The resultant electromagnetic pulse would make a lightning bolt seem like a flashbulb by comparison. It would turn Op-Center into an electronic graveyard. The pulse would also cover her tracks for her by erasing the videotapes fed by the security cameras. The military police and FBI would be looking for a talkative blond. One with blue eyes. She popped the colored contact lenses from her eyes and put them in the pocket of her uniform.
When Jacquie was a mile from the base, she pulled over on a narrow back street off Allentown Road. She was just a quarter mile from the Capital Beltway. It was important that she get there as quickly as possible. First, though, there were several things she had to do.
Jacquie slipped the water company signs from the sides of the van. She replaced them with signs she pulled from under the driver’s side floor mat. They read, Interfaith Good News Mobile. She put a bow in her hair and a Bible on the passenger’s seat. She placed a different license tag on the back of the van. The police would not think to stop her. No one would.
The wind was blowing hard, and she did not hear the blast when it came. But she knew the e-bomb had gone off. The rich blue sky over Andrews Air Force Base took on a brief, magnesium-white glow. It arced low just above and through the canopy of oak trees, a man-made aurora borealis that swiftly shaded to yellow, then green, then blue again as it vanished.
Jacquie smiled as she got back into the van. She drove to the highway, careful not to exceed the speed limit. She would return the van to Herndon, then stay in her house for several days. She would say she was sick with the flu while she waited to see the police sketch of the Op-Center bomber. She would be dieting while she was home. If the sketch happened to look like her now, it would not by the time she “got better.”
Ironically, the government would benefit in one way because of what she had done.
The budget for water coolers would go way down.
THIRTY-ONE
Washington, D.C. Tuesday, 2:37 P.M.
It sounded as though someone had popped a very large balloon. Hood’s first thought was that one of Op-Center’s emergency generators had exploded.
Paul Hood was sitting at his desk, his office door closed. He had been looking absently at the computer wallpaper, a crayon drawing of Los Angeles City Hall that Harleigh had done when she was four. He had been replaying the argument with Mike Rodgers, wondering if it could have gone differently, when he heard the burst from down the hall. It was loud enough to make him wince and to clog his ears for several seconds. A moment later the fluorescent lights above began to glow brightly. In front of Hood, the computer wallpaper was replaced by a strange, milky luminescence.
Hood rose slowly. As his ears began to clear, he heard coughing and shouts from beyond his closed door. He heard the people but nothing else. Not the hum of his computer nor the whir of the air conditioner or even the faint electric buzz of the coffee machine. Hood’s left wrist felt warm. He glanced at his watch. The LCD was blank. So was the screen on his cell phone. He removed the watch. Faint ribbons of smoke curled from the battery compartment and also from the cell phone.
“No,” Hood said. He suspected that what had hit Op-Center was not just a burned-out generator or a simple power failure.
He hurried to the door and opened it. The corridor beyond Bugs’s cubicle was filled with wispy, yellowish smoke. The air was rich with the pungent aroma of ozone mixed with the foul smell of melted plastic. He later learned that these were from charred outlet plates, electric wires, and telephone lines.
Bugs was standing in the corridor, fanning away smoke, trying to see. He looked back when Hood emerged.
“What happened?” Hood asked.
“Something blew up in the lounge, I think,” Bugs said. “I tried to call the gate to seal the perimeter, but the phones are fried.”
“Emergency power is gone?” Hood asked.
“Everything.”
“Do we know about casualties?”
“No.”
“Are you okay?” Hood asked.
“Yes.”
“Start getting people toward the stairwell,” Hood said.
“Mike is doing that,” Bugs said.
“Help him,” Hood said.
“Sure,” Bugs said. “Be careful.”
Rodgers and Ron Plummer were the heads of the emergency evac team. The thought of them working together did not fill him with hope but with pride and respect. Differences among Americans always vanished when it mattered.
Hood gave Bugs a reassuring pat on the back just as Matt Stoll appeared from the mist. He was heading in the direction of the blast. Hood went with him.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Hood asked.
“We got kilned,” Stoll said angrily.
“Sorry?”
“Superheated. The only thing I know that could do this is an e-bomb.”
“Are you sure?” Hood asked.
“The glow of the lights, the monitors, is like a fingerprint. Nothing else could cause that.”
“Was it inside the building or out?” Hood asked.
“Inside. I stopped by the Tank, and it was fine. I left Jefferson there to call for help. He was able to raise the front gate, which means they were not affected.”
While all of Op-Center was secure, the Tank was the equivalent of an electronic fallout shelter. The conference room was protected from eavesdropping, hacking, and all manners of attack, including electromagnetic pulse. Stoll had designed it to be a large-scale Faraday cage, a hollow conductor that spread a charge along the outside of a system without producing an electric field inside. That would include a burst from an electromagnetic pulse. Ironically, Hood had believed that the only way they would be affected by an e-bomb is if an Air Force test at Andrews went sour.
Until now.
The smoke and the smell grew stronger as they neared the lounge. Stoll covered his mouth with a handkerchief, but Hood did not. The smoke was not too acrid, and he did not want to appear weak or impaired. That was important in a crisis. The men rounded a corner and entered the lounge.
