With it came instant pain and nausea.
He stood in the farm field, sun beating down, head woozy and an overwhelming feeling of flu-like sickness wracking his body. Pressure in his ears. His head throbbed. He felt a trickle run over his lips and down his chin. He rubbed a hand across his face and his fingers came back bright red.
He took a feeble step. Dizzy and weak. Stepped once more. In the distance, the sound of a siren. His legs wobbled uncontrollably. The world began spinning, and Daniel dropped face-first to the rust-colored dirt.
39 Inflection Point
Agent Griffith stuffed his phone into a pocket. Messages from various contacts throughout the FBI had been coming in fast and furious. Was Rice sure? Why that particular submarine? He answered each as best he could, but he didn’t have much to go on.
His first call had been to the Washington, D.C. office of the Chief Master-at-Arms, United States Navy. The military police unit provided base security but also employed specialists trained in counterterrorism and internal security breaches. The conversation was brief and concise. They were already on high alert. A senior officer assured Griffith they would handle it.
The next call was to the national security advisor at the White House. Griffith provided the same limited information, along with Daniel’s recommendation to kill the submarine if that’s what it came to. The NSA agreed.
From there it was every senior director within the FBI. They all had similar questions, none of which Griffith could yet answer. The FBI’s job would be to uncover the culprits.
For inexplicable reasons, the evidence was somewhere in Daniel’s stomach. He’d said so himself, though, at the time, Griffith had thought he must be joking. Now he wasn’t so sure.
Griffith stood in the mostly empty waiting room at Piedmont Atlanta Hospital. Daniel had been brought in unconscious, found in a farmer’s field more than forty miles from where he’d started his jump at Freedom Plaza.
A doctor dressed in light blue scrubs held a black-and-white MRI image. He pointed to an abnormally bright object.
“He’s got a second chip in his body?” Griffith asked incredulously. The doctors had run the MRI after a relatively simple surgery to remove an electronics chip from Daniel’s left arm. The chip was already in the hands of the Atlanta FBI office.
The doctor shrugged. “It’s probably not a chip. It’s circular. It might be a coin. But if it is, it’s a big one.”
“Like a silver dollar?”
“Could be. I can’t imagine how he swallowed it.”
Griffith couldn’t imagine it either, but if the object was anything like a coin, the FBI would need it. Probably even more than the chip. “Get it out. Soon as you can. This is a national emergency.”
“We’re prepping him. But with all the internal hemorrhaging, we have to be careful.”
“Right now. I mean it,” Griffith commanded. “I want him to survive too, but I need that coin just as fast as you can cut it out.”
The doctor’s eyes widened, but he nodded and left.
Daniel’s life might be on the line, but so were the lives of millions. The Navy already had the key bits of information, but based on Daniel’s phone call, the coin would lead them to the people involved.
A half hour later, the same doctor placed a silver-and-gold coin in Griffith’s hand. It was almost identical to the coin that had started all this business, including instructions written around its outside.
Ten minutes later and one mirror ripped off a bathroom wall, Griffith had the answers he needed. The message from the future echoed the same information Daniel had called in. USS Nevada. Captain Cory Lundstrom. The time and places of attack, confirming what Griffith had already passed along to the Navy.
But it contained more. The names, positions, backgrounds and the last known contact points for key individuals who were long dead in 2053 but were still alive today. Some were right here in Atlanta.
********************
USS Nevada
North Pacific, 12 nautical miles southeast of Adak Island
October 9, 2023 16:20 Pacific Time
Lieutenant Commander Helen Tierney sat in the executive officer’s watch chair, a seat positioned physically higher than everyone else in the Command Center of the USS Nevada. She surveyed the activity at each station and ran through a mental checklist of the progress of their readiness drill.
The submarine was holding steady at their launch depth of forty meters. Simulated targets had been generated by the communications officer and passed to Fire Control. Two launch keys, her own and the captain’s, were inserted and activated. All twenty-four missile tubes showed green ready-to-launch lights. The only thing left was the captain’s verbal authorization to launch. A simulated launch, of course. All of them were.
Smooth as silk, she thought. Well, almost.
The live video feed of the activity down in Fire Control, one level below, wasn’t perfect. The monitor was small, and the picture quality wasn’t great. It was easy enough to see the trigger in the weapons officer’s hand, but harder to tell that it was colored orange and labeled SIM. The other trigger, the red one marked LIVE, would still be locked away with a key accessible only to the weapons officer.
Tierney made a mental note to suggest a change when they got back to port. Replace the tiny monitor with something bigger. A small improvement, but the low-quality monitor felt like a weak link in the chain.
Things like that had been on her mind ever since they’d received a top secret communication from COMSUBPAC. An unusual message, and one only she and the captain were privy to read. Be on high alert, it warned, for signs of a possible security breach. No further details. No intelligence. No background check revisions.
It made every sailor on board a suspect.
Oh yeah… and keep doing your job.
