Leslie Gordon rolled over and poked her husband in the ribs.
“You gonna answer that, Stan?”
“Huh…oh…my phone…who the hell?”
Colonel Stan Gordon, USAF, looked at the caller ID and reluctantly answered the call.
“Yeah, Larry, whatcha got. Must be big to wake me up at this hour.”
“Sorry about that,” Larry Wilkins said, “Might be big, not sure.”
“You’re not sure? Give me a sec, will you? Let me go to the other room so Leslie can get her beauty sleep.”
“You know she doesn’t need that.”
“I’ll tell her you said that.”
Gordon put on a pair of pants and ambled to the living room, where he sat down in his recliner and turned on a lamp.
“Okay Larry, what is it?”
“We had some weird goings on down here earlier in the evening. Started out with a bomb threat at the Taft. Walter grabbed the bomb and took off. Darn thing was a dud.”
“Someone planted a bad bomb?”
“Worse. It wasn’t real. Went off and popped a little sign out that said boom.”
“Now why in the hell would someone do that?”
“That’s what we thought until we got a report on a hijacked semi.”
“You think the fake bomb was a diversion?”
“Yeah, with Walter popping up all over town down here. Crooks wanted him out of the way, but we don’t how bad it is. I got a bill of lading from the shipment. It was headed your way, but I don’t know what these part numbers are.”
“And you’re hoping I can help you with that? That information might be classified.”
“I was afraid of that, but if whatever that truck was carrying is dangerous, we might need to know.”
“You said you have a copy of the bill?”
“You have a secure email I can send it to?”
“Sure.” Gordon gave Wilkins an email address and opened a laptop he had sitting on the end table.
“Okay, Stan, I just sent it. You should have it shortly.”
“Yeah, got it,” Gordon said a moment later.
“Please tell me you know what was in that shipment.”
Gordon perused the attached file and read it again.
“Crap.”
“What? You know what the shipment was?”
“Yeah, a couple new prototypes, not something you want in the wrong hands.”
“What is it?”
“One of them’s some sort of portable EMP. The other one…”
“Come again?”
“You know what EMP is, right?”
“Electro-magnetic pulse? Stuff that can fry electronics? I thought newer planes and military vehicles had hardened systems to protect against EMP.”
“Yeah, but these are different. The big fear was always a huge EMP that might fry a whole city or something, but this is a portable unit. It’s the size of a rifle and fires a projectile that’s smaller than a grenade. The projectile is self propelled and has a range of about five miles or so. Takes a couple seconds to get a radar lock on the target and then when you fire, the projectile will find the target and attach. Once attached, it can completely disable any vehicle. A standard EMP would only take out the electronics, but this one shuts down the entire vehicle. Engines quit, everything.”
“How in the hell—“
“The science is beyond me, but they work. Some older vehicles fare better, but it can be modified to go after certain systems, like to shut down the engines on a targeted vehicle.”
“If these are man portable, why was the Air Force getting a shipment of them?”
“Like I said, it’s a prototype, developed by some arms contractor on the east coast, in Vermont I think. Our boys would like to modify it to put it on planes and helicopters. You could disable whole armored units that way without killing anyone.”
“But imagine using it on an aircraft.”
“That would also work. The enemy pilot could still eject, but his plane becomes useless. The possibilities are endless.”
“Military applications aside, what if it falls into the wrong hands?”
“Used against civilian targets? Use your imagination. I’m sure it could be modified to be used against buildings, but even in its current configuration, the ability to fry any moving vehicle is scary enough. Enough of these in the wrong hands could wreak havoc on the aviation industry. You said the entire semi went missing?”
“Yes, the driver was knocked out and left on the side of the road. He’s lucky they didn’t kill him.”
“I trust your boys are on it.”
“We have officers looking for the truck, but we have to assume that by now the cargo has been transferred. Anyway, you said there was something else in that shipment?”
“Yeah, and that one could be bad news.”
“How bad?”
“It’s a different projectile fired from the same device, but it doesn’t disable the target vehicle. It lets someone with a computer take control. You get that attached to a vehicle, and someone with a computer can connect and remotely control whatever vehicle it’s attached to. You can imagine having that capability on a battlefield, but imagine it falling into the wrong hands.”
Wilkins let out a string of expletives.
“That’s pretty much it. Well, so much for getting any more sleep. I have to make some calls. Let me know if you come up with anything.”
12
It wasn’t the alarm that woke Franklin up, but the smell of bacon coming from the kitchen. By the time he came out of the shower, it was getting stronger. He came into the kitchen at 7:45 to an impressive spread of food. Walter was over the stove scrambling eggs and there were already heaping plates of bacon and biscuits on the table, along with coffee, juice, and milk.
“Man, dude, how long you been in here working on all this?”
“Not too long. That’s Marcy’s biscuit recipe. About the only thing I can make from scratch.”
“You must be hungry to make all this.”
“With your girlfriend coming to pick you up…can’t have you kids leaving here hungry.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Not yet, but it might not be long.”
“Come on Gramps, we just met.”
“Kid, I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night. Doesn’t take
