Project StrikeForce (4 page)

“Sorry, I’m used to things like due process.”

She glanced away. “Due process doesn’t exist here.
Here we’re trying to keep the world from destroying itself.” She turned back to
him, eyes empty. “I’ve briefed the Old Man and he’s given the green-light. I
can have Freeman here in a few days. He might not be too happy about it. That’s
all I’m saying.”

Eric smiled. “Since I’m recruiting, I have a few
other men I think might be a good fit.” He handed her a sheet of paper with a
list of names.

She yanked the list from his hand, glanced at it,
and rolled her eyes.

he sun peeked over the mountains,
the sky an indigo twilight caught between dawn and morning, when Fulton Smith’s
plane arrived. Eric braced himself against the morning chill as he watched the
Gulfstream, a twin to his, taxi down the runway. The pungent smell of jet fuel
washed over him, and his mind flashed back to other runways, other superior
officers.

Smith stepped from the plane, his suit pressed,
face bland.

“Good morning, sir,” Eric said.

Smith smiled faintly. “No need for pleasantries.
You’re up to speed?”

“Getting there,” Eric said.

“I’m sure you’re doing well. Now, take me to the
chamber.”

Eric led Smith to his Humvee and they headed back to
the base. He still wasn’t used to the underground tunnel, but he had read the
instructions and knew how to read the LCD screen in the dash. With the state of
the Russian economy and the crumbling satellite infrastructure, there were
hours between flyovers and the LCD screen gave a green light to raise the
hidden door to the tunnel.

He glanced at the dash. The screen displayed the
time of the next Russian satellite fly-by. By the time the satellite was
overhead, Smith’s plane would be parked in a hangar and they would be in the
underground base.

He put his thumb on the reader and keyed the
button to open the hidden door. They shot down the tunnel and he keyed the door
closed behind them. They reached the main door and checked in through security,
and switched from the Humvee to an electric cart.

He cleared his throat. “Sir, if you don’t mind a
question?”

Smith turned to look at him, the corridors
whizzing past, the occasional lab technician or soldier stopping to let them
pass. “Speak freely, Mr. Wise. Always with me, speak freely.”

“How is this possible? I mean, we are far outside
of what the Constitution permits. The Posse Comitatus act states we are not to
operate on domestic soil.”

Smith nodded gravely. “I understand your concern,
Mr. Wise. Let me explain. I was a young man when I met President Truman. He
knew my grandfather, you see. I was ready to deploy to Korea, when my brother
was killed. I was summoned to the White House. I thought meeting the President
was the most momentous thing that would happen in my life. I was wrong. I met
the President and another man, a man named Barth. Barth never spoke during the
meeting. The President recalled the times spent with my grandfather in Kansas
City. He then asked what kind of man I would like to be. I said I hoped to
survive the war, to marry, have children. I couldn’t imagine anything else.”

He paused, lost in thought. “The President had
almost been assassinated. I think this above all else planted the seed in his
mind. He asked if I’d accept a job. He felt that to maintain the United States,
to continue the grand experiment, a more comprehensive solution was needed. He
tasked me with creating the Office of Threat Management. An office that would
work outside the laws, outside the Constitution. He tasked me with saving the
world.”

Eric took a right turn and continued up a long
ramp, watching Smith out of the corner of his eye. “And, you accepted.”

“Of course. Suddenly, I wasn’t going to war in
Korea. I found myself at war here in the United States. Barth, as it turns out,
was the President’s man. A position long held and little known. He fixed things
that needed fixing. One man who did the unthinkable. It wasn’t enough. Over the
next year I built an organization, brought in soldiers and spies, scientists
and researchers. There were threats everywhere. The Cold War raged. The country
faced problems, internal and external. The outlook was grim. Nuclear war was a
distinct possibility. We acted. We stopped riots, assassinations, bombings. We
influenced, we spied, and we killed. We did this globally. We were not peaceful
men. And, we weren’t always right. We became better at analyzing data, better
at predicting the unpredictable. It was better to kill one man to stop a war.
One life to save thousands. Or millions. A conflict in Africa that could spin
out of control. Starvation in Turkey that could end with an occupation of the
Middle East.”

Eric nodded, steering the cart through the final
hallway. “You still need someone to act.”

