Zimmerman's Algorithm

Sun. Jan. 18

The truck from Infinity Microsystems rode the Interstate alone and unhurried. It sliced through the Virginia night, rarely putting more than five miles per hour between itself and the speed limit. It was a customized Peterbilt eighteen-wheeler, painted the black and cobalt blue of the IMS logo. The trailer's roof was stainless steel, and had a few more vents than was usual.

Colonel Ramon knew that the truck was unique, and its cargo nearly so.

The Colonel sat in the cab of a more conventional Mack truck parked in the on-ramp's breakdown lane. It had been idling there for about ten minutes with its lights off before the Peterbilt passed.

Fifteen seconds after the Peterbilt passed by in front of them, the driver pulled it out onto the Interstate, following.

The Colonel looked ahead, at the brake lights of the Peterbilt's trailer. He watched the mile markers by the side of the road and after the third one passed, he picked up a walkie-talkie that sat on the seat next to him and said, "Now!"

About half a mile ahead of the Peterbilt, another Mack truck pulled out, angled across all four lanes, and screeched to a halt on the icy pavement. The Colonel could hear the Peterbilt braking even though they were a hundred yards back. For a moment he worried that they might collide—like the Peterbilt's driver, he wanted no harm to come to the contents of the trailer. Fortunately, the driver kept control of his vehicle.

When the Peterbilt reached a complete stop, Colonel Ramon's Mack angled in behind it to prevent it from backing away.

Colonel Ramon pulled a ski mask down over his face while the rear door of the other Mack flew open to disgorge a half-dozen men with similar masks, black military fatigues, and M-16 rifles.

The Colonel calmly stepped out of the cab, ignoring the Peterbilt's revving engine, the sound of breaking glass, and the short burst of gunfire as the team secured the cab of the Peterbilt.

There was one security guard on duty with the driver, and he was never really an issue. The Colonel briskly walked through a cloud of diesel fumes toward the trailer on his own truck.

Back down the road, beyond the rear of the trailer, two more of his men, dressed in reflective orange and wearing hard hats, were setting up flares and sawhorses across all four lanes of the Interstate, one car had already been stopped and was making an awkward turn for the exit.

When the Colonel reached the rear, of his truck, the doors were open and the ramp down. Inside, three men were backing a Bobcat forklift out of the otherwise empty trailer.

He clapped his hands and his voice fogged as he yelled, "Get moving. That should be unloaded already."

The Colonel checked his watch and looked back toward the Peterbilt. The other team from his truck was on time. Two men handled a pair of bolt cutters and an acetylene torch, busily removing the barriers to the rear of the Peterbilt's trailer. The area between the two trucks was awash with the orange light and the twisted shadows cast by the torch. The Colonel could already smell the acrid smell of burnt paint and molten metal. It was harder to open than a standard semitrailer, both because of the heavy insulation, and the fact that there was some nominal security on it. Its cargo was worth fifty million dollars.

Not that Infinity Microsystems had ever expected anyone to steal it.

By the cab of the Peterbilt, the Colonel saw the IMS driver and security guard, facedown on the road, handcuffed and shivering. The guard looked to have taken a slug in the shoulder; there was a steaming black puddle under him.

Colonel Ramon thought things were going better than expected.

Behind him, the Bobcat rolled out of the trailer as the doors to the Peterbilt's trailer popped open. The men who had broken open the door, rolled their tools away and set up a portable ramp.

The Colonel walked up behind the Bobcat as it maneuvered itself to drive into the trailer. As the little forklift mounted the ramp, Colonel Ramon looked past it to get his first view of their objective.

He stood next to the swung-open door of the trailer, and could feel hot, dry air blowing past him. Some of the heat radiated from the sputtering remains of the trailer's lock, but most came from vents in the sides of the customized trailer.

Past the Bobcat he could see the Daedalus, the only cargo. It sat braced in the center of the rear half of the trailer. Cables led from it to a wall that blocked off the forward half of the trailer, and a series of ducts emerged from the upper portion of the Daedalus to merge with the vents in the ceiling of the trailer.

