The Manhattan Incident

by Raymond Poincelot

  VIDEO: THE INCIDENT. General Straub got off his office phone with President Chung. He had finally convinced her to proceed with the creation of the Global Strategic Initiative and its four phases. It had taken a lot of convincing. President Chung had reservations about a shared global army. Who would be in charge? What if there were disagreements over policy or plans? How could countries with differing world views in competition with the United States be trusted? She was also miffed that her power as Commander-in-Chief would be diminished. It had been difficult to win her over. General Straub assured her that nothing would happen unless the participating countries agreed to the formation. There would also be rules, regulations, policy and so forth spelled out. No one country would be in charge. A shared power arrangement with veto power like the UN would be set up. He finally won her grudging assent to proceed when he pointed out that she could use this as an opportunity to demonstrate strong leadership in the upcoming election. She would be seen as acting decisively in protecting the citizens of the United States. She would appear strong in military leadership by planning to meet the alien challenge which was surely going to happen. Her electability would be assured. Given that President Chung had a few weak questionable areas because of hiding in the bunker for a long time and being tainted by the RGen fiasco, she quickly saw the advantage.

  General Straub called in his Aide. Sergeant Sean O’Malley listened to the General as he outlined the first of many conferences to be held at the UN. “Set up a meeting date for the first conference as soon as possible. Invite the leadership on the political and military levels from the top ten military powers: the United States, Peoples Republic of China, Russia, Germany, France, United Kingdom, India, Brazil, Japan and Turkey. Tell them that we are going to plan the Global Strategic Initiative first discussed almost three months ago at the Chung-Straub meeting. This time the meeting will not be via video-conferencing. Given the import of what we are about to do, only face to face meetings will work. Tell them to come in decision mode. We don’t have the luxury of knowing how soon the aliens will return.”

  “Oh, also invite Dr. John Cabrot and his top two lab associates. We’ll need them as a resource for countering further biological attacks and helping others to get new labs up to speed. You need to stroke President Chung. She’s a bit bent out of shape. Contact her first for available dates. Make a big fuss about her being contacted first as she is the most important person coming to the meeting. Lay it on thick. General Douglas and I will make ourselves available for whatever dates become set up. Make sure you brief General Douglas and Dr. Cabrot on this matter. I told them you would do that soon. One last thing, Sergeant; keep the publicity silent on this planning and meeting dates. It will be closed to the press. We don’t want any leaks, so it is classified as Top Secret, Need to Know Basis.” “Yes, Sir, General; I’ll get on it right away.” “Sergeant O’Malley, I know you’ll do a good job. Your next promotion hinges on it” said General Straub with a smile. As the Aide left, General Straub added the following notation to his appointment calendar. “Meet with General Douglas for an update on weapons progress, alien armor, and related matters.”

  A few days later, General Douglas sat in General Straub’s office at the small conference table. “Colonel Lanzo has told me that the weapon’s research team under your command has made excellent progress. I wish I could say the same about our progress with the alien prisoner. So what do we have?” General Douglas handed Straub a thick report. “I’ll summarize the key points for you right now. Much of the report is quite technical. Even I don’t understand it completely. I guess that’s why we have army engineers and thank God for ProTek Armor.”

  “Using the information we gave them from the materials analyses some months ago, the ProTek Armor facility in Maine has created body armor similar to what the alien wore. We think it is even better, being more flexible and able to resist our best armor piercing bullets and even laser fire. It is a constructed carbon fiber sandwich, with a new super Kevlar Plus being the “meat” and the two bread slices a carbon fiber reinforced polymer plus hydroxyapatite. The inner layer has the hydroxyapatite facing outward as does the outer layer. The hydroxyapatite coating has a corrugated overlapping structure. The Kevlar-like layer consists of multiple crisscrossed layers of threads at right angles.”

