Pi Day Doomsday

THE THIRD FLOOR

They all rose as he entered, introducing themselves. I’m going to need a list of names, he thought. Almost on cue, Poole handed him a sheet of paper, “I’ve compiled a list of your teammates’ names and phone numbers. You’re on there, too.”

“Thank you for the roster, Lieutenant, I think I’m gonna need it. This is a big group.”

“It’s been bigger.” She smiled and offered him the seat next to her.

“That was Keller’s seat, but it’s yours now,” she said.

Then nodding to Norton, she commented, “Excellent timing Commander Norton, your punctuality is to be commended. Thank you for getting him here by our late start time. Now let’s get moving’”

He joked back, “Well I had to get our star marine sleuth here on time, and that was no easy task.”

“Yeah,” Cross said, smiling. “I traveled in two boats, a weird plane, and two automobiles getting here. I feel like I should be in southern Florida by now.”

A laugh arose around the table as members took their seats. Their acceptance comforted him.

Once the team sat, Poole looked around and somberly spoke, “I hope you all enjoyed your day off yesterday. Unfortunately, a few of our team did not. Strong and Dover found one of our pieces of evidence, the Sea Ray, cut loose from its moorings. The Coast Guard found it later drifting miles off the coast. It’s GPS had been damaged, obviously trying to cover something. We don’t know who did that but we suspect Fogner. Then Deputy Keller and another deputy, Higgins, returned to Fogner’s house after the SWAT attack. Both were fatally shot. Ambushed. We believe that was also Fogner, but we don’t know, the shooter escaped. Let us all bow our heads in silence for a moment, remembering Deputy Keller. He was a good man. Added tremendously to our group. He will be missed. His processional funeral is scheduled three days from now.”

Cross dropped his head and closed his eyes, wondering how that happened to Keller. And who was Fogner? He was sitting in Keller’s chair. Was it jinxed?

Poole finally started the meeting, reminding the group of Cross’s capabilities. Norton had created quite an impression for him: they felt like they already knew him.

She continued on, “Today, Ensign Dover and Agent Strong are back at our salvage marina trying to extract data from that GPS, and Briscoe from what I hear is in the hospital, checking out a few radiation side effects. Hope he’s okay. Captain Bell has returned to his ship, leaving Commander Norton as the Navy’s sole representative. Agent Strong and Special Investigator Combs are bowing out, now that the cipher is complete. I want to personally thank them for their help. Without it, the page I’m about to hand out would still be gibberish.”

Cross alerted at her introduction; he recognized a name from long ago. “Briscoe? I once knew a Briscoe. Is he Navy?”

“No, Mr. Cross, he’s a California Highway Patrol traffic officer. He found the threat. The evidence I’m about to hand out is the decoded version of that threat, inserted through his cruiser window at a coffee stop.”

Taking a short stack of papers from her briefcase, she passed them around. Cross received a thick folder with his page. The page everyone received was the deciphered poem, completed yesterday by KryptoKnight at Quantico.

It read:

Cross took the sheet and stared at the strange poem, ignoring the others for minutes, furrowing his brow, reading something he could never have imagined. Suddenly he felt fear. An inner, shaking fear. Like nothing he had ever experienced before. He wanted to call Lindy and tell her he might not be coming back.

“Mr. Cross? Mr. Cross?” In his mind, he couldn’t process her question. “Are you all right?”

He dropped the page onto the table and stared back at her. “Is this what I’m supposed to find? An armed thermonuclear weapon? On the ocean floor?”

“In a nutshell, yes, Mr. Cross. The poem’s creator, Simon Fogner, named the bomb Adam. It’s a W-88 nuclear warhead.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere out in the Pacific Ocean.”

He put his hand to his forehead, shaking his head. “I just don’t know. What are the lines in the first paragraph referring to: ‘Across into around’ and ‘Pastoral ides’?” Is that a date? It says ‘less one day tops.’”

“Pi day. March 14.”

He jerked back, looked at the date window on his watch, and said, “Holy hell. That’s only nineteen days out. Not enough time.”

“Well Mr. Cross, we have no options on time,” said Poole.

“What makes you think this threat is real? Do you have any proof of the threat other than this poem?”

“Yes, it’s all in your folder, but to catch you up to date, everything associated with this case is extremely radioactive. I mean Fukushima, China-Syndrome-reactor, radioactive. Deadly. A CHP officer is in the hospital because he stood in the suspected delivery boat. Our SWAT team had to wave off an inspection of Fogner’s house because their dosimeters alarmed life-threatening radiation after five minutes. Deputies Keller and Higgins died because of that. Yes, it’s very real.”

Cross surveyed his team’s expressions. They all nodded yes, including Norton.

“Okay, it’s real. Can we narrow the search field?” asked Cross. “Without some constraints, we’re looking for one specific grain of sand on a large beach. And we’re doing it all underwater.” He imagined living aboard the Canyon Glider, never surfacing, growing old in the tiny shell of a submarine, fighting cobwebs from the controls. He closed his eyes and shook it off.

