A Sound of Freedom

by Walter Grant

  He was getting more efficient at picking locks and very little time was required to get inside. He found the interior design of the house similar to his own, but the furnishings were quite different. It resembled Gilbird’s office, with wall maps, telephones, and computer terminals with modems. One big difference, however, was that the telephones and modems used a radio transmitter to transmit and receive messages. Only one phone, with the number matching the one he had a tap on, used a regular telephone line. The absence of a computer mainframe suggested the one in Gilbird’s office was the central processing unit for these as well as other terminals conceivably in different locations. In one bedroom he found a fire-control type of radar—radar designed to automatically lock onto and track a moving target. The output from a crystal controlled RF receiver as well as information from the radar was fed into a microcomputer and out through one modem to a central computer, no doubt in Gilbird’s office, and back through a second modem to a transmitter. Max guessed the transmitter was capable of putting out somewhere around 500,000 watts. By comparison, the maximum power permitted by FCC to commercial television and radio stations is 50,000 watts. The transmitter had a feature incorporated into it that allowed the operator to transmit on either high or low power. This feature meant the operator could transmit at around 5,000 watts and would go virtually unnoticed by the FCC. When an enormous burst of RF energy was desired, the operator could flip the switch to high power and transmit at 500,000 watts. It wasn’t a question of whether or not this was a legally registered transmitter, no doubt, it was not. However, because of the transmitter’s location it was likely the FCC would attribute any signals it might detect to the Air Force and would not investigate further. Still, it didn’t add up, no matter how you looked at it, this transmitter was not powerful enough to override one of the Air Force missile control transmitters. So what could be its purpose if not to override the control transmitter? He didn’t know and dared not venture a guess.

  Evidence in another bedroom indicated that not only had one of the dish antennas been removed, but a transmitter, receiver, and microcomputer complete with modems, a setup identical to the one remaining, had been removed as well.

  Utilizing a battery powered screwdriver from his backpack, Max removed the transmitter’s rear access panel and set it aside. Reaching into his backpack again he removed a package of C-four, divided it into two equal parts, and then worked the gel into inconspicuous areas inside the transmitter. Next he pushed electronic detonators into the plastic explosive and hooked them to the high output side of the power selector switch and then replaced the rear access panel.

  This would permit the transmitter to be tested for proper operation and function normally on low power, but the next time the selector switch was turned to high power the C-four would destroy the transmitter and perhaps level the entire building.

  Max had no doubt whatsoever that the two transmitters, the one still here in Gilbird’s house and the one that had left inside the Roach Coach, played a part in the recent missile failures at Vandenberg and would be used to perpetrate the final disaster—a disaster that would leave thousands dead and thrust the Soviet Union into the position of the world’s only superpower. The question was still the same; what were they planning?

  He resisted the temptation to boot up one of the terminals, fearing it might be detected. He contemplated leaving a few bugs around, but thought better of it. After they had found his bugs in Spic and Span, sweeping for listening devices might now be routine. If the bugs were found it could result in a more intensive search, which might lead them to the plastic explosive. Apparently they were still of the opinion the bugs found at Spic and Span were planted by the Drug Enforcement Agency; Max did not want to give them reason to think otherwise.

  The garage door had been enlarged to accommodate oversized vehicles such as the Running Chef (mobile canteen) captured on tape by his video recorder as it left earlier this morning. A mechanics workshop, complete with power tools, provided technicians with everything they needed to remove the electronic components from the bedroom and re-install them in the roach coach. This gave the group not only a back-up system for their endeavor, but, a mobile one as well. All he had to do was figure out its intended use, and all evidence suggested he must do so before the MX launch.