  “The outer hydroxyapatite has a final extremely thin film of grapheme that is doped with varying sized quantum dots of lead sulfide. This material acts as a photo-detector and absorbs 75% 0f the light striking it in the ultraviolet through infrared range. It is an extremely effective semiconductor with an electro-conductivity about 103 better than silicon. It is also very good as a heat conductor, so will reduce the damage from a laser hit. The material is also tough, being about 30-40 times stronger than steel. All in all, this body armor package can protect from up to 50 caliber fire and multiple laser hits. The electricity generated by the doped grapheme is used to power the suits electronics, a few servos to enhance mobility, and minimal heating and cooling to keep the occupant comfortable. It also keeps the battery back-up system charged so the suit can keep running for several hours during cloudy times and at night.”

  “The visor is a high strength polycarbonate, with a flip down shield of body armor for serious enemy fire. When the shield is flipped down, the camera and audio system comes on line automatically. There is a visual targeting system linked to whatever chip enabled weapon the soldier holds. The targeting display is seen on the visor with the shield either up or down. Night vision with enhanced infrared sensing and a 360 degree panorama is available. Someone wearing this suit could take out an entire platoon of unarmored soldiers day or night.”

  “Fantastic,” responded General Straub. “However, their usage assumes we have troops left to fight, which is not guaranteed, given the fire power of their mother ships.”

  “Yes, their mother ships are a problem. We didn’t get enough pieces from the self-destructed ships to reverse engineer anything at all. However, we were able to reverse engineer the one fighter craft captured in Vermont. Surprisingly, some of our initial assumptions were wrong. Essentially, the craft is powered with two types of engines, two fanjets molded into the two stubby wings and a ramjet molded into the underbody. This arrangement gives the fighter extreme flexibility. It can fly like our best fighter jets, but the ramjet can take over once sufficient speeds are reached, giving the craft extreme speed bursts up to Mach 5. The craft is made from a titanium vanadium alloy doped with copper. It is extremely hard and lighter weight than our metals, but we have been able to duplicate it. “

  “Our team has proposed two types of fighter craft based on this titanium alloy. Both would employ improved aircraft armor. The working metal prototype has this titanium alloy inner layer coated outside with essentially a much thicker version of the body armor that we just discussed. It can withstand several hits by conventional or laser weaponry before going down, giving the pilot sufficient time to take out the alien fighter craft. It is an even match so to speak. With some additional tweaking, we might actually improve the odds. Numbers will be where it’s at. There we might have the “home team” advantage, not having our numbers limited by interstellar transport. Of course that assumes a crash manufacturing program and sufficient time before the enemy returns, hopefully limited by the carrying capacity of the wormholes. But with enough fighters, we could defeat their fighter craft and with sufficient numbers of fighters left against a mother ship, take it out. We are still working on targeting rapid fire controls like we saw with the mother ships and the wedgies. Essentially, it’s all in the software, but we are confident that in time we can match the rapidity and accuracy on multiple targets seen on their side.”

  “Surprisingly, their laser on the fighter craft isn’t any more powerful than what we have. It is just smaller, so the power to weight ratio is much better than what we have. Our engineers have duplicated it and can now match the ones in the fighter craft and likely build bigger versions comparable to what the mothe
r ship might have. Of course since we have no mother ships or even a Wedgie equivalent yet, ours will be stationary and mobile land- based units, sea-based applications, and orbital platforms. Mostly, we’ll have to rely on orbital and deeper space nuclear weapons for first line defense. The new fighters supplemented with land and sea lasers plus improved versions of our rail guns and particle beams will be the second and third line of defense, respectively. All of these will satisfy phases one through three of the proposed Global Strategy Initiative we envisioned earlier.”

  “Our proposal for the upcoming Global Strategic Initiative meeting is to build two new aircraft on a wartime footing in a global cooperative manner. One would be an improved Warthog version, Warthog-OS, with the better armor, but still using the conventional weapons we deployed successfully in protecting our bases. The OS stands for “On Steroids.” The limitation here is that this Warthog will still be limited to low level defense as before, hence it is the last, but very effective, resort. The second will be a new generation fighter jet patterned after the F-22, but with better armor and the combined fanjet and ramjet engines with laser weaponry plus newly designed missiles enhanced with shaped charges and a uranium slug armored head. Our proposed name is F-22EV, the EV standing for Extreme Version. These fighters would meet the enemy at the upper reaches of our atmosphere and follow them down to where the Warthog-OS comes into play. Of course, the enemy would be hit with orbital platform fire before our fighters arrive and our fighters would be supplemented with our land and sea-based laser, rail gun and particle beam weaponry. We have yet to focus on the hand weaponry improvements, phase four, but the other areas take precedent.”

