Sky Hammer

“Exactly.”

“It’s possible that we might have to shut down the Net,” Kurtzman stated. “Akira, prepare to arm the nexus point C-4 charges.”

The young man stopped what he was doing and got busy. The entire Internet was relayed though sixteen junction points. If those were blown up, the Internet was gone, possibly for months. That would cause a loss of billions of dollars to corporations, and nobody had the authorization to do that but the Secretary General of the UN. And very illegally, Stony Man Farm. It had taken them months to get the firing commands for the remote charges, and even then, they’d had to have a field team infiltrate each nexus to add their own control elements. This was something they had talked about for years in dread. Blowing the Internet was a doomsday option, a last-ditch effort to hold back the news that could cause the death of countless people. Nobody sane wanted to undertake this action, but the cyberteam had to be ready. Just in case. On the other hand, if the news got on the cable news shows, then the cat was out of the bag and all hell would break loose anyway, and there really wasn’t anything they could do about that event.

“Could Sky Hammer smash down the junction points?” Wethers asked suddenly.

Kurtzman nodded. “If the people controlling it know the locations, yes.”

“I’ll start a disinformation campaign about this,” Delahunt said, slipping on her VR helmet. The best way to hide the truth was to bury it under half-truths and lies. With enough misleading rumors circulating, nobody would ever believe that Sky Hammer existed.

Kurtzman grabbed a telephone on his console. “Barbara? It’s worse than we feared…yes, a Thor. It’s got to be. We better recall the teams immediately. This is going to get real bad, real fast.”

“I have them located,” Wethers said, working a mouse.

The main screen switched to a map of the world, two glowing blue stars marking the precise location of the Stony Man field teams. They were on opposite sides of the globe.

Kurtzman hung up the phone. “Okay, Barbara is calling Hal, and we have recall authorization. Bring ’em back.”

“We can’t,” Wethers stated. “See? They are both under radio silence.”

“Why?”

“They found their targets much sooner than expected and have engaged the enemy.”

Kurtzman narrowed his gaze. Damn! The teams were wasting valuable time taking out these minor dangers to America when the sky was literally about to fall down on everybody. Hours wasted. Time gone. Time they didn’t have to spare.

Kurtzman clamped his mouth shut. He knew the current enemy action was merely “cleanup,” but if the teams were in the middle of a firefight, any distraction at exactly the wrong moment could get all of them killed. There was nothing to do but wait, wait for them to finish the missions they were on.

“Come on, guys, shake a leg,” Kurtzman whispered. “Move it.”

CHAPTER THREE

Chicago, Illinois

The classic rock music of Peter Frampton was blaring over the wall speakers of the control booth. Lost in thought, the blurry DJ was staring out the window of the Sears Tower, and it took quite a while before he finally noticed the jingling instrument.

“Yellow!” he drawled, removing the handrolled cigarette from his mouth. The smoke was sweet and pungent, and highly illegal. “This is WQQQ, all radio, all the time. What can I do for you?”

“Pay close attention, Jew, or everybody dies,” a garbled voice spoke.

The DJ went very still at that and dropped the joint into a nearly empty beer bottle on the sound board. It hissed out of existence.

“What did you just say?” he asked, flipping a switch to record the conversation. Having worked his way up through the ranks, the DJ had started in the news department and knew the sound of a scrambled voice when he heard it. Lots of kooks and nuts called up stations proclaiming everything imaginable, from women sighting Elvis on a UFO, to men claiming to be an alien’s baby. But nobody ever had the coin to get a voice scrambler. That alone meant big bucks, and money plus crazy always spelled trouble.

“I said shut the fuck up, Moses, or we’ll bomb your little shithole of a station just to make the other kike radio stations pay attention. Understand?”

In the control booth, a union technician perked up in his chair at the sound of the voice, and quickly started punching numbers into a red phone dedicated for outside calls only. The DJ tried to wave the man from calling the police, but the engineer paid him no attention.

“My apologies, sir,” the DJ muttered. They thought the radio station was Jewish? The owner of the radio station was a Norwegian, Dave Linderholm, and he had no idea who owned the Sears Tower.

A crackle of static and the voice returned.

“Mind your betters, pig. Now, the wall in Palestine was destroyed by the American Liberation Strike Force,” the distorted voice continued. “And we…”

“Do you mean, the wall in Israel?” the DJ asked, confused.

“Shut up! There is no such country!” The phone crackled. “All of that land belongs to Palestine!”

“Even the parcels they sold to the Jews?” the DJ asked quickly, pointedly trying to egg the caller into saying something that would be banned on the air. That always helped the ratings, and sweeps week was coming up.

“Zion propaganda! Now, unless American ZOG pulls all of its troops back to U.S. soil, our next target will be the UN building!” There was a click and the line went dead.

Quickly shoving another recorded cassette of early heavy metal into the board, the DJ rushed into the engineering booth.

“What a freaking loon,” the DJ exhaled, running nervous fingers through his wavy crop of hair. “Did we get everything?”

“Loud and clear.” The engineer smiled, patting a digital CD recorder on the board. “By the way, what’s a ZOG?”

“Zionist Occupation Government.”

“What’s Zionist?”

“Tell ya later. Did we get a trace on the call?” the DJ asked hopefully, looking at the bewildering display of readouts, gauges, lights and meters. He was the talent, not a freaking atomic brain.

“Sure. It’s useless.” The engineer sighed. “The call came from a rest stop on Route 95, outside of Camden, right over the river in New Jersey.”

Clever. Stop your car, make the call, drive away before anybody can get there.

“Could it have been a fake phone location?”

“For people with a voice scrambler? Sure.” The engineer leaned back in his chair, the springs squeaking in protest. “So what now? Call the news director, or do we sell this directly to CNN?”

“We?” the DJ asked, stressing the word.

“I have the only tape, dude,” the engineer said, patting the recording machine.

The DJ glared at the machine, then shrugged. “Fifty-fifty?”

“Done.” The engineer grinned, extended a hand, and the two men shook.

“So who would you call?” the DJ smiled.

“The FBI, man,” the engineer stated with a wave. “These crank yankers might be the real thing.”

The DJ laughed, then he heard the reverberating drum roll of a Metallica song fading away and rushed back to his board to shove in a commercial for acne cream. When it was over, he shoved in the longest running song he could find, which bought him thirty minutes. Time to contact CNN and get a big check!

Heading back to the engineering booth, the DJ paused at the sight of the 9/11 wall poster of the Twin Towers. Vaguely he seemed to remember that everybody had lots of hint and clues about the forthcoming attack, but nobody had told the FBI.