“What do you mean activate? You mean it’s not always on?”
“Active but not on. Otherwise the power drain would be immeasurable. Solving that problem, in fact, was the first major breakthrough we made.” He stopped and looked at Blaine more intensely. “Think of the way Bugzapper’s more mundane namesake functions. You’ve got a negative force confronting a positive force with the difference of potential not quite great enough to jump the gap — that is until a bug flies in and serves as a conductor between them. Energy passes through the bug and the fields are at last connected, with the bug paying the price for it, of course.”
“Not as simple in your system, though, is it?”
“Hardly. Four dozen satellites will compose Bugzapper at completion. And by the rules of astrophysics, they can’t possibly maintain a constant distance from each other. So we have to let them stray in their orbits. The distances will vary and it will be up to a super-computer to regulate the flow of energy emanating from each satellite to its neighbors to ensure the difference of potential is great enough so the gap can’t be jumped until something, a missile or a particle beam, forms a conductor. The computer’s judgments and instructions will be determined and made in microseconds.”
Sundowner hesitated and started back down to floor level, with McCracken right behind. “Of course, it was the discovery of Atragon that turned all this theory into potential reality. Without those crystals to serve as a power source, the shield won’t work.”
“And,” McCracken picked up, “you’ll need a hell of a lot more of them to fit forty-eight satellites, never mind getting them launched in time for it to matter.”
“Installation is no problem, since the satellites have already been fitted for some sort of solar storing receptacles. Adapting the Atragon once we’ve got it to the proper specifications won’t take long at all, so my feeling is the satellites can be ready for launch within ten days of delivery, the shield fully operational forty-eight hours after that.”
“Given the three-week time frame in the extortion note, that’s cutting things close.”
“At least, though, it gives us a chance.” Sundowner stopped. “I’ve explained what we’re up against. You can see how important this Atragon is to us.”
“Hold on, Sundance, I already laid things out for you. I’d like nothing better than to bring back your Atragon so long as its trail leads me to the men who killed T.C. But if the trails break off somewhere, you know which one I’ll follow.”
“I’m willing to accept that.”
“You don’t have much of a choice. Don’t try to follow me; your men won’t stand a chance, and the attempt will aggravate me to no end. I’m difficult when I’m mad, Sundance.”
“Can’t you give me some idea where you’re going?”
“Across the Atlantic.”
“Narrows it down some…. I could still hold back word of your involvement from the crisis committee, give you some room to move.”
“We’ve discussed that already, too. No, I’m more worried about a certain fat man named Vasquez. He happens to be a major narcotics distributor I KO’d just before I got shoved into the secretarial pool in France. He’s sworn to kill me if I ever set foot on his turf again.”
“And just what is his turf?”
“Most of Europe.”
“Terrific,” Sundowner moaned. “You realize, of course, that if you’re right about a leak in the Tomb, whoever killed my men and that woman might find you before you find them.”
“That, Sundance, is precisely the idea.”
Sundowner explained it all to the other men gathered in the Tomb, leaving out nothing but McCracken’s assertion about the presence of a mole. He had to doctor the story a bit to make up for it.
“So is he working for us or not?” the President wondered at the end.
“I’d have to say not. But he’s agreed to communicate with me regularly, and it’s my guess he won’t be able to resist finding the Atragon for us.”
“Why?”
“The stakes, sir. If this death ray is unleashed, millions of innocent people will die, and that’s the one thing McCracken can’t tolerate.”
“Don’t turn him into a hero,” cautioned CIA chief Stamp. Then, to the President, “Truth is, we’re talking about a rogue here, a renegade, a killer.”
“Killer’s a bit strong,” broke in Sundowner.
“Okay, I’ll grant you that much. But the others fit him well. What has become known as the Omega Command business proved that much. He forced the ruin or resignation of many of our predecessors.”
“That wasn’t McCracken’s doing, by my recollection,” interjected Secretary of Defense Kappel. “It was the doing of those individuals who brought it on themselves by the way they handled the situation.”
“Tried and sentenced by McCracken in Omega’s aftermath,” elaborated Mercheson. “Yes, it’s starting to come back to me now. This McCracken is a menace beyond compare.”
“Gentlemen,” said the President, “I’m a bit confused here. You mean this McCracken doesn’t work for us in some capacity?”
“McCracken doesn’t work for anyone, especially not us,” said Stamp.
“Why not?”
It was Sundowner who answered. “Long story. It starts back in Vietnam where McCracken was the best we had; an expert at infiltration, sabotage, all forms of counterespionage activities. He was a loner, yes, a rogue, by all respects couldn’t handle the ‘age of accountability’ at all. We kept trying to farm him out, and while he was working with the British a hostage situation came to an unpleasant end. To show his displeasure with the way things had been handled, McCracken pulled an Uzi on Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square and shot off certain sections of his marble anatomy. That’s where he got his nickname.”
“What nickname?”
“McCrackenballs.”
“As in—”
“Yes.”
“The point, sir,” broke in Stamp, “is that the balls McCracken has broken over the years haven’t all been ceramic. Plenty have been the flesh-and-blood privates of his superiors.”
“And usually with good reason,” argued Sundowner. “Omega was a case in point. The government called him out of exile to work for them and their subsequent treatment of him was inexcusable. Consequently, he’s sworn never to work for us again. He went free-lance, started taking on assignments and missions that no one else wanted any part of, almost always to pay off old debts and favors.”
“And now he’s after the killer of this woman,” the President reminded them, “not the reserves of the Atragon.”
“His only route to the former is to follow the trail of the latter, and he can accomplish it infinitely better than any team we could dispatch in his place.” Sundowner hesitated long enough for his words to sink in. “Either he’ll find the crystals or he’ll follow a path straight to the force that doesn’t want us to get them — the force controlling the ray. We win either way.”
“Nobody wins with McCracken,” said Mercheson. “Except McCracken.”
“I don’t see what we have to lose by the attempt in this case,” concluded the President, “or that we have much choice. McCracken is going out there anyway, and he’s the only one Earnst pointed in the right direction. He’s not working for us, so there’s no culpability on our part for his actions. He was straight with us, and Ryan was straight with him. So as far as we know, Blaine McCracken doesn’t exist anymore.”
“For now,” said Stamp.