The Eighth Day (34 page)

TWO FLOORS BELOW, a guard hung up a wall phone and announced, “Pizza time!”

“Yeah, big deal,” Edmonds said.

“Gee, what a sourpuss. Just ’cause you can’t have any.”

“Go get your slice, ya pain in the ass.” As the guard headed off, Edmonds opened his shirt pocket and pulled out a bottle of diet pills. He popped one and took a drink from the water fountain. He hated the way these things made him feel, but he was carrying an extra sixteen pounds and his lieutenant was giving him shit over it. The one-bar-wonder even threatened to rotate him out if he didn’t shape up. The pills jazzed his system and took away the hunger, which helped him not eat as much. Especially when there were seductions like pizza around. Returning to his post, Edmonds’s metabolic rate started to climb, along with some of the negative side effects of Dihexemfemeral.

Back at the pizza shop, Hiccock and Fuentes briefed the major while they changed back into their normal attire.

“The facility is underground,” Hiccock said. “There is a doorway leading from the nonsecure area. It utilizes an airlock security system. Someone doesn’t want dust or contaminants past that point.”

“Anything else?”

“That’s about it.”

“Want to add anything, Fuentes?”

“Like the gentleman said, airlock … oh and a few other things. They’re using sat com radios, which means they have field operational mobility. One of the guards was with me in Ft. Benning Ranger School and, as I remember, a real predator. He didn’t make me, though, probably ’cause of my
former
mustache. The guardhouse has a false top, probably holding a grenade launcher. There appear to be vents along the way to the building, possibly an underground entrance. They were using Ranger speak. Definitely jumpers. Probably Delta out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, or a Special Forces 10 group out of Fort Carson. We have two solid IDs, one named Malo and the other a woman whose credit card this is.” He produced the credit card receipt, now in a plastic bag in which knives, forks, and napkins came individually wrapped. He attempted to read it through the plastic. “Ronson.”

Hiccock was stunned by his own lack of military observational ability. “Well, yeah, the airlock and all that …”

The brown recluse spider was indigenous to the American southwest. Like most spiders it liked dark tight spaces, all the better to avoid becoming bird food. A group of MPs sat under a tree awaiting orders. As they shot the breeze, one didn’t notice as the spider crawled up his pant leg. Although venomous, any arachnologist would tell you that the little eight-legged insect was rarely deadly to humans. Usually.

“We’ll run those names and see if something connects,” the major said. “Anything on the commando you recognized?”

Fuentes pulled out another plastic bag with the receipt in it. “No, but they all touched this register receipt, so we might get a clean print and make him that way.” Hiccock, realizing all the details he had missed, added, as a weak offering, “He had a Mac-10 under his coat.”

Hiccock’s momentary respite from embarrassment was short-circuited by Private First Class Fuentes’s description: “A short stock, snub-barreled spray job, light clip. And I have been racking my brain since I saw him, but I can’t remember his name, just that he was DHG in our SFQC.

That was Hiccock’s last straw, “He was what?”

“Distinguished Honor Grad Special Forces Qualifications Course.”

Press Secretary Naomi Spence was on her computer in the White House, conducting a Nexis/Lexis search for statutory regulations on agricultural price supports for wheat and grain. A press conference loomed in twenty minutes and she was researching a quote from the Secretary of Agriculture during the dust-bowl era. As the screen flickered, she scanned for any reference of price supports, not noticing her moments of total inactivity—seconds where she was frozen still.

He had forgotten and deeply missed the pungent, sweet exhilaration of that first glorious sip of wine. Both as a constitutional issue befitting his status as a commanding officer as well as an accommodation to the religious Imans he suffered, wine became off-limits, but of course now that didn’t matter.

What did matter?
What about my life
did
matter?
the man who sat waiting in the low back chair asked himself. The stars he wore on his uniform amounted to something, but the camel’s ass who ran the country childishly made sure he had more stars on his epaulets,
whenever he wasn’t wearing a dress, the degene
r
ate
. Still his love for country amounted to something of which to be proud. As he sat waiting, sipping, and reflecting on his life, General Nandessera allowed a smile to cross his lips.
Loose ends.
He had cleaned up all the loose ends… all but two. Captain Falad, that canon soldier, fled realizing what was going to happen as soon as he heard the disastrous reports from the American media; that Samovar failed miserably to attain retribution for his country. Falad’s assistant, himself a loose end, reluctantly offered up the name and address of Falad’s brother-in-law, before he was allowed to die. The fugitive Captain’s relation was a businessman in America who would surely take in his wife’s brother and offer him shelter and a new identity. The General rolled his thumb over the piece of paper upon which was scrawled the American’s name and the address of his place of business.

