The Hammer of God (5 page)

“What do we got, Commander?”

“All bad guys engaged in the firefight down or secured. Possible secondary, unrelated, triple shooting next door. Unknown number of perpetrators on the run.”

“I can help with that,” Wallace said.

“Who are you? How can you help?” the no bullshit woman asked, ordered, and demanded in one smooth command voice.

“I am NYPD retired; I was on a P.I. when this all went down. I have video of every guy who escaped and surveillance inside the adjoining room killings.”

The woman turned to the Commander. “You know this man?”

“He gave us correct intel on the second room.”

“Retired at what grade?”

“Detective 2nd grade after fifteen years in patrol.”

“That's doing it the hard way detective.” She extended her hand, “FBI Special Agent Brooke Burell, Lead Liaison Officer, Joint Terrorist Task Force. We need to see that tape five minutes ago, Detective.”

Fifteen seconds later, they were all huddled around the little screen of his HD camera as he fast-forwarded and rewound the tape so Brooke could take a head count.

“I make it twenty-one through the door, which was the only way out, plus the three in the room. Means we started with twenty-four. Port Authority killed two, we got twelve piled up here, plus three in the bus. That leaves nine at large. Ben, APB all units. Seven suspects in motel shooting still at large, AED.”

Ben ran off to the communications van, while Wallace figured out AED must be fed speak for, “armed and extremely dangerous.”

An agent ran up. “Boss, the motel manager says these guys were having a meeting here. Twenty-four rooms booked in advance, cash. We're finding plane tickets, cash, prayer rugs, and Korans.”

“Someone else look at the tape and check the numbers,” Brooke said. She turned to Wallace. “Thank you. We'll get you a receipt for that tape.”

She turned and was heading off to the van when Wallace called out, “You know what? Now it makes sense!”

Brooke turned in her tracks. “What does?”

Saturday night used to be date night. Now, the only date the Hiccocks looked forward to on a Saturday night was a date with the pillow after the week's 7:30 a.m. staff meetings. So when his secure phone rang at 10:30, Bill's sleepy voice answered.

Homeland Security was on the other end. “Mr. Hiccock, I have a high priority message for you from the Secretary.”

“Go ahead.”

Bill heard clicking sounds and then the connection hit.

“Bill, Brad Grayson, Deputy Secretary DHS. We have a situation in New York that could be – repeat
could be
– a bio-terrorism event. You are directed to monitor the situation through your White House SOP. Sir, do you concur that you have been duly notified?”

“Yes, but one question – who is running the operation on the ground in New York?”

“That would be S. A. Brooke Burell, JTTF.”

“I know her, she's good.”

“Sir, if there are no other questions, do you concur that you have been duly notified?”

“Yes, William Hiccock has been duly notified.”

“Thank you and good night, sir.” The operator then switched off his recorder and dialed the next person on his Status 2 Alert List.

Bill redialed.

“Good Evening, White House Switchboard.”

“Good Evening, I am Bill Hiccock; please authenticate my identity.” A tone sounded and Bill repeated his name into the voice print recognition system. Then an automated voice said, “Acquired and authenticated, William Hiccock Science Advisor to the President.”

“Yes, Mr. Hiccock?”

“Switch me to signals.”

“Signals, what can we do for you, Sir?”

“I need to patch into the New York JTTF commander on the scene.”

“Roger, standby,” said the army master sergeant who ran the signals department at the White House, the super-interconnect of the U.S. government. A President could talk to a soldier in the foxhole with this network.

∞§∞

Special Agent in Charge Brooke Burrell was dealing with the ever-changing facts in the crime/terrorism/bio-terrorism/fugitive drama into which she had been catapulted. Her secure agency cell phone rang.

“Burell, go.”

“White House Signals Branch. I have…”

“I don't have time to talk to the White House right now…”

“Brooke, it's Bill Hiccock on the line.”

“Okay, White House, I got the call.”

The sergeant dropped out leaving a secure connection between the two participants.

“Bill, a local P.I. stumbled on a terrorist plot to infect some bio-weapon on U.S. soil. Very detailed plan, lots of target cities.”

“How far did they get?”

“We have seven still at large. We have nineteen on tape but it will be a few hours ‘til the tape is processed into our heads-up alert systems.

“Do you have a communications van there?”

“Yes.”

“Still got the tape?”

“Just about to fly it back to Manhattan H.Q. by chopper.”

“Do me a favor,” Bill said as he punched his cell phone. “Hold on for thirty seconds.”

“Thirty seconds, you got, Mr. Hiccock.”

∞§∞

“Kronos, get up. Get up now and go to your SCIAD terminal on the double.”

