“Will you volunteer?” pressed Desh.
“I’m not sure we have the same definition of volunteer,” responded van Hutten. “Basically, my voluntary choices are to take the gellcap myself, or be manhandled and have the pill forced down my throat. Is that about right?”
Desh frowned. “I’m really very sorry about this. You’re a good man and a brilliant scientist. We’ve studied you closely, and we’ve all come to admire you. The thing is, I’m certain you’ll forgive me once you’ve experienced what we’ve all experienced. And you’ll understand the tradeoffs we felt we were forced to make.”
Van Hutten sighed and then nodded. “Okay,” he said in surrender. “Let’s do this thing. Since it’s clear I’m getting a dose of this no matter what I say or do, I might as well take it, um . . . voluntarily. I do have to admit to being intrigued. And if you are a group of dangerous lunatics, you have to be the most reluctant and respectful group of dangerous lunatics I’ve ever seen.”
“Thanks,” said Desh with a wry smile. “I think.”
Desh and Connelly remained in the conference room while Kira and Griffin led their visitor to a spacious room nearby, completely transparent, with a single steel chair bolted to the ground in front of a mouse and a laser generated virtual keyboard. Four computer monitors were hung just outside the room, but all were easily visible from the chair through the thick Plexiglas walls.
“This is our enhancement room,” explained Kira. “Once you’re locked in it’s escape proof. Even for someone as brilliant as you’re about to become.”
Kira waited while van Hutten surveyed the room.
“The keyboard and mouse are connected to a supercomputer outside of the room,” she continued. “Which is connected to the Internet. But only in such a way that you can access the web for informational purposes. An even more powerful supercomputer monitors your activities, and if it detects any attempt to hack into a site, or affect outside computers in any way—unless these activities are preapproved—it will block them. You’d be smart enough to get around any firewall built by a normal programmer, but Matt put this in place while his IQ was amped.”
Kira paused for breath. “When you make breakthroughs, you should enter them into the computer as fast as you can. The good news is that you’ll be able to type at many times your normal speed with perfect accuracy.”
Kira was working on a brain/computer interface, and after a few more sessions with a gellcap she was confident she could come up with a system that could send human thoughts directly to a computer, eliminating the need for typing and facilitating the transfer of gellcap induced breakthroughs a hundred fold.
“We’ll be monitoring you,” she told him, “but we won’t try to communicate. For your first time, we want you to be able to soar without having to divert even a fraction of your attention to converse with dullards like us.”
“Very considerate of you,” said van Hutten drily.
“Are you ready?” asked Griffin.
Van Hutten nodded.
Kira handed him a gellcap and a bottle of water, and after taking a deep breath, the Stanford physicist downed the pill without ceremony.
Kira recovered the bottle and she and her colleagues retreated to the thick door, which they would lock behind them tighter than a vault.
“It will take a few minutes for the effect to kick in,” said Kira. “But when it does. . . Well, let’s just say that you’ll know it right away.”
7
Jake weighed possibilities from within the cocoon of the helicopter as it darted northward. The cleanest and most obvious choice, he knew, would be to breach the facility with overwhelming numbers and take them out at point blank range, bin Laden style. It was the surest, most direct route.
But it was far riskier in this case than it would have been if this were any other group. If one of them could elude his men long enough for a gellcap to take effect, the odds could well turn in their favor. Their minds would then work too quickly—their reaction times would be too fast. He had seen footage of this in action, and it was truly impressive.
There was far too much at stake for him to take any risk at all. He could leave nothing to chance. He lifted the right side of the heavy black headphones he was wearing just long enough to slide an earpiece into his right ear, connected by a thin cord to his cell phone. A small microphone attached to the cord hung near his mouth.
“Captain Ruiz,” he said into the mike, “what have they been doing in there?”
“It’s impossible to know for sure just from heat signatures, but they’re mostly seated. Over several hours they’ve gotten up to move around, separated for brief periods, and fidgeted. In my experience this looks like a very long meeting, with occasional bathroom and drink breaks.”
Jake nodded. “Are they together now?”
“They are, sir.”
Desperate times called for desperate measures, thought Jake. This was why his group existed in the first place. Sure, he would get second guessed by those judging his actions. The threat wasn’t a nice tidy nuke wrapped up in a bow. Unlike a nuke, it could be argued that the threat presented by Miller and crew was overblown. If he wasn’t steeped in knowledge of their activities and their potential for destruction, he might think so himself. But there was no turning back. He knew what had to be done.
“Okay then, Captain,” he said. “Here’s the plan. I’m going to scramble a bomber to fly overhead at an undetectable altitude and drop a five hundred pound JDAM down their throats.” This would vaporize every living thing inside the building, right down to the cockroaches.
“A JDAM, sir?” said the captain in disbelief.
Jake couldn’t blame him for reacting this way. It didn’t get more unlawful than dropping a smart bomb on a civilian building sitting on U.S. soil. But the situation was perfect for it. Their target was a building not too close to any others. And there was little traffic in the neighborhood.
“You heard me, Captain,” responded Jake. “We’ll set it so it doesn’t explode until it’s entered the building. Miller and Desh won’t have any warning, and there won’t be any chance it will be seen by anyone in the vicinity.”
This would reduce the building to rubble with such accuracy that there should be no collateral damage—not unless someone was within fifty yards of the building. But even so, he wanted to be absolutely certain. “Have some of your team set up unmanned roadblocks at major points of ingress to the target. Make sure no friendlies get inside your current perimeter. I’ll want you patched through to the bomber pilot so you can give him the all clear when the time comes.”
“Roger that. How will you explain the explosion, sir?”
“Gas leak? Grease fire? I don’t know. We have some very creative people who can handle that end. I’m confident we can pull this off.”
“Sir, are you certain all of this is necessary? Even if they’re all better than we are, we have superior numbers and tactical position. We can capture them or take them out without the need of a JDAM. I’m sure of it.”
A scene from a movie materialized in Jake’s head. It involved several policemen breaching a building to apprehend a lone woman. The police were certain they had the situation well in hand. I think we can handle one little girl the lieutenant in charge had said. Jake put on the deadpan voice of one of the characters in the film, an agent named Smith, and whispered his memorable reply: “No, Lieutenant—your men are already dead.”