Maybe it was the gravity of the day, or simply the boredom of waiting, but for some reason Nandessera struck a wooden match, setting one end of the paper aflame and lit the tip of a contraband Cuban cigar. It was another “devilish” luxury, which he had harbored for a day like today. He placed the burning sheet in the bowl beside him as the last traces of “Mohammed Ghib - McDonalds Restaurant - Pasadena California” turned to ash.

“Live a long life, Falad” was all he said out loud. And then he waited. And waited.

He was in the middle of remembering a childhood romp, one which still set the old man’s heart aflutter to this day. Over the sound of the door to his darkened room opening, he still heard the sounds of Sareena, her squeals of laughter as he chased her. He longingly reached out for her in his mind, seeing her hair dangerously and shamelessly falling out of the young girl’s burka. He ignored the sound of the honed metal as it left the sheath. He squeezed his eyes tighter, to see her face as he touched her shoulder and she turned, in his mind, one last time, her big green eyes like saucers electrifying his soul. The whipping sound of the blade slicing through the air was muffled by her delightful taunt.

The man wielding the sword was the best befitting the General’s rank. So clean was the cut, that Nandessra’s head slid right off and tumbled into his lap, looking up, with the smile of youth on the face of death.

The last of the two loose ends had now been cut.

Gleason Barr, petty officer in charge of the watch, was just finishing his 12-noon readings. The cesium regulated, chronographic intervalometer was outputting its consistent stream of 33.44 Ghz. The temperature and humidity were within a hundredth of a degree of nominal parameters. He duly noted these readings in his Naval Observatory logbook and went on to his other appointed hourly checkpoints.

The atomic clock was Father Time itself. It was officially called the Master Clock and was the standard for dividing the rotation of the Earth into segments. Each segment, by international agreement, corresponding to one second of arc. That meant of the 360 degrees of Earth, each degree was roughly 60 miles across at the equator, each mile was called a minute, and one sixtieth of that distance became a second or, roughly, 100 feet. Any spot on the Earth could be located to within 100 feet by merely expressing it as so many degrees, so many minutes, and a few seconds of arc.

The top of the Empire State Building in New York, for example, was 39 degrees, 15 minutes 22 seconds latitude, 44 degrees 17 minutes, and one second longitude. Of course, hardly anybody thought about it that way anymore, since the adoption of GPS, the global positioning system. It was based on the principle of a computerized receiver picking up a signal from satellites in stationary orbit and calculating down to the second (or millisecond in the case of military use) the position of the receiver. Because the whole concept was related to time, the cesium clock at the Naval Observatory became the signal heartbeat of the entire global positioning system around the world. If it were to vary by running slow or fast, airliners would land on freeways instead of airports. Rental car drivers, following their dashboard monitor, would be told to make left turns onto somebody’s front lawn instead of the street 100 feet further down the street. A cruise missile could possibly slam into a mountain that its terrain mapping software had detected, but its internal computer guidance believed was a mile to the left. That’s why Barr, who worked for the Navy, checked it every hour, even though the radioactive half-life of cesium was 500,000 years and computers on redundant power supplies controlled the temperature. In short, the entire world trusted, without question, that the Atomic Clock kept ticking to an accuracy of within one billionth of a second per millennium.

As he left the area, due to a cross coding in the microchip, which processed the temperature information, a subtle shift in the temperature occurred. Like a thermostat in a house, it started to raise the ambient heat of the cesium containment crucible that accelerated the rate at which the cesium gave off electrons. The atomic collector of the electrons, which, when it counted a certain amount, declared that another millionth of a second had just passed for mankind, started reporting the event ever so much earlier.

Up the East Coast, twelve degrees and 18 minutes of arc away, the four-striped shoulder boards of an American Airlines captain’s uniform were reflecting in the black screen of the cockpit computer. The 25-year veteran of airline flight was sitting in the left-hand seat of his 767-200ER as it was being readied for takeoff. After he made sure the Avionics ground crew had addressed the problem with an indicator on the Non-Directional Beacon, he had a moment to attend to an item from his personal checklist. From his iPad he was able to check his reservation for dinner in Milan that evening with Maria DeNardo, the sexy assistant to Milan’s Minister of Commerce. The pilot had a twenty-seven hour layover.
Appropriately named
, he mused. The man didn’t notice as the screen he was reading from delivered more information than he was aware of.

