All the Wrong Moves

by Lovelace, Merline

  “Confab as usual,” I confirmed.

  I wasn’t sure when we’d go out to Dry Springs for testing again. I might have to work out an alternate site for less sophisticated tests. In either case, we needed to continue to assess items submitted for evaluation and line up those that might by some wild stretch of the imagination have potential for military application.

  The team crowded into my cubbyhole of an office a few minutes later. Pen had spiffed up for our return to civilization by exchanging her Birkenstock sandals for Birkenstock clogs and several layers of natural fiber linen. A pair of ebony Chinese chopsticks anchored her lopsided bun. Rocky wore a summer seersucker suit. Sergeant Cassidy, like me, was in ABUs.

  Before getting down to business, we rehashed the news from Friday night. My team’s reactions to Armstrong’s arrest and confession ran the gamut. Pen shook her head over the tragedy of it all. Noel Cassidy thought Armstrong deserved a medal for taking Hooker out. O’Reilly wanted to dissect every gory detail. Rocky fretted about whether the murders were connected to the fire at the lab.

  I was careful not to reveal the additional information Mitch had shared last night. I wasn’t sure how much of it was sensitive, and contrary to my mother’s frequent assertions, I do learn from past mistakes. But that business about the mysterious phone call to Armstrong came to mind later, during our confab.

  The review session produced more hoots and howls than usual. They were probably a release mechanism or reaction to the stress of losing our lab. But I defy anyone to keep a straight face while listening to Pen read the specs on artificial sweat or Rocky try to explain the intricacies of an emergency evacuator.

  One submission got me thinking, however. Always a dangerous occupation on my part, although I had no idea how dangerous in this instance.

  The inventor claimed to have come up with a surefire way to retrieve digitized voice patterns from ordinary cell phones, then match them to fingerprints and iris scans for a biometric signature 20-30 percent more accurate than DNA. This project was clearly outside our charter of evaluating inventions with potential for use in desert terrain, but as I said, it got me thinking.

  “Didn’t we receive another submission along these same lines a few months ago?” I asked my team. “As I recall, the inventor proposed a methodology to retrieve signals from a quiescent device.”

  “Totally different concepts,” Rocky asserted. “The methodology you’re talking about involved powering up tele matic units using remote command signals.”

  “Didn’t the command signal include a unit identifier?

  “Yes.”

  “And the command information could be uplinked from one of several sources, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “Give me the case number, will you? I want to pull it up and take another look at it.”

  “Why?”

  That’s the thing about working with brainiac civilians. They always want explanations. I didn’t want to blab about the phone call Armstrong Sr. received, so I fobbed my test engineer off with a half-truth.

  “Before I decide whether we should evaluate this new submission, I want to review our rationale for disapproving the other.”

  “They’re completely different concepts,” Rocky reiterated. “And we didn’t disapprove it. We bounced it to FST-1.”

  “What did they do with it?”

  “They disapproved it.”

  “Just get me the case number. Puh-leez.”

  That’s another thing about civilians. Nice works better than tough. Sometimes.

  Rocky duly sent the case number to my desktop computer and I pulled up the file. The specs soon crossed my eyes. There were pages and pages of ’em, all written in excruciating technicalese. But the bottom line was that the inventor, one Girja Singh, claimed to have fabricated a way to retrieve signals from a telemetric device dropped in the Bering Sea and now thought to be buried somewhere under the polar ice cap. The very expensive device was supposed to have tracked the migration of harp seals, which related to naval operations in a way I couldn’t quite grasp.

  My team had no desire to go polar so we’d forwarded the submission to our sister team up in the Alaskan tundra. FST-1 had made an attempt to evaluate the invention but gave it up when one of their team members developed a severe case of hypothermia while testing the device. FST-1 did, however, indicate the invention might merit further study . . . sometime in the distant future.

