James Axler - Sky Hammer

“Yes, sir. Exactly.”

No way in hell that was a coincidence. “Get the agent on the phone,” the President commanded. “I want to talk to him direct.”

Mingle shook his head. “Impossible, sir. He appears to have been terminated in what might have been enemy action.”

“Appears? Might have been?” Fontecchio said, leaning forward in his seat. “Sir, the café was hit with flamethrowers and grenades! Twenty civilians are dead and the French government is furious!”

“We’re checking further into the matter,” Mingle replied smoothly.

“Did this meteor shower hit during the brick-laying ceremony, by any chance?” the President ventured as a guess.

Hertzoff nodded. “Yes, sir. Just as it began.”

“Is the prime minister dead?”

“No, sir,” Fontecchio answered. “Not a scratch. But the town is in shambles. The people are rioting and running back and forth across the border.”

“The Israelis will stop that nonsense soon enough with some concertina wire,” Fontecchio stated resolutely. “Not a problem.”

“Good. I want a full report on the matter within the hour,” the President snapped. “And contact the Joint Chiefs, I want our status raised to DefCon Three.”

Fontecchio balked at that, but said nothing. DefCon One was peacetime, DefCon Five was war. After 9/11, the United States hadn’t dropped below DefCon Two. Peace seemed to be a thing of the past, merely a notation on the war board, but nothing to do with the real world.

“Yes, sir,” Fontecchio replied uncomfortably.

The passengers in the limo swayed slightly as the vehicle took a corner, the rear limo moving ahead of them as they dropped to a new position in the convoy.

Turning to his aide, the president asked, “Isn’t there a ship christening tomorrow?”

“Yes, sir,” Molendy answered without glancing at the personal computer sticking out of his pocket. “A new aircraft carrier will be launched from the San Diego naval shipyard.”

“Don’t cancel the ceremony,” the President ordered. “Have the Secretary of Defense christen the ship.”

“Yes, sir. And what should I tell the secretary?”

“Nothing.”

“Yes, sir. And the press?”

“Same thing.”

“No problem, sir.”

“Then contact Space Defense, I want to know what’s happening up there.”

“NASA reports no unusual activity in space,” Hertzoff reported. “If there was a meteor shower, it’s over by now.”

There came a soft buzzing and Molendy pulled out a cell phone. The device was huge, almost the size of a paperback book; it cost more than most small airplanes and contained some of the most sophisticated electronics in existence.

“White House,” the aide said. Then he hit the mute button. “Sir, you have a call from a General Stone.”

“Who?” Mingle muttered, his annoyance clearly discernable.

Placing down his empty coffee mug, the President took the phone. “Hello, General…yes, I…well, no…damn.” Then the President was silent for a long time. “Okay, see you on the plane.” As the line went dead, the President closed the lid on the cell phone, automatically scrambling the memory and sending a false signal to the White House library. There was no redial function on this cell phone. Especially not to Hal Brognola, head of the Sensitive Operations Group based at Stony Man Farm.

Molendy accepted the phone and tucked it away opposite his bulky journal.

“Is there a problem, sir?” Hertzoff asked in concern.

Trying to be casual, the President dismissed that with a wave. “Nothing of importance.”

The others took that as a notice that the conference was over for the moment, and got on their own cell phones to check for any missed messages over the past ten minutes.

Outside the limo, police motorcycles rode along with the executive convoy, keeping people away from the line of limousines. Wherever the President went, traffic snarled and a major city ground to a halt for the duration of his visit. But his mind wasn’t on maintaining good public relations right now. If Hal Brognola wanted a private meeting, then all hell had broken loose somewhere. Could be Paris or Israel. Maybe both.

Deep in thought, the President studied the city passing by outside, trying to recall the details of a scientific report he had read as a junior senator very long ago. Israel may have been hit by vaporware, something that was not supposed to exist. But very obviously did. Project Sky Hammer. If so, then nobody was safe, absolutely nobody, and there were going to be a lot more deaths real soon.

Pressing a button on the armrest, the President said, “Driver, maximum speed to the airport, please.”

Instantly a siren started blaring from under the hood, and the convoy of limos surged with speed.

Computer Room, Stony Man Farm, Virginia

THE LARGE ROOM was very quiet, the air vents steadily exhaled a cool breeze and the silent keyboards made tiny patting noises from the hurried impact of fingers. A coffeemaker burbled at the kitchenette and muffled rock music could be heard coming from somewhere.

“What’s this about a Thor?” Carmen Delahunt asked, lowering her glasses. “Okay, Aaron. Tell me we aren’t looking at a Thor here. I remember reading about the project in a journal.”

A virtual reality visor plugged into her console, ready to access the Internet anytime. But the million-dollar VR helmet was deactivated at the moment. After the Paris attack, the team had been looking for a possible traitor in the NSA or CIA. But then the attack on Israel occurred, and it had top priority.

Privately, Delahunt hoped the two incidences weren’t directly linked.

Slim and well-built, the red-haired woman was a classic Irish beauty, but she was also one of the elite, the four Cyberwizards who composed the cybernetic division of Stony Man Farm. Her desk console was directly attached to the bank of Cray supercomputers under Stony Man’s direct control.

“The display is coming up now,” Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman called from the small kitchenette along the wall, where he was filling his coffee mug.

Sipping and wheeling at the same time, he rolled back to his console, the chair fitting snugly underneath.

The console had several monitors. A few of them were dark, but the rest were busy scrolling with news reports from every agency in the world.

Impatient, Kurtzman tapped one monitor with a screen saver. Why was the file taking so long? Instantly the wooden glen disappeared to show the status of the top-secret download. Ah, here we go, almost downloaded from archives now.

“Okay, heads up,” Kurtzman announced, tapping his keyboard.

Everybody else stopped whatever he or she was doing and paid attention.

“I’m afraid you’re right, Carmen. The name of the thing is Project Sky Hammer,” Kurtzman said as the big monitor at the front of the room came to life.

The plasma screen pulsed with light a few times, then cleared into a view of starry space, the blue-white globe of Earth low in the corner. The technical data flowed past the screen, showing power curves, field strengths and striking power. That end of the data nearly went off the chart. The Stony Man cyber team read the flowing data carefully.

Back in 1977, a research scientist named Dr. Gerald Mahone started thinking about weapons and what part of a bomb actually caused death and destruction. It wasn’t the metal casing or even the shrapnel inside. As an example, he suggested taking a bullet and throwing it at somebody. A steel-jacketed, hollow point, .357 Magnum round would simply bounce off his or her chest and fall to the floor. The bullet, the casing, the metal, wasn’t deadly, per se. It was the amount of force behind the projectile that made it deadly.