“So,” asked the general. “What speed has DARPA ALPHA been able to reach?”
“NUWAC,” Doreen told him, “our Naval Underseas Warfare Center, has already broken the sound barrier with a torpedo.”
“At DARPA ALPHA,” added Moffat in a voice so lifeless he might as well have been doing nothing more than giving Freeman the time of day, “we’ve developed a projectile, a bullet if you like, that’s reached Mach 10.”
“Son of—” exclaimed the general. “You’ve got my attention!”
“That’s more than eleven thousand feet a second,” Moffat continued in his monotone. “Faster than anything in the history of warfare.”
“Inside the usual cupronickel,” Doreen Wyman added, referring to a normal round’s copper-nickel jacket, “the bullet would melt and break up, even with the gas bubble reducing most of the drag. But in conjunction with NUWAC, we’ve developed a metal-carbon resin jacket that will remain intact until point of impact.”
Freeman instantly recognized the enormous implications, how such a round developed by DARPA ALPHA in this long, landlocked lake more than a thousand feet deep would change warfare forever. They were at a turning point. At Mach 10, such a round could penetrate a tank, the bullet’s superheated molten jet raising the temperature so high inside the tank it would explode.
“How long would it take,” asked Freeman, “to manufacture this supersonic round?”
“
“All right, how long would it take to lathe a hypersonic prototype of one of these rounds?”
Doreen Wyman, Freeman could see, was going to take the Fifth on this one.
“Professor Moffat?” Freeman pressed. “How long?”
“A week — if you had the right state-of-the-art computer-controlled lathes, et cetera.”
“And the disk!”
“Yes,” admitted Moffat sheepishly, looking out at the slate gray water again.
“Do you agree,” Freeman asked Doreen Wyman, “that they could have prototypes in a week?”
“From the time they get the disk, yes. A week.”
It was time to move out.
Prince had gotten a good scent from the abandoned bikes and had led the team to a large jetty, farther down from the DARPA ALPHA shore, from where it was assumed the terrorists had escaped by boat. But which way? The lake was twenty-five miles long and five miles wide. Freeman stuck with his and the sheriff’s Canada-bound idea. With all road and air corridors closed, there simply weren’t that many ways out, and Canada, sixty-four miles to the north beyond Lake Pend Oreille and Priest Lake, seemed not only the best escape route because the rugged, heavily forested terrain would provide great cover but because there was always the added enticement of Canada’s long, undefined border, and the fact that Canada simply didn’t have the manpower to field effective patrols.
The sheriff, overwhelmed by the catastrophe, walked forlornly down to the jetty.
“Any leads at all?” asked Freeman.
“Nothing very concrete,” replied the sheriff. “Dr. Moffat has asked the navy to send up one of their Hawkeye aircraft to help you with communications in this area. And an FBI guy told me a blood-soaked note was found in one of the victims’ hands.”
“A note?” mused Aussie. “What’d it say?”
“Hard to tell,” the sheriff replied. “One of the DHS guys told me all they could make out was a few letters — looked like ‘RAM’ and ‘SCARUND,’ whatever the hell that means.” He spelled it out for them, and Aussie wrote it down.
“RAM. Computer capacity: random access memory?” ventured Freeman.
“Or people’s names?” suggested Johnny Lee.
“Perhaps,” said Freeman, recalling his visit to Roberta Juarez at the hospital, “the words have something to do with Roberta saying, ‘It was spotted.’” No one could see any connection whatsoever.
“All right,” said the general. “No leads but Prince’s nose at the moment. We have to assume the terrorists have had ample time to reach the northern end of Pend Oreille, where they’d have to leave their boat and hoof it up to Priest Lake. And if the bastards know what they’re doing, which it seems they do, they’ll be avoiding any known back roads because the sheriff’s boys are out in full force. So, let’s see if Prince here can regain the scent up at the north end of Pend Oreille.” The general knelt down, the team doing likewise, Prince sitting as if waiting for his best in show ribbon. “Dear Lord,” began Freeman, “we praise You, we thank You for this world, and we here ask that You watch over us, guide us, so that we may do Your will in the battle against evil.”
“Amen,” they said in unison, and a group of DHS and FBI agents looked variously astonished, embarrassed, and humbled. Prince panted in anticipation of the hunt.
The general, Aussie, Sal, Choir, Ruth, Lee, Gomez, and Mervyn grabbed their weapons and MOLLEs and boarded the Chinook. Already Freeman could see the Hawkeye that Moffat had requested. If the terrorists, with their head start, reached Priest Lake forty-six miles north of DARPA ALPHA, following the general direction of secondary logging roads through the deep forest, they would have a straight twenty-five-mile south-to-north run up the full length of Priest, where they could then pass through a two-and-a-half-mile-wide connecting channel to another three-mile stretch of water. Had they planted a boat? The map showed that along the edge of Priest Lake’s primeval forest there was a smattering of “Mom-and-Pop”-type cottages and a tiny marina, but not much else.
Aussie Lewis, seat harness on, using his MOLLE as a footrest, wondered aloud, and loudly, “Hope we’re not heading in the wrong fucking direction.”
It was unlike Aussie to start the game with a pessimistic prognosis, and the general wanted to counter it immediately. For most of the team, Aussie’s question was nothing more than that, but Freeman, knowing Tony Ruth was a relative newcomer to the team, wanted to stanch any possible pessimism. “Sometimes,” he shouted to Aussie over the noise of the Chinook’s rotor slap, “the most obvious route is the correct one. The scumbags who stole that disk’ll be in a hurry to get that information back to their masters in the Mideast, Chechnya, wherever.”
“They don’t have to do it in person,” said Johnny Lee. “How about them using a landline? With a computer and modem they could set up and transmit the disk’s contents from anywhere they like.”
The general shook his head, and Prince looked concerned. “Sheriff and DHS have all the landlines, public phone booths, et cetera, covered,” answered Freeman. “Besides, now the story’s out, the terrorists are going to know that anyone seen using public landlines with a modem and the like is acting suspiciously and should be reported. Anyway, NSA is going to be picking up all private transmissions.”
“How about satellite phone?” asked Eddie Mervyn.
“Too insecure,” Freeman replied. NSA’d be all over it like the measles. No, the scumbags are heading for the Canadian border; I know it in my gut. Somewhere along the line where there’s minimal surveillance, manpower problems. Canada’s a huge country, bigger than the U.S., and the whole country’s population is only equivalent to California’s. It’s as if every other state in the union were empty.” The general grabbed Prince affectionately by the ears and spoke to him as if the dog understood every word. “Prince, you tell Aussie here that you and I know. Right? We just feel it in our bones, don’t we, boy? Those bastards are headed for British Columbia, and we’ve got to get them before they reach it. ’Course you and I know by now they’re no doubt in civilian garb. Probably look like a bunch of Greenpeacers out to see the flora and fauna.”
“They better watch out,” said Sal, as Prince, sitting up close to Choir, looked on, “otherwise a grizzly’ll bite them on the ass.”
“
“General?” It was the Chinook’s loadmaster sergeant. “Radio call for you from a Richard Moffat.”
For a second, Freeman was wearing what Aussie had long ago dubbed his Patton frown. He took the phone, cupping the mouthpiece. “Richard
“Chief scientist,” Choir reminded him. “Richard Moffat.”
“Hello, Doctor. Freeman here.”
“General, we think we might have an answer for you regarding Dr. Juarez’s ‘It’s spotted’ comment.”
“Oh yes,” answered Freeman.
“First, I should tell you Roberta Juarez didn’t survive.”
“Oh, shit!”
Prince’s head shot up, worried by the general’s sharp tone.
