Breakpoint (17 page)

He stood there, still shaking his head. “Look, I'm going to Infocon Alpha in Vegas tomorrow morning in my VLJ. I'm giving the keynote. Why don't you come with me?”

Now she was going to have to explain to Sol and Rusty why she was flying off to Vegas with a man she had just met, in his personal Very Lite Jet, a man who seemed to be the prototype for the brilliant mad scientist. But she'd bet anything Gaudium knew where some of these underground labs were, and if she could find them, warn them about the attacks…. “I'd be glad to,” she told him.

“You can spend the night in the guesthouse, then. And will you join me for dinner at seven?”

1730 PST
Twentynine Palms, California

“You'd better be right about this, Foley,” Major Mike Zerbrowski was saying into his mouthpiece as the helicopter lifted off from the Marine base. “It's goin' to be hard to explain why I used Marines to go after a civilian complex.”

Yes, I had better be right, Jimmy Foley thought. It had been a bad day so far. TTeeLer had missed the meet at the 7-Eleven and the FBI had eventually given up and most of them were lying around a pool at the Red Roof Inn.

Foley and the Marines watched the videotape from their Remotely Piloted Vehicle again. Flying out toward Bagdad, as Soxster had suggested, it had come across a fenced-off area with a security gate up a dirt road. It was a big ranch spread out on the way to the copper concentrate leach facility, at about forty-one hundred feet above sea level. It was at the seam of the Mohave and Sonoran Deserts. There were both Joshua trees and yucca, a private airstrip, three large satellite dishes, four large buildings, and maybe twenty cabins. Over two dozen vehicles were parked, but there were few people outside. It was listed on the county tax rolls as “American Energy & Mineral Research Corporation,” with a corporate headquarters in the nation of St. Kitts. Folks at the nearby Miner's Diner said they never met anyone from the place.

Jimmy had spent the day convincing the colonel commanding the 7th Marines that he had discovered the location of the culprits who had attached Echo Company by drugging them and taking control of their exoskeleton suits. Foley was convinced this was the place where the Chinese were using American hackers to monitor and subvert the military's work, maybe also the place from which they had sent the signals that sent the Pacific satellites off.

It had been harder to persuade the colonel to put Marines back in exoskeletons after what had happened to Echo Company, but Dr. Rathstein had been persuasive. “If we shut off the Netcentric functions, then there will be no data entering or leaving the suits. No one can hack in again. The guys will just have tactical radio links, voice, like in the old days.” He also produced over two dozen exoskeleton-experienced volunteers from Bravo Company. What got the colonel to say yes was Jimmy's argument that the 7th had been attacked and the colonel had inherent authority to act in self-defense; if he waited for Washington to approve a plan, the bad guys would be gone.

With the sun starting to go down, Jimmy watched the two other UH-85 Arapahos lift up, one on either side of the bird he was in. Each of those two helicopters carried four Marines in exoskeleton suits with the new M-912 combined individual weapon. The M-912 was a double-stack multiple-grenade launcher, an electronically initiated, very-high-rate-of-fire 9mm Lugar parabellum automatic rifle and Taser-style stun gun in one weapon. It would have been too heavy for troops without the lifting strength provided by the exoskels. Jimmy and the major in the lead Arapaho wore standard body armor and carried only side arms. Three Marine criminal investigators and two counterintelligence officers were sitting in the back of Jimmy's chopper. “Military forces can act in their own protection, even in the states. It's in the rules of engagement. And you can act without warrants and higher-level approvals when you think there is an imminent national security threat. Trust me, I know this
posse comitatus
stuff,” Foley bluffed.

The three-bird formation of Arapahos was coming toward the ranch low out of the dark eastern sky. Suddenly, ahead of them, red streaks jumped up from the ground.

“Missiles, missiles!” the pilot yelled over the radio. “Break formation, dive!”