The small room was clogged with yellow gray smoke. Without ventilation, it hung there, virtually impenetrable.
“Is anyone in here?” Hood shouted.
There was no answer.
“The smoke is from the explosive that triggered the EM burst,” Stoll said. The portly scientist shuffled across the tile so he did not trip over any debris. While Stoll moved deeper, he waved his left hand to help clear the smoke. “The explosion was extremely low yield.”
“How can you tell?” Hood asked. He was following behind, waving both hands and looking for victims.
“For one thing, the explosion did not have to be large to trigger the pulse. For another, I can see the base of the water cooler. The left side is gone. The bomb must have been beside it.”
Hood saw a body. He knelt and bent close. Ugly, twisted pieces of the water cooler base were lodged in the man’s chest. Blood stained his blue shirt thickly. He was not breathing.
“Who is it?” Stoll asked.
“Mac McCallie.” Hood went to where he knew the candy and soda machines were. He fanned away the smoke. The vending machines were damaged, but not badly. Hood continued to feel his way around. There were upended tables and chairs, their legs twisted and surfaces peppered with shrapnel. From below. He felt the tops. They were spotted with blood. That meant they were still standing when McCallie was struck. Stoll was correct. The bomb was probably beside the cooler. Mac must have been here checking on the scheduled water delivery. Bloody damn government contracts like that were public information. Anyone could have gotten it. Hood took a slightly singed dishcloth from the sink and lay it gently across the dead man’s face.
“This was designed to stop us, not kill us,” Stoll said.
“Tell that to Mac,” Hood said.
“Chief, I’m sorry,” Stoll replied. “He was in the wrong place. All I’m saying is that whoever created this wanted to shut Op-Center down.”
Je
fferson Jefferson appeared in the thinning smoke of the doorway. “The base has been sealed, and an emergency rescue team is on the way.”
“Thanks. Now get yourself out of here, but wait for the ERT at the top of the stairs,” Hood said. “Tell them to come here.”
“Yes, sir,” the young man replied. He remained in the doorway for a moment looking at the body on the floor.
“Go,” Hood said.
Jefferson turned and left. Hood heard his footsteps as he retreated. Except for distant voices and Matt’s strained breathing, Hood heard nothing else. Op-Center seemed as lifeless as poor Mac. It was strange. He was able to compartmentalize the death of the man. It was a terrible event, but Hood would mourn later as he had Charlie Squires, Martha Mackall, and too many others. It was much more difficult to get his brain around the idea that Op-Center was a marble-silent tomb. This facility had given his life purpose, the only direction he seemed to have. Absent that, Hood felt as dead as Mac. Except he was still breathing.
Mike would say that means there’s still hope, Hood thought. Maybe that would follow. Right now, all Hood felt was helplessness bordering on fear. He knew he had to get that under control. He had to focus.
Hood went over to Stoll. The computer scientist was squatting beside the jagged ruins of the water cooler and the adjoining debris field. Stoll had removed a penlight from his shirt pocket. He had taken it from an emergency supply kit in the Tank. He was examining the floor closely without touching anything. He looked like a boy studying an anthill.
“Does this tell you anything?” Hood asked.
“The bomb was not homemade,” Stoll said.
“How can you tell?”
“They used eighteen-gauge clear sterling copper wire,” he said through the handkerchief as he pointed with the penlight. “That gives an electromagnetic device a bigger pulse than standard twelve-gauge gold copper wire. But that is only true if the copper is free of impurities. A bomb maker needs some pretty sophisticated thermographic and harmonic testing equipment to qualify wire of that size.”
“I assume the military has that capability,” Hood said. “Who else?”
“A university laboratory, an aircraft or appliance manufacturer, any number of factories,” Stoll told him. “The companion question, of course, is in addition to having the technical wherewithal, who would have the logistical chops to put an e-bomb inside a water bottle?”
“Or a reason,” Hood said, thinking aloud.
“Yeah,” Stoll replied, rising. “I don’t imagine that Chrysler or Boeing has it in for us.”
The emergency rescue team arrived then, their flashlights probing the misty air. The smoke had achieved a consistency that made visibility a little easier. Mike Rodgers was the first man to enter. Seeing him, in command of the team and the situation, gave Hood a boost.
“Be careful where you step,” Rodgers said. “This is a crime scene.”
The four men who followed turned their lights on the floor. They walked carefully to the body of Mac McCallie and tried to revive him.
“Are you two all right?” Rodgers asked Hood and Stoll.
Hood nodded. “Did everyone get out?”
“Yes,” Rodgers said. “Bob complained, but the blast killed all the electronics on his wheelchair, so he did not have much choice. The wheels locked when the servo-mechanisms got fried.”
“Jesus, what about Ron Plummer?” Hood said, suddenly alarmed. “He has a pacemaker—”
“He’s okay,” Rodgers said. “We took him up with Bob. The med techs got to him right away.”
“Thank God,” Hood said. It seemed strange to thank God in the midst of this carnage. But Hood was grateful for that one bit of good news.
