by Nancy Madore
“I beg your pardon, but your security people could be mistaken, sir,” said Will.
Benderman waved Will’s comment aside, as if swatting a fly. “I’m not going by them!” he said. “I verified it myself at the first mention of a breach—right after your phone call this morning. I had Ritter here, check all the videos—including those in the control room—for last night. There was no suspicious activity whatsoever. And Miss Molten went over the computer logs with a fine-tooth comb. There was nothing out of the ordinary there, either.”
“Is it possible that your computer system could have been hacked into?” asked Gordon.
Benderman turned to his executive officer, Colonel Ritter, who smiled pleasantly as he prepared to explain. “It is always possible,” he said, “though in this case it’s highly unlikely. We have a multilevel firewall, and the network that speaks to the HAARP towers isn’t accessible through any other network. It’s completely off the grid, except to those who have access to it. But even if it had, somehow, been hacked into, we would be able to track any unusual activity on the computer logs. Everything that happens—every little hiccup—is registered on those logs. And as the lieutenant-general told you, Trish went over last night’s log very carefully and didn’t find a thing.”
“So you see Mr. Tallon, we have taken immediate steps to address your concerns and assist your investigation,” said Benderman. “As well, we’ve limited our own inquiries because we respect the security level that you’re working under. But I’m afraid we must conclude that any attempt to breach our system—if, in fact, there was one—has failed. I can assure you that we’ll…”
“The target is HAARP, sir,” interjected Clive, who hadn’t opened his mouth until that moment. Everyone turned to him in surprise. “If that formula goes through, the HAARP towers and everything within a hundred miles of them will be destroyed, including, possibly, this facility.”
Benderman stared at him as if mesmerized.
“We had the formula analyzed,” Clive explained. “We’re currently sitting on the bulls eye.”
“It…might not hurt to have another look at last night’s activity,” remarked Patricia Molten. “You know…make sure everything is running on course.”
“So you are running the towers today then!” said Gordon.
“No,” replied Ms. Molten. “We don’t activate the antenna during the day anymore, at HAARP’s request. It helps cut down on complaints from Gakona residents. The people are afraid of the towers. They blame them for everything from the flu to their troubled teenagers.”
“How often do you use the antenna?” asked Will.
“Not very often at all,” she said. “Every couple of months, maybe, if that.”
“But you used them last night,” concluded Gordon.
No one denied it. Patricia Molten had removed her laptop from her briefcase and was setting it up on the table.
The more concerned everyone else became—they were all showing signs of anxiety by now—the more composed Benderman seemed to become. “As I stated before,” he said to Will—“even if there was an attempt to breach the control room last night, we must conclude that it failed. Wouldn’t that, in fact, explain Gerard’s disappearance?"
“Possibly,” conceded Gordon. “But it could also mean that they’re still trying to get in.”
“It goes without saying that we will bump up security after this,” said Benderman. “I can assure you that we will have people watching the control room and all computer activity around the clock.”
“Wasn’t Thomas Gerard the head of this facility’s security system?” asked Will.
“But there again,” objected Benderman—“we’re talking about apples and oranges. Gerard ran the security system that keeps people out of the restricted areas of the building. He managed locks and video cameras…that kind of thing. He wouldn’t have had access to our computer programs.”
“Everything appears to be normal,” said Patricia, glancing up from her computer screen. “The program is saying that last night’s project was completed successfully.”
“What project was that?” asked Clive.
“I’m sorry, but that’s classified information,” replied Benderman.
“Are you sure the program that was completed successfully is the program you intended to run?” asked Gordon.
“Benderman could be right,” mused Clive in a side note to Will. “If the program’s already completed—and we’re all still sitting here—that’s a good sign, right?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” interjected Patricia—“We don’t just release energy into the ionosphere and get an immediate result. We study the results of our experiments over hours, days and sometimes even years.”
“That’s not very reassuring,” mumbled Clive.
“But again, I have to agree with the lieutenant-general on this,” she continued. “This program records every single step in the process. Look.” She turned her computer towards them and pointed to the activity log on her screen. “Here’s where the project data was initially entered last night. You can see that the data then went through three separate check points, to ensure accuracy, and only then was it sent to the control center to activate the towers. Throughout this process there were no interruptions, alterations—nothing.”
“What are these things?” asked Gordon, pointing to one of the error messages on the log.
“We call those blips,” she replied. “All systems have them, but they tend to happen more frequently out here because of the extreme weather conditions. They’re very brief interruptions in our network connection, too brief to qualify as a glitch, or to interfere with any programs that are running. Which is why we call them a blip.”
“Yeah, but couldn’t they also indicate a breach in the connection?” asked Gordon.
“No,” she replied. “I don’t think so. First of all, this network is protected, as we explained earlier. For someone to get near enough to one of the connections to breach it, they would have to be inside one of the secure areas. Both Greg Ritter and Wayne Timmons, the head security officer on duty last night, examined the security videos from last night and no one went near that area.”
