Shepherd One

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

President Burroughs and his team of three, including CIA Analyst Doug Craner, Chief Advisor Alan Thornton and Attorney General Dean Hamilton, remained at the head of the table viewing a live feed from Area 4 of the Nevada Test Site on a massive viewing screen. Others milled about the Comm Center manning communications and fax lines from intel sources around the world.

Chief Nuclear Engineer Ray Simone, although three hours behind in the state of Nevada where the sun has yet to rise, looked fresh despite no sleep. “Good morning, Mr. President.”

The president looked thoroughly exhausted. “You got anything, Ray?”

The engineer shrugged. It wasn’t exactly a vote of optimism. “As you already know,” he began, “the unit is initiated by an external source which, of course, is the BlackBerry. However, in order to start the internal sequence of the weapon, a ten-character code must be typed into the external source.”

“I know that.”

“Yes but, to go back on what we’ve already talked about, Mr. President, is that the device takes a sequential order of ten characters to activate the weapon. And to do this you need to type in a password for each character into the Blackberry’s display window. In other words, you need to type in a specific password to create a single character in the display window, and then repeat the process nine additional times, with different passwords, to create the ten sequential characters necessary to activate the device. But the odds of finding the right combination to disable the unit, Mr. President, can be accurately stated to be in the tens of billions.”

“But can it be disabled?”

The engineer nodded. “It can. But not in the time you want it, I’m sure. Even with the aid of the mainframe, it would take days to find the right combination.”

“Can you get in there and do it manually?”

“The roving laser grid makes it impossible to disengage it from inside. It would be far too dangerous to even make an attempt — even with our top-of-the-line equipment.”

Sinking slowly back into his chair, with his face bearing a pinched and anguished look, President Burroughs appeared on the verge of losing his projected faith. “Everything has its Achilles’ heel,” he said evenly. “And I need you to find it, Ray. I need you to find that Achilles’ heel.”

Simone raised his hand. “There is something else,” he said. “It might not be a weakness, but I haven’t ruled anything out yet.”

“What?”

On the viewing screen Ray Simone hunkered over the open unit, wearing a specialized pair of lenses resembling a jeweler’s loupe but larger, and made a closer examination. “There’s an altimeter attached to the internal computer system, which appears to be independent from the hard drive system. What its purpose to this particular device has yet to be determined, however.”

“And what is the purpose of an altimeter?”

Simone placed the magnifying loupe on top of his head. “It’s used to measure the altitude of an object above a fixed level,” he answered routinely. “As far as I know, it possesses no other function. It’s a simple device for measuring air pressure.”

“I want you to find out what its particular purpose is, Ray. I want you to know everything there is to know about that device as if you built the damn thing yourself.”

Simone circled the aluminum case in study. “From every point, Mr. President, it appears that the altimeter may have been adapted to receive a broadcast from the central processing unit. Since the hard drive is inaccessible due to the safety features, I’m unable to hack into its memory core. So perhaps I could reverse the process by hacking into the memory portion of the altimeter, instead.”

“And what will that tell us?”

Simone hesitated, as if going over of his revelation before speaking. “It could give us a clue to the unique reception frequency needed to initiate the weapon’s start sequence, which would limit the need to go through billions of codes needed to disable the device.”

“Reverse technology?”

“More like reverse prognosis,” he said. “But it’s only conjecture at this point. At the very least, we should be able to obtain the marked settings in the altimeter’s programming to find out what its purpose is.” Simone nodded in self-agreement as he leaned over the altimeter roughly the size and shape of an eyeglass case, but less rounded and more squared. “I believe that might work.”

“Talk to me, Ray.”

“The altimeter is not a part of the hard drive at all, but a conduit set up as a receiver to accept a certain signature from the central processing unit. Unlike the hard drive and striking pins, which are protected by the roving laser grid, the altimeter is not. So what I need to do is to find a way to tap into its receptive memory core and ascertain the exact code necessary to make it responsive. Once done, then shutting the unit down may be doable once we intercept and alter the code.”

The president felt a slight sense of relief but remained cautious. “Tell me something,” he said, his tone remaining even. “Do you see any downside to this?”

