The Siren Project (34 page)

“Why not now?”

“Because if there’s someone on the FBI side
under their control, anything useful will be destroyed before it's discovered. We’ll
call Lamar, when we’re ready.”

Mouse slid into the seat in front on the
console and studied the controls.

“It’s like watching brain surgery on
television,” Mitch said, fascinated by the ghoulishness of it.

“It's not TV folks,” Mouse said, studying
the fourth screen displaying the satellite alignment data. “We’re bouncing off
a NSA satellite. Very secure. Take a look at screen four, about six lines down,
where it says SGS. That’s Satellite Ground Station.” He pointed to the words,
Sincom One. “That’s the other side of the bounce. It’s a two way transmission,
signals going both ways, using massive bandwidth. There’s a ton of data
bouncing off that satellite.”

“What kind of data?” Mitch asked.

“Exactly what you see. Brain pictures going
out, and a lot of binary stuff coming back.”

“Targeting information,” Gunter concluded. “They
miniaturized the ENP device, so it can fit in a truck, but perhaps there is no
room for anything else. The control facility may be at the other end of the
signal.”

“They’ve got a small generator truck around
the corner for power,” Mitch said, “And this truck to get instructions. That's
how they can pluck people out of their homes Sunday night, and have them ready
for work Monday morning.”

“That’s if they don’t kill them in the
process,” Christa reminded him.

“Can you can track down where Sincom One
is?” Gunter asked.

“It's right there,” Mouse said, pointing to
the satellite alignment screen. “Those numbers are Sincom's latitude and
longitude.”

Gunter immediately recorded the
coordinates, while Mitch double checked what he wrote, ensuring it was correct.

When Gunter had finished, Mitch said, “Let's
pull the plug on this thing. We can’t help that security guard in there, but we
can stop this from happening again.”

“What did you have in mind?” Gunter asked.

“This truck’s sound proof, right?”

Gunter listened, unable to hear any noise
from outside. “Ya, I expect so.”

“Good,” Mitch said, then fired into the
console.

Mouse fell backwards out of his chair in
his haste to get out of the way. “Hey! Warn me when you’re going to shoot that
thing!”

“This won't be of any use to Lamar, if you
destroy it,” Christa said.

“Change of plan. If this is the only
satellite truck they’ve got, and we knock it out, they can’t melt anyone else's
brain, for a while.” The control panel flickered and sparked as he aimed to
fire again.

“Wait, wait!” Mouse shouted. “G, your pen,
quickly.” Gunter handed his pen to Mouse, who hurriedly copied down a long
string of numbers.

“What’s that?” Christa asked.

“The access code and coordinates of one NSA
satellite,” Mouse said with a mischievous grin. “You never know when you’re
going to need a spy satellite, for ordering take out, or reading the
President’s mail.”

When Mouse finished, Mitch fired several
times into the console, destroying the electronics, and causing the screens to
go blank.

Mouse picked up the chair and smashed the
video screens. “Might as well destroy everything.”

Mitch nodded approvingly. “Time to bug out.
This place will be full of people with bad attitudes real soon.”

They jumped out and hurried away from the
satellite truck, mixing into the crowd. Less than a minute later, half a dozen
men in red security coats came running from the direction of the convention center.
Mitch watched them investigate the interior of the satellite truck, then one of
the security men hurried into the side street past the unmanned FBI barricade.

“All of them were conditioned,” Christa
said, confirming Mitch's suspicions.

They headed back around the corner of the
building toward the convention center. “Now it’s time to call Lamar.” Mitch
switched on his radio, “Lamar, you there?”

“Where else would I be?”

“Any news on those security guards?”

“We’re still checking. No one knows
anything about alpha waves, although there was some kind of weird psyche test
involved. We’re still trying to find out what it was.”

“If you check the alley off the side street,
south of the main entrance, you’ll find a large white truck. Grab it and
everyone in it. Got that?”

“What’s in it?”

“Unfriendly people with high tech toys. Try
to get the equipment intact, it’s important.”

“I’ll send someone around.”

“Send a SWAT team. Send two. Expect
resistance.”

Lamar paused in thought. “Okay Mitchell. You
better be right about this.”

“When are you moving on the security
guards?”

“When I have something to give me cause to!”

“Lamar, there's no doubt. The security guards
are compromised.”

“So you said. We’re watching them, but so
far they look clean.”

Mitch switched off, irritated. “He’s
watching them! I feel safer already.” He slid the captured gun into Gunter’s
hand. “Hold this. I’m going to take a look inside. I’ll never get it through
the metal detectors.” Gunter pocketed the weapon. “Keep an eye on the FBI. Let
me know if they do anything other than sit on their asses and shine their
shoes.”

Gunter and Mouse crossed the street in
search of a good vantage point, while Mitch and Christa strolled toward the
entrance. When they passed through the metal detector, Mitch’s radio set the
machine beeping. One of the security men quickly descended on him with a hand
held detector and found the radio.

“I’ve got to keep in touch with campaign
headquarters,” he explained. “My cell phone batteries are flat. This is all
they had.”

The security man accepted the excuse,
letting them pass through into the lobby, where several pairs of FBI agents
patrolled with sniffer dogs. Once past the dog squad, they made their way into
the convention hall where they blended into the crowded arena. Some lesser
known party man was giving an enthusiastic speech, although there was so much
talking, shouting and general schmoozing it seemed as if no one was paying attention.
Rather than descend onto the floor, they worked their way up to the higher
galleries, where they could get an unobstructed view of the cavernous hall. Red
jacketed convention security men were scattered around the crowd, doing nothing
more than standing around, looking bored. Mitch knew Christa was examining the
nearer guards, and from the look on her face he knew, they were all
conditioned. He studied the positioning of the security men, looking for a
pattern, which soon became apparent.

