Edge of Apocalypse (26 page)

Both of them enjoyed the unspoken humor. Picking that kind of a place to discuss Jessica Tulrude's intentions to run for president.

THIRTY-NINE

At Liberty University

"Mr. Jordan, perhaps you could answer that question?"

Cal Jordan had been busy sketching a picture on his notepad. He looked up with embarrassment to find the entire class staring at him.

"Sorry, professor. I didn't hear it."

There were muffled laughs from a few students ten rows back that echoed through the large college lecture hall.

At the front of the class the professor frowned and tried again. "The question, Mr. Jordan, from one of your fellow classmates, was, Why should Congress have the power to force a private citizen to testify in a congressional hearing?"

For a moment, Cal's brain froze.

The professor studied Cal and then expanded his question. "We are studying the powers of the Congress. Mr. Hitchney asked a salient question about the subpoena power of the Congress."

Cal turned around and looked ten rows back until he located the face of Jeff Hitchney, another student in the class. Hitchney, a tall blond sophomore had a twisted half-smile on his face. Cal now realized that the student had planted the question on purpose to embarrass him. Hitchney was the star pitcher on the college baseball team and was the leader of the school debate team. But there was one more thing. He had a keen interest in Cal's girlfriend, Karen Hester. And Hitchney seemed intent on harassing Cal. After all, how could Karen have preferred Cal over him?

"Mr. Jordan," the professor said, pressing in gently, "I thought you might have some thoughts on the subject considering the fact that your father, Joshua Jordan, is in the news on that exact issue."

Cal cringed.
There it is again. Colonel Joshua Jordan. The man who single-handedly rescued New York City from the perils of incoming nuclear missiles. Wherever I go, I can't escape my father.

Now Cal struggled to focus and form an intelligent answer. He gave it his best shot. "The power of Congress to conduct hearings sort of assumes, I guess, the power to conduct hearings for the good of the country. And that would assume, I suppose, the power to force people to testify."

The professor gave a quick nod. Then he saw Hitchney's hand up again and called on him.

"Professor, it seems to me that Jordan is admitting then that his father is wrong and that Congress is right. Because he plainly suggested in his answer that the subpoena power is an appropriate exercise of the authority of congressional committees."

Hitchney capped it off with a smug grin.

A few more chuckles from Hitchney's row.

Cal's hand shot up. The professor recognized him. "Yes, Mr. Jordan."

"Mr. Hitchney is correct that I am admitting the power of Congress to subpoena witnesses. But that's not what my father's case is about. What that case is about is the fact that Congress can't force someone to give away trade secrets and business intelligence. Which is what they are trying to do. Plus...there's something else involved too..."

The professor asked, "And what is that?"

"Sometimes people refuse to give information to Congress...or a court too...for good reasons. Last week we studied the situation about media reporters who refused to testify in court about who their confidential sources were. They said they had a greater right to protect their news sources."

"And what is the greater right in your father's case?"

Cal paused. He now was in the interesting dilemma of having to defend his father's case. He wasn't hot on that idea. Plus the things that his mom and his sister, Deborah, had shared with him about his father's legal situation were strictly interfamily matters. Very private. But Cal had another overriding thought.
On the other hand, there's no way I'm letting Hitchney off the hook.

"Okay. Here's the deal," Cal replied. "My father invented this laser weapon...the RTS. Return-to-Sender thing. He never gave the government full ownership of the design. It was still in, like, an experimental phase. Then the North Koreans launched missiles at us. The government used my dad's weapon to stop the missiles--"

Another student blurted out, "Yeah, and melted the North Koreans who may not have even been the attackers..."

With that a few students gave out a subdued
boo.

But the rest of the class started their own spontaneous cheer for Joshua Jordan.

As the issue erupted all over the lecture hall around him, Cal was quietly staring at his hands in front of him.
Man, I can't believe this. Why did the professor go into this stuff anyway?

