Ian Slater - Darpa Alpha

“Yes?”

“Well, what was meant by ‘spotting’ was that at the end of their respective shifts, these two people would take the disk, and I’m talking here about a three-and-a-half-inch floppy, faster than a CD-ROM but larger than a USB memory device, and for security they’d place a very small circular NDE (non-data-erasing) battery within the reverse — hollow — side of the metal hub so that—”

“So it would transmit a tracking signal,” Freeman said excitedly, anticipating Moffat, “in case it was stolen!”

“Yes. Normally the disk’s battery has a ten-second delay so it won’t be activated while the disk is put in its jewel case at the end of the day.”

“I get it,” said Freeman. “But if somebody steals it without its jewel case, its battery would be activated. A beeper!”

“Correct. I’ve passed this on to Pacific Coast Command and the E-2C Hawkeye out of Whidbey Naval Station. It’s festooned with electronic eyes and ears, and it’s going to patch you into its radio net as soon as it picks up any signal from the disk.”

“Brilliant!” said the general, using the declarative adjective he’d picked up from his sojourns with Britain’s SAS regiment. “Absolutely brilliant!”

“Ah, General, there are a couple of other things you ought to know about.”

“Shoot!”

“Dr. Grierson — the physician—”

“Yes,” said Freeman. “Mr. Cool. The doctor who was looking after Roberta.”

“Yes. Ah, well, the word’s out that he and the hospital are suing you as being complicit in, ah, Roberta’s death. I thought you ought to—”

“Fuck ’im!” said Freeman, his face reddening, the phone in one hand, the other holding a grab bar against the turbulence they were encountering. “Fuck ’im! But thanks for giving me the heads-up, Doc.”

“You’re welcome.”

“That prick physician,” Freeman told Johnny Lee, “who I had you arrest at the hospital? He’s suing me! Poor woman’s dead and he’s got a lawyer on my case.”

“Ah,” said Aussie disgustedly. “These guys’ve got attorneys comin’ out their ass.”

Prince was worried, backing up against the team’s two Zodiacs as if looking for protection. Choir reassured him that the general’s anger had nothing to do with him.

“ But ,” Freeman announced, “good news. That disk the pricks stole—”

“Has a beeper!” cut in Aussie.

“You’ve been listening in on my phone conversations,” charged Freeman, with mock severity.

“I have.” Everyone laughed.

“I ought to have you arrested!”

“General Freeman.” It was the helo pilot’s voice. “We’re descending to the Priest Lake turnoff.”

“Hold on!” cut in Freeman. “Don’t land here. I’ve just heard from Moffat that the terrorists are carrying a beeper, so I want to contact the Hawkeye to see whether they can get a fix on the bastards.”

“Roger,” answered the Chinook’s pilot. “We’ll take you back upstairs for a while.”

The general, allowing for Murphy’s Law, expected it to take much longer than it did to contact the Hawkeye but in fact they were exchanging info within five minutes. One of the electronic warfare officers aboard the Hawkeye was seeing a dot pulsing on his screen with the urgency of a boil about to burst. The E.W.O., one of the “moles” aboard the essentially windowless aircraft, sat beneath the rotating, spiral-painted rotodome. He routed his call through the “box,” and the binary codes of zeroes and ones sorted themselves out into a military frequency that could be heard on Freeman’s modular infantry radio, informing the general that the E-2C Hawkeye was picking up a clearly identifiable beep from Priest Lake. To underscore the sound, the electronic warfare officer brought the “beep” sound on line so that all the team members could hear it via their MIR’s earpiece. The Hawkeye informed Freeman that the plane would loiter on station to provide GPS-assisted intel.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Freeman told the E.W.O. “But I urge you to stay beyond MANPAD range.”

“Appreciate your advice, General, but I hardly think the terrorists would bother adding shoulder-fired rockets to their load.”

The general signed off and wasted no time informing his pilot that the Chinook’s new landing zone would have to be as close as possible to the beep point the Hawkeye was reporting. The signal put their prey two miles west of an island in the southwest corner of Priest Lake. The island itself was about a mile offshore.

“I love that fucking beeper,” said Aussie. “The fuckers are hoist by their own petard.”

“What’s a petard?” inquired Salvini, who was tightening the webbing that held the helo’s two Zodiacs firmly against the bulkhead.

“Johnny?” called out Aussie as he busied himself checking out his HK G36 assault rifle’s under-barrel grenade tube, the grenades festooned about him. “You’re our linguist. Tell this ignorant savage from Brooklyn what a friggin’ petard is.”

“I don’t know,” said Johnny Lee, the skin over his high cheekbones tightening with concern; for all his knowledge of Asian, Mideastern, Slavic, and Romance languages, he didn’t know what a petard was.

“It’s an explosive device,” Freeman explained, “formerly used to bust through walls. To be hoist by your own petard means you screw up your own plans by your own actions. What Aussie means is that the very thing those scumbags stole is giving them away.” He allowed himself a smile despite the serious business they were embarked on.

“Serves the bastards right,” said Tony Ruth, with grunts of approval from Gomez and Eddie Mervyn, who were tightening the slings on their navy rig Heckler Koch submachine guns.

“And,” said Choir, “if those swine haven’t picked up the Hawkeye’s transmit to us, they won’t know. It’ll be one big surprise when we suddenly appear on top of ’em.” He turned to his beloved spaniel. “That right, boy?” Prince’s tail was wagging affectionately as Choir adjusted the Velcro tabs on the dog’s hagvar bulletproof, anti-shrapnel vest. Prince had easily passed the long, hard training for a tracker at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, but he had never liked the vest, for while it protected his body in the area between his head and hindquarters, it was heavy.

“Don’t let’s get ahead of ourselves,” Freeman cautioned Choir. “These swine are clever dicks, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to pull off this attack. They’ve obviously been planning for it for a long time. I checked with the FBI and DHS guys and they say that Tenth Mountain Division has had no reports of theft visà-vis their Paratrooper mountain bikes or uniforms. That tells me,” added Freeman, his voice rising above the noise of the Chinook, “that these terrorists planned their op down to the last detail—” He paused, holding his left hand up for silence, his right hand gripping the roll bar as he listened to the beeper. Damn! It had ceased, which told him that his quarry might be in a “dead zone,” physical barriers blocking transmission, or—

“Maybe the terrorists know they’ve got a beeper,” cut in Johnny Lee.

“Well,” said Freeman, “the best we can do is keep our eyes and ears open.” His left hand indicated the southwest quadrant of his navigational pilotage chart. “We’ll land here, two miles west of this island, the last reported beeper contact. We’ll move in the bush along the west side of this old logging road that runs south-north parallel to the lake. We’ll follow Prince and our own noses but — and I can’t stress this too much — there are isolated cabins, not many, but some with a boat launch for hunters and fishermen. So remember, even if we get a beep right on top of one of them, identify before engaging. These scumbags — twelve of ’em by the bicycle count — may have commandeered a civilian vehicle to save travel time between Pend Oreille and Priest Lake. For them there’ll be no need to worry about identifying friend or foe. Everyone is now their foe, so they’ll be quick on the trigger. I’ll try to stay in contact with the Hawkeye and in whisper contact with you via your MIRs.” The general paused. “Questions?”