He leaned close to Christa’s ear. “The red
jackets are covering the exits.”

“Looking for us?”

“I don’t think so.”

Mitch scanned the exits he could see as
they worked their way through the crowd. People entered the chamber, without
the security guards showing any interest in them. He noticed two security men
standing back in the shadows, paying no attention to anyone. They stood in
front of a fire exit and a water cooler.

“I want to try something,” he whispered, as
he started toward the two security guards, who initially ignored him, but
quickly cut him off when he suddenly darted toward the fire exit.

“You can’t go through there,” one of the
guards said. “This way is closed.”

“I just need some air.”

“This way is closed,” the guard repeated
mechanically.

Mitch extricated himself from the security
man’s grip and returned to Christa. “They’re not trying to keep people out the
auditorium, they’re here to stop them leaving.” He flicked on his radio. “Lamar,
the security goons in here are closing up the doors so no one can get out.”

Lamar’s voice was barely audible over
crackling static. “Say again, I can barely hear you.”

Mitch cupped his hand over his mouth and
the radio receiver and yelled, his voice partially obscured by the noise in the
convention center. “The security guards won’t let anyone out. Get your people
in here. Ensure the exits are open.” He pressed the radio speaker close to his
ear to hear the response, which was almost drowned out by static.

“Say again! Identify yourself!” Lamar’s
voice hissed back, barely audible.

“Something’s wrong with the radio,” Mitch
said, pocketing it. “I’m getting drowned out by static.”

“Why go to all the trouble of finding, and
conditioning forty or fifty guys, just to take hostages?”

“Because . . .” he replied thoughtfully, “They'll
do what they're told, like robots . . . And they're totally expendable.”

“They don’t want to kill their own people!”
Christa said, alarmed, “Which means, everyone here is going to die!” She looked
around the room, saw the people and banners filling the convention floor, the
balloons and streamers suspended high above, heard the music playing and saw the
lights illuminating the stage. “This room is so crowded, someone could be
carrying a case full of explosives and we’d never find it.”

“It won’t be that simple. Those sniffer
dogs in the foyer would have found explosives. It’s something else, something .
. . unexpected. Something much bigger! Remember what EB said, there'd be
extreme collateral damage.”

Mitch continued his slow reconnaissance of
the convention hall, squeezing through increasingly tighter presses of people. Off
to the left, was a temporary media control area for managing cameras and
lights, barricaded from the mass of people. The four sound technicians he'd
accosted outside the convention center were standing by their sound equipment,
the head sound engineer was yelling and waving his hands around furiously. Mitch
realized it had been some time since he’d heard the speaker on the podium. In
the din, generated by the boisterous audience, he hadn’t noticed the speech had
stopped, nor had anyone else except the sound technicians. He looked down to
the podium, where the speaker stood tapping the microphone and waving toward
the media control area, trying to attract attention. As the speaker was not
someone of great renown, the crowds on the floor were amusing themselves, ignoring
the farce on stage.

Mitch jumped the barrier isolating the
media area, and slipped past several large control decks and monitors set up
for the television broadcast. The screens were all blank while television
technicians franticly ran checks on their electrical equipment. He stopped at
the sound control area and tapped the angry sound engineer on the shoulder.

“What’s going on?”

“I told those people–” The sound engineer
yelled as he turned, stopping suddenly at the sight of Mitch. “Not you again!”

Mitch repeated his question. “What’s wrong
with the sound?”

“Who the hell knows! God damned equipment
shorted out again.” The sound engineer turned back to his equipment.

Mitch grabbed his shoulder and spun him
around. “It shorted out this morning, and now again?”

“That’s right. The vision guys too,” he
said, nodding toward the camera control area. “We just got this crap set up and
working, and bam, it’s down again. It makes no fucking sense.”

“What caused it?”

“Like I know anything. I just own this
piece of shit!”

Mitch pushed the engineer aside and leaned
over the sound control console and yelled to the two sound technicians on their
knees trying to figure if they could rewire the console in time. “What caused
the short circuit?”

One of the technicians looked up dejectedly.
“A power spike. It blew right through our charge protectors. See?” The man held
up a small white unit meant to protect the equipment from power spikes. It had
been reduced to a twisted melted blob.

Mitch studied the object in the
technician’s hand for a moment. “Have you ever seen that happen before?”

“Once, when a radio station I was working
at got hit by lightning, but it’s a sunny day. There's no lightning out there.”

The other technician rolled out from under
the bench. “I told you, it’s those damn speakers. They’re sucking so much
juice, the whole electrical system in this place is close to shorting out. I told
them the circuits couldn’t handle those things.” He shook his head. “No one
ever listens.”

The second technician crawled back under
the sound console as Mitch turned to look at the two giant black speakers
positioned either side of the stage, each one standing several times taller
than a man. The stage also had several speakers mounted on it, but they were
much smaller units than the two mega speakers. Mitch signaled Christa to follow
him as he pushed his way down to the convention floor toward the nearer of the
two enormous speakers.

She caught him before they reached it,
yelling over the static. “What is it?”

“Energy!” he shouted. “Electricity is
energy!”

As if that was all the explanation she
needed, he pressed harder through the crowd, pulling slightly ahead of her. When
he got close to the speaker, a prickling sensation combed his body. The hair on
his arms and head stood up, contorted by the intense electrical field
surrounding the speakers. The crowd had left an open area around the large
black boxes, avoiding the uncomfortable sensation created by the immense build
up of static electricity.