Breaking Point

by Tom Clancy

  “Colonel Ventura,” the guard said. He saluted. “Good to see you again, sir.”

  Morrison’s roommate of last night, Missey, was at the wheel. As they drove through the gate in a ten-foot-tall chainlink fence topped with coils of razor wire, Morrison said, “Colonel Ventura? What is this place?”

  “The rank is honorary,” Ventura said. “I did some work for the man who runs the place, once. And let’s call it a ... patriot compound.”

  There was a car in front of them with Ventura’s operatives, and one behind them, special vehicles rented at a place Morrison didn’t think was going to run Hertz out of business. The guy who provided the cars had been covered in what looked like Maori tattoos, including his face, and the deal had been done in cash.

  The drive from there had turned into a ride in the country, about forty-five minutes’ worth to this place.

  Morrison put two and two together: Idaho, men with guns in paramilitary gear, razor wire. “Some kind of militia group,” he said. “Neo Nazis or white supremacists?”

  “Let’s just say if you were black, it would be a lot harder to call in the favor.”

  “Jesus.”

  “These people speak very highly of him, yes, but I doubt he spends much time here.”

  Morrison shook his head.

  “Then again, it is unlikely in the extreme that anybody will sneak in here and kidnap you,” Ventura said. “Certainly not anybody of the Oriental persuasion.”

  “I thought you said the Chinese wouldn’t send somebody who looked Chinese.”

  They passed another trio of armed men in jungle camo sitting on or standing next to a military vehicle, a Hummer or Humvee or whatever. The three silently watched the cars go past, and when Morrison looked back, he saw one of the men hold up a com and speak into it.

  “That’s only if they want to sneak up on you. The Chinese don’t like to delegate certain functions—they don’t trust each other, much less round-eyes. If you arrange a meeting with them for something they want, they’ll send someone who looks and acts the part. They won’t want you to doubt their sincerity.”

  The narrow dirt road curved through another thick patch of woods, then into a cleared space maybe three or four acres big, with several prefab metal and wooden buildings centered in the clearing, all painted a drab olive green. A big air-conditioner rumbled in the background, spewing vapor into the hot afternoon.

  There were more military-style vehicles, more armed men—as well as several armed women—and a pair of flags flying from a tall wooden pole in front of the largest of the structures. There was Old Glory, and under it, a shining white flag with what looked like a pair of crossed yellow lightning bolts over a line drawing of a hand.

  “Sons of Pure Man,” Ventura said, watching Morrison as he looked at the flags. “Empowered by God Almighty to smite the wicked, scourge the impure, and kick the asses of anybody else who would mongrelize the true race.”

  “These people are friends of yours?” Morrison said.

  “These people will help me keep the wily Chinese from grabbing you, draining you dry, and then smiling politely as they hand your widow your head with an apple stuffed into its mouth, on a platter. We aren’t family here, but allies are where you find them—sometimes you have to overlook a few little cultural or philosophical differences.”

  Morrison sighed, but didn’t say anything else. Ventura had a point. He was about to go into negotiations with people who had been wise in the ways of political and court intrigue for five thousand years. Being ruthless was not a problem for a culture with as much practice at it as they had. And he had hired Ventura for his expertise. As long as he did the job, Morrison didn’t care how.

  “So now you put in a call to your friend the used car buyer and invite him to drop round for a little chat. He won’t like it, but he’ll come, especially if he’s figured out who you are, and that you might indeed have something worth selling.”

  “And after that?”

  “Well, once they know you are where they can’t get to you, then we can leave. Further communication can be relayed through here—the general has quite an up-to-date collection of electronics—and with any luck, we can keep them believing you are still here until the deal is done.”

  “And after the deal is done—if it is?”

  “One step at a time, Dr. Morrison. We’ll burn that bridge when we have to burn it. Oh, and by the way, after we step out of the car? Assume that everything we say is being monitored—because it probably is. They can’t hear us in here because we’re protected by certain devices, but outside, you can book it that somebody will have a shotgun mike or even a laser reader on us at all times.”