Sometimes it was hard to tell if the higher-ups even knew what her job was. At this very moment, she was overseeing a readiness exercise that brought enough firepower online capable of destroying half the planet. Every electronic and mechanical system had been powered up. If it weren’t for the computer safeguards and the good people aboard this vessel, in less than five minutes, those deadly missiles would actually launch. With that kind of responsibility, she couldn’t afford to have doubts about a single person.
“Command, Fire Control,” the weapons officer’s voice boomed over the intercom. “Targets loaded. Confirm?”
Tierney looked over the shoulder of one of the sailors in the Command Center. His finger scrolled through a list of the five simulated targets loaded into the fire control computer. The sailor gave a thumbs-up.
Tierney grabbed a microphone from its perch over the station. “XO confirms. Targets are good.”
“Very good. Fire Control is standing by.”
“Final check for launch,” Tierney called out to the dozen sailors staring at their displays. “Systems?”
“Systems, aye. We’re go for launch.”
“Navigation?”
“Navigation, aye.”
“Comm?”
The communications officer held up a hand. He pushed a headset tight against his ear and studied text scrolling across his display.
“Comm?” she repeated.
“Uh, we’ve got a problem, ma’am.”
She stepped over to the station. The captain held his position at the opposite side of the room as prescribed by procedure.
“Whatcha got?” She looked over the comm officer’s shoulder. His VLF communications display only provided a message header. From COMSUBPAC, Naval headquarters for submarine operations in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
PRIORITY. Clearance: Top Secret. Eyes: Captain or Exec only.
If this were an actual launch, a priority message might be a change in targets, or, potentially, an abort command. Even in a tactical readiness drill, she’d need to play it that way. The comm officer pushed away from the station, and she squatted in his place, touching the screen and quickly skimming the message tha
t came up.
Disturbing. The worst possible news. The security breach they’d been warned about had been traced to their crew.
“Stand down,” Tierney called out. “Captain, you’re going to need to see this.”
Captain Cory Lundstrom picked up a microphone and broadcast across the submarine. “All hands. Stand down from the TRE. Repeat, stand down.” He switched off his launch key, slipped the lanyard over his neck and joined Tierney at the comm station.
Together they read the alarming message. A specific crewmember had been identified as compromised. Fire Control Technician Joshua Swindell. He was to be arrested for questioning immediately.
“What the fu…?” the captain said, shaking his head. He looked Tierney in the eye, thinking.
“Lockdown?” she whispered.
He nodded silently in agreement.
Tierney took a deep breath. She’d never thought she’d have to issue the commands, but she’d been trained for every contingency. The lockdown procedure would turn this vessel into a crime scene. But with a compromised sailor on board and no reason to believe there might not be accomplices, a crime scene might be exactly what it was.
“Chief!” she called out. A chief petty officer wearing a security badge stood up at the far side of the room. “Come with me.”
She stepped through a door and dropped down a ladder, hands on the rails and feet never touching a step. When the chief reached the bottom, she noted his holstered firearm and gave him a quick summary. “We’re making an arrest. This is not a drill. Swindell in Fire Control. No one else, at least for now. Got cuffs with you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Let’s go, then.”
Fire Control was the next door down, and when they entered, Swindell seemed ready for them. He jumped from his chair and lunged for the door, but the chief caught him, wrestled an arm behind his back and slapped handcuffs on him. The sailor looked confused and frightened, but he stopped struggling.
“What the hell is going on?” shouted the weapons officer. It was a good sign that he hadn’t been compromised too.
“Stand back,” Tierney announced. “This is a lockdown.”
The chief propped Swindell up. His eyes darted left and right. Tierney stepped to within inches of his face. “What have you been up to, sailor?”
He didn’t answer, but the guilt was written on his face. She patted him down, then reached into his pants pockets and drew out a slip of paper and a key.
“Well, look at this. A Fire Control lockbox key?” She motioned to the weapons officer, who dialed a combination on a safe on the wall. Empty inside.
“How the hell did you get that out?”
“I didn’t,” Swindell answered, his eyes filling with tears. “The Lord did.” He started to shake.
Tierney examined the slip of paper, immediately recognizing the format of a launch code. “Oh God.” A sick feeling twisted in her gut. Swindell was one of the few on board with login access to change a target. Inexplicably, he also had a key that would put the live launch trigger in his hand.
A live launch to a real target. They’d come very close.
There would be a lot of questions, and not just for Swindell. Everyone would be interviewed, officers and enlisted alike. Every locker and personal space would be searched. The crew would understand. It was the price they paid to preserve the trust placed in their hands. The guilty, Swindell and anyone else, would be handed over to authorities once they were safely back in port.
********************
At 7:30 that evening, Griffith stepped out of the passenger side of the FBI squad car and surveyed the primary target of their investigation. A church. A simple one-story building. Aging brickwork, a white wooden steeple that needed paint, and weeds in the front lawn.
It didn’t seem to match the ambitious sign out front: Lord’s Covenant First Temple of Blessed Reconstruction. A small banner was tacked on one side: Worship with us, Sunday 10 a.m.
At least they were advertising.
