Breakpoint (26 page)

Will Gaudium lifted his head and threw back his shoulders. Looking at his employee, he said in what he thought was a command voice, “General Bowdin, I want you to suspend the operation until after the election, until mid-November, when I will review my decision. No more operations, no more deaths. That's an order.”

Francis X. Bowdin chuckled and walked toward the back gate of the courtyard. “Well now, Will, that may pose a problem. I got the FBI and Navy investigators pouring all over the ranch out in California. We may have to throw them a few guilty bodies. I got two pain-in-the-ass investigators from the Intelligence Analysis Center, a wiseass gray-hat hacker, and a fuckin' Harvard professor woman getting too close to figuring things out. They may all have to go. To say nothing of the devil children; they get their special formula delivered to them Monday. Besides, I may have to plant a few more fortune cookie crumbs leading back to the Reds on the Mainland.”

Gaudium was stunned. He raised his hand, made a fist, then pointed his index finger at the General. “Frank, you're not listening. I gave you an order. You work for me!”

Bowdin walked slowly across the courtyard to Gaudium. “No, Will. No, actually I don't.” He dropped a large hand down on Gaudium's shoulder. “Listen, why don't you come out to the hollow with me. You've never seen our training facility, and it's not far from here.” As he spoke, he unrolled his hand and then, with a chopping motion, struck Will Gaudium sharply on the temple, between the forehead and ear. Gaudium slumped, instantly dead. “It's the Ides, Will. Beware the Ides.”

Holding the body up with one arm, Bowdin spoke into the sleeve of his other arm. “Todd, there's a red house up the street behind the inn and across the street. See it? There's a parking lot out back of it. Pull the Hummer around there and drop the hatch open. We got something to take back to the hollow.”

1028 EST
Intelligence Analysis Center
Navy Hill, Foggy Bottom
Washington, D.C.

“Mr. MacIntyre, have you heard from Susan?” Jimmy said as he and Soxster burst into the IAC Director's office.

Rusty eyed the NYPD detective and the long-haired young man with him. “Actually, I'm on the line with her now. Who the hell is this?”

“Oh, sir, this is Soxster,” Jimmy explained. “He works with us.”

“He does?” Rusty asked. “Is he cleared for Top Secret?”

“Well, ah, at this point, yes,” Jimmy fumbled. “I'll explain it all later, but yes, yes, he is.”

Rusty arched an eyebrow. “I'll put her on speaker.”

“Susan, are you all right?” Jimmy asked anxiously. “I should never have let you do things alone.”

“Yeah, I'm okay. I'm on a Coast Guard cutter. We just rounded up the last of the Dominion Commonwealth agents. They were making for Florida, but we chased them in the helo and vectored in the cutter.” She paused a moment. “I do solo just fine, thanks.”

“Susan, see if they can chopper you over to Lauderdale. I've got a chartered VLJ waiting to get you back here. I just finished reading Foley's report about Gaudium and General Bowdin. It convinces me, but we'll need to punch it up so that when Sol lands he can brief the Principals at tonight's White House meeting. Also, we need to find those two guys, Bowdin and Gaudium, and get them arrested,” Rusty said both to Susan on speaker and Jimmy standing next to his desk.

The transmission from the cutter
Bertholf
was crystal clear on the speaker: “Sure, but, Rusty, we need to find a way to warn the parents of the children conceived with the help of that lab. They get the poisoned formula tomorrow and the director at the lab wouldn't give me the list of parents, didn't believe I was a U.S. federal government officer.”

“I got your message on that, Susan, and I am about to give that clinic director a call. Then I'm calling FedEx to have them find and stop the packages. The last thing I want to do is have to go public with this and make the appeal through the media,” Rusty said as he scanned Susan's e-mail on his screen. “There'd be a witch hunt in this country, people trying to track down the superkids, people trying to kill them. It would be like—”

Soxster interrupted. “We already know where Gaudium is, or was this morning. And where he probably is now.” Russell MacIntyre shot him a look that said,
Who told you that you could speak?