  You’ve probably figured out my rationale. If this handy-dandy invention could, in fact, retrieve signals from a stone-cold dead device buried under tons of ice, maybe it could pick up signals from a cell phone Mitch speculated was now at the bottom of the Rio Grande. I knew it was long shot but what the heck.

  I noted Mr. Singh’s email address. Or was Girja a Ms.? I wasn’t sure so I sent a gender-neutral email asking the inventor to contact me for a possible re-evaluation. I included my name, title, duty address and phone number. After clicking send, I got down to business.

  THE next few days passed in a blur of activity. Dr. J acknowledged receipt of my report and said he would appoint an inquiry officer. He also told me the CID had confirmed their suspicion of arson. With great relief, I jettisoned all worry about being held personally or fiscally responsible for the damage to the lab.

  I wasn’t quite as successful at jettisoning EEEK. I emailed All Bent several times with no response, then tried to reach him by phone. Don’t you hate it when people don’t respond to emails? Playing telephone tag is so twentieth century.

  When the messages I left on his voice mail also went unanswered, I contacted the president of Harrison Robotics. He informed me Mr. Benson had suffered an unfortunate accident while demonstrating a robotic-driven wheelchair to a client. I informed him that his Ergonomic Exoskeletal Extension had taken up residence in the back of my Bronco due to an unfortunate accident at our test site.

  I offered to send EEEK home by FedEx or UPS or camel, but the prez promised to make the necessary arrangements . . . after he consulted with All Bent about the device’s condition and usability. I think he’d heard about the goop decorating EEEK’s foot pedals and wasn’t sure he wanted his expensive piece of equipment back anytime soon.

  That left me trying to find someplace to stash EEEK and the equipment we’d salvaged from the lab. I also needed to find an alternate facility, one that would allow FST-3 to conduct at least limited evaluation and testing until we were fully operational again.

  I sucked it in and called the deputy post commander. This was the same harried individual I’d complained to previously about our cramped quarters, so I wasn’t too surprised when he said he’d look into the matter and get back to me. I figured I’d hear from him by next July. If then.

  I then turned the problem over to Sergeant Cassidy, which is what I should have done in the first place. NCOs have a spy network that makes the CIA look like bumbling amateurs. Took him all of a half hour to appropriate a portion of a storage room in the base gym. Not surprising, as he spent most of his off-duty hours there.

  The room was locked and only accessible by gym personnel. Still, I suffered severe qualms about depositing EEEK there. I had visions of some muscle-bound jock springing him out of his container and challenging him to a one-on-one on the basketball court or track. I just knew I would look out my window and see him bounding down the road beside some sweating troop.

  Despite my doubts, I left him amid the other equipment we’d hauled away from the lab. With the equipment locked up amid volleyball nets and cartons of toilet paper, Noel promised to get to work finding an interim test facility.

  HE was still searching on Wednesday morning, when I received a copy of the CID’s interim report. As Dr. J had indicated, it confirmed their suspicion of arson but one of the items in the report sent me across base to consult with the unsmiling young De Niro look-alike.

  His real name was Jerald Hansen and he operated out of Fort Bliss’s main fire station. Jerry talked me through the technical aspects
of his report. I listened, pretending I understood, then zeroed in on the part that had caught my attention.

  “You say here you think the short circuit that sparked the fire was remotely activated.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How?”

  He flipped to a photo of what looked like a melted plastic bubble. “This is a new generation of infrared light-emitting diode. It works like your TV remote,” he added at my blank look. “It can be activated by any signal sent via a variety of devices.”

  “Like a cell phone?” I asked with a sudden hitch in my breath.

  “Sure.”

  He launched into a complicated explanation of electromagnetic pulses as trigger devices that Rocky would have grasped intuitively. Needless to say, it went right over my head. All I was interested in was that bit about the cell phone.

  I’m a great believer in coincidence. Why else would Charlie Numnutz Spade have suggested we hit the Tunnel of Love Drive-Through Wedding Chapel on September 10, when I was feeling a sort of sappy sentimentalism? It sure as heck wasn’t because he remembered—or even knew!—the 10th is my birthday.

