“I am a Soldier first, but an intelligence professional second to none.
With pride in my heritage, but focused on the future,
Performing the first task of an Army:
To find, know, and never lose the enemy.
With a sense of urgency and of tenacity, professional and physical fitness,
and above all, INTEGRITY, for in truth lies victory.
Always at silent war, while ready for a shooting war,
The silent warrior of the ARMY team.”
– Creed of the Military Intelligence Corps [13]
07:40
Johnson, Kalfas and Tooley arrive at the Special Projects Center. Even at seven thirty in the morning it’s already pushing a hundred degrees.
Calling it a ‘Center’, looking at it from the outside, would be rather generous. SP’s ‘Center’ is an old, blocky three story building that looks like it could have been there when the Portuguese rolled in in the 1500s.
It did however, have the advantages of being away from taller buildings in the area and having a high roof top cornice that served to hide SP’s vast antenna array.
Sidebar for a little Kuwait history?
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kuwait
Johnson had never been to the facility. His initial impression walking up to the primitive looking building shifted when he saw the heavy steel door at the entrance surrounded by an array of security cameras and a numeric keypad.
“Identify yourselves, please” a voice said from an invisible speaker.
“Captain Patrick Johnson, MI.”
“Sergeant Nigel Kalfas, MI.”
“Corporal Leslie Tooley, MI.”
“Please present your identification to the camera.”
After a moment, the electronic lock on the door buzzed and the latch clicked.
“You may enter.”
There couldn’t have been a bigger contrast between the building’s exterior and what they found two steps inside the heavy steel door…
In the first step, the temperature dropped 20 degrees from the balmy 97 degrees outside. In the second step, they entered an elegantly furnished lobby with a reception desk and a waiting area surrounded by a few leather sofas. Persian rugs decorated two of the walls and a framed photograph of Emir Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah hung on the wall behind the well-dressed receptionist sitting at a marble topped counter. For all the world, it looked like they’d walked into some kind of high-end office complex.
The picture of the Emir was no surprise. The guy’s face was hanging in practically every lobby in the country. What was a little strange though was in this one he wasn’t alone. He was shaking hands with president Bush.
“Patrick, are we in the right place?” Kalfas whispered to Johnson.
“I think so…”
Patrick approached the desk and the receptionist looked up from her computer. “How may I help you?”
“We’re here for a meeting with Dr. Nichols at 08:00.”
She hit a few keys on her keyboard, peered at the screen and leaned back. “He seems to have not checked in this morning. A common occurrence I’m afraid… The evening shift is having a hard time keeping up with him after 2 am or so and he can be difficult to locate sometimes. By the time the morning team arrives, he could be anywhere. – Something about Sweet Tarts…
My apologies. I digress. Please feel free to have a seat. I’ve requested one of the technicians find him.
Tea?”
“No thank you, ma’am. We’ve just had some coffee.” Patrick replies.
“I could use a cup!” piped in Kalfas.
While Johnson gave Kalfas the stink eye, the receptionist picked up the phone and punched a key. “Keith, would you please serve tea for some guests we have in the lobby? There are three of them. Thank you.”
“He should just be a minute. While we’re waiting may I ask you to please relinquish your side arms? It’s part of our security protocol. You should have been briefed.”
Johnson recalled that earlier the Colonel told him to “cooperate” with the Special Projects team.
“OK, guys. The Colonel said play nice. This is not our house.”
They looked at each other for a moment and all three simultaneously moved to draw their weapons out of their holsters.
“HOLD IT!”
How is was that the petite brunette behind the reception desk went from calmly sitting at her computer to standing, holding a Heckler & Koch automatic shotgun was a mystery. It couldn’t have taken more than a second.
It was quite impressive, though.
“My apologies. One at a time, please.” she said with a slight shrug.
The group managed to negotiate the transfer without further mishap and settled in on the lobby sofas around a glass coffee table.
“What, exactly is this place?” Asked Kalfas.
At that moment, Keith arrived with the tea set.
In a surreal scene, Keith, who looked like he stepped out of a Merchant Ivory film, treated the trio to an awkward couple of moments while tea was poured into little china cups and the ritual of “cream or lemon?” “and how many sugars?” was performed. Johnson and Tooley took theirs without anything. Kalfas opted for cream and two sugars.
Finally, the soldiers were left in the waiting area, cradling little china cups in their large hands.
Johnson and Tooley glanced at each other as Kalfas took a sip. “Earl Grey! Delightful!”
Patrick began. “Anyway… I’ve only had a few occasions to interact with the Special Projects Division. They are a mostly civilian outfit. Nobody I’ve ever met knows who, if anyone, they actually report to.
Their focus is applied R&D. ‘Just about anything you can think of. In my experience, they’ve got teams working on computers, surveillance electronics and even special purpose weapons. Lots of prototype stuff. Lots of scientists and engineers from all over; Americans, Brits, even a couple of ex Soviets. As a result, they run things a little differently.
I met Connor er, Dr. Nichols, about three months ago at a briefing on computer security. It was a strange talk. Since then, I’ve bumped into him a few more times on missions.
He thinks that as networks become more pervasive, someday any computer will be able to talk to any other computer.”
“Huh? Why would anyone want to do that?” asked Kalfas, “I just use mine to play Sim City.”
“Ask Connor, but be ready to spend some time. I asked him a question at the conference and the only way I got away was when I told him I was about to go AWOL if I didn’t leave.”
“So what’s this guy’s story?”
“The Colonel has the details.