  “ ‘Allies,’ you said?”

  “Trust no one and no one can betray you. Just good tactics is all. Ah. There’s the general, come to welcome us.”

  Jackson “Bull” Smith was no more a general than Ventura was a colonel, save to the bunch of mouthbreathers who hut-hut-hutted around his compound in the Idaho woods. Thirty years ago, Smith had been an Army infantryman, done some fighting in the Middle East, and more ground-pounding in one of the never-ending eastern European wars, but he’d never gotten past master sergeant, and that only when he got tapped to serve in the unit quartermasters, where he spent his last two tours. Still, he knew the Army way as well as any decent NCO, had seen legitimate action—he had a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star—and he was very canny. It was true you couldn’t run an army without sergeants, and Smith knew the ropes well enough to organize a bunch of half-assed warrior-wannabes into a fair imitation of soldierly discipline. At the very least, they were good robbers, because that was chiefly how they raised their operating funds. So far, they had knocked over supermarkets, banks, a theater multiplex, an armored car, and a small Indian casino, all without being caught or losing a man, and without killing too many bystanders. Ventura knew their M.O., and he’d sort of halfway kept track. Smith’s boys had stolen somewhere in the range of six to seven million dollars in the last year alone, Ventura guessed.

  You could buy a lot of Idaho backwoods and MREs for seven million dollars.

  As Smith stepped forward to shake his hand, Ventura nodded crisply at the man, a choppy, military bow. “General.”

  “Please, Luther, it’s ‘Bull.’ ”

  Ventura suppressed a smile. Yeah, he thought it was bull, too. “I don’t want to break discipline in front of the men.”

  “Understood,” Smith said.

  Ventura didn’t know how much of the pure race crap Smith really believed, if any. The money and power were probably a lot more attractive, since Smith’s history, military and otherwise, didn’t show any particular contention with or hatred of any of the “mongrel” races until lately, but—you never knew. Pushing sixty, ole Bull here had been at this militia game for about ten years. He was living high on the hog, considering the location. Good food, good booze, women, toys, and the admiration and obedience of a couple hundred men, give or take. There were a lot worse ways to spend your time if you were an old ex-sergeant with no other skills.

  Five years ago, when Ventura had still been in the assassination business, Smith had contacted him the usual roundabout way, and they had struck a deal. A certain influential politician in the Idaho statehouse—if that wasn’t an oxymoron—had been standing in the way of Smith’s acquisition of this very compound, something to do with land use, or butting up against state forestry property or some such. The politician, a state senator, knew what Bull and the boys were up to, and there was too much of that going on in Idaho already, the state was getting a real bad reputation. Tourists didn’t want to come and see the boys playing war games—at least, not the kind of tourists the state wanted. It was bad for business if little junior went out picking berries and got mowed down by a bunch of gun-happy paramilitary goons who mistook him for an enemy, or Bambi, as had happened at least once.

  If he couldn’t stop it legally, there were some shadier ways to get things done, and the senat
or knew how to do them. This, of course, played right into Bull’s conspiracy fantasies.

  So. The politician died in what the coroner said was an accident, and Smith got the property he wanted. And Bull was not a man to forget somebody who’d done him a service.

  “General, I’d like to introduce Professor Morrison. The doctor here is doing some secret work for the Navy and Air Force, and naturally we don’t trust them to keep him safe for our mission.”

  “Understood,” Smith said. He offered his hand to Morrison, who took it. “There are traitors everywhere.”

  “Sad, but true,” Ventura said.

  “I’ll have my adjutant show your people where to bivouac, and you and the professor can join me for dinner.”

  “Excellent idea, General,” Ventura said.

  When Smith was a few yards ahead of them, Morrison said, “How are you going to explain a Chinese agent coming here to see me?”

  “What, a turncoat chink double-agent? We’re feeding false information to our gook enemies, Doctor, you know that. The general understands how espionage works. He keeps his ears open.” Ventura tapped his own ear, and hoped that the man would remember what he’d said about being watched and listened to.