Jimmy came to his rescue. “We got Gaudium's credit-card number from the Mandalay in Vegas and then checked to see when he used it last, which was last night for dinner and overnight accommodations in Rappahannock County, Virgina.” He did not bother to tell Rusty how Soxster had acquired either piece of information. “So I used a little professional courtesy and called the sheriff out there to see if Gaudium was still at this inn. Turns out he had a guest this morning that fits the description of General Bowdin to a tee. Then they both disappeared.”

Rusty looked from Jimmy to Soxster and back to Jimmy. “Dominion Commonwealth. I know that name from somewhere. Another case. Anyway, so how does all that tell us where he probably is now?”

Soxster leaped in again. “Property records in the surrounding area. Dominion Commonwealth Services owns about two hundred acres backing up on the Shenandoah National Park. Must be his lair.”

Rusty looked back at Jimmy. “Lair? I was just out in that park two weekends ago, climbing Old Rag Mountain. Little forest fires all over the park because of the drought. Got the park rangers' shorts all in a knot. What's he mean, lair?”

“It's probably another facility like the one out near Twentynine Palms, hackers, control room, shooters, barracks, warehouses,” Jimmy explained. “Probably why Gaudium was in Virginia, to go there. The General picks him up this morning and takes him there to show him about the next attack or something.”

“Google Earth,” Soxster said.

“What did he just say?” Rusty asked Jimmy.

“We looked at it on satellite imagery. It's at the end of a place called Thornton Hollow. Easily defended. The staff are probably heavily armed and are likely to be ex–Special Forces like the General,” Jimmy explained. “We counted nine major buildings, probably all prewired with explosives on the roofs in case the place gets raided. They probably plan to blow them up, like they did to me out at their ranch in the desert. We figure they also probably got a smart fence to detect intruders, land mines, maybe remotely operated machine guns.”

“Lovely. So we'll need the Delta Force to go in and get him,” Rusty suggested.

Soxster shook his head quickly, no. Jimmy spoke their hesitation. “Well, sir, maybe not them. See, Bowdin used to command them, and probably a bunch of his Dominion guys were in the SF.”

“So what are you suggesting?” Rusty asked.

“Well, uh, I had an idea,” Soxster said. “Didn't they, like, kill the head of the Pentagon's advanced gizmo office, DARPA? I got some ideas how they can help.”

“Oh, good.” Rusty sighed and looked again at Jimmy. “Who did you say he is?”

“Soxster,” Soxster said. “Didn't this use to be Wild Bill Donovan's office in World War Two? The OSS?”

1835 EST
Basement Conference Room 3
The West Wing, the White House

“So we would begin by shooting down their satellites, since they shot down ours,” Secretary of Defense William Chesterfield said, addressing the powerpoint slide on the screen.

“They didn't. They hacked ours, or somebody did,” the Secretary of State corrected. “And that slide says you're going to use ground-and space-based lasers. Didn't Congress refuse to fund all that Star Wars laser stuff?”

Chesterfield shifted in his seat and looked at the National Security Advisor, who said nothing. Chesterfield sighed and then answered, “Brenda, this is obviously sensitive, but yes, the Congress did cut the laser weapons in space program. They did not cut the space-to-ground, ground-to-space laser communication program.”

“You're going to attack them with a communications system?” Brenda Neyers asked.

“Well, they're tunable lasers. And the way we developed them…” The Secretary of Defense again looked to the National Security Advisor for help.

Finally, Wallace Reynolds came to the Secretary of Defense's assistance. “The communications lasers can be tuned up to the point that they could fry eggs on Mars, all the way from Arizona.”

Chesterfield kept going. “Then, because they blew up the internet beachheads and cut the fiber-optic cables, we would sever all of the internet connections in and out of China. Our specially equipped submarines are standing by, the
Jimmy Carter
and the like. DIA has found a Russian colonel freezing his ass off out in Vladivostok who will stage a few accidents where the fiber-optic landlines run from China into Siberia.”

“You're proposing to blow things up inside Russia?” Secretary Neyers demanded.

