Omega Sanction

Chapter Nine

Takamura lived in a trailer on the west side of Fort Bragg. It was a long drive every day to and from the main post, but he enjoyed the solitude. His nearest neighbor was over a quarter mile away. The trailer was set in a small, secluded opening in the pine forest, accessible via a quarter mile of dirt road. Power lines ran about fifty feet behind the house, through a straight cut in the forest.

The thin walls of the trailer vibrated with the classical music every so often as the concert he was listening to went up in pitch, before sliding back down. He sat back in a battered leather recliner, a keyboard resting in his lap. His feet were up on the extended leg rest. On his head, a headset held a pointer that maneuvered a small white arrow on the large-screen TV eight feet in front of him. A small boom mike wrapped around from the headset to in front of his lips. A voice-activated program that he had personally modified allowed him to point with the headset and speak commands, removing the need for a mouse with a clicker.

Seventy-two inches allowed him to have several programs open on the screen. He was in four different chat rooms, under four different screen names, in each corner of the screen. Along the bottom an elongated box held the controls for every electrical device inside the trailer, including the stereo, lighting, and the heating/vibra pad on his recliner. Takamura could control everything from the deep comfort of the chair. It was the highest-tech low-rent trailer in North Carolina. What Takamura didn't spend on rent went into his computer system.

Right now, he was clearing the center of the screen, using the pointer and voice commands. He accessed the program he had used earlier in the day to try to penetrate the personnel database. He began scrolling through the program, his mind making sense of the letters and numbers, searching for a way to make it better.

The walls of the office displayed the accoutrements accumulated over eighteen years of service in the military. Plaques from units served in, certificates representing medals awarded, photographs of comrades, all dotted the wall.

What was more interesting and fresh in the memory of the person occupying this office in the first subbasement of the Pentagon were the units that weren't represented, the photos that weren't there.

Red Flyer and the Omega Missile.

Lieutenant Colonel Lisa Parker had served in both, and not only was there no sign of either unit in her office, records of each had been expunged from her official service record, leaving several years of her military service time unaccounted for.

Red Flyer had been a classified team selected from the various services whose mission was to covertly emplace a nuclear weapon anywhere in the world. Given that cruise missiles could target anyplace on the planet, the existence and potential use of Red Flyer had been more for political than practical reasons, a fact that had caused great consternation when the veil of secrecy surrounding it had been pierced.

Parker's last mission with Red Flyer had been to emplace what she had thought was a nuclear weapon inside of Israel, near their nuclear weapons storage facility in the Negev Desert. Although the bomb had been a dummy, the mission had had strong political overtones. She'd found out later that the mission had been run to counterbalance the Israeli Samson option — a nuclear weapon secreted in a house in Washington.

It had not made much sense at the time and as she'd had more time to think about it, it made even less sense. A political shell game using nuclear weapons in a perverse balance of power in a new world order was the best she could fathom.

The man who had been the political force behind the Red Flyer missions, National Security Adviser Hill, was still awaiting trial, his lawyers slowing the process down due to the fact that almost all the material to be used in the trial was highly classified. The reality that Hill was still walking around Washington was another bitter pill for Parker to swallow. A petty thief would be thrown in jail quicker than a man who had misled his country and deceived the President.

And then Omega Missile, the other unit she had been assigned to after getting kicked out of Red Flyer. Housed in a silo in Louisiana, it was a doomsday weapon devised by Professor Kilten. She had been selected by him to serve on the launch crew after being banished from Red Flyer.

Omega was a missile whose payload consisted of the launch codes and targeting matrixes for all of America's nuclear forces — silo, submarine and airborne launched. Omega Missile had been taken over by Kilten and a band of mercenaries to hold the government hostage and demand changes in the nuclear infrastructure — most specifically to expose Hill and what he was doing with Red Flyer.

Kilten and McKenzie, the mercenary leader, had been stopped by Parker and Thorpe. She had hoped that some of Kilten's desperate message might have gotten through, but the status quo seemed to have returned. Her eyes shifted up to the TV screen on the other side of her desk. The VCR hummed as the tape played, but Colonel Parker's eyes were unfocused, not seeing what was being played out on the screen. She'd already completed her after-action report on the SEAL Team Six-Delta Force joint operation and watching the tape of the operation wasn't going to change anything. Her report told the truth and the tape backed it up, but the politics of interservice rivalry would ensure that not much of anything was done.

A turf battle had developed after the operation. The SEALs claimed that since the rig was on water, they were in charge. The Delta commander had claimed that since the rig was "dry," he was in charge. But given that it had turned out badly, he was willing to cede responsibility to the SEALs, who in turn were claiming that Delta had not handled their end of the operation. The joint commander sent to ensure this turf battle didn't occur had failed to take positive control and now everyone was pointing fingers.

