by Maden, Mike
“Sure it does.” Ryan turned to Burgess. “You remember the old Q-ships from World War One?”
“No, sir. I’ve got gray hair, but I’m not that old.”
A round of polite laughter rippled around the table.
Ryan grinned. “Subs were the newest naval tech in World War One, and the Brits didn’t have the ability to either find or sink them. So they started converting merchant vessels into sub hunters. They put up false superstructures to change their appearance, and hid deck guns behind the facades. U-boats would see them, think they were harmless merchantmen, and surface to take them out with their own deck guns, only to watch the facades drop and the Q-ship guns open up.”
Ryan stood and pointed at the bigger screen displaying the locations of the sunken vessels. “John, can you pull up the map that displays all of the AIS ships currently at sea?”
“Sure.” He clicked a button on his laser pointer. Tens of thousands of arrowheads in a variety of colors swarmed across the sea lanes, mostly hugging coastlines, but many traversing the open waters.
Ryan nodded toward the screen. “Our bad guys are out there in the middle of all of that, hunters hunting prey.”
“So you think Q-ships are behind this?” Arnie asked.
“Not Q-ships. Mother ships.”
“You mean, for the drones?”
“Yeah. And tell me this, where’s the best place to hide anything?”
“In plain sight,” Foley said, thinking about the dead drops she used to use when she was a cowboy CIA operative in Moscow. She’d stuff coded messages inside of dead pigeons, dead rats, even dead cats. “But disguised.”
“Exactly.”
“You think one or more of those ships on the board are a mother ship?” Arnie asked.
“Bingo. And if we can’t find the drone—small, silent, invisible—we find the mother ship.”
“Do you think one mother ship can control drones in both the Pacific and Indian Oceans?” Foley asked Talbot.
“Not likely.”
Arnie pointed at the map again. “Thirty thousand boats on the water right now. Could be any one of them. Container ship. Cargo ship. Tanker. Could be five, could be ten, could be a hundred of them.” He turned back to Ryan. “You may have figured it out, but you haven’t exactly solved the problem.”
“Like I said before, simple, not easy.”
He turned to the SecState and SecDef. “This thing is too big for us to handle now. We need to start reaching out to people we can trust and get some help. You two get together with John and come up with a list of people who understand the gravity of the situation—and who know how to keep a lid on this thing. If we thought the markets might get rattled earlier, well, this will cause a firestorm.”
“Understood,” Burgess said. The others nodded in agreement.
He turned to Foley. “Let’s find someone over at DARPA. They’re on the cutting edge of this stuff. Let’s get some of their people noodling on this problem—but without blowing any whistles.”
“I know just the person to call.”
“Do it, please. And do we have any idea if Buck Logan has had any success with his efforts?”
“He’s putting his security teams on his company-owned vessels, with automatic weapons and Stinger missiles,” Foley said.
“Do I want to know how you know this?”
“No, sir, you don’t,” Foley said with a smile.
“Any other ideas?” Ryan asked the room.
Heads shook. “Okay, then let’s get after it.”
46
HOUSTON, TEXAS
Buck Logan was a true paraplegic, having lost the use of his body from the L4-L5 lumbar region of his spine all the way down to the tips of his toes. His high-T libido still raged within his broken frame. He turned all of that frustrated sexual energy into building an empire, trading a lifelong commitment to one woman for an unbreakable bond with his destiny. He transformed his previous talent for feminine conquest into domination of his business competitors, doing to them in contract negotiations what he could no longer do to the buxom young cheerleaders he bedded as a youth.
While the lower half of his nerve-damaged body was unresponsive and weak, he religiously trained the upper half. He was in the middle of a German Volume Training exercise, doing ten sets of ten repetitions on a military press. His wheelchair was parked beneath a Smith machine with forty-five-pound iron plates on either side of the bar. Buck had the place to himself when he chose to work out there.
The door to the corporate gym pushed open. Phil Werley, his liaison to all things Fed, especially DNI Foley, came through the door.
Logan grunted out his last rep and rolled his wrists, slamming the hooks of the stop bars.
“Why the long face, Phil? Somebody cornhole your little sister?” Logan said, breathing heavily, speaking at Werley’s reflection in the mirror.
“Just got word from a friend. Another boat’s gone down. Not confirmed yet, but it seems to fit the profile of the other ones.”
Logan unlocked his chair, ducked his massive head beneath the weight bar, and spun around, his face reddened.
Whether it was reddened from the workout or the bad news, Werley wasn’t sure.
“One of ours?”
“No, sir. Some Indian rust bucket. Went down west of Perth. The Aussies found the wreckage—or what was left of it. No survivors.”
“That’s the IO, not the South Pacific. Guess these pukes are upping their game.”
“White House is pretty lathered up by it. They thought they had this thing nailed down when they cornered the Russian boat. Now they don’t know who’s behind it.”
“Goddamn it.” Logan swore long and low. “So, I take it, still no witnesses, no radar tracks, no sonar hits, and no fucking clue at all who did this?”