  But this was too much for mere coincidence. A call to a grieving father made from a disposable cell phone, alerting him to where and when Hooker would try to slip back into the country. Another call from a similar device destroys data collected at the scene of Hooker’s demise.

  The inescapable connection whizzed around in my head as I drove back across base. I had to stop at an intersection and wait while a Patriot missile convoy rumbled past, heading out to the range for a test fire. Since arriving at Fort Bliss I’ve learned that Patriot is an acronym for Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept of Target. Or, if you prefer the troops’ version, Protection Against Threats, Real, Imagined, or Theorized.

  By either name, the Patriot doesn’t look like much from the outside: a long, rectangular box mounted on trucks or trailers they call caissons. As in “When the cai-ssons go roll-ing along, dum-da-dum.” Inside those innocuous-looking boxes, though, were six to eight launch tubes containing lethal missiles. Hopefully, no one will ever aim one of those suckers in my general direction.

  The last caisson cleared the intersection and I fought heroically to stay within the post’s 25 mph speed limit for the rest of the way to my office building. I re-entered the blessed air-conditioned cool, removed my hat and stuffed it into the leg pocket of my ABUs. Brushing back the sweat-dampened tendrils that insist on escaping my hair clip, I approached what we laughingly call the FST-3 waiting area. This consists of two plastic chairs wedged side-by-side in the hall outside my cubbyhole of an office.

  Many an inventor has planted his or her butt on those plastic chairs. Some came to provide supplemental information on projects submitted for evaluation. Some came to rant at me for heartlessly rejecting their babies.

  I wasn’t sure which category the slight, dark-haired female in jeans and a T-shirt fell into. She looked to be no more than fifteen or sixteen years old. She had a visitor’s pass clipped to her T-shirt, which meant one of my team had cleared her for access to our area. Nevertheless, I approached cautiously. Even the most unprepossessing inventors have been known to froth at the mouth and exhibit maniacal behavior in defense of their projects.

  She looked up at my approach. Her black eyes zeroed in on the name tag on my uniform and a polite, expectant smile lit her face.

  Big relief. It didn’t look like this visitor was out to maim or dismember or otherwise disfigure me.

  “May I help you?”

  “I hope so.”

  Her olive skin and black hair had made me suppose she was a native of West Texas or New Mexico, but her voice had a musical accent I couldn’t quite place.

  “I am Girja Singh. You emailed me several days ago.”

  The light dawned. That was British English I was hearing, or more correctly Indian or Pakistani English.

  “Yes, I did.” I replied. “But I was just looking for information. I didn’t expect you to fly in from . . .” I searched my mind for the mailing address on her project submission. “Oregon.”

  “I live in Oregon, but I attend UCLA,” she explained. “We had a week’s break between summer and fall sessions, so I decided to drive over and personally demonstrate ALP’s capabilities.”

  As an editorial note, I should point out that the military isn’t the only establishment given to acronyms. The academic community is almost as bad. And scientists . . . Lord! You wouldn’t believe how they love to string together ten or fifteen letters, toss ’em out at random, and automatically assume everyone else understands them.

  I tried to remember what ALP stood for but came up blank. Luckily, Ms. Singh fell into the scientist category and assumed I knew.

  “I brought ALP with me,” she said in her melodious voice. “I shall be most happy to demonstrate it for you.”

  When she reached into her purse, I expected her to pull out a set of car keys and go outside to retrieve her invention. Instead she withdrew what looked like an ordinary Walkman and a headset with rubberized earpieces, an attached mike, and a telescopic antenna.

  “That’s it?” I asked. “That’s ALP?”

  “It is. Did you not review the specs? I included technical drawings and circuitry diagrams.”

  I wasn’t about to admit that her pages and pages of specs had defeated me long before I got to any drawings. I dodged the question with one of my own.

  “Mind if I ask how old you are?”