Information deciphered from the coin had led them to this place, as unlikely as it seemed. Home to a radical preacher with ties to organized crime figures in Colombia and Russia. Apparently, this guy would become a key figure in the future.
Bank records weren’t hard to get, and the flow of money confirmed the coin’s message. Foreign money, coming to this small organization over several years. There was clearly more to this building than its weathered exterior.
Two other FBI agents, Kenney and Williams, climbed out of the car. Normally, they would have been enough for this portion of the investigation, but since the church was in Atlanta, Griffith had decided to tag along.
The porch was lit by a bare bulb. Kenney kicked the double front doors, and they swung open. In the foyer, a single folding table was covered with printed brochures promoting the church. A bulletin board listed upcoming church activities.
All three agents drew their firearms before heading down the main church aisle. Dark. Empty.
A door on one side led into a hallway with the light on. They passed an empty office and a desk covered with papers. Agent Kenney peeled off to search for evidence.
Griffith silently motioned to another door at the end of the hallway, with a sign indicating Bible Study. Light streamed out from under the door. Agent Williams followed, his gun pointing up.
The door was unlocked, and Griffith peered inside. No one there. The room was filled with boxes and tables stacked with electronics. A metal-framed shelf held computer equipment connected by cables. Lights flashed across the front panels.
To one side of the room, a white oval frame stood by itself. About six feet high, it looked like an airport metal detector. Lights blinked on and off around its interior edge.
Griffith entered first, pointing his gun as he surveyed each corner of the room. No one in this room either. It seemed to be an equipment room of some sort, though it was hard to imagine what a church would be doing that would require such a setup.
“What do you make of it?” Griffith asked.
“He’s probably not communicating with God,” Williams answered.
Griffith chuckled and examined the electronics rack. Possibly communications equipment, but it could be almost anything. They’d need a technology expert to figure it out.
A sharp cracking sound interrupted the silence, and Griffith jerked his head toward the white oval. A violet light erupted around its edge, and the space within its interior wavered like hot air over a sunbaked desert highway.
From nowhere, a young man wearing a white visor over long stringy hair stepped through the oval and into the room. His head pivoted, and his jaw dropped. He quickly turned back to the oval, but Williams grabbed one arm and dragged him away.
“FBI! Freeze!” Griffith yelled, pointing his gun.
The man struggled in Williams’s grip. “No! You must not stop me. You don’t know what you’re doing!”
With a single twist, Williams dropped him to the floor, wrenched his arms behind his back and cuffed him. Griffith holstered his gun and squatted down closer to the man’s face compressed against the hard floor. His eyes were wild with rage. He matched the description of their target.
Griffith shook his head in disbelief. “Pretty fancy setup you have here, especially for a preacher. Why don’t you tell us about it?”
********************
Griffith loved it when all the loose ends of an investigation were wrapped up. It was comfortable. Secure. Almost heart-warming.
Atlanta police had hauled away the preacher for booking. The Navy was still reporting the all-clear hours after the predicted launch time. They’d arrested a sailor on board the USS Nevada, and the submarine was now on a lockdown protocol, every missile secure in its silo.
One of the many messages on Griffith’s phone was from the president’s national security advisor, congratulating Griffith on their success. That one felt pretty good. It allowed his mind to focus on different things.
G
riffith hopped into the front passenger seat of the unmarked FBI car. “Thanks, guys. I appreciate the unplanned stop.”
Agent Williams gave him a blank stare, put the car in gear and pulled out of the parking lot of an all-night tattoo and piercing shop. The car headed toward a significantly more upscale part of Atlanta, where they’d booked a hotel for the night.
Some of the messages on Griffith’s phone were from a contact recently added, Chloe Demers. She was already at the hotel, using the time to complete her research into something she was tentatively calling “anchor drift”. Griffith didn’t fully understand the time physics, but Chloe thought it might explain why Daniel hadn’t returned from his jump and why he’d reappeared forty miles from where he’d started, and more than three hours later.
According to Chloe, Daniel should have reappeared almost instantaneously, just as she’d done in her test of the belt back in Geneva. They’d waited at Freedom Plaza for more than an hour. No Daniel. Further searches in the area around the Ebenezer Church hadn’t turned up anything either. The church’s reverend had seen Daniel prior to the jump, but not after. No one had.
As the car pulled onto a freeway, Griffith checked his phone once more. Another message from Chloe.
Je suis au bar. Bonne connexion internet, excellent vin.
Prior to this assignment, Griffith would have struggled to string more than three French words together. But when Chloe spoke, the language didn’t seem difficult at all. She was apparently sipping wine at the hotel bar, waiting for him.
Griffith examined the small box in his hand, gift-wrapped. He didn’t care what the other FBI guys thought about their inexplicable stop at a peculiar shop in a seedy neighborhood. Chloe would love it.
40 Home
A regular electronic beep tugged Daniel into consciousness. He lifted heavy eyelids.
An inclined bed with rails on both sides. An IV drip feeding into his left arm. A clip pinching the end of his index finger with a wire running to a monitor that signaled each heartbeat.
The Quantum Series Box Set Page 90