Werley knew his boss wasn’t actually asking him a question.
“They’re putting their heads together in D.C. on all of this. My understanding is that they’re working on a new plan and getting ready to roll it out.”
“What plan?”
“Moving air, sea, and space assets into place, where and when they can. It’s high priority, but not at the expense of ongoing combat operations.”
“You mean Ryan’s only putting his johnson halfway in.”
“It will take a few days. They’re hoping for an electronic solution. There doesn’t seem to be much chance of eyes-on at this point.”
“Ryan hasn’t panicked? Called in the cavalry?”
“He’s as worried as you are about roiling the markets. Until now, it’s still just the Aussies, the Kiwis, and us who are tackling this thing, but now that it’s moved to the Indian Ocean, all bets are off.”
“And our plans?”
“Rolling out as we discussed.”
“If the Russians aren’t behind this, who is? Gimme your best guess.”
“My guess? The Chi-Comms. I think it’s a test of one of their new weapons systems—and a test of our existing ones.”
“Not the Russians?” Logan asked.
Werley chuckled. “Ivan? Are you kidding me? The Russian economy is smaller than Canada’s—even smaller than Texas’s. They don’t want to pick a fight with us in the South Pacific, or the IO, for that matter. They’re more worried about the PLA Navy than us.”
“If the Chinese are behind this, what will Ryan do about it?”
“Without proof? I wouldn’t do a damn thing if I were him.”
“And when he gets his proof?”
Werley shook his head. “I don’t even want to think about it.” He snorted. “Hope to God I’m wrong. I probably am. Even the Chinese can’t be that crazy. I just can’t figure out who else would have the capability of doing this—whatever the hell ‘this’ is.”
Logan’s eyes narrowed. “Daddy always said, ‘Bad news
comes in threes.’ Another shoe’s gonna drop. I can feel it in my bones. It’s just a matter of where, and when, and how bad.”
Logan dismissed Werley with a grunt as he turned back around to the Smith machine. He watched the door close behind Werley in the workout mirror as he wrapped his gorilla hands around the steel bar.
The world can wait, he thought. The iron can’t.
He’d done his part.
47
OAK RIDGE, TENNESSEE
The drive over to the computer lab was another perk of the job. The green, pine-studded hills and crisp fall air of East Tennessee lifted her spirits this morning. Parsons’s spirits had needed lifting, as she dreaded the so-called emergency meeting Rhodes had scheduled via text early yesterday.
Usually these emergency meetings were like nursing calls. Rhodes would hit the panic button and Nurse Parsons would run into his room fearing the worst only to discover that all he needed was his filthy bedpan emptied.
Rhodes was a trained physicist, for sure, and not without some talent in the lab. He was also a scratch golfer. The fact he had a Ph.D. in physics didn’t mean he was good enough to drive the science at the lab any more than his par golf meant he could beat Tiger Woods at the Masters.
She pulled her pearl white Subaru Outback into the tree-lined parking lot. She found a space next to the sign announcing RESERVED FOR DIRECTOR RHODES, and his silver G-Class Mercedes wagon. She killed the engine, keeping her eyes on the Mercedes, a vehicle she’d like to own one day but never could on her government salary. Rhodes had been smart enough to segue into the private sector early. He made great money as a partner at a lobbying firm for a big defense contractor before transitioning back into the public sector.
Good for him.
The man might not have been a world-class scientist, but he was brilliant in his own way, discovering early in his career that he was a supremely gifted politician, both in the boardroom and on Capitol Hill. The DOE had decided they needed a man like him to run the program since it was a federally funded project. Quantum bits and entangled particles didn’t fuel RAPTURE.
Money did.
That was okay by her.
* * *
—
Parsons smiled at the uniformed guard in the glass booth. He nodded back a little too eagerly, his wolfish eyes raking over her hard, lean body dressed in form-fitting slacks and a turtleneck sweater beneath a lambswool vest.
She passed by the sign in red letters, NO STICKER, NO PHONE, warning her that if her government-issued cell phone didn’t have the required security sticker, it couldn’t be taken into the area where she was heading.
No problem. Parsons was a stickler for the rules, particularly when it came to security.
* * *
—
Dr. David Rhodes greeted Dr. Kate Parsons at the door, holding a cup of black coffee out to her.
“I know it’s early. I picked this up for you.”
“Thanks, David.”
“Please, have a seat.”
She sat in the buttery soft leather chair across from his desk as he took his seat. Her phone buzzed. “Mind if I get this text?”
“Of course not.”
He watched her flip through her text one-handed, an unlacquered thumbnail scrolling through a block of words while sipping coffee with the other hand. She was a real worker.
Parsons was an attractive woman, for sure. Not cover-girl hot but striking nonetheless, he thought, with her short red hair and dark green eyes. Those were hard to miss. Parsons was the kind of woman that turned heads when she passed by. There was an energy about her, due in part to her incredible athleticism. He chided himself for paying a little too much attention to her shapely figure whenever she walked into a room, and especially when she walked out of it.
