“We’ll also have National Guard support and if necessary a squadron from the Three Hundred and Fifty-fifth Fighter Wing out of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson.” He measured out a half smile. “We’re taking this very seriously, Captain. I had a long talk with the President last night and again this morning. He’s put enough assets and resources at our disposal to wage a war.”
“That’s what this is,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s definitely what this is.”
“Where do we stand with intelligence?”
“Sit and I’ll go over it. The full intelligence packet is being downloaded to your PDA, but here are the talking points, and there are some real speed bumps.” He tapped a key and the LCD screen behind him showed a picture of the man the boy SAM had identified as Hans Brucker.
“This is Gunnar Haeckel,” said Church. He tapped another key and a second photo appeared. It was a scan of an employee ID photograph. “This is Hans Brucker.” He hit some keys and two fingerprint ten-cards appeared, one beneath each photo. “Here are their prints. Now watch.” He tapped keys and the cards moved together and the computer program corrected the angles of each so that they overlapped. Brief lights flashed every time a loop or whorl aligned. It was like looking at a string of firecrackers. One by one each separate fingerprint image flashed white to indicate that a complete comparison was finished. All ten prints were perfect matches.
“Yeah, you told me that there was a screwup. Someone’s screwing with the fingerprint index.”
“No,” said Church. “These are the correct prints from each man.”
Hu looked up finally, grinning. “We’re also running a high-speed DNA profile on Brucker. Guess what?”
“You look too pleased with yourself, Doc. This isn’t going to be good news, is it?”
“It’s about the coolest thing I’ve seen in a while,” Hu said. “What we got here is a new chapter in the second Star Wars movie.”
“Huh?”
“Second Star Wars movie. After Phantom Menace, before Revenge of the Sith.”
It took me a moment to fish through the raw geek data in my brain.
“Oh shit,” I said.
“Yep,” said Hu, grinning fit to bust. “Attack of the Clones!”
“Oh… come on…”
“Sadly,” said Church, “Dr. Hu is correct.” I noticed a little twitch in his voice when he said “Dr.”
“Well,” I said, “we already have unicorns and tiger-hounds. Why not clones?”
Hu looked a little deflated, as if he expected a bigger reaction from me. Truth was that I’d toyed with that concept on the flight back from Costa Rica, after learning that the fingerprints matched. I’d dismissed it mostly because I didn’t want to believe it.
“We have any aliens or crashed UFOs?” I asked.
“Not at the moment,” Church said dryly.
“Okay, then what about the Extinction Wave? What do we know about that?”
“That’s the real problem,” said Church. “Doctor?”
Hu said, “It looks like our mad scientists have been trying to take diseases that are normally genetic — meaning passed down through bloodlines—”
“I know what ‘genetic’ means,” I said.
He sniffed. “They’ve been trying to take genetic diseases and turn them into viruses. It’s wacky and way out on the cutting edge. Essentially they’re rebuilding the DNA of certain viruses to include the genes that code for Tay-Sachs, sickle-cell, Down’s syndrome, cystic fibrosis, certain types of cancer… that sort of thing.”
“So this is the Cabal,” I said. “This was what they were working on during the Cold War days.”
“Definitely the same agenda,” said Church, “and some of the same players.”
“The difference,” Hu said, “is now they can actually do this stuff. They’ve cracked the process for turning genetic diseases into communicable pathogens.”
“And the Extinction Wave is going to be a coordinated release of these pathogens?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Church.
“How the hell do we stop them?”
“That’s what you’re going to find out for us when you raid the Deck. We have a glimmer of hope—”
“Not much of a glimmer,” Hu cut in, but Church ignored him.
“—in that we found several matching lists of the countries and regions where the pathogens will be released.”
“That’s great! We can warn—”
“I’ve also been on the phone with the State Department. Embassies in each country have already been put on standby. There’s an issue of delicacy here,” Church said. “We have to keep our awareness of this under the radar until we’ve taken down the Deck and the people responsible. We can’t risk a leak that might lead to this new Cabal going dark and starting up again at a later date and in new locations.”
I nodded.
“From everything we’ve read,” Hu said, “there’s a specific release code that needs to be sent out. Your dancing partner, Carteret, said that the release code was programmed into a trigger device that is always kept by either Otto Wirths or Cyrus Jakoby. He said he thinks it’s a small device about the size of a flash drive but with a six-digit keypad on it.”
“He didn’t say any of that to me,” I said.
Church adjusted his glasses. “He told me,” he said. “He was quite willing to unburden his soul.”
“What did you do to him?”
Church ate a cookie and didn’t answer.
Hu said, “So we have to get to Wirths or Jakoby and get that trigger device before the code is sent to agents around the world who would then release the pathogens.”
“Only that? Swell, I’ll see if I can work it into my day,” I said sourly. I reached over and took a cookie from Church’s plate. “We’re going to have to go in quietly. Otherwise, they’ll just trigger the device at the first sign of an invasion. Quiet infils take time to set up, and I can hear that frigging clock ticking.”
“I have an idea about that,” said Hu. “This trigger device probably is a flash drive. A device of the kind Carteret described isn’t big enough to have a satellite uplink. It probably doesn’t have any kind of transmitter. I asked Bug about this. He agrees that the trigger device probably needs to be plugged into a USB port and then the code sent out via the Internet. It’s the smartest way to do it, and it would allow for individual codes for each launch.”
“Okay, so what’s the plan?”
“An EMP,” he said. “Right before you rush the place, or maybe after you’re inside, but before you start going all Jack Bauer on everyone, we pop an E-bomb on them.”
“What the hell’s that?”
“An electromagnetic bomb,” he said. “Very cool stuff. It’s a bomb that creates an electromagnetic pulse. It won’t kill people, but the EMP fries anything electrical and should wipe out their computer systems. Unless they’re ruggedized… but that’s a risk.”
“We have this stuff?”
“The Navy was playing with them during the first Gulf War,” said Church. “And we used one to take out Iraqi TV during the 2003 invasion. If we can locate the deck I can arrange to have an E-bomb dropped.”
“Friend in the industry?” I asked.
“Friend in the industry,” he agreed.
“Then that’s our edge,” I said. I stood up and reached across the table to Hu. “Nice work, Doc.”