Bridge had circled around and come to the side of the camp opposite the holdout shooter. He grabbed a grenade from his webbing, placed it at the bottom of a fencepost and ducked for cover. The explosion tore a hole in the fence and he scrambled through. The prisoners turned in the direction of the blast and were about to fire when Kasogi yelled to his men to hold their fire and get down. They buried their heads as the “desert man” man scurried up to their position.
“Konichiwa,” the desert dweller said, then added, still in Japanese, “I am here to get you out.” He took out a grenade and pulled the pin, then tossed it to the lone guard’s position. A second later, the threat was neutralized. He turned to the leader of the prisoners and asked, “Where’s the driver?”
The Combat Information Center of the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson was restarting the operation to extract the operative, Sirocco, from the Sudanese desert. Only minutes before, it had been aborted, but now was back on. The report stated, four dead, six wounded.
“I am Captain Kasogi Toshihira. My men and I are in your debt.” He bowed as he met the man who had come out of the desert like the wind.
“Thank you for holding your fire as I approached, Captain Toshihira” Bridge said not offering his own name.
“You are the sniper?”
“Yes, and I have helicopters on the way to take you and your men to safety. Is this everyone?”
“Of my crew, yes. But there were three Marines and a pilot and we haven’t seen them.”
“Where is the driver?”
“He’s over there.”
Bridge went over to the driver, who was in a state of shock, but clearly not a combatant. It took a couple of minutes, but Bridge discovered that he reported to no one and there were no reinforcements for the guards. The scared man told of another place where he delivered supplies, where there were two guards and four men, Japanese, in uniforms, who were never unchained, in a shack. He went back to the captain.
“I don’t think anyone else is coming, but just in case, Captain, have four of your best men serve as lookouts in all directions. The choppers will be here in thirty-five minutes. I will order a small detachment to rescue the Marines; they are being held about four kilometers up the road.”
XIV. PAPAL ENVOY
Bill had turned the communications center at Camp David into a working operations center. Nearly one hundred people had been mustered to help him find out who was behind the shoot-down and if it was part of a bigger plot, or just some lone nuts. The nagging thing was the priest. Priests don’t kill. Yet —
“Joey Palumbo on the screen,” Cheryl said.
Bill sat down in front of the secure teleconference screens. Joey was coming from the Sec Con at the US Embassy in Paris. “What’s up, Joey?”
“I got to tell ya, Bill, I think I should be there right now. Can you fill me in on what you know so far?”
“Well, we got a dead priest, Father Cleary, and his accomplice. As far as we know right now, he’s out of a Boston church and the other guy is from Vermont. No military past for either of them to account for the missile launcher or how they got it.”
Cheryl, working a keyboard next to Bill, hit a few keys and the dossiers of both men appeared on a second screen. She also flash-trafficked them to the Embassy Signals Department under encryption.
Bill could see Joey’s eyes divert to the screen to his right as he thought out loud. “Irish priest out of Boston; Cheryl, who from my staff is there?” Joey said.
“Hal!” She called out to Hal Unger, Joey’s assistant, bent over next to her to get into the picture.
Joey saw him. “Hal, good. Check with Boston P.D., Interpol, and Scotland Yard. You are looking for any connection to the IRA or any paramilitary group, for either of these guys that could access a tube launcher. Also get a track on the tube and tell me who made it and who had it last.”
Hal left and Bill continued, “As you probably know by now, Dr. Landau was a leading researcher into the God Particle. So the priest thing is a little unsettling. I have two major theologians on the way right now, along with a papal envoy to the State Department.”
“Cheryl, have Hal also check Earth Liberation Front and other environmental terrorism groups. Remember that ELF nut up in New York who was pissed off at Brookhaven National Labs?”
“Yeah, our first ‘black-holer,’” Bill said. “Joey, you know what? Since you are in Europe, see if you can cop-talk to someone in security at CERN. Maybe they have a threat file.”
“Good thinking. Anything else?”
“No, not at this time.”
“How’s little Richie handling all this?”
“He’s running around with one of his toy helicopters going, boom, boom, boom.”
“I guess that’s good he isn’t holding it in.”
“I hope so. Be safe, Joey.”
“You too, boss.”
As the screen switched to black, Bill rolled back on his chair and re-ran the entire day’s events unconsciously rubbing his seared cheek. Was he missing something or not considering some essential aspect of what could be a new wave of attacks on America and American science?
The phone rang.
“Hiccock.”
“Bad news, boss.”
“Kronos, I am not accepting any more bad news today; quota’s filled.”
“I contained as much as I could about Landau and the experiments he was advocating but a small thumbnail article got out. I’ll send it to you on SCIAD, but essentially it announces the start of what they are calling the Landau Protocols next week at CERN. I took it down, but not before the blog page got 326 hits.”
“Keep scrubbing the Web for any of the keywords and include this new term, ‘the Landau Protocols.’”
“Already done, Hic. I’ll keep you updated.”
Bill knew that nothing, outside of theoretical science, was ever 100 percent, but he would have loved it if this Landau business had been totally contained. He would have to wait and see if anyone connected Landau’s death to the upcoming experiments.
As the late afternoon sun was setting behind the blue-green hills, Bill could hear Richie and Janice laughing as they played in the pool when he passed them. The president’s Camp David office was rustic and had none of the intimidation of the Oval Office, which was purposefully designed without corners to disorient visiting heads of state and favor no domestic direction as to North, South, East or West. Here the soft tan leather chairs and brown and white cowhide rug made Bill think of it as an office more befitting a rich rancher or oilman.
Cheryl led the three members of the clergy in for the meeting. After the introductory pleasantries, which included Bill’s request for confidentiality regarding the discussion, he got down to the heart of the matter, asking if there was any theological basis for organized resistance to particle research. Their opinions and positions narrowly steered clear of any culpability for the recent attack. Yet, Bill sensed that they didn’t necessarily mourn the death of a man who was about to open the Pandora’s Box that held the God Particle.
However, nothing they said was as intriguing to Bill as what the papal envoy was wearing. For the rest of the meeting Bill’s thoughts were distracted by the envoy. At the end, he thanked them all for the president of the United States, reminding them of their agreement to secrecy. As they were leaving, he innocently asked the papal envoy to remain.
The bishop acquiesced. “Of course, Dr. Hiccock.”
When they were alone, Bill went out on a diplomatic limb. “Your Eminence, I am not a diplomat, but would you mind speaking off the record with me?”