He was happily married, but he wasn’t dead, was he?
But it was Parsons’s incredible intellect that electrified a room. Beautiful women didn’t intimidate him, but brilliant minds like hers did. He was no slouch in the education department—a Stanford Ph.D. meant something—but his brain didn’t hold a candle to hers.
But it wasn’t really her brains or her good looks that made him painfully self-conscious when he was around her.
It was guilt.
If IQ were the sole hiring criterion, Parsons would be running the RAPTURE project. But for all of her many and considerable assets, Kate was lacking in people skills. Sure, she was perfectly friendly, and an excellent communicator. She had done a great job leading the initial team and laying the foundation for a project that would likely change history, maybe more so than the Manhattan Project.
He always thought that it was fitting that RAPTURE was also being designed in Oak Ridge. Even the building they were sitting in was within shouting distance of the original graphite reactor. Ironic that the geniuses assembled to conquer nuclear power on the Oak Ridge campus so many decades ago didn’t have a single computer to rely on, whereas RAPTURE was only and all about computational power.
Much like Parsons. She was nothing but computational power. Her eyes bore through you like a laser when she asked you questions that you both knew you couldn’t answer, and made you burn with shame. She was always the smartest person in the room. Everybody knew it and everybody hated her for it because she lacked the grace to hide the obvious.
Now that RAPTURE was a fully funded federal program, new skill sets were required. It meant lobbying on the Hill, shaking the right hands, and turning the impossibly complex into the understandable for Washington midwits.
For better or for worse, Rhodes was the face of RAPTURE now because he was the one testifying behind closed doors in subcommittee meetings. Of course, Parsons remained the genius behind the actual work. She really should be getting all the credit. But neither life nor government-funded science were fair. He didn’t make the rules. He just played by them, and played by them very well.
He watched her close up her phone, grateful that she’d always been cool about the awkward situation they were in. He knew her second-class status had to be hard on her ego but she never showed it at work. She was a real pro and clearly dedicated to the greater cause of advancing human knowledge.
Thank God for that. Without Parsons, the project would die a long, malingering death.
* * *
—
Dr. David Rhodes sat behind his polished mahogany desk in the wide corner office on the second floor, an expanse of pine trees and rolling hills framed in the giant picture window behind him. Photos of Rhodes posing with congressmen and senators whose names Parsons didn’t know hung on the wall. There were also numerous awards and honorifics he’d earned over the years, mostly for philanthropic work. There was even a framed photo of Rhodes receiving an award from the hands of Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Rhodes’s office was located just two miles away from the Spallation Neutron Source facility where she had run into Tad/Ted two days before. A shiver ran down Parsons’s spine, and other parts of her as well, after reading the text he’d just sent. The man showed promise.
She slipped the phone back into her purse.
“Sorry about that, David.”
“No worries.” He forced a smile. Something was obviously bothering him.
Rhodes was in good shape for his age, around sixty, she guessed, and good looking, in a game show host kind of way. He must have had something going on for sure, given the fact he’d been married for over thirty-eight years to his college sweetheart, a former beauty queen and mother to their six children.
Good for them.
“I appreciate you coming in a little early this morning,” Rhodes said. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
She leaned forward. “What?”
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Dylan Runtso is dead.”
Her mouth narrowed. “Oh.”
She sa
t back slowly, expressionless for a moment, eyes blinking as she processed the information. Finally, she said, “That’s terrible. How?”
“Four days ago, he was in a café in Barcelona when a bomb exploded. Maybe you heard about it on the news?”
She shook her head. “I don’t watch the news.”
“I know you two were close when he was here.”
“He was a brilliant guy.”
“Have you two stayed in touch?”
“No.”
“This must come as a real shock. If you need to take time off—”
“No. I’m fine. I mean, yeah. It is shocking. But we’re already behind schedule.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. The Russians and the Chinese aren’t taking time off, are they?”
“No, I suppose not.”
Parsons knew what buttons to push. It was a three-way race to the finish line.
God help us if we don’t finish first, Rhodes thought. RAPTURE was just weeks away from completion. The bad guys weren’t far behind, according to his contacts on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“I appreciate your commitment to the work, Kate. I really do.”
She stood, a small smile on her angular face. “I’m a scientist, first and always. Personal feelings must come second. I’ll work now and grieve later.”
Rhodes stood as well.
“If you’ll excuse me, I need to get to the lab.” She started to turn.
“Oh, Kate. Just one other thing. Since you will be here today, I need to add something to your schedule.”
“Sure. Name it.”
“The FBI wants to speak with you.”
Her head cocked, like a bird spotting a worm. “Me? Why?”
“About Runtso, of course. They have a few questions. But if that’s a problem, I can wave them off.” He began reaching for his desk phone.
“No, not a problem at all. You know where I’ll be. Send them along when they get here.”
Rhodes smiled sheepishly. “They’re already here.”