  His snooping was cut short by the sound of the garage door opening. Positive that no alarm signaling an intruder had gone out he assumed Evone Gilbird was returning home and was unaware of his presence. Hurrying to the back door he watched the cameras, waiting for the right moment. He heard a car pull into the garage and the engine shut off as he slipped out through the back door. Stopping at the spot where he had disabled the alarm system by severing the coax, he eased it out of the wall, removed the tape, reconnected the center conductors, and using the piece of tape wrapped the splice to prevent it from shorting to the grounding shield. After twisting the grounding shields together to complete the circuit, he pushed the cable back inside the wall. His handiwork would not be discovered as long as no one pulled the coax out of the wall and exposed the splice. Evone had no doubt activated some remote control device disabling the alarm system, allowing her to enter the house. The system might automatically check itself for proper operation when next activated, this possibility necessitated reconnecting the coax. He barely made it to the corner before the camera swept into range. While he waited at the corner for the right moment to sprint to the cliff’s edge and disappear over the side he heard the garage door close.

  The sun was well below the horizon before he reached the top of the cliff behind his house and climbed back over wall and onto his patio.

  Another frozen pizza, a quick shower, a change into his standard black sweats, and he was ready to play an ace he had been holding back.

  Max drove past the pull-out overlooking Spic and Span for a couple of miles before making a U-turn, turning off his lights and heading back toward Lompoc. The moon, full now, and rising earlier each night was already well above the horizon making it easy to drive without headlights. He eased the TransAM into the pullout overlooking Spic and Span and cut the ignition. Standing beside the Pontiac he couldn’t hear or see any cars in either direction. Crossing the road he climbed over the fence and started making his way up the hillside toward the tree with the radio/recorder. Whoever made the security sweep had discovered and deactivated the three bugs left in Gilbird’s office. The tiny transmitters are fairly easily found if you are skilled and have the right equipment, it’s almost as simple as walking into a room and finding a boom box with the volume turned to maximum, however, even with skill and equipment, finding a bug left in a passive mode would be similar to finding the smallest of portable radios well hidden and left in the “off” position. It is unlikely, after finding the three active bugs the search was extended to bugs in a passive mode. This being the case, the bug he left with a delayed startup time of forty-eight hours stood a good chance of surviving the sweep and was now sending any conversations in Gilbird’s office to his little tape recorder hidden in a tree on the hillside.

  The full moon lit up the countryside making it easy for Max to pick his way up the hill. A half-dozen cows that had been resting underneath the clump of trees ahead, apparently wary of the approaching man, got to their feet and began moving farther up the hillside. As one walked underneath the tree concealing the recorder, a loud explosion shattered the night. The unsuspecting cow was lifted ten feet off the ground and thrown twenty feet down the hill. She made a few feeble attempts to regain her footing, but soon gave up, her life quietly slipping away. Well, it looked like his ace in the hole wasn’t going to pay any dividends, and he was running low on cards. There was no need to check the radio recorder; the only thing he would find was perhaps another booby trap.

  Starting back down the hill, his attention was drawn to the warehouse below. Two cars were tearing out of the parking lot heading toward the highway. They would be at the pullout in another couple of minutes. Max hurried down th
e hill, crossed the road and was approaching the TransAM when a calm, cold voice warned, “Stop right where you are and don’t move or I’ll drop you in your tracks.”

  Max recognized the voice from the telephone conversations as Bell’s. Max didn’t speak but waited for the man to show himself. Bell had been hiding below the pullout, probably taking turns with others, waiting for someone to return and check the tape recorder, and when Max was out of earshot, used a battery powered radio telephone to alert someone at the warehouse—this would account for the two cars racing up the hill.

  Someone had figured out the most logical spot for a person to position himself in order to listen to the bugs. Once the recording device was located all they had to do was wait; they knew it was only a matter of time before someone showed up to retrieve the tape. It was too bad for Bell that Max returned on his watch.

  A super heterodyne receiver utilizes a variable oscillator to mix with the incoming RF signal to maintain a single frequency which made single button tuning possible—TRF (tuned radio frequency) radios, back when radio was in its infancy, required manually tuning each stage of amplification with a separate button. The function of an oscillator is to create a minute amount of RF energy, an undesirable downside is the fact that it also functions as a transmitter. So, after determining the general area where Max concealed his radio recorder, it was simple enough, using a very sensitive open-ended receiver to locate the eavesdropping device—during World War II many a German spy was caught because they were listening for instructions from Berlin on a heterodyne receiver.