“We’re trying, but so far we’ve only run into dead ends. Using some simple assumptions, we can narrow the field down to about a hundred-and-twenty square miles, but that’s all. We’re assuming a ten mile radius from Dana Point, where he lives. There’s a boathouse there where he probably docked his boat. It’s also very hot with radiation.”

“Um-hmm. Anything else?” asked Cross.

“Everything he touches is radioactive. He must be very ill, dying from radiation poisoning. He’s a Nobel prize winning physicist, harboring a deadly grudge against his peers and society for defaming his character. It’s all in your folder. I suggest you study it. You’ll see a manic psychopath at work. A mad genius: evil personified.”

A shiver ran up his spine, leaving him cold. He excused himself from the meeting and found the bathroom just in time to throw up.

Two more chairs were filled when he returned. Strong and Dover sat expressionless, relating their story.

“It was vandalized beyond recognition. The fiberglass hull and decking were bashed in by a heavy object, probably a sledgehammer. Its GPS unit was in pieces, dangling on wires from the dashboard. We did manage to get the model number and manufacturer’s name from a sliver of hanging metal, though. We also found shards of the circuit board and brought them back, hopefully with the memory chips intact, but other than that, it was a total waste of time. We’re surprised it still floated.” Dover reached into his pocket, pulled out a dull gray lump of metal, the size of a dinner roll, and offered it to Poole. “Here’s the evidence.”

“What is that?” she asked, hesitating, but reaching out for it.

“The GPS circuitry wrapped in lead foil. If it’s radioactive, the foil will shield it. Give it to your electronics forensics group. See if they can pull anything from the chips. Hopefully some data is in there, too. Don’t know if it will help or not, but we tried.”

Taking the object, she handled it with two fingers and carefully placed on a sidewall shelf. “Thanks guys. We’ll leave no stone unturned, so to speak, in our seemingly impossible task.”

Disappointed, Cross watched. “It that our search limiter in that foil? Is that all we’ve got?”

“Yes, but we’ve got more prospects. A team of deputies is searching a county landfill east of Dana Point, looking for paper scraps from his house. Keller suspected that they might carry information about Fogner’s plans. They had been pinned all over a wall, like a bulletin board.”

“A bag of paper scraps in a county landfill?” he asked. “That’s probably harder to find than the bomb.”

“Not when it’s hot with radiation, Mr. Cross. We have half the Geiger counters in Orange County out with them right now. They’ll know when they’re within ten feet of the bag. Still not an easy search, you’re right.”

“Yeah, too bad we can’t do that with the warhead. Even if it’s glowing hot, spewing out all sorts of radiation, the water will shield it past two or three meters away. I won’t find it unless I’m sitting on top of it.”

He squinted, looking across the room at nothing, thinking. “What about this Fogner guy? Think he’s still alive?”

“We’ve had an APB out on him for days. Him and his Prius. Of course, everyone’s driving a Prius these days, so he blends in. A few of our patrol officers are even carrying scintillation counters with them, hoping to get an alarm on a passing car. Nothing yet.”

She paused, then turned to Norton. “So what are your search plans, Commander? Have you discussed them with Mr. Cross?”

Shifting in his seat, glancing at Cross, he answered, “No Lieutenant, we haven’t had time. I’ll take him back with me to Seal Beach this evening. Get him a room in the VOQ, the Visiting Officer Quarters, for the night. We’ll talk over dinner, then catch the Osprey back to the ship when it arrives tomorrow. I plan to caucus with Mr. Cross and Captain Broward in the morning. There’s a big ocean out there and not much time. We have to start the search immediately.” He knew from his previous chats with Broward, that a search scenario around Los Angeles was almost hopeless. Even though he didn’t know what they would be looking for, he was very pessimistic based on the populated location. They had been assigned searches for large objects: satellites, downed spy planes and even nuclear submarines, but those were far out at sea, without civilian intervention. Now they were facing the California Maritime laws, restriction after restriction, overseen by Greenpeace and a multitude of harbor patrol ships. Only the Coast Guard knew of Adam, and they weren’t talking.

Preparing for the mission, based on the elevated-level homeland alert just days earlier, Broward had researched the area and found that cable repair ships were fairly commonplace off the L.A. coast. Major fiber-optic transcontinental submarine cables started there and ran across the ocean floor to China, Japan, and South Korea. They were always being interrupted or broken by fault systems, marine growth, or submarines. He liked that idea for a cover. If his ship were discovered, his story would be that they were repairing the CHUS cable, the China-U.S. Cable Network, over thirty-thousand kilometers long and very prone to outages.

“When will you be coming back ashore?” she asked, looking between Cross and Norton.

“Realistically? When we find Adam and disarm or dispose of him. However that happens.”

She sat back, spinning her pencil on the table, and said, “Well, our taskforce is dwindling; we’ve solved many puzzles up to this point. Now it appears our tasks are moving offshore for the duration. Commander, how many passengers will the Osprey carry?”

“Twenty-four fully outfitted troops. It’s a troop carrier, mostly,” said Norton.

