Impact (Fuzed Trilogy Book 1)

by David E Stevens

After a few seconds, he sensed his presence.

  “I know I’ve been a pain to work with, and I apologize. Thank you for all that you’ve done for me.” Not wanting to dwell on his past, he said, “Mind if I ask some more questions?”

  He took Jesse’s silence as a yes, and began, “Tomorrow’s the biggest holiday of the world’s largest religion. I’ve been reading some of the ancient religious texts, the Bible, Qur’an, Talmud and Veda. They’re pretty bizarre.” He shrugged. “But then so is cosmology and quantum mechanics. If we set aside unprovable religious beliefs, including infinite universes, we have a paradox. Can you help me with that?”

  How did the universe start?

  “The Big Bang.”

  How did The Big Bang begin?

  “Here we go again. From an infinitely small, infinitely dense point called a singularity.”

  Where did the singularity come from?

  “Don’t know. Since The Big Bang created space and time, it’s like trying to give birth to a baby without the mother.” He paused. “And if the singularity was birthed along with the laws of physics, it had to operate under quantum mechanics. That creates another paradox. To set the state, to lock the singularity into reality, we need an observer, which is impossible. Or we need infinite universes, which is unprovable.”

  How do you know there was no observer?

  He shook his head. “Because nothing can exist outside of space and time!”

  Then what initiated The Big Bang?

  “Exactly!” He walked for a few moments, thinking. He had been surprised to learn that the majority of the world’s population believed in a Supreme Being. “You’re not suggesting that some type of consciousness could have been the ‘observer’ that initiated The Big Bang?”

  What does science say?

  He shrugged. “Most scientists would probably say they can’t exclude the possibility, but don’t believe a supreme being is required to explain the universe.”

  What do you think?

  “I believe that too, but unless we accept infinite universes on blind faith — which really just pushes the paradox further back — the universe’s existence isn’t possible.”

  Yet, here we are.

  He took a deep breath. “It seems awfully bio-centric to think that instead of sentient life being the result of inanimate matter ... inanimate matter might be the result of sentient life.” With a wry smile, he added, “Yet, it’s the one area where cutting-edge physics and our crazy spiritual beliefs intersect.” He shook his head. “Just have a hard time imagining some invisible entity influencing the universe.”

  Dark Energy?

  He laughed. “Touché!” Shaking his head with a smile, he said, “Good night Jesse and merry Christmas.”

  The President of the United States, Jeff Yager, was tired. It was only a couple weeks after Christmas, and he was already juggling marbles, bowling balls and nuclear weapons. As he wrapped up a discussion on North Korea with his Director of National Intelligence and the CIA Director, he looked down at his notebook and saw one more action he could check off. “Buster, you know that black program you asked me about a few days ago? The one that’s messing with your spy satellite program?”

  “Resurrect?”

  “Yes. I checked with the cabinet, joint chiefs and NASA. None of them know anything about it.”

  Buster and the DNI both frowned.

  Buster said, “I didn’t expect that.” He paused. “Then, we really need to get to the bottom of this!”

  The President caught a slightly raised eyebrow from the DNI. They both knew Buster’s reputation. His appointment was the result of political realities. Buster was a lawyer and a strong leader, but tended toward a “Fire, Ready, Aim” mentality.

  Looking Buster in the eye, the President said, “Let’s find out a little more before we start kicking in doors. Maybe it’s a legacy project from a past administration. I’ll check with them. If we don’t get anything concrete, then you can go ahead with an investigation.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Davidson listened to Buster summarize the conversation with the President.

  Buster finished with, “Let’s go ahead and get a jump start on this. If the President finds out it’s from a previous administration, we can stop the investigation.”

  Davidson said, “I’ll call Lafferty at the Bureau.”

  “Wait a minute, this is our baby!”

  He looked at Buster with some surprise. “What little we know suggests it’s all based in the U.S.”

  “Brian, I know what our jurisdiction is, but this is impacting our spy satellite, and I hate telling the President I don’t know about something in the black world. Besides, you mentioned Antarctica. That’s not FBI jurisdiction.”

  “The South Pole isn’t anyone’s jurisdiction, but I’ll broach the idea of keeping operational lead with Lafferty.” He paused. “Sir, you might want to call the FBI Director yourself. I think Jay Jost will be more receptive if the request comes directly from you.”

  Buster nodded.

  Davidson knew there was something strange going on but didn’t want to spool up the Director, not yet. The intelligence world was painted in shades of gray, but Buster only saw the world in black and white. He looked right at Buster and said, “We need to proceed with kid gloves on this.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  35

  PENETRATION

  Davidson met with the Deputy Director of the FBI, Bart Lafferty. He knew Lafferty well, having worked with him on past projects. Like Davidson, Lafferty was a career agent who started on the streets and worked his way up. A big man, he fit the classic, tough, Irish cop profile with a mop of reddish hair going rapidly gray. Brian knew looks were deceiving. Lafferty was a Stanford grad and a gentleman.

  Davidson ran through everything they knew.