  The booby trap would in all likelihood, kill whoever returned for the tape, but, just to make sure, Bell was waiting.

  Max did exactly as instructed, standing quite still, feet apart, the left slightly ahead of the right, similar to a karate “cat” position, not speaking or moving.

  “Put your hands over your head.” Bell walked out from behind the TransAM, about thirty feet away, as he spoke. The bright moonlight reflected off the gun in Bell’s hand, the gun was pointing directly at Max, who still hadn’t moved.

  “I said get your hands up, Mister, and do it now!” Bell demanded and gestured with the gun.

  To further reinforce whatever overconfidence the man may have already possessed, Max responded, in a frantic and startled voice. “Okay! Okay!

  His strategy seemed to be working. Bell moved further away from the car and appeared unconcerned for his own safety; he was in charge and with obvious satisfaction in his voice, snapped, “Do it now!”

  “I’m doing it, don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” The feigned panic in Max’s voice was all that was needed to make Bell believe he had everything under control—he wasn’t going to have any problems dealing with this frightened little man from the DEA. Bell continued walking toward the man dressed in black and was only ten feet away when Max pleaded again, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” and at the same time moved with blinding speed. Bell was too slow to react. Max’s hand flashed to his right hip then snaked out in front of him, all in one smooth, easy motion as the little Walther whispered 3 times. At about the same time the words “Don’t shoot” reached Bell’s ears, three Teflon-coated, .22-caliber bullets entered his brain. Bell stood for a few seconds as if nothing had happened, then his knees buckled, and he slumped forward, dead even before he hit the ground.

  The sound of screaming tires, straining to maintain traction on the curves below, warned Max of the rapidly approaching vehicles. He caught sight of the headlights just three switchbacks below. He jumped in the Pontiac, turned the ignition key and slammed the TransAM into gear as the engine roared to life. The unpaved pullout provided poor traction and caused the Pontiac to fishtail as Max accelerated. The two cars topped the hill, a hundred yards away, just as Max reached the highway. When the wheels of the TransAM touched the solid pavement Max slammed the accelerator to the floor. With tires smoking, the Pontiac leapt ahead, leaving behind a smell of burning rubber. The lead car turned into the pullout while the second car zoomed past in pursuit of the TransAM. Max turned on his headlights, but left the rear lights off. By the time he selected the correct switches and engaged the hydraulic pump, the other car, having a running start, was almost on top of him. The Pontiac’s engine was screaming, the tachometer read ten grand as Max shifted to second gear and left more rubber on the highway. As the engine RPM neared ten thousand turns for the second time, a red Nissan 300 ZX pulled along-side Max and a man with a gun leaned out of the passenger’s window. Max shifted to third and the TransAm, now in its ground effects configuration, shot ahead. He saw a tongue of flame leap from the gun and heard both rear windows shatter as the projectile passed through the car behind his head. Another bullet shattered the rear windshield. The next switchback was coming up fast. Max went as deep into the turn as he dared before downshifting and braking hard. Since there were no brake lights showing, the driver of the Nissan was unaware of the TransAm’s rapid deceleration. He realized his mistake too late and slammed on the brakes. Max hit the accelerator again and powered through and out of the turn. Unable to slow enough to negotiate the switchback, the driver lost control of the Nissan as the rear tires broke loose. The ZX spun out, skidded off the road, and rolled over several times before it crashed into a tree a couple of hundred feet down the hill.

  On weekends most businesses keep extended hours, so it wasn’t surprising to find an auto self-storage garage attendant still in his office at 8 p.m. in Santa Barbara on a Friday night. Max put-up a security deposit and paid for six month’s storage, pulled his Pontiac inside the unit he had just rented, locked the door and took a taxi to the local Chevrolet dealer. The dealer had a large selection of used vehicles, including several different models of used trucks. Max chose a late model, dark brown, half-ton, short-bed with a 454 cubic inch engine, and a two speed transfer case that afforded the advantage of shifting to four wheel drive on the fly. The salesman watched suspiciously as Max counted out crisp new fifty dollar bills, but wasn’t about to ask questions of a man paying more than the truck was worth without dickering over the price. At the storage garage he transferred the contents of the Pontiac’s trunk to the space behind the Chevy’s seat.

