Call to Treason

FIFTEEN

When April Dorrance was a young girl growing up in rural Sneedville, Tennessee, on the Virginia border, her father collected discarded appliances and fixed them for resale. That was the kind of thing a skilled and resourceful African-American man had to do in the South in the early 1970s to feed his family. April loved playing house with the appliances before they were repaired. She also enjoyed watching her father work. She loved seeing his huge hands manipulate fine wire and tools. He always explained what he was doing and why.

“That was how my pop taught me,” Royal Dorrance said one night in their small cabin with its corrugated tin roof.

“And is that how his father taught him?” April asked.

“Yes ma’am,” he replied.

“Who was the first one who learned it?”

“That would be my granddad, Mr. Walter Emmanuel Dorrance,” Royal told her. “He was a private with the 803 Pioneer Infantry during World War One. Big segregated unit, meaning they only allowed black soldiers. He learned all about engineering when he fought in France.”

“He went to school in a war?” April asked.

“In a way, Precious,” her father said. “He had to learn things to survive and to help his friends survive.”

“Does that mean war is good?”

“Sometimes,” he said. “We’re free because of a war. And a lot of things get invented to fight wars.”

April never forgot the idea that war could be a positive aspect of civilization.

When April was a little older, not quite eleven, she began coming home from school and fixing some of those appliances herself. She loved how proud her father was when he came home with a new truckload of goodies. After his death, she continued in the family business to help support her mother and younger brother. With the help of her high school science and shop teachers, the young woman earned a scholarship to study electronics at the University of Tennessee College of Engineering in Knoxville. April excelled and graduated in 1984 from Cornell University with a Ph.D. in QuASSE — quantum and solid state electronics. She was immediately recruited by the CIA. April agreed to go to work for them because of the challenge, the job security, and the fact that it was close to her mother and brother. She went to work in a secret research laboratory located in Richmond, Virginia. The facility was actually below Alexandria, in a bunker below the University of Richmond. Only the UR president, select members of the board of trustees, and the UR chief of police knew they were there. No one knew what they did there. A large annual endowment bought their disinterest.

And April Dorrance got to learn and grow because of war.

The eleven-person staff of the School, as they called it, tested new forms of electronic jamming, surveillance, and triangulation equipment for use by mobile forces during combat. A university was the ideal place to do that, since computer and telecommunications use on campus was constant and typically cutting-edge. There were always students who brought with them the latest laptops, cell phones, and other portable electronics. The kids owned everything a modern soldier, spy, or terrorist might possess. Probably more. The School staffers liked nothing more than field-testing prototypes on unsuspecting students and teachers. It was like Candid Camera, watching them as they tried to figure out why their cell phones were suddenly talking to them in Bantu, the language of April’s ancestors.

The problem with the School was the burnout factor. It was intense work done in windowless surroundings for long hours. It was impossible to have a social life. It was also difficult to leave. The CIA had control over the kinds of positions one could seek after leaving their employ. They did not want confidential information finding its way into the private sector. An electromagnetic inhibitor that could plant false readings on enemy radar could easily be built into an automobile to befuddle police radar. April did not want to work for a government contractor who would demand the same extended hours and would not have the kind of budget or resources she had at the School. That left teaching. April had bought a house in Goochland, halfway between Richmond and Charlottesville. She simply drove twenty miles in the opposite direction each morning to teach microelectronics at the University of Virginia.

But people who had worked with April over the years often called her to consult on specific projects, and she was happy to do so. The government still possessed the best toy box on earth.

Nonetheless, the call was unexpected.

The caller left a message on her cell phone, which she returned on a more secure landline in her office. It was not the caller who surprised her. Though the two of them had never worked together, they had met on a number of occasions. What surprised April was what the caller wanted. The government had hundreds of these weapons stored in military and intelligence warehouses around the globe. Then again, April understood that they might not have one exactly to these specifications. She also knew that sometimes goods had to be acquired “off the books” because the system had “moles and holes,” as the caller referred to them.

April could deliver it, of course. And she would, because she trusted the caller and their mutual friend.

Besides, it was fun and lucrative. Just like working on the old Formica-topped kitchen table in the cabin in Sneedville.

April was informed that the components would be delivered to her home that evening, and she was to assemble them for pickup the following morning. That was more than enough time. These weapons were increasingly modular. Not like the days when Private Walter Dorrance had to use a mallet and spare train rails to fashion replacement cranks and ballast for the Allies’ twelve-inch Mk4 siege Howitzers. He certainly did not get paid as well as she did, either. This one would buy her mother a new car.

And maybe do some good. Because war could be a force for good.

Even a war that was only one bomb long.