Simone removed the loupe from his head and placed it on a nearby table. “When you’re dealing in theory, Mr. President, there is always a downside. What you need to understand is that the altimeter simply measures the altitude of an object from a fixed point. After making note of its apparent connection to the hard drive as a receiver, it tells me that its purpose is to engage after the device has begun its countdown sequence. Once the weapon has begun, then it will send a signature code to the altimeter which, in turn, sends a response to the mother brain informing it that the code was received and all systems are go. I will then insert a virus into the altimeter’s answering sequence, which should disable the master memory in the hard drive and render the unit inoperable.”

“It sounds solid,” said Thornton. “But what if you’re wrong about the altimeter?”

Simone stared back from the viewing monitor, his features expressionless as an awkward silence passed though the room.

The president finally had to prompt the engineer for an answer. “Ray?”

Simone sighed. “Mr. President, from where I’m standing, the altimeter is its Achilles’ heel. If I’m wrong, then there’s nothing I, or anybody else, can do to stop it from going off once the initiation code has begun. The altimeter has been designed to communicate with the central processing unit for a reason. So I am totally confident in my assessment.”

The president nodded while his mind worked. “Achilles was crippled by an arrow’s blow to the heel,” he said, “which incapacitated him long enough to be defeated by Paris. I need you to be our Paris, Ray. I need you to use whatever engineering tools and skills you have at your disposal to kill… that… thing… dead.”

Simone nodded. “I’ll have my team on it immediately, Mr. President.”

“And, Ray… keep me posted.”

“Of course.”

“Then see what you can do and get back to me as soon as you can.”

“Yes, sir.”

After the connection was severed, he turned to his team consisting of Craner, Hamilton and Thornton. “An altimeter?” he said, more as a comment than a question. Yet it begged for an answer. What possible purpose could such an attachment serve?

CIA Analyst Craner spoke in his usual clipped tone. “Like Simone said, Mr. President, an altimeter serves a single purpose.”

Burroughs concurred, his eyes suddenly taking on a faraway look. “If its purpose is to measure the altitude of an object from a fixed position, then that leads me to believe the device was manufactured to work at a high altitude.”

“Agreed,” said Thornton. “But it could have been engineered to serve another purpose as well. Like Simone said, we really don’t know at this point.”

“But if you were to hazard a guess, a rational guess, then what would you say its purpose was?”

“A plane,” said Hamilton, the answer was simple and quick. They had massed the same collective thought suggesting the units were created to work at high levels of altitude. The first intimation was obviously a repeat performance of commandeering airliners with a much more devastating payload that would topple strategic points of interest, most notably New York City and Washington D.C. But what was the third site?

Point was, if the devices worked at a specific level based upon the confidence of trying to hijack jumbo jets, no matter how much time had elapsed since 9/11, it would have been a foolish gesture on their part since there were no less than two armed Air Marshalls on every flight and even more on United and American, the two airlines the terrorists held an affinity for since they contained two of the three words in United States of America.

“There’s no way in hell they could get those devices on any plane in this country,” stated the president. “Not with the high alert. So let’s assume they know this and have already altered their plans.”

“Which leads us back to square one,” said Hamilton.

Square one was the whereabouts of Hakam, his team, and the nuclear weapons. If they were not located soon, then it wouldn’t matter if Ray Simone found a solution to disable the units or not. If Hakam could not be found, then America would fall prey.

Even though President Burroughs took some comfort in knowing he and his team had made significant strides forward, he felt like he was doing so on leaden soles.

Where are you, Hakam? he asked himself.

And how do you find six individuals in a country with a population of three hundred million people?

The president closed his eyes against the onrush of a coming headache.

So much for progressive steps forward, he thought. Finding Hakam and his team would be like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack the size of Manhattan.

Understanding this, hope began to fade. And not only within him but he could also see it on the faces of his team. “We’ll get this right,” he told him. But if he could have heard his own voice, then he would have detected the same sense of vulnerability they were all feeling.

The hope, in all of them, had no doubt faded to a pinprick spark close to extinguishing itself dead.