The Arapaho seemed almost to tip upside down as it banked and dove for the surface. The pilot righted the aircraft a few feet above the desert floor. Twisting his head to see through the window to the sky behind them, Jimmy saw four fireballs slowly descending. The pilot had had the presence of mind to release diversion flares as he maneuvered out of the path of the incoming Stinger-like missiles.

“Talon Two, Three, you still wi' me?” the Arapaho pilot asked, calling on the other two helicopters.

“Roger that, Talon One, Talon Three is on your tail,” came the response. Then: “And Talon Two, who are these guys got Stingers out here?”

“Break formation. Talon Two, approach your target low from the east-northeast, heading zero eight zero. Talon Three, from the northwest at heading two eight zero. Do not break ceiling above three zero zero feet.” The lead pilot then began a long turn, giving the other aircraft time to get into position for a simultaneous assault on the site.

“I don't see anybody down there where the Stingers came from,” Talon Two called in.

“Talon Three in position,” Foley heard over his headset. Then the other helicopter confirmed its readiness.

“All Talons, go, go, go.” The Arapaho lurched forward. “Remember, no touchdowns, drop, discharge, and pull out.”

The desert turned into dust devils as the choppers descended. The exoskeleton Marines leaping from the Arapahos reminded Foley of Heinlein's
Starship Troopers,
giants totally encased in their own individual ecosystems, impervious to attack. The exoskel Marines jumped into swirling sand and fanned out by bounding across the ground. Also dropping from the helicopters were several four foot long vehicles with miniature tank treads, Bombots. They carried multimode cameras and sensors designed to find booby traps and bombs. Another model carried a high-rate-of-fire electronic gun system.

Jimmy Foley and Major Zerbrowksi came up behind the squad moving in from the east. He heard a small thud up ahead and realized that the lead unit had made it to the large warehouse-like building. The thud was probably the sound of the Marines using a light explosive charge to blow the lock off the main door. Foley realized he had not yet switched his headset from the aircraft band to the ground frequency. As he switched over to the chatter of the Bravo Company 'skels, he heard, “Sending the Bombots into building one.”

Normally, the exoskeleton troops would have the visuals in their helmets of what the Bombots were seeing as they drove around inside the buildings. However, with the Netcentric connections turned off to prevent another hacker attack, only their voice radios connected the exoskels to the tactical communications system. Only Jimmy, the major, and two gunnies had the Bombot's visuals on their portable monitors. The vehicles scanned the rooms with their electro-optical and infrared cameras, but they were also equipped with self-sensing microcantilevers that detected the smallest particles that could be explosive residue. They tested by creating faint popping noises, actually detonating particles in the air.

“Bombot reports building one secure,” he heard on the ground freq. “We're going in.”

“Building two secure.” That meant both the warehouse and the residence had been taken and checked for booby traps.

He was getting close enough and the sand was settling, so he could make out the shape of the thirty-foot-high warehouse. “Building three secure.” That was the multibay garage building. Foley headed for the warehouse.

On the ground outside the building were what looked like two large toy aircraft, maybe the unmanned aerial vehicles that Soxster thought had been used to beam signals down directly to the exoskeleton-suited Marines? Zabrowski bent over one of the little planes. “Writing's in English and Chinese.”

“Yeah, well, ever found a toy that's not made in China?” Foley asked, and kept going.

Foley heard the chattering back and forth on the tactical channel. None of them had found anyone. There were lots of computers, but no people. Signs of recent occupancy, but no one home. “Got a video-monitoring studio here,” one of the Marines announced on the radionet. Foley joined him and found six flat screens, flipping among various video feeds. They had not shut the system off. But the feeds were not coming from the ranch. They seemed to be from industrial facilities, parking lots. Then the White House appeared on one screen. They had been hacking into surveillance cameras all over the country. Foley hit the computer console in front of him and a GUI appeared with a search box. On a hunch, he typed in “SCAIF.” A long list of dates came back. Jimmy typed again. “SCAIF, bombing.” It came back with three listings. He hit the third. On the center flat screen above him, a tape began to run. The image was grainy, maybe on telescopic. A cloud like a small explosion appeared in the distance, then a large truck came roaring down the road. A car crashed into the truck from the side and the screen was immediately filled with a flash. There was no sound. Then the camera panned back and to the right. There was someone on the ground. The image zoomed in. “Jesus, Susan!” Jimmy said. He reminded himself that he knew she was all right. That scene had taken place yesterday. He tapped his mike: “We got a bunch of evidence over here.”

