Greg Bear: Quantico

Grange thanked Stengler. They dropped their kits on one side of the ready room. Fifteen minutes later, Grange stood beside the door as it was locked. They all sat in the comfortable high-backed chairs arranged before a wall display on which a sunny ocean portrait of the ship was currently being shown.

The screen went dark. A young, nervous male voice-over informed them that their secure briefing was to be delivered by SAC Quentin T. Dillinger of Diplomatic Security. Dillinger stood behind a White House podium with a map of the Arabian Peninsula half in shadow behind him. He was not at ease and frequently referred to notes on the podium or glanced over his shoulder as areas of the map were highlighted.

‘Greetings. David. The rest of you I have not met.

‘BuDark was established three years ago as an internal, inter-agency investigation team, by mandate of the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees. I was appointed SAC of the operation, tasked to learn about a covert U.S. plan to respond to a major Islamic terrorist strike, on the order of 9-11. We have discovered that such a plan did in fact exist, targeting Mecca and code-named Desert Vulture, and a version of it may very well be under way. An FBI special agent named Lawrence Winter apparently decided to ignore his original orders and reconstruct Desert Vulture into a scheme of his own, using his own contacts. He traveled throughout Mexico, Central America, and the Middle East, arranging for the transfer of money from several international parties. For reasons still not clear, he expanded the original target list of Desert Vulture to include Ohio, Rome, and Jerusalem-in addition to Mecca.

‘Branches of his operation have been located and halted in Washington State, Rome, and in Israel. We could not prevent what may have been a dress rehearsal in Ohio. And one last operation, unfortunately, still threatens Mecca. It is this operation that immediately concerns us.

‘We are in the season of the Hajj. Approximately a million pilgrims have entered Mecca, despite unstable conditions caused by the breakdown and departure of the Saudi government. Lawrence Winter and a team of Israeli operatives, hand-picked from the sons of Jewish extremists, are in or near Mecca at this moment. They have more than two hundred custom-made fireworks charges designed to airburst and disperse biological payloads at two thousand feet. The payloads are not anthrax. Winter has substituted a transgenic strain of yeast. In the field, exposure to this yeast has caused rapid onset of memory disorders in civilians and in lawenforcement officers. A small quantity is sufficient to cause illness.

‘One of our forensic psychologists suggests that Winter is trying to punish us for killing his family, not with a Biblical plague, but something new: a stealth pestilence that causes permanent amnesia. Wipe away the world’s memory, and you wipe out hatred-that seems to be his theory.

‘Jerusalem and Rome are no longer threatened, so the Muslim world is likely to interpret any strike against Mecca as a call to all-out holy war. I think you can see that any U.S. involvement with Desert Vulture or Lawrence Winter is inexplicable and inexcusable.

‘Our only option is to take out these weapons with a series of pinpoint strikes, using a weapon that will cauterize anything within a diameter of fifty to one hundred meters. We cannot use high explosives or even tactical nukes, not just because of collateral damage or the extraordinary political consequences, but because of the potential dispersal of surviving toxic particles. Instead, we have decided to utilize a class of kinetic kill projectiles known as Lancets-essentially guided steel telephone poles tipped with a chemical warhead. They’re designed to fall from low Earth orbit and punch a hole in the ground, through several hundred feet of dirt, reinforced concrete, and even steel. They then incinerate anything within the relatively small but very deep impact crater, at temperatures above three thousand degrees Celsius. We’ve already launched sixty of these bunker-busters into low Earth orbit at intervals, in close-spaced clusters of four. They can be brought down on twenty minutes’ notice and will self-guide with an accuracy of one or two meters to obliterate pre-programmed or laser-painted targets.

‘We believe there are three trucks involved, and that Winter is going to release the fireworks on the second day of the Hajj, as pilgrims funnel through Mina. That will be tomorrow. One million pilgrims will be tightly concentrated in a small area within the village. Winter’s rockets could be launched upwind of Mina, explode, and disperse well over two hundred pounds of uniquely deadly particles.

‘We have very little time.

‘Sending non-Muslims into Mecca would be considered highly provocative under any circumstance, but we believe the seriousness of our situation renders such concerns irrelevant. It has been determined at the highest level, however, that this operation cannot involve serving military personnel. And so we have selected a team of government officers and agents that we believe are trustworthy and have demonstrably had no knowledge of or participation in any aspect of Desert Vulture.

‘If necessary, we will die to protect not only the pilgrims in Mecca, but the citizens of the United States of America and every nation on Earth-the entire human race.’

‘Who’s “we”, paleface?’ Rebecca asked under her breath.

‘Your next briefing will take place on the ground in Saudi Arabia. Godspeed.’

The screen faded on Dillinger’s drawn features.

Having it served up and delivered all at once left William numb. The deck vibrated under his feet as another UAV was RATO-launched into the early morning. Rebecca took his hand and gripped it.

‘Goddamn them all to hell,’ she said.

William returned the squeeze.

Captain Periglas met them in the TSC and dismissed their Marine escorts. ‘Ladies and gents, this is what we have for you so far.’ He waved his arm across the darkened room. There was only one display visible; most of the officers and enlisted men in the dimly lighted Tactical Surveillance Center were wearing gogs or helmets. ‘Currently, there are fifteen UAVs surveilling the sky above and around Mecca, most of them at altitude, that is, exceeding ten thousand meters. They have excellent SAR-fine-resolution synthetic aperture radar-as well as outstanding optics and other sensors. Many of our UAVs are equipped with smaller aircraft that can be dispersed in quantity. We refer to them as “midges”. Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows. They even fly like sparrows, for up to twenty hours before they self-destruct. The ones we are utilizing at this moment to search the crowds in Mecca are known as Osmic Mobile Observers or OSMOs. They can zero in on individuals or groups of individuals based on long-term dietary habits.

‘Any vegetarian will tell you that meat-eaters stink; I stink, most of my crew stinks. Rich Muslims stink but with significant differences. Poor Muslims stink hardly at all. Three meals a day of eggs, meat, and/or fish, and we can send an OSMO right up to you with the passionate sensitivity of a moth seeking a hot date. We can also distinguish observant Muslims from drinkers of alcoholic beverages, which may or may not be helpful; we are discovering that a disturbing number of security, police, and army personnel have imbibed spirituous liquors, wine, or beer in the past two weeks.’

Grange motioned Jane Rowland forward from the group and Periglas pointed to a chair beside a Chief Warrant Officer. The chief removed his gogs and switched on a monitor so that they could all see what he was seeing-a complicated map of Mecca, spotted with circles and ellipses of pink, purple, and green. The larger pulsing overlays were accompanied by shifting ranks of numbers.