Enzio nodded frantically, almost in panic.
“Good.” Hakam let the finger hover. “Now tell me, how difficult is it to get the pontiff’s personal belongings on board the aircraft?”
“His belongings and the belongings of his staff are exonerated from examination or search because there is no indication of hostile intent. All baggage is taken to the sublevels of the departing gates and guarded by TSA officers, who make sure no one rummages through the items. Just before the airspace is locked down for air travel, the items are then loaded aboard Shepherd One.”
“And I assume to get below the departing gate you need to be in possession of an access card or key code?”
“A card,” he answered.
“And you possess such a card?”
Enzio nodded.
“We know,” the Arab returned. “We have in our possession all the cards of your crew.”
Enzio cocked his head. How could he be in possession of the access cards?
“Almost done,” said Hakam. “Now, the price of saving the lives of your family members will depend upon how much you’re willing to follow my instructions.” He leaned closer. “Are you willing to follow my instructions without question, Captain, keeping in mind that I hold the key to your family’s salvation?”
“Please don’t hurt my children—”
“Captain, are you willing to follow my instructions without question, knowing that I hold the key to your family’s—”
“Yes, dammit! I will follow your instructions without question!”
Hakam’s finger no longer hovered over the key. “Then listen very carefully,” he said. “Tomorrow morning my team will board Shepherd One along with two packages under your command until we become airborne. Is that understood?”
Enzio nodded.
“If any concerns are raised by airport security, then it will be your duty to deflect them until we get aboard. Is this also understood?”
The captain swallowed. His throat was as parched as desert sand. “Yes.”
“Is getting on board without a hassle from security doable, Captain?”
Enzio nodded, but slowly. “Since Shepherd One is not a planned commercial trip… there will be no problems.”
“Of course there won’t be. But so that you know.” Hakam traced the tips of his fingers along the blank screen of the laptop, a subtle reminder. “For some reason if things don’t go as planned, then the heads of your family members will be discovered lined up on the sidewalk in front of the Polizia De Stato with a note stating they were taken by the Sword of Allah. Am I clear on this?”
Enzio’s face threatened to break.
“Am… I… clear… Captain Pastore?”
“You are.”
“Good.” Hakam fell back in his chair and began to outline every detail of getting his team on board Shepherd One, starting with the careful loading of two very special packages.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
President Burroughs and his team of three, including CIA Analyst Doug Craner, Chief Advisor Alan Thornton and Attorney General Dean Hamilton, remained at the head of the table viewing a live feed from Area 4 of the Nevada Test Site on a massive viewing screen. Others milled about the Comm Center manning communications and fax lines from intel sources around the world.
Chief Nuclear Engineer Ray Simone, although three hours behind in the state of Nevada where the sun has yet to rise, looked fresh despite no sleep. “Good morning, Mr. President.”
The president looked thoroughly exhausted. “You got anything, Ray?”
The engineer shrugged. It wasn’t exactly a vote of optimism. “As you already know,” he began, “the unit is initiated by an external source which, of course, is the BlackBerry. However, in order to start the internal sequence of the weapon, a ten-character code must be typed into the external source.”
“I know that.”
“Yes but, to go back on what we’ve already talked about, Mr. President, is that the device takes a sequential order of ten characters to activate the weapon. And to do this you need to type in a password for each character into the Blackberry’s display window. In other words, you need to type in a specific password to create a single character in the display window, and then repeat the process nine additional times, with different passwords, to create the ten sequential characters necessary to activate the device. But the odds of finding the right combination to disable the unit, Mr. President, can be accurately stated to be in the tens of billions.”
“But can it be disabled?”
The engineer nodded. “It can. But not in the time you want it, I’m sure. Even with the aid of the mainframe, it would take days to find the right combination.”
“Can you get in there and do it manually?”
“The roving laser grid makes it impossible to disengage it from inside. It would be far too dangerous to even make an attempt — even with our top-of-the-line equipment.”
Sinking slowly back into his chair, with his face bearing a pinched and anguished look, President Burroughs appeared on the verge of losing his projected faith. “Everything has its Achilles’ heel,” he said evenly. “And I need you to find it, Ray. I need you to find that Achilles’ heel.”
Simone raised his hand. “There is something else,” he said. “It might not be a weakness, but I haven’t ruled anything out yet.”
“What?”
On the viewing screen Ray Simone hunkered over the open unit, wearing a specialized pair of lenses resembling a jeweler’s loupe but larger, and made a closer examination. “There’s an altimeter attached to the internal computer system, which appears to be independent from the hard drive system. What its purpose to this particular device has yet to be determined, however.”
“And what is the purpose of an altimeter?”
Simone placed the magnifying loupe on top of his head. “It’s used to measure the altitude of an object above a fixed level,” he answered routinely. “As far as I know, it possesses no other function. It’s a simple device for measuring air pressure.”
“I want you to find out what its particular purpose is, Ray. I want you to know everything there is to know about that device as if you built the damn thing yourself.”
Simone circled the aluminum case in study. “From every point, Mr. President, it appears that the altimeter may have been adapted to receive a broadcast from the central processing unit. Since the hard drive is inaccessible due to the safety features, I’m unable to hack into its memory core. So perhaps I could reverse the process by hacking into the memory portion of the altimeter, instead.”
“And what will that tell us?”
Simone hesitated, as if going over of his revelation before speaking. “It could give us a clue to the unique reception frequency needed to initiate the weapon’s start sequence, which would limit the need to go through billions of codes needed to disable the device.”
“Reverse technology?”
“More like reverse prognosis,” he said. “But it’s only conjecture at this point. At the very least, we should be able to obtain the marked settings in the altimeter’s programming to find out what its purpose is.” Simone nodded in self-agreement as he leaned over the altimeter roughly the size and shape of an eyeglass case, but less rounded and more squared. “I believe that might work.”
“Talk to me, Ray.”
“The altimeter is not a part of the hard drive at all, but a conduit set up as a receiver to accept a certain signature from the central processing unit. Unlike the hard drive and striking pins, which are protected by the roving laser grid, the altimeter is not. So what I need to do is to find a way to tap into its receptive memory core and ascertain the exact code necessary to make it responsive. Once done, then shutting the unit down may be doable once we intercept and alter the code.”