The president felt a slight sense of relief but remained cautious. “Tell me something,” he said, his tone remaining even. “Do you see any downside to this?”
Simone removed the loupe from his head and placed it on a nearby table. “When you’re dealing in theory, Mr. President, there is always a downside. What you need to understand is that the altimeter simply measures the altitude of an object from a fixed point. After making note of its apparent connection to the hard drive as a receiver, it tells me that its purpose is to engage after the device has begun its countdown sequence. Once the weapon has begun, then it will send a signature code to the altimeter which, in turn, sends a response to the mother brain informing it that the code was received and all systems are go. I will then insert a virus into the altimeter’s answering sequence, which should disable the master memory in the hard drive and render the unit inoperable.”
“It sounds solid,” said Thornton. “But what if you’re wrong about the altimeter?”
Simone stared back from the viewing monitor, his features expressionless as an awkward silence passed though the room.
The president finally had to prompt the engineer for an answer. “Ray?”
Simone sighed. “Mr. President, from where I’m standing, the altimeter is its Achilles’ heel. If I’m wrong, then there’s nothing I, or anybody else, can do to stop it from going off once the initiation code has begun. The altimeter has been designed to communicate with the central processing unit for a reason. So I am totally confident in my assessment.”
The president nodded while his mind worked. “Achilles was crippled by an arrow’s blow to the heel,” he said, “which incapacitated him long enough to be defeated by Paris. I need you to be our Paris, Ray. I need you to use whatever engineering tools and skills you have at your disposal to kill… that… thing… dead.”
Simone nodded. “I’ll have my team on it immediately, Mr. President.”
“And, Ray… keep me posted.”
“Of course.”
“Then see what you can do and get back to me as soon as you can.”
“Yes, sir.”
After the connection was severed, he turned to his team consisting of Craner, Hamilton and Thornton. “An altimeter?” he said, more as a comment than a question. Yet it begged for an answer. What possible purpose could such an attachment serve?
CIA Analyst Craner spoke in his usual clipped tone. “Like Simone said, Mr. President, an altimeter serves a single purpose.”
Burroughs concurred, his eyes suddenly taking on a faraway look. “If its purpose is to measure the altitude of an object from a fixed position, then that leads me to believe the device was manufactured to work at a high altitude.”
“Agreed,” said Thornton. “But it could have been engineered to serve another purpose as well. Like Simone said, we really don’t know at this point.”
“But if you were to hazard a guess, a rational guess, then what would you say its purpose was?”
“A plane,” said Hamilton, the answer was simple and quick. They had massed the same collective thought suggesting the units were created to work at high levels of altitude. The first intimation was obviously a repeat performance of commandeering airliners with a much more devastating payload that would topple strategic points of interest, most notably New York City and Washington D.C. But what was the third site?
Point was, if the devices worked at a specific level based upon the confidence of trying to hijack jumbo jets, no matter how much time had elapsed since 9/11, it would have been a foolish gesture on their part since there were no less than two armed Air Marshalls on every flight and even more on United and American, the two airlines the terrorists held an affinity for since they contained two of the three words in United States of America.
“There’s no way in hell they could get those devices on any plane in this country,” stated the president. “Not with the high alert. So let’s assume they know this and have already altered their plans.”
“Which leads us back to square one,” said Hamilton.
Square one was the whereabouts of Hakam, his team, and the nuclear weapons. If they were not located soon, then it wouldn’t matter if Ray Simone found a solution to disable the units or not. If Hakam could not be found, then America would fall prey.
Even though President Burroughs took some comfort in knowing he and his team had made significant strides forward, he felt like he was doing so on leaden soles.
Where are you, Hakam? he asked himself.
And how do you find six individuals in a country with a population of three hundred million people?
The president closed his eyes against the onrush of a coming headache.
So much for progressive steps forward, he thought. Finding Hakam and his team would be like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack the size of Manhattan.
Understanding this, hope began to fade. And not only within him but he could also see it on the faces of his team. “We’ll get this right,” he told him. But if he could have heard his own voice, then he would have detected the same sense of vulnerability they were all feeling.
The hope, in all of them, had no doubt faded to a pinprick spark close to extinguishing itself dead.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Basilio Pastore was dismayed. In the preceding hours he had seen his father plead for the lives of his family from the position of his knees. The man was crying, begging — the one-time hero of the Aeronautica Milatare surrendering his pride before the lens of a distant camera. And Basilio wanted to weep. Whenever he closed his eyes he could see his pleading father burned as an afterimage behind the folds of his lids. So he planned to never close his eyes again.
Sitting in the corner of the room with his knees drawn up into acute angles and his arms hugging his legs close, Basilio stared at a fixed point on the opposite wall, his gaze and manner unflinching and statue still.
He never felt so ashamed.
“Basilio?” His mother’s voice was soft and honeyed, the lilt of her tone possessing a maternal comfort which he needed at the moment, but was unwilling to admit.
Basilio’s line of sight never wavered from the fixed point.
“Basilio.” She took a seat beside him, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them in mimic of her son. “Your father loves you very much. There’s no shame in what he did.”
Basilio’s response was to clench his teeth, which caused the muscles in the back of his jaw to work.
“Someday,” she added, “when you have children of your own, you’ll understand.”
Vittoria could see the welling of tears along the edges of her son’s eyes. And the way he caught himself and reacted by holding his chin out with forced stoicism.
Inwardly she had to smile, the boy who tried so much to be a man. “Your father did what he did because he’s not here to help us. So he did the only thing he could do — the only thing that was left to him.”
Basilio’s chin began to quiver with jelly-like consistency, the dam beginning to break, his tears ready to fall. “I never saw Papa cry before,” he finally said. “Papa never cries.”
“Just because your father cries doesn’t make him any less than a man.”