The Chameleon Factor. Don Pendleton

it was true, nobody bothered to reply to that.

      Exiting the stairwell, the two groups continued on to the tunnel that would take them to the Annex, choosing to walk rather than take the tram.

      The Computer Room was abuzz with activity, two men typing madly at computer stations, while a redhaired woman wearing a VR helmet and gloves rode the Internet. At the end of the row of consoles, the fourth computer was dark, the chair empty.

      “Anything on the railroads or bus lines?” Barbara Price demanded, crossing her arms.

      “Nothing so far,” Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman replied, his hands flowing across a keyboard. A former member of the Rand Corporation think tank, Kurtzman was the chief of the electron-riders at the Farm. Although confined to a wheelchair from an attack on the Farm many years earlier, his mind was as sharp as ever. That was, aside from a minor dementia for black coffee strong enough to kill a rhinoceros.

      “Ditto with major airlines,” Akira Tokaido added, speed-reading a scrolling monitor. “Every plane is on schedule and accounted for.” Of Japanese and American descent, the handsome young man was often referred to as a natural-born hacker with “chips in his blood.”

      “So far,” Price said, biting a lip. “Keep a watch on the private planes. He might try to hijack a Cessna or a helicopter. Are there any crop dusters working in the state?”

      “Good idea. I’m on it,” Tokaido said, turning on a submonitor while typing with his other hand.

      “What are we looking for?” Lyons asked, dropping his duffel to the floor. It landed with a clank that momentarily caught the attention of the hackers.

      “Glad you’re here,” Price stated without preamble.

      “Where’s Hal?” McCarter asked, glancing around.

      “Already back in D.C. talking with the President,” Price answered, waving the men toward the coffee station along the wall. “There’s plenty of coffee, so help yourself. I expect you’re also hungry, so I had the staff fill the fridge with fresh sandwiches. I can brief you as you eat. You go airborne in fifteen minutes.”

      So fast? Lyons started to ask for an explanation, but said nothing. Price was no fool. If she was sending them into the field this quick, then the shit had already hit the fan.

      “Ah, thanks, I think. Did Bear make the coffee?” James asked with a worried look.

      Without turning in his wheelchair, Kurtzman laughed. “And you call yourselves soldiers.” He brandished a steaming mug. “This’ll put some hair on your chest!”

      “Or take it off,” James quipped.

      “Also degreases tractor parts,” Schwarz added.

      “Heads up!” Carmen Delahunt announced from behind her VR helmet. “I just accessed a NSA WatchDog satellite.”

      Right on cue, the main wall monitor fluttered with a wild scroll and settled into a picture of more swirling clouds.

      “Damn!” Delahunt cursed. “There’s no break in the cloud cover over western Alaska.” She sounded as if the inclement weather were a personal affront to her abilities as a hacker.

      “Carmen, did you really expect clear sky at this time of year?” Price asked. “That’s why the Pentagon set the field test for the Chameleon. No other nation’s satellites could watch.”

      “Advanced technology is so damn primitive,” Schwarz said with a flash of a smile.

      “Apparently so, this time,” Delahunt muttered, going back into the virtual reality of the worldwide Net.

      Going to the kitchenette, Price poured herself a fresh cup of coffee, adding a lot of milk and sugar. “Have you all read the report from Hal?”

      “In the Black Hawk coming here,” Lyons replied. “There wasn’t much there.”

      “Sadly, it’s all we have,” she said.

      “Okay, grab a seat,” Price instructed, gesturing at some chairs pushed along the wall. “We’re truly operating in the dark on this. We know nothing about how the Chameleon operates, power requirements, distance limitations and so on. Every report and file was destroyed in Alaska. All we can do is make some educated guesses. Everybody connected with the project was at that field test or in the laboratory. The missiles from the USS Fairfax killed them all.”

      “What was the hoped-for size of the unit?” Schwarz asked, leaning forward in his chair.

      “About the size of a paperback book,” Price replied. “But Hal said that the President believes Professor Johnson was field-testing a shoe box version yesterday.”

      “The size of a shoe box?” James said, the astonishment plain on his face.

      She nodded. “Yes. But once again, it’s only a guess.”

      “Still certainly small enough to be portable,” McCarter said, rubbing his chin. “How much did it weigh?”

      “We figured it at roughly twenty pounds. But it could be more, a lot more.”

      “Barbara, was that Professor Torge Emile Johnson by any chance?” Schwarz asked, scrunching his face.

      Blinking in surprise, Price turned. “Yes, it was. So you know him?”

      “Only by reputation. I’ve read articles by the man. He was a genius. A real one. Made breakthroughs all the time. SA once called him the Thomas Edison of the twenty-first century.”

      “SA?” Manning asked patiently.

      “Scientific American magazine,” James explained.

      Manning nodded wisely. “Ah, yes. I have the swimsuit issue at home.”

      “Oh, shut up,” James growled.

      “So what is the mission?” Hawkins asked, leaning against the wall. “We’re supposed to get it back before anybody get hurts?”

      “Over three hundred people are dead already,” Price answered sternly. “We want it found, or destroyed.”

      Going to the fridge, Blancanales opened the door to find it filled with plates of sandwiches, soft drinks and bottles of juice, so he grabbed sandwiches and an orange juice. It was going to be a long day. He could feel it in his bones.

      “What about the off-site backup files?” he asked, resting against the counter to unwrap his food and take a healthy bite.

      “The what?” McCarter asked, heading for the fridge. There was no Coca-Cola in sight, only some diet Mountain Dew and several bottles of fruity stuff, and the juice.

      Blancanales was chewing, so Schwarz answered. “Every project is vulnerable to accidents, or hackers. So all big corporations, and most government projects, have an automatic recording of everything done in the lab located far away from the building. Just in case.”

      “Smart move,” McCarter commented.

      “Damn straight it is. The IRS does the same thing, which is why it’s pointless to bomb the place.”

      “The Farm, too?” Hawkins asked.

      Turning away from his console Kurtzman said, “No, we’re too sensitive. If this place goes, nobody will ever know we even existed.”

      “The backup files are a good place to start a search, but once again, we don’t know where they’re located,” Price added grimly. “Only the project head and the Pentagon liaison did.”

      “And they’re dead,” Encizo stated.

      “Exactly.”

      “So our job is to go through the wreckage and find the location of those backup files,” Lyons said, thinking aloud, his eyes half-closed in concentration.

      “Yes,” Price said. “Able