AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Better you should ask Curtis." Ingram nodded to Meeker and sat down.
Meeker stepped up to a blackboard on a side wall and took a piece of chalk in one hand. He drew a rough sketch of the B-29 and a long, uneven contour line representing the seafloor that stretched across the board's surface and ended with a sudden rise that was Soseki Island. Thankfully to all in the room, he didn't squeak the chalk. Finally, after adding in a few geological details on the sea bottom, he turned and flashed a warm smile.
"Clyde has only given you a brief peek at our satellite surveillance and detection systems," he began.
"There are others that have the capability of penetrating through an impressive distance of solid material and measuring a vast array of different energy sources. I won't bother to get into them-- Clyde and I aren't here to teach a class-- but will simply reveal that the explosive device you placed inside the electrical network of the Dragon Center did not do the job."
"I've never laid an explosive that failed to detonate," Weatherhill growled on the defensive.
"Your charge went off all right," said Meeker, "but not where you set it. If Dr. Nogami was still in deep cover inside the command complex, he could tell you the explosion occurred a good fifty meters from the electrical junction center."
"No way," Stacy protested. "I watched Timothy set the charge behind a bundle of optical fibers in an access passage."
"It was moved," Dr. Nogami said thoughtfully.
"How?"
"The inspector robot probably observed a slight drop in the power pulse, searched, and found the charge. He would have removed it and notified his robotic control. The timer must have set off the charge while it was being carried through the corridors to robotic control for investigation."
"Then the Dragon Center is fully operational," Mancuso said with grave foreboding.
"And the Kaiten Project can be primed and detonated," added Stacy, her face displaying lines of disappointment.
Meeker nodded. "We're afraid that's the case."
"Then our operation to knock out the center was a bust," Weatherhill said disgustedly.
"Not really," Meeker explained patiently. "You captured Suma, and without him the cars can't be detonated."
Stacy looked confused. "What's to stop his fellow conspirators from setting off the bombs?"
Pitt threw Nogami a bemused look. "I suspect the good doctor has the answer."
"A small bit of information I picked up after becoming chummy with the computer technicians,"
Nogami said with a wide smile. "They allowed me to wander freely in their data center. On one occasion I stood behind a programmer and looked over his shoulder when he punched in data concerning the Kaiten Project. I memorized the entry code, and at my first opportunity I entered the system. It gave the bomb car locations, which you had already obtained, but I became stymied when I attempted to insert a virus in the detonation system. I discovered only Suma had access to the detonation codes."
"So no one but Hideki Suma can launch the Kaiten Project," Stacy said in relieved surprise.
"A situation his henchmen are working like hell to correct," answered Meeker. He glanced around at the MAIT team. "But congratulations are still in order, you pulled off a winner. Your efforts effectively shut down the Dragon Center, causing the Japanese to reprogram their prime and detonate systems, and giving us enough time to put together a plan to destroy it once and for all."
"Which, if I'm not sidetracking your lecture," said Pitt quietly, "brings us back to Dennings' Demons."
"You're quite right," acknowledged Meeker. He hesitated while he sat on a desk. Then he began cutting toward the heart of the briefing. "The President was willing to lay his political life on the line and sanction a nuclear strike against the Dragon Center. But he called it off when word came of your escape.
Your operation bought him some time, not much, but enough to accomplish what we've planned in the few hours we've got left."
"You figure on setting off the bomb inside the B-Twenty-nine," Pitt said, his eyes half closed in weariness.
"Not exactly." Meeker sighed. "It will have to be removed and placed a short distance away."
"Damned if I can see what damage it will cause to an island almost forty kilometers away," Giordino muttered.
"A group of the finest oceanographers and geophysicists in the business think that an underwater atomic blast can take out the Dragon Center."
"I'd like to know how," Stacy said as she swatted at a mosquito that had found one of her bare knees.
Meeker refaced the blackboard. "Major Dennings could not have known, of course, that his aircraft crashed into the sea and fell to the seafloor close to a perfect location to remove a serious threat to his country forty-eight years later." He paused and drew another jagged line that traveled under the sea bottom from the plane to Soseki Island and then curved southward. "A section of a major Pacific seismic fault system. It travels almost directly beneath the Dragon Center."