“In most situations we funnel our data to existing
agencies. But, in extreme cases, yes, we need someone who can act. A weapon, to
be unleashed only when necessary.”

They arrived at the chamber. “We’re here,” Eric
said.

Smith smiled. “Yes, Mr. Wise. We most certainly
are.”

* * *

The room was the size of a small
gymnasium. A full-height glass window partitioned it in half, the back filled
with stadium seats, enough to hold hundreds of people. The seats were filled
with white-coated technicians, and there were very few empty spots left.

Eric led Smith down to the front, a few meters
from the ground. Their seats afforded them an excellent view and they watched
as the techs behind the glass prepared for the experiment.

John Frist lay strapped to a plastic table in the
center of the room, eyes closed. His chest rose and fell, his breathing slow
and rhythmic.

Dr. Elliot stood in yellow isolation suit,
hovering over Frist. He shuffled nervously from foot to foot, trying to watch
the different monitors that surrounded Frist. Dr. Oshensker sat at a nearby workstation,
typing furiously.

Smith turned to Eric. “Do you understand the
process?”

“I read the briefings.”

“Then you know how dangerous and delicate this
process is. We’ve had a measure of success and Dr. Elliot assures me they have
perfected the technology.”

There was a flurry of activity as the technicians
rolled two walls of equipment to the center of the room, placing them on either
side of Frist.

“Dr. Elliot wasn’t the first to create nanobots,”
Smith said, “but his breakthrough allowed us to offload the power and
computing. He looked at it from another perspective. What did he really need to
accomplish? He sends them the instructions and a supercomputer will take care
of the processing. The racks on either side of the subject will bathe him in an
electric field, strong enough to power the nanobots, but not strong enough to
cause cellular damage.”

Eric gawked at the amount of equipment, and at
Frist, unconscious on the table. “What if it doesn’t work?”

“Then Mr. Frist died serving his country,” Smith
answered soberly.

Below, a nurse inserted a PIC line into Frist’s
chest. Eric watched for a moment. “Does it bother you what we’re doing to him?
The procedures? The enhancements?”

Smith turned his gaze to Eric. “There were five
hundred and twelve people who died in the Red Cross bombing. Mothers and
fathers, sisters and brothers. They loved and were loved. Many died instantly,
but not all. Some died in the fire and some from smoke inhalation. Others died
from puncture wounds or blunt-force trauma. One woman suffered a heart attack
from stress. You know this. You’ve seen the reports.” He turned his gaze back
to the technicians working on Frist. “I’ve done terrible things in the name of
freedom, ordered men and women to their deaths. I believe in the sanctity of
life and I feel sorrow, even for Mr. Frist.” He stopped and tapped Eric on the
leg. “I also know that we do what
must
be done. We are the gatekeepers.
Like as not, if I were asked to do it all again, I would.” Smith paused. “This
isn’t about me, is it?”

“No,” Eric said slowly, “I guess it isn’t. I think
I understand what you expect from me. No matter how I feel, I’ll perform the
job.”

Smith nodded. “I have faith in you, Eric. Perhaps
we aren’t turning Frist into a monster, perhaps we’re helping him find redemption.”

“Maybe,” Eric admitted, “Or maybe we’re going to
kill him, right here and now, in front of all these people, with a completely
untested medical procedure.”

Smith nodded. “Perhaps. You’ve heard the
expression, you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs?”

“In this case, it’s his skeletal system.”

“The nano-bots will do their job or we wouldn’t be
at the human trial stage,” Smith said.

The plasma screens showed a number of graphs, all
green. Dr. Elliot directed a man to maneuverer a steel framed array with two
glass tubes, each the size of 2-liter soda bottles, directly behind Frist. One
was filled with a clear liquid, the other with a liquid so dark it appeared to
suck the light from the room. The nurse had finished inserting the PIC line and
was busy hooking other IV’s in his arms and legs.

Dr. Elliot finished his last round of checks,
whispered something to another tech, and stepped to the front of the room.
“Test, test. Can you folks hear me?”

The people in the auditorium sat up and the talking
abruptly ended. There were nods all around. Smith sat still, hardly blinking.
The only noise in the room was the hum of the equipment and a faint whisper of
the ventilation system.

