The Hammer of God

by Tom Avitabile

  The Chief of Staff entered and took his seat in the chair reserved for the President. He quickly scanned a clipboard, nodded, and then removed his glasses.

  “First let me tell you that this is a drill. The President is fine and in no danger. Second, our response time is up from the last National Emergency Simulation Exercise. We beat our old mark by a minute and a half with eighteen NCA members secured within four minutes of the emergency action message transmission. For those of you who have been through this a couple times, thank you, and you can return to your duties. For Mr. Hiccock, Mr. Rassing, and Mrs. Chulk, I am going to ask you to stay and let the team familiarize you with what happens when we crash the White House like this.”

  Hiccock breathed easy. The world was safe for now. No attack/counterattack scenarios to wipe out all life as we know it. Just a few more procedures for him to learn and, no doubt, a few more nightmares to have. He spent the next forty-five minutes learning about SIOP, Pave Paws, authenticator codes, and other stuff most people thought went away with the Cold War.

  ?§?

  Meanwhile, Surgeon General Judy Pearson was studying a report titled The Treatment of Infant Pancreatic Cancer through Genetically Engineered Cell Remanufacture when her deputy barged into her office.

  “What’s up, Bob?”

  “Bad news, boss.”

  When her deputy finished giving her the details, Pearson’s immediate instinct was to call the White House. Instead, her eyes fell on her calendar and her impending dinner. She decided she’d prepare for dinner early.

  “Bob, get me a copy of H.R. 7631 — stat!”

  It was no ordinary jar of cold cream. The Princess Briana label insured that only the faces of the most well-to-do women would ever feel its deep-cleansing emollients tingle as it beautified, moisturized, and rejuvenated their already too-well-pampered skin.

  Chang Su admired the work of her team. They were specially chosen to make this jar by the commissar of the village who was also the head of the factory. It was an honor to serve the PRC in this fashion. Normally she would copy lesser brands and then the factory would run thousands of cases. In this case, though, her instructions were to make only twenty-four of these. They were perfect replicas of the actual jar in every way except that they were 1/32nd of an inch smaller than the original because they were made from a different material. The label was easier to resize but the unique jar required three attempts to get just right. Capitalism not being embraced in China, she never calculated the cost per unit benefit of such an intense effort to derive so few jars. The intended customer however, was glad to pay as much for two dozen jars as others paid for a whole truckload of the knockoffs that had become the stock in trade of the new Chinese economy. The amber colored jars were packed for shipment and tomorrow would be driven by truck four hundred miles to the provincial capital where they would then be sent by airplane to Beijing.

  Another job well done.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Compounds And Elements

  For Bill, dinner that night was pleasant but uneventful. How can a mere dinner compete with a call to the Situation Room to possibly save or end the world? Their guests were the Surgeon General, Judy Pearson, and her husband, Rod, a thoracic genius and head of surgery at George Washington University Hospital. Janice had recently joined the staff there, so to Bill’s way of thinking, this was a four-point connect with Judy and Bill working for the current President and Janice and Rod working in a hospital named after the first.

  After dinner, Bill found Rod in the living room, pursuing the artifacts in the “shrine:” what Janice and he called the wall of built-in bookcases that held the mementos of Bill’s illustrious college football career.

  “I saw that game!”

  Bill looked to see what Rod was talking about. He was looking at a game ball and a picture of his team. “I got knocked out in the first half, sat out two quarters until the team doc pronounced that I only had my bell rung, no concussion.”

  “Yeah, and you came back with a vengeance. Two touchdown passes in the last four minutes!”

  Three, Bill corrected in his head but let it go, “I had a great line taking the hits for me. I guess my having been knocked out of the game earlier brought out their paternal instincts to protect me.”

  Rod swooned as he turned to Bill’s Heisman Trophy. “How great must it be to have one of these?”