“Wha…?”

“Kronos, wake the fuck up!” As Bill yelled, Janice stirred.

“Okay, okay geez, where's the fire?” came the disgruntled voice on the other end.

“In New York. I need the Joint Terrorist Task Force on the SCIAD net now.”

“They can't.”

“Can you set up a backdoor to SCIAD for about thirty seconds from now?”

“Sure, Hitch, no big whoop. I can create a one-time challenge and passkey to my super FTP.”

“Just do it.”

As he typed on his end, Kronos couldn't believe what he was being asked to do. “You're gonna give all our stuff to the fucking feds?”

“Relax, brainboy. We're the fucking feds, too. How long?”

“C'mon Hitch; I just woke up.”

“How long?”

“Sixty seconds… I'm booting up now. Geez.”

Bill smirked and changed phones. “Brooke, get the tape and the camera to the communications van. I have my guy making a password to my SCIAD net. We can use it to process the tape in three minutes max.”

Brooke entered the van and placed the camera and tape in front of her comm tech.

“What's this?” the tech asked.

“You'll get instructions.”

“From who?”

Brooke spoke into her cell. “Bill, who's gonna tell my tech what?”

“My guy Kronos will be on the line in a few seconds.”

Brooke jutted the cell phone at the tech. “Can you capture this call?”

“Sure. What's your number?”

In a few seconds the patch was complete and over the speaker they all heard, “Kronos here. Who am I talking to?”

“Rich Hest, JTTF com officer.”

“I'm Kronos. You got HTML?”

“Yes.”

“512K Bandwidth?”

“1 meg.”

“I'm going to multiplex that to 30 meg,” Kronos said.

“Whoa, how you going to do that?”

“Magicians oath. If I told you I'd have to make you disappear.”

“Okay, I'll just do what you tell me.”

“Cool. X,F,T,P, back slash, back slash, sciad, forward slash, admin.”

“Forward slash admin. Got it.

“Here's the answer to the challenge. Charlie, Siera, Tango, Romeo, Papa Siera.”

The tech typed simultaneously as he listened. “Papa, Siera. I'm in.”

“What are we uploading?” Kronos asked.

“I got a HD camera here.”

“Firewire?”

“Shit, no cable,” the tech said looking around.

“I'm on it,” Brooke said as she bolted from the van. Once outside she yelled to Wallace. “We need all the wires!”

Wallace reached into his car, grabbing the whole bag and ran back meeting her halfway.

∞§∞

Janice took the lull in the action to ask, “What's going on?”

“Kronos is rewiring my network and pulling off another miracle.”

“Oh, that.”

∞§∞

Brooke opened the bag and the tech found a cord that had a small plug at one end and larger one at the other. He put the small end in the camera and the other in an Core i7 - iMac that was in the van. “Okay I'm hooked up.”

Kronos came back on the line. “I just set up, back slash, back slash, tape. Upload to that.”

“Okay, I pressed play; it's on its way.”

“Bill, where's this going?” Kronos asked.

“FBI labs in New York and Washington, TSA, DHS and Face Recognition Systems in Roanoke.”

“I better send them all this Ultra HD video codec as well, so they won't waste time. They never got video like this before.”

None of this was lost on Brooke's tech in the van. “Whoa, real-time HiDEF full-bandwidth upload? Who runs this thing?”

“Need to know only, Rich. Erase and forget it when this is over, understood?”

“Yes, Sir, Ma'am.”

Kronos had the backdoor shut and SCIAD secure thirty seconds after the tape finished uploading.

Bill asked the tech to hand the phone back to Brooke. “Brooke, what happened up there?”

“Looks like these guys had cold cream jars filled with a bio agent of some kind that had its own heat source.”

One of the cops entered with the empty case they found in the shootout room.

“Could be a viral strain, one that needs to incubate right up to the point of release. Are we contained?”

“A few jars got shot up, some were smashed, and one was opened by a cop.” Brooke noted the stamp “24 count” on the side of the cardboard. “It looks like there were twenty-four of them.”

“Brooke, lockdown immediately! The risk of secondary contamination is too high.”

“I already ordered a secure perimeter. I have Bio-response on the way. Any idea what we could be dealing with here?”

“There's no way to know for sure, but we were just war gaming an attack with HCD Complex 33. It's a synthetic strain of influenza. We figured with the vaccine shortage we might be vulnerable.”

“So this could be nothing more than the flu?”

“A fast acting, potentially deadly form, but not if you catch it early. I'll notify NIH. Make sure your bio guys know it might be viral.”

Brooke was writing as she repeated the name over the phone, “H… C… D… Com… Plex… 33, got it. I'll alert them. Thanks.”