After the Omega Missile incident, Parker had thought things would change. That she could make a difference. She laughed out loud, the sound bouncing off the narrow concrete walls of her office. She was in the first subbasement of the Pentagon. Buried. That was the word she would use for her office's location and for her job. She'd thought that with the power of the purse, Congress could control the military, but after being in the job several months she'd learned that it didn't quite work that way. The base closure list was one club the Pentagon waved over Congress's head. No senator or congressman wanted a base in his or her district shut down. After being in Washington for almost a year, she was amazed anything got done.

And then there were the weapons. The Seawolf submarine cost over one billion a pop and brought a ton of jobs to specific contractors. The Pentagon had learned long ago that it was as important, if not more so, to consider where the weapons systems were made as whether they really needed the weapons themselves. Thorpe's comments about the entire operation being staged to show off the Hummingbird missile bothered her more than she had allowed. When she had returned to the Pentagon, most of the questions directed to her during the debrief had revolved around the missile rather than the navy-army cooperation.

Parker glanced at the clock. It was after nine. She'd already scheduled her flight to Fort Bragg. She did have some business there, but Thorpe's phone call had intrigued her. She pushed a button on the remote, turning off the VCR and TV. She gathered her briefcase and coat and left her office, locking the door behind.

The walk to her car was a long one; she was parked in an outer ring of lots that surrounded the Pentagon. She slid behind the wheel and headed home. The men following her were good. During the ten miles to her townhouse in Springfield she never once suspected she was being tailed.

Takamura moved the picture to the upper left corner of the large screen.

"One down," he whispered to himself as he typed on his keyboard. A steady green bar flashed across the length of the top of the screen, indicating his invasion into the DOD database had not been detected yet.

"Two." A photo flashed onto the screen. Takamura began moving it, then paused, staring at the image. Something bothered him, but he wasn't quite sure what it was. He focused back on the keyboard.

"Three." The photo of the third girl from the list appeared. This time Takamura knew what was disturbing him. He moved the girl to the left, under the other two. "Oh, man," he whispered seeing the three lined up. He quickly accessed the last three girls missing in the vicinity of Stuttgart over the past year.

When he was done, he stared at the screen for a minute, not quite believing what was there. Then he picked up the phone and dialed Moon Hall. He had the operator forward him to Major Thorpe's room.

"Thorpe."

"Sir, it's Takamura."

"What's up?"

"Sir, I've got something really strange that I found on the computer."

"Really strange?"

"It's about the girls."

"I'll be there in thirty minutes."

"I can download—"

"Thirty minutes."

Hancock had rolled his chair over to the chess table holding the Civil War pieces. His chin was in his hand and he was thinking through moves.

Kilten had been a chess master. Hancock had never played the man before his unfortunate demise in Louisiana. But he had played Deep Blue, Kilten's computer alter ego. And lost. He had learned from that loss a simple truth. In any game, no matter what one's skill level was, there was always someone — or something, in the case of the computer Kilten had programmed — better than you. He had warned Hill about Kilten, but the national security adviser had ignored his advice and continued with his agenda.

The conclusion he had drawn from both Hill's action and Kilten's was that the only way to guarantee a win was to control both sides. Some might consider that cheating, but Hancock didn't. He considered it working twice as hard.

His hand reached out and hovered on top of the white queen. He slid it across the board and removed a black pawn. He kept his hand on the white queen as he considered the consequences of the move. Satisfied, he removed his hand, committing to a course of action.

When he was done, he went back to his desk and opened a drawer, taking out the secure phone. He had his secretary connect him to the NSA's computer monitoring office.

"What is it?" Thorpe was wearing a black windbreaker over a khaki shirt and pants. He filled up the doorway to the trailer.

Takamura had a glass in his hand and he took a deep swig. "Want a drink, Major?"

"What do you have?" Thorpe stepped in, declining the drink with a wave of his hand.

Takamura poured himself another one. "I was testing. To see if I could get in. I downloaded it. I didn't want to stay in the system too long."

"Downloaded what? Slow down and relax."

"This way." Takamura led Thorpe down the narrow corridor to his computer room.

Thorpe paused, seeing the large-screen TV, which now showed a swirling image that he couldn't quite make out. "That's hooked to your computer?"

"Yeah."

"You need to get a life," Thorpe stood behind Takamura as the younger man sat in front of his keyboard and put on the head pointer.

"That's my own screen saver. Designed it myself."

"Great."

"On screen," Takamura said into the boom mike.

The screensaver disappeared. The photos of the six young girls filled equal shares of the TV.

"Jesus," Thorpe whispered.

"That's what I thought," Takamura concurred.

Thorpe walked past Takamura to the screen. He put his hands out, running down each side, across the images.

"They could be sisters," he said, taking in the faces. Each girl had straight blond hair and blue eyes. Their faces were all thin and angular. All except one.

"Why is Terri Dublowski different from the other five?" Thorpe asked.

"I don't know. It's not only the hair and eyes," Takamura said. "They are all between five-foot and five-two. All weigh between ninety and one hundred and ten pounds. All except Dublowski's daughter. Those five can't be a coincidence."

"No," Thorpe agreed, "they can't."