  “I was offered two million for it by some oil tycoon,” Bill said matter-of-factly as he got “the look” from Janice, who was chatting up Judy on the sectional. “I guess they were all out of them on E-bay,” Bill added.

  “How can you put a price on something like this,” Rod said, marveling at the trophy even more.

  “You know, if you like it that much, you can borrow it and put it over the fireplace.”

  Out of the corner of his eye Bill saw “the look” again. He knew it was because Janice wanted them over by the new couch. Mostly because she liked the way, from the new seating area, the living room windows looked out upon the sun setting on the lake at this time of day.

  “Judy, would never let me do that, unless you can convince her somehow that it’s Chinese modern.”

  That little man-to-man admission made Bill wonder if a surgeon being married to the Surgeon General caused a problem. Could Judy pull rank and order her husband around? And was he duty bound to follow her directives? Clean the windows, drive my mother to the store, book a trip to Hawaii. Nah, no surgeon ever got henpecked.

  “Bill, will you get the cognac and the glasses from the cabinet?” came the order from Bill’s “general.”

  As Bill poured the cognac into the decanter, Judy couldn’t help but comment, “Janice, I have to know, did you use a decorator? I love the way this room just flows. That chair is perfect, and situating this area to take full advantage of this breathtaking view… all of it, really comfortable, yet beautifully done.”

  Janice was beaming and gave the slightest of looks to Bill when Judy mentioned “her view.” “I am so glad you like it. I pretty much just start with some ideas that I get from magazines and then add a few touches.”

  After several minutes discussing home decorating, remodeling and Chinese modern motif, Judy opened a new conversation. “There could be a shortage of flu vaccine this season.”

  “How could something like that happen?”

  “How all bad things happen, Bill — politics.”

  “I think I am going to enjoy this,” Janice said swirling the contents of the decanter.

  “There won’t be a final opinion until Monday,” Judy continued, “but preliminary reports indicate that our British supplier may have been sending us contaminated batches.”

  “How is that even possible?”

  “Could be shoddy adherence to quality control.”

  “Or sabotage.” Rod added.

  Bill glanced over at Rod. “Why would you say that?”

  “I know that company; they took over a plant in Liverpool that had some problems in the past, but they revamped the management, kicked out the dead wood, and were doing well for almost a year. This could have been the work of some disgruntled employee they cut when they took over.”

  Judy shook her head in frustration. “In any event, these production issues could render half of our vaccines useless.”

  “Half?” Bill said.

  “It will take six months to test all known shipments of this vaccine. That will freeze half our inventory and put us well past this year’s flu season.”

  “And how does England play into keeping America healthy?”

  “Better living through geo-politics. It seems we needed to send more trade to England, so a whole handful of stuff that the U.S. made was suddenly outsourced to the U.K.”

  “For England’s support for the war in Iraq, I bet?” Janice said.

  “That didn’t hurt, but this policy can be traced back to the 90’s. Anyway, if the British supply is tainted, then millions of Americans will be unprotected this year. I had
some preliminary projections run and it could mean 25,000 more deaths in the high-risk groups.”

  Bill shook his head. “I still can’t believe we don’t make enough vaccines here.”

  “We used to make enough, but over-regulation and pork barrel Congressional hooey left the U.S. high and dry and the drug companies became reluctant to do risky cost-plus contracts with the government without protection from litigation.”

  “Add to that Congress, being full of lawyers and ‘wanna-be’ lawyers, launching liability insurance into orbit for any company that still wanted to produce drugs in this country,” injected Janice who had felt the sting of prohibitive malpractice rates in her own profession.

  “How long would it take to retool another source?” Hiccock asked.

  “Retooling is what Detroit does,” Rod said. “It takes the Motor City seven years to change a design. The drug industry isn’t even close to that. It takes twenty years to bring a new drug to market.” Rod finished his Pinot Grigio, got up, and walked over to the dry bar. “Can I refresh yours, Bill?”

  “No thanks; I’m good.” He looked back to Judy. “I’m missing something. We already have the drug. We just need to replicate it.”