What I’ve heard is that when he was a high school sophomore, SP swooped in and grabbed him after class one day because he’d broken into a super computer at Aberdeen. ‘Said he needed more processing for a simulation he’d been working on for his biology class and wasn’t getting any response to his requests. Something about simulating evolution in the computer.
They ended up giving him is own lab. He’s been working for them ever since.”
Tooley looked confused. She asked, “Sir, so if he was pulled out of high school how’d he get to be ‘Dr. Nichols’? The Colonel said he was only 17.”
Patrick leaned back and sipped his tea and glanced over to Kalfas. “OK, it’s not bad.”
“Apparently last year, while working for SP, he got his doctorate by mailing in a thesis he wrote in his spare time to the Berkeley Computer Science department. ‘Word is, he did this blind, without ever talking to anyone there, he just ‘threw it over the wall’.
He did however, attach a cover letter. It was pretty short. All it said was, ‘Next week I’m sending this to Stanford.’
After reading his thesis, the faculty were falling all over themselves for a chance to be his advisor and keep him out of Stanford’s hands. – Apparently there’s a thing there...”
Tooley made a low whistle. “Ballsy.”
Kalfas made the sort of face you make when confronted with something totally alien. “Huh… Smart then?”
“Scary smart. A little weird, but I like him. ‘Seems like a good kid.”
High heels clicking on the tile floor announced the return of the receptionist. (This time mercifully, without the shotgun.)
“The Dr. will see you now. This way please.”
The receptionist led them down a gleaming, tiled hallway to an antique elevator at the end. After they filed in and the doors closed, she turned to the brass button panel with three floors indicated by roman numerals. Patrick noted that she pressed all three at once and then executed a complicated sequence over the keys that he couldn’t follow. After a brief pause, the three buttons flashed twice and they were treated to a brief sense of falling.
After about 15 seconds, the doors opened.
“Here we are. Dr. Nichols is in the lab. Enjoy your meeting.” And with that, she stepped back in the elevator and the doors closed.
The group looked at each other for a moment, shrugged and filed into a large open space. Sitting at a table loaded down with computer monitors that probably each weighed as much as the receptionist, was Dr. Nichols, somehow fixedly peering into three of them simultaneously.
At the surrounding tables were four tired looking technicians, working with a variety of military electronics, some recognizable, mostly not. Power supplies, oscilloscopes and other diagnostic electronics filled the lab. Probably about half of the equipment in the room was hooked up to what appeared to be some kind of avionics package secured to a large metal stand. Clearly, they were trying to figure out what the thing was or how it worked.
Several panels were detached from the device and dozens of probes were attached to points on the internal circuitry.
So far, Dr. Nichols hadn’t noticed the group enter.
Finally, Dr. Nichols looked up from his screens and turned to the techs. “OK guys, I’m going to try to turn it on again! I’ve finally got the power startup sequence figured out… – I think...”
Tooley, Kalfas and Patrick were watching curiously.
Kalfas turned to Patrick and whispered, “What is that thing?”
“I’m not sure...” Patrick replied.
Tooley nodded her head towards the device and whispered, “Did you notice the Russian writing inside where they’ve got it opened up?”
Patrick nodded. “Yeah. I also noticed what looks like a couple of bullet holes near the back end...”
Apparently, this was uttered a little too loudly and Dr. Nichols finally noticed the visitors.
“Oh! Hi Patrick! I didn’t know it would be you. Who’re your friends?”
Patrick replied, “Hi Connor, this is Sergeant Nigel Kalfas, and Corporal Leslie Tooley. They’re working with me on a new assignment.”
Dr. Nichols smiled and nodded.
“Nice to meet you, Nigel, Leslie. Call me Conner.
Yeah Patrick, you’re right about the bullet holes. We had to get in there and make some guesses about what used to be in the damaged regions. Funny thing is, one of the bullets seems to have gone right through the thing’s auto-destruct triggering circuit so we got a hold of it mostly intact. I’ll tell you, there’s enough plastic explosive in there to take down this whole building!
Great find, right?!”
Patrick eyed the device dubiously. “So what is it?”
“I’m not sure!!!” Said Conner grinning like a twelve year old. “Isn’t that cool!?”
“Er, and you just decided to try and turn it on?...”
Patrick noticed that the technicians were giving him significant glances accompanied by wide eyed nodding behind Connor’s back. Everything in their expressions and posture seemed to be saying, “That’s what we’ve been trying to tell him!’
“Come on Patrick! How else are we going figure out what it does? Duh!” replied the young doctor.
“Anyway, you’re just in time! I was just about to fire it up!” Connor started typing away on his keyboards and one by one, machines in the room connected to the unknown device started making an ominous humming noise.
“Ready? One!.. Two!...”
At that moment every technician in the room hit the floor and covered their heads.
“Whoa!! Whoa!!!” shouted Patrick, “Hang on a second!”
Connor tapped a few keys and the humming subsided. He looked up at Patrick with an expectant expression. “What?”
“Well, Connor,” said Patrick in a slow and calming voice, “I know you’re excited about this project and we certainly wouldn’t want to get in the way of your work, but the Colonel has sent us down here to meet with you and pick up some equipment...”
Connor tilted his head to the side in a rather bird-like gesture and looked off into space for a moment. “Oh, yeah! The equipment! Come on, follow me. You’re going to love this!”
Gesturing for the three of them to follow, Connor started walking out of the room and yelled back over his shoulder to the techs, “Don’t worry guys! I’ll be right back!”
Patrick glanced back into the room on his way out. – The techs looked worried.