Chesterfield did not answer her. “Of course, China may respond, if they think it's us that did all this. They might attack Taiwan, in which case we just use Op-Plan 5010, the Seventh Fleet reinforced by land-based strategic and tactical air.”

“If they think it's
us,
Bill?” Brenda Neyers challenged. “Who the hell else are they going to think it is? Botswana?”

And at just that moment, Sol Rubenstein opened the door. “Sorry, everybody. I have an excuse for my tardiness. I was in Hong Kong earlier today.” He plunked his weary body down in the seat behind the nameplate that read “Director of National Intelligence.”

Wallace Reynolds looked relieved. “And how was the dim sum, Sol?”

“Never got any,” Rubenstein said, opening his folder. “Now listen, it hasn't been China that's been doing all of these attacks. They gave me proof.” He raised his hand against the responses around the room. “And I just got a call on the way in from Rusty MacIntyre. My investigators have confirmed who
has
been doing the attacks—and it's actually been Americans. A group of religious fanatics, neo-Luddites, and a former U.S. Special Forces general, all banded together.”

“That's absurd, Sol,” Chesterfield exploded. “The U.S. Army has been attacking the U.S.? Nonsense! And who else—Lud something?”

Wallace Reynolds's pleasure at Rubenstein's arrival had quickly evaporated, but the former Princeton professor explained, “Ned Ludd, leader of an anti-technology rebellion, England, 1811. His followers were called Luddites. The term's used now for anyone who opposes technological advance, especially through violence.” The other three in the room looked briefly at him and then continued.

“Does the FBI agree with this crazy Chinese theory?” Chesterfield asked.

“First of all, I did not say the U.S. Army was doing anything, I said a former member of it. And no, I have not yet briefed the FBI. I just landed, for Christ's sake,” Rubenstein replied.

“Good, when you can prove it and the Bureau concurs, let me know. Meanwhile, the President has asked me for options and I am giving them in the morning. I have also issued a Warning Order to the relevant units and they are standing by. Is there anything else, Wallace?” The Secretary of Defense stood, nodded, and left the room.

“Really, Sol,” Secretary of State Neyers asked, “all the way there and not enough time for dim sum?”

“The PLA is scraping for a fight over Taiwan,” Rubenstein replied. “Wallace, did you get that? They're gearing up, too.”

“I heard you, Sol,” the National Security Advisor said, staring at the presidential seal on the wall. “I was just wondering why I had ever left Princeton.”

2303 EST
Dominion Commonwealth Services Training Facility
Thornton Hollow
Near Shenandoah National Park, Virginia

“The aircraft will be ready at Dulles at 0600, sir. We fly direct to Antigua, refuel while you gentlemen visit the bank, and then disappear,” the ex-Major explained.

“All right. We'll leave here in five hours,” Bowdin responded. “Any more word from the Bahamas?”

“No, sir, but I confirmed that FedEx has the packages and they will be delivered by ten tomorrow.”

“Well, then I think most of what we set out to do is on track…. What's that noise? Sounds like an aircraft?” General Bowdin and his aide walked out of the log cabin–style house in time to see and hear an old Cessna prop plane sputter and then continue on a path into the woods on the steep slope above their camp. “It's going in!” Bowdin yelled.

A few seconds later, they heard an explosion up on a wall of the hollow and then saw a bright yellow flash. “Send some men up there. See if anyone survived, although I don't see how. And get that fire out,” Bowdin ordered, and returned to his cabin. A few minutes later, as he packed a suitcase, Bowdin saw shadows and lights on the wall. Turning to look out the window, he saw a line of flames moving down the hill toward the camp.

“What the fuck, Major!” Bowdin yelled from the cabin's porch. The hill above was engulfed in flames, trees spontaneously combusting.

“Sorry, sir, the men didn't get on it fast enough. Everything's been so dry that it just lit up. It's in the camp already, sir, and I don't think we can hold it. All the men are out back trying to…” As he spoke, the warehouse a thousand yards behind them erupted with a concussive boom, and then came a secondary explosion as the helicopter on the pad next to the warehouse went up.