  Judy’s eyebrows arched and then she set the hook. “That’s where you can help.”

  “Me?”

  “Get the President to fast-track the Prescription Medications Emergency act.”

  “I’ve never even heard of it.”

  “I left a copy of H.R. 7631 out in the foyer. It should make for a good bedtime story.”

  Bill sat and let the last swallow of cognac dissolve in his mouth. “Was I just set up?”

  “Aw Bill, would a friend do that?”

  ?§?

  Thud. Five pounds of legislation, addendums, and amendments makes a considerable sound when heaved onto a nightstand at 1:30 a.m. Bill’s miscalculation in throw weight startled Janice out of a deep sleep.

  “What’s going on…? Why are you still up?”

  “Next time friends are coming over with homework let’s remember not to serve wine, or serve them dinner either. In fact, let’s never have them over again.”

  “Sounds like you have a real page-turner of a bill there.”

  “Who writes this stuff?”

  “Every prescription drug company in the world, or their lobbyists. Now go to sleep; that’s enough civics class for one night. I am expecting a slammer of a headache tomorrow and I want to be well rested for it.” Janice reached across him and up to the lamp on the nightstand. Her breast smothered his face as she strained for the switch. She uncoiled back to her side, fluffing her pillow, and trying to get back to sleep.

  Bill started thinking. A few years back, that would have been enough provocation to initiate some serious lovemaking. Why not now?

  Why not now?

  He snuggled over, found her, and ended any concern about a headache.

  ?§?

  “Seventy-two hours. That still leaves a twelve-hour margin of safety.”

  “And the thermal element itself?”

  “Time released and not unlike the basic structure of heated shave cream.”

  “No chance of detection?”

  “Our Chinese friends and their Pyrex glass copies will insulate the contents.”

  “Then we are ready?”

  “Yes; we just need to place the active strains in all twenty-four jars.”

  “Keep me informed when the shipment is ready?”

  “Yes, Sheik.”

  The next morning, Bill put out a Point of Information bulletin over his SCIAD network. The network was one of his inventions. In much the same way national security depended on the free and open exchange of data, ideas, and suppositions between agencies, so did a strong scientific defense. He had seen first hand the impact of the first big-science attack on America and it wasn’t pretty. It took a long time even to determine that America was being attacked and people paid for that with their lives. A network like SCIAD might have made a dramatic difference.

  The name was a double-entendre of sorts; SCIAD was the shorthand for his White House role, but like all scientists, Hiccock acronymed it out: Scientific Community Involved in America’s Defense. Because it was his pet project, and because very few in Congress or the Administration understood the first thing about it, he was able to make up all the ground rules. Bill was proud of SCIAD’s layered architecture, which guided the flow of ideas. The real trick that kept SCIAD from denigrating into nothing more than an Intranet version of the Internet was its structure. It was all too simple for any jackass to publish anything on the web, without provenance, peer review, or proper methodology. Add to that the wonders of PhotoShop and other graphic programs, and any “whack job” can make their junk science look as good as real science. The SCIAD network had built-in gatekeeping and content filtering, with verification and authentication.

  In Bill’s on-line scientific community, there were two levels — rings, actually. The closely held ring consisted of members Bill had code-named “Element.” Members of the second, farther out (in more ways than one) ring were classified as “Compounds.” Hiccock’s SCIAD handle was Nucleus, although everyone knew it was Bill.

  There were ninety-two members of SCIAD’s Element ring. They were FBI vetted and cleared to see top-secret SCIAD traffic at its most raw and unedited state. Their primary job was that of gatekeeper to Nucleus. Two Element members had to concur on a thesis, proof, or speculation before it was transmitted to Nucleus. Bill then had the option to send it back to the entire Element ring for comment.