At the same time, Press Secretary Spence was on her computer in the White House, conducting a Nexus Lexus search for statutory regulations on agricultural price supports for wheat and grain. A press conference loomed in 20 minutes and she was researching a quote from the Secretary of Agriculture during the dust bowl era. As the screen flickered, she scanned for any reference of price supports, not noticing her moments of total inactivity--seconds where she was frozen, still.

The captain’s 767, fully loaded with 181 passengers and 160,000 pounds of fuel, accelerated through 190 m.p.h. to V2, then rotated and lifted off runway two-two-right from JFK. At 300 feet, the standard hard right turn was executed to avoid the inbound traffic lanes in the New York Center area of control. The captain then relinquished his flying duties by flipping on the autopilot. The preprogrammed course would bring the plane up over the top of Manhattan out to the Atlantic. It would then traverse the North Atlantic Track. Five hours later it would cross the Scottish coast at Lockerbie, then into the European system of air lanes to his wheels-down point in Milan. As the plane banked hard over the Inwood Park section of Manhattan Island the sun rotated to dead ahead. Normally, transatlantic flights tracked along Long Island’s southern shore out to the Atlantic routes. On this day when the prevailing winds prevented planes taking off in that easterly direction, the flights were routed in a big turn over New York City. The flight plans for those airliners that flew over city took them down the Hudson River.

At the cockpit’s slight angle of ascent, the flight deck crew could not see the island of Manhattan, or its buildings. The little icon representing their craft on the cockpit GPS system showed them to be smack dab in the middle of the Hudson River. The Ring Laser Gyro Inertial Navigation System was starting to sense a disparity between the GPS reported position of the plane, and its own dead reckoning based on physics.

As soon as the plane diverted from its assigned airspace, an FAA flight controller in New York Center, following protocol, sent out a scramble order followed by an attempt to contact the off-course plane.

Major Jack Haus was in the cockpit of his F-18c Eagle. He and his wingman were in the on strip alert, in the hot seats. Their two Grumman fighters, looking like needle-nosed hatchlings nestled under a corrugated steel canopy at the end of runway 2-9’er, were ready to go. Two ground-support units were attached to their engines, keeping them hot and turning. From where they sat, it was a straight shot down the runway and up into the air. When the alert came, all he had to do was snap on his oxygen mask and throttle up.

It had been that way since the terrible attack on New York’s symbol of World Trade. He and his squadron had responded a total of 47 times since the new security measures were initiated. Thankfully, every time had been an innocent mistake, or electronic glitch that caused airliners and other planes to veer dangerously close to the nation’s collective nightmare in lower Manhattan. As it happened, each time they scrambled, he and his wingman shot off into the sky not knowing whether the threat was real or not.

Sitting in his war bird loaded with war shots seemed so incongruous to the Annapolis graduate. He was, after all, right here in America, in the affluent suburbs of New York. There were kids playing baseball right outside the gates of the base while his little gnat of a plane sat, with enough explosive ordinance cocked and loaded under its wings to rain hell down on a whole shitload of bad guys. The problem was the cretins who would take a plane weren’t in uniforms or massed nicely on a border somewhere. Major Haus’ flying death machine had a redefined purpose; to minimize collateral damage. God forbid, killing a few hundred on a plane, to save thousands in buildings. The math of the equation was terrible because even a low number, like one hundred, was still one hundred innocent people.
Except for maybe one to four man
i
acs, who would dare attempt something so insane again?
The other passengers, moms, dads, sons, and daughters, would simply be sacrificed to save thousands, and in the case of an attack on a nuclear reactor, millions.

His great sweat, the one that kept him and every other good, American born, professionally trained fighter warrior up at night was having to make the split second decision to terminate the lives of innocent folks. The Major knew he could be flying into a nightmare from which he might never awake.

As he eased the throttle forward, he said a little prayer, “Oh, God, let this be just another screwed up navigation system, and if not, let me get there while they are still over water.”

Both screaming Eagles were airborne 30 seconds after the alert signal was sent. The on-board cockpit computer immediately told him the threat was coming from JFK and that was too close. Previous attacks came from planes rerouted (hijacked) well outside of New York.

As it was on that infamous September morning, a fighter pilot, in a similar plane, missed being on the scene by 1 minute, thus escaping the terrible dilemma by losing the “opportunity” to create a “mini-tragedy” in order to stop the massive one.