After the instructor brought the class back to order, he asked Cal to finish his thought.

"The point I was making is just this," Cal explained. "If the government doesn't own the weapon, then shouldn't the businessman who invented it be able to protect his design?"

Hitchney shot his hand up, and the professor nodded for him to speak again.

"Weapons involve national security. That issue doesn't belong to some multimillionaire businessman; it belongs to the government."

Cal didn't wait to be called on.

"Uh, we
are
the government," he said, turning back toward Hitchney. "We studied that during the first week of this class..."

Hitchney didn't wait for the nod from the professor this time. "One private citizen can't decide those kinds of things. That would be chaos. The government is supposed to decide those issues--"

"And what if some of the politicians in Congress aren't trustworthy? What if they let that weapon information slip into the wrong hands--"

"Wow, talk about paranoid," Hitchney muttered to his friends sitting next to him, but loud enough for most of the class to hear.

That is when the professor stepped back into the discussion. "Okay, okay. Good discussion. By the way, I love it when you students decide to exercise your gray matter. I think that's great."

Then the professor turned to Cal again. "Just wondering Mr. Jordan, what's your major?"

"Art."

"Well, if you ever get tired of art, you may want to think about pre-law. You raised some good points today. And you might give some thought to joining the debate team too."

When he said that, the professor smiled and threw a smile up toward Jeff Hitchney, who was trying hard not to look threatened by that last comment.

As the professor continued his lecture, Cal felt his Allfone vibrate. He had set the vibrate mode on Morse code. Home was coded to vibrate dots and dashes for the word
family.
But calls from his father's office were set to vibrate out the code for
SOS--
the international distress signal. That was his own private joke.

This time it was the SOS. He wasn't going to take it. At least not right now, when the eyes of half the class were still glued on him.

Back in his high-rise office in New York, Joshua Jordan was letting his call go through to his son on his speakerphone while he continued to scan a weapons design memo from his engineering team.

The phone kept ringing. Joshua put the paper down.
He's not going to pick up. So, he knows it's me calling, and he's not picking up. Of course, he could still be in class. Take it easy, Joshua. Give the kid a break.

When Joshua heard the start of his son's voicemail message he thought about leaving a message. But bad news was best delivered person-to-person.

He decided to hang up and try him again in a few minutes.

Joshua thought back to the call he had just received from Rocky Bridger, a man whose fortitude was usually chiseled out of granite. But when Joshua had picked up his telephone call, his voice sounded different.

Rocky started by saying, "Josh, Rocky. Oh man..." His voice wavered.

There was a long pause. Then a sound. Rocky's voice was breaking with emotion.

"What is it?" Joshua asked.

"Roger, my son-in-law...murdered...Joshua...my God, he's gone."

When Rocky collected himself, he shared the slight information he had. The police were playing cloak-and-danger with this. But the horrible bottom line was that Roger French was murdered in his office in downtown Philadelphia. The local police were being extremely tight-lipped about the details, though they'd mentioned that the FBI had some interest in the case. But his son-in-law was gone, the victim of a brutal crime, and now Rocky was with his daughter, who was in shock and was inconsolable.

Joshua tried his best to comfort his friend and mentor. But he felt stupid and useless and clumsy.

He had immediately called Abby. He'd always been impressed with her sense of compassion, but this time her willingness to drop everything to go to Philadelphia to help the family was particularly heartwarming.

Then something struck Joshua like a meteor.
Rocky just lost his son-in-law. To a senseless murder. Your life changes in a heartbeat. You can lose them...so quickly. When was the last time I told Cal that I loved him? Debbie and I don't have that issue. She's so up-front with everything. But Cal and I...things have always been uptight. Strained. And the clock keeps ticking. And nothing gets resolved. What if something happened to me? And I didn't get a chance to smooth things out with Cal beforehand?

That's when Joshua felt the overpowering need to call his son.

He tried again, and after a few nervous seconds, Cal picked up the call.