Hood, Rodgers, and Stoll moved aside as two of the rescue technicians carried Mac away on a stretcher. They moved quickly, even though there was no need. The other two ERT personnel went deeper into the facility to make sure there were no other injuries or individuals who might have been overcome by smoke.
“The base commander put a team to work getting a generator running,” Rodgers said.
“Matt, how long until the computer monitors and fluorescent lights go dark?” Hood asked.
“It’ll take another ten or fifteen minutes for the internal-system gases to lose the electromagnetic charge,” Stoll said.
“We should probably get out of here, let the cleanup crew draw out the smoke,” Rodgers said.
Hood nodded. The cleanup contingent of the ERT would be moving in with large potassium permanganate air purifiers. These big, fifty-pound units would clear eight hundred cubic feet of air per minute.
The three men headed toward the stairwell. Op-Center looked ghostly, with only the milky glow of the dying overhead lights and monitors.
“Matt, I don’t suppose any of the hardware outside the Tank would have survived,” Hood said.
Stoll shook his head. “Most of the files are backed up there, so at least the data is secure. But it’s going to cost a bundle to replace the nuts and bolts. The computers, the phones, the PalmPilots, the CD and DVD data disks people were using. Even the coffeemakers and minifridges. Hell, we must have at least a thousand lightbulbs that are useless now.”
“You’ve still got your team,” Rodgers said. “And that includes me, Paul. I did not get around to changing the date on my resignation.”
Hood was not a sentimental man, but that one choked him up. He thanked the general, though the sound came out more gulp than word.
“Getting back to who had the ability to pull this off,” Stoll said, “I have to ask if either of you has any idea who might have done this.”
Neither man spoke.
“I mean, it may not be the most tactful question to ask, but could it have been the guys we are investigating?”
“It could be any number of individuals or groups,” Hood said. “Maybe the New Jacobins in Toulouse looking for a little revenge.”
“Forgive me again, but that doesn’t fit,” Stoll went on. As ever, his pursuit of knowledge was chronically unencumbered by tact. “Like I said back there, this could have been designed to produce far more fatalities than it did. The New Jacobins and some of the other people we’ve crossed swords with would have been happy to reduce us all to binary digits.”
“Matt’s right,” Rodgers said. “I know what it’s like to lose a man, Paul, but this was designed as a flash-bang not as a kill shot. Someone wanted to blind us.”
“Who?” Hood asked diplomatically.
The general did not answer. The question became rhetorical rather than leading. The men reached the narrow stairwell. They started up single file. Stoll was in the lead with Rodgers behind him.
“What we should do is plan to meet in the Tank as soon as possible,” Hood went on. “Put all the possibilities on the table and cross-reference them with known modi operandi.”
“I don’t think we’ll be able to go back down there today,” Rodgers said. “Which is just as well, because I want to do some nosing around.”
“Need any help?” Hood asked.
“No,” Rodgers said firmly.
Hood left it at that. What was implied was far more important than what was said. Rodgers wanted to make sure that Op-Center’s investigation of Admiral Link had not hit a nerve.
The men reached the parking lot on the south side of the building. There was a small picnic area with tables. Op-Center employees stood and sat around them, alone and in very small groups. A few were smoking, even fewer were talking. It was strange to see no one using a cell phone or laptop. The blast had destroyed them all. There were misty clouds inside the cars parked nearest to the building. Their electronic components had also been burned out.
Most eyes turned to Hood when he emerged. The team knew, intuitively, that he would be the last man out.
Hood moved among the group to where Bob Herbert was sitting. He wanted to make sure his colleague was okay. Herbert said he was. He said it without emotion, which bordered on disinterest to Hood.
But at least there was no anger. That was progress. Hood then told his team about Mac McCallie. There were a few moans of disbelief and several quiet oaths. Mac could be a severe pain in the butt who damn near counted every staple. But he was a professional who put in long hours. If employees needed something to do their job, he made sure they got it, ASAP. Hood also promised that they would find whoever had infiltrated their organization and planted the bomb.
The 89th Medical Group was stationed at Andrews, and ambulances began arriving to give each of the dozens of employees an on-site examination. Installation commander Brigadier General Bill Chrysler also arrived by staff car. Hood stepped from the group to meet him.
It was just now hitting the director that his facility had been e-bombed. Op-Center had been virtually destroyed. Hood felt violated, overwhelmed, and demoralized. Paradoxically, he was also starting to feel what Liz Gordon had once called “impotent rage,” the desire to lash out in the absence of a target. Worse, he knew he had to stifle every one of those feelings. Unless the team was very lucky, this would not be a quick fix nor an easy one. And finding the perpetrator was not the only immediate problem. Hood also had to make sure that the CIOC or the press did not start positioning this as a publicity stunt or a grab for additional funding. He also had to make certain that the CIOC did not decide that it was easier to shut down Op-Center than to fix it. After what Hood hoped would be a brief meeting with Chrysler, his top priority would be to get in touch with Debenport and let him know that Op-Center was vigorously pursuing the investigation of the USF Party.
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