Cross nodded in agreement; he had spent much of his trip examining the rows of uncomfortable jump seats. They reminded him of his mini-sub’s two seats, small, hard and efficient.

“We have a heliport on top of our building. Think it could land there in a pinch?”

“What normally lands there? What aircraft do you use?”

“Usually a Bell 430, but we have a lot of other aircraft using it too.”

“Hmm,” he said. “The Osprey has a thirty-thousand pound liftoff weight versus the Bell’s ten-thousand pounds. The slightly larger size is not a big problem but the prop wash from it will be three times more powerful lifting off and landing. Think your heliport can handle that?”

“I’ll have to ask. I was thinking you might stop by and pick a few of us up for a short ocean cruise.” Winking after her comment, she chuckled.

“Well, that would be fine with me, Lieutenant. The Trident Tine is a huge ship. I’m not sure how Captain Broward will handle it, though, but at least you can be frustrated with the rest of us as we search. Good idea. If we can’t land it on your rooftop heliport, you can always travel down to our Seal Beach heliport and board it there. It’s not a far drive; we just did it in thirty minutes.”

“I’ll consider that, too.”

Agent Gibbs interrupted, smiling. “I think I may need to oversee the operation, too. Count me in.”

Norton, seeing the trend, asked around the table, “What about you Ensign Dover? Agent Strong? Maybe we should have our nuclear physicist, Dr. Gruber and Officer Briscoe, too, if only for a familiarization tour. They’ll be able to see the results of their efforts.”

Those addressed, smiled, and nodded. Strong added, “I think I’ll delay my trip back to D.C. by a few days. It’ll be more comforting to see our work in action.”

“Done!” Poole slapped her hand on the table. “I’ll ask Briscoe and Gruber. You check with the Captain and if he approves it, we’ll meet your Osprey somewhere. I’ll let you know in a few hours. Okay?” For the first time since she commanded the group, she was happy, genuinely happy. The slight curl of her lips showed it.

Surprised by her acceptance, Norton said, “Sure. The more the merrier, so they say. Except there’s nothing to be merry about when you have less than three weeks to live.”

“On that note,” she said, “I call this meeting to an end. Time for a break. The purpose of our taskforce has been to assess the threat, find it, and squelch it. In a way, we’re now moving on to the second phase. Loose ends we’ve left from phase one are Fogner’s whereabouts and his yet unfound paper trail. Those are progressing in the background at an acceptable rate, so far. I have the team roster, as do all of you. I’ll call you this evening with details on our field trip. I expect we’ll return tomorrow night, so pack lightly.” Standing, she added, “Remember, this is a highly sensitive project. Not a word to anyone. We don’t want to start a panic.”

Leaving the Crime Lab, the group’s spirit was brighter. They walked to their cars and drove off, leaving Norton and Cross waiting for the Navy car. From the side parking lot, the driver saw them and pulled up front.

“Everything okay, gentlemen?” the driver asked, opening the doors.

“Went fine, ensign,” Norton answered.

“Where to now?”

“Back to Seal Beach. The O Club. Hungry, Mr. Cross?”

“A little, but I could sure use a drink.”

In the Officer’s Club, at the Seal Beach NWS, the Commander treated Cross to drinks and dinner. He had been on his cell most of the evening talking to Broward, Poole and the VOQ. When he had asked Broward permission to bring the Adam team aboard, he was told, “Of course, you fool, how the hell else am I going to learn about our mission?” It was the Broward he remembered.

Poole’s call went much better. She had secured a landing spot at the nearby sixteen-hundred-acre MCAS Tustin, closed years earlier to make room for a gigantic city park; its runway, a two-thousand-foot diameter landing pad, was used for landing wartime blimps during WWII. Now fenced from the public, it was still usable. She pulled rank and had it opened for her use. The team would meet there around eight a.m. to board the Osprey. It was only a short drive from the Crime Lab; a brief diversion from their normal morning drive. A quick call back to Broward scheduled the Osprey’s pickups. It would leave the Trident Tine’s deck at oh-seven-hundred hours.

Finishing dessert, ready to leave, Norton dropped his credit card over the check. He pulled his phone, glanced at Cross, and dialed the VOQ.

“Sorry sir, we are full tonight. No rooms available,” he heard.

“Who am I speaking with?”

“CPO Smith, sir.”

“Well Smith, I have a Vice Admiral here with me needing a room for tonight. Admiral Cross, CIA. He’ll be really disappointed if you can’t find him a room. Are the rooms all filled with three-star Admirals?” He winked at Cross, waiting for the answer.

“No sir, of course not.”

“Well then, bump someone dammit. We’ll be there shortly after he changes from his uniform. He’s traveling under cover.”

“Yes, sir! I’ll make it happen.”

“Thank you soldier, I’ll mention your cooperation to your superior.”

Switching off, he smiled. “A little disinformation never hurts anyone. Come on, let’s get you to your quarters.”

Ten minutes later at the VOQ, Norton, assured that Cross had been assigned a room, bid him goodnight, scheduled a seven-thirty meeting at the nearby helipad and left for home.