"You can have this one, Ma'am." the Warrant Officer replied.
Sally said, "Bring me a voucher to sign." and held out her hand. The Warrant Officer gave her the Beretta butt first. She eased back the slide on the weapon to see if a round was in the chamber, unzipped the back of her purse, and slid the automatic pistol into the special gun compartment. Her two children, standing close to her side, didn't act surprised. "Jose," she said,"let's find my husband."
Since the alternate site didn't have historians or sociologists, there were only two consoles in the operations room. Two Warrant Officers wearing headsets sat at one console. They briefly reported on who they had contacted in the search for General Arthurs and what they had done to try to get through to the Homestead facility. Sally sat at the other console and called up a communications status display. "We've got full network connectivity with the Homestead facility. Let's see what's going on."
She checked the building security program and looked at the log entries. General Arthurs had entered the building at 1302 and told the civilian security guard that he could leave. The log also showed that the general signed an escort authorization for a Mr. Charles Abrahamson. The guard had checked Mr. Abrahamson's ID and recorded it as a new Montana driver's license. Before he left, the guard recorded that the building was locked down and the General's workstation had control of the security program.
Sally looked into the real time tracking system and saw that her husband's forearm implant was reporting from the hallway outside the Data Analysis Console room. Right next to her husband was a warm body wearing a low level access visitor badge. The low level access rating of that badge was
causing the security system to prohibit the door to the analysis facility from opening.
"Can you get me General Landry or Dr. Wirtz on the phone?" Sally asked the officers at the other console.
"They should have just arrived in Tokyo, Ma'am. We'll dial their cell phones now." After a pause, one of the officers said into his headset, "General, Mrs. Arthurs is calling. " He turned and nodded to Sally.
It took Sally a moment to get the headset on and punch into the call. "Fred, just listen. I need to know what you can tell me about someone named Charles Abrahamson."
"Uh, okay, Sally. He is not a nice guy. Let me go so far as to say that he is big trouble. He has not been our friend. To the best of my knowledge he is far out of the picture. I'm a little shocked that you ask."
"He's turned up and he's with Ted." she replied. "At Homestead or where?" he asked. "In. . inside the Homestead facility."
"Sally, you weren't in on all of this. Only Ted and I knew about Abrahamson. But, this can only be bad."
"My thought exactly, Fred."
"Should we turn around and come back?" Landry asked.
"No, you are of more help by being in touch. Can you go to the Embassy so we can talk on a better phone?" She meant a secure phone, of course.
"We'll be on our way immediately. I'll call you. . where? Boulder City?"
"Yes, Fred, as soon as you can please." She punched off and turned in her chair.
"Jose, there is a bad guy alone in the Project with my husband."
"It won't do much good to notify Homestead base security, would it?" Jose observed. "They'd never get inside without heavy equipment."
One of the Warrant Officers said, "There's video monitoring in that hallway, isn't there, Ma'am?"
Sally thought for a moment. "I don't think we can get into the real time video system remotely. It's all fiber optic cables and direct connections. But, there is video archive storage on the network. Let me see if I can ping it from here."
With remote access through a network management server, Sally pulled up the list of network devices and found the video archive storage. She accessed the storage device and found that she could get video, but that it was between
three and five minutes old. The delay depended on the priority of other data backup processes happening on the network.
Sally had to hunt through the archive for the correct camera view. She brought up the video just in time to see the man wearing the visitor's badge in the hallway shoot her husband twice.
It took Sally a good minute to recover. She said, "Major, I want you to get out of here. I want you to get in your jet and fly to Washington. I want you to brief the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs on everything that has happened this far."
"Ma'am," Jose said, "I can't do that."
Sally looked at him with fierce intensity, "Jose, you have to get out of here. I'm going to have to do things and I don't need you to get involved."
"Sally, there is a big ass storm on the East Coast that I can't fly into. Lowly Air Force majors do not go knock on the door of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs unless they're bringing in coffee, and I can't leave you here to do this alone."
Sally shook her head. "We have to shoot this guy before he shoots, Ted. You are under direct orders not to shoot without the authorization of the Chairman. But, I'm not going to risk being told "No" for some bureaucratic reason. I'm going to save my husband."
Jose said, "Every commander has the right of self-defense. It's a duty and obligation. Fire if fired upon."
Sally looked at him and said, "Yes, Jose, but how will we ever prove that he shot first if we shoot him before he shoots?"
Jose shook his head, "Sally, sometimes you just have to do what you have to do."