  There were now nearly three hundred Compound members on the network, individuals who didn’t have the squeaky clean, flag-waving backgrounds or citizenship to pass National Security scrutiny but had unbelievable minds nonetheless. What America desperately needed in scientific defense was mental horsepower and the Compounds provided it. They were privy only to redacted information. None of which would compromise Nat Sec, but it would get their mental engines going. As with the Element ring, in the event a Compound member came up with any significant thinking, that member also had to be vetted by at least two Element members before dissemination to Nucleus and then out to the entire Element level. As a further hedge bet, Bill then had it all fly back out to the outer ring once again, as redacted information about this new item. This then allowed all 30 °Compounds to kick it around before shooting it back inside to the Element ring again. This looping of data and vetting by at least two Element class members kept down the wild, off-the-charts speculation that could clog a system. Yet, because Bill made his bones on “wild ass speculation” in The Eighth Day affair, he didn’t want it stifled completely.

  On the technical side, this data ring was grand slam and whiz bang with the latest interconnectivity protocol, layers of protection, and some stuff private industry would kill for, like real-time link-up to supercomputers, big fat pipes to download hi-def, and 3D video and images in real-time, satellite imagery, and real-time geologic, thermologic, and electronic signature analysis. All of these tools and tech marvels sprang forth as the illegitimate love child of Bill’s shotgun wedding of a former felon in computer crimes — a character who liked to be called Kronos — and the best computer guy the government had. These two techno sapiens, left to their own crazy devices and aided by some off-budget funding, built him a ring system that would have been the envy of any hacker, programmer, or tech mogul on the planet…if they knew about it. Of course, no one did. The whole technical side was invisible. Stealth digits, flying around the Internet as a sort of “digital aerosol” sprayed across the web, seemingly never to be condensed again, except by the 392, retinal-scan-protected condenser/expanders out there.

  Hiccock’s ex-wife Janice was an Element level member but he waived her $50K yearly honorarium fee paid to the members, to avoid raising eyebrows. His old schoolyard chum and ex-FBI agent, Joey Palumbo, handled interfacing with his former agency on the vetting process of members and was in charge of ring security f
or Bill. Even though Joey was a crucial part of Bill’s success in the last science attack, the Bureau had its ways. Joey had spoken above his grade to the then-Director of the FBI — in front of the President’s Chief of Staff, no less. His agency career ended at that moment. Bill dragged him kicking and screaming back into Washington, specifically for SCIAD.

  Then there was one that got away. Bill would have wanted this person to run the whole thing, even over himself, but that was never going to happen. Rear Admiral Parks was a crusty octogenarian with a mind that beat out the most sophisticated evil science ever stumbled upon. Hell, forget about getting her in the ring system. I couldn’t even get her to hit the power switch on a computer.

  It was a great loss to the country, but she’d paid her dues and won her right to privacy a million fold. Still, Hiccock knew she’d have torn up the rings like a teenager doing donuts in a K-Mart parking lot.

  To: all E and C ring members:

  From: n

  Looking for possible exploitation opportunities by enemies, foreign and domestic, of potential flu vaccine shortage. Focus not limited to vulnerabilities or soft targets, but to any and all ramifications that could be leveraged against us. Timeframe is loose. No specific threats or intel to support above, just pure spec.

  The little scientific notation letters were a favorite among the scientific elite, so Bill used them at every opportunity. He allowed the red line of the retinal scanner, which was identical to all the others on the ring, to interrogate his iris one more time in response to his hitting the return key to send the message. This was a double way of ensuring that even if a person walked away from a hooked-up computer, no actions, downloading, uploading, or opening a file could occur without the ring system knowing that the cleared person was initiating the action. “Action Approved: Nucleus” popped onto the screen and then it went blank. The computer in front of Bill had no idea it had just handled ring traffic. The ring was an engine that treated any computer like a dumb terminal. All interaction and work done on the ring was accessed and processed within the ring. No cookies, saved copies, or backups to any local drives or servers. As far as the PC on his desk was concerned the last three minutes and fourteen seconds that he spent on the ring never happened.