  If anyone in Lompoc was watching for a Firebird TransAM with broken rear windows they probably wouldn’t pay much attention to his new pick-em-up truck. At any rate, he needed some equipment still at his house; hopefully no one had yet associated his car with the Pontiac that traveled surf Road.

  He finished the last of two sandwiches, hastily thrown together, poured himself a cup of coffee and opened the newspaper purchased from a vending machine while waiting for the salesman to complete the paperwork for his truck. Glancing at headlines, he passed over most articles quickly, showing only modest interest in others, but stopped abruptly when turning to the section pertaining to local news. He pushed everything aside and spread the newspaper out on the breakfast bar.

  A full page layout of the MX, drawn to scale, showed how the fifteen bomb payload was deployed and explained how, with individual guidance computers, each bomb could be programmed for several different targets. A choice of pre-programmed targets could be selected either before launch or during flight. After the central guidance computer brings the Peacekeeper within range, the bombs would be dispensed in sets of five each, over three different target areas, the individual bombs would then begin homing in on their previously selected target.

  Max sat in disbelief, unable to move, as the horror of it all left him numb. The plan was indeed ingenious; the Kremlin would reap benefits far beyond its immediate goals. The KGB had hit upon the one thing secretly feared by many people and forecast by others, a nuclear disaster within the United States. Although the warheads were high explosives and not nuclear—at least the shipping crates he saw, with the dummy warheads, were marked high explosive—the incident would be held up to the public as a preview of the disaster that would surely happen sometime in the future involving high-tech nuclear weapons.

  The Kremlin
would get everything it wanted at the disarmament talks. The public would rise up, not only in America, but around the world, in support of Gorbachev and against President Reagan. The anti-nuclear proponents have long predicted such a disaster, they would now have a field day with the help of the media—the media is always eager to publicize human suffering and propagate dissent. The USSR would emerge as the number one world power, at least in the short run, and possibly for decades to come. President Reagan would be forced to give away so much at the bargaining table that, in a worse case scenario, the United States would be weakened to a point beyond recovery. He saw it all now, except for one very important part.

  The fifteen dummy bombs he’d found on his foray onto Vandenberg, along with the guidance systems, were the ones the Air Force intended to use for the test launch. The Air Force would never suspect, even in their wildest nightmares, that it was possible for anyone to remove the dummy bombs and replace them with live warheads, and with computers programmed to deliver those warheads to metropolitan areas in Southern California, rather than practice targets along the Pacific Missile Range.

  The maps on the walls of Gilbird’s home and office told the gruesome story. He remembered the cities circled and populations written in underneath the name of each city. Names he remembered included Long Beach, Anaheim, and Inglewood; he was unable to recall with certainty several others in and around Los Angeles. Further to the south were San Clemente, Oceanside, and San Diego. To further complicate the disaster and creating an international incident, Tijuana, Mexico was included. These cities were all planned targets. The computers were programmed to guide, with pinpoint accuracy, the warheads to highly populated areas within those cities. On a Saturday evening shopping centers and sporting events would be likely targets. This part of the plan was crystal clear—still, he wasn’t convinced they could pull it off. The Air Force would, up until the exact moment of launch, monitor every aspect of the Peacekeeper and its payload. The computer programs would be checked and double checked continually throughout the countdown. After the launch all information would be sent back to the control center by telemetry, should any change in trajectory, contrary to the program in the guidance computer, be observed the destruct command would be transmitted resulting in the MX completely destroying itself. In the event the ICBM did not self-destruct after the command was sent, an airborne B-52 would be standing by to destroy the MX with an air-to-air missile.