Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(52)

His thoughts turned to the football game he’d been invited to last fall, the New Orleans Saints at the Arizona Cardinals. With the domed stadium filled with Arizona’s red-clad fans and the Cardinals driving, the words that sent a shiver down Tall Bear’s spine thundered through the huge stadium’s public address system.

“Rise up Red Sea!”

As Tall Bear watched the tribal leaders climb into their pickups and cars, fire up the ignitions, and drive off down the dirt road, spewing plumes of light brown dust in their wake, his jaw clenched in determination.

Rise up Red Sea!





It could have been his story.

So why did Freddy feel like a world-class fool for not breaking this one himself?

Maybe because it was the biggest story in history and he’d known about it for weeks. But instead of pouncing on it, he’d stayed quiet, letting the president make the announcement in a televised prime-time Oval Office address. Maybe because he had the deep-seated feeling he was on the trail of something even bigger. Or maybe he’d gone all soft and patriotic. One thing he knew: if his editor ever found out he’d sat on this, he’d be looking for a new line of work.

Leaning back against the pile of pillows stacked against the wood wall-board—he couldn’t bring himself to think of the brown wooden thing fastened to the wall as a headboard—Freddy stared at the television that blared breaking news on every channel.

The president had come right out and told the American people that a black hole was forming at the heart of the ATLAS detector in Meyrin, Switzerland. He’d also announced that effective immediately, he and the leaders of all the G7 countries were imposing martial law to ensure public safety and order during this crisis. The National Guard had been called out and the US military had been ordered to its highest readiness level, DEFCON 1. In addition, under his martial law decree, the provisions of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 were being temporarily suspended, thereby enabling the branches of the United States military to enforce the law.

As the nation watched in stunned silence, the president shifted to a gentler tone, assuring the public that the world’s major powers had developed a plan to deal with the black hole using technologies derived from the Rho Project. The plan involved the most ambitious construction project ever conceived: a project to build a device that would transport the micro black hole deep into space, far from our solar system, where it could no longer pose a threat to Earth. He, in conjunction with EU leaders, had placed Dr. Donald Stephenson, the man most intimately familiar with the alien technologies, in charge of the project to construct the Rho Device.

Then, closing his address with the typical May God be with us all crap, the president signed off to pandemonium.

Martial law? Did the US government even have a plan for implementing martial law on a national scale? Freddy didn’t think so. And he didn’t think the plan would be a very effective one even if it existed. Maybe it could be done in Europe, where everything was close together, but this was America, and America was one big-ass place.

Simultaneously with the president’s announcement, leaders across the EU issued proclamations of their own, timing that must have been forced on them considering that prime time in the US market hardly corresponded to a similar situation in Europe. Then again, maybe the early-morning hour facilitated martial law implementation. Most Europeans would just wake up to find it in effect.

As Freddy continued watching the breathless commentary, stories about the black hole began to be replaced by news of looting breaking out in communities across the nation, gun shops and outdoor-supply stores being among the early targets. In some cities the police found themselves deluged with calls, having to pick and choose which situations they would respond to. The National Guard had been called up, but that took time.

Outside the Holiday Inn Express, Freddy heard the wail of distant sirens break the stillness of the Los Alamos night.

Shit, I hate being right, Freddy thought as he strapped on his walkabout leg and reached for his pants. Well he was a reporter. Might as well get out there and cover what was sure to be the beginning of the end of the America he’d known and loved. For all he knew, reporting the news might violate martial law. As he buttoned his shirt and grabbed his digital recorder and camera, Freddy paused one more time to listen to the sirens. If that was the case, he wouldn’t be the only one engaged in criminal activity.

Then, striding across the red-yellow-and-orange-striped carpet, Freddy exited his hotel room, letting the door slam behind him.





Dr. Louis Dubois didn’t like the way his colleague Dr. Donald Stephenson was looking at the engineers gathered around the conference table. He looked like an apex predator evaluating prey—a falcon, perhaps, or a jaguar. The same bloodless, hungry look. He wondered, not for the first time, if Stephenson might be a high-functioning psychopath who, if he hadn’t turned to science, would be engaged in less savory pursuits.

Luckily, the engineers were studying the blueprints with fierce intensity and ignoring Dr. Stephenson. Side conversations shifted into French, German, and Spanish, then back to English for general discussion.

Finally, though, as Dubois had known would happen, Dr. Stephenson lost patience.

“Can you build it?” Dr. Stephenson snapped out his question to Gerhardt Werner, the lead engineer for Kohl Engineering, the company responsible for building many of the largest and most demanding projects in the world, including the massive Francis turbine generators at China’s Three Gorges Dam.