  “General Douglas, job well done. Now we have to gear up manufacturing in a global sense and sell the Global Strategic Initiative to the other major powers.” General Straub then smiled and said, “The devil is always in the details. Let me know the minute we have the first scheduled meeting for the Global Strategy Initiative.” “We’ll, we actually do already. I have the meeting tentatively scheduled for April 2nd. It appears that everyone can make it that time. Oh, I checked your Outlook calendar, and so can you. There are more details to work out, but I think it’s a go.”

  DEAR READER. This event is not in the video and provides historical continuity from Cooper’s autobiography. Reverend Jeremiah picked up his office phone as he looked at the caller ID. It was Alfred. “Jeremiah, I have kept my ears open and I think something is coming up. There is a hush-hush meeting coming up starting on April 2nd according to the 2020 calendar. Our food service will cater the meeting, which will be held in the United Nations. There is no published list of participants and we all will go through a background check. The Secret Service is running the checks and just gave our place a thorough examination. I overheard the Secret Service types talking world leaders, so maybe the Anti-Christ will be part of the meeting. Oh, and the guests will all be staying here where I work. It’s a favorite stop for people going to UN meetings.” Jeremiah rolled his eyes and thought, “Of course, you idiot, that’s why I got you the job in the first place at the Millennium UN Plaza Hotel.” Instead, he said, “Great job, Alfred. See what else you can find out, but don’t be obvious. You don’t want to lose your job.” “I’ll be careful, Jeremiah.”

  Jeremiah hung up and thought, I need to be careful, too. I need some type of bomb, one that can’t be traced back to me. He prayed hard to God that night after having several drinks. His sleep was fitful and he had weird dreams. In one he contracted with a felon who had been sent up for making bombs. He woke with a bad headache that morning and remembered the dream about the felon. “Thanks, God, for the idea,” he said out loud. Now the problem was to find the felon, but how would be do that? He suddenly had an idea. After breakfast, he walked out the door, grabbed a hooded sweatshirt that some parishioner had left behind in the pew months ago. It was perfect, he thought. He put it on, but kept the hood off. Grabbing his bicycle, he pedaled to the library. Just before he got there, he put on large aviator sunglasses and pulled the hood up. He didn’t know if the library had cameras going, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He walked in slightly bent over to keep his face away from surveillance cameras.

  Sitting at the computer, he brought up Google. He quickly typed in court-cases, New York, bombs and hit the enter button. Bingo, several turned up. Many were ruled out quickly by Jeremiah, as they occurred many years ago. “Gotcha, Mahmoud Abu Basrah” said Jeremiah. He had found a case from 10 years ago with a sentence of seven years. “Hmm, this guy should be out by now and maybe willing to earn some money,” he thought. After several more minutes, Jeremiah thought he had tracked down the bomb maker in question and had an address in the Bronx and a phone number. Given the Millennium UN Plaza Hotel meeting was a little more than a month away, Jeremiah needed to move fast. He shut down the computer and walked out, keeping his head down.

  On the way back to the office, he stopped at a store that sold throw-away, preloaded cell phones. Later that night, after his dinner was over, he walked a few blocks away from his small apartment and made the call. “Hello, Mr. Basrah?” “Yes, what the hell do you want?” “I have a business proposition for you” said Jeremiah. The answer was somewhat hostile in tone. “I don’t do any illegal things, get lost.” Jeremiah decided to lie, thinking that Mr. Basrah might think this was an entrapment or sting. “You got me wrong, it is legal and worth some good money. Could we at least meet and talk about it?” There was a several second pause… “By good, are we talking some thousands?” Jeremiah said yes, but with some reservation. He knew that this could wipe out his discretionary fund. But then he thought, God will provide; I’m doing what he wants.

