Across the world, in the great marble capital of the United States of America, an ombudsman enters his place of power. Senator J. Harding, Republican from Florida steps into the Capitol building. He’s flanked at his side by an athletic man in an Army Dress Uniform. His collar insignia shows Commander. His chest is bare, a minimum of ribbons acquired decades before through Basic Training and routine exercises. Square-cut buzz on his head and an expressionless face, reserved for barking rather than talking. The kind of life that is dedicated to fighting, from the moment it begins to learn.
Harding flashes a badge to an idle guard, who opens a large wooden door off the main foyer. The senator and his military guest descend a flight of stairs into a cement corridor lined with fluorescent lights and motion detectors. Another guard, this time in camouflage with an M4 carbine salutes the senator and passively watches the soldier follow him through an unmarked steel door. The guardlocks it behind him.
Harding and the Commander maneuver around the elongated wooden conference table at the center of the room. Six other men watch them from various positions at the table. All have manila envelopes and notepads out, several pens arrayed for the discussion. Harding sets his briefcase down on the table, and took his seat. The Commander stands at a loose parade-rest behind him, staring blankly at the main doors. His trained senses pick up the shuffling sounds of the other committee members shifting and adjusting. Harding opens it up. A sleek computer screen hums to life. A few elegant strokes on the built-in keypad and a small red bulb lights up. He smiles at his fellow committee members.
“Okay, I’ve just activated an electromagnetic scrambler in the chamber. If you have any digital watches or cell phones, you’ll have to reset them once you leave. Sorry about that, but it’s the price of business. Now let’s get to it. Allow me to introduce Commander William Heathrowe, United States Army Special Forces. He’s spent the last decade everywhere we’re not allowed to be, so don’t expect him to be too talkative.”
Senator Trevize, a man with fish eyes on a shark face, with a smile to match, points at the ribbons and lack of medals. “Don’t you SpecOps boys carry a Christmas tree’s supply of medals. I can hear half this building a mile away down in these corridors.”
Heathrowe doesn’t make eye contact. “Sir, medals and awards imply participation in a variety of illicit activities, that the United States of America does not partake in.” For the first time Harding had known the Commander, a curl of a smile slipped through.
Harding shifts the briefcase scrambling device out of the way on the table. He pulls a smaller manila folder out of his jacket pocket and unlatches it. Inside are a series of photographs and intelligence reports. A subtle nod is picked up by the aide in the back of the room who dims the lights and turns on a digital projector.
“This information is now six hours old, so bear with me.”
The first image is a desert photograph from a helicopter. An endless fields of Saudi Arabian oil fields.
“At approximately 9:30am, local time in Saudi Arabia, a team of FBI CSI under special orders roped off and began examining the body of one Dr. Isaac Kowalski. Kowalski was found executed in an oil field about 100 miles south of the capital. Professional grade work.”
The image shifts to digital photos of Kowalski’s body, taken by FBI on scene. Some of the senators in the room shift uneasily.
“Agent Kevin Pace was on scene as the Agent in charge, working with local Saudi intelligence assets, including a man we’ve worked with before, Ahmed Nasser. Agent Pace discovered a small flash drive on Kowalski’s body during the investigation, just before this happened.”
Now there’s a photograph taken from a plane. High resolution at high altitude. Black clouds rise up. Two of the SUVs are smoking with flames visibly billowing from the windows and hoods. The third is seen leaving a dust wake. Several arms of the oil pumps are bent and contorted, crumbling to the ground in the infinitesimal time of the photograph.
“A suicide bomber destroyed the site, killing several of our team, as well as destroying the remains of Kowalski’s body. Agent Nasser was killed in the attack, and Agent Pace was severely injured as in undergoing treatment at an American military facility as we speak. The contents of the flash drive remained undamaged though, mostly due to luck. Our section chief sent a copy here, through encrypted satellite links and direct drive downloads.”
The projector whirs and churns and suddenly a flash of information displays on the wall behind Harding. He turns his body to see the images as well. The stoic Heathrowe’s eyes waver for a moment, in the flashing intensity of the projector at the other end of the room.
“These are the contents of the Kowalski drive.”
Words, in English and Arabic flash. A series of binary and C++ coding, as well as more advanced quantum equations dance across the wall.
“Excuse me, Senator Harding, but I don’t program computers. Could you enlighten us?” Senator Trevize leans forward, peering over the rims of his glasses.
“Of course, Senator Trevize. I’ll let Commander Heathrowe brief you on Kowalski’s involvement.”
Heathrowe snaps to attention, and then moves at ease. “Thank you sir. Back in the late 70′s through mid 80′s, the Defense Department picked up Dr. Kowalski as part of an elite wargaming unit. He programmed a new training system for large-scale exercises featuring multiple divisions in simulated combat against each other, as well as more localized small arms warfare between competing special forces squads. The kind of combat America expected from the Soviet Union, somewhere between a tank blitz and proxy wars, the two most predictable scenarios we could come up with. He worked with a series of military scientists and other computer programmers and psychologists to create a computer simulation to run these wargames. Effectively an early version of our more common AI’s.”
