across Balls Wilson’s face. Unless he missed his guess, they’d just found the first chink in Mark Smythe’s armor.

  The last few days had been some of the most draining of Heather’s life, a strange mixture of psychiatric sessions in which Dr. Jacobs worked to exploit her psychosis, interspersed with psychic communication sessions with Jennifer. Like a soldier crawling under barbed wire while probing the ground ahead with her bayonet, Heather navigated a mental minefield that left her exhausted, but unable to stop for rest.

  Although she was no longer strapped to a hospital bed, the replacement wasn’t much more comfortable. Sometimes she rested better curled up in the corner farthest from the toilet, pretending to sleep the night away.

  Her psychic contacts with Jennifer remained intermittent. Sometimes, depending on the heroin dosage the bastards were feeding into Jen’s veins, Heather couldn’t make contact at all, and sometimes wading through Jen’s mind felt like moving through a pea-soup fog, Jen’s thoughts like shrouded lamps, dimly visible through the haze. It worried Heather horribly. Images of her friend, physically addicted to the dangerous drug, crowded her tired brain.

  For the last two hours Heather had lain on the cell floor, matching her heart rate and breathing to that expected of her sleeping self. Contact had been impossible. She thought about trying to contact Mark, but every attempt at that had met with utter failure. He had erected mental blocks so intense she could barely feel him, much less penetrate them. She could sense that he was close, but whatever torture he was enduring had forced him to erect his mental defenses. Now, as tired as she was, Heather couldn’t bring herself to make another attempt.

  Uncurling, she yawned and stretched, her heart rate gradually climbing to a wakeful rhythm. The cell was dark, but Heather didn’t need to see a clock to know it was three minutes past four in the morning, any more than she needed someone to tell her that meant she was 14,580 seconds into her day.

  As much as she wanted to indulge in a restful meditation, she needed to work out before her doctors and handlers arrived to soak up endless portions of her time. After all the time she’d been strapped down, her muscles needed to work. Heather had a feeling that, when the time came, she was going to need every bit of strength and coordination she could muster. And her Jack Gregory–filled visions whispered that that time was rapidly approaching.

  Shrugging out of the hospital gown, Heather tossed it into the corner, stretched her naked body tall and erect, and filled her lungs with air. Then, breathing out slowly, she shifted into her first yoga pose of the morning.

  Warrior one.

  Constitution Avenue was crowded with cars, the Washington Mall was packed with people, the early evening was hot and muggy, and some damned country singer roamed the Capitol Stage wailing about how rednecks could survive. Freddy shook his head. He hated these July fourth celebrations. It was just like the government to make a special exception to martial law rules in order to squeeze in such a self-congratulatory ceremony during these hard times. He’d seen enough red-white-and-blue-backdropped fireworks-augmented performances to last two lifetimes, but here he was at another. On top of that, his walking leg was rubbing a blister on what was left of his stump.

  But Tall Bear’s message had said to be here, so here he was.

  If he’d been thinking, he’d have brought a blanket to spread out on the lawn along with a cooler full of Bitburger Pils. Glancing around at the security squads roaming through the crowd, Freddy doubted he could have slipped it in.

  Something bumped hard against Freddy’s good leg, almost toppling him. He looked around in time to see two fat blond kids chasing each other through the crowd, weaving in and out of seated groups of people, several expressing the annoyance Freddy felt.

  Maybe the little porkers would pass out in the Washington heat.

  He glanced at his watch. Six fifteen p.m. Tall Bear’s message had said six o’clock. So where the hell was he? Freddy moved a little farther south, his eyes scanning the Capitol steps. No sight of the big Indian cop. At his height and with that long raven hair he should have been easy to spot, even in this mob.

  Freddy spun in a slow circle, shielding his eyes from the sinking sun as he gazed westward toward the white spire of the Washington Monument. A flock of birds rose up from the cherry trees near the Jefferson Memorial, their whirling mass swooping across the green expanse of the mall, briefly eclipsing the bright orange orb before settling into some trees beside Constitution Avenue. Freddy was glad he hadn’t parked over there.

  If anything, the crowd on the mall was getting bigger as people maneuvered for spots they wanted for tonight’s fireworks show. Looking out at the scene, Freddy could almost convince himself that all was well with the country. But DC was a heavily protected green zone, at least this part of DC. The army, marines, and National Guard had done a good job of expanding the number of areas under their control, but that still left large sections of the country subject to something approaching anarchy. Louisiana had been written off as not worth the effort to police and many of the nation’s sparsely populated rural areas had reinterpreted martial law as militia law, maintaining local order at the expense of civil rights. Poor inner-city neighborhoods resembled war zones that police feared to enter and the army regarded as nonessential.

  On the stage, the country band finished its set, thanked the crowd, and exited stage right, replaced by a congressman from the great state of Maryland. Freddy tuned him out and resumed his search. Frustrated, he jostled through the crowd toward the Capitol building. Maybe if he stood on the steps, Tall Bear would find him. Thirty minutes of standing proved him wrong.

  “Screw this,” he muttered, turning to head back toward Union Station and his car.

  The thought of his car brought his hand to his pocket. Freddy froze. His car keys were gone. He checked his hip pocket and breathed out a small sigh of relief. At least he had his wallet. But how the
hell had he lost his keys?

  Instinctively, he patted all his pockets, surprised to feel the key ring bulge in his front left pants pocket. What the hell? He never put his keys in that pocket. Reaching his left hand in to grab them, he felt something else with them. A piece of paper.

  Extracting his keys and the paper, Freddy stared down at it. The paper was a neatly folded piece of heavy vellum. It reminded him of something he’d seen before, although he couldn’t place it.

  Glancing around, Freddy saw nothing out of the ordinary. But someone in the crowd had picked his pocket, then returned his keys, along with the note, in a way sure to get his attention. Staring down at the paper, Freddy undid the four folds. As he stared at the handwriting, the sense of déjà vu enveloped him so strongly it took his breath away.

  This is the second note I’ve sent you, although the first in my own name. You may recall a certain shoebox and necklace that accompanied the first. Be assured, if I wanted to harm you, you’d already be dead. You have some information I want and I believe I can fill in part of the story you’re currently working. If you’re interested, be at the southeast corner of Louisiana and New Jersey at 7:15. I’ll find you. J.G.

  A cold shiver started at the base of Freddy’s neck, radiating up his scalp and down his arms like the kiss of death. Jack Gregory. Somehow, in the midst of all this hyper-security, the Ripper had touched him twice and he hadn’t even noticed, despite the fact he’d been actively studying his surroundings.

  Freddy folded the note and returned it to his pocket along with his keys, then, with another quick glance around, crossed Constitution Avenue onto First. Taking a slight right onto Louisiana, he made his way past the Taft Memorial, reaching the southeast corner of Louisiana and New Jersey Avenues. His watch said 7:08.

  A black Honda Shadow motorcycle squealed to a stop beside him, the rider’s face, hidden behind the helmet’s reflective faceplate, turned toward him.