The instant time-distance calculations Major Haus made in his head told him to go to afterburners, a carefully controlled explosion in the exhaust pipe of his engines, which propels the fighter plane at almost supersonic speeds. With full after-burners, the trip from the National Guard base at Gabreski Airport, Westhampton, 60 miles east on Long Island, bee-lined to New York City would take four minutes. At that burn rate he wouldn’t be able to make it back to base. He’d have to land at LaGuardia.

At New York Center, those air traffic controllers who were not frantically trying to reroute traffic away from the hurtling sub-sonic darts slicing through their air space, were watching the little blips approach the bigger one as their hearts stopped.

As he approached Manhattan air space, a chill went through the Major’s pressurized flight-suited body. Haus saw the airliner already over the center of the island. Knowing immediately that the rules of engagement just took him out of the equation, he keyed his mic. Now under the control of an orbiting AWACS, he proceeded to lay out the tactical situation, “Big Daddy, be advised target is over city, I have no clear shot, request permission to break off attack and try to signal.” It was a rhetorical request. The airborne military traffic controller circling above in the converted 707, operating under the same rules of engagement, crackled back, “Affirmative, Baby Eagle; break off your attack; try to interdict.”

The fighter pilot then contacted his wingman. “Maintain combat air patrol status until replacement Eagles arrive.” His wingman banked his swept wing fighter, to start a racetrack pattern around Manhattan Island.

A passenger on the left side of the aircraft looked directly down to see the roof of World Plaza on 8th Avenue at 50th Street. Meanwhile, in the cockpit, the beeping of the Vector Oriented Radar receiver caught the co-pilot’s attention. The cockpit GPS showed the position of the aircraft as being midway down the island still dead center of the river.

Mandy Weinstein was watering her fuchsia, which was hanging in a macramé cradle in her window on the 95th floor of the Empire State Building. She dropped her watering can when she noticed the giant cockpit and huge wingspan of the 767 coming head on, right at her. She screamed and backed away at five miles per hour.

The co-pilot saw it first. His instinct was to reach for and disengage the autopilot switch, but the captain reached for his switch first and jammed his pen in it. The co-pilot’s identical control became non-operational due to the captain’s override. He lunged at the captain. In the struggle, he punched the older man, breaking his jaw and shutting out his lights. With his hand aching, he fumbled for the lodged pen. It broke off in the switch. The building loomed large in the windshield. The first officer having recently served as a flight engineer on older birds, instinctively reached for the circuit breaker panel and took the gamble of his life; he threw one without checking to see if it was labeled Autopilot. It was in the general area he remembered from the manual and that would have to do because he was already putting his weight onto the yolk, so that it would bank hard right the instant the power to the servo-controlled mechanism was interrupted. That 420-volt signal was stopping him from saving his life and countless thousands.

The yoke disengaged and the screaming plane made a rollover right bank. Literally flying sideways wing tips pointed straight down to 34th Street and up to God. The belly of the plane missed the side of the 1931 building by seven feet.

The windows and walls shuddered as the passing fuselage blocked the daylight to the 95th to 97th floors. The upper wing tip would have knock King Kong off the top.

At that moment hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers hearing the horrendous roar of the acrobatically strained engines, looked up with the same thought, “Oh, God, not again!” They then breathed a common sigh of relief as the on-edge plane reappeared from behind the building and righted itself as it climbed to the safety of the heavens.

The cockpit reading on the flight data recorder would, upon analysis, show the plane was actually four seconds arc east of where it should have been. The co-pilot was hailed a hero. The captain committed suicide, hanging himself while in police custody the first chance he got. The understatement of the year was that “the people aboard that plane and in the landmark building were very lucky.” Others around the globe, however, were not as fortunate.

Throughout the world, six planes crashed. One into a mountain in Tibet, three missing their airport runways by less than 2000 feet, and two in a mid-air collision over Argentina. In the short 30 minutes of distorted time, 1,714 people were killed around the world.

Ten minutes later, the temperature in the cesium core of the Atomic Clock was cooling, significantly decreasing the amount of electrons emitted and, in effect, slowing the clock again. Ten minutes after that, it was back to normal time, as if it had never varied. Barring any further intentional cross coding to the chip, this would never happen again.

At 12:20 PM, Press Secretary Spence stepped behind the podium in the White House’s pressroom. The papers in her hand were the text of the president’s reasons for urging Congress to pass the Farm Subsidy Reform Act. Instead, she said, “The American government has two hours to surrender and cease its reckless course. Nothing less than the total dissolution of the government will be acceptable. If this demand is not met, all planes, everywhere, will crash and all hydroelectric plants will burn out. Every nuclear power plant will explode and all of this nation’s infrastructure will be destroyed.”