∞§∞

Bill dialed another number. “Judy, Bill. Sorry to bother you this late.”

Judy was in her den with CNN on in the background. The events in New York were starting to make the cable news. “Bill, I know all about it. I am the one who had DHS call you as soon as I got the call.”

“Is there any flu vaccine for Complex 33, if that's what this is?”

“Vaccine is a preventative. Once the cardio-pulmonary is infected you have to treat it with intense medication, face masks and gloves, and lots of soap and water to wash hands with.”

“That at least sounds manageable.”

“Only if it's C-33 and only if we catch it within the first hours. The chances of which, so far, seem good if all the first responders have been quarantined.”

“Some of the jars are still unaccounted for. Can you work up some numbers if a few of those get away?”

“I'll get the epis working on it. Maybe it won't get to that.”

“From your mouth….”

“Amen, Bill.” Then she called the chief of staff at the CDC's National Center for Infectious Diseases to muster the epis of the Epidemiological Analysis Team and get them cracking on the impact report.

After Bill hung up, he mentally created a checklist to make sure he had done and was doing everything he could. Satisfied, he slouched back under the covers, pecked Janice on the cheek, and tried to sleep. But the singing was keeping him awake.

Singing?

“What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“You're humming.”

“Am I?”

“Yes. You am.”

“Maybe I'm happy.”

Bill pondered this for a few seconds. “Okay, why?”

Janice rolled over and faced him. “You know the other morning when I got sick and you said to see a doctor?”

“Yeah.”

“Remember I said I didn't know what got into me?”

“Yeah.”

“Well it was you. You got into me. And now…”

“Oh God, baby! Are you saying you're…?”

“Um hmm. Yes, we are!”

“Whoa. So you're happy?”

“Yes. Are you?”

“Yeah, yeah! I'm happy. Wow!”

“I know, wow.”

“How… when…”

“The how we covered. The when was probably two months ago.”

Bill beamed. “Wait till my folks find out.”

“My mom's going to go nuts.”

Bill's head was spinning. What a turnaround from just minutes ago. “Janice, I love you.

“Oh Billy, I love you so much.” They hugged tighter than Bill ever remembered and for longer than they ever seemed to hold each other before.

Thanks to Bill's SCIAD network, the images of the at-large terrorists were sharp and clear with no degradation. The Federal Face Recognition system got them swiftly. Private Eye Wallace's excellent-quality surveillance camera and the lucky position of a good light source right outside the room made the 1/60-of-a-second field grabs, sharp enough even before processing to trigger seventeen face recognition ID match-ups from the nineteen Middle Eastern men who went through the door that night. Of the two faces that remained unknown, one was among the seven still at large. The other unknown face was one of the deceased. The seven photos were distributed to the TSA, all local authorities, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, DIA, FBI and the NSA. Many in those agencies were stunned at the high quality of the images, prodding more than one to ask if this was a drill because in the real world images never started, transmitted, or remained this clean.

Two more bioterrorists were captured at Logan airport the next day. Officials quarantined the terminal and everyone involved received prophylactic doses to inhibit HCD Complex 33. Luckily, the spread of the virus was severely curtailed since the two terrorists took a New York City taxi to Boston. It turned out that the cab driver was a member of the Atlantic Avenue Mosque community, a group that still had a hazy connection with Al Qaeda.

If the plan that was uncovered had been carried out in just the NFL towns, and the stadiums that the men were scheduled to visit, it could have meant twenty-five million deaths in the high-risk groups of elderly, those with heart conditions, and pregnant women. In total, the jihadist effort could have killed forty million Americans. It would have been the greatest public health emergency ever in the history of the world. At this point, the risk had been reduced dramatically, but the five remaining at-large terrorists posed a lethal risk to more than ten million people.

Armed with the picture of the four known men and the one unknown man, law enforcement officials swarmed into Muslim communities from coast to coast. There was a terrific outcry from all the usual sources. These cries of stereotyping and prejudice towards one specific cultural group was strangely not as loud among smart-thinking Muslims in those communities who realized that an infected bioterrorist hiding in their midst would infect Muslims and non-Muslims with non-stereotyping, non-discriminatory accuracy. Two known terrorists were found hiding in those communities. Because one of these proved to be infected, intense medical teams also swept into these Muslim communities curtailing their infectious breathing of Complex-33. Untold thousands of innocent Muslim-American men, women, and children were saved.