Will looked at Clive. “Pete said there were other facilities with access to those towers,” he said. “I wonder if there could be a second location involved.”
“If you’ll write up a security check request—you don’t have to disclose any classified information; a simple request from your department head will do—I’ll have HAARP send a memo to all of the department heads who have access to those towers,” offered Ritter.
“I think we should also issue a hold on all activity involving those towers…at least until we’ve talked to the girl,” said Will.
“That will be up to the department heads,” said Benderman. “I can assure you that we won’t be using those towers again for a while. Our current program will continue to run for the next few days, but only to record all the feedback relating to last night’s experiment. We need that feedback to examine the results of the experiment; otherwise months of research would be for nothing.”
Will sighed. “I’ll have that request faxed to you within the hour,” he conceded. “In the meantime, we’ll keep you updated on the status of our investigation as it relates to your facility and its employees.” Reluctantly he stood up. “We appre…”
“Wait a minute…” said Patricia Molten uncertainly. She’d been examining the data on her computer while they talked. “Something’s off.”
“What do you mean by off?” asked Clive.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I don’t think it’s anything to get alarmed about, but something doesn’t look right.”
“What doesn’t look right?” persisted Gordon.
“The feedback we’re getting from the ionosphere,” she said. “The numbers don’t add up.”
“What do you mean they don’t add up?” demanded Ritter. “Be more specific!”
“I don’t know wh
at I mean!” she said, becoming flustered. “It’s probably not anything. I…I really can’t tell what’s happening from just looking at a bunch of numbers.”
“Then why are you bringing it up?” snapped Benderman irritably.
“Because the numbers are deviating significantly from our projections,” she said. “And with all this other…” She gestured towards Will and the others. “I thought it was worth mentioning.”
Benderman was thoughtful. “We’ll put the lab on it,” he said after a moment. “It’s not unusual for the projections to be off on a new project.”
“Can you bring up the formula for this project?” Gordon asked her.
“I’m not sure I can get to it from this screen,” she said, but she was typing rapidly as she spoke. They all waited. “Yes! Here it is.”
“This is the formula that was sent to the HAARP towers?” Gordon clarified.
“Yes, this is our program’s history screen,” she said. “This is the formula we sent to the HAARP antenna last night.”
“Wait, can I see that paper again?” Gordon asked Benderman. Gordon held the sheet up to the screen. He and Patricia went through the entire row of symbols and numbers. “The two are identical!” he cried.
“But…that’s impossible!” Patricia exclaimed, snatching the paper from his hands to check the numbers again.
“You’re sure that this is the formula that went to the HAARP towers last night?” demanded Gordon, pointing to the formula on the screen.
“But…there must be a mistake,” insisted Patricia. “That must be our formula on that paper then. You…you must be wrong about it.”
“We need to call an emergency meeting,” said Will, ignoring Patricia. “Clive, can you get Pete on the phone? We’re gonna need to talk to the guy who analyzed that formula.”
“Hold on a minute,” objected Benderman. “We have to verify that this formula is what you say it is before we start calling in people from the outside!”
“I agree,” said Will. “Clive’s contact will be giving information, not taking it. He already spent hours on this. It might save your people some time. And we’ll need to look at the formula you originally entered, to verify that it was, in fact, tampered with.”
“That’s classified information!” objected Benderman.
“And it won’t leave this room,” said Will. “At the moment we’re more concerned with this other formula and what it might be capable of. But we need verification that the formula that activated those towers last night was not yours. We’ll also need your staff experts’ best guess about what level of emergency we’re looking at here. Finally, someone will have to alert the D.O.D. and tell them that we’re in the preliminary stages of a possible state of emergency, and have them stand by for a briefing.”
Benderman’s composure seemed to have dissolved. He just stood there, frozen, like a deer in the headlights.
“Shall I get my commanding officer on that or would you prefer to do it, sir?” Will persisted.
“No,” said Benderman, making a visible effort to pull himself together. “I’ll handle it.”
Clive had gotten up and moved to one corner of the room to call Pete. He came back over and handed a slip of paper to Colonel Ritter. “This guy is waiting to talk to someone in your control room,” Clive informed him.
The T.D.M.R. staff abruptly got up and left the room, leaving one of their sentries—Kenneth Hudgins—behind to guard the door.
“What do we do now?” asked Nadia.
“We wait,” said Gordon.
Chapter 45
A sense of unreality settled over Nadia. She felt as if she’d stumbled into a parallel universe of her own, far away from the world she’d existed in before. The people looked the same, but that was only an optical illusion, a cosmic trick that was being played on her. In fact, she was beginning to feel like her entire life had been nothing more than a series of mirages.
Little more than an hour had passed since Benderman and his entourage left the conference room, but in that short span of time it had been completely transformed. People were now crowded around the enormous conference table, and the large screen that covered the back wall was lit up and animated, like a movie in a theater. The screen depicted several men in expensive suits sitting in plush chairs that were symmetrically arranged around an imposing desk in the center of the room. Behind the desk sat the President of the United States. They were looking into the Oval Office.