The techs behind the glass took their seats at
different workstations. The nurse finished hooking up the last IV and took a
position behind Oshensker’s workstation.

“Well,” Dr. Elliot said, “it appears we are ready
to begin. Dr. Oshensker is here, just as a precaution. Once the nanobots are
inserted, we can’t stop until the program completes. We must finish the process
and extract the nanobots. If left in the subject’s body, it could be
disastrous.”

The techs in the room nodded their heads. They had
worked on this for years, and not all the tests had ended well. When reading
through the archives, Eric had stumbled across pictures of a rhesus monkey. The
monkey was a bloody mess, as if it had turned inside out.

Now we’re risking a man, not a monkey.

Eric’s eyes swept the room, wondering if they were
nervous, and saw a twitch in Frist’s right eyelid. He turned to see if anyone
else had registered the twitch, but no one seemed to notice.

The door to the auditorium opened and Nancy joined
them. Smith greeted her with a nod. “Nice of you to show up, dear.”

“Wouldn’t miss it. How are we?”

“Nathan is about to begin.”

“Dr. Oshensker,” Dr. Elliot called out. “What’s
the status of the test subject?”

“Well within parameters,” Dr. Oshensker answered.
“The monitoring program is in place and all vitals are normal. The program is
up and the telemetry is recording.”

Eric was barely listening. He watched Frist, but
there was no further twitch, no sign that Frist was conscious. He glanced up at
the monitor showing Frist’s blood pressure. The status was green, the blood
pressure normal. According to the EEG readouts, Frist was unconscious.

Dr. Elliot turned to the nurse. “Kara, would you
start the program?”

The nurse nodded and typed commands on her
keyboard.

A large countdown clock appeared on the monitor.
As it started to tick down, Dr. Elliot continued to lecture. “When we reach
zero, the nanobots will be injected. There are billions in the cylinder. Once
they are successfully inserted, we’ll take a short break as they receive their
positioning instructions. The next step is the nano-carbon material. Once
injected, we’ll start the Weave. The nano bots will use the buckeyballs to form
a mesh sheathe over the skeletal framework, primarily the arms, legs and ribs,
rendering the skeleton much stronger than a normal. Make no mistake, this will
not render the subject bullet proof or invulnerable to harm. But, in
combination with his battle armor, will increase his chance of survival.”

The timer reached zero and everyone took a deep
breath. “We are injecting the nanobots now. This will take several moments.
Please note that our test subject is completely unconscious. The migration of
the nanobots would be excruciatingly painful if the test subject were awake,”
Dr. Elliot said.

The tube of clear liquid drained, quickly at
first, then slowing to a trickle. In less than five minutes, the tube was
empty.

“The nanobots are injected, and are en route to
their destination along the skeletal axis. Keep in mind, they are incredibly
small, and are pumping through the blood stream of a living organism. They must
find their way to the skeletal structure and prepare for the nanocarbon
material.”

Eric was fascinated. They had just injected
several million dollars’ worth of nanobots, at the cost of a billion dollars to
develop, into a living human being. He shuddered at the thought of billions of
tiny ant-like robots plunging through his bloodstream and crawling along his
bones.

On the screen, a number climbed until reaching 85
percent, and a gentle beeping started. “We’ve reached the threshold,” Dr.
Elliot said. “The nanobots that didn’t make it to the skeleton will go inert
once when done. As the blood flows through the kidneys, they will eventually be
excreted through the urine. Kara, please begin the injection of the
nanocarbon.”

Kara nodded, and with a few mouse clicks, the
black nanocarbon drained from the glass tube.

Eric was startled to see a triumphant smile on her
face. It struck him as odd, her demeanor at odds with the other techs. He tried
to remember details from her personnel file. He knew she was a registered
nurse, recruited years before, cross trained in the project’s technology, but
the rest of the details were lost in a blur.

On the monitor, a graphical representation of
Frist’s body appeared, the skin peeling away until only the skeletal structure
remained. A red mesh displayed and wrapped the bones, the proposed pattern.
Above the graphic, the words WEAVE BEGINNING floated, next to a countdown timer
displaying thirty minutes.

“Nanobots are starting the Weave,” Dr. Elliot
said. “You can watch as the red mesh turns green. We can’t actually see it
happening, of course, but this screen will give you an idea of their status.”