The Daedalus resembled an industrial refrigeration unit. With the exception of the processing unit, which was a small box the size of four briefcases, that's what it was. From the exterior, all that was visible was the stainless-steel skin of the state-of-the-art refrigeration units which were needed to keep the core processor at twenty degrees below freezing.

Colonel Ramon could hear the Daedalus humming from where he stood.

Inside the trailer, two men carefully disconnected the vents from the Daedalus, and the sound of the refrigeration unit briefly intensified, accompanied by a dry, transformerlike smell. Then the noise died as the cables were detached from the unit.

The Daedalus was silent.

They were now in a race against time. Once the refrigeration units were cut from the power supply, the core temperature of the Daedalus would start rising, despite the near-impenetrable insulation around the superconducting core of the machine. When it reached five degrees below freezing, the ceramic processors in the machine would cease to function; if the core ever reached a temperature above twelve degrees Fahrenheit, the million-dollar chips that formed the heart of the computer would be irreparably damaged.

That would take about twelve hours.

Colonel Ramon watched as the Bobcat rolled up to the Daedalus. The forklift strained to get the machine a half-foot above the floor of the trailer. The vents above didn't allow a greater clearance. It took about ten minutes for the Bobcat to move the Daedalus from the IMS trailer to the refrigerated trailer attached to Colonel Ramon's Mack. It was the longest part of the operation, and the time they were most vulnerable.

The computer was halfway home when Colonel Ramon heard a sound he'd been dreading. The whoop of a siren, back beyond the barricades his men had set up.

Ramon turned and started walking back in that direction. The blue flashers of a Virginia Highway Patrol car were drowning out the red glow of the flares. The officer had already gotten out of the car. He had the radio microphone in his hand and was trying to yell at his dispatcher and Colonel Ramon's men at the same time.

". . . Accident, the first thing you do is call emergency services, the second thing you do is report it—"

"Just happened, Officer." One of the men in the hard hats was saying. "We have a call in—"

Ramon rolled up his ski mask. As he approached, he smiled and asked, "What's the problem, Officer?"

The patrolman looked in his direction and said, "The problem is you have an Interstate blocked off, and no one reported the accident."

Ramon nodded, as if he understood exactly the officer's problem. "Things have been chaotic here—one hell of a mess. I guess everyone's been concentrating on the cleanup. . . " Ramon stepped past the barriers and held his left hand out to the officer. "Henry Anderson, Great Lakes Trucking."

The officer looked at him incredulously for a moment, still holding the microphone in his right hand. After a moment he took Ramon's hand with his left. "Your men here said that they'd already reported it."

"They probably assumed that someone else had called it in." Ramon talked calmly, looking directly into the patrolman's eyes. He tightened his grip on the patrolman's hand as he spoke, and the moment before the man realized something was wrong, Ramon's fist slammed into his throat.

The patrolman let out a shuddering gasp, dropped the microphone, and collapsed to his knees. His right hand reached for the holster at his belt, but Ramon brought his boot down on the man's wrist, shattering the bone. The officer tried to pull his arm away, but Ramon still held him.

Ramon yelled at one of the men behind him, "Don't just stand there, grab his gun."

One of the men stepped forward and pulled the weapon out of the patrolman's holster.

The patrolman's struggles were becoming weaker. His breath was little more than a hollow wheeze.

Ramon called the other man forward and the two of them manhandled the near-unconscious and barely-struggling officer into the patrol car. The dispatcher was calling, trying to talk to the man, the voice was just starting to sound concerned. Ramon shut off the radio.

He drove the patrol car over to the breakdown lane just on the other side of the barriers. Once it was parked, Ramon looked at the unconscious cop and felt for a pulse. "Give me his gun," he said quietly.

"What are you doing?" asked one of his men.

"What do you think?" Ramon said as he took the gun. "He can identify me."

Ramon put a single shot through the patrolman's left eye.

By the time the officer was dealt with, the Daedalus had been transferred and the IMS truck had been pulled over to the side of the road about a hundred yards ahead of the highway patrol car. The driver and the guard were both handcuffed in the back of the trailer.

The two Mack trucks pulled away from the scene, headed for Washington D.C., while behind them a half-dozen flares slowly guttered out. The theft had taken less than twelve minutes.