The air in the room crackled with tension.
“Can someone translate what Finbury just said into something we can understand?” asked an exasperated chief of staff from the Oval Office.
Stewart Finbury was the lead scientist at T.D.M.R. He was a small, frail-looking man with a thin, quivery voice. He’d just spent several long minutes trying to explain ‘ionospheric plasma disruptions,’ ‘irregular electron concentrations’ and ‘extreme spatial inhomogeneities’ to the anxious group. His tenuous voice wavered unsteadily when he spoke, giving the impression that the effort either terrified or exhausted him.
On one side of Stewart Finbury sat Patricia Molten, whose eyes remained fixed on her computer screen as she anxiously monitored the activity in the ionosphere, and on Finbury’s other side was another associate who periodically jotted down notes for Finbury to refer to, like cue cards.
The White House’s Chief of Staff, Michael “Mick” McCrea, was a short-tempered, disagreeable, ornery old cuss who always seemed put-out whenever called upon to fulfill any task relating to the management of his duties. Even during his campaign days, he barked at the media like an angry dog warding off an intruder. But he was a powerful man, with an unending supply of connections that could turn up in the most unexpected places. And he did have a knack for getting to the heart of a matter.
McCrea’s brusque interruption seemed to unnerve Stewart Finbury even more. Finbury’s eyes skittered around the room, as if seeking an ally.
“What Finbury’s trying to say is that whoever broke into our system last night sent an unprecedented amount of electromagnetic radiation into the ionosphere,” explained Colonel Ritter. “The level of concentrated energy that was maintained has heated and distorted the ionosphere to dangerous proportions. The energy is now trapped in one small area, where it’s building pressure. Our team of scientists has confirmed that this build-up of pressure will most likely create a boomerang effect that will send an even more powerful beam of electromagnetic energy back here, to its point of origin.”
Everyone took a moment to absorb this.
“Assuming your team is right about this…boomerang effect, what exactly are we looking at here?” the president asked.
Ritter glanced at Finbury before replying. “The first issue, naturally, is radiation exposure,” he explained. “The beam will most likely kill every living thing within a twenty mile radius. Next is the beam itself, which will penetrate deep into the earth, where it will create disturbances as far down as the tectonic plates.”
“Are you suggesting that this…beam could set off one of the faults?” asked the president.
For an instant Ritter’s composure slipped, and he had the look of a man wearing a shirt that was two sizes too small. Nadia even thought she saw him squirm the tiniest bit. He seemed reluctant to answer the president’s question, but he did so, nevertheless. “This beam has the kind of energy that can create a fault,” he replied grimly.
“Just what the hell have you been doing up there?” demanded McCrea, but the president held up a hand to silence him.
“Where are we in this crisis right now?” asked the president.
Everyone turned to Patricia Molten.
“So far it’s progressing exactly as Finbury predicted,” she said. “The energy is building. It shows no signs of dissipating.”
“How long before the boomerang effect brings it back here?” asked the president.
“Worst-case scenario…we’re looking at four hours, Mr. President,” she replied. “Best case,
six.”
There was a moment of stunned silence.
“Is there any way to stop it?” the president asked.
“Finbury has an idea,” suggested Ritter.
“Tell us, Mr. Finbury,” said the president.
“In English!” snapped McCrea. “We haven’t got all day.”
Stewart Finbury pursed his lips in what may have been indignation, but was more likely terror. His voice, when he spoke, was as shaky as ever. “Well…to put it simply, there’s a chance we could force the mass to disperse while it’s still in the ionosphere.”
“Force it…how?” asked the president.
“By creating an explosion at the epicenter of its energy field,” Finbury replied.
“And the risks?” asked the president.
“Nothing like this has ever been attempted before,” interjected Benderman, who’d been silent up to this point. “It’s impossible to predict what the risks would be.”
“Mr. Finbury?” persisted the president.
“Well…there’s the electromagnetic pulse effect to consider,” said Finbury. “An explosion of this size would have a significant effect on electric and magnetic fields, resulting in disruptions in communications and other systems all around the world.” He cleared his throat nervously. “And…there is always the possibility of…rupturing the ionosphere,” he added in his wobbly voice.
The president exchanged looks with his chief of staff. “And if we do nothing?”
“There is a tremendous amount of energy headed straight for us,” said Finbury with a sudden burst of conviction that infused his timorous voice with a peculiar authority. “Trapped below the earth’s surface, this energy will be under enormous pressure, similar to that of several million atomic bombs—certainly enough to rupture the earth’s lithosphere, unless it can be released through a nearby fault. Either way, it will cause a massive earthquake that could extend a hundred miles in all directions before all that energy is released. Not to mention that it could set off other faults and earthquakes, creating a chain effect.”