  Mr. Basrah said, “Clancy’s Bar in the Bronx? Do you know it?” “Yes” said Jeremiah. “Come tomorrow night at 7:00 and come alone. If you don’t, you’ll never get a second chance. How will I recognize you?” “Easy, I’ll have a full white beard.” The phone went dead. Jeremiah was pleased with himself. He had planned to disguise himself to make sure nothing came back to him. He planned to use the bushy white beard that was used at the Christmas pageant. It looked realistic, unless you got up close and personal. Given bar lighting, he wasn’t worried. He also planned on wearing a number of pullover sweaters under a shirt and then a blazer. He had scrounged through clothing donations to the church and found the too large shirt and blazer, but with three of his crew neck sweaters, it looked pretty good. He looked heavier and older. Perfect, he thought.

  At 6:58 PM he approached the bar, having left his bicycle chained to a street sign. He glanced across the street and saw someone in the doorway raise a cell phone. As he entered the bar, he saw a middle-eastern looking man in the corner back booth put his cell phone away and beckon him forward. Jeremiah then realized that the man now across the street was a lookout to see if he was alone. Good, I’ve passed the test he thought. He sat across from Mr. Basrah. He could feel the sweat trickling down his forehead from the overly warm clothing and heavy bike pedaling. Mr. Basrah took it all in. “You appear nervous. Why?” Jeremiah answered, “Well, my business angle might be construed as not quite legal and I’m not sure how you’ll take it.” Mr. Basrah stared intently at him. “I thought so. Let’s go to the men’s room. The bar has too many ears here. I took the liberty of ordering you a beer. My religion forbids alcohol, so you take a few sips and then come to the bathroom. I’ll meet you there.” Jeremiah did as he was told.

  A few minutes later, he entered the bathroom and saw Mahmoud Abu Basrah at the sink with the water running full force. Jeremiah figured that the noise would mask their conversation. This guy wasn’t taking any chances. By now Jeremiah was convinced that this guy was legitimate and not part of an FBI sting. His relaxed mood was quickly ended, as Basrah turned and pointed an ugly semi-automatic pistol at him. “Raise your hands over your head and don’t move, or you are a dead man.” Jeremiah carefully complied.

  Basrah came over with a hand held meter of some type and scanned Jeremiah’s body thor
oughly from head to toe. Basrah then smiled and said, “You can relax, now. My meter says you aren’t wearing any wires. So, what do you want?” Jeremiah said, “I need a powerful bomb that can take out a hotel room, kill its occupants, and be capable of being placed in a high end champagne bottle. Can you do it?” Basrah looked at him in a strange way. “Yes, what kind of detonator would you like; cell phone type or remote push button type?” “I need a push button one.” Basrah then said, “How far away do you want it to work? Or do you want one that has a delay after you press the button, giving you time to get away?” Jeremiah stared at Basrah and said, “No delay.” “But you’ll die, too.” “Yes, God has promised me a place in heaven; I am not concerned.” Jeremiah smiled, but his smile was because he knew that Alfred would die, thus leaving no connection to him. Jeremiah thought himself quite the devious person. He would tell Alfred that he had a minute to walk away after he pressed the button.

  Basrah shook his head and said, “You are as nuts as the suicide bombers of my religion. Here’s what I will do. I will supply a push button detonator with a 15 second delay. Should you decide at the last minute that you don’t want to be a martyr, walking as fast as you can and hopefully around a corner will get you safely out of harm’s way. On the other hand, if you still wish to kill yourself, just hold out your hand and wait for a tip. Basrah smiled with this comment and then added, “It’ll cost 10 grand.” That would wipe out Jeremiah’s total discretionary fund. Jeremiah countered with “Eight grand, cash, 100 dollar bills.” Basrah answered, “Nine grand in 100 dollar bills.” “Deal” said Jeremiah. Basrah smiled and said, “Same time next week here. Don’t be late. I’m leaving now. Give me a few minutes; then go finish your beer. Leave a tip. The beer is paid for already. Nice doing business with you. Don’t follow me, come alone next time, or you will be dead.” Jeremiah knew that he wasn’t kidding. He was sure the lookout across the street would be nearby and ready to kill him today or next week if necessary. The 15 seconds bothered Jeremiah, but he would tell Alfred he had two minutes, so don’t rush out and raise suspicions. Still, if Alfred should manage to survive, he would figure out some way to make sure Alfred didn’t last long.