∞§∞

It was impressive; this was a prayer mat of the same weaver as his father had, all those many years ago. That alone was the sole comfort he now had at the Manhattan Correctional Facility. Unable to merge into the general population, his confinement couldn't be deemed solitary because there was a constant stream of nurses, doctors, and psychiatrists, as well as guards. An imam came once a week – a prayer session attended by a translator and a member of the American security community. These visits were also recorded for later scrutiny. He was not allowed a lawyer because he was being “detained;” he had not been arrested.

Then she came to his room one day. His danger sense went immediately up. She was either a young girl from a college course doing research or a she-devil, sent to seduce him away from Allah and the cause.

“Aliz Berniham. I am special agent Brooke Burrell, the F.B.I. agent who took you into custody when you were wounded at the motel.”

Upon the term, “F.B.I.,” Sheik Aliz Berniham focused on a crack near the sink in his one room “cell” and tried to let the remembered sound of midday prayers fill his ears in an anemic attempt to drown out her words in his head. But his mind swirled; Allah's plan, which he had been so close to carrying out, with its two years of training and planning, had been thwarted by a woman. A woman who, from the looks of it, didn't even bleed yet. What had he done to displease Allah, to be rebuked like this?
A woman!

Then a smile creased his face ever so slightly. If the Americans were this desperate, conscripting a mere woman to combat jihad, then surely victory was a matter of when, not if. His attention eventually tuned into the voice of the woman speaking at him.

“… it's up to you. In our system you have been designated an enemy combatant. Therefore, we can hold you indefinitely. Now, the manner of your incarceration can be good or not so good. It can be here or in a nicer place, eventually with an outdoor garden, maybe contact with certain other inmates.”

She was good, this one, well briefed about his garden at home, his sole expression of art, and the many satisfying hours he spent gardening. It was a remnant of the British influences of his youth when they occupied his country, dividing his homeland up like a holiday goose at the dinner table. His father, through his connections with the British Empire, secured free passage for his mother, his brother, and him to relocate in Hungary.

His father died soon after their arrival in that new country. He and his brother strayed from the religious teachings into the ways of science. They were both naturals at it, with each achieving academic honors and degrees in various disciplines.

“Okay, so here's what I want to know: how did you adulterate the vaccine? How did you get operational ability in the U.S.?” The agent slid a pad across the plain wood table. He disregarded it, instead he remained focused on the wall, calculating the stress forces that combined and created the horizontal crack in the plaster.

“This is the only way for you to get some semblance of normality for the rest of your living days, Sheik.”

She was showing some small amount of respect to his position. Still, he remained focused on the fracture. He shifted in his seat.

“Aren't you going about this all wrong?” he finally said, recognizing her against his better instincts.

“I am not going to insult your intelligence and befriend you then use that friendship to weasel information out of you,” Brooke stated flatly. She finally got eye contact from him for her gambit. “You will never get out of here, unless you tell me what I want to know. That is an iron-clad fact, sir.”

The Sheik smiled. He knew he wouldn't be here long.

∞§∞

It reminded Bill of P.S. 21, the little, red brick front part. The original school building to which, in 1957, the modern extension was attached. The basement of that 1900's elementary school was the same as the basement here in the White House, right down to the moisture-controlling gray sealant paint.

It was uncomfortable for Bill to have a gun in the White House. He held it dead at his side so no one would notice it and take a shot at him, especially no one in this room – the target range beneath the portico of the West Wing. Brent returned after signing out the ammo.

“The last time I fired a gun was up at my uncle's cabin.” Hiccock said.

“Handgun?”

“No, mostly .22s rifles.”

“I bet there wasn't a safe Coke bottle or old toy within a mile.”

“Bathroom tiles! Uncle Jack was a plumber. They shattered like you hit ‘em with a bazooka.”

“Was Jack former military?”

“Hunter. He actually hunted for his winter meals. Mostly venison.”

Brent reached down and took the gun from Hiccock's hand. He threw off the safety, pulled back the slide, and popped the clip. “My little rule is approach every gun as loaded and every time for the first time.”

“Yeah, you look more cautious than me.”

“Every firearm accident happens because overconfidence makes you get sloppy. Every gun is loaded, even the one you just put down.” He placed the unloaded gun on the cleaning table next to his own identical automatic then intentionally picked up his. “Until you know that this time it isn't.” He hit the slide hard and ejected the live round from the twin gun.

It was a bit of obvious sleight-of-hand, but it made the point to Hiccock. “Got it.”

“So since you just want to be proficient, we'll start on the basics.”

And so Hiccock's Introduction to Firearms 101 course started with Brent Moscowitz, the Secret Service agent from Queens. This was all happening because Bill confided to the agent, who was assigned to protect him, that he didn't want to be seen as a weenie by the men and women of the various law enforcement agencies over which he now held sway.

