“It’s probably better odds than a firefight, Sir. I’ll go along with it.”
“Okay, Hiccock, you do it. And find the bastard responsible, because in less than half an hour, all hell’s going to break loose across the country.”
The president nodded to the chairman, who exited, leaving Mitchell and Reynolds alone in the little anteroom.
“Sir, is there something about Robert Parnes that I should know?” Hiccock said.
The president checked with Ray Reynolds who shook his head. “Why are you asking?”
“Sir, something disturbing has come up. It seems there’s a Parnes-Reynolds connection.”
“If I told you it had nothing to do with the current situation, would that suffice?”
“With all due respect, Sir, how do I know the chief of staff, or you for that matter, isn’t undermining my mission and our lives?”
“Fair enough. I’m going to have Ray tell you what he told me five minutes ago.”
Reynolds looked at the president with apprehension in his eyes, but Mitchell remained resolute and nodded for him to proceed. “Bill, Ray here. During the campaign, Parnes approached me when we were stumping at MIT. He had an idea that he wanted to try, a new way to use the Internet.”
“Did he say what that was?” Hiccock asked.
“Something to do with advertising. I figured it was a million-to-one chance, so I didn’t ask for many details. I never gave it much thought or credit for our win. Our web site hits were in the low thousands. Not even close to the margin of win.”
“Go on, Ray, tell him everything.”
Reynolds addressed Hiccock again. “If we got elected, our part of the deal was to get Parnes and the members of his team a big science research project. When Dawson from Agriculture proposed their weather forecasting initiative, I thought it was the perfect, quiet, out-of-the-way spot for Parnes’s payback — which by the way I didn’t feel he had earned, but a deal’s a deal.”
“So you see, other than being connected to Parnes, it has nothing to do with the current situation,” the president said.
Hiccock stopped Mitchell cold. “Except that what Parnes did wasn’t just advertising. It was subliminal advertising and those same subliminal techniques became the basis for how all the terrorists were programmed. Your campaign served as the beta test for the process. Your election proved beyond a doubt that it could work. In fact, nobody I’ve spoken to in the whole country thinks they voted for you. That’s why the exit polls were so wrong on Election Day. Having people forget that they pulled the lever for you was the post-suggestion. After confirming that the subjects would not remember their programming, the next step was easy. And the number of hits was low, Ray, because Parnes didn’t use your web site, he used the entire Internet. No matter where someone was surfing or what site they were on, they got programmed.”
The president was immobilized by the preponderance of complicity that was now laid at his feet. “I’ll bring this to the floor of Congress and put myself in their hands.”
Ray hit the mute button. “That’s absurd! You are the president. Your agenda and the advances you have made will help this country. You can’t throw away all the good you’re doing.”
“All the good is tainted. I am not going to fall into the trap that a small wrong now will allow me to do great good in the future. That is the mantra of dictators and every crooked politician since Tammany Hall.”
Reynolds stared at the president with disbelief in his eyes.
The president released the mute button. “Anything else, Bill?”
Hiccock continued, “Sir, it’s possible that many of the ‘Homegrowns’ first programmed act, way before they blew something up, was to vote for you and then forget that they did.”
“Well, that just about effectively ends my brief shining career as president. Bill, just make sure this monster is also terminated.”
The president hung up.
Convened once more around a blueprint of the mountain-fortress layout, Mack explained the plan. “We’ll place charges here in the elevator machine room and here in the access tunnel and one here where the rock meets the concrete slab.”
“Only three?” Hiccock asked.
“First off, that’s all we have left. How much of this stuff do you think I had in my locker at work?”
Harry, the decorated UDT guy turned master blaster, turned retired consultant to a construction company, spoke up. “I figure we’ll bring down about 300 cubic tons of rock and dirt into the hole. That’d be about ten stories high in this twenty-story dual elevator shaft.”
“That’s the good news,” the major said.
“Okay, what’s the bad?”
Mack delivered it. “Harry’s got a good plan here, and I agree with his numbers, but these have to be timed shots. They have to go off in sequence to shake the rock out of its place. Otherwise, we’ll just make a lot of smoke and noise.”
“So?” Hiccock said, not grasping the bad part.
Gold explained, “Someone has to stay up there, because any wires running down the shaft would be severed by the first blast at the bottom.”
“We’ll make them home runs to three detonators in this upper utility area here,” Mack said. “But the blaster gets exposed to the un-friendlies.”
“I’ll ask for volunteers,” the major said.
“It really should be one of us. If anything goes wrong …” Mack’s raised eyebrows finished the sentence.
Hiccock couldn’t listen to this. “We can’t ask anyone to sacrifice himself.”
The soldiers, current and retired, all slowly turned to him in unison.
“That’s what soldiers have been doing since the beginning of time,” the major said.
“Look, I’ll do it,” Mack said. “I already got banged up and maybe they’ll treat me as wounded.”
“What if we just blow it now instead of waiting for them? Then you’d have time to get away.”
The major checked his watch, “White House estimates the bad guys are eleven minutes out. We’ll be lucky if the charges are set by then.”
“Chief, your bad shoulder could muck this up, old friend,” Harry said. “You might need to improvise. I’m the man for the job.”
“Chief?” the major said to Mack. “You were their commanding officer?”
“Not me. The Admiral’s husband, Jack Parks. I’m the highest surviving rank of our unit.”
“Well, Chief, you know he’s right.”
“Yeah, I know. But let’s give him two guns and enough ammo to rock and roll.”
A self-conscious Hiccock stood squarely before the Navy frogman. “Your country owes you a debt it can never repay.”
“Ah, hell, they’ve owed me that since Korea. Let’s go blow this hole!”
With that, the battle-hardened vets left for one last action.
Kronos entered as the room emptied. “I checked up like you asked. According to the routing server, no recent traffic moved on the system to the web.”
Hiccock was stumped. “That’s impossible. These helicopters couldn’t have been ordered in before we breached the perimeter.”
“I have been trying to tell you,” Parnes said. “This is the wrong place. All of my people are good Americans.”
“Well, then it’s a grand day for fuck-ups because there is a whole company of death and destruction heading for this ‘wrong place’ as well! We’re ready for our VIP tour.”
Hiccock grabbed Parnes by the good arm and muscled him toward the door.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
It was obvious to anyone encountering the columns and racks that constituted the largest computer ever made by man that even techy geeks love dramatics. ALISON was lit up with red-and-blue spots as if she were dressed for a New Year’s Eve ball. These monoliths encircled the “core area,” the central feature of which was a huge tank. In the tank, seven-eighths submerged in a gray liquid, sat an enormous sphere. Upon closer inspection, it became apparent that it was actually made up of millions of computer chips. A thin layer of the gray ooze coated the exposed chips. Data terminals and multipurpose CRT stations surrounded the tank. The entire floor and chamber were carved out of solid rock deep within Leadfoot Mountain. Troughs crisscrossed the ceiling carrying away condensation from the rough rock surface. A huge dehumidifier, constantly droning, circulated the dry, sterilized air.