The Archimedes Effect Read Free Page B

Carruth opened the door and stepped in. Kendrick was asleep, and the quick injection he gave the man would keep him that way.
    They rolled Kendrick to the ambulance without incident.
    They drove to the armory. The building was a large warehouse within a carefully guarded perimeter. It was good security—human guards outside and technological ones inside.
    Again, they darted the guards. Stark took over at the kiosk, while Carruth and Hill drove inside.
    At the outer door, Kendrick’s hand worked exactly as advertised. Patrick did some kind of geek-magic and opened the electronically controlled inner door.
    “You ready?” he asked.
    Carruth nodded.
    Things were about to get hot.
    The warheads couldn’t be removed without activating indicators well away from the armory. Such alarms were active at all times, part of SOP for keeping track of the weapons. So they had to move fast.
    “Go.”
    The target they were after was a big one—approximately three hundred pounds. They pushed the stretcher—now clear of Kendrick—close to the rack, and rolled the device onto it. An audible alarm went off.
    Hill smoothly tightened two nylon safety belts as Carruth pushed the nuke toward the door. They hurried.
    They made it to the ambulance. Carruth drove while Hill locked down the warhead.
    Go-go-go—!
    They sped toward the armory perimeter, hearing sirens approach. Stark ran, hopping in while they were still moving.
    They were halfway to the gate when the world flickered and jumped, making Carruth slam on the brakes.
    “Damn machine!”
    Carruth smacked the side of his heads-up display and the image stabilized.
    This is what happens when you buy cheap.
    Carruth thought VR training was for shit—no amount of pretending to crawl through the forest prepared you for the real thing. The cold, the bugs—VR just didn’t cut it. Sure, the spacing of the base, the time factors, and the movement could be worked with their setup, but the little random things—Kendrick deciding to go pee, or being out on a date—those could never be factored in accurately.
    But their current operations budget didn’t cover full-scale mockups. Or as the boss had put it, “You can spend the money on your field gear or your training gear, you choose.”
    So they’d compromised. The system they were using wasn’t full VR—it mixed real-time computer graphics and a heads-up display with simulated models. The guards and base were all VR, spun on the Kraken Cluster back at camp, and ’cast to their headsets. But the crawling through grass, climbing, and driving were for real.
    They hadn’t bothered with much training for the other attack. That had been simple hit-and-run—get in, do damage, and get out. And there, they’d had all the computer codes. Because this one was more complicated, training was a necessity.
    But it was worth it. The attack would drive the price of their U.S. military base information through the roof. And on a more personal level, Carruth was looking forward to the black eye it would give the military.
    Teach them what happens when they mess with me.
    They made the entrance and picked up Dexter without any problems. By then, the ambulance sirens and flashers were running.
    Code three, and they were out.
    Hill called out the time. Armory-to-exit was the best they’d done yet.
    They were just about ready.

2

Pentagon Annex
Washington, D.C.
    Jay Gridley, head of Net Force’s computer section, leading expert and master of virtual reality in all its intricate, complicated forms, couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this tired. His eyes burned, and felt gritty when he blinked. His body had that brittle feeling, like a piece of glass, as though something would shatter if he moved too fast.
    The days when he could sit up in VR all night long, then go all the next day without sleep were gone. When had that happened?
    That’ll teach me.
    Little Mark, his darling baby boy, had run out of milk the night before, and Jay had gone out