  Morrison remembered. “Ah. Yes, I see you’re right. A man in the general’s position would know these things.”

  “Of course. Hell of a soldier, Bull Smith, and a credit to the Race.” He turned slightly so that Morrison’s head would block any camera that might see his face, and gave the man a quick wink.

  He also reached around and adjusted the paddle holster in his waistband. The general’s people were probably fairly loyal, not counting the undercover federal ops that must have infiltrated by now; still, Condition Orange applied here, just as it did everywhere else. If need be, he could pull the Coonan from concealment and get off two shots in about a second. Not a patch on John Wesley Hardin out of a hip-slung rig, maybe, but still pretty damned fast from under a vest. And until they got inside with Smith, his people would have his back covered.

  So far, so good. Pretty soon, though, it was going to get a lot more interesting.

  16

  Saturday, June 11th

  Washington, D.C.

  The voice was female, sexy, throaty, and designed so that everything it said seemed like an urgent request to go to bed with it: “Alex? We have a Priority One Com. Alex? We have a Priority One Com. Alex—?”

  “All right, I heard you already! Computer answer page off, please.”

  Next to him, voice thick with sleep, Toni said, “I thought you were going to change that voice.”

  “I haven’t been able to figure out a way around Jay’s program.”

  “And you’re supposed to be the head of Net Force.”

  “Yeah, well, Jay is the best programmer in Net Force, now isn’t he?” To the computer, Michaels said, “Answer com, visual off.”

  “Hey, Boss.”

  Speak of the devil. “What, Jay?”

  “Sorry to bother you at home this early, but you said I should let you know if I got something on this, uh, Chinese business. Well, I think you might want to see this.”

  Michaels looked at the clock. Too early. “All right. You want to download it here?”

  “Probably not the best idea, Boss. It needs telling.”

  Michaels sighed. “I’ll be at the office in an hour.”

  When Jay was off the com, Michaels turned to Toni. “Another crisis.”

  “I remember them.”

  “Why don’t you come with me?”

  “I quit, remember?”

  “Your job is waiting for you—I haven’t hired anybody to replace you.”

  “Let’s hold off on that. I still need to sort all this out.”

  He smiled. “I thought we had done that.” He waved at their mutual lack of clothes under the sheet.

  “No, we resolved the personal issue. I’m still working on the business stuff.”

  “Come along as a visitor, then.”

  “No, you go ahead. I think I’m going to sleep in.”

  “Be here when I get back?”

  “Maybe.”

  They both grinned.

  Quantico, Virginia

  Michaels leaned back. “Okay, you got me down here. Speak.”

  Jay said, “Well, I can tell you the theory. Still doesn’t prove that it works.”

  “I left a warm bed to come hear this, Jay. I take your point. Go.”

  “All right. Background stuff: Generally speaking, the human brain operates over a fairly small bioelectrical frequency range, and while there is some overlap, these are usually divided into four parts:

  “The mental state Beta, sometimes called ‘beta waves,’ is from 13 to 30 Hz. This is the so-called ‘normal’ level of awareness. At the top end, at around 30 Hz or a bit higher, you have states of agitation—anger, fear, stress, etc.—but most conscious human thinking is done in this range.

  “Below Beta is the Alpha state, from 8 to 13 Hz, and this is normally associated with a relaxed, mellow state of mind, kind of daydreamy, but with an increased ability to concentrate. This frequency is easily achieved by such things as meditation or self-hypnosis. For more than forty years there have been devices—biofeedback, or ‘brain wave synthesizers’—that help produce Alpha, and you can pick up one in any large electronic or new age store. Some people supposedly can do it just by rolling their eyes back in their sockets.”

  Michaels nodded. He’d read about this stuff somewhere along the way. It sounded vaguely familiar. “I’m still awake.”

  Jay continued: “Beneath Alpha is Theta, at 4 to 7 Hz, and this is generally a state of very deep concentration, such as advanced meditation or devoted prayer, and it includes intense waking memories, and lucid dreaming.