Senator Barbone clacks his jaw. He looks down at the image of Kowalski on the paper in front of him.
“Why assassinate him? None of these wargames are still in effect are they? Last I checked the Soviet Union doesn’t exist. We’re talking about killing a man over a computer game he designed fifty, hell, sixty years ago?”
“Exactly,” Harding interrupts. “The program he designed was code-named RED VICTOR. RED VICTOR was discontinued almost immediately after the Cold War came to a close and the wall came down. There was no more need for grand scale combat simulators. And after the effects of 9/11, and the War on Terror, his proxy war simulators became obsolete. We were no longer fighting a traditional war, and the lessons learned in the later half of the 20th century weren’t cutting it. Kowalski moved back to England, and retired with a healthy government pension.”
“Then somebody comes along thirty years later and decides he knows too much about something,” Trevize adds.
“Right.” Harding nods to the aide running the projector. The flashing words stop. Now a matrix of numbers appears. They’re aligned in a grid, various lines dart between specific combinations of digits.
“What is this?”
“This is the problem we have.”
Harding slides a series of reports across the table. The senators all take one.
Barbone stares at the report. “Jesus.”
Trevize looks at Harding. “When did this happen?”
“Approximately two hours ago, the USS Kearney, a Destroyer at Okinawa was bombed. Her keel shattered, and half the hands on deck were lost as she sank. The M.O. of the bombing and the location on the hull of the attacks mimic that of the USS Cole in the later 1990s. No traces of those responsible, though nobody on the usual channels is taking responsibility.”
“No shit,” Trevize’s gaze burns holes through the report.
Barbone points at the numbers on the screen, gripping the report in his other hand. “You think Dr. Kowalski knew something about this? Had something to do with this?”
“Absolutely.” Harding stands up and uses his arms to point to pairs of number sequences. “We have dates and lines of latitude and longitude. We have precise coordinates as well as timing to a series of military actions around the globe in the past six months. He’s got three of the major offensives in the Russian Civil War mapped out here, a full two months before they ever took place. Not to mention clearly giving coordinates to the location of the cities and objectives in question, as well as the location of the USS Kearney in its dock last night.”
“Disgruntled DoD whiz-kid comes back for revenge? I don’t buy it.”
“Neither do I,” Harding sits back down. He stares at the men circling the table. “But he did know something, and now it’s coming around to bite us in the ass. What’s worse is, the presence of a suicide bomber at his murder site means there are survivors in this plot who didn’t want us to know what he knew.”
“RED VICTOR allowed a computer to run a simulation, provided an output of information in the form of a matrix, very similar to this one,” Heathrowe starts up again. “We’ve talked with some of the ex-members of RED VICTOR, they’ll remain classified for the time being, and they confirmed that the source material of this data sheet we pulled of Kowalski matches some of the later incarnations of the RV protocal routines.”
“And now he’s dead…” Harding pauses.
“So excuse my ignorance, Commander Heathrowe, but how exactly does this pertain to Army Special Forces?”
Harding looks at Heathrowe. “Based on the severity of the situation and the information we were receiving, I had to move outside our usual protocols. Heathrowe has hand-picked a small team of special forces operatives. They’re dropping into Siberia tomorrow night to meet up with our man on station.”
“Hold the fuck up, Harding,” Trevize drops the materials in his hands. “We’re sending commandos? Into Russia in the middle of their civil war?”
“We gave our agent in Russia, code-named FOX, some of the Russian pertinent coordinates and dates, and he’s all ready identified several catastrophic points of interest in the name of global security.”
“We’re playing police now, Harding? Who cares if the Russians are tearing themselves apart?”
Heathrowe winds his finger in the air, to the aide. The images shift. They stop at a particular series of lines and dates. “These are latitudes and longitudes of prominent democratic centers of the western world. Perhaps you’re familiar with them, Senator Trevize?”
Trevize glares at Heathrowe. Their eyes lock contact now.
“London, Dublin, Paris, Rome, The Vatican, Hamburg, and Madrid.”
“That’s not a series of terrorist attacks, we’re talking about an entire military assault…and we don’t even know by who yet.”
“FOX thinks he can stop it?”
“FOX is just one man, but he believes to have located a major playing piece, based on the information given.”
“What are those numbers, there?” Barbone asks.
A series of numbers, in red, flash and shift continuously, despite the solid black digits around them. Heathrowe and Harding both look at them for a few good seconds.
“That we don’t know about. They haven’t stopped shifting, not since we’ve found the drive. The equations are still altering their values.”
“Well we better figure it out soon, there’s only one location that’s not on that list, and those red numbers scare the hell out of me for it…”
Harding nods solemnly. “Washington, D.C.”
Trevize closes his eyes. “Send them in.”
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