∞§∞

By the time Bill got to his office that Monday there were just two bioterrorists left at large: one known, one unknown. It seemed that America got lucky this time. But there were a million more bugs out there and millions more fanatics willing to infect themselves as bioterrorists in a slow-motion version of suicide bombing.

The news that Janice was pregnant made that normally worrisome prospect utterly terrifying to Bill now.
Is that what impending fatherhood does to a person: magnify all the sharp edges and pointy things in the world?
he pondered as he signed on to his SCIAD net. The top three messages were about Edward Ensiling, a scientist found dead in Vienna. He was a member of many teams that brought about a good deal of innovation and discovery. As the science advisor to the President, Bill sent a memo to the Office of Protocol for the appropriate response or letter to be issued from the President. The office would first run an FBI and CIA background check, because Ensiling was a foreign national, Hungarian, if Bill remembered correctly.

In the afternoon, Bill came back from a meeting to find an older staffer awaiting him in his office.

“Mr. Hiccock, Dave Dwyer from the Office of Protocol. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too, Mr. Dwyer. What can I do for you?”

“You alerted this office to the demise of one Professor Ensiling and suggested a presidential commendation or letter of sympathy. Your request has been denied.”

“Really? Why?”

“It seems during the '60s, the good professor made some enemies within the Air Force and NASA. Those letters in his file are a red flag against any presidential recognition. I am sure you understand.”

“Certainly, although I am amazed. He was a top scientific mind of the last century. But if it's red flagged it's red flagged. Thank you for coming over to tell me personally.”

“No problem, really. I actually wanted to meet you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. I followed your college career and, well, let's just say it's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Hiccock.”

“It's Bill, please, and the pleasure's all mine, Dave.”

“Your two-minute shootouts, well, they were the most exciting thing in college ball. Still, to this day.”

“Well, thanks, Dave. But you know I had an excellent offensive line. I could have washed my socks, trimmed my nails, and still had time to throw.”

“Well, I'll be going. Again, a thrill to meet you.”

“Have a good day,” Bill said as Dwyer left.

Twenty minutes later, Bill was sitting at his desk, deep in analysis of how to defend against the next bio-terror plot. As he sat, he absentmindedly spun and caught a football in one hand, something that he first perfected on the sidelines, as a backup quarterback his sophomore year at Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx. Using his thumb to pivot the ball in his palm, at regular intervals he would swoop his 3x-size hand over the top and catch the ball in a perfect fingertips-on-the-laces grip. Eight out of ten times, he got it without looking. So inured was his muscle memory and acuity at finding the laces that he actually was able to focus his mind on something else, while performing this mindless feat.

Ray Reynolds, the President's chief of staff stood in the doorway hypnotically watching Bill perform this one-handed trick. Eventually, he knocked on the jamb. “Got a minute, Bill?”

Bill caught the ball mid-twirl and placed it back on the wooden stand on the credenza behind his desk.

Ray sat down in the chair across from him. “Bill, the boss was very pleased with the way you moved things along up in New York.”

“We got lucky because Kronos didn't get lucky, so he was home Saturday night to wire the patch up.”

“All the same, it's your team. We've got bio-med crash units in the two Muslim communities where we found two of the infected men. So far it's contained, but we are losing people. Almost 3,000 innocent folks are dead because they were first to get infected by the bastards hiding in their neighborhoods. They were already dying long before we got to them.”

“But those 3,000 could have in turn exposed 90,000. Both communities could have been wiped out,” Bill said.

“Of course, those 90,000 could have infected millions before this thing burnt out,” Ray said closing the briefing folder on his lap. “Again, you don't wire up the fast patch thing and we don't get facial recognition on these animals. Then untold millions would be dead or dying now, Bill.”

“The cop didn't make it…” Bill said without moving his head or eyes.

“Which cop?”

“At the motel. An NYPD cop found a jar cracked open on the asphalt. As far as we can tell, he didn't touch it, but he inhaled a full dose. He was quarantined but slipped away yesterday.”

“I hope those sons of bitches, rot in hell for bringing that shit to America.”

“Nationally, the Center for Disease Control says we are talking 26,000 additional deaths this flu season. And that's with 21 of them caught or killed before they could infect anyone.” Bill had just read that report a few minutes earlier.

“Even so, I'd say we dodged a bullet.”

Both men uncharacteristically sat in silence, each dwelling on what could have been.

“Well, I better be getting back to my office.” Ray got up and looked at the game ball behind Bill's desk and noticed what was written on it in white paint. “Stanford 27, Penn State 3? Bill, I watched you on three consecutive New Year's Days win all kinds of bowls. What was so special about this mid-season snorer?”