  Lafferty had no problem with the CIA keeping operational lead, and they agreed the first thing they needed was someone on the inside.

  Lafferty said, “It’ll be hard to spin-up an agent with enough technical background to pass ‘em off as an insider.”

  Davidson agreed. “Let’s find someone already in the program and ‘turn’ them.”

  “Brian, you guys have more experience converting the opposition to the dark side. What do you suggest?”

  “We start at the top.”

  Lafferty gave him a questioning look.

  “We need to befriend the program’s senior office manager. We’ve already identified her. She’s very experienced and highly respected.”

  Lafferty nodded. “Despite affirmative action, they’re still almost always women, aren’t they?”

  Davidson shrugged. “I think it’s because men suck at multi-tasking. Women are more competent at running the complexities of an office populated with people.”

  “But will she have access to the classified information we need?”

  Davidson said, “Many office managers are read into the programs because they have to handle the administration, but that’s not why we need her. Women are actually less likely to leak classified information. The reason we need her is that she can help us identify our mole. She has the most important information.” He smiled. “She knows the office politics and where the skeletons are buried.”

  “So in the government and engineering world, who makes a good mole?”

  “Human nature is the same whether pipe fitter or PhD. We look for people who either have something to hide or an ax to grind.”

  Kevin Yankovic was the CIA agent assigned to find an informant. Working with the FBI, their cover story was that he was from the Government Accounting Office. It wasn’t unusual for the GAO to take an interest in government-funded programs at contractor facilities. Yankovic had an intuitive ability to read people ... with the exception of his teenage daughter. The young FBI agent they had inserted supplied him with a description of the major team players. After studying their profiles, he believed he had two potential candidates.

  They borrowed
the office of the local Defense Contract Management Agency’s Commanding Officer. As his first candidate arrived, Yankovic opened with a low-threat approach. “Dr. Shepherd, thank you for seeing me on such short notice. I know you’re a very busy man.”

  Shepherd nodded nervously.

  “The reason I wanted to talk to you is that we are aware that you are part of a program we’re concerned about. Along with the FBI, we are investigating funding irregularities. We need to determine if there is a need for a criminal investigation. As the program’s logistics expert, we wanted to talk to you first.” Yankovic knew very well that in the government and contractor world, a GAO visit to your program was like an IRS audit of your tax return.

  Shepherd fidgeted and didn’t make eye contact.

  Yankovic continued, “You know the program I’m speaking of?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” He paused, looking around. “I knew there was something wrong.”

  Yankovic leaned forward. “And why is that?”

  “I have three degrees, 17 certifications and over 35 years of experience in my field, but they act like I don’t know what I’m talking about. I told them their site was poor and their timeline was preposterous, but did they listen to me? No. They bring in some Ruski who has no degree and no certifications.”

  The reference to the Russian was interesting, but he had to let the fish run with the line. “Yes, I can certainly understand your frustration.” He listened sympathetically as Shepherd continued to complain. He had one more interview, but he was sure he had his mole.

  After 20 more minutes, Yankovic actually felt sorry for anyone who had to work with this guy. He called this type of personality the “all knowing black cloud.” They never quite understood that, even though they were knowledgeable, no one wanted to listen to them because they always focused on why things couldn’t be done rather than how to do them.

  Davidson stopped by Buster’s office. “We got our informant. It wasn’t easy. Most of those involved are fiercely loyal to the program and its leaders.”

  Buster asked, “How’d you do it?”

  “Our agent established a relationship with the office manager. She’s been extremely helpful.”

  Buster winked, “A little undercovers work?”

  Davidson shook his head. “Actually the office manager is a grandmother. All it took was inserting a young lady from the Bureau posing as a new office assistant. She made friends with the office matriarch and just asked her who to watch out for.”

  Looking a little disappointed, Buster asked, “So, who’s our mole?”

  Agency policy was never to use names, even in closed meetings. Davidson said, “He’s one of the team’s experts and sits in on most key meetings. The office manager told our agent no one likes him. Apparently, he believes most of the people in the program think he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and it makes him look incompetent in front of his team.” Looking at Buster, Davidson suddenly felt uncomfortable.

  Buster nodded, oblivious to the parallel.

  Two months after discovering the beam correction problem, Katori and Chandra called a meeting to discuss the progress. Smaller than usual, it included just the core engineers, physicists, Meadows, Smith and Josh.

  Chandra started. “We tested Josh’s crazy idea of burning a hole through the atmosphere. It worked! At least in the lab. We figured out the correct frequency and power needed, and then we passed it to Katori’s team to do the hard stuff.”

  Josh noticed Katori had bags under his eyes and looked as if he’d been sleeping in his clothes. Cho, sitting next to him, didn’t look much better.

  “It’s harder than we thought.” Katori whispered, having lost his voice. “Two beams with different frequencies and power, fired from the same place within milliseconds.” He paused for effect. “But we did it ... or at least we think we did. It was our youngest engineer, Greg Langlois, who came up with the solution.”

