Perilous Panacea Read Online Free PDF Page B

difficulty communicating with our reporters, but we were able to get to our Pentagon correspondent by telephone, and she reports that many government computers were hit. Although not yet confirmed, a Pentagon employee, who wished to remain anonymous, said several of the government’s super-security computers were hit.” Blitzer came back on: “I have on the phone Professor Dudley Anderson, a computer-security expert from Georgetown University. Professor Anderson has been…”
    It was clear to Applenu that this part of Hearn’s elaborate plan worked to perfection. The objective was to disrupt communications between NNSA’s Transportation Control Center in Albuquerque and the trucks carrying the nuclear materials. Everything needed to proceed in a precise fashion. Two minutes before communications were knocked out, the command car leading the truck convoy would receive a “Change in Route” notification originating from Hearn. A Change in Route notification requires the convoy commander to confirm the order, but before that could be done, communications would be interrupted. In addition to a loss of voice and computer communication, Albuquerque would also lose the GPS signals.
    The original plan was to have the convoy commander be one of Lormes’s recruits. However, since Austin was unable to make that happen, it would be necessary for Lormes’s men to subdue the men not in on the hijacking. The commander’s assistant riding in the truck with him was one of Lormes’s men. Once they took over, the trucks would be taken off on a side road, where the nuclear material would be transferred to other trucks, eventually winding up at Applenu’s factory. All GPS units on the trucks would be disabled, so Albuquerque would not be able to locate them when communications were restored.
    It was after ten when Hearn called Applenu’s cell phone. “We did it, Brian! I just talked to Lormes. Phase two, the acquisition, went as planned, like clockwork.”
    “It’s over?”
    “It’s just beginning, old chap. Lormes and friends plan to have the product to you tomorrow. You got everything ready to begin manufacturing?”
    Applenu hesitated; he had hoped it would never come to this, hoped that Austin would not be able to pull it off, thus getting him out of this quandary. “The facilities are ready,” he said.
    “For phase three,” Hearn said, “you are the man, old chap. You’re in charge of getting the stuff processed, machined, and shipped to the customer.”
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    Three days after Lormes delivered the material to the factory, Applenu, on Hearn’s orders, was at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami’s South Beach for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Meeting when Hearn called Applenu’s cell phone. “Did you see our man?” Hearn asked.
    “He gave an interesting talk on computerized machining, and he’s giving another paper tomorrow morning entitled, ‘Micro/Meso Mechanical Applications for Improved Precision Machining at the Microscale Level.’”
    “Is he our man?”
    “The chap’s quite sharp, but he won’t work for us when we tell him what we’re doing. I can take care of the machining, and you can take care of the computer part of it, so we really don’t need him.”
    “We need him and Surling for insurance. Maybe you can take care of the machining, but we’ve got to be sure. Reedan and Surling are experts. So it’s up to you and Lormes to recruit him.” He laughed. “Lormes can be persuasive.”
    “There are a bloody lot of things that could go wrong, and this is one of them.”
    “There were a bloody lot of things that could have gone wrong up to now, but they didn’t. And they won’t in the future. By the way, I sent our last product design off to our boss. It’s the best design yet.”
    Hearn was referring to Sherbani, who showed all bomb designs to “his scientists at home,” as he called them. Although Hearn referred to Sherbani as the boss, Applenu knew Hearn considered