As he reached down to the console again, he heard in his headset, “Major, we got a stiff in the warehouse. Big bullet hole in his forehead.”

Foley accompanied Major Zabrowski inside the large structure that he guessed was forty feet by a hundred. The front part was divided up into vehicle bays, some of which had dusty jeeps and trucks. The rest of the space was office cubicles, many with flat screens and headsets. Following the voice of a gunny sergeant directing them, they made their way back to a cubicle near the far side of the building. The body was still on a gurney. An IV drip stand was on its right and some sort of brain scanner on the left, with its wires still connected to pads on the skull. There was also a large, bloody hole in the middle of his forehead.

They had tried to learn what he knew through drug inducement and lie-detector brain scans, which Jimmy Foley knew from his own experience worked well, unlike the medieval hocus-pocus of polygraphs. Jimmy wondered what had happened to Naomi, the single mom, and her kid. He swallowed hard.

“You know this guy?” the major asked. “Who is he?”

“This is TTeeLer,” Jimmy said with an overwhelming sense of guilt.

“What kind of a fuckin' name is that, Major?” the gunny asked. Zabrowski shook his head.

“It's geek,” Foley volunteered.

“Greek? I heard of Stavos and Dimitri, no TeeTee,” the Gunny said, and laughed.

“Geek, computer talk,” Foley corrected, remembering what Soxster had told him. “TTL. It's part of a computer packet, how long it's good for, how long it lasts. It means Time To Live.”

“Well, in his case, I'd say it meant time to die,” the gunny said, bending down to examine the body.

Jimmy looked up and saw, on the other side of the room, the surveillance camera inside the glass globe. It was moving slowly. When it was pointed at Foley and the major standing over TTeeLer, the lens zoomed in. It could just be an intelligent video program that was directing it, Foley thought, but it had an erratic pattern that made it seem driven by hand. He turned his back on the camera, flipped his frequency to the All Mission Personnel channel, and said softly, “Do not run, but quickly withdraw from all buildings, withdraw now.”

The noise was from above, sharp and loud,
THWACK
, and with it came an instant rain of metal shards everywhere. They hadn't checked the roof, Foley thought as he looked up. The ragged metal roof fragment hit his right eye and angled into and through his nose. Foley felt no pain, but through his left eye he could see his blood gushing out. Then he fell over onto the corpse.

2008 PST
Will Gaudium's Home at the Bacchanalia Winery

“I wasn't sure at first whether you were only pretending to agree with me,” Will Gaudium admitted as he poured the Late Harvest Laborscum, “but the expression
in vino veritas
hasn't lasted two thousand years without reason.”

“Well, here is the truth: I hate dessert wines,” Susan protested, convinced that she had already had enough wine for two nights.

“At least try it,” Gaudium pleaded. “My wife loved it.” He tended to the dwindling fire, stirring the embers and adding a log.

Sipping the liqueur-like wine, Susan had to admit, “I can see why. Like honey, but not syrupy or oversweet.”

“Just like you,” Gaudium let slip. “I'm sorry, that was inappropriate, Susan.”

“No, Will, don't be upset. It was fine.
In vino veritas.
I love getting compliments,” she said. “But, if you don't mind, tell me about your wife.”

Gaudium inhaled. “Breast cancer. Three years ago. Happened fast. Tried everything, but it was aggressive and we caught it late.” He swallowed and, Susan thought, his eyes teared up. “You see I have no problem whatsoever with genetic alteration to fix mistakes in our cells. If I could have spent all my money to save her that way, I would not have hesitated. But instead of doing research into that our scientists were doing Viagra and Botox.”