BIG BANG THEORY
Thursday, August 18, 2011
1600 Eastern
TCA Headquarters
Homestead ARB, Florida
Excerpt from the Personal Narrative
of Major General Ted Arthurs (USAF Ret)
Recorded July 2015
CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET /TA
"Retirement started to look really good about then."
Ted had been inside the Project with "Charlie the Madman", as he'd come to think of him, for about three hours. The phones had started to ring an hour ago, so he knew that Jose and his people, and probably Sally, were looking for him. He also knew that eventually they would look in the right place.
So, Ted told Charlie stories and showed him pictures. Charlie had a video camera in his backpack and he set it up to record everything that Ted said. Ted told him the history of the project. He told him about Bose-Einstein Condensate and the laser power requirements. He spoke slowly, repeated Charlie's questions back to him, and did everything he could to drag out the process. Charlie's camera battery died after ninety minutes.
A couple of ibuprofen from Ted's desk drawer had taken the edge off the pain, but he still didn't move well. But, with his camera gone and his mind over stimulated, Charles Abrahamson was going over the edge. Charlie never let go of the gun and Ted didn't think he could play him for much longer.
The problem, Ted knew was that there were no cameras in his office. It was his privacy thing kicking in to bite him in his butt. He had tried to steer Charlie to the break room or to anyplace with cameras, but he had resisted.
"I want you to send a bead back in time." Charles said. "I want a demonstration that I can use to sell the project to investors."
"And where would you like this bead?" Ted innocently asked.
"Someplace where someone rich and powerful can find it and be convinced. " Charles replied.
Ted would have shrugged, but that move wasn't in his body right now. "You name it."
Charles struggled. He obviously hadn't thought this one through.
"Classic and timeless. As old as antiquity. I have it. The Sphinx! I've never seen it, but I would love to. That's it. I want you to put a glint in the eye of the Sphinx in Giza."
"Actually," Arthurs admitted, "that's a damn good idea. We have to use a global mapping program to get the exact location in three dimensions, but it shouldn't be hard. We have to go to the Data Analysis Console room, but you'll want to see that anyway."
Charles didn't say anything. He just bobbed his head and waved his gun toward the door.
Ted walked slowly. He was still bent over and hurting. But, he also wanted as much time as possible on the video cameras. Time, as usual, was on his side. It was his home pool advantage.
When Ted got to the steel door, he entered his code into the keypad next to the door. He wasn't surprised when the keypad beeped, but the door didn't open. He knew the computer wouldn't open the door while any other body's heat source, with a visitor badge or not, was so close.
"What's going on?" Abrahamson asked.
"I'm not sure." Ted replied. "Maybe it's a glitch in the system because of the hurricane. You know how computers are. Let me try it again."
Abrahamson crowded him and pressed the barrel of the gun into his neck.
The door beeped and Ted moved away as if to try the handle. But he only faked a move, a clumsy fake, to the door handle and kept going along the wall of the hallway.
Abrahamson pulled back the hammer on the revolver and said, "Stop!" With his arm fully extended, Abrahamson had the end of the barrel only inches from Ted's ear.
Ted heard the fusillade. The sounds of the shots were worse the he had imagined.The noise filled the hallway and stunned him. Blood and brains showered him. It was like the innards of an over-ripe pumpkin dropped on a sidewalk. The effect of the hot bead was non-directional and gore flew in every direction. The smell was worse than the sight.
The first white hot glass bead had taken off much of Abrahamson's head. Two more beads popped into the hallway as his body fell to the floor. Ted threw up once against the hallway wall. It hurt and he didn't want to do it again.
"Sloppy on the time dimension, but the three dimensional positioning was right on." Ted thought to himself. He reflected that the folks in Nevada had been in a hurry. They were probably harassed, he thought, by a crazed Italian brunette slave driver with a gun in her hand.
Ted went slowly back to his office, opened the drawer for the secure voice system, and dialed the backup site. He knew who would answer. "Hey Sal, thanks for that. He was getting ready to shoot me."
"He DID shoot you!" she said. "I saw him and there is no way I'm going to forget it! This is something I can't unremember!"
"Sally, I'm going outside. I hope it's raining because I really need a shower. I'm my own biohazard."
"There is a medical crew standing by outside. I saw how you're walking."
"Sally, when this dies down, can we retire? I'm really getting tired of this stuff."
"You'll lose your white jet." She said.
"I have an idea about that." was his only reply.