"Josh, this is Dad."

"Hi."

"How are you doing?"

"Fine."

"Good. Look...I just heard some really bad news from a friend of mine. You know Rocky Bridger?"

Cal fell silent.

Joshua added, "The General from the Pentagon. Longtime friend of mine from the Air Force?"

"Oh, yeah..."

"Well, his son-in-law was murdered a couple of nights ago in Philadelphia. Rocky didn't have any details--why would anyone want to kill Roger?"

"I'm sorry to hear that, Dad. You and Mom mention Roger a lot. But I didn't know him well..."

"Well...I got to thinking, and I just needed to call you."

"Okay."

"And..."

"Yeah?"

"Just tell you..."

There was a pause.

"I love you."

Joshua wanted to elaborate somehow, but ended it there instead.

Taken off guard, Cal could only mumble, "Thanks, Dad."

"Sometime we need to talk, you and I."

"Okay."

"Man-to-man."

"All right."

Cal was thinking to himself,
What is this all about?
But asking that was too risky.

"I mean," Joshua added, "about what happened in New York. The day the missiles came. With you still being in the city..."

Cal was thinking,
You mean so you can drill me about how I didn't tell you the truth about staying behind in Manhattan with my girlfriend, Karen Hester, who you don't approve of? You mean we need to talk about that? I already admitted all of that to Mom. Can't you just let it go?

That is when the conversation started drifting away like a rudderless sailboat.

Finally, Joshua was the one who ended it.

"Okay, Son. Just wanted to call. So...good-bye."

Cal was the last one to speak.

And all he said was, "Good-bye."

Then he clicked off his Allfone.

Some students who had just been in his government class when he took on Jeff Hitchney passed him by and called out his name and gave him the thumbs-up sign.

Cal smiled weakly and acknowledged them.

But inside, he was in turmoil.

FORTY

The owner of the hardware and mining-supply store in West Virginia was gingerly holding onto the box of explosives. He set it down cautiously on the counter. Then he pointed to the contents, so his customer could look inside.

The customer standing in front of him was a man in a flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off. He was wearing blue jeans and boots.

The jeans looked new.

He didn't recognize the customer.

"Which mining operation did you say you are working at?"

"Wyler Coal," Atta Zimler said, concocting the name instantly and doing a good imitation of a slow drawl. "It's a small mine. It's family owned. Just opened up."

"Okay," the hardware man said. "So anyway, these are the solid-pack Bridgewater-type blasting caps. They detonate from an electric spark..."

"Good," Zimler said. "That's what I'm looking for."

"What are you using as your primary explosive?"

Zimler grinned. He had no intention of telling him the truth. His
primary
was military grade plastic explosives he had already obtained on the black market for a pretty penny at a drop spot outside of Pittsburgh. All he needed now was a detonator. Blasting caps set off by an electric charge would be perfect. He had already purchased the remote switches from an electronics shop. Rigging those up with cell phones to send the charge would be child's play for him.

"Primary explosives?" Zimler replied. "Oh, the usual. Now these caps, they won't detonate by accident with static electricity in the air, right?"

"Nope."

"Stray cell phone signals, that kind of thing won't do it?"

"No. You have to send the electric charge directly to the cap for it to blow."

"Good," Zimler said. "My attitude is, when you blast, you want to make sure that your target gets the full force. And only
when
you want it to go off. Timing is everything. Right?"

Something hit the store clerk strange about the conversation, though he couldn't put his finger on it. "Yeah, I guess so...," he replied.

Pulling out a wad of bills, Zimler paid cash.

Before the store owner handed over the box of blasting caps, however, he grabbed a clipboard and slapped it on the counter. "We're supposed to get this from everyone who wants explosives. Got to put your John Hancock right here..."

Zimler smiled and acted like he understood the phrase. But he hesitated for just an instant.

He looked at the clipboard and noticed the signatures on it.