  “I am seventeen.”

  “And you’re an undergrad at UCLA?”

  “Actually, I am a second year graduate student, working on a master’s in electro-acoustical physics.”

  I did a big gulp and invited Ms. Singh into my office. To shield us both from my ignorance, I also invited Rocky, Pen and Dennis. Sergeant Cassidy, I was informed, had left for an appointment with his shrink.

  I introduced Ms. Singh to my team and ignored their puzzled looks as they tried to figure out why I was so interested in a project we’d foisted off on FST-1 months ago. I would tell them about the CID report later. Right now I wanted Ms. Singh to explain in layman’s terms how her invention could retrieve signals from a dead telemetric device.

  Needless to say, she lost me in the first sixty seconds. Dennis’s eyes glazed over two minutes later. He’s into software, not dual mode digital signal processors and geo-stationary satellite uplink capacity.

  Pen and Rocky hung in there, but by the time slender, ultra-serious Girja Singh wound up her supposedly non-technical explanation, Rocky was fidgeting nervously in his corner and Pen was nibbling the eraser of the pencil she’d plucked from her about-to-fall-down bun.

  I couldn’t help myself. I had to ask. “Have you thought about working for the government when you finish grad school, Ms. Singh? DARPA could use someone with your smarts.”

  Her smile was polite but noncommittal.

  “About ALP.” She opened the disk-shaped Walkman to reveal a palm-size computer with an oval screen and circular keyboard. “Do you wish me to demonstrate its capabilities?”

  “Hang on a sec.”

  I flipped up my cell phone and scrolled to the numbers I’d entered after my first face-to-face with Agent Jeff Mitchell. He answered on the second ring.

  “Hi, Samantha.”

  Isn’t Caller ID a wonderful invention? Wish FST-3 could take credit for it.

  “Hi there.”

  I was still in cautious mode, not sure how much of what Mitch had told me I should share with my team. I hadn’t seen anything on the news about the anonymous call Mr. Armstrong received. Could be the FBI was still working it.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “You know that disposable cell phone you think might be at the bottom of the Rio Grande?”

  That was innocuous enough, considering the others in the office didn’t know who I was talking to.

  “Yeah. What about it?”

  “Do you have its number handy?”

  “I
can get it,” Mitch replied. “Why?”

  “I’ll explain later. Call me back with the number, okay? ASAP.”

  He remained silent for a moment or two before giving a cautious, “Okay.”

  I hung up and smiled at Ms. Singh. She smiled back. Rocky twitched. Pen nibbled on her pencil. Dennis looked at me, at the ceiling, at the entrance to my office, as if plotting his escape. We all heaved a sigh of relief when my cell phone buzzed.

  “It’s Mitch. Ready to copy?”

  “Shoot.”

  He rattled off the number and I promised to get back to him later. I relayed the number to Ms. Singh. She extended what turned out to be a monster telescopic antenna before positioning the earpieces. After clicking a few keys on the circular keyboard, she spoke the number into the headset’s mike.

  “It’s ringing,” she announced calmly a few seconds later.

  CHAPTER TEN

  MY mouth hanging open, I took the headset Ms. Singh handed me. I almost knocked Dennis’s glasses off trying to maneuver the antenna and earned an evil glare as he straightened the black frames.

  I expected to hear a normal ringtone. What I got was a static-filled brrrrh. I listened for ten seconds or so, half hoping, scared to death that someone might actually answer. I framed a dozen different responses in that short eternity, the most intelligent of which was “Uh, who’s this?”

  To my disappointment and secret relief, the brrrrh continued unabated.

  “There’s no answer,” I said to the room at large.

  “Is the telemetric device you’re trying to reach operable?” Ms. Singh asked.

  “We don’t think so.”

  “Then why would you expect an answer?” Her dark eyes looked at me reproachfully. “ALP cannot raise the dead. All it can do it tap into the instrument’s residual signal capacity, if any still exists.”