  “Under Theta, we have Delta waves, from 0.5 to 7 Hz, and these frequencies were once thought to occur only in deep sleep. Certain people, however, such as Indian yogi adepts or Tibetan priests, have been able to produce Delta states on demand, and while appearing to be asleep, fully participate in and recall conversations later when they are ‘awake.’

  “There are some variations, and some people run higher or lower, but that’s pretty much the basic model.”

  “All right,” Michaels said. “So now I know about brain frequencies.”

  Jay nodded. “Over the years, various agencies of various governments have tried broadcasting certain extremely low-frequency radio waves in an effort to alter human consciousness. In the fifties, the Russians had something called Lida, a machine that supposedly rendered people susceptible to hypnosis. The North Koreans had variations of this during the Korean War, used on American POWs. They didn’t work very well, but that was not for want of trying.

  “For years, back in the old Soviet Union, the Russians beamed microwaves at the American Embassy in Moscow, centered on the ambassador’s office. The CIA discovered this in 1962, and some effects on various ambassadors were speculated upon, including a leukemia-like illness, and a couple of deaths from cancer. Nothing proven.

  “In 1976, ham radio operators around the world noticed a peculiar signal originating in the Soviet Union that came to be known as the ‘Russian Woodpecker,’ from the staccato way it interfered with their radios. This signal was thought to come from big Tesla transmitters, and was thought by the CIA to be designed to depress or irritate the recipient.”

  “Tesla? Like the Tesla coil?”

  Jay grinned. “Let me tell you about Nikola Tesla. There are some who believe the Tunguska Event—an explosion estimated in the 10-to-15-megaton range that blew down half a million acres of pine forest in Siberia in 1908—was either a test—or a malfunction—of one of Tesla’s giant transmitters.”

  “I thought it was a comet,” Michaels said.

  “You probably think Oswald shot JFK, too, Boss. Merely a cover story, according to the conspiracy theorists. Some say it was an alien spaceship, others a runaway black hole, others a speck of antimatter, but, hey, my mone
y is on Tesla. He was a certified genius. Aside from being the guy who came up with and patented the idea of alternating current, thus helping George Westinghouse to become filthy rich, he created working fluorescent lights long before Edison’s uncredited lab monkey made the less efficient incandescent bulb. Tesla patented all kinds of stuff. His work was the basis for the X-ray machine. He sued Marconi—and won—for swiping his work to create radio. Tesla came up the ideas that would later become radar and tomography.

  “Listen, in 1904, in Colorado Springs, he built a big power generator for his wireless power transmission experiments. Using what he called ‘terrestrial stationary waves,’ he lit two hundred lightbulbs twenty-five miles away by pumping juice into the ground, no wires. He could generate artificial lightning bolts of a couple to three hundred thousand watts that were more than a hundred and thirty-five feet long; you could hear the thunder fifteen miles away in town. He was waaay ahead of his time, so he certainly had the smarts and gear to knock down a few trees. It would have been the last in a long line of tests that—some say—included sinking the French ship Iena by electrical bolts generated miles away.”

  “Apparently Tesla didn’t much care for the French,” Alex said, smiling.

  “He didn’t care much for anybody,” Jay said. “Anyway, in 1906, J. P. Morgan financed Tesla, and he built a bigger generator than the one in Colorado, this was on Long Island. Eighteen stories tall, topped with a huge metal globe that weighed more than fifty-five tons. Eventually he and Morgan had a falling out, and he made a couple of bad choices, so he ran out of money before he proved it could work. According to his theory, you could focus the power just right, and turn it into what would essentially be a death ray with the power of a small nuke, and send it anywhere on the planet by bouncing it off the ionosphere.”

  “Fascinating, Jay. Are we getting to the point any time today?”

  “There’s a great story about Tesla going to a bridge with a hammer and a stopwatch, tapping the metal at precise intervals, and damn near taking the bridge down with the Galloping Gertie effect. I’m telling you, Tesla was head and shoulders above everybody else of his time.”