  Cho nodded. “It worked on our scale model Blaster at low power. We think it will work full scale, but it’ll require replacing components after each firing.”

  Meadows shook their hands. “Awesome! I’m impressed and proud of you and your team.” Continuing gently, “What does this mean as far as our timeline?”

  Katori rubbed his eyes. “We need to talk about that. This redesign put us behind schedule about six weeks.”

  Meadows glanced at Chandra.

  She said, “These guys have been working their butts off, living on a few hours of sleep, but every day that passes makes the comet that much harder to deflect.”

  Meadows said, “Steve, Garrett, fantastic work! Please pass our congratulations to your team.” Looking down at his program schedule, he added, “That pushes the first firing at the pole back to May seventh, three months from today.” Looking back at them, he said quietly, “I have to ask you to look carefully at your timeline and critical path. See if there’s anything we can do to pull the schedule forward ... anything at all.”

  Davidson, sitting in Buster’s office said, “The informant is giving us excellent information. This thing’s bigger than we thought. They’re trying to build the world’s most powerful laser to deflect Earth-impacting comets, and they’re going to put it near the South Pole. Our agent says that by all appearances it looks like a genuine program. They have highly respected engineers, military officers and astrophysicists on the team. They seem to have plenty of funding. We don’t know the source, but our accountants don’t see any illegal transfer of government funds or anything from offshore.”

  Buster nodded. “Sounds like a good program.”

  Davidson said, “Yes....”

  “But?”

  “They’re operating under a tight timeline due to a possible comet impact in a little over a year.”

  Buster laughed. “A comet hitting the earth? That’s crazy.”

  “Actually, Chen from the Science Directorate says comets are a real threat.” He paused. “What raises the warning flag is that the experts say there are no known comets that will come anywhere near the earth.”

  Buster shrugged. “Could they have detected a new one?”

  “Our people say that if any observatory found a new one, everyone would know immediately, and this project claims they’ve known about it for almost a year.”

  “Where do they claim the information came from?”

  “Our informant says no one knows. It’s classified, even to them.”

  “Who’s the ring leader?”

  “Navy Captain Joe Meadows. He was captain of the aircraft carrier USS Ford.” Looking at his folder, Davidson added, “He’s a highly decorated officer with a good reputation. He’d be an admiral today if it hadn’t been for a fire that destroyed some new fighters right after he assumed command. He works for NAVAIR, you know, Admiral Hendricks.”

  “Let me guess; Hendricks doesn’t know anything about this.”

  “No, but that’s not impossible. There are black programs that cross service and agency boundaries.”

  Buster said, “Could Meadows have been ‘turned’ by a foreign power because his career was ruined by the fire?”

  “Anything’s possible, but he holds the highest clearances and was in the PRP program.”

  “PRP?”

  “Personnel Reliability Program. They continuously evaluate the stability of those who have particularly sensitive jobs, like carrying a live nuclear weapon in a single seat fighter. Meadows’ profile and career indicate he’s about as stable and ethical as they get. If he were on the other side, we wouldn’t even think about trying to turn him.”

  Buster frowned. “He has to report to someone. This isn’t rocket science.”

  Davidson smiled. “Actually, it is rocket science.”

  Buster didn’t smile.

  Davidson continued, “Short of bringing Meadows in for questioning, we can’t be sure who he reports to. I don’t think we want to do that yet. If we’re investigating a genuine program, we risk compromising it, not to mention embar
rassing ourselves. If it isn’t genuine, then we tip our hand.”

  “Are there any other significant players?”

  Davidson pushed several pictures across the desk to Buster. “Yes, but they read like a who’s who of science and engineering. NASA’s Dr. Victoria Chandra, Boeing’s Dr. Steve Katori and the famous psychiatrist Dr. Sheri Lopez, to name a few. There are, however, two on the team who do have my interest. One is a Russian-born construction expert, Christoff Bobinski, and the other guy appears to run the funding side.”

  Buster frowned. “I don’t care about the accountant. What about the Russian? What do we know about him?”

  Davidson knew Buster was from a different era and had an inherent distrust of their old Cold War adversaries. “Sir, the Russian is a naturalized American citizen and renowned construction expert. We actually have a dossier on him from the Cold War era. He had little use for the Communist Party. We’re doing more background work on him, but he’ll be easy to track.” Davidson paused. “I’m more interested in the accountant. We’ve broken a lot of terrorist operations by following the money trail.”

  “Who is he?”

  “His name is Commander Josh Fuze.”

  “What do we have on him?”

  “Absolutely nothing. That’s why I’m interested.”

  36

  DOUBT

  It was only two months to the first test firing. Chandra and Katori stopped Meadows and Josh after one of the technical meetings and asked if they could talk privately. They went to Meadows’ office. Smith was already there.

  Chandra began, “Joe, we trust your leadership and we’re totally committed to this program, but there are things that....” She stopped. “Well, there have been some questions.” She glanced guiltily at Josh.

  Josh knew where this was going.

  Meadows asked, “Like what?”